'The Natyasastra'

Somewhere between the 2nd century B.C.E. and the 2nd century C.E., what are now The Natyasastra’s 37 chapters were likely assembled in India.  (Some editions have 36 chapters, including Manomohan Ghosh’s 1951 version, and some have 38.  I used Ghosh’s 1967 37-chapter rendering of The Natyasastra.).  The oldest known “how-to” book on Asian theater, predating Zeami Motokiyo’s (c. 1363-c. 1443) treatises on Japanese Noh drama (written between 1402 and 1430) by some 16 centuries, it’s attributed to the sage Bharata-muni (dates unknown; may have lived about 500 C.E.) but was probably compiled by several contributors over many years.  (The compilation and publication is likewise uncertain and estimates range between 500 B.C.E. and 500 C.E.) 

The book’s title is variously rendered as Natyasastra, Natyashastra, Natya Sastra, or Natya Shastra, often with diacritical marks.  The word(s) mean, loosely, ‘theater treatise’ or ‘performance manual.’  The Sanskrit word natya is usually translated as drama but it can refer to other expressive performance forms, such as dance (one of the Hindu god Shiva’s avatars is Nataraja, “the lord of dance”), and sastra (which is pronounced ‘shastra’) means ‘treatise,’ ‘manual,’ ‘book.’ ‘rules,’ or other term of similar meaning.  Because I based my reading of The Natyasastra on Ghosh’s translation, I’ll be using his version of the book’s title. 

Our primary source of information about ancient Sanskrit performance and a guide to understanding many of the living performance traditions in India today, the treatise is still used by classical Indian performers such as actors of Sanskrit dramas by the likes of Kalidasa, Sudraka, Bhasa, and Asvaghosa; Kathakali dancer-actors; Kutiyattam storytellers; and Bharata Natyam and Orissi dancers, as well as classical musicians and singers.  Unlike Aristotle’s (384-322 B.C.E.) Poetics (c. 335 B.C.E.), The Natyasastra was written for theater practitioners, not analysts.  A complete handbook of theater production, it covers all elements of playwriting, theater construction, costume, make-up, acting, dance, music, and aesthetics (including Rasa theory, on which I posted on 13 January 2010) in the minutest detail. 

(The root of natya is the Sanskrit work nat, which means ‘act’ or ‘represent,’ so natya can even be rendered as ‘acting.’  Like many Asian performance forms, classical Indian theater doesn’t make the same distinction we Westerners make among ballet, drama, and opera.  What we call Chinese or Beijing Opera is the progenitor of Japanese Kabuki, which many Western critics categorize as dance drama.  But Kabuki performers don’t consider themselves “dancers.”  Ask them, and they’ll insist they are Kabuki “actors.”  The form they work in, like Kathakali in India, Indonesian Wayang Topeng and Wayang Orang, and many other Asian performing arts, combine acting, singing, dancing, and what we’d recognize as mime into one synthesized art form.  The Natyasastra reflects this totality: performance, according to Bharata, is a combination of all the arts: speech, dance, singing, music, gesture and mime, decor and costumes.)

The Natyasastra is partly a religious text, the “fifth Veda,” revealing to the people the rules of dramaturgy and stagecraft as handed down to Bharata (muni is a term of honor meaning ‘sage’ or ‘saint’) by the god Brahma.  The production of a play is an offering to the gods, and performing is a Vedic ritual act.  Composed in verse (with some prose passages in a few chapters), The Natyasastra (like Konstantin Stanislavsky’s “ABC’s”) is conveyed as a sort of dialogue between Bharata and his disciples.   Bharata (whose name is also the Sanskrit word for both ‘actor’ and ‘India’) had 100 sons, who all became actors.  (Bharata Natyam simply means ‘Indian dance,’ for instance.)

In addition to the presentation of ancient theology, principally of the Vedic tradition of pre-Buddhist and pre-Hindu India (though, because it was compiled during a period of religious transition on the Subcontinent, its religious philosophy is something of a hybrid), The Natyasastra also discusses what we’d call performance theory, aesthetic philosophy, mythological history, and practical theater craft. 

Between 1865 and 1898, a number of studies, articles and partial translations of The Natyasastra and other Sanskrit treatises were published in several European languages, including French, English, and German, though none seems to have been a complete rendering of the text.  In modern times, particularly after 1950, there have been many translations of The Natyasastra, all or in part, into English and other languages, as well as many more critical studies of the treatise.  (An Internet search indicated that few are currently in print or available even to special order from stores like Barnes and Noble or Amazon.)  

Because of its status as a Vedic text, The Natyasastra views theater not as an entertainment, but as a way of getting spectators to another state of mind (rasa).  (This is what Rasa-Bhava is intended to accomplish, as you’ll see.)  In theory, because attending a performance is supposed to be a spiritual experience, the viewer is supposed to be transported to a more transcendent plane, but today Indian performers see the effect in a more secular frame.  (There is at least a superficial resemblance between this precept and Aristotle’s notion of catharsis as mentioned in his definition of tragedy in chapter 6 of the Poetics.)

A complete run-down of all the topics touched on in The Natyasastra would be impossibly lengthy, and I really mean this post to be a general introduction to the treatise.  (There are various translations in libraries, especially university libraries, and used copies can be found on line and in antiquarian bookstores.)  I’ll compile a précis of the chapters (which will vary slightly depending on whether you compare mine with a 36- or 38-chapter version) and comment at more length when I feel it’s warranted.  (Note that my original study of The Natyasastra was in pursuit of its discussion of acting and Bharata’s instructions in comparison to the Konstantin Stanislavsky system, the basis of my acting training.  I developed this comparison into “The Natyasastra and Stanislavsky: Points of Contact,” published in  Theatre Studies, volume 36 [1991].)

