ACTING LIKE JESUS

The following is excerpted from an essay by Tom Letchworth, entitled "If All The World's a Stage." Early in his essay, Letchworth writes:

Jesus himself gave us direction in our role play: "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16: 24). We are to step into his role. Paul says, "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1). More to the point, he says, "Be imitators of God as dear children" (Ephesians 5:1).

He later writes this:

If we study the life of Jesus, if we think and act like Jesus, if we contextualize that life in our own lives, we will begin to become the ‘Little Christs’ of which Luther spoke. Just one catch. I defy anyone to do this, under their own power.

I've tried. I've seen others try. Trying to live the life of Christ under your own power leads to futility, frustration and failure. Either we become involuted narcissists, constantly asking ourselves "how'm I doing, how'm I doing?" and growing less and less interested in others; or, we become legalistic Pharisees about the very acts and thoughts that should liberate us. Or, worse, we become both of the above-Narcissistic Pharisees.

No, the only way to live Christ's life is to allow Christ, through the Holy Spirit, to dwell in us. We begin, no matter where we are on the spiritual journey, with a repeated act of surrender that imitates Christ in Gethsemane: "Not my will, but Thine be done."

God doesn't wish to obliterate our personality. I've met too many diverse characters and eccentrics who joyfully follow Christ to believe that. What I believe he does want to do is to live his life through us and in us in such a way that the gifts and strengths of our own personality are transformed "by the renewing of our minds."

And, when we have immersed ourselves in the story of Jesus, learned to think and to act like Jesus, forgotten about ourselves; and when Jesus lives his life in and through us, then we will play the greatest role of our lives, and in the lives of others.

(This essay was originally recovered from

http://www.francisasburysociety.com/hcworldstage.htm,
but that link no longer seems to work.)

MIMICS MOVING IN THE SPIRIT

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly beloved children

and live a life of love,

Just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us …

Ephesians 5:1-2

You need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word …

… the mature … by constant use

have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Hebrews 5:12-14

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just

and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

… My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.

But

if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense

– Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

1 John 1:9-2:1

Life is made up of making one choice after another, “What will I do now?” Willing to do something comes before doing something. Humans have “free will” and can act according to what they freely choose to do. Since humans are created by God, in God’s image, we would be wise to act according to the will of our Creator. This is what it means to be imitators of God – continually choosing to act like people created in God’s image, always willing to do God’s will.

As we grow and mature, the choices we make form who we become. “Mimics” and “imitators” come from the same Greek word in the Bible. They both mean “to act just like someone else.” The important thing to remember is that human beings are created by God with free choice – they choose how to act. This means that acting like someone else requires making choices like that other person makes. God acted first in creating us to be good, then recreating us through the cross of Christ. All that God does is good. Acting like God means to do good by grace.

How then do we know God’s will? How do we know what is good? God shows us His will by giving us Himself in His Word, written in Scripture and revealed in Jesus Christ. We read in scripture that if we choose to follow Jesus, we are doing God’s will. Jesus showed us that being good means obeying God. Jesus is the Son of God who always obeyed God the Father. He did this by the power of the Holy Spirit. This same power is ours so that we too can become imitators of God.

SYMIMMESIS AS A WAY TO CLARIFY ENIGMATIC REFLECTIONS

1Co 13:12; 2Co 3; Ex 34:29-35; Nu 12:8

Living life is an irresolvable enigma without the love of God in Christ;
it is like trying to solve the riddle of what one may look like while finding only a poor reflection seen hazily through a darkened mirror. Consider the people of Israel, who feared to come near or gaze at Moses when he came down from the mountain to present to them the Word written by God on tablets of stone. Moses was not, at first, aware that his face radiated God’s glory whenever he entered the presence of the LORD and spoke with him face to face. For the sake of the people, Moses put a veil over his face until he went back into the Lord’s presence. Then, as fear dulled their faith, their hearts and minds became veiled as well. Likewise do people without the Spirit see God’s world dully and hear God’s word read with veiled hearts.

In life, without the Spirit, we can only look enigmatically through a mirror, as though faced with a riddle; however, the good news is that by the Spirit we can live life able to see clearly and be seen face to face. Only in Christ is the riddle resolved and the veil taken away; whenever we turn to the Lord we are unveiled so that our faces all reflect the Lord’s glory.

