Part 14 - Cornelius 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 (more or less) the same ever 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. In the later sketches (including this one), that occur after Jesus' ascension, we've slightly modified this format to adjust to Peter's new role.

This sketch was originally written to be part of a longer series to follow on from the re-written version of Part 7 - Raising Tabitha.  It proved to be a very difficult sketch to write because the whole premise of the story in Acts 10 and 11 is based on the Jewish food laws.  How could we get this across when all the cultural references in Capernaum Street are English?  So we settled on the running gag being that Peter and Elizabeth would refer to traditional English foods as if they were "weird & wacky foreign foods".  To vary the format a little we also split the sketch into to mini-parts to cover both Peter's dream and the events at Cornelius' house separately and to allow some sense of elapsed time between the two.  We should also point out that there was an epidemic of E.Coli in Germany in the news at the time relating to contaminated salad vegetables (hence the topical reference at the end of the second sketch).

Given we've broken from the normal format we've included the original first draft of the sketch for reference as this was done in the usual Peter-coming-home-from-work style. But, basically, we thought it was pretty poor hence the major re-write. But here at Potted JAM we like to share everything warts and all so we've included it in case it is useful for someone.

Rating

Characters

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

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.
(Note: We've always stuck with the same costumes so that the characters are recognisable though by the later sketches from Acts it doesn't really fit with the situation).

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 the data projector.
• 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 (as performed)

Part 1

Part 2

Original Draft