Drama: The Incarnated Word
I wrote this in my journal six years ago today. I was directing a drama intensive with a beautiful group of students up at Wyoming Catholic College. We were attempting to put on a play in one week! And we succeeded. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral” no less. Never have I felt such grace as I did that week with these wonderful young people who are now priests, nuns, mothers, fathers, writers, in law school and teaching high school.
This memory made me cry. I still hold to every thought here.
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Today we celebrate the fiat of Our Lady, her courageous yes to being the Mother of the Eternal Word. All day I have been immersed in the spoken word. The human word which in its very small way is an imitation of the beauty given and shared with us by THE Word, the beautiful and only Son of God.
I am directing a play. But in some sense it is like watching a small miracle of grace. Some of these young men and women I am meeting for the very first time. And through the acted word they are revealing the beauty and understanding of their souls to me with such generous vitality.
Drama takes much courage, I am finding. It is a revelation of something precious within expressed by the spoken word. And when a whole cast is doing the same thing, something miraculous happens.
Drama is such a vital art form. I am filled with such conviction that it can be a vocation. To move and influence a whole audience with the power of your acted word. To bring comfort, to bring the ah hah moment, to be the spur to action, to unite us in our human frailty or human greatness. This is a high calling.
I feel such an urgency to lead many young people to it: to write plays, to act the spoken word, to bring souls to Christ through art. To make drama serve His mighty plan for our greatness.
Small steps. Small steps.
And here I am in a very small college, with a small band of students, experiencing the beauty of He Who is all beauty. I thank Him for this total gift of grace.
Praise Him!
Denise, thank you for sharing. I have experienced what you write so beautifully about here. I teach Drama at a classical Catholic high school, and I love those young ladies and men. Lately, however, those moments thick with the Holy Spirit feel few and far between. Mostly it feels like a slog - nobody's fault, just the reality of creating productions with little help - and like I'm fading out under the stress. I don't know whether I believe it's a vocation at all, let alone mine, and the Lord is lovingly silent on the question, so I especially appreciate your perspective. What a downer of a comment, hah! I mostly want to say thank you for sharing your experiences with Drama. Your heart is beautiful, and your interview with Kathryn Wales spoke to me, too. It is good to be reminded why it all matters, from someone who no doubt slogged at times, too. You are in my prayers.