The first chapter of The Natyasastra recounts the mythical “Origin of Drama” (chapter titles will vary depending on the translation).  Bharata tells his disciples that Brahma, the Creator, handed down The Natyasastra to all the castes as the Natyaveda.  The sage describes the first production of a play at a festival for Indra, the guardian god, but Vighnas, evil spirits, try to ruin the production.  Indra destroys the Vighnas. 

Chapter II is the “Description of the Playhouse,” detailing how the theaters are to be constructed.  Bharata describes the rites and rituals associated with the theater construction.  “Puja to the Gods of the Stage,” the third chapter, lays out the hierarchy of gods of the theater and which one presides over which areas of the theater building.  (Puja is a devotional prayer ritual.  Even today, when dramatic performances are no longer considered worship rituals, a prasad, a food offering, is placed at the edge of the stage.)  The gods have to be pacified and the building purified to avoid terrible consequences of offending the gods.

In Chapter IV, “Description of the Class Dance,” Bharata says that he’s written a play to be performed for the gods.  The deities are pleased and instruct another sage, Tandu, to teach Bharata the Tandava dance (literally ‘Tandu’s creation’ but commonly known as the “class dance”) and there’s a detailed, gesture-by-gesture, body part-by-body part description of the dance.  Bharata explains when dance is appropriate to a play and when it’s not.

“Preliminaries of a Play,” the fifth chapter, describes the rituals associated with the prelude to a dramatic performance (Utthapana ceremony).  Following the set-up, there’s a song in praise of gods, Brahmins, and kings (“Benediction”); an entrance song (“Walking Around”); and the introduction of the play (“Laudation”) by the Director (literally, ‘the expert,’ not a prototypical, pre-Saxe-Meiningen stage director but the company manager).

Chapter VI (“The Sentiments”) and VII (“The Emotional and Other States”) cover Rasa-Bhava.  This is the section of the book that makes it possible for the actors to transport the spectators to a different frame of mind, not unlike what we in the West mean when we speak of “the willing suspension of disbelief” (a term coined in 1817 by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834)—we freely enter into the fictional world of the play.  The Natyasastra is very precise in its discussion and description of this process—but if you can cut through the Sanskrit terms and stilted English translation, the basic principles of the theory are not more alien than that which Stanislavsky, Uta Hagen, Lee Strasberg, or most 20th-century acting teachers inculcate.

Chapters VI and VII together identify and describe the bhavas, the “Psychological States” or “Modes of Being” of the performers, and the corresponding rasas, the “Sentiments” felt by the spectators.  The bhava, the emotion felt by the actors, results from a “Determinant” (vibhava), or determining circumstance.  The vibhava affects the characters so that they feel sorrow, fear, wrath, or some such emotion (bhava).  The “Consequent” (anubhava) of a particular bhava is a specific behavior such as weeping, fainting, blushing, or the like.  The anubhava, if properly executed, will cause the audience to feel a specific rasa corresponding to the bhava felt by the actor. 

Chapter VII goes into great detail about the bhavas, which are broken down into three categories.  The third category of bhavas are the eight sattvas, or “Spirited” modes.  There’s no adequate translation of sattva, but this allows the actor to convince himself the circumstances are real to the character, even though, as the actor, he knows they’re not.  (This is a very simplistic reduction of Rasa-Bhava.  I’ve tried to be brief here; however, I refer the reader once again to my post on Rick On Theater “Rasa-Bhava & The Audience,” 13 January 2010, for a more detailed examination of this complex and fascinating acting theory.)

Chapters VIII, IX, and X (“The Gestures of Minor Limbs,” “The Gestures of Hands,” and “The Gestures of Other Limbs”) cover in great detail all the codified movements of the parts of the actor’s body.  Indian classical theater, like many other Asian performance forms, uses highly stylized and long-established gestural expressions and The Natyasastra naturally stresses the expressiveness of the body, since it is vital that “the audience . . . follow the meaning of the play visually, through the codified system of hand gestures and facial expressions.”  These chapters and others that describe the movements, gestures, and expressions of the actors, which in Indian classical theater are closely related to Rasa-Bhava, are very technical and extremely detailed.

Chapters XI, XII, and XIII (“The Cari Movements,” “The Mandela Gaits,” and “The Different Gaits”) cover walking and foot movements the same way the previous three chapters did gestures.  (A cari is the movement of a single foot.  There are movements of two feet called karana and a combination of karanas is called a khanda.  Three or four khandas make up a mandala.  That may give readers an idea how precise The Natyasastra is in codifying movements and gestures.)

“Zones and Local Usages,” the fourteenth chapter of The Natyasastra, designates the different "zones” of the stage and explains the significance of each one to the play and the characters that appear there.  “Local usage” (pravrtti), just as the phrase suggests, applies to the costumes, languages, manners, and professions of different countries in the world as they appear in plays.  (The “world” to which Bharata refers, of course, is largely the Indian subcontinent of South Asia and the countries are the ancient kingdoms.)  Even this is codified as The Natyasastra designates only four regions for this differentiation: Daksinatya Local Usage (southern countries), Avanti (central and western), Odgra-Migadhi (eastern), and Pancala-Madhyama (northern/Himalayan).

