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Script change
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG -- Life happens. That's how television, movie and Broadway actor Frank Runyeon succinctly explains why he put aside a glamorous secular career for that of roving national evangelist. In perhaps his best known role, Runyeon, 49, played Meg Ryan's love interest on the soap opera As the World Turns during the 1980s. With dark good looks, he landed roles ranging from caring priest to brooding scoundrel. Now he travels the country starring in one-man plays based not on the imaginings of Hollywood writers but on the philosophy of Christian scripture. On Friday, he will appear at St. Peter's Cathedral, 140 Fourth St. N, in Afraid! The Gospel of Mark. Except for the South, where interest in his work is steady, bookings skyrocket around Christmas and Easter, Runyeon said. In the past 10 years, Runyeon has given about 1,000 scripture-based performances a year in about 40 states. "It's really interesting to see all the people. I feel like I've been running for president," he joked during a telephone interview. How does he hope audiences will respond to his work? "That their reaction will be, 'Wow.' That this is powerful and absolutely seminal stuff," he said. "These texts are the very core of Western civilization. It's who we are. Obviously, I hope they come to know the God that I've come to know in these texts." Last week, Runyeon, whose credits include his stint as Steve Andropoulos opposite Meg Ryan, as Father Michael Donnelly on Santa Barbara and as tycoon Simon Romero on General Hospital, recently talked about his shift in career. "As you get older, life happens. A former college roommate took his life. One of my kids almost died," he said. "Like other people in my generation, I'd gone to church with my folks, but I'd never let my faith advance beyond the fourth-grade level. I wasn't so much planning on leaving television. It was just asking the hard questions (about life)." The night his son was delivered by emergency Caesarean section was life changing. His son, now almost 15, was not expected to live through the night. That experience made him think deeply about his faith. "It was what it felt like to be in the kind of pain that I was feeling, knowing that my son was in there dying, that gave me the smallest feeling of the infinite pain that God must have felt when his son was dying on the cross," Runyeon said. The actor, who had seen the King James version of the Gospel of Mark performed by British actor Alec McGowan in the late 1970s, decided it was a project he would like to do. "I wondered if it couldn't be done more theatrically," Runyeon said. The Princeton graduate started studying the Gospel of Mark and began learning Greek so that he could experience the gospel the way it was originally written. His religious studies eventually led to a master's degree from the General Theological Seminary in New York City. Runyeon thinks his translation of the gospel from its original Greek has helped to bring its story alive for audiences. "The text is as close to a word-for-word re-creation, not just of the meaning of it, but the poetry of it," he said. Afraid, set by candlelight in the catacombs of Rome, lasts for 70 minutes. Audiences "tend to think that this guy is going to stand up and be holier than thou and they are going to fall asleep and go home," he said. "Part of the adventure is to uncover the humor, the power and suspense of what's there. In other words, it's not only a sacred text, it's also powerful theater. It was meant to be theater." The gospel follows the structure of Greco-Roman drama, Runyeon said. It opens with a messenger, John the Baptist, and ends with another messenger, the angel announcing that Jesus is risen. "And in the exact middle is when they discover that a god is among them. Peter says to Jesus, 'You are the Messiah.' " The title of Runyeon's play is based on the final word of the original text of Mark's gospel, when Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, discovered that Jesus was not in the tomb. They were told by an angel that he had risen and that they should go and tell his disciples. Instead, the women ran out of the tomb and said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. "And there is nothing else," Runyeon said of the apparently abrupt ending of the gospel. "Later generations added a variety of endings, but everybody agrees that Mark didn't write it. What if he intended it to end there? What it does is make it unbelievably powerful. Why would the evangelist leave that out?" Runyeon asked. "The play is the answer. It is exciting to me on a number of levels. Artistically, it's just very bold and creative of Mark to have done that. And it's a challenge as a playwright and actor to make it work for the audience. When you experience it as a play, people do say, 'Wow, what an ending.' From the point of view of faith, it's also exciting. The message is so profound. ... The story is not over yet. We are part of the story and we have our own part to play. We are the risen body of Christ." Afraid is one of five religious shows written by the actor. One, based on the Sermon on the Mount, is followed by a talk, "Hollywood Versus Faith." "It's humorous, but it makes its point," he said of his take on Hollywood. "It's just funny what people in Hollywood do and think." Runyeon's other shows are In the Darkness: The Gospel of John, 'What Are you Doing': The Letter of James, and The 3 1/2 Stories of Christmas. Raised by a Lutheran father and an Episcopalian mother and married to a woman who is Roman Catholic, Runyeon describes himself as "radically ecumenical." Over the years, he said, he has "less and less reservation" about admitting that he is religious. As for Meg Ryan, who went on to great fame and fortune, "Obviously, I've not seen her in a long time," he said. One of the great things about leaving television was that "the real world was given back to me," Runyeon said. "People don't act bizarre everywhere I go. I might go back and do something conspicuous again, but I really would miss the anonymity." If you go Afraid! The Gospel of Mark, a one-man play by actor Frank Runyeon, at 7 p.m. Friday at St. Peter's Cathedral, 140 Fourth St. N, St. Petersburg. Tickets are $5 at the door.
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