About Fishworks

Hello and welcome to our website! Fishworks’ purpose is to glorify God through the arts. As we started working on refreshing this website, I took some time to look through a few of our past newsletters (back when we used to snail-mail them quarterly)! That seems so long ago (and I guess it was)!

Here is the backstory of our adventures:

We have been living this Fishworks life for a long time. The Lord called Dennis and me to walk away from the secular performing arts in 1985. Needless to say, we were fearful of what was to come. I remembering saying at the time, “But, Lord, we don’t know how to do anything else!” Within days of our obedience to leave it all behind, we had an invitation to bring a professional drama team to Cornwall, England to work with Ambassadors for Christ, Great Britain, in the summer of 1986. As we prepared for that mission trip, the Lord revealed in Dennis a gift for writing scripts using Scripture conversationally. That trip was eye-opening and very motivating as we saw the impact of God’s Word through the performing arts. When we came home, invitations poured in from churches in the area and groups within our church.

After a few months we realized that this was our calling, so we came up with the name and filed papers of incorporation and our not-for-profit status. We have been Fishworks, Inc. since 1988!

In the early 1990s a friend who was involved with the fledgling National Creative Arts Festival asked us to be a part of that group! We performed in Nashville at the inaugural event and invitations came from all across the country. We had no idea of the plans He had for us! We were invited to many state and regional conferences to perform, as well as teach classes. We have loved every minute of performing, teaching, witnessing, discipling, and fellowshipping through these many years.

Our format has always been, “no sets, no lights, no special make up, minimal costumes, minimal props, but with our imagination . . . and yours, we can go places!” We used a sketch format with each piece ranging from 4 to 15 minutes including intros or testimonies between. It was a very successful performance plan. We continued for more than 15 years before we accepted a staff position at a local church.

Now we believe we are challenged to get back to our original call. In the past year we have begun to expand our horizons and incorporate some of our old sketches into a video format. Our first offering is available on this site. It is called “The Good Steward”, a challenge to understand that stewardship is about more than finances.

The realization that we have come to is that it is time now to produce, train, encourage, support and provide for younger people to serve as we have served. We are NOT acknowledging that we’re OLD, just that there is a need for many others to do what we have done! We want to send more workers into the harvest.

As an example, over the past couple of years, Chick directed two one-woman shows performed by Cara Hendsbee. Cara has taken scripture and created 20-30 minute performances of “Ecclesiastes” and “Light Has Come”. Cara is prepared to perform locally or regionally. She is available through Fishworks, Inc.

Ecclesiastes: Ecclesiastes is a psychological drama that wrestles with the gritty reality of humanity. Using Scripture exclusively, Cara brings the ancient Biblical author’s story to life in this poignant 20 minute one woman show, searching desperately for hope amidst the chaos in her mind.

Light Has Come: Light Has Come shares the story of the Bible in four parts – Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Glorification – drawing from 20 books of the Bible. Cara intertwines various genres found in Scripture into her show, including narrative, poetry, letters, prophecy, and even chronology. Cara Ann explores themes of light and darkness, dust and divinity, and shame and honor in this 30 minute dynamic, hope-filled drama.

This past December, Fishworks collaborated with Bluebird Uncaged (ballet collective founded by Rekekah Diaddigo) for their annual production of “Sterling’s Path.” You will find a link to their website here: www.bluebirduncaged.com.

Our plan is to work with them again next fall for the remounting of “Sterling’s Path”.

We are also hoping to host a fundraising performance this summer to showcase some of the performers that will be working with Fishworks in the future. Please stay tuned for further updates.

In the meantime, due to the fact that producing performances is far more expensive today than it was when we started, we deeply appreciate all donations to Fishworks, Inc. We are a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization.

All gifts are tax deductible. You mail donate by PayPal, or credit card on this website or mail donations by check to the address below.

Fishworks, Inc.
255 Chelsea Drive
Decatur, GA 30030-5003

If you have questions, please contact us at fishworksperformingarts@gmail.com or call Chick at (404) 667-0751.