Chapters XV through XXII cover playwriting and dramaturgy.  “Rules of Prosody” (Chapter XV) defines, describes, and classifies the poetic meters used in classic Indian drama.  Since Sanskrit drama is written mostly in verse, it also details the proper way an actor must recite each kind of poetry.  It’s a lesson on elocution, voice, speech, and articulation—a voice and speech lesson with specific instructions in the proper pronunciation of the sounds of the Sanskrit and Prakrit languages.  “Metrical Patterns” (Chapter XVI) lists all the different types of poetic meters and how they are employed in plays, with examples of various dramatic situations in which each pattern would apply.  Different meters correspond to specific rasas.  Chapter XVII, “Diction of a Play,” names the 36 “marks of excellence” of a well-written play, such as Ornateness, Compactness, Simile, Metaphor, and 32 more.  (In this usage, “diction” doesn’t refer to speech articulation or enunciation, but the effectiveness and clarity of the poet’s word choice and expression.) 

Chapter XVIII, “Rules of the Use of Languages” instructs poets on the distinction of Sanskrit, the largely literary tongue which on stage is used for the speech of noble, heroic, and refined characters, and Prakrit, the vernacular language, with its many regional, local, and class dialects, of lower-caste, mad, or drunken characters, as well as women and children.  (Prakrit is also often more appropriate for songs in a play.  Most of a classical Indian play is written in Sanskrit.)  “Modes of Address and Intonation” (Chapter XIX) explains how characters of different types and social status speak to one another.  It also specifies how the verses are to be recited in terms of vocal quality, with certain inflections corresponding once again to certain rasas.  (This is that other kind of “diction,” how words are pronounced.) 

In Chapter XX, Bharata describes the “Ten Kinds of Play” that make up classic Sanskrit drama.  He lays out their structure, the rules for their composition, and what is appropriate or not to represent on stage.  Chapter XXI, “The Limbs of the Juncture,” is a detailed analysis of the plot structure of a play.  (“Joints” and “Limbs” are the terms The Natyasastra uses for what Michael Chekhov, the acting teacher, theorist, and director who was a nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov, called the play’s “Main Climaxes,” the points in the play’s action when the character’s pursuit of his major goal changes direction.  

The Natyasastra divides the action of a play into five stages: Beginning, Effort, Possibility of Attainment, Certainty of Attainment and Attainment of the Object.  Roughly, these stages agree with the Stanislavskian identification and pursuit of the objective (Beginning and Effort), encountering obstacles (Effort and Possibility of Attainment), and overcoming the obstacles and achieving the objective (Certainty of Attainment and Attainment of the Object).  Sanskrit drama did not have unhappy endings so there were no plays in which the main characters’ objectives were not accomplished.

In “The Styles,” the twenty-second chapter, Bharata relates the mythological origins of the performance styles of Sanskrit dramas, which is both a matter of the way the plays are written (that is, the writing style) and the way they are performed (the acting style).  As with most other categorizations in The Natyasastra, these are very specifically defined and described, and, once again, each style corresponds to certain rasas generated in the audience. 

Chapter XXIII covers “The Costumes and Make-up” of a classical Indian play.  It covers props (including fake animals) as well.  Bharata describes both how these are made and how they’re used on stage.

Chapters XXIV through XXVI deal with acting, portraying specific characters, and what we’d call acting technique (the practical methods of making viewers believe a fiction: that it’s cold and rainy, that the knife you’re playing with is really sharp, that you have a headache).  Chapter XXIV, “The Basic Representation,” focuses on speech, the movement of the body, and physical grace.  It also instructs aspiring actors on portraying emotions and feelings and various psychological and emotional states, and how to respond to different circumstances and situations that occur in Sanskrit drama.  Successfully representing these states is key to creating the correct rasa in the spectator.

“Dealing with Courtezans [sic]” (Chapter XXV) actually explains how to portray men and women in various types of courtship, romantic, and sexual relationships (for example, a woman overcome with love, winning a woman’s heart, and a courtesan’s mercenary treatment of men).  Most Sanskrit plays are some sort of love story.  “Special Representation,” the twenty-sixth chapter of The Natyasastra, is instruction on how to enact physically what Uta Hagen called the “given circumstances” of a scene: the time of day, the season of the year, the weather, bright sun, dust, and so on. 

Chapter XXVII describes “Success in Dramatic Production,” which Bharata separates into two kinds.  One is human success, which is simply signs of appreciation from the audience for the performance—applause, laughter, praise, gifts.  The other kind is divine success, which is the approval of the gods.  This is manifested by the lack of disturbance from the audience, errors in the performance such as accidents or actors forgetting lines, fire or an animal getting loose in the theater, and so on.  If all goes well, the gods are signaling their approval. 

The music of a Sanskrit performance is discussed in Chapters XXVIII through XXXIV, covering not only the types of music to be heard, but the instruments on which it will be played (with several chapter devoted to specific types of instruments such as reeds, cymbals, and drums).  Chapter XXXII describes the songs performed in a play. 

Chapter XXXV, “Types of Characters,” is essentially the breakdown of the classical theatrical troupe.  Like Shakespeare’s Lord Chamberlain’s Men in Elizabethan England, Sanskrit acting companies had to have the actors on hand to cover all the plays in their repertory, so, like repertory companies in the West from Shakespeare’s day to the Straw Hat Circuit in the first half of the 20th century in the U.S., they categorized the characters so they could distribute them to the appropriate performers according to their abilities, special talents, age, appearance, and so on.  In other words, they engaged in “typecasting,” just like Western companies in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

(To be clear, “typecasting” isn’t what most people think it is.  Characters are divided into “types,” such as “leading man,” “leading lady,” and “character man.”  The company’s actors are also “typed” and when it comes time to assign actors to roles, actors are matched to their roles according to type—along, of course, with other considerations.  So a leading actor is cast in a leading man part, a character woman is cast as a character part, and so on.  It was a way for repertory troupes to be sure that they had enough appropriate actors on the roster to cover all the parts in their repertoire.  The classic Indian categories were different, of course, but the idea was the same.)

