Everything I Learned About Life, About Faith, About God, I Learned Directing Players

By Josh Hornbeck

The following essay was originally presented as a sermon
at the Seattle Vineyard on June 7, 2009.

Okay. So I guess I should start off with a disclaimer. I didn’t really learn everything I need to know about life and faith and God while I was directing the University Players, but it makes for a better title than “Five Things I Learned while Directing the University Players.” That, and “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” was already taken. So here we are.

Back in March of 2009, I was called into a meeting with the heads of my departments. It was in this meeting that I was told that the University would not be funding any of the performing groups for the next academic year – there would be no touring by the choir or the various other music ensembles on campus, and there would be no University Players. It was a shock, to say the least. While there had been rumblings that our budget might get cut – we might not go on tour next year, we might have less money for equipment – everything I had heard through the grapevine suggested that since the Players was such an inexpensive group to maintain, we would almost certainly be around for another year. Sadly, that was not the case.

I met with my pastor not long after I received the news, and he asked if I might be willing to share about my experiences with the rest of the congregation. I said, “Sure, why not,” even though privately, I didn’t know what I would say. Everything was still a little too raw for me to be able to accurately sort through my feelings. But I guess that’s one of those mixed blessing in having three months to wrap up your job – you actually get a little time to process everything. So there I was, standing in front of the congregation, a little less than a week left before my time with the University Players was to end. Things were (and are) still raw – I was still vacillating between anger and frustration, depression and acceptance, but those three months gave me time to process, to look back on my tenure with the Players.

Before I became the director of the University Players, I was an actor with the troupe for my junior and senior years in college. At that time, our high school shows were essentially a collection of skits loosely centered around some central theme or idea. The plays had their fun and funny moments, but were ultimately forgettable. Our church shows were, likewise, a loose collection of scenes – usually consisting scripture staged in awkward tableaus, arms raised, reciting our lines with an affected, almost pompous air. Each year the major challenge facing us was to see what new way we’d be able to form a cross with six actors.

Once I graduated, I spent another two years in touring theatre as an actor with Taproot Theatre’s Road Company. At Taproot, we were focused more on the story and the issues we were bringing into schools and churches. I learned a lot, but after my second year with Taproot, I was tired. I’d spent four years touring and I was done. I really didn’t want to have anything more to do with educational performance, taking theatre into churches and schools. I started my own arts company. We put on a few productions – some of them very good, some of them very bad – and I was happy, mostly, working at Blockbuster to pay the rent, pursuing my art when I had the time.

So in the spring of 2003, when I was asked by the chair of SPU’s Theatre Department to apply for the position of director of University Players, I really wasn’t all that interested. I’d already put my time in with the Players. Why would I want to go back? But then I thought I shouldn’t be so hasty. After all, I was essentially being offered a chance to get paid for my art, so I threw my name in the hat and figured I’d just see what happened. I didn’t get the job. But the more I thought about directing Players, the more I realized just how much I could do with the group, and the more I really wanted this position. When it came up again in the spring of 2004, I eagerly applied. And this time, I was offered the job.

God knows what he’s doing. When I first heard about the opening, I really didn’t want to go back to the University Players. But God knew that this is where I needed to be. And over the five years I was at SPU, he proved this to me time and time again – in the lives I saw touched through our art, in the community of students that was formed anew each and every year, and in the ways God worked in my own life.

God knows what he’s doing. It’s a truth that I saw especially demonstrated throughout the process of auditioning and casting the groups for each year. Because the Players had ties to the SPU Theatre Department, I ended up seeing many of the plays, directing projects, and acting scenes that were produced and developed. And, as a director, I couldn’t help but think about which of the actors might be a good fit for my group. So while I kept my eyes open throughout the year, the truth is, all of my planning flew out the window once we actually got to the process of auditioning. Random students would show up at auditions, people I had never seen before, people who surprised me, people who were perfect for the group. And even though every year I would worry that I wouldn’t be able to find the right cast, every year, God made it incredibly obvious who needed be in Players for a given year.

