Inside the Tradition of Jesuit Theater with Fr. George Drance, SJ

AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast · Nov 23, 2022 · 46m

Back at some of the very first Jesuit-run schools in the 1500s, teachers would work with students to put on plays. This tradition was called “Jesuit drama,” and it was seen as a fantastic way to accomplish several educational goals at once. The plays themselves were in Latin, so that helped the students learn the language. Plays required memorization and skilled rhetoric, both big values at the time. And the subject matter of these early dramas were Catholic morals and doctrine, so they were seen as central to religious instruction, too. The rich tradition of Jesuits involved in theater has…