Religious Drama in America (An Article)

Perhaps because significant religious bodies had early on succeeded in preventing the opening of theatres in colonial America and later, after playhouses had begun to appear, remained a potent source of possible repression, the separation of church and theatre was long a part of the American scene, much the same as the separation of church and state. Very little of what might be termed “religious drama” was offered to playgoers until late in the 19th century. Dramatizations of Biblical stories were virtually unheard of in the professional theatre, and even the portrayal of such figures as ministers was generally restrained and infrequent. Non‐Protestant clerics were sometimes characters in tales of Renaissance Italy, but these figures often seemed to derive more from Elizabethan and Jacobean traditions than from genuine observation. (For further material on religious groups see “Jews in American Theatre and Drama” and “Mormons in American Theatre and Drama.”) It may be telling that the first 19th‐century success centering on a major religious figure was Bulwer‐Lytton's English drama Richelieu (1839), which dealt not directly with religious matters but rather with the Cardinal's attempts to influence affairs of state and of the heart. Depicting such meddlesomeness may have appealed to the strong anti‐Catholic sentiments of many playgoers, although the real reason for the play's long popularity was undoubtedly the performances of Edwin Forrest, Charles Macready, and Edwin Booth in the title role. One of the first important American religious plays of national interest was a version of the classic passion play, known either as The Passion Play (1879) or as The Passion. However, this dramatization of the New Testament story by a Jewish playwright offended many Christian clergy, who lobbied for its suppression. The later arrival of such English plays as Henry Arthur Jones's Saints and Sinners (1895) and Jerome K. Jerome's The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1909) further increased acceptance of religiously oriented works. At the same time native drama began to employ religious and Biblical figures and themes with increasing success. The most notable from a commercial standpoint was the dramatization of Lew Wallace's famous novel, Ben‐Hur (1899), which attracted huge audiences as much by its spectacle, including a celebrated chariot race, as by its religious message. Charles Rann Kennedy's simple and more thoughtful The Servant in the House (1908) met with great critical acclaim but found only small audiences. The disillusionment and cynicism that followed World War I led to few religious works being attempted during the 1920s. Given the tenor of the age, it may be significant that Eugene O'Neill's Dionysian study of a Biblical story in Lazarus Laughed (1927) was the playwright's only major effort not to be given a Broadway hearing. Other examples of the period were the 1924 presentation of Max Reinhardt's decade‐old pageant The Miracle, Shaw's St. Joan (1923), and The Ladder (1926), the curious play that attempted to promote the Eastern idea of reincarnation.

If the hedonism and cynicism of the 1920s offered relatively infertile fields for the growth of commercial religious drama, the political and economic preoccupations of the 1930s proved equally discouraging, especially since the theatre and other arts were dominated by the often‐irreligious left. Such major playwrights as O'Neill and Philip Barry were given short shrift when they presented their religious questions in theatrical terms: O'Neill in Days Without End (1934) and Barry in Bright Star (1935) and Here Come the Clowns (1938). Yet the most successful and memorable of all American Biblical plays was a product of this era, The Green Pastures (1930). It was also in this period that T. S. Eliot wrote the first of his religious dramas, Murder in the Cathedral (1936), followed later by A Family Reunion (1947) and The Cocktail Party (1950). By contrast with the bitter, disbelieving response to the failure of “the war to end all wars” to achieve its aim, the prosperous decades that followed World War II and that encompassed the Cold War, the McCarthy era, and several dismaying, brutal hot wars, saw a variety of responses, including a reexamination of religious values and the importance of religion in private lives, and an ill‐defined, sometimes wavering fascination with mysticism. The shock of the Nazi extermination of European Jewry brought forth a number of intriguing works dealing with the subject. The Diary of Anne Frank (1955), the importation The Deputy (1964), and Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy (1964) were among the more interesting of such plays. Works treating Biblical subjects directly included Robinson Jeffers's curious, failed Dear Judas (1947), which attempted to argue that Judas betrayed Jesus in order to ensure Jesus' immortality; Archibald MacLeish's J. B. (1958), which recounted the Job legend in modern terms; Clifford Odets's The Flowering Peach (1954) about Biblical Noah; and Paddy Chayefsky's The Tenth Man (1959) and Gideon (1961). The musical stage turned to religious themes of one sort or another with great success in the 1960s and 1970s, with such works as Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Salvation (1969), Godspell (1971), Your Arms Too Short to Box with God (1976), and the English products Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1982). English and French dramas concerning religious ideas included Becket (1960), A Man for All Seasons (1961), Luther (1963), Amadeus (1980), and Racing Demon (1995), while native plays, such as The Runner Stumbles (1976), Mass Appeal (1981), Agnes of God (1982), Handy Dandy (1990), and Sacrilege (1995), also dealt with religion. Ironically, the most popular pieces were the ones that looked back on a religious upbringing and laughed nostalgically at it: Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Reflect Up? (1981), Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (1981), Nunsense (1985), and Late Nite Catechism (1996).