Theater and the Sacred in the Middle Ages (original) (raw)
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At long last, a scholar of medieval drama has written a book about The Idea of the Theater in Latin Christian Thought: that is, about changing understandings of ancient theatrical practices, and their theoretical appropriations. Donalee Dox focuses on what the theatre we call "classical" meant to medieval intellectuals over a thousand-year period, and how these meanings are reflective of larger trends--especially the deliberate construction of a Christian world-view and cultural program in the decades after the Council of Nicea, the cataloguing and codification of learning from Isidore to Charlemagne, the canonization of the liturgy in the centuries of monastic reform, the embrace of ancient models brought about by the new urbanity of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the impact of Aristotle's Poetics and its scholastic interpretation in the fourteenth. In other words, this is an intellectual history of a concept, not an attempt to reconstruct the performance conditions of either the ancient world or the Middle Ages.
Wojtyła–Grotowski &. The religious horizon of modern theater and drama in Poland and around the world. Grabowski, Artur, editor. The Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, Encyklopedia Teatru Polskiego, Warsaw, , 2024
This paper discusses the work of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’s Romeo Castellucci with regards to the spiritual. The director’s involvement with the metaphysical and the sacred permeates his texts, mise-en-scène and scenography. In Castellucci’s productions, the absence of God becomes a main structural element, but also a philosophical investigation which cracks open the boundaries of representation, generating a true metaphysics of the stage –what cannot be grasped through the mind can still be reflected in abstraction and ambiguity. My analysis will focus on Castellucci’s Go Down Moses (2016), which tells the story of the life of the Old Testament figure, as narrated in the Book of Exodus and “On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God (2011),” a theater piece about the vulnerability of aging in a Godless time. The silence of God and loss of faith in Christianity do not, however, lead to nihilism, but to a profound need to test the limits of the human capacity for suffering and for accepting salvation as utopic. This endless search for meaning and communion with the Absent God, is what brings the spectator to the heart of Castellucci’s irreverent spirituality. As spectators, we are haunted by the sacrilegious imagery of the director’s godless universe, his post-apocalyptic spaces, the archetypical patterns from the Old Testament recurring and the tortured quest for the spiritual. Through his philosophical and imagistic “iconoclasm”, however, we come closer to his idea that “You can best speak to God when you think he does not exist.” Ultimately, in Castellucci’s work the spiritual becomes an act of transgression: the spectator is disoriented and destabilized constantly, oscillating between faith and tragedy, salvation and dejection, as he or she is made to access his or her own relationship to God in a world that seems more than ever devoid of meaning.
ARYS. Antigüedad: Religiones y Sociedades, 2020
In theatre, actors often perform religious rituals on stage. In this article, we argue that in some cases, like in Plautus and Simone Weil, religious rituals are not just imitated but the specific performative structure of the ritual enhances the affective charge of the theatre play. To illustrate this technique we apply Gérard Genette’s theory of hypertextuality to develop a new concept of hyper-performativity. Consequently, we analyze Plautus’ Rudens and Simone Weil’s Venise sauvée to portray their hyper-performative techniques, in antiquity as well as in late modernity, how to write religious rituals into theatre. || En el teatro, los actores a menudo realizan rituales religiosos en el escenario. En este estudio defendemos que en algunos casos, como en Plauto y en Simone Weil, los rituales religiosos no son sólo imitados, sino que la estructura performativa específica del ritual realza la carga afectiva de la obra teatral. Para ilustrar esta técnica, aplicamos la teoría de la hipertextualidad de Gérard Genette en el desarrollo de un nuevo concepto de hiper-performatividad. Por consiguiente, analizamos el Rudens de Plauto y la Venise sauvée de Simone Weil con el fin de mostrar sus técnicas hiper-performativas para escribir rituales religiosos en el teatro, tanto en la Antigüedad como en la Modernidad tardía.
Sacred staging: Dramatic magic in the medieval mass
2018
This essay explores the dramatic elements of the medieval Mass, examining how this ritual functioned as a staged performance deliberately intended to provoke a response in its congregation, which, in dramatic terms, can be considered as its audience. An ongoing concern throughout the Middle Ages was the involvement of the (primarily English-speaking) congregation in the (Latin) prayers and action of the Mass, as well as how the congregation’s response to the mass might be shaped. In this essay, I investigate how the actions of the priest performing the Mass might be seen to have clear parallels with the performance of an actor, just as the Mass itself parallels the Passion sequence of the York mystery plays. Moving on to church architecture, which functioned as a ‘playing space’ for the Mass, I then explore how their its deliberately exploited the use of space, light, and sound to capture and hold the attention of an audience. Finally, I consider the significance of the Lay Folks Ma...
Power and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Theater
2014
For some time now, theater historians have been puzzled by the absence of a crucifixion scene in the 'Künzelsau Corpus Christi Play'. In its place, an adoration of the cross ('adoratio crucis') occured, in which a priest displayed a cross to the audience. Based on connections between the 1479 play text and the Künzelsau procession of holy relics documented for 1499, it is apparent that the cross in question was a reliquary crucifix containing what contemporaries believed to be a fragment of the True Cross. The crucifixion was thus not absent from the play, but rather represented through other, non-mimetic means. The essay reconstructs the role of the reliquary crucifix in procession and play, which augmented the presence of the Eucharist on stage in demonstrating the authority of the Künzelsau clergy.