Religion and Spirituality

Zeina Salame shares her experience attending a reading of Heather Raffo’s Noura produced by Noor Theatre, and discusses the social impact of Middle Eastern American theatre in 2017.

Hannah Sachs considers the intersection of theatre, religion, and spirituality.

Actress and spiritual advocate Diandra Rivera offers advice on how performers can spiritually center themselves. 

Jenna Gerdsen on a reinvention of wayang kulit—the ancient Southeast Asian puppet theatre form.

Salma Abu Ayyash considers the missed opportunity for Ayd Akhtar’s Disgraced to challenge Islamphobia and the intersection of oppressions.

In this installment, Michael Lueger examines historical and contemporary depictions of Muslims in Western drama. 

Playwright Joseph D’Ambrosi advocates the need for Christian theatre artists to reevaluate censoring plays for the sake of faith-based themes.

Henrik Eger reports on the trajectory of the Catholic docudrama Full of Grace from vision of the late Bishop Joseph Sullivan of Brooklyn to the stage in Philadelphia.

Dancer Chloe Woggon discusses her performing a dance in front of an audience, in which she had an metaphysical experience.

Actor Billy McEntee discusses his faith and his experience performing as a choir member in Playwrights Horizons' production of The Christians.

Puppeteer James Godwin explores the philosophical and spiritual implications of puppetry.

Some could argue that a play like Burq Off is not the right place to begin to understand the world of the Muslim Diaspora in Europe... But Manzoor herself provides some of that context, throwing statistics into her monologues almost as if her drama were a form of journalism.

Could the theater offer to both theater artists and theatergoers a kind of substitute for the awe they felt as children towards a religion that they no longer can as readily accept intellectually or morally?

Martha Steketee interviews dramaturg Jill Rafson about the process of developing The Mysteries, described as “48 playwrights and 54 actors retelling the entirety of the Bible in a single night.”

Alice Stanley Jr. discusses her experience at a workshop of Ariel Luckey's solo performance Amnesia, and the talkback which followed.

Dani Snyder-Young reviews Silk Road Rising's world premiere of Motti Lerner's Paulus, and explores the modern ramifications for a play about religious inclusivity in Israel.

Lily Janiak takes a look at San Franisco-based Mugwumpin’s The Great Big Also as it explores the new frontier: what that meant to the first American settlers, and what the frontier means now.

Hannah Hessel writes about the intersection of her Jewish and artistic identities, and how the decline of Jewish theatre companies is encouraging artists to create their own work.

Playwright Catherine Trieschmann examines the clash between her theatrical taste for sinner and her real life taste for saints.