The Natyasastra, needless to say, describes in great detail many different characters that make up the three types that populate the Sanskrit plays and the physical and temperamental attributes of the actor best suited to play them.  In “Distribution of Roles” (Chapter XXXVI), Bharata advises the Director (this is the company manager once again) to follow the precepts for typecasting that he’s laid out.  This chapter also describes at length each of the kinds of parts that occur in a Sanskrit drama, and also non-performing member of the troupe such as the makers of garlands and headgear, the company painter, and so on.

The last chapter, XXXVII, in Ghosh’s translation of The Natyasastra, is “Descent of Drama on the Earth.”  When Bharata had finished presenting the Natyaveda to the sages, they asked him how the drama had come from heaven to the earth.  Bharata explained to them that his 100 sons had angered certain sages by caricaturing them and the sons lost their status as Brahmins, members of the highest caste, and became Sudras, the lowest caste.  The sages cursed Bharata’s sons, but the gods interceded on Bharata’s behalf.  Indra retrieved the Natyaveda and instructed Bharata to spread is over the earth.  The 100 sons of Bharata, having become actors themselves, taught the text to their sons, founding a family of actors, and the gods were pleased and redeemed Bharata’s offspring.  (This suggests that, at least in ancient India, the acting profession was prized and honored, a fate actors didn’t experience in the West, where they were often vilified and ostracized, especially among religious folk, because they make their living by lying, pretense, and deceit.  There are still members of some faiths that see acting and theater as inherently sinful.)

Sight & Sound

by Kirk Woodward

[My friend Kirk Woodward hasn’t sent an article into Rick On Theater since “George Abbott” on 14 October, but he’s back now with “Sight & Sound,” a report on a Christian religious-based theater company two of whose productions Kirk recently saw.  From his perspective as both a practicing Christian and a theater professional, Kirk describes and evaluates the work of this company.  Sight & Sound fills a niche in the American theater scene that I suspect most of us don’t experience, or even consider, very often, and I think Kirk’s well-considered examination of it is well worth acknowledging and looking at. 

[Just to remind ROTters, Kirk’s recent guest posts on this blog have included “Mr. Dylan Gets Religion,” 23 April; “Stephen Schwartz,” 2 August; “Agatha Christie: Dramatist,” 1 September; and one half of “The Originalist Squared” (with my second half), 7 August.  (For other posts from Kirk, ROT’s most generous and reliable contributor, use the search engine, above left, and type in “Kirk Woodward.”  His work, always provocative and interesting, goes all the way back to the beginning of the blog in 2009.)]

Religion is a belief system; theater is a craft of performance. It might seem easy to combine the two – why not simply do a performance about a belief system? But in practice the two don’t always blend easily. Theater’s purpose is, in Hamlet’s words, to “hold the mirror up to nature,” but a religion promotes a particular definition of what that mirror ought to show.

The results of “using drama to prove a point” are often unsatisfactory. There are exceptions, one of which I described in an article in this blog on the play “The Tidings Brought to Mary” by Paul Claudel (see “Religious Drama,” posted on Rick On Theater on 19 January 2014). But Claudel’s play is deeply mysterious, and in any case exceptions tend to prove the rule.

Clearly “religious drama” can mean nothing more than a drama with a religious subject. For example, the play Saint Joan (1923) by George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) dramatizes a number of issues involving religion, such as the relation of individual experience to the teachings of church doctrine. Shaw does not appear to promote a particular church or a particular established theology; his play holds those elements in tension, and the result is powerful theater. In many other plays of this sort, their creators' intentions are possibly interesting but mostly irrelevant. 

Sometimes, however, a dramatic work appears, at least, to be created on the principle that the role of art is to serve God, and that therefore art is to be judged by how well it does God’s work. Tolstoy adopted this idea in later years; he found himself unable to see how purely aesthetic interests mattered, when God’s work was so important.

By this standard, categories of “good” and “bad” art are irrelevant; what matters is how well the work does God’s work. One problem with this approach is that it tends to be adopted by censors, fanatics, and dictators, who have their own ideas of what the good is and who also have the means to impose their standards on others.

Another problem is that, with religious art and practically any other kind of art, a work that’s created with a teaching purpose may well be dreary. How can it help it? There’s limited joy of discovery in creating something that’s already figured out what it wants to say.

Another approach, which we might call the aesthetic approach, is to say that there is no such thing as religious art at all. There’s only art, whether good or bad. Art takes as its subject whatever it wants, whether it’s religion or politics or love or whatever.

This approach ends all arguments, because it makes ideas of religion irrelevant – which is also its problem. Religion has its own claims. For example, one can read the Bible for its imagery, but it wasn’t written simply as a literary work, and at some point that fact may insist on being taken into account.

If we are of a scholarly turn of mind, we can take an anthropological approach and say that works of art reflect the ideas of religion held by people at the time. This approach looks backward into history, noting, for example, that the ancient Greek tragedies were performed as elements of religious festivals. The approach also looks beyond Western art, to non-Western cultures, looking at the way different cultures present themselves, often without attempts at value judgments on their beliefs or art forms. A limitation of this approach, again, is that it tends to trivialize religion, and whatever else it may be, religion is not a trivial matter.

