About Drama and Christian Singing

We had our Cantata just over a week ago (more about that here).

It didn't have drama, which was good by me, since I have hesitations about its use.

Not that I am trying to stop all drama in this context. No, I've even allowed a couple of presentations which included drama, though with misgivings.

I see a problem in these areas (and probably more I can't think of right now):

1. People already get drama far in excess of what's healthy;
2. Those who like to be involved in drama tend to be those who like getting attention; and
3. Drama can easily move to the center, pushing everything else aside.
   

1 - People already get drama far in excess of what's healthy

Consider this: most people in the US today get much more drama in a month or two of TV and movie watching than almost anybody in history (before the appearance of radio) were exposed to in their entire lives.

A coworker told me last month that he bought a terabyte hard drive for his home recorder and it was one third full (over 300 Gigabytes of broadcast tv) in 2 weeks. Now I may be off a little, but I think I recall reading somewhere that you could put all the written works of ancient history (up to some reasonable cutoff of, say, the advent of the printing press) on a few CDs, if not less. Be generous and call it a couple of Gigabytes. This person recorded, in a few weeks, over 100 times as much data in the form of drama (and some sports and news I suppose) as the combined written record of pre-printing press history!

Surely there's a disconnect here, an imbalance. It's too much, too fast, too often, and we never ask what we sacrificed to get it.

2 - Drama can attract the wrong kind of people

People who like to perform tend to like the attention and the applause. That's no surprise. But in a situation where the goal is to direct the viewer's attention to God and to spiritual truths, that can be a huge problem. Those two things don't work well together:

• emphasis on the content of the message, and on eternal truths; and
• emphasis on applause and attention.
  

The same can be said, to a lesser degree, with singing, and I've worked hard to avoid those who focus on self and performance rather than on message and truth. Drama is, to me, the next level of risk.

3 - Drama can easily move to the center, pushing everything else aside

Like anything that is more intense, more glitzy, with a stronger visceral thrust, drama carries with it the risk of moving directly to the center of attention and pushing other stuff out. Like the message. I struggle against that in choral work, and know that the struggle is even harder with drama.

I know that Jesus used story in, for example, his parables. Fair enough. On the other hand,

• all of Jesus' parables had a point that related to reality (which cannot be said of much of today's drama), and
• I would venture to say that Jesus' ratio of parables to everything else he said was fairly strong in favor of everything else (which cannot be said of today's drama either).
  

Maybe if we were getting an hour or two a month of drama, then it would all fit nicely and I wouldn't feel so hesitant about using it in combination with Cantatas. But we aren't, and I still do!