Abstract
Peter Brook has called the Holy Theatre ‘The Theatre of the Invisible-Made-Visible’. Whether it take the form of ‘gods’ flying in from Africa to possess the Haitian dancer or of ‘the abstract notion of mercy’ sliding down the ‘voodoo pole’ of Isabella’s silence to become ‘concrete’ in the prolonged moment of her hesitation, ‘the notion that the stage is a place where the invisible can appear has a deep hold on our thoughts’.1 This should not surprise us. We are, after all, exploring the relationship between the theatre and the Christian doctrine of the invisible Word become visible flesh. But it may also disturb us. For it is one thing to suggest that God chose a ‘theatrical’ mode of self-revelation and quite another to propose that human art may conjure up an incarnation in the theatre. But Brook is at least bold in his conviction that, while the theatre must ground itself in the abrasive surfaces of everyday life, it must also brace itself to reckon with the mysteries of the unseen. The ways in which it has taken up the latter challenge form the substance of this chapter.
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Notes
A. Riddell, ‘Edinburgh Shock’, Sunday Telegraph, 1 September 1974, p. 14.
E. N. S. Thompson, ‘The English Moral Plays’, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, XIV (March 1910) p. 315.
For a fuller discussion of what follows, see M. Harris, ‘Flesh and Spirits: the Battle between Virtues and Vices in Medieval Drama Reassessed’, Medium Aevum, LVII, 1 (1988) pp. 56–64.
R. Tuve, Allegorical Imagery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966) p. 112.
Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, trans. K. Lake and J. E. L. Oulton, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926–32), I, p. 406;
Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of fob, trans. Rev. J. Bliss (Oxford: Parker, 1844–50), III, pp. 483–4;
M. W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins (Michigan: Michigan State College Press, 1952) p. 34.
Gregory, op. cit., III, p. 490 and I, pp. 52–3; Ambrose, De Sacramentis, in Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Gamier, 1844–63) XVI, col. 434; P. F. Mulhern, ‘Holy Spirit, Gifts of’, The New Catholic Encyclopedia.
Racine, Phaedra, trans. R. Lowell, in E. Bentley (ed.), The Classic Theatre, 4 vols. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1958–61) IV, p. 136.
M. Maeterlinck, Théâtre (Brussels: Lacomblez, 1912) II, pp. 4–113. My translation.
C. Innes, Holy Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) p. 19.
F. G. Alexander and S. T. Selesnick, The History of Psychiatry (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) p. 169.
Ibid., pp. 145, 170. Cf. the discussion of Carus in B. Knapp, Maurice Maeterlinck (Boston: Twayne, 1975) pp. 141–2.
Artaud, The Peyote Dance, trans. H. Weaver (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1976) pp. 64–9, 20–36.
J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (London: Macmillan, 1879) pp. 73–113.
N. Greene, Antonin Artaud: Poet Without Words (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970) p. 118; cf., in The Theater and its Double, pp. 48–52 especially.
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© 1990 Max Harris
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Harris, M. (1990). Seen and Unseen. In: Theater and Incarnation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09697-8_7
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