Roll up, roll up... A Monologue About Christianity!

Picture credit: Author’s own 

I spent Saturday evening at the West End show ‘Every Brilliant Thing’, starring the comedian, Sue Perkins. Lenny Henry has now replaced Sue for the next run. It was a fabulous night out on the town. And why wouldn’t it be? What’s not to love about a monologue on the theme of suicide? All the ingredients for a right old chortle, surely? Well, it was amazing, and yes, we laughed out loud during a monologue about suicide.

The tickets were a gift from our daughter for my wife’s birthday, and I hadn’t checked out what we were going to see. All I really knew was that Sue Perkins was in it, so during our pre-show drink, I had a quick Google to narrow down what it was all about. Would I have proactively booked to see a monologue about suicide? I think I might go with probably not. After all, Mrs Smart missed Strictly for this.

Here’s the thing though. As we laughed, the humour opened pathways in our psyche to learn and reflect and to have compassion for the character in a way that a straight-laced and serious equivalent could not have. I should add that ‘Every Brilliant Thing’ isn’t a heavy or sad tale. The title of the play refers to the joyful list the character makes of all the great reasons to be alive, the first of which is ice cream but no more spoilers in case you see it.

What the playwright has achieved with this show is to get people through the door and make a dark subject accessible. Thousands of theatregoers now have a new perspective and increased awareness of a difficult to talk about subject, even if, like me, they just popped out for an evening of light entertainment. Imagine how few people would have bought a ticket to a sombre and serious show called ‘A Monologue About Suicide’?

As Christian writers, how can we make our subject accessible? We may know of the joy within, but lots of quite reasonable people would rather eat their own underpants than pick up a ‘Christian’ book or step inside a church where they expect nothing but a dreary monologue about sin. Some years ago, that was the exact reason I started a Messy Church. The church we were at was rather formal, and I just wanted to make our faith and our place of worship accessible to a new generation of young people and families. I knew that many who came probably weren’t there to explore faith. They came to get the kids out of the house, to escape the rain, or to enjoy the art and crafts, and the food, but it was a gateway to other things. Few of those families would ever have rocked up on a Sunday.

I’m half-way through ‘The Siege’ by John Sutherland, a book I meant to read ages ago. I like many things about it, not least how he naturally includes Christian characters and ideas in an exciting and non-preachy plot that would (thankfully) never get placed under the ‘Christian’ genre. In the novel I’m writing, one aspect of the story is how a character is navigating his way towards faith. The journey is unusual, messy and imperfect, and it’s still that way on the last page, but I don’t want to convey to a reader that faith is all lovely and gift wrapped or reserved for people who have nice, conventional lives.

So, over to you. How can Christian writers make what they write accessible to wider audiences?