Nicholas Alder’s show Road to Judecca explores their relationship to how faith can be simultaneously illuminating as well as blinding, and how charismatic leaders are capable of using faith to their advantage, as well as a study into the deep desire of each of us to believe and, through belief, belong. With plenty to cover, we wanted to explore more, so we invited Nicholas for a pixelated pint to dive into their show.

You can catch Road to Judecca at Riverside Studios tomorrow, Sunday 23rd March, at 6pm (60mins). Tickets are available through the Venue’s Online Box Office.

Jake: Hi Nicholas, your show Road to Judecca looks at how faith can be simultaneously illuminating as well as blinding – tell us what that means to you and what inspired the piece.

Nicholas: Hello Jake, faith can and has provided sanctuary, security, and a sense of belonging and purpose, to those individuals who have wandered in a state of confusion, internal and/or external abandonment. Then there are those who are brought up with faith and wish to hold onto the belonging. We want to be reassured, loved, heard, and wanted by others, and when people or a community offer that, it can feel intoxicating while sometimes not being aligned with our inherent moral values. Sometimes because of the offerings of faith, we lose sight of how much is sacrificed. We start to refrain from asking questions because we fear abandonment, and we put up with things that we might disagree with and ultimately we might end up justifying the misdeeds and defending them because we subscribed to the faith, and to question it is to question ourselves.

This blinding can be compared to an abusive relationship, in which we choose to be blind or actually are due to conditioning. My own relationship with faith and a past abusive relationship led me to create this piece. Although the relationship wasn’t built solely on religion, they used religious rhetoric often to communicate. I read extensively about religious leaders and some cult leaders in pursuit to understand the hold they maintain on people, and what those people wish from them. What is the transaction, if there is one?

Jake: The show uses an interesting technique exploring how the four ‘modalities of Lutheran Prayer’ can function in an actor’s process. Tell us what that means in practice and about how you developed the piece.

Nicholas: The four modalities of Lutheran Prayer are the command, the promise, the words, and faith. The command is to pray, the promise is God promising to receive the prayer, the words being the ones provided in the bible, and faith charging the practice as a whole.

I grew up in a Lutheran household in which we would pray everyday, but to me it was a repetition with not much thought behind it, a habit if you will. With this project, I wished to explore acting as a religious practice, and so I went back to my roots to find that connection. I started exploring the theatre space as sacred grounds, charged with something that was quite close to what we deem as faith, a temple in which we enter to believe. Acting becomes a service to something greater than the performer, thus letting go of the ego which cripples a performer. It’s a service to a community, to the audience, to a political belief, to a nation, to a group of people, or to God. And four modalities come together, command to tell the story, to enact the service, the promise from the audience to receive, the words on the page, and the faith that the magic in the room is real.

Jake: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?

Nicholas: I hope the audience witnesses a behaviour that they have been either subjected to or subjected someone else to or have seen someone else take part in, and that they engage in a conversation of responsibility within faith and learn to call out particular problematic behaviours before circumstances escalate beyond the point of return. I hope that the audience doesn’t see bad habits as an inherent part of practicing faith but rather the abuse of the power over people with the utilisation of faith.

Jake: Tell us about how the show has ended up being performed at Riverside Studios and about your relationships with the other creatives involved.

Nicholas: In collaboration with the theatre collective “Voler”, I produced and performed in a play that I wrote with award nominated poet Francis de Lima last November. The production was called “Greater Than I Can Bear” and it was a retelling of the biblical story of Cain and Abel with magical realism and the subject matter of class struggle. Riverside Studios was very accommodating and we had such a delightful time collaborating with them, that we only thought it inevitable that we performed there again.

Road To Judecca is a production under Voler Theatre Collective, although it is performed, written and directed by me. I have had several people assisting me with choreography, direction, outsourcing material and assisting with venue hires across Europe. It has been a fantastic Everest to climb, but I couldn’t have accomplished this without all the friends and colleagues I’ve made along my artistic journey.

Jake: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind (alcoholic, non-alcoholic – be as creative as you like!), what would it be and why?

You: What a wonderful question! My instincts tell me the beverage would be a smokey whiskey sour. An odyssey with flavours and layers. Zesty, bitter and sweet like an undulating relationship. And with all the sweetness, the alcohol is hidden within it all, and you are unprepared for the intoxication due to its subtle appearance in taste. And finally, the presence of the egg, a symbol of creation or withholding of creation, accompanied by philosophical inspection, “What came first? The chicken or the egg?”

You can catch Road to Judecca at Riverside Studios tomorrow, Sunday 23rd March, at 6pm (60mins). Tickets are available through the Venue’s Online Box Office.