Kevin Dean: Sometimes it’s really obvious what a piece of Christian theater is. Sometimes it’s a little less obvious. Our mission is to produce compelling theater from a Christian worldview that engages a diverse audience.
First and foremost, the plays that we produce have to be compelling. That’s where it starts. The Christian worldview comes in through our play selection and the things that we put on our stage and what we choose to say.
There’s a lot in the American theater canon that we are just never going to be able to do. They are great of pieces of theater and art, but they don’t align with our particular mission. Some of my favorite plays we could never do because of that. At the same time, not every play we do is going to have an over-evangelical message. For example, we did “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Steel Magnolias” last season. Those have values that are important to us — family, friendship, loyalty, hope, redemption, those kinds of things. You can always feel safe that you’re going to see that type of story unfold on our stage.
Oftentimes we do have shows with a very strong Christian message. Right now we’re producing “How to Die: The Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” I directed that particular play. We produced “The Hiding Place,” which was the story of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian who helped hide the Jews during World War II.
We’ll tell stories about the Christian faith. Sometimes we’ll just tell stories that reinforce the values that are important to us as an organization. We did “The Play That Goes Wrong,” and there’s nothing spiritual about that play other than it’s one laugh after another, and laughter is good, healthy and healing. Sometimes we’ll do shows like that just to provide people an opportunity to escape what’s going on in their lives, to get away and laugh.
HB: Was “How To Die” a world premiere?
KD: It was. We commissioned that play through our Metzler New Works Initiative and we commissioned the playwright Andy Pederson, who’s now actually on our staff. He wasn’t at the time, he was a professor up in Chicago, but he’s now our director of education.
HB: A.D. Players was founded by Jeannette Clift George. She started this little theater company and she did a lot of work that was biblically based. She wrote a lot of the shows herself. Now you’re doing “Fiddler on the Roof” and you’re doing “How to Die” and you’re doing “The Best of Enemies.” How has your programming evolved, and what are you looking for now as you seek to perform these works for a more diverse audience?
KD: We’ve stayed true to our roots. Jeannette started this theater company in 1967. She worked for these really incredible theater companies doing these incredible plays, but none of the plays that they were doing really said what she wanted to say as an artist. She started the A.D. Players so that she could do more plays that were Christian in nature, that had a Christian message.
Jeannette was very prolific. She wrote hundreds of plays; early on, all the A.D. Players did was her plays, and they would travel them around. They performed in libraries and churches and schools, universities, living rooms. That’s the genesis of the A.D. Players. Then obviously we grew; we bought a theater and started doing a mix of her plays and plays in the American theater canon like “Driving Miss Daisy,” like “Steel Magnolias,” like “12 Angry Men.”
Philosophically we still stand on that foundation — it’s a blend of plays that are Christian in message and plays that are not necessarily overtly Christian, but still have those values. The difference is we’ve gotten bigger as an organization. When we moved [to the current theater], we opened up some of the shows that we couldn’t do at Grace Theater. Through our Metzler New Works Initiative we commission playwrights to tell stories that we want to tell, like “Hiding Place” or “The Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” We did a play a few years ago, “No One Owns Me,” which was about raising awareness of human trafficking in Houston. That was a commission.
The idea is to commission these plays and develop them, and over time we want to get them on our main stage. Right now our executive artistic director is adapting “Crime and Punishment” for the stage. We still have that anchor of developing new works that say what we want to say and then making them available for other theaters to produce.
So a lot of what we do now is the same as what we used to do, but there are more moving parts and more resources at our disposal. That has allowed us to expand. Rather than just have Jeannette write all the plays, we’re able to form relationships with other Christian playwrights and help give them an opportunity to tell stories they want to tell or stories that we want to tell, and we commission them to write it.
HB: Why is it important to have these values shown on stage in the times we’re living through now, as well as throughout the history of your organization?
KD: You can never have enough grace. We all need grace in our lives. We need grace with one another. We need grace with ourselves. I listen to podcasts, and I don’t know if societally we’re any worse than we were in the ’70s, but with social media, everything just feels so combative.
