Description:
This critical new title in the Theatre & series explores the fluctuating relationship between theatre and Christianity by focusing on key points of intersection - the challenge of realism and the real, the treatment of women and the role of amateur performance. It covers a wide range of examples from medieval times to today, examining how theatre and Christianity have sometimes clashed dramatically and sometimes embraced one another to great effect.
Engaging and enlightening, this book offers an insight into the complex dynamic between theatre and Christianity perfect for undergraduate and postgraduate students of theatre or religious studies.Brief description: Margherita Laera is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at the University of Kent, where she serves as Deputy Head of the School of Arts and Architecture. She is the author of Playwriting in Europe: Mapping Ecosystems and Practices with Fabulamundi (Routledge Focus, 2022); Theatre & Translation (Methuen Drama, 2019) and Reaching Athens: Community, Democracy and Other Mythologies in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy (Peter Lang, 2013), and editor of Theatre and Adaptation: Return, Rewrite, Repeat (Methuen Drama, 2014). Margherita also works as a theatre translator from and into Italian and English. She is co-editor of the 'Theatre &' book series for Methuen Drama, and founder of Performing International Plays, an organization promoting theatre (in) translation in secondary schools.
Review Quotes:
"Engaging, creative and thoughtful, Theatre and Christianity offers fresh insights through discussing Shakespeare, Passion Plays and Jerry Springer: the Opera." --Jolyon Mitchell, University of Edinburgh, UK
"Schafer's compact argument shows how Christianity and theatre are, simultaneously, irreconcilably hostile to and wholly dependent on each other, and, thus, existentially intertwined." --David Mason, Rhodes College, USA