My first year as a director, I was so nervous and uncertain. I really didn’t know what I was doing. But God provided the perfect cast, a group of students who were a little more independent, who were passionate and motivated, and who challenged me to discover exactly what my role as director meant.

During the 2007-2008 school year, we dealt with the issue of grief – where is God in the midst of our troubles – and God provided a group that was silly and could laugh at the drop of a hat. And it was perfect. If we would have had a more serious group, rehearsals would have been unbearable. As it was, we would explore the deep, emotional recesses of our hearts and then be able to laugh and joke around not more than a few minutes later. It was probably the only thing that kept us all sane.

When we dealt with the idea of self-acceptance, looking at a high school student who was dealing with an eating disorder, God provided a cast that included a young woman who had dealt with that exact issue herself. Her presence in the group allowed us to have a much more direct impact on the students we performed for. She would sometimes spend an hour after our performances, praying with girls who were struggling with eating disorders, giving them advice and helping them find resources at their schools and churches.

God knows what he’s doing. It doesn’t always feel that way, though, does it? When life seems to throw us a curveball, when our plans fall apart – it’s easy to fall into despair. It’s easy to start thinking that God really doesn’t know what he’s doing – or that he isn’t looking out for our best interests. But time and time again, I have seen God take very different people – people who clash, whose personalities were like oil and water – I have seen God take these people, and knit them together in the perfect ensemble, the perfect cast, the perfect people to deal with the issues and themes for each given year.

Now, the largest chunk of time I’d spend with the Players was during rehearsal camp at the beginning of the year, two weeks before classes start. And it was there, during our fourteen and fifteen hour days of rehearsal, that God truly taught me the importance of community.

My father’s a pastor. And when your father’s a pastor, you’re automatically plugged in with your church. There’s no way around it. Everyone in the congregation knows who you are and what you do, whether you like or not. And when you’ve spent you entire life automatically plugged in, it’s hard to figure out how to plug in on your own, especially if you’re a bit of an introvert. I know it may surprise those of you who know me to hear me call myself an introvert, but it’s true. I love my solitude. I have a hard time meeting new people. I’m not entirely comfortable speaking in front of a group of people, especially without a script. I’m only an extrovert by necessity. And so, it’s hard for me to really plug in to a community. I’ve been attending the Seattle Vineyard since 1995. But it wasn’t until I started directing the Players that I really saw how much I needed to be in community.

The most important part of rehearsal camp – more than learning lines and blocking – was the time we spent developing ensemble. As a group, we were going to be spending an entire year together, performing thirty or forty times, leaving the state to tour during Spring Break, rehearsing every morning. So, community’s important. You\ have to trust the people you’re working with. You have to open yourself up and be vulnerable every time you step out on that stage. And after spending fifteen hours a day together for two weeks, community came pretty quickly. We spent time worshipping together and starting off the day with scripture and devotions. We ate all of our meals together – breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We played games. We prayed for each other. Each year we watched a specific television show together – I liked to call it research – but really it was just another way for us to bond.

And because we formed this community, we were ready when life threw us for a loop. When a member of the group had a breakdown, or when misfortunes occurred – a parent falling ill, a relationship falling apart – we were able to come together, supporting, praying for and lifting up the hurting member of our community. We were able to come together in the midst of crisis, leaning on each other, bearing one another’s burdens.

Community isn’t easy. It takes work. Especially if you are part of a congregation that is spread out all over the city. It isn’t like we all go to the community church just a few blocks away. So we have to be intentional about community. We have to go out of our way to be in relationship with each other – whether it’s committing to a home group, getting together regularly with a group for fellowship, or even if it’s just grabbing lunch with someone after church. It may be inconvenient, but it is so important. We can’t live out our faith in a vacuum. We can’t do it on our own. It takes community.

