Max McLean’s play inspires students’ faith
Award-winning actor Max McLean brought C. S. Lewis to life at Notre Dame in his performance of the play Further Up & Further In. Students gathered for the show in the Debartolo Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, November 5. Drawing upon Lewis’ personal life and works, the play included reflections on science and religion, skepticism, and the importance of Christianity.
Wednesday’s showing of Further Up & Further In was organized for the Moreau First-Year Seminar, a required one-credit course designed to support students’ holistic formation. The Moreau Program offered the play as a co-curricular learning experience, giving away 200 tickets to students. Wilsey Professor of Theology and Moreau Program Director William Mattison told the Rover that such events are intended to foster imaginative learning outside the classroom.
Written as a sequel to The Most Reluctant Convert, a play chronicling Lewis’ conversion to Christianity, McLean created Further Up & Further In to follow Lewis’ journey to becoming one of the most influential Christian thinkers of his generation. In the playbill, McLean describes the play as a story that explores “the depths of the Christian faith that [are] often ignored or minimized in contemporary culture.”
When asked about his goal and vision for the play, McLean told the Rover in an interview, “I feel called to bear witness to Christ, and I want to do it in a way that is artistic, beautiful, compelling, passionate, imaginative, that doesn’t shy away from the hard questions.” He also discussed the difficulties that students faced and how he desired to address them through Lewis: “When you are in your college years … you are having your beliefs questioned or challenged. … I want my plays to ask the tough questions and provide very, very credible responses that are rooted in Christ.”
The play began with the Big Bang projected on a video wall in the background. Lewis, played by McLean, entered the stage and asked the audience to consider how the universe came to be.
In response to the materialist view, Lewis proposed the existence of a supernatural world. If the materialist view is true, Mclean’s Lewis said, “our minds must in reality be merely chance arrangements of atoms in skulls. … It is when one has faced this preposterous conclusion one is at last ready to listen to the voice that whispers. Suppose we are not offspring of Nature? Perhaps there is another world, further up, further in.”
Later in the play, Lewis corresponded with a skeptic of Christianity by letter. A young man wrote to Lewis, telling him that, although he wished Christianity were true, he could not make the leap. Lewis replied by detailing the intellectual struggles he encountered on the road to his own conversion. Soon after, the young man wrote to Lewis, “I do not want to accept, but I cannot reject. So, I choose to fling myself over the gap to Jesus. … Perhaps I didn’t choose. Perhaps I was chosen.”
The play concluded with a peek into The Silver Chair, a story Lewis had recently begun working on. Jill, a young school girl, was transported to another world. Dying of thirst, she saw a stream of fresh water, but there was a lion nearby. Jill inched toward the stream, debating whether to trust the lion and take a drink. When she was about to give up and look elsewhere, the lion stated clearly, “There is no other stream.”
Student responses to the play were overwhelmingly positive. Following the performance, McLean stayed to answer student questions. Mattison told the Rover, “I attend a lot of co-curricular events given my role, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people stay after.”
When asked his thoughts on the play, freshman student Mark Mikhail told the Rover, “I felt like C. S. Lewis was actually talking to me. Not even C. S. Lewis—God was talking to me.” He described the play as a milestone in his faith journey at Notre Dame, saying, “I’m finding similarities and finding love and beauty of Christ in all these different denominations.”
Commenting on his takeaways, Mattison told the Rover, “I like the fact that the Gospel is boldly proclaimed in a way that’s attractive and intelligent. No one’s forcing anybody to believe anything, but here’s what we believe. And guess what? It makes sense.” He continued, “For a place like Notre Dame with its Catholic mission, [it] seems crucial that we have things like that going on.”
Gabe Hockstra is a freshman from Aldie, VA studying economics. He can be reached at ghockstr@nd.edu.
Photo Credit: Moreau First-Year Seminar
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