ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 27, 1997 TAG: 9703280009
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-4 EDITION: METRO JANEL RHODA/THE
TYPE: SEASON OF REVERENCE
SOURCE: CODY LOWE THE ROANOKE TIMES
For the past five years, Christ Short - a former professional actor and stand-up comic - has played a role that's very dear to his heart and soul.
A couple of years ago, a late-winter storm kept grounds manager Gary Short out 14 hours one Friday plowing snow off the Shenandoah Baptist Church parking lot, in anticipation of the usual overflow crowd for the annual Passion Play the next day.
Saturday meant two productions - matinee and evening - of the dramatization of Christ's life, crucifixion and resurrection.
For Short, 39, that translated into a second unusually long day - because he also is the actor who portrays Jesus Christ.
By the finale of the evening's presentation - when Christ exits his tomb in his resurrected glory - Short was totally exhausted.
"I think I'm going to black out," he remembers thinking.
But the audience reaction - an eruption of applause - kept Short going through the final minutes of the play.
Afterward, as he mingled with the audience accepting congratulations and answering questions, one spectator told him, "You looked tired and weak when you came out of the tomb. I don't think Christ would have been tired and weak."
Dealing with those kinds of expectations - to appear human, superhuman and divine in a single role - while also dealing with a subject that is sacred not only to his audience but to Short himself, is just part of the challenge of portraying Jesus Christ.
Short and the rest of the cast and crew wrapped up this year's presentation of the Passion Play last weekend. The independent Baptist church's Easter production is among the most popular church events of the year in the Roanoke Valley, attracting about 600 spectators to each of the 10 performances each year.
Tickets, which are free, are snapped up within a few days after they become available.
For the past five years, Short - a former professional actor and stand-up comic - has played the part of Christ.
He, his wife of 17 years and their three sons moved to the Roanoke Valley seven years ago from California, where he completed three years at Pacific Coast Bible College.
He's working on finishing up the last year he needs for a bachelor's degree and hopes to be pastor of his own church someday. For now, he's on the staff at Shenandoah Baptist, where he supervises the grounds - including the extensive athletic fields. He teaches a Sunday school class and leads a junior-high drama ministry at the church's Roanoke Valley Christian School.
After graduating from high school in New Jersey, Short began playing comedy clubs in that state and in New York. He eventually married a girl he met at his high school and moved to Las Vegas. He was selling jokes to big-name comics and performing his own stand-up routines at such places as the Sahara Hotel.
But the lifestyle never really seemed to fit.
At that time, "I wasn't a Christian, but I knew the world I was working in was false," Short said last week. "I saw how empty it was."
Other comics were offering to pay him for gags with drugs or prostitutes, and many kept suggesting that he should never have married - that a wife would only drag him down.
"I had just gotten married" about six months before, Short said. "The one thing I knew for certain was that I loved my wife," Debbie.
She had been a Christian since her baptism at age 9. She inspired Short to join her in worship at a little Baptist church in Las Vegas, where in 1980, he, too, became a Christian.
As it turned out, his career was just taking off, he said. He was writing material for Las Vegas headliners and "starting to get calls" for his act. He taped an HBO special with Rich Little. "It was the thrill of my life."
Then, he said, he heard God calling.
``The Lord told me, `I want you out of there.'''
Despite the expectations and temptations of success as an entertainer, Short said, he took God at his word and left the business.
His circle of comic friends was always dreaming about retiring from the rat race, Short said.
Now, "I'm the one who got the little house in the country. I've got my health. I got the dream. And I got eternal life," as a Christian.
He thought he was through with acting, but he never left it completely.
In California, Short said, he was involved in a dramatic Easter presentation significantly larger than the one at Shenandoah.
His experience at that California church didn't exactly prepare him for his starring role here, however. In that one, he played a dual role - as Satan and Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus by identifying him to the authorities who wanted him killed.
He can smile about the irony of it now, but he concedes that, for an actor, that was a great role, too.
Yet it doesn't really compare with portraying Christ.
Actors are often taught to try to internalize the characters they portray to give them life.
"But for a Christian to play Christ, you figure you've got his spirit within you already." Short said. "You can see where you are NOT like Jesus at all, but you try to suppress those things" and, in the words of Scripture, try to "become the image of Christ."
He prays with other cast and crew members continually before the beginning of each performance, Short said, asking God "to talk through me," hoping to touch other Christians and perhaps bring an unbeliever to faith in Christ.
"It thrills me to know that one day I'll stand before Christ, and after I apologize for so much of what I've done, he'll tell me what kind of job I did."
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: JANEL RHODA/THE ROANOKE TIMES. Former professional actorby CNBGary Short of Roanoke stars in Shenandoah Baptist Church's
production of the Passion Play (ran on N-1) color.