Thus is the ministry of the Spirit full of glory. Filled with the Spirit of Christ, we become living letters, clearly known and read by everybody, written with the Spirit of the living God, not with ink; written not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. God has made us competent in Christ as ministers of a new covenant – not of the letter but of the Spirit: for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. With ever-increasing glory we are being transformed into his likeness. The glory that shines through us comes from the Lord, who is Spirit.

As in water face answers to face,
so the heart of man to man.
Pr 27:19

ZanniTAVANI

Theatre Café & Bookshop

featuring

improvisational & interactive theater

with

someMimics friends & players

CONCEPT:

Acting Studio / Bookshop / Café

A. Acting Studio

Acting Studio events will be the focus of ZanniTAVANI Theatre Café & Bookshop.

§ PLAYING AREA: There will be 3 playing areas:

1. Place enough for staging Theatre in Community

- auditorium seating 250 people;

- stage area capable of being utilized as classroom backstage.

2. Black Box studio

- seating capacity of 100.

3. Movement studio

- mirrored walls and dance floor.

§ PLAYERS: Resident troupe of someMimics friends & players

Ø 6-9 actors, male and female.

Ø All actors accomplished in improvisational, interactive, and physical theatre skills.

Ø Theatre events will focus on themes that support building up community.

Ø Resident actors facilitate workshops and participate in Symmimetic Symposiums.

Ø Interns try their skills in Café functions and events.

§ PLAN: Proposed curriculum for each playing area to be developed.

1. Theatre in Community

q ROLES:

on stage (player)

back stage (persona)

off stage (person)

home (privacy)

head (secrecy)

heart (spirituality)

q RELATIONSHIPS

I/me

me / not-me / not-not-me

me/you

us/them

I am / we are

self/other

him/her

him, her / it

same / different

q REWRITING SCRIPTS:

effect of affect

conscious / subconscious / unconscious

2. Black Box

q Arranging space in which relationships are put in context of place

q Presentation of self / Representation of another

q Face-to-face confrontation

(persuasion, exhortation, admonition)

q Solo / Ensemble

q Maskwork

q Acting exercises (improv/physical)

q Clowning

q Concepts:

ignorant / indifferent

silence / listen / speak

Stillness / action

Will / Won’t, Do / Don’t

Feel / Think / Choose / Act

Friend / Lover

Stranger / Acquaintance / Friend / Lover / Enemy

Sensual / Mental / Emotional / Spiritual

Have / Want / Need / Receive / Give

3. Movement

Breathing

(air [still] / wind [moving])

Body awareness

(intention / space / time / place / position / direction)

Making music

(silence / Sound / Noise / Music)

Dance

spontaneity / discipline freedom / bondage

copy (typos) / imitate (mimesis) / create (poesis)

B. Bookshop

Bookshop sells books/items relating to Symposiums in Café or activities in Acting Studio.

§ Inventory reflects the interests of ZanniTAVANI and/or someMimics.

§ Computerized inventory to be managed to have minimal back-room stock!

§ Seating in comfortable couches/chairs to be available for browsing.

§ Books may be taken to Café.

C. Café

Café will serve simple beverage/food menu for Symmimetic Symposiums and other activities.

§ Capacity will be 250.

§ Seating includes movable hexagonal tables and folding chairs.

§ There will be a stage area for readings, live music (acoustic guitars, piano, jazz ensemble), and improv.

§ Patrons will be welcome to participate in occasional interactive theater events.

ZanniTAVANI is affiliated with Tavani Consultants in Human Services.

BECOMING FOLLOWERS:

A TRAGICOMEDY IN SEVERAL ACTS

Dramatis Personae:

God

Everyone else

PRELUDE

Playing alongside Wisdom

ACT I

In the beginning …

ACT II

Beyond the Garden

ACT III

Crucial events, critical people

ACT IV

Gathering together and going out

ACT V

Coming back at last

EPILOGUE

Word to the wise

The zany theme of the fool

There is, in modern theatre, a resurgence of the zany theme of the fool, much of which is inspired by commedia dell’arte. The clever servants of the Zanni have led to the worldwide tradition of the inverted status relationship in which the usually lower-status servant character has the upper hand in terms of wit, truth, and intelligence while the supposedly upper-status master character must content himself with only the trappings of superiority.

