Davida Bloom

White, But Not Quite:
The Jewish Character and Anti-Semitism - Negotiating a Location in the Gray Zone Between Other and Not

[pages 12 - 28]

Read This Article

Abstract

This article explores the ambiguous location of the Jewish character in the mid- to late twentieth century dramatic literature and performance and the ambiguous location of anti-Semitism at the end of this century. A location somewhere between the Other and the Not, a location that marks Jews as white, but not quite.

William Davies King

Performing the Holy Ghost:
Revelations of the Reverend Edward Irving in 1830-31

[pages 29 - 56]

Read This Article

Abstract

In 1830, the Reverend Edward Irving was faced with an unprecedented problem within his church; certain members of his congregation began speaking in tongues. Church rules mandated that only those who are authorized may speak in a service. Irving, who was the most notable preacher of his day, was faced with the question of whether to permit these outbursts, which were putatively expressions of the Holy Ghost. Ultimately he decided to permit them, but then faced the situation that some of these empowered speakers declared Irving himself to be Satanic. This episode illuminates the subversive potential of performance within post-Enlightenment discourse. Darkness, in the name of God, threw the power relations of Reform-era London into a fascinating disarray.

Scott Magelssen

Bloody Spectacle or Religious Commentary?:
Divination by Entrails in Seneca’s Oedipus

[pages 57 - 69]

Read This Article

Abstract

In Act II of Seneca’s Oedipus, Tiresias attempts to name the former king’s murderer by examining the gruesome entrails of a slaughtered bull and heifer. The scene is often used to argue that Seneca corrupted Sophocles’ tragedies into bloody spectacle. The counter-argument is that such scenes influenced Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth. I argue that the scene ought to be removed from the categories of degeneracy and primitive Elizabethan tragedy. Instead, a close examination of the scene in the context of Roman religion and cultic practices shows it to be an articulation of the relationship between nature and human action, and a first-century enunciation of the desire to maintain order in the cosmos.

William Douglas Powers

Returning to the Sacred:
An Eliadean Interpretation of Speck’s Account of the Cherokee Booger Dance

[pages 70 - 88]

Read This Article

Abstract

This paper considers the Cherokee Booger Dance as a religious phenomenon by reinterpreting anthropologist Frank G. Speck’s observations of a performance held by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians through the lens of Mircea Eliade’s theory of religion. This investigation attempts to present the ritual as a means of acquiring spiritual transcendence, held by Eliade to be a universal human longing. This perspective differs from the assertion posited by Speck, based on cultural evolutionism and theories of functional reductionism, that the Booger Dance is little more than a manifestation of sociological or psychological conditions exasperated by historical Cherokee-white relations.

Delyse Ryan

'Two Hours Genuine Fun Without the Vulgarity'; As the Bishop Said to the Actress

[pages 89 - 102]

Read This Article

Abstract

Religious organizations played an important role in sustaining theatrical activities in Brisbane, Australia during World War I. This paper examines the major contribution that churches made to sustaining a live performance culture in Brisbane. By encouraging parishioners to participate in public concerts, religious groups helped to foster the arts at a time when the professional industry was struggling to remain financially viable. The theatre, however, did not have an entirely unproblematic relationship with the churches and this paper outlines some of the major complaints that the church leaders of the day made against the professional industry in Brisbane.

Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.

The Cross and the Bomb:
Two Catholic Dramas in Response to Nagasaki

[pages 103 - 119]

Read This Article

Abstract

The atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan in 1945 raised many serious theological issues for Japanese Christians. Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan and ground zero for the bomb was Urakami Cathedral, the site of the most active Roman Catholic parish in the country. Japanese Catholics asked why God would allow His church in the most Christian city, and His people in an otherwise non-Christian nation to be subjected to such an experience. Two dramas, written by Catholic playwrights, explore this question, focusing on the role of martyrdom, a prevalent theme in Nagasaki literature. Tanaka Chikao's 1958 play Maria no kubi (The Head of Mary) explores the bomb as a theophany, arguing that faith is strengthened by the actions of the survivors. Father Ernest Ferlita, writing in 1996, adapts Nagai Takashi's 1946 book The Bells of Nagasaki. His play utilizes elements of the Noh, a theatre rooted in Shinto and Buddhism. Ferlita's adaptation, like its source, argues that the survivors of the bomb are in a kind of living purgatory, and must take as their model the bomb's dead victims, the martyrs who have been taken to Heaven. Tanaka's play is a Japanese play that explores the Catholic faith through Western elements; Ferlita's play is a Catholic play that explores the Japanese Catholic experience through Buddhist and Shinto elements.

Michael A. Zampelli

Trent Revisited:
A Reappraisal of Early Modern Catholicism’s Relationship with the Commedia Italiana

[pages 120 - 133]

Read This Article

Abstract

The Catholic world after the Council of Trent was more hospitable to antitheatrical sentiment than it was before. In order to deepen our appreciation of the world in which the commedia italiana matured, this paper begins a project of situating theatricality and antitheatricality within a more inclusive field of religious history. This wider frame allows both early modern Catholicism and the professional theatre to emerge as parties in a cultural conversation who have particular needs, desires, and interests that define the "subtext" in their stormy relationship. I explain how Trent’s major disciplinary and pastoral concerns set religion in lively competition with the theatre in concrete, practical ways.