Part 10 - Pentecost by Jane And Mark Lewis

Contents

• Background
• Rating
• Characters
• Staging
• Script

Background

Then one of the series we were doing in our Family Services was on the life of Peter. As Peter was a "Northerner" (as far as those in Judea were concerned) we decided to write a series tenuously based on Coronation Street. As Peter lived in Capernaum, the title of Capernaum Street wasn't too difficult to come up with! We were then faced with the constraints familiar to many church drama groups - a lack of resources and a Hollywood special effects budget. These seem necessary given the miracles Peter witnessed. Then we had the idea - what if Peter "came home from work", as it were, from his "day job" as a disciple of Jesus to relay all his experiences to his wife Elizabeth (OK we made up the Elizabeth bit but we know Peter had a wife because he had a mother-in-law - see Mark 1:30). This would mean only two people were required and no special effects!

Capernaum Street was born and the format has remained the same since. Each episode Peter returns from his day with Jesus to recount everything that's happened to Elizabeth in an "up-North"-kitchen-sink-type-Coronation-Street style.

This is Part 10 of the Capernaum Street series and relates the events of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-41) - hence Peter's slipping into foreign languages. We also decided, as this Elizabeth has only been witnessing these things second-hand over the whole Capernaum Street series that it was about time we started bringing her to a decision point. Does she believe Jesus is who Peter says he is

Version 2 of the sketch came about as we were doing a series at church covering the story of the beginnings of the church through the eyes of Peter. So we re-wrote this sketch to follow more directly from Capernaum Street 12 - The Ascension (note the reference to 'gift' in both). Also as this was appearing in a family service we were concerned about the children losing interest so one of our sons came up with the idea of short-circuiting the argument at the end of the sketch by fast-forwarding it.  This worked very well when first performed. The re-write was also an excuse to get some topical references in - strange to think that Twitter didn't even exist when Version 1 was written....

(Note: the Part numbers refer to the order the sketches were written in and not necesasarily the order of events in Peter's life).

P.S. Our thanks to Erika for providing the German translation and help with pronounciation. We have also heard from a church in New Zealand who re-wrote this sketch to use Korean and Mandarin!

Rating

Characters

• Peter, apostle of Jesus.
• Elizabeth, his wife.

• Simeon & Ethan - children watching "Capernaum Street" on TV
  

Peter should be dressed to suggest "fisherman". (E.g. wellies, big woolly jumper, water-proof jacket, etc.)
Elizabeth is a house-proud housewife and should be wearing a house-coat, have her hair in a scarf and have a duster to wave around for emphasis.

Staging

We use three devices to create a consistent "look and feel" to the Capernaum Street sketches:

• The characters are always dressed the same in every sketch (see above).
• For each performance we project the Capernaum St. sign (illustrated above) on an OHP.
• We use, what turned out to be, a very successful device for indicating the start and end of each sketch: the Theme Tune. We both play the first few bars of the theme tune to Coronation Street on kazoos.

Script - Version 1

Version 2