Entertainment industry chaplain Charles Brammall at the epicentre of Australian acting
Professor Ken Healey, lovely, God-fearing History of Theatre lecturer at NIDA, invited me to lecture the whole of the student body on “The Lasting Effect of the Judeo-Christian Heritage on Modern Literature and Thought”. I spoke for about twenty minutes, then took questions for about forty. One of the students, a large, ripped, muscle-bound guy with a square jaw, asked why God hates gays (which I hadn’t spoken about in my lecture).
I didn’t answer the way I would have liked to in hindsight, but none of the class disagreed or argued, which surprised me. This tall, ripped chap came up to me after forwards and shook my hand with his huge muscular bear hand and said “Thanks mate. That was really good.” He turned out to be gay Rugby League player Ian Roberts, who had become an actor. We’ve stayed in touch. God is good all the time!
There were some encouraging and courageous stands for God taken by people in the NIDA group:
“N” was a female Musical Theatre student who went on to be in “Cats.” One day, she asked us to pray for a situation that had come up in class. She was working on an assessment task with a non-Christian classmate, which involved submitting the score of a musical theatre production. They were nearly finished, but she was distracted by something at the last minute, and her classmate inserted an orgy scene into the score and submitted it. She was aghast and didn’t want to be associated with it. So she went to find her Professor and raise it with him.
He knew she was a Christian, saw her coming, and didn’t want it to be removed, so he “ran away” from her. He was “progressive” and “mature” and quite happy for his students to submit orgy scenes. She had to chase him for the next week or so to try and get him on his own. He continued avoiding her, and that’s when she came to the group and asked us to pray and for our counsel. What should she do? We chatted and prayed about it and searched the Scriptures. Someone in the group helpfully raised Phil 4:8-
“… brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable — if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy — dwell on these things.”
N decided that if the lecturer was going to keep evading her, she would have to raise it in class, in front of the whole cohort. It was the only way to get within a bull’s roar of him. She did so, and in front of the whole class, he replied, “I think that’s ridiculous. You’re a prude.” (Some NIDA faculty aren’t known for their subtlety.) “You’re being ridiculous. Your ethic is in the 50s, and your head’s in the sand. We know better now. We’ve moved on. It’s the twentieth century, for goodness sake. It’s actually immoral to do what you’re suggesting.” His response reminded me of Phil 3:19-
“Their glory is in their shame, and their god is their stomach.”
However, the lecturer went on to say “But, I do admire your courage, and your integrity and consistency, and sticking to your guns. So go ahead- remove it if you have to.” Wow. One for God. Surprisingly and delightfully, later on, several non-Christian classmates came up to N and thanked her for what she did, saying they too were uncomfortable with the scene being included. It was 1 Pet 2:12 writ large:
“Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us.”
I thank God for gutsy, principled N and her uncompromising loyalty to holiness in a difficult setting. Please pray with me that her classmates willglorify God on the day He visits us. And pray she is still going from strength to strength with the LORD in “Cats”.
NIDA is a wonderful gift to us from God, and we have much to thank Him for- the skillful beauty of the work of many of its graduates. People like Mel Gibson and Steve Bisley, Cate Blanchett, Judy Davis, Sarah Snook, and Baz Luhrmann. But auditions, and studying there, are notoriously difficult, for several reasons:
Firstly, each year about a thousand people audition for the acting course, to secure one of twenty-four places. Secondly, Christian and non-Christian students alike tell me that NIDA’s aim is to “break students” emotionally before building them up again. This is so they can “get in touch with their inner fears and traumas, and experience a wider and deeper range of emotions, to help them inhabit more characters. And experience what it’s like to be rejected because that’s the reality of what will happen once they’re out in the industry.”
Students tell me it can be a terribly traumatic experience, and some people carry scars from it for the rest of their lives.
Thirdly, I have heard, anecdotally, that in some auditions, students’ intestinal fortitude and commitment to Jesus have been sorely tested. There are no limits to the things they have been asked to do in auditions, including having sex with an animal. As I say, this is anecdotal, but sadly, it wouldn’t surprise me.
Please pray for NIDA students and staff, especially those who are believers. That God by His Spirit would make them uncompromising, committed to purity and holiness, and for strength to shine like a light in a sometimes dark place. And for unbelievers, that they would come to know His saving grace, John 1:15-
“The light shines in the darkplaces, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Actor and NIDA lecturer Wendy Strehlo (“A Country Practise”, “Blue Heelers”, “Home and Away”) I got to know at NIDA. We chatted often about important pastoral issues.
I have heard from NIDA students (at least in the past), that the intake of students each year is not based on acting ability, but on achieving a range of body types, genders and “looks”. For example, a short black guy, tall white girl, slim Asian guy, curvy black girl, ripped Pacifica guy, trans woman, “boyish” looking girl, camp man, and an “older, fat” woman etc. Actors tell me often that they were rejected in an audition because they were too curvy, too slim, not blonde enough, not ripped enough, their hair was too curly, they weren’t “Asian” enough, etc.