A more recent version of the anthropological approach is the modernist declaration that today’s world has destroyed the coherence of works of art so that it’s meaningless to say that a work is “religious”, or for that matter to label it in any other way.

A post-modernist critic versed in deconstructionism would go even further and say that no matter what its intent, a work of art can only reflect the oppressive power structure of its time. This approach negates the experience of art, particularly the distinction between greater and lesser works.

Or we can go in the other direction, and say that on the contrary, all art is religious. The limitation of this viewpoint is that if everything is religion, then nothing is – what’s the point of talking about religion at all if what we mean by religion is “life”?

I offer these reflections because, as noted above, I recently had the opportunity to see two stage productions based on Bible stories, Moses (at a movie theater near my home) and Jesus (with a church group), created by Sight & Sound Theatres. I offer these reflections because, as noted above, I recently had the opportunity to see two stage productions based on Bible stories, Moses and Jesus, created by Sight & Sound Theatres. I had heard about their productions for years, and people I know at a church in New Jersey have made an annual bus trip to see Sight & Sound shows for years. A friend convinced me that I ought to see at least one of their productions, if only to see their brand of theatricality for myself.  

Sight & Sound is a for-profit commercial company with a Christian evangelical mission, founded by Pennsylvania farmer, Glenn Eshelman and his wife, Shirley, who began with a traveling slide show for churches in 1964 that expanded into a theatrical production company aimed at general audiences – but always with a Christian bent. Sight & Sound presented its first full-scale stage production (Behold the Lamb) in 1987, and to date has presented twenty or so different shows at its two theaters in Ronks (in Lancaster County), Pennsylvania, and Branson, Missouri. I saw a film of the stage production of Moses, and I saw the company’s newest production, Jesus, in Pennsylvania.

                                                                                                

Because of the Biblical subject matter of these shows, I ought to say something about my own background. I’m an active Christian, and I preach in churches in the Presbyterian Church USA, a “mainstream” denomination. I’ve also worked in theater for years, as director, playwright, and actor, on plays of all sorts. In particular I’ve written a number of plays that have been produced, and some of them have had religious themes.

I tend to resolve the conflict between religion and theater (if there is one) in my own mind by supporting the right of a playwright to write whatever kind of play she or he feels called on to write. Playwrights take their chances on the success of their plays, but if one feels compelled to write a play with a theme, let the chips fall where they may.

My position, however, does not extend to Moses, because the script for that show was not written primarily as the result of an artistic spark, but as a “work for hire.” How do I know this? Because no writers are credited for the work. In fact no one who works on the production is credited by name. (There is also no “curtain call” at the end of a Sight & Sound show.)

This policy is not unique with Sight & Sound; I have observed it in other Biblical spectacles presented by churches. The theology involved, apparently, is that everything in the production is done for the glory of God, so individuals should not be named.

I find this idea both pretentious and un-Biblical. Moses and Jesus, just to name two figures in the Bible, are both identified by name in that book. Shouldn’t writers, actors, and technicians be named as well? The Apostle Paul lists many of his co-workers in his letters in the Bible. Why shouldn’t theater co-workers also be listed? 

In any case, the script of Moses appears to have been created by committee. Maybe it was – the script is notably uneven. Dialogue is elevated and lofty one minute, modern and conversational the next. Plot lines appear and disappear. The musical numbers frequently seem to have been heavily influenced by  Broadway shows (Les Miserables comes to mind), and occasionally from Disney films. 

However, the quality of the writing is not a major advertising point about Moses, or for that matter about Jesus. Two things are primarily important in these shows: they are based on Bible stories, and they are spectacular. To take them in reverse order:

Spectacular – Sight & Sound’s stages are huge (the two theaters are close to each other in design), some 300 feet in total length, making Broadway houses seem cramped by comparison. The performance area includes three sides of the theater – the regular “stage,” which is huge, and along the walls on the right and left of the audience – plus a center aisle that can be either a conduit for audience members or a playing space.

Using a mixture of set pieces and projections, plus numerous special effects, the shows achieve an almost cinematic effect. For example, when Moses escapes from Egypt, he walks on a small, multi-directional treadmill, on a stage floor filled with smoke, while behind him sweeps a scenic panorama that takes him from Pharaoh’s palace, past the pyramids and the Sphinx, across the desert, and into the mountains, while music blares.

Big scenes, in other words, are the theater’s meat, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Opera, of course, tends to run toward spectacle – “grand opera” is often an accurate description. Parsifal (1882), written by Richard Wagner (1813-1883), is certainly a spectacular opera with religion as its subject, although the exact nature of that religion is open to debate. Wagner, however, wrote the entire opera himself – it was anything but a committee creation.

Sight & Sound is an avowedly “evangelical” company – each show ends with an “altar call,” an invitation for audience members to join with members of the company in counselling and prayer. Not surprisingly, then, their productions are all Biblically based, usually centered around the stories of individual characters in the Bible, as can be seen from the titles of recent productions: Noah - the Musical, Joseph, Jonah, Moses, Samson, and the enormously popular current production Jesus.

Dramatizing a story from the Bible is not necessarily easy. Our era wants to know about the psychology of a character, often conveyed through a “back story.” The Bible provides little of either. Instead, it describes emblematic moments.

