On a Monday evening last April, I walked into a small church building to watch a play depicting the Gospel of Mark performed by a group of mostly amateur student actors. I knew just a little bit about “The Mark Drama.” It was a minimalistic approach to telling this gospel story without costumes, props, or set design.
In a chapel room, InterVarsity students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison set up chairs in a circle for the audience, leaving just a small space at the center for the “stage” ala theatre-in-the-round.
John Florey, a Campus Staff Minister from South Dakota and one of the four Directors of “The Mark Drama,” spent the previous weekend working with these students to get them ready for showtime. Before the play began, I sat analyzing the space, wondering how a group of students, with only 13 hours of practice, could tell the most important story of all time and tell it well.
What followed was one of the most powerful demonstrations of…
