Last night I went to see Sarah Ruhl's Passion play at a church in Clinton hill. I biked back over the bridge. No other people were there. Just me, the bridge, the moon, a couple of cars and the soothing lights of the skyline. I thought about the play and the division of church and state and how the roles we play effect who we really are. I wondered what it would be like to play Mary Magdalene year after year (or Virgin Mary, which might be worse). I wondered if anyone still believes in god the way people used to. And how this image is always changing. Maybe one little girl somewhere imagines god to be a big teddy bear with a candy stomach, while her mother pictures him as the man from the Dolce and Gabana perfume ads. It seems like the contradictive quality of repressive religion is the fact that religion allows or forces complete freedom to imagine, yet any form of vivid imagination is pronounced as the greatest sin of all.We live in a world of declining imagination. Thankfully there are people like Sarah Ruhl who know how to keep it alive.
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