A dramatist often must, so to speak, “fill in the blanks” in the Biblical narrative, and the risks of this process surely are evident. Biblical incidents are presented side by side with recent inventions by (in the case of Moses) faceless writers; audience members may even imagine that they’re hearing scripture when they’re only hearing contemporary dialogue.

To say the least, the literary contribution of a contemporary writer may not quite equal that of a work that has held the interest of readers for over three thousand years.

One possible reason stories in the Bible are so memorable is that their readers are able to create details of the stories for themselves – perhaps drawn from their own lives. On the other hand, a drama on stage gives stories, as a character in William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream says, “a local habitation and a name,” limiting the audience’s imagination in the same way that a music video is likely to become tightly associated with the song it illustrates.

INTERLUDE

A friend of my daughter auditioned with Sight & Sound for the role of the archangel Michael in their production The Nativity. He had learned the assigned song and expected that at the audition he would sing the song and read from the script.

As soon as he came on stage, however, a crew fixed him in a harness, strapped on him two angel wings each about ten feet long, and hoisted him into the air. He had had no idea this was going to happen. Nevertheless, he started to sing.

Then the wings malfunctioned, a technician ran onto the stage shouting "Stop!" and the crew worked on the system for a few minutes, coaching him how to move the wings in order to help fix them.

Finally they lowered him, quite shaken, to the ground. They took off the wings and the harness, and as he stood there, breathing heavily, the director said to him, "Okay, let's take the song from the top!"  The actor was offered the role as an understudy. He declined.

I saw the Sight & Sound production of Jesus on November 1, 2018, at the Millennium Theater in Ronks. In appearance the theater is a cross between an idea of a building in ancient Jerusalem and a Los Vegas casino, a feeling that continues in the lobby with its lights, displays, cafes, and shops. The wide auditorium seats just over 2,000 people in a series of sweeping rows.

The “special effects” in Jesus are stunning. Fishing boats float on the sea and rock appallingly in storms. Live animals behave just as they’re supposed to – camels, horses, pigs, doves. Rocks split, wind blows (in the auditorium!), rain falls, people travel among towns that effortlessly glide onto the stage, reconfigure themselves, and glide off again.

(Well, not entirely effortlessly – the stage does not have a turntable, and one could occasionally spot human beings pushing set pieces from one area to another, which I found comforting.)

The elaborate production values in Jesus are its calling card, of course, and deservedly may bring in audience members who might not have a vested interest in its religious theme.

Thinking ahead, I assumed that a major problem with the show would be the characterization of Jesus, who of course is not physically described in the Bible at all. I actually had no problem there. The actor playing the role is personable and physically not at all intimidating. I would like to know more about him as an actor but, as I mentioned earlier, his name is not available to the audience.

(From news accounts it appears that one actor playing the role – apparently there are two, but judging from a photo he is the one I saw – is Brandon Talley, who graduated from Elon University in 2004 and has worked ever since with Sight & Sound. I know this because of a published article, not from the show’s program, since there barely is one.  Elon is a liberal arts school in Elon, North Carolina, founded in 1889, originally but no longer officially affiliated with the United Church of Christ denomination.)

For Jesus exactly one name is offered in the program: Joshua Enck is credited as “Producer/Director.” Enck, now 41 years old, became the president and chief creative officer of Sight & Sound in 2015. (The chief executive officer of the company is Matt Neff, also 41.) Enck’s name does appear in the tiny program, called “Insight,” and his director’s note offers a clue to the success of the production.

“What you are about to experience,” he writes, “is not a history lesson on the most famous person ever to walk the earth. It is not even necessarily a story of Jesus’ life.” Enck tells how a theme of “love that rescues” began to emerge as the show’s creators (otherwise unnamed) read the gospel accounts.

The theme of “rescue” does provide a thread through the entire show, and so there is a dramatic continuity to Jesus that the script of Moses simply does not have. Enck and his team could have chosen other themes, but to choose one and stick to it, whatever it is, is essential for a production of this scale. I conclude from the coherence of the storytelling in Jesus that the theater’s current leadership, at least, is as committed to theatrical excellence as it is to proselyting.

One example from Jesus may suffice. Mark 5:1-20 tells the story of the demon-possessed man running amok in a graveyard, healed by Jesus. In the Sight & Sound production, the graveyard is situated along a seaside cliff. On the left, as the audience looks at the stage, a boat loaded with Jesus’ disciples tosses realistically on what appears to be a rugged sea, while the “sky” above the scene seems to be heading for a storm.

On the audience’s right, the insane man rages on top of a craggy, almost inaccessible promontory, leaping from rock to rock and shouting imprecations at everyone, including the people in the boat, while further to the right is a crowd of townspeople, alternately yelling at the man and trying to figure out what to do about him. The effect is one of chaos wherever one looks.

In the midst of all this upheaval, Jesus clambers from the boat onto the rocks and slowly begins to make his way up the cliff, never rushing, occasionally shouting friendly encouragement to the lunatic above him, taking his time, deliberately climbing over one rock after another, while the disciples in the boat urge him to turn back, or at least to be careful. He is the only calm, almost cheerful element in a wild scene. After a while he disappears behind the rocks, while the turmoil continues. Eventually we see him again – he has made it all the way to the top, and he unthreateningly moves toward his encounter with the screaming man…

I hope it is clear from this representative description that what could be a fairly routine depiction of a miracle is powerfully presented, but in a way that serves the story. The contrast between Jesus’ calmness and the frenzy of everyone else in the scene, and the slow, deliberate way in which he moves toward his encounter with the madman, is both thematically and theatrically effective.

