Community Theatre comes to Martinborough – Mark’s Gospel in Drama

A theatre performance with a difference will be held in Martinborough in August, one with little costuming, local actors, and employing improvisation and contemporary language. The dramatically innovative Mark Drama brings to life the Gospel of St Mark in a way that reflects the society in which it was first heard. It was written to be learned and then repeated so that a predominantly illiterate 1st century audience could access and understand it. Made up of six sections, the gospel is structured to promote ease of learning and then to be read or spoken to others.

The 15 actors involved in each production are not professionals, may not know each other well, and may not even have acted previously. Over six weeks they learn Mark’s Gospel and then in 12 hours of workshops and rehearsal they prepare to perform it.
The Mark Drama, in a New Zealand first, is being produced collaboratively by three South Wairarapa Anglican churches – Martinborough, Greytown and Carterton. Director Claire Haworth, who is in Martinborough to oversee the production, says that this is “an innovative, powerful piece of theatre” and describes it as “a dynamic way of making theatre”. She believes that it has resonance for everybody and says that community learning to then share is a powerful experience.

Claire is a trained drama therapist who teaches and facilitates workshops with a community focus. Work such as the Mark Drama enables her to merge her Christian faith with her love of community-based drama direction. She says that she enjoys working with non-actors and seeing people flourish as they embody a character. Mark’s Gospel is full of people finding their identity, and having the messages presented in drama “gives people a chance to learn and to be affected by the story”. As a director, Claire sees individuals touched by the power of a community experience. It is, as she explains, “a very authentic, fresh approach that resonates with ordinary people in the audience”.
In fact, the gap between audience and performers is very slight in the Mark Drama. The actors are not on a stage with a conventional separation from their audience, but are amongst them. The very simple set is spatially designed to ensure that the audience is forced to interact and partake in the action, to be implicated and not to passively observe. It becomes, in Claire’s words “their story too”.

The Mark Drama has been performed in at least 17 countries and translated into several languages. Claire has directed about nine previous productions, and because of the impromptu and dynamic approach has experienced very different results despite the words being essentially the same. She compares working with groups of greatly differing ages, explaining that “the way the actors inhabit a character will differ between a 17-year-old girl and a 70-year-old woman, and then there’s local idiom that comes through the opportunities for improvisation”.

The Mark Drama is the shortest of the gospels, fast-paced and using immediate marketplace language. It promises to be 90 minutes of exciting community theatre, bringing to life stories that continue to have relevance 20 centuries forward from their origins.

Martinborough Saturday 8 August at 7pm, Martinborough Town Hall
Greytown Sunday 9 August at 2pm,Greytown Town Hall, Main Street
Carterton Sunday 9 August at 7pm, St Marks Church Hall, Crn High Street and Richmond Rd