Over terskelen fra estetikk til religion:

Et forslag til en utvidet definisjon av «religiøst teater»

Sammendrag

Theatre has long served as a medium through which religious ideas are expressed, often by staging traditional myths and doctrines tied to institutional belief systems. This connection between theatre and religion has been well-documented in multiple scholarly discourses. More recently, scholars have also explored how certain performances evoke spiritual experiences through theatrical staging. However, contemporary research on aesthetic-religious experiences in performance tends to avoid the term «religious theatre» unless the work is explicitly connected to organized religion and communal belief.

This article challenges that limitation by examining The Disorder of Desire (2022) and Einkvan (2024), two Norwegian performances that operate outside conventional religious frameworks. Drawing on a broader definition of religion as engagement with narrative worlds involving superhuman forces, and using the concept of immanent transcendence, the analysis explores how these works construct religious meaning and offer audiences experiences that may be understood as religious in nature. The aim is to propose a more inclusive understanding of «religious theatre»—one that reflects contemporary shifts in the study of religion and aesthetics.