Abstract
This article addresses issues and questions at the intersection of religion and theatrical drama from the perspective of Muslim-Christian comparative theology. A case study approaching an actual performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet from this disciplinary point of view also takes into account the Syrian context, develops a framework for “mutual witnessing”, and the practice of drama therapy. Accordingly, the case-method proceeds to address two interrelated challenges. The first is how to relate to the adaptive praxis and theological sensibilities of performers who inhabit a political and religious situation that is radically different from one’s own. The second regards in a more specific way of reframing a case of Christian martyrdom in terms of witnessing that remains open and hospitable to religious others, and particularly in this case to Syrian Muslims. As an exercise of comparative theology, this case-method approach focuses on notions of “witnessing truth” that appear and are cultivated in the work of liberation theologian Jon Sobrino and in Ibn ‘Arabī’s Fusūs al-Hikam, specifically the chapter on Shuayb. In conclusion, this exercise turns to the performance itself as a potential foundation for shared theological reflection between Muslims and Christians. As such, this article attempts to render how theatrical action creates a “religious” experience according to the structure and threefold sense that Peter Brook observes.
Highlights
Romeo and Juliet in the attic of its Amman-based hospice1
With respect to children wounded as a result of the Syrian war, his theatrical experiments are particular instances of “drama therapy”, which is premised on the notion that theater can become a medium oriented to and capable of addressing problems that arise due to violence and trauma
How can the example of Frans van der Lugt, a corpus of a different kind, be adduced in a role suitable to the way his martyrdom resonates with Syrian identity and may reconfigure Muslim-Christian dialogue? there is ample room for discussion, it should be based on the premise that there might be more truth between Christian and Muslim perspectives regarding his legacy than in Christian reflections alone
Summary
On 14 April 2015, the organization Souriyat Across Borders (SAB) hosted a performance of. As Brook himself recognizes, what these Iranian Shia villagers were witnessing is what he characterized as “an incarnation”, which is to say, “at that particular moment [Husayn] was being martyred again in front of those villagers”.15 Considering these points, I venture to suggest that “witnessing truth” provides in the multiple senses of the term an indispensable concept for developing the ethical implications of Muslim-Christian comparative theology. Theologians can account for the human role in constructing tradition, and permit the possibility that it is “not merely about past and present, but about past and present in which God’s working are manifest”.19 By attending to this case, and given the ongoing Syrian crisis, the idea of “witnessing truth” provides a basic theological framework, it an interpretive key that coheres this event between the performers and audiences and, fundamentally accounts for its intercultural perspective and interreligious focus. The play will seem to flout conventional rules for staging Shakespeare, on this issue, the adaptation remains quite faithful to a basic truth that in his wisdom—and perhaps especially through his tragedies—Shakespeare “forces us to regard any perspective on human actions as deeply provisional, historically bounded and contextually determined”.20
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