Damian Coleridge – Director & Writer

Has had a wide involvement in theatre as an actor, playwright and director, as well as a producer of community events; and a long term involvement with local church communities. He founded 4 Mysteries Project in 2001.

Adrian Coleridge – Writer

A musician with a doctorate in scripture and a particular interest in the gospels and performance. At present he is working on performance scripts for the 4 gospels.

Vision

A wonderfully eclectic theatre project involving performers from diverse backgrounds and a surprising mix of music, movement and design, the project aims to perform the four gospels – four stylised, symbolic, very different performances – separately, then together over one day. In doing so it seeks to open up new theatrical possibilities.

Brief History

1st Phase: 2001-2003. 4 Mysteries Project began in 2001 with a weeklong workshop exploring the performing of Mark’s gospel. It concluded with a showing of the work done. In 2002 there was another weeklong workshop of scenes from John’s gospel concluding with a showing of the work done. Then in 2003 there was a performance of a Mark Passion.

2nd Phase: 2004 – 2008. We developed new ways and formats to enable the work of exploring the performance of the gospels to continue e.g. a John Passion script was developed to accompany the Mark Passion; we created an installation performance of John’s gospel; and developed a chamber version of Mark’s gospel to perform in a city hotel etc. As well we sought the advice of a wide range of theatre practitioners in Australia, the UK, the US and Indonesia.

3rd Phase: 2008 – 2011. We began to develop story frameworks for the Mark and John: a war story for Mark, a story of transformation for John. Subsequently we took this process further and began to develop performance scripts for the Mark and John. As well we considered different ways of presenting our work – as a comic, a workshop program, a slide show and a game.

4th Phase: 2012 – 2020. There were workshops round the Mark and John performance scripts  and initial work was begun on the Matthew and Luke performance scripts. 4 Saturday sessions in April 2017 were followed by a ‘Vision Dance’ in March 2018 and a workshop of scenes and songs from each of the 4 Mysteries gospel performance scripts in November 2019.  The Mark script will be performed in 2020.