At the very least, the work that we do helps promote civil discourse. It’s OK to disagree. It’s OK that we didn’t vote for the same person. It’s OK that you think X and I think Y — we can still live together civilly and have a civil conversation.
I can’t remember who described the theater as an empathy gym, but that idea always resonated with me. It’s a place where an audience goes to sit in a dark room surrounded by strangers and exercise their empathy muscles. You look at this story on stage, you look at these characters, and you can identify with them and maybe you see something. It makes you think differently about something and it helps you create empathy.
I think a lot of what’s missing in the world right now is the ability to empathize with another human being, to understand where they’re coming from. You don’t have to agree with them, but to at least have a broader perspective of where they might be coming from and why they may think and believe the things that they do. That’s why I think what we do is important, because we help people.
If you look at the New Testament, most of the time Jesus is telling stories, parables. I think there’s something about humankind that makes many of us learn better from a story than from perhaps a sermon. We’re able to understand things a little bit better because we’re watching a story unfold. I think that’s why stories are important, and especially the kind of stories we tell, because I think it creates empathy.
HB: How are you doing outreach so that you are reaching more diverse audiences with different points of view, who are at the same time hungry for these kinds of stories about hope and faith and family and what it means to be a good person?
KD: One of the things I’m really excited about is that we’ve started to do sensory-friendly productions for folks who are on the spectrum, for them and their families — special needs folks who might not feel comfortable going to a theater. We adjust the light and the sound so that it’s not overstimulating, and they have the freedom to sit and watch a play, to be themselves.
They don’t have to worry about being disruptive. They and their families can go and enjoy the show. If you are at one of these performances, you see the incredible effect that live theater has on everyone. We did this production of “The Sound of Music,” and it was absolutely incredible. The parents are able to see their kids come to life in a different way because they’ve never been exposed to something like this before.
Diversity is diversity. It’s not necessarily about race or economic stature. It’s a wide term. And there are a lot of folks out there who might not feel comfortable going to a play on your typical Saturday night. But because we tailor these performances for them, they’re able to come and enjoy and learn and absorb these stories.
Those are the things I’m really, really excited that we do to separate us from a lot of other organizations. In fact, we’re taking the lead on that in a lot of ways. Other folks have reached out to us to say, “So exactly how do you do this? This is great. Help us do what you’re doing.” We’re able to be a leader in that arena.
HB: Why do you feel that what you are producing now is necessary for Houston and Houston’s art scene, but also as a beacon for the rest of the world?
KD: This is what I feel called to do. I came to A.D. Players just to do an internship. I was planning to be here for a year, and then I was going to go to New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. During my internship, I really felt called to this work and this ministry, this theater. It’s the same for many, many folks — this is where they feel called to be and feel called to exercise the gifts that God has given them, in an environment that’s safe and creative.
Once upon a time, back when we were at Grace Theater, we didn’t have a super high profile. We were a small to midrange regional theater company that was fairly insular.
We didn’t hire a ton of outside actors, directors, designers, artists, what have you. It was all mostly done by those of us on staff. You may work the box office in the morning and then do a kid show in the afternoon and a mainstage show at night, and then the next time you might be in the parking lot helping park cars.
As we’ve gotten larger, I feel like our responsibility is to continue to grow and evolve and use the resources that we have for the kingdom. That’s super important for us.
I hear all the time from actors and directors and designers who work elsewhere in town or across the country. “There’s something different about your place, man, there’s something different about it.” I think it’s the Holy Spirit.
You don’t have to be a Christian to work for us. In fact, a lot of the actors that we hire are not. But they love coming to work here because of how they’re treated and the environment in which they get to exercise their artistic muscles.
When you produce a play, it’s not just for an audience. It takes an army of people to put on a play. Not just the actors and the designers, but depending on the show, you have a pretty robust backstage crew. It’s literally an army of people.
I think that’s really important in terms of what we bring to the Houston theater community — being that light and having that legacy where people can come and be exposed to that. Sometimes you may have conversation. We try to form relationships with the artists and the technicians and then let the Holy Spirit do the rest.
