RELIGIOUS DRAMA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 June 1938, Page 8

RELIGIOUS DRAMA

“If anybody tries to write a sincere play about Christianity,” said Miss Dorothy Sayers, the novelist, in a recent address, “it is always some pious person who is the first to cry: this is blasphemous, or undesirable, or undignified. Then people are so timorous about Christ Himself. There is a fatal tendency to make representations of Him, books about Him, so dull. And yet nobody who met Him in the days of His human life ever found Him dull. No one would imagine that He had been publicly hanged as a highly dangerous Person from the kind of things people are are to write about Him nowadays. And the reason why He is so timidly represented is that if one tries to do anything at all arresting, pious persons are the first to be offended. At one time the Church and the drama were allies, and there was no timidity, no lack of humour in the medieval religious play. If it was his cue, Herod was allowed to come on the stage and rage, without any consideration for the feelings of people who might be shocked to hear Biblical figures raging on the public stage. Nowadays it was incredibly difficult to get people to allow anything arresting or funny on the stage, if it had to do with religion. The unfortunate result was that the theatre was as much afraid of the Church as the Church was of the theatre.”