These are real people, with real family trauma, and real family trees.<\/em><\/p>\nOn a more philosophical level, one of the first things I did was jump on a plane and visit the ten Boom house in Haarlem, in the Netherlands, and then drove across Germany to the Ravensbr\u00fcck concentration camp, where Corrie and Betsie were. I needed to experience that before I could write anything.<\/p>\n
A concentration camp is like the negative of the Grand Canyon, if that makes sense. You see pictures your whole life, but then when you go you stand on the rim of it, you can\u2019t imagine how much bigger it is than you ever imagined. At Ravensbr\u00fcck, standing in the gas chambers, standing in front of the oven, it\u2019s so much deeper and darker and wider than you ever imagined. It\u2019s impossible to portray the enormity of true evil.<\/p>\n
I was surprised that the Nazis in the play\u2014the two who really speak\u2014are atheists. They\u2019re antagonistic to Christianity in general. But historically, 95 percent of Germans were Christians. The churches very much adapted to and accepted Nazism, which the churches in Germany today work very hard to remember and repent of. They will tell you, \u201cWe were part of something evil.\u201d Why present the Nazis in the play as people who didn\u2019t share the same faith as Corrie and Betsie ten Boom?<\/h5>\n
It\u2019s something we wrestled with. Ultimately, where I landed was, I was wanting the show at a meta level to be a work of theodicy\u2014Corrie trying to think about how does God permit evil\u2014and that needed an antagonist. It was helpful to have a Nazi be that antagonist.<\/p>\n
The other thing is that, in her book, the Nazis that she encountered were very hostile to Christianity. Nazis came in and saw her reading the Bible and said, \u201cWhy are you reading this trash?\u201d In her experience, she encountered Nazis who were antagonistic, and I don\u2019t know that I can explain that, because you\u2019re right about the history. But that was her experience.<\/p>\n
Yeah, but only about 1.5 percent of people were atheists. The top Nazis and top Christian leaders were promoting a kind of heroic Christianity, purged of Judaism and \u201cJewish influences,\u201d so Christianity was more about winning and less about, you know, the scandal of the Cross. It really changes things to portray her enemy as atheists.<\/h5>\n
It\u2019s an interesting question. But the reality is, as Corrie portrays them in the book, she did have multiple encounters with people who were specifically anti-Christian and atheistic. And it was helpful dramatically.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve written novels before. How different is theater? What are the biggest challenges of adaptation?<\/h5>\n
On the surface level, when you write a book and release day comes around, you sit in your room to deafening silence and hope somebody\u2019s reading it. When you write a play, you go to opening night, and even if people didn\u2019t like it, they stand up and clap.<\/p>\n
The form of the novel is inherently interior. The novel\u2019s greatest strength is it reveals the internal life of a character. Theater is inherently three-dimensional and, I would say, incarnational. I create something as a writer that is unfinished. It cannot be experienced as it is meant to be experienced until other people incarnate it in three dimensions on the stage and make it its full self.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s also a fascinating theological thought to me. You could almost think of the law as theater, the law as something that God gave to Moses that we couldn\u2019t understand fully until the Incarnation showed up.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also beautiful to me that it\u2019s a communal art form. When I write a book, it\u2019s all on me. In theater, I write the best thing I can, but then you get into rehearsals and there are 30 or 40 people bringing their art to bear. And that\u2019s always better than I could have done on my own.<\/p>\n
What did you see in the play, in the process of rehearsals, that wasn\u2019t just your intention but something coming to life through the collaboration or incarnation of the play?<\/h5>\n
There\u2019s a moment at the end of the show where Corrie is offered an opportunity to offer forgiveness. The way that I had written was pretty matter of fact. Corrie is pretty matter of fact in the book. But as we rehearsed it, we really saw how delicate that scene needed to be. If it\u2019s easy to forgive, we\u2019re minimizing the evils of the Nazi regime. But if we make it too hard, that doesn\u2019t work either.<\/p>\n
The process was, we did a couple of readings of it back in 2018 down in Houston. Then we did developmental workshops. That\u2019s where everybody says what\u2019s wrong with it and I try and keep my mouth shut and then go back and fix it. Then we did, I think, four weeks of performance in Houston. Then COVID got in the way, and I spent most of the pandemic reworking the play. When it came to the stage in Nashville, that was another version.<\/p>\n
That scene, the way it ultimately worked out, you can see the struggle on Corrie\u2019s face. When you get the actors involved, actors are incredibly emotionally intuitive people. They teased all sorts of nuance out that I had not seen, and it was beautiful.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t change how it was written on the pages. But it changed the way the scene breathes and is enfleshed before the audience.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next? Do you have another play you\u2019re working on now?<\/h5>\n
We are in active development for my adaptation of Charles Dickens\u2019s A Christmas Carol. <\/em>I\u2019m really interested in digging into the theological aspects. The story is fundamentally theological, but most adaptations downplay that part. But the theology is remarkable. Dickens knew his theology. Like, he named the main character Ebenezer for a reason\u2014\u201cHither by thy help I\u2019ve come,\u201d you know? So I\u2019m excited to share that with people soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n