Well, we just had the first session of "Religion and Theater" and it was, well, amazing. First sessions of classes are usually awkward and formal with lots of boring organizational stuff from the instructor. Not this one! In 100 minutes we managed to:
• do some warm-up stretches (like an acting class) and some interactive walking exercises so we'd become comfortable with the space and with each other
• introduce the themes of the course and discuss the syllabus, requirement, materials, etc. (I'll be happy to send you the syllabus if you're interested.)
• break the class up into six groups who had 15 minutes to "invent a religion" - a 3-minute skit with narration
• watch the strikingly creative performances of the skits
• my synthesis of the themes and issues about religion which came up in the skits (it was all there: afterlife, ritual, community, love, worship, syncretism, new age, esotericism, sacraments, rites of passage, faces in the clouds, money, etc.)
• C's whirlwind introduction to Euripides, whose play The Bacchae we read for the next class
It was fantastic, the energy and enthusiasm growing steadily as we went from movement to discussion to improv to performance to analysis ... it makes the courses I usually teach, sitting around a table with a text, seem monotonous by comparison!
Actually, the six skits were so clever - remember that the students didn't know each other, had not time to think about this beforehand, and were given the simplest instructions - that I wish I'd had a video camera. Well, at least I can describe them to you:
The first group announced the appearance of an unknown religion deep within all of us, called "the." An initiate to "The ceremony" was baptized and went through the shapes of the letters T, h and e (the first looking like a crucifixion, the second like prayer, the last like yoga) before being surrounded by worshipers chanting the the the the in enthusiastic crescendo.
The second group presented a television informercial for "Astro-Yoganomics," a new synthesis of yoga, color therapy, reiki, crystals, massage and organic food. "Self + Health = Wealth" was their formula, and you can get their free DVD cost-free on the Shopping Network.
The third group had some students come upon a table at a Religion Fair where they discovered "Transhumanism," a movement offering immortality by "saving yourself on a disk." Your body may die, but your identity, if uploaded to their server, will survive forever (or as long as you've paid for). You can sign up and get confirmation on your cellphone.
The fourth group had a priest of the Cloudite Temple take a supplicant to ask the clouds - two women standing on chairs making wavy motions with their arms - for guidance. Invoking the pictures we all saw in the clouds as children (you say you see a boat, but I see a kitten), they taught us that the clouds know that each of us is different and yet the same.
The fifth group presented the Superfun Love-Everyone Fellowship, a circle of people who hugged each other and said "I love you" before tucking into a big cake; their secret handshake was forming your fingers into the shape of half a heart, seeking others.
The final group presented, in television news format, the first gay marriage in a subsection of a faction of a branch of a Protestant sect, version 2.0 b. The partners had to vow to be faithful until the other's financial status became problematic, and not to adopt children.
Is it just me, or is this amazing? Wonderfully creative, a fascinating cross-section of students' understandings of what religions are about, and of the different contexts in which they appear. And, as I said (my improv moment) as soon as they finished, they really did touch on a remarkable number of key features of religion as studied and lived. Wow! I don't think I've ever been as excited (I want to use colloquialisms here like psyched or buzzed or pumped) at the start of a class, probably because I've never had the chance to do this kind of collaborative course before, not to mention one in which we can do things with our bodies as well as our minds, and where the instructors feel for each other like members of the Superfun Love-Everybody Fellowship!
P.S. The Bacchae is going to wreck havoc with the cheery understandings of religion so far discussed...! Max Weber, who argued that it was the job of the teacher to provide "inconvenient facts," would approve.
