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Spotlight On...
Daniel Brooks and Rick Miller - Bigger Than Jesus
 Bigger
Than Jesus, the new creation by Rick Miller and Daniel Brooks, produced
by Necessary Angel Theatre Company,
is billed as being a "Multimedia Mass for the modern age."
A catchy slogan, but more than that as well. Writer and performer
Rick Miller expands upon that idea: "We structured it along the
lines of the Catholic Mass. The play started with a line --‘I know
the entire Catholic Liturgy by heart. I grew up Catholic, I haven’t
been to Church in many years. But the words of the liturgy stuck
with me, and I was interested in taking those words into a secular
space, and
trying to find meaning in them. Bigger Than Jesus is a search
for meaning not only in those words of the Catholic Mass, but
also why people celebrate
Mass to begin with." "And it’s also to atone for the
sins of Christianity as well," concludes
Brooks jokingly.
Rick Miller
and Daniel Brooks began talking about Bigger Than Jesus nearly
three years ago. The two of them agreed that they
wanted to experiment
with creating a "religious experience in the theatre." Miller
recalls the feeling that going to Church instilled -- of feeling
cleansed, uplifted, challenged. Everything that good theatre can
and should do. Brooks
explains that one of the things that they have done is take the
life of Christ in the Gospels, and used that to create a dual structure
with the
liturgy -- "Including points in the life of Christ which we have
very freely interpreted." Miller agrees by reinstating "This is our
own Jesus story, told through our Mass."
One of the interesting things
about Bigger Than Jesus is that is a creation - that is Daniel
Brooks and Rick Miller have been working
on it as partners, and not simply as writer/director and actor/director.
Through
discussion and experimentation, it has grown in a very organic
way to become what it is. What is it that attracted them to this
style of theatre-making? "I
prefer working like this, partly because I rarely find the writer
who thinks about the stage the same way I do. So that when I begin
working with a collaborator,
we develop a stage language together, and text, and scenography
- the approach to dramaturgy. The collaboration process is inventive
-- and to a certain
extent, holistic. It gives me, as a director, much more voice.
I’m
less interested in solving the problems of another person’s text."
Miller
remarks that for him, is was natural to build the show in this
way. "A
lot of our initial rehearsals were just walking around in the park
talking about family, and divinity, and life. All of these things
fuel not only
the content, but the way you’re going to be working together. And
as Daniel said - you develop a language together so that in the
end what’s
been produced is almost a child -- which I believe is very relevant
considering what Bigger Than Jesus is about."
One of the important
aspects of Bigger Than Jesus is the multimedia element that Miller
and Brooks established. What made them want
to incorporate these technological aspects, and what would the
play be like without them? "Bigger
Than Jesus: Unplugged," say Brooks, "I’ve seen a lot
of ‘multimedia’," Miller
replies, "and I think in this case our media achieves a certain integration
in the content of the show. I don’t feel that we’re using it
gratuitously -- all of the tricks we use have become almost characters
in the play that we have endowed with a certain sense of the sacred." It’s
interesting that the media Brooks and Miller have employed serve
almost as post-modern religious iconography. And in incorporating
that, they have
deepened their investigation into Jesus and Christianity in their
own distinct way. Miller sums it up by saying, "The Mass is not Mass
without the architecture, the music and the lighting. Without that,
it’s
just words. I believe that a lot of the meaning lies within the
trappings."
When I ask Rick Miller and Daniel Brooks who or what they
would say have inspired them as artists, Miller credits Robert
Lepage as a being a major source of his evolution as an artist.
Brooks on the other hand notes
that most of his influences have been outside the realm of theatre. "I
would say more film than theatre, although Samuel Beckett was a
huge influence. In film, I think I’ve been very influenced by the
French New Wave, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, even the Marx
Brothers."
One of the things that fascinates me about Bigger Than
Jesus is the amount of scrutiny the artists have applied. Often,
time and money are issues when it comes to producing new work, but their
entire company has
been able to develop this project to it’s fullest extent. In the end,
that’s what encourages theatre to go beyond what is expected, and
in its own way, become a religious experience. Back to top |
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