Before I had directed Players, I had made a habit of keeping community an arm’s length away. Sure, I’d come to church when I felt like it. And, okay, every once in a while I’d meet up with a few people from church for coffee or lunch, but I never allowed myself to really be in community with others. After seeing how transformative, how powerful real community could be – I realized just how important it is to be in community – in fellowship with others.

One of the main reasons I was hesitant to direct the Players was the type of plays they were performing. They seemed trite and silly. There wasn’t much substance. Now, there was a reason that the Players’ shows were mainly a disjointed collection of sketches. For most of the decade before I came on as director, the plays had been written by everyone in the group through improvisation. There are certainly some cool things about the process of six actors coming together to improvise and create a play, but by its very nature, that process limits the type of work you can do. And I just wasn’t interested in continuing in that vein.

When I first met with the theatre faculty to interview for my position, they said they were looking to change the Players format. They were looking for the director to either write a new script or find a pre-existing one to tour. Now, I’m a firm believer in the power of story. I believe that when you follow a group of characters, when you see them grow and change over the course of a play, I believe that their journey, the lessons they learn, I believe that sticks with you. When you see an idea or an issue played out on stage by characters you, hopefully, care about, that helps you take that issue and see how it plays out in your own life. So, of course, I was excited to see the Players change from a collection of sketches to a more story-based theatrical style.

And I was excited to write. I wrote my first script – a really bad social issue play – when I was a senior in high school and I kept writing throughout college. When I started my own arts organization, I wrote quite a few short pieces for our events. But the truth is, I’d never really had to write a play for anyone other than myself. I had to learn very quickly to trust in the work, in the vision, in the stories that God gave me to share.

My first play for the Players went better than I could have expected. It was the story of a group of sitcom characters who begin to realize that the world they live in isn’t real, it’s just a collection of happy endings and clichés that forces them all to stay the same. While the school administrators and teachers never quite got it, the students always understood what was going on, they always got the message.

It was my second play that first year that caused problems. I gave my students a working draft of our church show at the beginning of winter quarter, and they hated it. That night, several of them decided to throw out my script and write their own show. The next day, the students told me that they felt that the play had no theme or message. They wanted to do something else instead. Once I took a few deep breaths and calmed down a bit, I told them that whether they liked it or not, this was the play we were doing. They grumbled and complained, but I stood my ground. By the end of the year, it was their favorite show.

Standing my ground in that moment was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I like it when people are happy. And I like it even better when people like me. I hate being the bad guy, I hate being the one who makes the hard choices. But when my first group of Player mutinied, I knew that the play I had just handed to them was the play we were supposed to perform. I had to trust that God really did give me this work to share with the Players and our audiences.

It’s hard, isn’t it? Trusting that the work God has you doing, that the word he’s given you, is real. That it’s important. That he has given you something unique to share with the rest of the body. But, he has. We all have something unique, something important, to bring to our life as the family of God.

It’s funny. You’d think that after my first year, every other play we did would be a cakewalk. I’d always be certain that God gave me the perfect plays for us to perform and that everything would go smoothly. But no. Each and every year, I had to learn to trust God all over again. I had to learn to trust that he really did give me the right play for the right year.

My second year we dealt with eating disorders and body image. I was worried that the play would be too serious or too cheesy. But the impact was tremendous. I avoided giving an easy to swallow moral with our production about grief and I was worried that school administrations would want more of an obvious spiritual message, but teachers and youth pastors were ecstatic about the production.

The 2007-2008 church show was rough – rehearsals went poorly, previews were awful, but when we performed it outside for a homeless mission in San Francisco, we realized that that one performance was the whole reason we did the show.

My final year directing the Players was particularly nerve-wracking. Our high school show addressed the issues of sex and abstinence. Our church show was a musical. But once again, in each and every performance, God showed up. And it was amazing – this continual journey of learning to trust in the work that God gave me, trusting in the stories that he gave me to tell.

