Mark Shea has written a third installment in his series on the connection between Drama and Religion, which you can find at Catholic World Report. Since I’ve written about this topic myself (mostly from the point of view of actors, or the analogy between Acting and the Faith), I thought I’d add a few things to the very insightful points that Mark makes.
- Shea’s first installment discusses the history of drama and its relation to religion, and also tackles the overall philosophical connection between Drama and Worship.
- In his second installment, Mark Shea examines the relation between Acting and Religion.
And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind … (Rom. 12:2)
For the great challenge of life in the Faith is Getting in Character as a Christian. Actors understand this analogy deeply. The hard part about acting is “getting it”, finding the integrity or inner consistency of the character you’re portraying. Once you do that, the role becomes natural: your gestures, your words, your voice and movement – everything about you conforms to the character, once you’ve found the character’s soul or center.
So much of our frustrations as Bad Christians comes from not yet Getting in Character for our roles. When the mask is simply something separate from us, simply something extrinsic that we aspire to, we often find ourselves becoming obsessed with the minutiae, focused on various virtues or sins rather than the big picture; or worse, we start to rationalize away all sorts of acts that show that we’re still “conformed to this world” and not “transformed” by the renewing of our minds.
But this inner transformation is beyond us. It cannot happen without sacramental grace. It also cannot happen without our conscious and deliberate cooperation with that grace. Conforming ourselves to the Costume that we put on at our Baptisms is a mystery – one that requires both our own efforts and also the cessation of our efforts. It is both an acquiescence to something greater, and also a striving toward something greater.
This is the paradox of living the Faith that acting in a drama perfectly mimics. As an actor, if you don’t do a certain amount of conscious work, such as learning your lines, studying the play, meditating upon your character, planning certain bits, rehearsing – you’ll get nowhere. But by the same token, if you don’t abandon all of that work and preparation in the moment of performance, your acting will be stilted, contrived, awkward. When the curtain goes up and the lights shine down, you must (in a sense) lose your life to save it (see Mat. 10:39) and abandon your work to the Holy Spirit, to the inspiration of the moment. I think musicians, athletes and soldiers all understand what I’m saying.
The paradox of the stage actor is the paradox of the Christian actor – we must put forth effort to be conformed to our roles (both on stage and in life); but the true conformation happens at a level that is a gift from God and that is beyond our human control. Effort and abandon, like Faith and Works, always paradoxically go together.
- In his most recent installment, Shea examines the phenomenon of the Actor as Celebrity.
“Friends, why are you doing this? We too are only human, like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them.” – (Acts 14:15)
That is our role as actors, to point our audiences to the God “who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them”. It is a priestly function. It bridges the gap between the audience and God, by bringing written words to life, by continuing God’s work of making the Word become flesh.
The applause, therefore, is never about us. And if we’re booed, it’s because we assert our own identities into the material – the audience sees behind the mask to the actor who is giving a listless performance, or cannot become engaged in the liturgy because the priest is asserting his own identity by making stuff up, or become distracted because the musicians are turning themselves into the center of attention, rather than the God the Divine Drama points to.
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So, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “The play’s the thing wherein we’ll catch a glimpse of the King of Kings.”
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