Psalms as Monologues

Is it heretical to say that public reading of the Bible can sometimes be lifeless?  Far too often, we lose the drama inherent in much of Scripture.  What do you say we bring it back?

A while back I learned one of the Psalms as a monologue and I ended up using it as part of my God on Broadway musical revue (I’ll explain that at some point) this past year.  It struck me once as I read through a chronological Bible that the Psalms are spread throughout the Old Testament to a pretty considerable extent.  I’ve often wondered what span of the Old Testament story could be told simply through the Psalms.  I’d like to put together a series of Psalm monologues that would trace a picture through the Biblical story.  It could be powerful, but I have to figure out in what context to perform it.  I’m not sure people would come to a “Psalms as Monologues” non-musical revue (what’s the monologue version of a musical revue?).  It needs some further context, but I’m not sure what.  Anyone got any ideas?

Incidentally, here’s the Psalm (137) I used as a monologue.  There just so happens to be a Godspell song based on this Psalm, so we used that, too.  How can you NOT read this with passion?

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars
we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill .

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.

Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-

he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.