To write or buy…which should you do?
To buy a play, you need to be sure that your actors can handle it. You also need to know that you can somehow cover all the roles. And, unfortunately, you need to make sure that the play you are buying is well-written. Then there are stylistic choices. Most church “plays” that I have seen are music for the choir to sing with some sketches thrown in for good measure.
Of course, the reason for this is that the church, as a whole, has eschewed theater as an evil thing and focused on singing. That’s fine, but it means that there is very little experience with drama in the church. Only in the last few years have we seen more sketches and youth plays in church. I was in an acting troupe that traveled around to churches to put on plays, there is a desire to see well-done acting in church.
Back to my point. In many cases, if you have the services of a good writer in the congragation, give them a good set of parameters and let them write. Tell them who the audience is, how many actors of each gender you can expect, the length of the play, and any music you may want to add. That is what we decided to do.
We started out two years ago writing by commitee, which I heartily recommend against. Every meeting ended up with each participant rocking away on his or her hobby horse: “I want a ‘real’ play—stark, dusty, uncomfortable”, “Too many words, boring”, “You aren’t bringing out the humanity of the disciples enough.”
I ended up writing most of the play. The scenes that were written by others were good, but the voices were completely different. I had to rewrite them almost completely.
So last year the play went pretty well. I lost a lot of sleep and was very worried up to the last moment. Audiences enjoyed it and it went fairly well. This year I cut three scenes and wrote one new one. I feel a lot more confident. At least half of the actors are the same. Auditions went well and we just started rehearsing.