REJOICE AND MOURN
- the death of martyrs-

an adaptation of MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL
by T.S. Eliot

with quotations from and about 
Archbishop Oscar Romero

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:00 am in KG-01

 followed by a Lunchtime Forum:
T.S. Eliot: Poet, Playwright, and Prophet

Deryl Davis - Associate Faculty, Religion and Drama
Fredericka Berger - Lecturer Emerita in Religion and Drama
and members of the cast

 Elderdice Hall 12:15 to 1:15 pm

MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL
"religious truths brought home afresh"

By Fredericka Berger, Lecturer Emerita in Religion and Drama

"Thus without any preliminary fuss or fanfare, without advertisements in the newspapers, or any advance announcements, except through church channels, a poetic  play was staged in the Chapter house which may well mark a turning point in English drama... One hadn't listened for five minutes before one felt that one was witnessing a play which had the quality of greatness..." -The New Yorker, July 3, 1935.                      

The performance of Murder in the Cathedral at the Canterbury Festival in 1935 is thought to have initiated the revival of religious drama in the twentieth century - a revival which had been a long time in coming.  Since the Middle Ages, drama had not been generally accepted within the church.  Although the recovery of this heritage had begun with William Poel's revival of Everyman in 1901, it took the confluence of talents and aspirations of three personalities to overcome the discomfort with drama in church settings that had persisted over centuries.

First, there was George Bell, Dean of Canterbury and later Bishop of Chichester who identified Eliot as a writer of sufficient stature to advance Bell's cause of promoting the arts in the church.  "Through religious drama," he is quoted as saying, "religious truths may be brought home afresh and the imagination stirred."  Then there was E. Martin Browne.  After his move to Chichester, Bell appointed Browne as Director of Religious Drama for the diocese.  He was to become Eliot's guide to the craft of the playwright and the director of all his plays.  Finally, there was T.S. Eliot, who as early as 1924 had indicated a desire to write a modern verse drama. 

After his conversion and baptism in the Anglican Church in 1927 (performed in great secrecy), Eliot was eager to find a way to merge his religious and poetic aims.  According to Peter Ackroyd, his biographer, he was "interested in the possible emergence of a new kind of intellectual - a Christian intellectual who would try to combine both thought and feeling with a devotional spirit."  Although Eliot's subsequent dramas became less overtly religious, and also less poetic, Murder in the Cathedral was emblematic of a rapprochement between the church and the arts, and of a renaissance of religious drama.