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How actor David Payne ‘became’ C.S. Lewis
The first time he set foot on a stage, Englishman David Payne was a 55-year-old music business executive.
Payne was on an extended business trip in Nashville when he saw an audition announcement for a community theater production of Shadowlands, a well-known drama about British novelist and theologian C.S. Lewis. “British accents a help” it said at the bottom. “I have one of those,” Payne thought. And he’d seen Shadowlands onstage in the U.K. and loved it. And he had some time on his hands.
Thinking he might get a small part, Lewis was flabbergasted to be cast as Lewis himself.
More than 20 years later, Payne, now a full-time actor, has appeared as Lewis in in front of nearly 750,000 people all over the world, in one-man productions (including An Evening With C.S. Lewis, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and Lewis and Tolkien). His “fireside chats” have proved so popular, he now employs four “other” actors to take the show on the road, including his son Daniel, simply because he can’t be in two places at once.
Payne will, happily, be onstage Friday at the Jaeb Theatre (in Tampa’s Straz Center) for A Christmas with C.S. Lewis.
“When I was doing Shadowlands, the director gave me a copy of A Grief Observed, which was the book Lewis wrote after his wife died,” Payne explained (A Grief Observed was part of the play’s source material). “A very moving, rather challenging book.
“And for some reason, I memorized it. It’s not as massive as just saying it – it is only 96 pages. And one day in Nashville a friend of mine said ‘What are you doing with this memorizing thing you’ve done?’ I said ‘I memorized it. It just needs an audience.’”
Payne’s first solo show was a “house concert,” for 40 guests, at his friend’s home.
C.S. Lewis. Photo: IMDB.
The author of more than 30 books, Lewis is perhaps best known for his allegorical fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. He was also a close friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Both Lewis and Tolkien taught literature at Oxford University, and both were deeply rooted in the Christian faith.
“When I was 17, a friend gave me a copy of [Lewis’ book] The Screwtape Letters,” Payne recalled. “So that was my introduction to Lewis. And I’d read the Narnia books, and Mere Christianity as well, so I knew about him.
“I think the thing that made me really want to pursue it was the Shadowlands play, and the story. It just captured me. So once I decided to go on the road with An Evening With C.S. Lewis, I did a lot of research. I wasn’t interested in the academic side. I wanted to find out about him. I wanted to get a sense of him.”
In the Christmas show, Payne explained, “he’s talking to an American audience that’s visiting his home. They want to know about various traditions of Christmas, because they’re interested in English history. So he goes through some of the history, interesting facts. It was illegal to celebrate Christmas in the early part of the 16th century. In the early 18th century, it was largely forgotten because of the Industrial Revolution.
“And historians tell us that the tradition of gift-giving at Christmas dates back to Queen Elizabeth I. So he gives a little bit of the context, then he talks about how he didn’t really care too much for Christmas because he became an atheist, so he didn’t celebrate Christmas.
“Then he meets Tolkien, and Tolkien sort of leads him back to Christianity. And then he talks about what Christmas now means to him.”
A Christmas With C.S. Lewis is presented at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday (Dec. 5 and 6) in the Jaeb Theatre. Find tickets here.
