Jesuit Theater

Abstract

The Jesuits were famous for didactic and college theater performances, but they also practiced other forms of theater in their scholasticates, close to the convent and amateur theater. Jesuit theater generally refers to the early modern period that corresponds to a specific moment in the Society’s history. But Jesuits continued to write and perform theater during the late modern period, even if the suppression of the Society of Jesus created deep changes in the Jesuits’ relation to theater. If Jesuit drama productions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are more limited and different in nature, they also reveal new accommodations the Society faced after the suppression and restoration. This chapter proposes an approach to Jesuit theater from a longue durée perspective that allows an understanding of how this practice has characterized Jesuit cultural identity in the early modern period but no longer in the late modern period, although a Jesuit theater still exists.