Bible Characters – points of view – a dramatic activity

Lucy Moore

A simple idea for looking at an old story in a new way. For some examples of looking at an old story from a ‘different’ viewpoint, look at stories in The Gospels Unplugged like Walking on the Water from the viewpoint of the fish in Lake Galilee, the Temptations from Satan’s viewpoint or the footwashing from the point of view of the slave at the Last Supper. There are many more!

On your marks:

Make sure everyone knows the story. If it’s a very familiar one, you could try telling it with lots of mistakes in (There was once a shepherd who had a hundred elephants…) and inviting the children to ‘spot the mistakes’.

Get set:

When everyone knows what goes on in the story, ask them to brainstorm (or thought-shower or idea-waterfall or whatever the pc term is these days) to make a list of all the people or animals or items of scenery that might have been there (a shepherd, shepherd’s wife, second shepherd, sheep, sheepdog, wolf, gate, walls, tree…).

Go!

Then get everyone to choose one of these characters. Eventually you’ll be telling the story from each of these points of view.

Before that, though, build up gradually with one or more of the following:

• Hotseat the characters
• Draw an outline of your character on a big sheet of paper. On the inside of the outline, jot down the character’s thoughts and feelings. On the outside, jot down anyone else’s thoughts and feelings towards them.
• Play twenty questions (you can only answer yes or no) to find out who the character is.
• Draw a picture of the story from your character’s point of view.
• Now go round the circle and each person can tell the story from their own character’s point of view.

What might you learn?
Well, who knows? But it might be, that the baddies are not as bad as they seemed. Or that the goodies are not as simple as all that. Or that there were dangers that you’d never thought of, repercussions for the community well outside the limits of the original story….
Keep your ears open for the insights that the children will come up with and show how much you value these insights.