breathing life

I’ve been on a break from rehearsals for the past few weeks, as there was little for a writer to do in this initial period of blocking. Blocking, for those who may have forgotten, is when the director goes through the script page by page and tells the actors when and where to stand, move, and deliver lines.

Though sometimes we work on scenes out of chronological order, it seems that Ian is taking the direct route and working from beginning to end. It was amazing to see the beginning of “Job” come to life after first imagining it in my head while writing, then hearing the lines spoken at the initial table-read.

The truth is that the written lines are only half the story. It truly is an example of “reading between the lines”. While an actor is speaking, many things can be happening. This also includes the actions of other characters on a different part of the stage. Just like in real life, many things happen at once. Job may be arguing with his friends near the wreckage of his children’s home while his wife is grieving on the front porch of their house. We also see the spiritual realm that is unseen by the characters. The audience watches as the work of Satan and his demons unfolds.

Seeing a story become real reminds us that the story IS real. We can’t allow the ancient text to become merely a fairytale. God obviously thought Job’s testimony was relevant to our millennium, or He wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of including it in our holy text. How much are we aware of the spiritual happenings around us? We can be quick to blame the  devil when anything goes wrong, but is that accurate? Or do we take the other extreme, like Job, and ignore Satan’s existence altogether and blame God for being unfair? Does the battle between good and evil place us in the middle? And does the acknowledgement of this reality change the way we pray, behave or react?

Job didn’t know the whole story, but what if he did? Do we comprehend the big picture? What if we did? Suddenly, “Job” seems less like an ancient tale and more like something to which we should pay attention…