St. Therese and Drama

January 21, 1895, the feast of St. Agnes, was the feast-day in Carmel of Therese’s sister, Mother Agnes of Jesus (Pauline Martin), who was then prioress.  It was the custom for the community to celebrate the feast day of the prioress with special festivities, in which the novices played a leading role.  For Mother Agnes’s feast in 1894, Therese had already written and produced her first play about Joan of Arc, The Mission of Joan of Arc, or The Shepherdess of Domremy Listening to Her Voices.  At the end of 1894, for the community’s Christmas recreation, Therese wrote and produced her second play, The Angels at Jesus’ Manger.  Just three weeks later, for Mother Agnes’s feast, she produced a second play about Joan: Joan of Arc Accomplishing Her Mission. 

Since Celine had just entered in September 1894, four of the five Martin daughters were together again, and Celine played the role of St. Catherine.  By accident, the scene of Joan’s martyrdom became a little too realistic:   Celine testified that Therese “was almost burned alive when a fire accidentally broke out. Upon Mother Prioress’ order not to move whilst others strove to extinguish the fire around her, she remained calm and still amid the danger, offering to God the sacrifice of her life,” as she told Celine later.  (Celine’s testimony in the Apostolic Process). The community received this play with enthusiasm, and for perhaps the first time Therese, who played Joan, was considered something of a “star” among the Carmelites, but she understood even better, as a result, the futility of human praise.

The text of the play is online thanks to the Web site of the Archives of the Carmel of Lisieux and the generosity of the Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars.  For a full understanding of Therese’s plays I strongly recommend consulting the book The Plays of St. Therese of Lisieux, for its General Introduction by Bishop Guy Gaucher, O.C.D. and the individual introductions to each play will greatly enrich your understanding of these least known of Therese’s writings.

Over a period of about three years toward the end of her life, St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897) was asked by her Carmelite superiors to compose eight “theatrical pieces” for special occasions in her convent. She did not consider them mere trivial amusements. On the contrary, Thérèse invested herself wholeheartedly in the writing and performance of these little dramas, which provided a welcome opportunity to articulate her growing spiritual insights and share them with her religious community. Here we find echoes of her great themes, some were developed at greater length than anywhere else in her writings: Mary of Nazareth and Joan of Arc, humility and the “little way,” confidence and love, and so much more.

To understand the significance of these theatrical recreations in the Carmelite monasteries of the [Teresian] reform, we must look all the way back to the Spanish foundress of the Reform herself, Teresa of Jesus (1515 – 1582). But Carmel itself is situated in a much older tradition of monastic life in general. Thus, for example, the Saxon nun Hrotswitha of Gandersheim (ca. 935 – ca. 1000) “wrote for her religious legends in prose which were acted in the refectory, as well as comedies which were performed in the convent and which imitated those of Terence, but in a Christian spirit; this, by the way, sheds some light on the role of theatre in the convents: in Gandersheim–as in England, where the Venerable Bede alludes to theatrical paraliturgies on Easter Night—theater was considered a means of both education and entertainment.”

St. Teresa of Avila, blessed as she was with good sense and a healthy realism, knew how austere the life she proposed for her daughters was and did not want them going to extremes and becoming “melancholic.” A life of continual prayer, solitary and silent, in a cloistered community of twenty women or so, is possible given God’s grace and a true vocation, but only under such conditions of equilibrium as the Teresian Constitutions prescribe with an art born of experience. Simplicity and beauty of surroundings, a large enough flower garden, regular manual labor, daily communal recreation, feasts at various times of the year, must all contribute to assure that the rigors of the seclusion, the austerities of the penances and fastings, are freely lived in a joyful atmosphere.

“The bowstring cannot always be drawn taut and it is necessary… to give to the cares of the soul and the struggles of the mind some respite, a kind of truce, a rest and a repose,” wrote Teresa’s dear disciple, Fr. Jeronimo Gracian, in 1608. Joy, smiling, and even laughter appear quite often in the Spanish saint’s writings. She couldn’t bear the thought that her sisters might “cloak themselves” in a rigid piety. Her letters abound in flashes of humor that reveal an interior good cheer in the midst of turmoil and worries which were never lacking. There is no shortage of choice anecdotes on this subject: “Once, while visiting a convent, the Foundress heard that the Mother Superior had forbidden the telling of jokes or comic stories at recreation, on account of the vanity this might lead to. `My God!’ she cried out, `what have we come to? As if we weren’t stupid enough by nature! Here we are wanting to become that way by grace!””’

