Zacchaeus – a rhyming story

Lucy Moore

On your marks:

Here’s a suggestion or two for using this as a piece of drama

Get set:

You may need a selection of hats, a bag of money, a table and three chairs

Go!

You could choose a Zacchaeus, a Jesus, and some Good People of Jericho and give them appropriate hats to wear for their parts. Zacchaeus also gets the money bag. (If Zacchaeus is under 12, it is worth making it an impregnable money bag or the fascination of the coins will mean the loss of Zacc’s concentration for the drama).

Or you could have the whole congregation/ audience as the people of Jericho, and encourage them to respond appropriately from their seats.

As you tell / read the story, joining in the action yourself (fist-waving, pointing, cheering etc) the characters act it out spontaneously with your guidance and encouragement if necessary. For the tree, Zacchaeus climbs onto the chair. For the meal, use the other two chairs for Zacchaeus and Jesus to sit on.

If you have some preparation time with your cast, they could learn their character’s lines, as there aren’t very many.

It’s fun to have lots of panto-style booing and hissing for Zacchaeus at every available moment, especially towards the start of the piece, and cheering for Jesus as he enters. And encourage the crowd to give vivid reactions at every turn of the story, especially in their reactions to what Jesus says to Zacchaeus and Zacchaeus’ response towards the end.

Or you could divide the story up into short chunks and give each chunk to different narrators to present. This has been done with great effect in a class assembly, where the whole class took part, each small group learning just three or four lines.

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