I have a few reservations about the show. I felt a loss of focus toward the end of the first act. (The second act, the story of what Christians call “Passion Week,” Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem, is dramatic in the gospel accounts and similarly dramatic on stage.) I also felt that the action, or really the lack of it, immediately after Jesus’ death on the cross was too drawn out.  

The musical numbers in the show are merely functional, and a short dance interlude seems obligatory and unnecessary. The motivations of Judas, who betrays Jesus, are mostly slapped together in one song and seem to be arbitrary decisions on the part of the writers, not based on what the audience had seen before that point.

I also feel that Sight & Sound has an uneasy relationship with Judaism and I was extremely uncomfortable, both in Moses and in Jesus, with what one might call “religious appropriation.” In Moses I fell this particularly in the Passover scene, where elements of actual ritual are mixed with at least one major Christian symbol, when a cross mysteriously appears over a house where Passover is being observed. In Jesus the issue surfaced in the scene where the Sanhedrin, an ancient tribunal of elders, gathers.

Obviously Sight & Sound is a Christian enterprise, but sorry, folks, it is not acceptable at any time to take someone else’s living ritual and employ it for your own purposes.

Having said those things, I’ve covered my objections. In general the production comes across as open-hearted and cheerful. (I have no way of knowing, of course, how many if any people experience the show as a religious turning point in their lives.) Artistically speaking, it accomplishes what it intends to. Scenically, it is overwhelming. The acting level is high, and the story, on its own terms, is coherent.

We may note, nevertheless, that Jesus doesn’t solve the question of the relation of religion and art; it merely illustrates one possibility. Jesus is a work of religious art because it says it is – there’s no question about it. Sight & Sound explicitly considers its productions opportunities for evangelism. So they answer the question of the nature of “religious art” to their own satisfaction. Other issues remain.

“A Marriage of Stage, Spirituality in Richmond”

by Celia Wren


[I'm always interested in the ways theater rubs up against other aspects of society and culture, whether it's education, politics, history, or any other element of human, especially American, life.  Here's an article from the Washington Post that reports on a successful (nine years and running) confluence of the art of theater with faith and spirituality, two aspects of our culture that haven't always been a comfortable fit.]

Conventional wisdom holds that January can be a challenging time for theaters, with winter weather and post-holiday fatigue tending to put a damper on attendance. But in Richmond, the period after New Year’s has become a regular buzz-generator for local companies. That’s because it ushers in the city’s Acts of Faith Theatre Festival, a yearly effort by local artists and a number of religious congregations to affirm an affinity between spirituality and the stage.

The festival, now entering its 10th season, was founded by a group of thespians who happened to be practicing Presbyterians. The concept has been embraced by Richmond’s theater companies, which now typically plan their seasons so as to open, between January and March, at least one designated Acts of Faith show – a play or musical featuring either religious or thought-provoking social and existential themes. Billing itself as “the largest faith-based theatre festival in the United States,” the Acts of Faith celebration kicks off Jan. 12, with a preview evening in which participating companies will present snippets from 18 upcoming productions.

Those shows will include a production of Moliere’s “Tartuffe” by Richmond’s flagship Virginia Repertory Theatre, as well as a staging of James Sherman’s “From Door to Door” by the city’s Jewish Family Theatre and Jihad Abdulmumit’s play “The Shootout,” mounted by For Our Children Productions, a grass-roots company that tackles social issues from an Islamic perspective. Richmond Triangle Players, a troupe focused on plays that relate to the LGBTQ experience, is hosting the pre-New York tryout of “The Mormon Boy Trilogy,” by out-of-town author/performer Steven Fales.

The festival “started out with just a handful of churches and theater companies participating, and it has exploded,” says Jacquie O’Connor, managing director of Henley Street Theatre and Richmond Shakespeare, a pair of classically oriented troupes that are in the process of merging. The two groups will present David Davalos’s comedy “Wittenberg” – about Hamlet, Martin Luther and Doctor Faustus – as an entry in this year’s festival. 

Over the years, O’Connor says, the festival has “really brought the theater community and the faith community together in a way that is innovative and inspiring, and that furthers the conversation” about how art relates to spirituality and belief. 

Bringing two realms together 

That was the goal of Jeff Gallagher, Daniel Moore, Bruce Miller and a couple of other Central Virginians, who launched the festival in 2005 with support from Second Presbyterian Church in downtown Richmond. (The church is still the festival’s “convening sponsor.” More than a dozen other congregations serve as co-sponsors or advisers.) At the time, they felt troubled by the perception of a disconnect between the theater world and the world of religion, or at least Christianity. 

“I frequently encounter people who are among my church friends who don’t get what I do in the arts, and I encounter people in my artistic family who don’t get why I enjoy teaching Sunday school,” says Miller, who is Virginia Repertory Theatre’s artistic director and a practicing Presbyterian. He adds, “To me, it’s so much the same thing,” with religious and artistic experience “using all the same mechanisms in my psyche and my being.”

Around the time of the festival’s launch, events from America’s latter-­day culture wars had contributed to a sense, among some, that faith and the arts were at odds. Not too much time had gone by, for instance, since a New York theater producing Terrence McNally’s play “Corpus Christi” in 1998 had confronted denunciations from religious groups, and even threats of violence.

“There was the perception that if you were pushing the edges of art, you were poking the eye of the faith community,” says Gallagher, a playwright-turned-biotech entrepreneur. He remembers worrying in the aftermath of Mel Gibson’s controversial 2004 movie “The Passion of the Christ” that “consideration of faith in the public square was going to get increasingly polarized, and do damage along the way – and then possibly disappear.” 

