Religious Theatre: A Research on Contemporizing Form and Content

In Iran and many other countries of the world, varieties of religious theaters have been created based on numinous and spiritual principles and beliefs, and believe in Eternity which have inveterate origins and bases and even some of them are ritual; Theater Ritual Origin has emphasized on religious roots and bases of theater, which have been called social, cultural, communicational, and artistic institutions. These relations and correlations are numerous and complicated and have been reflected in “Theory of Ritual Origin of Theater Art”; some contemporary heater theoreticians, including Anton Artho, have considered maintenance of ritual nature of theater art to be important and necessary in order to preserve theater in the contemporary time. On the other hand, by passage of time and passing (following) Renaissance, modernism to post-modernism periods, like religious cinema, religious theater has played an important and effective role in different levels of society too and has found many spectators; parameters and dimensions of modernism and post-modernism ages in the society have challenged its entity. One of the significant backgrounds of new theories of theater art has been formed around tendency to “theme” of theatre art and or tendency to “system”. This issue has become more important in the twentieth century and caused some new and current movements in theater art…. Knowing two concepts and issues of “theme” and “system” respectively, “authenticity (originality) and content “and “authenticity of shape or form” and quality and quantity of their counter-fight in the twentieth century and also knowing the characteristics and specifications of each of these two counter-fight movements, are two most significant and major areas of investigation, research, and criticizing new theories in the art of theater. In the present research, based on various written sources-while noticing the status of religious theater in contemporary (modern) times- necessity of re-thinking and criticism in formic (technical) and thematic aspects and elements have been emphasized; and also, it has been considered necessary to transform and create its formic elements by “Modernization” and to analyze and review its thematic elements based on “Hermeneutic approach”. Not only modernization is a beneficial concept to criticize both form and content of theater, but also it relates to what have been called social determinism of art by sociologists. Some sociologists believe that art and literature, shape of form of an artistic work are connected to modern necessities. In other words, social determinism affects creative modernization of artistic work. It should be noted that selected hermeneutical approach, means perception, theory and practice of interpretation-explication and introducing with it is very necessary for producers of religious theaters. Without this introduction, it might that a deep distance be created between content of the theater and spectators’ perception, understanding, interpretation, and explication. This study is based on six new definitions of hermeneutic science which have been stated by the celebrated master of this discourse, Richard, A. Palmer (1968) and “Modernization” concept of Yan Kat 4 (1964) has been used to criticize form (shape).