Daily recreation is an integral part of Carmelite life. It is not pure relaxation, in the sense of “letting loose” to compensate for habitual restraint. At recreation with her sisters, the Carmelite does not set aside that union with God which is the heart of her life. Every day, for an hour at midday and an hour after the evening meal, there is time for a sisterly exchange, a joyous sharing. La Madre herself expressed her joy in these recreations, and like a good Castilian she wanted them to involve singing and dancing. But, in addition to the everyday, there come liturgical and community feast days to break the monotony . . . Christmas, which celebrates the Mystery of the Incarnation, is especially emphasized. What we would now call “paraliturgies” are drafted. Thus, Teresa of Avila praises Sr. Isabella of Jesus: “It’s extraordinary the talent this child has, for with some drab little shepherds and some little nuns and a statue of Our Lady belonging to her, there isn’t a feast in which she doesn’t create something with these in her hermitage or at recreation, along with some verses for which she provides a lovely tune, all of which leave us amazed.” In the same letter, she continues: “Most pleasing to me were the verses that came from down there [i.e., Seville]. I sent the first ones to my brother and some of the others, for they were not all of equal merit. I think you could show them to the old saint,” telling him that this is how you spend your recreation, always speaking the language of perfection, and it is right to provide some diversion for the one to whom you owe so much.”

The process of using popular Spanish melodies and changing their lyrics in order to sing of the soul’s relationship with God, was in great vogue during Spain’s “Golden Century.” Teresa and John of the Cross both used it, and the custom tom has spread to Carmels everywhere, even down to our own time. A kind of theater arose from the merging of this style with another tradition: representations of the lives of the saints–especially the martyrs–when the community celebrated their feasts. St. John of the Cross, himself a great poet, was introduced to the customs of his discalced Carmelite sisters during the time of his stay at Valladolid. Once he had become prior at the Granada monastery (1582-1585), he arranged to have the lives of the saints and “the Virgin Mary’s entrance into Bethlehem” presented for his students beneath the galleries of the cloister. Then, later, at recreation, he would ask the novices to put together a dramatic improvisation on whatever mystery had been presented to them. They were “a draft of very elementary pastoral drama,” wrote Fr. Tomas Alvarez of these Teresian theatricals.

Garcia de la Concha and Alvarez Pellitero feel free to speak of a “convent theater, in the sense that the novices would act such parts as Mary, Joseph, a shepherd or a choir of shepherds to celebrate the Nativity. These authors add that two surviving Festecicas del Nacimiento written by Mother Maria of St. Albert prove that the nuns of the Valladolid convent had produced other Christmas plays “on a larger theatrical scale”–sort of like pastoral plays. These remarks will provide a context for the following anecdote: A highly prejudiced visitor asked our Mother to see him in the parlor. She went out to him, accompanied by Sr. Anne of St. Bartholomew. There, this honest fellow confessed being frightened by the penitent life of the Discalced sisters. He pitied them, he said, and begged God to help them endure. As he saw it, there could be nothing but scenes of desolation and torture behind the monastery grille. “Tell me, Mother Teresa,” he asked, “what are the nuns you keep locked up here doing at the moment?” “To tell the truth, sir,” the saint answered with a smile, in her ordinary tone of voice, “you have good reason to pity them. They’re all absolutely disconsolate. Here Christmas is right around the corner and they don’t yet know their parts for the comedy they’re going to put on!” “But what are you saying, Mother Teresa!” the startled visitor exclaimed. “Do you mean that you put on plays in here?” “But of course,” our Mother sweetly replied. The conversation came to an end and the visitor departed. Sr. Anne of St. Bartholomew nevertheless allowed herself then to remark, “To be honest, my mother, I was quite pained to hear you tell that gentleman that we organize performances and entertainment inside the cloister!” Thus there developed a tradition of Carmelite recreations which flourished in all the Carmels of the Teresian reform form and which is attested by the book, Papier d’ exaction, still in use at the Lisieux Carmel in the late 19th century. Here is an excerpt from that book:

A sense of gaiety seemed to them to be one of the requisites of a perfect Carmelite. They themselves went to the expense of arranging little celebrations and composed canticles according to the spirit of the solemn feast days. The Sisters insisted that the recreations should consist of representations of the holy mysteries and acts from the life stories of the saints. To this end, the novices had to carefully reenact the life of the saint whose feast was to be celebrated, and each would then speak out of the fullness of her heart all that was fitting for whichever role she had been assigned. Like anything that might detract from their regular duties, these festivities and performances never took place on ordinary working days. The intention of our holy foundresses in establishing these pious activities ties (which so clearly reflect their Spanish origin) was, above all, to sanctify the hours of relaxation and to impress more vividly the holy mysteries on heart and soul.

This text, which Sr. Therese of the Child Jesus had to act, joins the two essential elements of Carmelite recreation in fidelity to the spirit of the Foundress: relaxation and edification. Every French Carmel then, inherited these traditions of recreation and, over time, each developed its own characteristic ways of implementing the tradition, so that we naturally find some variations from one monastery to another. But the spirit–and very often the outward form–was faithfully handed down through four centuries. Everywhere, allowing for a few nuances, one finds a kind of hierarchy of recreation pieces. Among the liturgical feasts, Christmas is the dominant one. Then came the community’s feasts: the prioress’s own feast day; the feast day of the lay sisters (July 29, for St. Martha); the novices’ feast day (December 28, for the Holy Innocents), when relaxation was more apparent.