Animationstheater als Medium des Wortes Gottes

Abstract

Theatre has played an important role in the preaching of the Church since the time it entered into the space of faith a long time ago, creating its own forms called the religious, sacral, catholic or liturgical theatre. Especially today, in the times of visual reality, the evangelical function of theatre has been widely appreciated, mainly due to the language of images it utilizes. There has always been high demand for words animated by images and the Holy Scriptures provide readers with them in abundance. Word and image, as content carriers, activate the listener/ spectator, encourage him/ her to take an intellectual effort, engage personally, reflect on God’s words and their impact on an individual’s everyday life, teaching listening and helping hear not only the voice of God, but also of another human being. Hence, theatre as a medium of the evangelical truth can be an instrument used to improve an individual, rendering him/ her convinced about the primacy of spiritual values, sensitizing him/ her toward the truth, teaching maintaining objectivity, taking responsibility for the word and differentiating between true/false and right/wrong.

This article aimed to demonstrate the animation theatre as an attractive and useful – particularly in the contemporary social and cultural context – tool for preaching the Word of God within and beyond liturgy as well as to formulate postulates for the theory and practice of church preaching taking into account the animation theatre. The following research methods were used in the work: analysis of the ecclesiastical documents and available publications about theatrical animation, sometimes comparative method and synthesis of the results from this research. The fundamental conclusion of the studyis worded as follows: Whereas resorting to the theatrical forms in preaching the Good News beyond the liturgy raises no objections, implementing them into it directly is considered questionable and even controversial. For this reason, whenever elements of theatre are utilized in liturgical celebrations, the liturgical norms have to be observed precisely so that to avoid any abuses, and primarily one has to remember that the Eucharist is not a theatre, but God’s meeting with His people.