Performing the Christ in the Royal Borough of St Andrews
... the UK, US and Canada to cover all possible contingencies and these and other countries. No one may quote from it either directly or indirectly save by obtaining written permission from the author who may be contacted on Khovacs@email.com Failure to do so will result in prosecution to the full extent of intellectual property law. Roman rite, was being demolished by proponents of a new Immediate Theater calling for the ‘performance’ of the Christian faith through a lived-out enactment of the ‘word of God’, both as Holy Script and in its command performance in Jesus the Christ. This event, foundational to Scotland’s Protestant past and post-Christian modernity, is reenacted on an installation set guiding visitors through the fiery sermon preached by a (slightly larger than life-size) mechanical replica of John Knox, one hand on the Bible, the other pointing to the heavens, and a burning gaze that is consistent with contemporary descriptions of his public preaching. Not surprisingly, given the significance of religious conflict to the town, the University of St Andrews has been attracting large numbers of students of theology since its beginnings in 1413, but more recently, a number of post-graduates, mostly from America, specifically aiming to explore and exploit the connections between theology and theater somewhat along the lines of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s monumental Theological Dramatic Theory (Balthasar 1988-1998) in the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts. Although the university does not offer an academic drama program, there is nevertheless a thriving theater community eliciting all manner of performance from both students and professionals (the latter, godfathered by Scotland’s own Sir Sean Connery). Apart from the yearly Lochiehead Passion Play (in which audiences play first-century eyewitnesses in this outdoor, rain-soaked staging of Christ’s crucifixion), the Kate Kennedy Parade (the town’s historic notables, from St Andrew to martyrs burned at the stake during the wars of religion to modern golf legends, make a yearly appearance in the guise of an all male cast parading past medieval landmarks), and occasional mountings of the York Mystery Plays, the last few years alone have seen a remarkable interest in the staging of Jesus and the human/divine conflicts implicit therein. Jesus as the LEGAL WARNING: This essay is the sole legal property of I.P Khovacs who holds copyright in the UK, US and Canada to cover all possible contingencies and these and other countries. No one may quote from it either directly or indirectly save by obtaining written permission from the author who may be contacted on Khovacs@email.com Failure to do so will result in prosecution to the full extent of intellectual property law. anonymous, marginal other (Ivan Khovacs, The Resurrection of Willie Brown, 2003), Jesus the religion-despising god-man and destroyer of temples to capitalism (George Dillon, The Gospel of Matthew, 2003), Jesus the modern-day messiah killed by Bush & Blair global anti-terrorism rhetoric (Katherine Lapinel, The Passion of St. John, 2003); to say nothing of revivals of Everyman (2003), Arthur Miller’s The Creation of the World and Other Business (2004), and more ad hoc performances in borrowed church halls, candle-lit worship services and even street preaching in the tradition of Knox (minus the looting and burning). All of this among a relatively small population of sixteen thousand inhabitants. Most recently, a sellout run of Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi gained unexpected world-media interest for its portrayal of the homosexual Joshua (the biblical Hebrew name for Jesus) from the BBC, CNN, Reuters, and Playbill, all testifying to the evident controversy in the staging, particularly in light of Scott’s Common Law and Britain’s blasphemy laws which allow for prosecution in the case of stage representations deemed to incite hatred towards a particular religious group. As could be expected, and as happened at the play’s debut at the Manhattan Theater Club (1998), those who found offence in the production manifested outside the theatre and in view of police security requested for the duration of the engagement. The group was organized, outspoken and, very much ‘on cue’ in their public ‘performance’. The spectacle taking place outside the theatre paralleled that taking place inside—a counter-performance of sorts. With a wooden soap-box for a stage, members of The Christian Voice took turns with ad-libbed monologues urging the crowd to think through what it means to theatricalize “Jesus and his disciples as sexually active homosexuals” (Williams 2004). ‘Production notes’, complete with a ‘cast list’, were handed out to the captive audience clarifying the origins and aims of the public spectacle as well as scripting further ways in ...