Under a Spotlight

Take an atheist playwright or two, a handful of professional actors ( some Christian, a Buddhist, an agnostic) and a sixty strong audience, largely, though not exclusively drawn from our local Anglican congregation, and what do you get? Well strangely enough, much agreement about the Christian faith today. ‘Under a Spotlight’ was the penultimate arts event in our Lent series ‘Visions in the Wilderness.’ The evening consisted of rehearsed readings from three contemporary plays which have taken Christianity as their central theme. ‘Racing Demon’ was David Hare’s examination of Anglicanism’s growing identity crisis at the end of the last millennium, ‘On Religion’ was A.C. Grayling’s recent dissection of the conflict between faith and reason at the start of the current one, and ‘The Last Days of Judas Iscariot’ by Stephen Adly Guirgis, set the most infamous betrayal of history in post 9/11 New York with Christ, Satan, and even Mother Theresa speaking the language of the Bronx.

From ‘Racing Demon’ we presented the opening scene where The Bishop of Southwark challenges the incumbent of one of his local parishes to ‘look cheerful’ whilst giving communion to his congregation, to ‘put on a show,’ regardless of his disillusionment with the sacramental side of his ministry. The Rev. Lionel Espy has long since questioned the purpose of such rituals in the context of his inner city parish, filled with the underclass of post-Thatcherite Britain.

In Grayling’s play, we staged the scene in which Grace, a Dawkinsesque figure, confronts her grown-up son about his decision to train for the priesthood. They have been listening to yet another news bulletin, detailing the latest bombings by religious extremists, and she asserts that ‘his lot (the so called religious moderates) provide cover for the nutters.’ Tom however is a child of post-modernism and lives with the tensions and contradictions of his world-view.

We also dramatized the final scene from ‘The Last Days of Judas…’ where Jesus visits his betrayer in his Bronx purgatory, to try and awaken him from his catatonic state. Judas utters vicious curses, accusing Christ of betraying him. Jesus gives as good as he gets, provoking Judas to acknowledge that by denying him, he is living a lie. It is a breath-taking scene that was brilliantly played by two actors at the top of their game. After all the intellectual arguments from the previous plays about the nature of religion, it seemed to distil the whole thing down to something more simple, and yet more profound. Can we let go of the failures of our past, and let ourselves be loved once again? When we open ourselves to love, as Judas did, as any of us do when we discover the intense power of our spirituality, we open up a can of worms! These may consist of those tensions and contradictions Tom talks about in ‘On Religion’ and they certainly include our mixed up, messy humanity which we so often cover up beneath the polished surface of our carefully rehearsed words and manner. Relationships are inevitably messy, and Christianity is above all the call to get involved with others- The Holy Trinity and the Church, which may include dealing with its infuriating Bishops and ‘religious nutters’. In ‘On Religion,’ Grace, the archetypal rationalist only discovers the true meaning of relationship, when her son is brutally murdered in a bombing. Her cold, theoretical world-view is blown apart, as she has to help organize his religious funeral and deal with the apparently irrational process of grief. We presented a speech from one of the most moving scenes from the play when Tom’s fiancé Ruth, confronts Grace at Tom’s grave two years on from his death. When I first saw the play at The Soho Theatre, I was struck by the rawness of emotion spilling onto the stage. Grace who up to then had been so self-contained and cool, was reduced to a snotty nosed, snivelling child, howling with pain as Ruth confronted her with the reality of Tom’s death. Our spiritual growth challenges us to confront a reality which is often painful to acknowledge, and work our way through it with a sometimes blind faith. Judas in the play, seems unwilling to do this, and remains forever frozen in his catatonic state. In ‘On Religion’ Grace does eventually soften sometime after Tom’s death, and the audience are left with hope regarding her future.

At the end of the presentations we discussed the issues the play had raised with our audience. It is always difficult to do something like this in such a large group but it was worth it nonetheless. As I said at the beginning of this reflection, there was much agreement and empathy with what the playwrights and actors had created, in spite of our differing belief systems. However, I think theatre works its’ miracles primarily in the shared moment of performance, under the spotlight. Here, at its best, drama stirs something deep within us all. It may be sensed either in a silence or sudden burst of raucous laughter, or glimpsed on the face of another member of the audience- especially when seated in the round. A nerve has been touched, our polished surface has been disturbed, even blown apart - and we are left to pick up the pieces!