This topsy-turvy situation arose from the historical circumstances in which the Commedia developed. This Venetian nickname of Zanni was a dialect version of Giovanni, a name common in the 15^th century among peasants from Bergamo, in Lombardy, who emigrated to Venice and Genoa from the economically destitute regions of Po valley. When the Venetian economy became developed through profit-sharing (maona) among the citizenry, international trade increased, decreasing the price of locally-produced foodstuffs, with the result that the peasants, the zanni, were brought to the point of bankruptcy. Being unable to sell their product, they had no option but to abandon their lands and emigrate in large numbers to Venice and Genoa. This influx was met with resentment and contempt. Zanni were treated as objects of derision, and their presence provided convenient scapegoats for every mishap. They had no command of the local language, they committed gaffes, and they were continuously hungry and in poor health.

The Zanni characters of the Commedia were based on these economic outcasts. Zanni were valet buffoons, clowns, and knavish jacks-of-all-trades; zanni possessed common sense, intelligence, pride, a love of practical jokes, although they often were also quarrelsome, cowardly, envious, spiteful, vindictive, treacherous. Frequently two zanni played contrasting roles, the first clever and adept at confounding, the second a dull-witted foil.

The forbears of the Commedia may have been the comic mime actors of ancient Greece and Rome. The term “mime” indicates that mimes imitated life (recall our theory of mimetic community); rather than being silent, these ancient mimes were masters of the tongue. One name for the mimic actor was autokabdalos, which can be translated “improvised.” As Beatrice Otto explains in Fools are Everywhere:

“These actors were decidedly ready and eager to take advantage of anything which, because of its baseness, its meaness, or its triviality, provided that laughter-provoking contrast between man’s mind and the fettering restrictions of his body, and they were ever ready to stand forward as the secular exponents of popular feeling. Improvisation gave the mimes a jester’s freedom to mock, and throughout history irreverence toward anything blindly revered was the cornerstone of their entertainment. Mimes had sung and spoken parts and could include acrobatic skills in their repertoire. Their acrobatic agility guaranteed that they should never be dull, never be fettered by religious prejudice or ceremonial. They stood, above all, for secularism and the right to laugh.”

However, ZanniTAVANI, stands, above all for TRUTH and the right to laugh in the face of failure. What is true can be well presented as parable; so must theatre go about imitating LIFE.

Zanni?

The troupe’s name, ZanniTAVANI, ^{(remember, Zah-nee, not Zay-nee)} comes first from the founding director, Craig Tavani, who has been developing his theory of symmimesis over the past three decades. The name “Zanni,” on the other hand, applies to those comic characters who played the part of servants in the Italian improvisational theatre known as Commedia dell’arte.

Historically, one finds a variety of forms of the word zanni: zane, zanne, zani, especially, zany. Dei Zanni became a generic term for the commedia dell’arte itself (hence “zany”). The Zanni characters were valet buffoons, clowns, and knavish jacks-of-all-trades; zanni possessed common sense, intelligence, pride, and a love of practical jokes, although they often were also quarrelsome, cowardly, envious, spiteful, vindictive, and treacherous. The zanni’s costumes consisted of a wood or leather half mask with hair and beard glued to it, a loose blouse, wide trousers, and a wide-brimmed or conical hat with long feathers. Frequently one of the zanni carried a wooden sword.

Zanni initiated the action of the play, producing comic impact based on repeated comic actions; this stage business, called lazzi consisted of situations, dialogues, gags, rhymes and rigmaroles which actors could call up at a moment’s notice to give the impression of on-stage improvisation. The lazzi, along with topical and practical jokes (burle), was often directed against the smug, the proud, and the pretentious (sounds like the name of a TV soap opera!). Zanni were also noted for their feats of acrobatics and tumbling. (In the case of ZanniTAVANI, however, this is known as tripping and falling.)

In some commedia performances there was only one zanni; in others there might be two to four. The principal character among them was often called simply Zanni, while his companion(s) had various names – Harlequin, Brighella, Scapino, Scaramouche, Pedrolino, Pulcinella, and others.

Frequently two zanni played contrasting roles, the first clever and adept at confounding, the second a dull-witted foil.