Rev Neil Riches
Dear friends,
Yesterday evening, I went to the ‘Shakespeare by the Sea’ Festival at the Pavilion – a bargain at £2 a ticket, which included a glossy programme. Plenty of sponsors! 70 children aged between 8 and 10 took part in ‘reduced’ versions of two Shakespeare plays. The Prince of Wales Primary School put on ‘Macbeth’ and St. John’s Primary School presented ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Macbeth was dark, with exciting battle scenes; there was no doubt that Lady Macbeth was the force behind the action. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was colourful and whimsical; much was made of the many opportunities for humour which exist within the play.
There are those who claim that Shakespeare can be wordy and inaccessible, yet here were relatively young children who had clearly grasped and understood the core of two very different plays – and then presented them in ways which were engaging and which left no doubt as to the continuing relevance of the plays.
At the ATC conference which I attended towards the end of last year, one of my colleagues invited us to share in an activity which he had done with his cadets. He had written a brief introduction to all the books of the Bible – including the Apocryphal books – in a way which assumed no knowledge of the book whatsoever. He used humour, whilst preserving the integrity of the book. The youngsters were then invited to share in a number of exercises in which the total number of books was whittled down to one – the one which they would most like to read as a group and the one which they felt had most to say to them. As adults, I suspect that we came up with a predictable single book, but the youngsters… well, with little prior Bible knowledge, they ended up with Job.
The plays in the Pavilion encouraged me to ‘revisit’ Shakespeare; I had ‘done’ Macbeth for ‘O’ Level English Literature, but I drew fresh things from this new performance. Equally, I found myself asking questions after the ATC exercise – why might young people be most drawn towards Job, a book which some of us might contend is dense and depressing? What was it about the book which appealed, and which offered the most relevant comment on the experiences of today’s young people?
We should all be open to fresh insights into faith, even when – perhaps, especially when – they come from unexpected places and when they can be challenging.
With much love in Christ,
Your friend and pastor,
Neil