13 A Public of One: Jesuit Discipline in the Theatre of the World Will Daddario University of Minnesota /Augsburg College “Father Edmund Campion, when in England, constantly confess[ed] the Catholic Faith, [but as a result] he was conducted to the gallows, where, as in a public arena, he represented the great spirit of Christ, and said to the Spectators: Non est theatralibus scenis vita nostra dissimili” (Ottonelli 354). 1 This Latin phrase, “A theatrical scene and our life are not dissimilar,” uttered by the Jesuit Campion before his death, and cited by another Jesuit priest, Giovanni Domenico Ottonelli, in his seemingly antitheatrical treatise, offers a rich paradox for theatre historians and scholars of performance. On the one hand, these words would seem to express an elective affnity between the Jesuit Order and theatrical practice, as if the Jesuits recognized a harmony between acting in accordance with the Word of God and the labor of the actor to interpret a script upon a stage. On the other hand, when placed in the context of other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jesuit writings, this affnity between the Jesuit Order and theatrical practice stands out as an odd exception. In the very document where this reference to Campion arises, for example, the Jesuit author hurls calumny and invective toward actors of his day, seemingly to dissuade them from continuing to lead what he describes as a wanton lifestyle. Far from constituting an irresolvable paradox, however, I believe that this polarity establishes both a molar and a molecular dimension of theatrical practice within the Jesuit Order. Whereas the molar, or wide-angle, dimension presents a starkly antagonistic stance toward actors and acting, and it is usually this dimension that frst appears when encountering Jesuit writings in the archives, the molecular, or microscopic, dimension presents a more nuanced understanding of Jesuit performance and Jesuit theatrical life. The molecularity of Jesuit theatre appears when one pierces through the façade of Jesuit antitheatricality and maps the techniques of conversion deployed by the Jesuits, the strategic use to which Jesuits put theatrical techniques, and the performative rhetoric deployed by Jesuit authors. Instead of reading Jesuit writings as either for or against theatrical practice, then, it is helpful to engage with both the molar façade of Jesuit theatricality and the molecular repertoire of Jesuit conversion, with how Jesuit theatre appears at frst glance and then with the complex substructure beneath that surface appearance. Downloaded from http://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/ecumenica/article-pdf/4/1/13/1400727/ecumenica_4_1_13.pdf by guest on 06 February 2022