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Faithfullytold: Panama City Passion Play Shares Eternal Easter Story

Posted on: Sunday, 9 April 2006, 15:00 CDT

By By David Vest Newsfeatures Editor 747-5073 / Dvest@pcnh.Com, The News Herald, Panama City, Fla.

Apr. 9--Doug White's life carries a particularly sharp focus every year as Easter approaches. You may hear it if you try to reach him by cell phone.

"Hello, this is Doug White," his recorded message says. "I'm sorry I've missed you. I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to the Panama City Passion Play April 14th through the 16th at the Marina Civic Center ... I hope to see you there."

White is an associate pastor and the minister of music and worship at St. Andrew Baptist Church, which is sponsoring the Passion Play in its third year. Before he arrived in Panama City, he produced it in Miami and in Gainesville.

It's a big production, appropiate for the Civic Center, Panama City's biggest entertainment venue. It involves more than 100 people on stage and about that many more behind the scenes.

The story of Jesus' death, crucifixion and resurrection are the eternal cornerstone of the Christian faith. But White says it's important to keep the presentation fresh every year.

This year, the story is told through the eyes of a Roman guard, whose story is in the Bible. "He has a sick servant who is healed by Jesus," White said in a phone interview last week. "So he truly comes to believe that Jesus is the son of God."

"He's also grown fond of a certain Jewish girl," White said. "So there's a little bit of a love story there." The girl's uncle is the healed servant, and their family has become followers of Jesus.

Other new twists this year are previews of the play staged in the lobby by church members as the audience arrives. A platform extending from the stage will involve the audience in crowd scenes even more than in past years. A recorded, synthesized musical score will blend sound effects and instruments not available in the orchestra with the orchestra's live music.

"There's a new script, a new cast and new scenery," White said. "Some of the scene drops (backgrounds) are homegrown," he said, but many are by professional artists from theater production companies.

Although professional actors and musicians aren't involved, the production emphasizes professional production values, White said. "I want to show people what the church is capable of."

Other churches whose members attended previous Passion Play per- formances asked to be involved and were welcomed. They include churches -- Baptist as well as others -- from Seagrove Beach, Panama City Beach and Panama City.

Corporate sponsors and other donors make the production possible, White said. "Some people give thousands, some give as little as $25," he said "We don't charge, but it still takes money."

The church sells DVDs of each year's performance, he said. This year, there's an invitation to stage the Passion Play in Scotland if that can be arranged.

"I've done this for 20 years," White said, "and Panama City has had by far the greatest response." Actors and roles

Michael Dobbs will reprise the role of Jesus this year for the third time -- the only actor in the play in a recurring role, White said. "It's a role that was very intimidating," Dobbs says, "especially not to have come from a theater background."

In a quick conversation last week after his day's work as a construction superintendent, Dobbs said the Passion Play has deepened his personal faith.

"It's one thing to read the Scripture and to know the story," he said. But to play the role of Jesus "really impressed on me how much he suffered and the willingness for him to go through it."

"You can't change the story much," he said. But "Doug has done a really good job coming up with a script ... a lot of my lines are straight out of the Bible with a lot of updated translations. I've been grateful to him for letting me play the role."

As the Roman guard at the center of the story, Drew Smith will step into his biggest role so far in the Passion Play. He played James, a disciple of Jesus, in an earlier version. His three sons, ages 10, 12 and 14, also have roles this year.

His character is "really into his career more at the start," Smith said last week. "But he gets an introduction to a Hebrew woman and her family who follow Jesus ... He realizes that this career stuff is not the way to go."

In his position with largebusiness sales for BellSouth, Smith said, he spends a lot of time traveling. In his car on the way to Pensacola last week, he said, "I was able to rehearse my lines about four times."

Smith hasn't had any experience in theater since "high school years and years ago," he said. But Jill Chester, the drama director for the Passion Play, has been a good coach. "She knows what to do, where to stand, how big gestures should be, the inflections, that sort of thing, Smith said.

Chester is a physical education teacher at Mowat Middle School in Lynn Haven, and she also has taught at middle and high schools in Cottondale. But she has been involved in drama productions at Chipola College and at Troy University.

"This is pretty much a a hobby," she said last week of her theater involvement. Why, not just how

The traditional protagonists of the Easter story fall into three camps, according to White: Jesus and his disciples, Jewish religious and political leaders with the dilemma of what to do about Jesus' challenge, and Romans and others who come to realize the significance of Jesus' crucifixion.

In past years, scenes featured Old Testament prophesies of the Messiah. But his year, the focus is all-New Testament: Jesus' earthly ministry, his betrayal and crucifixion, his resurrection and his ascension to Heaven.

The crucifixion segment is stark, White said -- the way Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ" presented Jesus' suffering, "that probably is the way it happened. But small children can't take that."

"We don't concentrate on the gore," he said. "We emphasize the difference Jesus makes in people's lives." While "Gibson shows you the how," he said, "we show you the why."

Another movie coming out on May 19 makes it particularly important to get out that message from the Gospels, he said. "The Da Vinci Code," based on Dan Brown's bestselling novel, strays broadly from the Bible's establishment of Jesus' divinity.

"That's all the more reason," White said, "to have something like this (the Passion Play) happen ... it's all the more reason to pass out the cards" that St. Andrew Baptist passes out to people in the audience. The cards direct them to their particular churches if they want to find out more. There's also a place on the card "to check if they've made a decision" of faith, White said.

The goal is to extend the message beyond any particular church. That's why, White said, it's called the Panama City Passion Play. "We've got to get the church involved" in a ministry of Christian faith, he said. "But the bigger thing to me is to get all the community involved."

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Copyright (c) 2006, The News Herald, Panama City, Fla.

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Source: The News Herald

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