Recently I received an email from a student from Glasgow University in Scotland. He has recently begun training as a Mark Drama director, and I had asked him when he had first encountered the Mark Drama. It was at UCCF Forum in 2018. I had taken a team up to Forum to do three performances of the Mark Drama. The hope was that most of the 900 students there would get to see what Mark Drama was like, and might decide that their CU should put on a production. This is what he wrote: I truly was amazed by it. Particularly the Garden of Gethsemane which I now read in a whole new light. That first enc ..read more

The big question you may be asking is When is Mark Drama going to start up again? Me too. Well, it’s already started up again in New Zealand, with the audience social-distancing (but not the actors). But I have no idea when that is hoping to be possible in the UK, and I have no information as yet about other countries. It’s good to know that God is in control! Andrew ..read more

Recently St. Andrews Christian Union put on the Mark Drama and an independent student newspaper sent their Theatre Editor to check it out. See what he wrote afterwards here: http://www.thesaint-online.com/2019/04/mark-drama-a-review/ Praise God ..read more

Uncover Mark: a brilliant start So Christian Unions are being encouraged to put on their own productions of the Mark Drama, to help CU members to ask their friends to read Mark’s Gospel with them. At the beginning of December I directed for a joint team from the two main CUs in Sheffield: this was the first Mark Drama as part of Uncover Mark. Charlie, a first-time director, was directing with me. And it was stunning. I travelled up to Sheffield with high hopes, but all my expectations were surpassed. Alex, who was playing Jesus, had done a brilliant job learning the lines: he was fluent and sp ..read more

This was a massive highlight for me. I was directing for Kennet Valley Free Church. The team age-range went from 16 up to 70 (I’m guessing here, so I may be offending some of my readers!): the challenge for me was that we had no one between the ages of 22 and 34. But they were brilliant: loads of focus and commitment. And Charlie, who was playing Jesus and who had never seen Mark Drama, was superb: he had learnt the Jesus words incredibly well and spoke them out so you could feel the authority in them, and he was very quick at every point of the rehearsals to get what I was looking for. And Se ..read more

Are you a CU member looking to do the Mark Drama as part of your mission week? Check out UCCF’s page dedicated to all things Mark Drama. There you can download the “Making the Most of the Mark Drama” booklet which takes you through the process of putting one on and has FAQs!       ..read more

3 Mark Drama performances in 24 hours. 15 volunteer actors from around the U.K. A swanky tent in a field in Wales. Nearly 900 attendees.   What a week we had last week! UCCF  had their annual student leader’s conference FORUM and launched Uncover Mark, which is part of the Uncover  series that encourages students to encounter Jesus by reading a gospel and discussing it with a friend. Over the next few years, Christian Unions in the UK will be going for it in inviting fellow students to look at Jesus in Mark’s gospel. As part of this, UCCF invited us to come and put on a Mark Dra ..read more

It’s brilliant that we have 20 new directors ready to go. But I hope that we will need a lot more than that. At UCCF Forum at the end of August I will be directing a team which will do 3 performances of the Mark Drama, with an audience of 300 at each. And CU leaders from all over the country will be watching. Afterwards they will have the opportunity to indicate that their CU wants to do the Mark Drama at their university. Nearly all of these productions will happen in the late January-early March window. So we need more directors. Please pray for Callom and me as we talk to UCCF about how we ..read more

Some of the 20 new directors-in-training had never seen the Mark Drama. So a key part of this past weekend was me directing parts of the drama, with the participants doing the acting (and Callom playing Jesus). You could sense the enthusiasm mounting. 5 who had already shadowed a production then each directed a few incidents in Mark: they did a great job. There was also an opportunity to show everyone how the director works with the Jesus actor (before any of the rehearsals) to work on two of the most demanding scenes: Gethsemane and the cross. We had to pass on a lot of director’s materials t ..read more

This past weekend it’s like a door has opened. In September UCCF is kick-starting Uncover Mark in university CUs. As part of this they’re going to encourage CUs to put on their own production of the Mark Drama. For that to be possible we need directors. Lots of them. Callom and I trained 20 new directors this past weekend. They came from all over, committed to learning how to help CUs proclaim the good news in this way. They worked hard. They asked good questions. They studied the director’s materials. One comment was typical: I’m much more confident after this weekend! Here’s another: I’m ver ..read more