The Role of Religious Figures in Modern American Drama Leonard Troy Appling

Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2010 Political Priests: The Role of Religious Figures in Modern American Drama Leonard Troy Appling Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES POLITICAL PRIESTS: THE ROLE OF RELIGIOUS FIGURES IN MODERN AMERICAN DRAMA By LEONARD TROY APPLING A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2010 The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Troy Appling defended on August 5, 2010. ____________________________________ S.E. Gontarski Professor Directing Dissertation ____________________________________ Neil Jumonville University Representative ____________________________________ John Fenstermaker Committee Member ____________________________________ Karen Laughlin Committee Member Approved: ________________________________________________ R.M. Berry, Chair, Department of English The Graduate School has verified and approved the above‐named committee members. ii To my family, especially Marie, whose encouragement and patience made this possible. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply indebted to the following people for their roles in making this project a reality: To my committee members—Neil Jumonville, John Fenstermaker, and Karen Laughlin—who graciously allowed me to pelt them with questions, in some cases for half a decade. To Stan Gontarski, whose direction shows throughout, for convincing me that theory and performance studies can be fun. To Carolyn, Dustin, Jared, Tiffany, and the rest of the English Department who listened and tweaked along the way. To the faculty at the University of Memphis, especially Thomas Carlson, who convinced me to shift continents and countries, and Gene Plunka, who got me hooked on modern drama—even the Absurdists. To Ralph Warren and Robert Woods at ACC, who with one well‐used skull convinced me that the dramatic, not the digital, was the path for me. To the church families in Covington, Keystone, Starke, Tallahassee, and Villa Rica, whose support and prayers were a source of constant encouragement. (And to Chris, Katie, Hank, Howard, Dustin, Don, and Jim, whose skillful combination of song and snark bolstered me through prelims and prospectus.) To the playwrights in this study, whose works have provided inspiring, thought‐ provoking, and sometimes controversial discussions in both my own home and in the culture at large. Finally, to my family, who kept me focused and sane throughout most of the process. Thank you all. Your passion shows in every word. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ................................................................................................................................. vi 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 2. PRIEST AS PRAGMATIST ........................................................................................... 21 3. MINORITY MINISTERS ............................................................................................... 45 4. PRESCRIPTIVE PREACHERS AND SEMANTIC SAINTS ..................................... 79 5. PARANOID PASTORS ................................................................................................. 100 6. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 121 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 128 Biographical Sketch ............................................................................................................ 140 v ABSTRACT Understanding religious imagery and its uses on stage is essential to interpreting drama, beginning as it did in the sacred rituals of ancient Greece. In post‐World‐War‐II America, playwrights divested religious elements of their sacredness, using them as signifiers of secular humanism instead, in order to construct or critique ideological tenets central to the American consciousness. This study examines the relation on the modern stage between religion (both formal and civil) and the concept of “America” in the works of James Baldwin, Bill C. Davis, Christopher Durang, Diane Shaffer, and John Patrick Shanley, who each used religion to create conformity with (or critique of) the sense of American exceptionalism that dominated the post‐WWII period. This study focuses on the characteristics of the clergy depicted by these playwrights: pragmatism, marginalization, prescription, and paranoia. While narrow in scope, the thematic concerns these characters represent echo other religious elements such as those of Arthur Miller’s Crucible or Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice. Each of the playwrights in this study attempt to re‐code the religious signs—in this case, their characters—to effect an understanding in the audience that these people represent a larger social commentary. Building on theatre anthropology and semiotics, especially the work of Victor Turner, Peter Brook, and Keir Elam, as well as theorists of American civil religion such as Robert Bellah, this study will demonstrate the ways religion has been used on stage to define American ideology, as well as establish the link between dramatic clergy and the larger societal figures they represent. vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION When told that Jesus forgave the adulterous woman in the Gospels, the title nun of Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You responds, “That was merely a political gesture. In private Christ stoned many women taken in adultery” (400). The Sister’s suggestion that Jesus conflated religion and politics was not a new theme. Indeed, the historical Jesus was executed precisely because of his religious‐ political connection. In America, the study of religion’s influence on politics and vice versa had interested many scholars and practitioners in the years following World War II. In fact, the intersection of these two social elements had been explored as early as Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Robert Bellah posited in his defining article “Civil Religion in America” that: Although matters of personal religious belief, worship, and association are considered to be strictly private affairs, there are, at the same time, certain common elements of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share. These have played a crucial role in the development of American institutions and still provide a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life, including the political sphere. This public religious dimension is expressed in a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals that I am calling the American civil religion. (171) 1 Arthur Miller, via such religiously‐themed works as The Creation of the World and Other Business, its musical version Up from Paradise, Resurrection Blues, and especially The Crucible, established himself as a master of this secular‐sacred interaction. He was one of the first to consistently critique the American social and political scene, with its conflation of secular and civil religious symbols. (Although a similar mode exists for The Emperor Jones, Eugene O’Neill’s play emphasized the use of religion specifically for economic oppression, rather than political.) Miller’s plays problematized religious figures, divesting them of their sacred veneer and humanizing them into fallible characters. By pointing out the flaws in the characters and stories, such plays were subversively critiquing the cultural ideology which had in the past used these icons as a moral foundation or imperative. In so doing, Miller fundamentally altered sacred religion’s role on the American stage and left a legacy that echoed in the works of the next generation of socially‐conscious playwrights such as James Baldwin, Bill C. Davis, Christopher Durang, Diane Shaffer, and John Patrick Shanley. In America, art at the border of culture, politics, and religion culminated with Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un‐American Activities (HUAC). Any element that conflicted with the definition of “America” carefully constructed by the Committee was seen as subversive and subject to censure and/or prosecution. Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, and others—in an effort to protect the sanctity of art, or what Walter Benjamin termed its “aura”—rebelled against this homogenization of ideology and expression. In order to avoid arousing suspicion (or in Miller’s case with The Crucible, to highlight the futility thereof), these artists began reintegrating traditional images and ideas—especially of a religious or “patriotic” nature. One did not generally suspect Boris and Natasha to reside in between the Cleavers and the Hardy Boys, so it followed that popular media—including theatre—became not only entertainment, but a template of sorts defining the “gospel” of patriotism, as well as a badge of honor for their creators. Artists and writers who could speak the vernacular of American 2 exceptionalism were less likely to become targets of HUAC and other similar movements. This thematic conformity resulted in increased religious symbolism even in plays otherwise distinctly irreligious or anti‐religious, such as the Eve symbolism in Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman. Beginning in the 1960s, as the

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