Performance | 4 Mysteries Project

A weeklong workshop exploring questions about how to perform Mark’s gospel.
Involving 5 actors, 2 musicians, a designer, a sound designer, a translator and director.
A translation of various scenes, based in oral storytelling, was done for the workshop.
The workshop concluded with a showing of the work done.
Feedback was invited.
There was subsequent discussion with various stakeholders and performers

Another weeklong workshop of 5 scenes from John’s gospel.
Involving a different company of 4 actors, a musician, lighting designer, writer and director.
Again, a translation of various scenes based in oral storytelling was done for the workshop.
The workshop concluded with a showing of the work done.
Again, feedback was invited.
And there was subsequent discussion with various stakeholders and performers.

A performance of a Mark Passion.
Involving another company of 6 actors, a designer, lighting designer, sound designer, musician, writer and director.
The translation done in 2001 was tweaked for performance.

Worked on a John Passion script to accompany the Mark Passion.
Worked with an inner city community on a proposal to perform the Mark Passion in a city laneway.
And worked with another inner city community on a proposal to perform the John Passion.
Tweaked the Mark and John translations even further, creating something more akin to performance scripts, while still adhering to each gospel’s basic outline.
Moved into a space and established a 4 Mysteries performing group to work on the Passion scripts.
Created an installation performance of John’s gospel.
Developed a chamber version of Mark’s gospel to perform in a city hotel.
Sought the advice of a wide range of theatre practitioners in Australia, the UK and the US.
And looked to Indonesia, to see what interest there might be.

A breakthrough came when we started to ask ‘what kind of story can you make out of each account of the gospel?’
We began to develop story frameworks for the Mark and John. A war story for Mark, a story of transformation for John. They generated ideas.
Subsequently we took this process further and began to develop performance scripts for the Mark and John.
These scripts didn’t use anything from the earlier translations, or later tweaking of them, or the order and words of the gospel texts. It was a new beginning.
As well we developed a program – ‘Making a Body’ – working with John’s gospel in a 4 Mysteries way in schools and with young adults.
And developed a slide show introducing both performance scripts – this way of understanding the gospels – to local communities.
Later we began exploring the prospect of the Mark script – a war story – as a comic and as a game.

Workshops round the Mark and John performance scripts.
We continued to develop the scripts.
Initial work begun on the Matthew and Luke performance scripts.
Presentation on performing the gospels at various conferences.
Development of website.
4 Saturday sessions working on each of the 4 Mysteries gospel performance scripts, April 2017.
‘Vision Dance’ March 2018
Workshop of scenes and songs from each of the 4 Mysteries gospel performance scripts, November 2019.
Performance of Mark script, ‘Body Lines – A War Story’, in 2020.