What is it about?
Sight & Sound Theatres, a Christian theatre company known for their musical adaptations of stories from the Bible, takes up the mission of evangelizing through musical theatre. While the genre of musical theatre can transform harsh religious messaging into an accessible and entertaining form, it can also undermine religious messaging by introducing camp and trivializing supernatural deities. This article examines how Sight & Sound Theatres’ Noah keeps with and breaks musical theatre conventions effectively to evangelize to their audiences.
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Why is it important?
Sight & Sound Theatres, as a faith-based theatre company, is often considered fringe or marginal theatre by secular artists, audiences, and scholars, and yet, its show reach a massive audience each year. By studying the tactics and goals of faith-based, evangelizing theatre, we can better understand the appeal of the company's Bible adaptations and how the artistic choices of the artists involve reflect the religious and political beliefs of their growing audience base.
Perspectives
Writing this article as part of the Bruce Kirle Memorial Debut Panel through ATHE was a great pleasure! I hope you find the unique combination of camp and Christianity though-provoking. If nothing else, I hope this brings more attention to an understudied area of fringe theatre in the US.
Chelsea Taylor
Northwestern University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘Jesus, the Ark for Today’: Evangelizing through Sight & Sound Theatres’s Noah, Studies in Musical Theatre, December 2021, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/smt_00075_1.
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