In my early 20s, I took acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. One workshop scene was from Ugo Betti’s “The Queen and the Rebels.” In it, Argia, a woman of ill repute, is mistaken for the Queen and captured by rebels who interrogate her and sentence her to death.
While trying to prove her identity, Argia has an epiphany: This is her chance at royalty, to die not as a dishonorable woman, but as a noble Queen. She embraces the opportunity Providence has provided with these memorable lines:
“I’m not afraid any longer. My face expresses dignity. I am as I would always have wished to be.”
The scene was especially poignant to me, as I too, was a woman with a shameful past. I was not a faithful Christian at the time, but I did believe in Jesus. Like St. Genesius, patron of actors, who changed from mockingly playing the part of a believer being baptized to one who suddenly saw the truth in the words he was speaking, the part I was playing transformed me and turned my pretending into reality. On a lighted stage, surrounded by a cast of characters and props, Argia’s words became true for me and I held my head a little higher.
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As a child, I spent my time between the Protestant church of my maternal grandparents and the Catholic Church of my father’s family. While I liked the sweet simplicity of the little Brethren church I attended with my Nana and Papa, St. Mary’s of the Immaculate Conception fascinated me with her high, swooping ceilings, looming carvings of the Stations of the Cross, and tall stained glass windows each portraying the story of a different saint. Even at a young age, the sanctuary felt like a giant stage where a drama unfolded. Jesus was not only a wooden cross and a man speaking about him in a monologue; he was a figure, present and alive, moving over every wall revealing a different perspective of his life and character while men in sparkling robes intently attended to important matters I only partly understood but filled my heart with wonder.
When I returned to the Catholic Church two years ago, I was struck by how richly liturgy is centered in story, even employing similar elements of theatre to draw us into the spiritual heights and depths of the Gospel account. This became startlingly clear during my first experience of Holy Week. Mesmerized by the statues covered in purple, where I once beheld the blessed faces of those who know Christ so intimately, those who had become family — Mary, Joseph, and the Saints — I felt for the first time all that would have been lost if Christ had not conquered the grave by going to the Cross and rising again.
How many times had I sat through the familiar stories of Easter trying to grasp, from the comfort of a pew, what could only be comprehended by a deeper level of participation? In John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, he says that “the body expresses the person.” Though the coverings represent Christ’s hiddenness before his Crucifixion, they struck me as a reminder of the permanent desolation I would endure if I was never again able to see the face of Christ, nor any of the saints, nor they to see mine. I wept in grief and despair, but also relief and gratitude because Christ’s sacrifice ensures that I can look to him now, and one day face to face, and be fully seen, known, and loved.
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In her article Art and Divine Beauty: An Antidote to the Winter Blues, Grace Sheahan says, “The visceral reaction that art can provoke is key to recapturing our humanity when life becomes monotonous.” Not only can the arts connect us to joy and suffering, but also infuse the familiar with new life — acting as a lifter of the veil.
The following year, the time of my Confirmation, I was again met with the striking similarity between the Church and theatre during Palm Sunday. As I received the palm leaves, what could have easily been a prop in a play, I felt their weight in my hand, a symbol connecting me to those who welcomed Jesus on Palm Sunday. It was a somber insight to realize these same leaves, spread out in celebration for Christ days before his betrayal and crucifixion, would become visible markers of repentance for next year’s Ash Wednesday.
In theatre, physicalizing emotions are when physical acts create emotion. In the Protestant churches I’ve attended, other people bring the symbols to us in our seats. In the Catholic Church, we go to the table together as sojourners on the same pilgrimage. On Holy Thursday, as I walked to the altar for the Body and Blood of Jesus, I felt as though I was receiving from his own hand during the Last Supper. The priest’s gold vestment, signifying joy, shimmered in brightness in the fluidity of familiar movements of grace, as I imagined Christ would be in all his heavenly glory. Though the statues remained covered, and Christ’s suffering lay ahead, my heart leapt with assurance of victory of the coming light.
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My favorite part of the drama was Easter Vigil, the dark night when all hope has been lost. In storytelling, this part is known as The Ordeal from The Hero’s Journey, the lowest point before the hero’s comeback. To stand outside the church, huddled together as the disciples might have been, was to feel the great despair of that Saturday night long ago. But then, the fire, Christ’s inextinguishable power and hope. The priest performs his part, says his prayers — the fire of God’s glory — then opens the doors of the Sanctuary to utter darkness. With a lit Paschal candle he proceeds as the dawn of eternal salvation slowly arises until our hearts are thumping with joy.
In its purest form, theatre is about truth-telling. When the Church employs the sanctified methods of theatre, she invites us to participate in the Gospel story as created beings of both spirit and body. This helps me enter more authentically into my place in the narrative, which gives me hope even during the most turbulent of times.
