Introduction

The relationship between theatre and religion is not a relationship of metaphors. The core experience in religion has its own real substance, as does the core experience of theatre. Characterizations of theatre as fundamentally mimetic, representational, symbolic, or as, otherwise, fake ignore how theatrical performance reveals reality by objectifying pretense. In his early, pre–World War II work, theologian Paul Tillich saw the religious character of art and anticipated the development of art that would restore something genuine to European Christianity. World War II destroyed such modernist optimism, but a classic, Christian-ish faith emerged in postmodern performance. Theatre came to show that doing was always more important to religion than believing, and that in the doing, people form the reality they experience. Religion and theatre do not resemble each other. They emerge together from a single, human impetus.