Going Live: Television Studio Drama and the Divine Drama of Liturgy

Yesterday Jude and I went out to Eagle’s Nest Ranch (ENR) to see Sparrow, written, produced and directed by Debi Stodolka, and ENR’s first foray into live drama and dinner theatre. A hard-working, talented cast acted out a story of redemption which was inspired by the book of the Prophet Hosea in the Bible. There was even a “wandering minstrel.” Sparrow got me thinking about drama and Christianity—which, some say, is the Divine Drama—and reminded me of something I wrote a couple of months ago on the subject arising out of my previous vocation as a director of television drama but hadn’t got around to posting. 

We're de-cluttering. In doing so, I came across my shooting script and floor plans for the ACCESS Network's 1984 television studio production of Sharon Pollock's stage play, The Komogata Maru Incident.

Televison studio lens protractor and Komagata Maru shooting script

A floor plan showing cast and camera positions in the studio

I produced and directed it in ACCESS's Edmonton studio. We shared a building with The Brick furniture warehouse in those days which meant that takes often had to be aborted because of The Brick's PA system announcements booming through the too-thin walls—but I digress. 

A thirty-four years younger me (left)
directing Hopkinson (Graham McPherson) and TS (Blair Haynes).

I must be one of the very few people in Canada (or anywhere now) who was trained to direct BBC style multi-camera television studio drama. I was so trained by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation in the early days of my television career. 1970ish. Unlike drama shot film style, television studio drama is shot like a stage play using multiple studio cameras and sets all in one studio. All the classic British dramas like Z-Cars (which was also live!), Upstairs and Downstairs, The Forsyte Saga, and The Pallisers were shot this way. 

I still think such drama is a valid medium. It is a kind of cross between stage and film and has its own life and effectiveness. Studio drama can require a level of "suspension of disbelief" closer to that required while enjoying live theatre. Performances and the sense of narrative has a fluid, immediate quality which is often missing in film. You don’t see it much any more. These days most television drama is shot film style. 

Candlelight Easter Vigil Liturgy
St Barnabas Anglican Church, Medicine Hat

Good liturgy is like live television drama. There’s a script. There are costumes. A set. There is an audience—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is music. There are “performers”—the congregation. And a director—the presider. There are interruptions and  distractions, too, like the ones I experienced while trying to make television studio drama next to the Brick warehouse in Edmonton all those years ago. People in the cast are late, or don’t come at all. There’s noise. There’s rivalry and conflict. People lose focus. They don’t learn their lines properly. We stop and start. Lines are missed. Actors don’t like the way their hair is done. People miss their marks. 

Sample script for worship

Being a parish priest is rather like producing and directing a live  television studio drama. There can be lots of people, there are deadlines, budgets, you always seem to be running out of light, you are always trying to bring some order out of chaos. It can be profound and silly and great fun and it can drive you mad all at once. 

I like the Orthodox idea that their highly scripted and choreographed Divine Liturgy transcends time to become something akin to the ancient, prescribed, also thoroughly scripted worship that happened in Moses’ Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple. There was nothing seeker friendly in it. The worshipper didn’t get to ad lib his or her lines or choose his or her preferred contemporary or traditional style. The worshipper was not the audience. God was. God’s preferences were what mattered. Such worship was not all about the participants. It is about and for the Author. In Moses’ and Solomon’s day, God said, “This is how you are to worship Me and this is where and when and in Whose Name.” Period.

Good liturgical worship is like a carefully and faithfully scripted, live television period drama except for the cameras (although the new big-box churches do use them to project the platform action on the big screen). As we suspend our disbelief, allow ourselves to be written in to the script, learn our lines and play our God-given parts, the story of the good news of Jesus Christ, Saviour and Lord, goes live. 

Gene+

Boxing Day Thoughts on Pastoring: Blue Mondays, Mistakes and Soul Handling

A couple of things have stuck in my mind from the "Readings for Reflection" in my A Guide to Prayer for this week. 

Blue Mondays

First, from Hannah Whitall Smith's, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, this bit spoke to me:

Years ago I came across this sentence in an old book:

Never indulge, at the close of an action, in any self reflective acts of any kind, whether of self congratulation or of self despair. Forget the things that are behind, the moment they are past, leaving them with God.

When the temptation comes, as it mostly does to every worker after the performance of any service, to indulge in these reflections…I turn from them at once and positively refuse to think about my work at all, leaving it with the Lord to overrule my mistakes, and to bless it as he chooses. I believe there would be far fewer "blue Mondays" for ministers of the Gospel than there are now if they would adopt this plan; and I am sure all workers would find their work far less wearing. 

Smith has her detractors, but I think she's right on here and I think it applies not only to Mondays, but also to Christmas and Boxing Days after the Christmas Eve push. What's done is done, what's not done is not done, what didn't work didn't work, what did did, let it be. Trust the Lord to overrule and to bless with divine accuracy.

From My Boxing Days: The TV Version

One of the things I enjoyed about directing live television in my previous life is that once a show was over it was done. There wasn't time to agonize over it because we had to get ready for the next one. I didn't have my mistakes and imperfections recorded for endless playback, regrets and what ifs and I rarely had any feedback from the viewers.