Miller recalls feeling mortified by reports of the homophobic religious group that had picketed hate-crime victim Matthew Shepard’s funeral – an event covered in the 2000 play “The Laramie Project.” 

“They call themselves Christians, those people!” Miller says with exasperation. “They do something like this – and then the arts community goes, ‘Christians are all crazy!’ And some people in the Christian community go, ‘Artists are all devils!’”

Responding to this climate, the Richmonders came up with the idea of a theater festival designed, in Gallagher’s words, “to create a space where there could be an experience and enjoyment and discussion of faith in a way that was very public, and in a broader way that would be found in a synagogue or a church.”

Established theaters and other groups were invited to participate in the festival by staging plays with themes related to faith and – a key element – by holding post-performance audience talkbacks. The first festival included Regina Taylor’s church-hat-themed play “Crowns,” mounted by Barksdale Theatre – a company that later folded into Virginia Rep – and a production of Allan Gurganus’s “Blessed Assurance” by Firehouse Theatre Project, which focuses on contemporary American work.

Wide variety on offer 

Importantly, the festival founders left the definition of “faith” wide open. Moore, a director and actor, says they did not want to “be in a position where we were giving the green light, or thumbs-up or -down, to any particular play.” Each producing group could decide whether a given script was appropriate for the festival.

As a result, Acts of Faith productions have ranged widely in subject matter and style, sometimes seeming – at least to a casual observer – to connect rather tenuously with the festival’s governing theme.

When Henley Street mounted “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 2009, O’Connor recalls, “We had a lot of people say, ‘How could that be a part of the Acts of Faith festival? What is it about that show?’ But it actually is very faith-based, in the sense that it deals with tolerance and the understanding of how we should be treated.”

Last season, one of Virginia Rep’s Acts of Faith offerings was Noel Coward’s comedy “Hay Fever.”

Come on: “Hay Fever”?

Coward’s play evokes the aftermath of World War I, when disillusioned young people “were turning their backs on their religion and upbringing and adopting very much a ‘live-for-today-screw-it-we’re-going-for-it’” attitude, Miller maintains. He says he based an entire Sunday school lesson on “Hay Fever” at his church, leading a substantive discussion about how congregations can and should react when people turn away from traditional theological beliefs.

For his part, John Knapp, artistic director of Richmond Triangle Players, says he strives to program Acts of Faith productions that deal overtly with religion – plays such as Carol Lynn Pearson’s “Facing East,” about Mormon parents coming to terms with the suicide of their gay son, which RTP tackled in 2010; or “Next Fall,” Geoffrey Nauffts’s tale of love between a devout Christian and an atheist, which RTP staged in 2012. 

“The thing that I really like about the festival is it gives us a platform where we can perform really meaningful, thought-provoking theater,” Knapp says. “Some of that stuff can be a really tough sell, but it gives us a platform to do it. And the faith community, because it supports the festival, will come to the shows, so you do have more bodies in the seats.” Without the festival, he says, “I don’t think I would ever have touched ‘Facing East.’”

Like Knapp, many Richmond thespians say that – separate from any rapprochement it might have fostered between believers and showbiz types – the Acts of Faith festival has been great PR, and good audience-building, for local theater.

By participating in the festival, “we reach out to people that normally we would not reach,” says Abdulmumit, who is the founder of For Our Children Productions. (At the festival last year, the company staged “The Madrassa Across Town,” about a young girl who aspires to memorize the entire Koran.)

“As the years have passed, our audience has widened because of Acts of Faith,” says Debra Clinton, artistic director of Jewish Family Theatre. (Jewish Family Theatre and For Our Children Productions are among the nonprofessional companies that join the festival on an “associate” level.)

Miller, who has spent decades in Richmond theater, says that attendance by church groups has become a significant factor for companies participating in the festival. “There are some small companies whose biggest audiences of the entire year are church groups that come to see their Acts of Faith offering. And with our larger companies, it brings new people in the door,” he says.

However, because no citywide marketing research or other analysis has been conducted, evidence of the festival’s impact on local theater attendance remains anecdotal. (The festival does have a headcount for Acts of Faith talkbacks: Nearly 1,200 people stuck around for those in 2013.)

What does seem clear is that the festival has become a Richmond fixture.

“There are places where this probably wouldn’t have gotten off the ground,” Moore says. “But it has taken root here.”

[The Acts of Faith Theatre Festival (http://theactsoffaith.org/) in Richmond, Virginia, took place at various venues from 12 January to 19 April 2014. The annual event, which bills itself as “America’s Largest Faith Inspired Theatre Event,” was established in Richmond in 2005.  The city’s Second Presbyterian Church is the convening sponsor of this collaboration between the faith community and professional theater companies.  The non-sectarian  and ecumenical festival has grown from just a few participants in that first season to include, as of the 10th festival this year, 15 area theatres offering 18 shows. 

[Wren is a freelance writer and editor focused on theater and media criticism.  With more than two decades of experience, her articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, Newsday, the Boston Globe, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the New York Observer, Smithsonian, Talk, Stagebill, American Theatre, Commonweal, Broadway.com, and South Africa’s Weekly Mail.  She’s written about Broadway productions, HBO series, Masterpiece Theatre, Ken Burns documentaries, Animal Planet, online poetry, contemporary novels, a Christian video game, and more.  Wren also teaches at Johns Hopkins University.  This article was originally published in the “Arts” section of the Washington Post on 5 January 2014.]