The Performance of Religion: Seeing the Sacred in the Theatre

Abstract

It should come as no surprise that theatre is a useful tool for inspiring radical social change. On stages around the world, in university classrooms, and in scholarly studies, theatre makers and thinkers use the performing arts to dismantle the status quo and fight injustices in our society. As prevalent as theatre that challenges audiences to think differently, however, is theatre that, through ritualistic practices, reminds viewers to maintain accepted truths, especially as they connect ethics to religion. Cia Sautter's The Performance of Religion: Seeing the Sacred in the Theatre encourages readers to find the value in this latter kind of performance. Transporting us back and forth between the Early Modern period and our own time, Sautter analyzes how the works of dramatists like William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe exhibit elements of a sacred ideal, reminding spectators to uphold religious principles in their own lives. In these instances, theatre imparted religious ethics to its audiences and, as a result, inspired them to become better people—this, too, is theatre for social change.At the heart of The Performance of Religion is a call to reject the historical separation of religion and the arts in the academy. Sautter contends in her first two chapters that the majority of contemporary theatre scholars do not associate Western theatre with having religious value, particularly after the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. She opposes this notion, writing that “religion is performed, and that theatre is a means of reflecting on highest values in public”; and that both religion and theatre “are important for understanding how people perform their ethics and ideals” (7). Therefore, Religious Studies and Theatre Studies must be in conversation with one another in order to fully understand the impact that these subjects have on the way people behave and interact in various historical moments. Through an analysis of historical records, close readings of plays, application of contemporary theory, and an ethnographical examination of theatrical performances, Sautter situates the Bard and his contemporaries as premier examples of understanding Western theatre's religious impact on audiences.In chapters 3 through 5, Sautter analyzes the texts and performances of several Early Modern plays to illuminate how cultural context and social history reveal the ways people interpreted religious values in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Additionally, in each chapter, Sautter opens with an ethnographic account of a modern performance of the play in question, claiming that this ethnography serves as a “launching pad for discussion” and an opportunity to discuss the “overall impact of the experience for the audience as a community, including the embedded communication inherent in a theatrical production” (12). Chapter 3 argues that Marlowe's Dr. Faustus is “an excellent example of how theatrical performance aids in thinking though one's values and beliefs, as well as the correlation between actions and beliefs” (63). As Dr. Faustus is rich with religious allegory, metaphors, and ethics, this chapter claims that plays are a better mirror of society than religious sources, which are often biased and dogmatic.In chapter 4, Sautter analyzes Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well to demonstrate how depictions of gender within religious systems expose larger ethical issues within seventeenth-century society. Despite the fact that female characters in All's Well would not have been played by women at the time, Sautter compares these characters to the ways women were treated in English society in order to reveal how plays “might aid us in discussing important issues faced in current culture” and, more importantly to her thesis, how plays inspire us to treat all people “as human beings worth of dignity, respect, and compassion” (123). Chapter 5 explores dance in theatrical performance and argues that ritualistic movement is an “embodied form of communication of values” that influences how people behave and interact (113). Sautter analyzes a modern production of Macbeth at London's Globe Theatre, which features the incorporation of stylized movement by all characters, especially the witches. She contextualizes this production with a rich history of movement in the Early Modern age and movement's power in our contemporary moment. Unfortunately, in this chapter she often loses connection to her primary argument that performance reveals religious meaning, which bears weight in the way people behave in society.Sautter rightly calls to privilege the arts as a tool to understand how various societies perform their beliefs, both on the stage and in the world, but there are two minor issues that detract from the book's impact. Throughout the work, Sautter is in conversation with various theologians such as Paul Tillich and Martin Buber, as well as performance theorists such as Richard Schechner and Augusto Boal, to situate her definition of religion and to explain how religious meaning is made from theatrical performance. While these voices offer a useful understanding of the power of performance, they often take the place of the author's voice in a way that distracts from her argument. Additionally, I did not find Sautter's ethnographic accounts of modern productions as helpful as she claims them to be. While she suggests that these analyses might illuminate how audiences experience the plays as a community, most of them do not offer much more than summaries of the production. Though Sautter's experiences are valuable, they do not contribute to her arguments as strongly as her astute close readings and analysis of historical context.Despite these minor issues, The Performance of Religion is a valiant contribution to the fields of Theatre Studies and Religious Studies and, more significantly, a call that these two fields must be in scholarly conversation with one another. As Sautter admits, this book was born as a result of her own dichotomous graduate work—she completed a PhD in Religion and the Arts—and of her pedagogy. The book therefore offers a model for scholar-artists and theatre educators who seek to use their own experience and teaching as a basis of scholarly research. Her work is strongest when she draws from these experiences. Sautter's melding of complex contemporary theory with personal anecdotes and ethnographic accounts from live performances would make this book appealing for graduate and undergraduate readers. Overall, The Performance of Religion is an exciting addition to the growing canon of scholarly work that recognizes the value of understanding more deeply the relationship between religion and theatre.