1. Workshops:

Disturbing Stories

There are stories in the Bible that are disturbing. Some of them are just odd, some raise awkward questions, and some are so upsetting you sometimes wonder how they got into the Bible in the first place.
As important as those stories are, this workshop does not focus on them, at least not to begin with.
To begin, we focus on what happens when you poke at stories, prod them, disturb them a little. Sometimes they fight back. Sometimes they turn out to be ticklish. And sometimes they become disturbing.
In this workshop we introduce a new way of exploring biblical stories and demonstrate the value of "disturbing stories."

 

Women Who Were Watching: Gender in the Gospels

Too often the baritones who are interpreting the stories about baritones in the Bible imagine that everyone who counts is, like them, obviously a baritone. In biblical stories this leads to mischief, both for the characters in the story and for the people who are interpreting the story. In this workshop we crack open the texts and listen for the voices of women who, it turns out, speak on every page and in every scene.

Going Public: It's Not Just Bible Stories Anymore

When biblical stories are told in a too-sheltered environment (the church, for instance), they grow weak and spindly. In this workshop we explore what happens when you tell these same stories in public, in the midst of the whole range of other stories that are the lifeblood of popular culture.

Telling Stories About Resurrection in a World Where Everyone Dies

Christian theology begins with the resurrection of the dead. Any attempt to interpret Christian biblical texts or theology or life that does not pay attention to the impossibility of resurrection and the impenetrable reality of death will misunderstand everything. In this workshop we explore the ways that Christian texts (and thus Christian hopes) dance with the fact of disaster.

Other Workshops created on demand and with consultation.

2. Storytelling Performance Pieces:

Taking Place/Taking Up Space

If the gospel texts were written for embodied performance, then responsible interpretive practice will expect that performance of these texts will reveal crucial aspects not found in silent reading. As Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote: "A drama exists really only when it is played."
In this performance we take up one important aspect of embodied performance: the matter of space. In the real world, when things take place, they take up space. Building on the work of Jacques Lecoq (École Internationale de Théatre), we explore the ethical space opened up in face-to-face encounters in the gospel of Mark, especially the encounters with the hemorrhaging woman and the Syro-Phoenician woman.

 

Eyes to See

At the end of Mark the audience discovers women who (we are told) have always been watching and supporting the story. We have never seen them. In this performance we hunt for the story of the watching women. They hold the story together, if you have the eyes to see them.

Mud, Blood, and Violence

The creation stories in the beginning of Genesis are simple and delightful folktales. But if that were all that they are, they would hardly be worth reading, telling or hearing. In this performance, we explore the creation story in Genesis 2 as a story of resistance told to protect the Jewish people from Marduk and Tiamat, the dangerous and violent story told by the Babylonian captors who held the Jewish people in Exile. The creation of Mudguy and Havvah (Adam and Eve) resists, in every generation, the notion that brutality should be allowed to have the last word in creating a world fit for people.

 

Rachel Weeping for Her Children: An Exploration of Bach's St. Matthew Passion

Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" opens with a call: "Come, ye daughters, share my wailing."   Matthew's gospel opens with the voice of Rachel, weeping for the babies of Bethlehem who were killed when Herod tried to kill Jesus at the beginning of the story. For Jewish faith Rachel weeps for all the Innocents who have been slaughtered in every generation.

Matthew's story draws our eyes from the death of Jesus to the deaths of the Innocents of Bethlehem, and from there to all the Innocents for whom Rachel has always mourned. In our performance we have tried to follow Matthew's lead. It is to all those children, the Innocents of Bethlehem, of Auschwitz and Treblinka, of every place and time, that we dedicate this performance.  

This is for the children.  

 

Currently being developed:

An exploration of the gospel of Luke that we are developing in consultation with Jewish collaborators to be performed for a Jewish audience. Tentative title: "Turning the World Right-Side-Up."

New Performances added regularly.