Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 15, 1995 TAG: 9504180045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: RELIGION EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRIGGS AP RELIGION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
His father was a shopkeeper who tried to unite Christian groups in England in a practical effort to house the homeless and feed the hungry.
So although the British actor Alec McCowen holds no formal religious affiliation, it is in keeping with family tradition that his signature role has become his one-man show, ``St. Mark's Gospel.''
Even 17 years after his first performance, the actor who otherwise has ``a normal career'' on stage and in films such as ``Cry Freedom'' and ``The Age of Innocence'' still finds himself drawn to the challenge of retelling The Gospel According to St. Mark.
``I keep coming back and doing St. Mark. And when I think I'd finished with it, as I did five years ago, nevertheless it comes back into my head,'' McCowen said in an interview at a midtown hotel a few blocks away from the Off Broadway theater where he is again performing his one-man show.
``I think I have become - there is no other word for it - a St. Mark nut.''
One might think the idea would be a natural - a theatrical reading of one of the most important and beloved books in Western culture, a book originally written with the idea that its words would most often be spoken, not read.
But the Bible, particularly the Gospels, were relatively unexplored territory for the stage, McCowen discovered when he was first searching for a material for a one-person show.
``I wondered why the so-called Greatest Story Ever Told was never told,'' McCowen said. ``It seemed to me no one trusted the words sufficiently to think they would hold up in this sort of recital.''
The Gospel of Mark was actually his last choice. He first considered and rejected the other three Gospels; John for being too much a study of Jesus rather than the story of Jesus, Matthew because it was more a great sermon than a great story and Luke because he felt the style of writing was so beautiful he would be tempted into indulgent speaking.
What was left was Mark, which McCowen found made an excellent theatrical vehicle. The Gospel spends more time telling the action, rather than commenting on it. As the shortest Gospel, it can be told in two hours, with a dramatic break in the middle at the beginning of chapter nine when Jesus says, ``Truly, I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.''
The end is the dramatic Passion narrative of the death and resurrection of Christ.
McCowen began learning his lines on Aug. 17, 1976, and finished 16 months later. Learning an average of three verses a day of the King James version usually took about two hours, the actor said.
All the attention in the show is on the Gospel. The Spartan set consists of three chairs and a table. McCowen dresses simply in slacks and a sweater.
On a personal level, McCowen said he is drawn to the humanity of Mark, Jesus' relationships with his apostles, and the stormy encounters against the hypocrisies of the scribes and Pharisees.
In the end, in what is in one way a tribute to his father, McCowen rolls up his sleeves as he recites Jesus post-resurrection instructions to go into all the world and proclaim the good news.
``This is what the resurrection is about,'' he said. ``It should be about preaching the Gospel to every culture.''
And while he is not a church member, McCowen's audiences are not the only people affected by his show.
``I think doing St., Mark has affected me a lot in the way I live my life,'' McCowen said.
When he runs into trouble or is depressed, he finds the Gospel offers a source of reflection. ``Since I've been doing St. Mark, I find myself more often choosing to do good, to believe there is a puyrpose rather than that there is no purpose,'' he said.
As friends, parents and loved ones have passed away, he has not given up hope.
``Many people have gone under because of loss, but I do try and have tried to believe there is a purpose to their death and there is a challenge to me to carry on.''
by CNB