One of the things I told each group of Players is that, as a group, we had three very important purposes. We were a theatre troupe. We were a ministry. And we represented the University. Each of these purposes was essential. Now, I always started with the first – we were a theatre troupe. I believed very strongly that our work had to be excellent. We had to give God our best. If our work was sloppy or if it wasn’t engaging, it would affect both our ministry and our representation of the University. Similarly, if there was no ministry, who cares how good the work is? It’s just an empty performance.

So each year, I started with a theme. I tried to explore several aspects of one particular issue in both our high school and our church shows. What I didn’t realize is that, more often than not, the issue that we dealt with in our shows is the issue that the group struggled with as a whole. That first year, during the mutiny, the play we were working on dealt with unity and the importance of community. And what did we struggle with? Unity and community. My third year directing Players, we looked at the ways we see and treat the people in our lives. And throughout that year, as a group, we noticed ourselves judging and talking about others behind their backs.

At one of our final performances of “The Princess and the Ogre,” we found ourselves at a little Christian school up north. The school’s sound technician was condescending, mean, and downright rude to my students. They were all angry and frustrated, but as we came together to pray before the performance, one of them realized that we were there to share God’s love with everyone, even ogres who work in sound booths.

After that first year, when I saw that we were struggling with the very issues we were addressing, I realized that if we were going to be doing ministry, we needed to be prepared. So rather than just finding random devotions to read, I starting looking for books and scriptures that specifically dealt with the issues that we’d be dealing with in the schools and churches. I had the Players reading books over the summer and when we came together for rehearsal camp, we would read through a specific work together, to get us thinking about the issue, to get us prepared.

When we do ministry, we have to be prepared. Yes, there are experiences and opportunities that come up out of the blue, but if we want to live a life of service, of ministry to others, it is essential that we cultivate our relationship with Christ. We have to be in scripture, we have to be learning more about God, drawing closer and closer to him. Just like I discovered with the Players, we have to first deal with the issue in our own lives so that we could go out and share the message God’s given us.

While all of this was wonderful – the community, the work, the ministry – the aspect of University Players that was most touching, the part that was most powerful to me, are the students I had the pleasure of working with over those five years. Each of the twenty-four students were unique and blessed me in so many ways and taught me so much. Whether it was learning how to lead, how to be more sensitive to others, or how to communicate more effectively, each student gave me so much and challenged me to grow in ways that I never thought possible.

It was a delight to watch these students grow – as artists, as people, as men and women of God. And it was fascinating to see that despite our differences, God really does have a reason for bringing us all together. Despite our differences, we have something larger that draws us together. Each year we had someone who was focused on the ministry. Each year we had someone who was focused on the art. Each year we had someone who could see the hurts and pains of others in the troupe. Each year we had someone who knew how to make the rest of us laugh. And each member of that group was essential.

The theatre troupe, the little band of artists coming together to produce works of excellence, it’s just another example of the body of Christ. We are all so unique. We all have something different that we bring to the ensemble of our church congregation, to the ensemble of God’s kingdom.

Sometimes it’s easy to get discouraged. We see the people in our congregation who regularly receive words to share with the rest of us. We hear stories of those who pray for the sick and see them healed, yet every time we pray, nothing seems to happen. During worship, we see those who are moved to dance while we stay in our seats. But the truth is, we are all essential to this troupe of believers. We each have our parts to play in the kingdom of God. It isn’t just the ministry or the worship that brings us together – it’s the love of our lord and savior. It’s God that brings us together. It’s God that has formed this community – this rich, diverse, wonderful community.

So, here we are. A job I wasn’t interested in applying for became one of the richest, most rewarding experiences of my life. God taught me so much about life, about my faith, about myself, about him… And as I look into the future, uncertain about what’s ahead, I have to trust that God still knows what he’s doing.

(Posted 09/29/2009)