In my work as a priest, Sundays are rather like those live shows except that I see the results (or lack of them) in my congregation playing and replaying week after week and year after year so it's harder to put them behind me.

Best and Strongest Hands

Then there's this from Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (who I can't remember hearing of before):

I beg you, do not look upon Dortmund

or Medicine Hat, or where ever else, methinks,

as a steppingstone, but rather say: Here I shall stay as long as it pleases God; if it be his will, until I die. 

It helps, of course, if you like being where you are.

Look upon every child, your confirmands, every member of the congregation as if you will have to give account for every soul on the day of the Lord Jesus. 

I find that a bit daunting. It's true, I bear some responsibility for the spiritual feeding and welfare of the people I serve, but I also believe that once one is old enough one is responsible for the feeding and welfare of one's own soul.

I like this bit

Every day commit all these human souls from the worst and weakest of hands, namely, your own, into the best and strongest of hands. Then you will be able to carry on your ministry not only without care but also with joy overflowing and joyful hope. 

His best and strongest hands are the hands that save. By his mercy, mine sometimes bring comfort, but can be clumsy and often fumble the ball. Alas.

But then, what Hannah said.

Priestcraft and the Art of Television Directing

In my previous life, for 20 years, I made television programs for a living. On April Fool's day 1968 I became an employee of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation when I started out as a member of the floor crew (the guys who swept the studio, moved sets and so on) at DNTV-2, a small television station in Dunedin, New Zealand. About 18 months later I wrote some scripts for a children's program. The producer of that program became the Executive Producer for the station and offered me a job as a producer-director responsible for the weekly Monday night sports magazine show and for live telecasts of sports on the weekends. I was 22 years old with all kinds of delusions of artistic televisual grandeur. Sports was an excellent training ground upon which to learn my craft.

In 1974 we immigrated to Canada where I did a brief stint as a studio cameraman at CHBC-TV in Kelowna before being hired by CKY-TV, Winnipeg, to direct the 6 o'clock news. CKY gave me the opportunity to do my first drama and documentary programs. In 1980, we moved to Calgary to work for what is now ACCESS Network.

Since I was ordained in 1991, I've often thought that in many ways being an Anglican priest, or any kind of pastor, is very much like being a television producer/director. The time has come to explore that idea.

At first I thought this should be entitled Pastoring and the Art of Television Production. But then I wondered, is what I do just pastoring? Or is it, more accurately, priestcraft? The word pastoring doesn't seem to include the priestly sacramental things I do whereas the word priestcraft seems to include the pastoring part of the job. So priestcraft it is for now.

Back to the topic at hand. Consider, for example, what makes a good television program. Just before going to seminary in 1988, I taught television operations and production for a year at Mt Royal College in Calgary. I created an acronym for my Mt Royal students:

SQuAT

If you want to make a good television program, that's what you have to know, I told them. You had to know SQuAT. It got their attention. SQuAT?

S stands for STORY. The story is all. It has to be good, compelling, appealling, and the director must know it intimately.

Same for a priest/pastor. The story is all and the story is Jesus. The pastor must know it (and Him) intimately. Just as in the case of the television script, the words of that story must come off the page, into the heart, soul, mind and body and be told (proclaimed, broad and narrow-cast) in word and deed.

Qu stands for QUALITY, which must be high. In the TV business it's called production values. We need high quality people and equipment to tell a good story best. Pictures must be well composed and sharp and the sound must be clear, well-mixed and in sync with the picture.

Ditto in ministry. How we live our lives and do our ministry is the "picture" we present. That picture, too, must be well-composed and well-focussed. What we say and how we say it (our sound track) must also be clear, balanced, unambiguous and in-sync with the "picture" we're transmitting.

A stands for AUDIENCE. We must know who they are. To whom, exactly, are we telling the story? Is your primary audience male, female, young, old, where do they live, what are their interests? If we don't know who our target audience and what they're like, we can't know how to tell our story.

Pastors also must know who their "audience" is. We have two. In worship our audience is God. As lead worshippers we direct the cast and crew (congregation) as they "perform" for the Living God. For our preaching, teaching and visiting, our audience is our congregation or the people with whom we have contact in our ministry outside the church. How do they need to hear and experience the story for maximum impact?

T stands for TEAM. Making television programs is a team effort. I was a producer/director, not a performer, a shooter, a set-designer, composer or a sound man. I needed all these people to get the story told. My job was to know the script (story), visualize it and create an enviroment where the creativity in each team member could flourish. I needed to inspire them with my vision of the story. When I did that well, team members could excel and magic could happen.

It is also worth noting that the set or studio is not a democracy. There can only be one director; a leader who casts the vision and calls the shots (literally in the television world). Committee-made television shows tend to be bland, colourless affairs.

Likewise, the pastor has a responsibility to learn and visualize the story, cast the vision and equip the saints (the team) for the work of ministry...which is to get God well worshipped and the story well told and acted (lived) out.

Priests/pastors have to get to know SQuAT.