Temple: a crisis of faith

Temple is a new play by Steve Waters at the Donmar Warehouse which is a fictional account inspired by the Occupy London movement in 2011.

On 15 October 2011 Occupy London makes camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral. On 21 October 2011 a building that had kept open through floods, the Blitz and terrorist threats closes its doors. On 28 October City of London initiates legal action against Occupy to begin removing them from outside the Cathedral ...

Set in the heart of a very British crisis, the play explores a crisis of conscience, a crisis of authority and a crisis of faith.

Giles Fraser, who was at the centre of these events, writes about them in today's Guardian as exploring "a theological question that takes us back to the very foundations of the Christian faith"; the tension, inherent within the Christian faith, "between swapping the rags of the oppressed for the ermine of high office."

Fraser suggests that it is if the play captures something of this theological dynamic, with justification on both sides, that it will have succeeded.

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Neal Morse - Temple Of The Living God.

Why the Bible is box office

The Guardian has a useful summary of twentieth century religious drama as a result of several new productions which suggest that the Bible is currently box office:

'Temple by Steve Waters opens next month at the Donmar Warehouse in London ...  a fictionalised version of the clash between clergy and anti-capitalist protesters during the occupation of the piazza outside St Paul’s in 2011-12.

And, last week, Temple Church in London became a temporary stage for performances of a new production by director James Dacre of Shakespeare’s King John, in which the English monarch faces inquisition and excommunication by a cardinal sent from Pope Innocent III ...

Two recent openings at the National Theatre – a revival of Shaw’s Man and Superman and Tom Stoppard’s new play The Hard Problem – feature debates, Shavian and neo-Shavian respectively, about the likelihood of God. And the West End has just staged a revival of Peter Barnes’s 1969 comedy The Ruling Class, with James McAvoy as an English aristocrat who shocks his Anglican, Tory family by announcing that he is the Risen Christ.'

It is also interesting to compare and contrast this article with a 2012 Guardian article claiming that, 'despite its roots in ritual, religion gets barely a look-in on stage these days.'

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Pops Staples - Somebody Was Watching.