**Preface**

We are pleased to offer *Religion and Theatrical Drama* as a book of essays, which recently appeared as a Special Issue of *Religions*. This project began as an attempt to reinvigorate dialogue between studies of religion and theatrical drama. We noticed how dramatic terms—such as performativity, character, role, story, and improvisation, to name a few—had become ubiquitous in comparative and critical approaches to the study of religion. Likewise, we noticed how theatrical drama continues to stage theological themes, sacred stories, divine revelations and conundrums, and religious and ethical dilemmas.

These chapters take particular interest in the ways that theatrical drama interacts dialectically with religions. Religious phenomena share family resemblances with theatrical drama as an artistic genre, one that entails the co-presence of actors and audiences in events characterized by their people, actions, scripts, and practices. Theatrical drama illuminates contested contrasts regarding matters such as social construction and givenness, hermeneutics and pragmatic wisdom, integrity and impersonation, repetition and difference, distortion and disclosure. Meanwhile, plays in performance bring together discussions about God and the gods, trustworthy and dangerous traditions, identities and ethics, and the stories that communities choose to celebrate or perhaps refuse to tell or interpret.

Religion and drama have been inherently contested areas for research. When we began this project, we invited interpretive papers working at the intersection between "religious" matters in theatrical drama (widely conceived to include literary-dramatic classics and new plays, music dramas, political theatre, pageantry, devised performances, and more) and studies of religious thought, history, and practice. Inspired by drama's metatheatrical reflexivity (that is, when plays and performances become aware of themselves as works of theatre), we invited reconsiderations of what may be seen as theatrical theologies and dramaturgical methods for the study of religion. Provoked by drama's cosmic conflicts and comic disruptions, we also invited reconsiderations of text and performance, story and spectacle, from varied and new approaches. We realized that theatrical drama generates exciting ways of being engaged by religion-related questions that do not need to be reduced to such binaries as secular/religious, theory/praxis, and drama-as-literature/theatre-as-performance.

We offer our deep thanks to our contributors as well as to our editorial partners at *Religions*, including too many to name here. But we are especially grateful for the invitation to conduct this project and the patience and support during our discussions with Bingjin Pinky He and Daphne Liao. To borrow the words of Prospero's concluding prayer to the audience from Shakespeare's *The Tempest*: "With the help of your good hands: gentle breath of yours my sails must fill, or else my project fails, which was to please." We hope you enjoy the essays and the show!

> **Charles A. Gillespie, Larry D. Bouchard** *Editors*
