THE IMPORTANT THINGS: A LOOK BEHIND THE SCENES

By Jasmine Pang

Hello people! The Easter play is in six days and I hope all of you are excited about coming down to watch it! Yup we’ve all been working really hard but anyway I just wanted to share with you some stuff I’ve learned throughout all this.

As we count down the days to the 7th of April, I really hope all of you will keep this event in prayer. Doing a play for church is quite different from doing a play outside. In acting, we’re taught to act with emotional truth – to relate what the character goes through to our own experiences. The more important thing that we have to achieve in this Easter play, however, is spiritual truth – the actors need to be convicted by the Spirit as they perform in order to touch the audiences. The latter is something that definitely isn’t within my power as a director– the most I can do is to pray for the actors. What this play really depends on, therefore, is not my direction, but on God’s direction! Only He can bring a normal stage production to that spiritual level, in order for the message of His love to be brought across.

That’s something I struggled with for a while, actually, because I’m a perfectionist, and I don’t like knowing that certain things can’t be under my control. Along the way, however, I’ve learned to give things up to God, and to trust that He’ll take care of everything. There was a period of time where I had sleepless nights, and kept on staying up to rewrite the script again and again, to think of how to direct scenes and design the set. But one day, as I was in the middle of one of those things, Eric messaged me Psalm 23:1-2. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside still waters, He restores my soul.”

That made me stop in my tracks and think – that pushing myself to the limit wouldn’t be the answer to anything, and that I had to depend on God instead. Not saying that wanting everything to be good and up to standard is a bad thing – it’s only right that we do things to the best of our ability in service to God. But that’s only half that story, because we can only accomplish so much in our own strength!

If I were to judge the play right now by professional standards, I would say we aren’t ready to go on stage in UCC, in front of the public. But I believe that on Saturday, we will be amazed, because what will shine through is the glory of God. Ultimately, what counts will not be the play itself, but his presence in UCC. He’s the one who will be in control! Be there to experience it!