Jaunt To Japan Drama Group From Harvest Christian Fellowship Has Been Invited To Perform Its Play

Teenagers dressed in gangster clothes whirl and dance on the street corner, drawing in a boy who surrenders his most prized possession to join them - a coat given to him by his father.

Suddenly, a gun battle ensues and the new recruit falls to the ground, fatally wounded.

This isn’t a news clip from an inner city, but a scene from a play to be performed in Japan by a drama group from Harvest Christian Fellowship Church. The thespians leave today for a two-week journey to Kyoto and Kamioka, where they have been invited to perform.

“I just got a vision to write something to express what this house (church) believes,” said Jessica Herrmann, 23. She formed the group in January, wrote and choreographed the play, produced the music and performs several roles in it.

Each of the group’s six members portrays multiple characters. They deftly switch characters with a quick, minimal costume change.

The church has missionaries based in both Japanese cities the group will visit. The actors’ goals are to evangelize, work with Japanese youth and strengthen the mission already in place, said Herrmann.

She started the group with the idea of performing the play overseas.

“We have a heart for all the nations,” she said. “It just happened that this is the one that opened up first.”

The untitled play follows the lives of several children and their father, who presents a coat to each child as a symbol of his unique relationship with them.

Soon, they leave to explore the outside world.

Eventually, each child trades the coat for something he wants, and each is injured in the process.

Their father, seeing their distress, comes to them and heals them, but in the process, falls and dies. After the children mourn his passing, he rises and gives them each back their coats, symbolizing his restored relationship with them.

Often, Herrmann said, people watch most of the play before realizing it has a religious message, that the father is God and his children are, well, us.

That’s intentional, because Herrmann wants audience members to see themselves in the characters and understand that they, too, can be restored.

“What I want to portray is that Father God will have a relationship with us no matter what,” said Herrmann.

The five other dance-team members are Thomas Bechard, 15; Aaron Sedler, 15; Melanie Breeden, 17; Jillian Wylie, 14; and John Layman, 32. Most troupe members are home-schooled, so taking a two-week overseas jaunt isn’t a big problem. The exceptions are Layman, a plumber, and Sedler, who attends Ferris High School.

Sedler arranged to make up the school work, but he’ll also miss playing in the season’s final football game. It’s worth it, though, to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, he said.

“It’s an honor just to be part of such a unique thing,” Sedler said.

The group has performed the play several times at the Bus Plaza and on Riverside Avenue downtown. Sedler says they got a good response from the crowd, and classmates who had seen it approached him later to say how much they enjoyed it. “It’s nice to get that response from people,” says Sedler.

Keith Jones, a former pastor who now works in School District 81’s truancy office, saw the group during one of its downtown performances. “It’s jazzy, it’s snappy, it tells a story,” he says.

The play addresses real-life issues in a format youth can understand, says Jones, and was especially effective because the group went out into the neighborhood with their message.

The group has spent the past few weeks fine-tuning and critiquing their performance. They wanted to perfect their flow of movement and work on facial expressions and gestures to let the characters’ emotions come through.

It’s the gestures, though, which raise an entirely new question - “Can we do that in Japan?”