photo by Michael Mellema Senior Joe Lapp has been performing a live art depiction of his faith outside on the Commons lawn this week.

Few students would be willing to share all the intimate details of their spiritual journey with 4,000 strangers. Senior Joe Lapp not only wants to share his experience with the issue of faith, but he has chosen to tell the Calvin community in a very public and unique way.

On Monday and Wednesday, and again today, Lapp has been performing a series of live art, original theatrical productions based on three years of his faith journey at Calvin. These performances take place at 10:20, 11:20, and 12:20, for ten to fifteen minutes, in the middle of the commons next to a busy walkway. Passersby may have noticed him and his meager props of bricks and a chair on their way to class, but wondered what it was all about.

“The pieces are communicating a journey or the process of faith,” said Lapp, who grew up in the conservative Mennonite tradition. “I came here to Calvin and embarked on a process of tearing down my faith and building it back up. I wanted to strip everything away and see what’s left, and hopefully come out with an idea of how to live the Christian faith.”

Each day this week has been one part of his three-part series, entitled “Education in Faith 101, 201, and 301.” They are designed to represent his three years at Calvin and the process that he went through in rediscovering faith during those years.

Of Monday’s “101,” he said, “It communicates a doubt and despair when the foundations of faith are shaken,” caused by things learned in his first year at Calvin. For that performance he wore a suit and tie, refusing to make eye contact with students passing by.

Occasionally he made futile attempts to stack loose bricks on top of an already constructed “foundation,” but would soon knock them down again. Most dialogue consisted of the phrase, “My house of faith has fallen, and great is the fall thereof.”

Wednesday’s “201” section represented “failed attempts to build faith,” he said. “I’m feeling that God is still there, but I couldn’t get it together.” Wearing the more casual attire of khakis and a button-down shirt, his props consisted of merely one brick for the foundation, and a broken chair. While constantly returning to the phrases, “I have no foundation to build on. How can I believe? (How can I not believe?),” he tried unsuccessfully to stack bricks on top of this one brick as a symbol of those failed attempts.

Today, Lapp will present “Education in Faith 301,” which portrays “a new basis for faith,” he said. “This will have the feeling that God does exist, and he holds the universe together.” In this piece he hopes to communicate the basis for faith that he has constructed his third, final year at Calvin.

Simply dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans, Lapp will be sitting on a log, contemplating a single brick while musing, “This brick exists. I have faith that it exists. It exists because God holds it together.”

“Basically, the pieces move from being complex to simple,” Lapp said. “Monday’s was a religion of externals, Wednesday everything was in between, and Friday I focus on this one central thing, that God is here, that he exists. It follows the basic structure of fall and redemption, and hopefully finding that.”

In addition to his own personal experience, Lapp took ideas and themes for his performances from poems that he has written, scripture verses, and passages from writings by Nicholas Wolterstorff. He tried to work at least one portion of text into each section.

As for his audience consisting of students on their way to classes, said Lapp, “It’s designed to be a passerby thing. I get people who know me, who understand what I’m trying to do. Then you also get the people who say, ‘Hey look at this weird dude.’ But if they weren’t there, truthfully I’d be a little surprised. I realize that there are people who won’t understand.”

Lapp also struggled with how much information about his work to give to his audience. “When you do something like this, how much context do you give people? You have to find that small middle ground between no information and all of it.” In the end, he placed two stools in front of his performance area, displaying both the title of his work and his original poem for that day’s theme.

This is not Lapp’s first foray into live performance art. He was first introduced to it in a performance art class here at Calvin, and his first year in the dorms, he performed interactive material in the KH lobby.

In addition, he dressed like a homeless person and panhandled for a day at Calvin to observe student reactions, and then took that idea downtown to do the same thing. There, he even slept overnight in a homeless shelter, to get the full effect.

“This is something I love to do,” he said, “to not be within the boundaries of the theatre. And I’ve always wanted to do something out here…This is sort of a farewell present.

“Another thing that I’ve been taught at Calvin is that Christian art should be realistic. It should not present easy answers. Questioning our faith is a normal part of life, and we should not be afraid of it. This live art series is following what I’ve learned here at Calvin in trying to create art that acknowledges doubt, that takes viewers through

depths of suffering and questioning before presenting hope.”

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