William Robert’s Unbridled: Studying Religion in Performance is both an interdisciplinary work and a novel return to basics. Examining the methodology of studying religions through the lens of dramaturgy, performance studies, and other relational disciplines, the novelty of Robert’s book lies in using the performance of a single play—Peter Schaffer’s Equus—to help shed light on how religions could be studied. Equus revolves around the psychiatrist Martin Dysart treating a young man Alan Strang admitted to his hospital. Throughout sessions with Strang, Dysart learns he created a new religion around a horse deity named Equus and fell out of the god’s favor in a fit of violence that separated Strang from the mundane world. Schaffer’s multivocal approach informs Robert’s own study, which might seem scattered at times, but the way he rehearses an introduction to religion class through Equus also comes back to the why of religious studies. Why do we study religions? What draws us to a particular idea, practice, or persona? Robert’s insistent questioning of why the field uses certain approaches over others is a return to the basics. At times, it seems as if Robert transforms a single question into many questions through different registers (his title page reads: “Unbridled or Studying Religion’s Wild Ride or What a Difference a Performance Makes or Why Me or Learning Onstage or How Not to Have Sex in a Stable or Doing Things with Imagination or Making Ways”). You know you’re in for a wild ride when the opening epigraph of the manuscript begins with Jacques Derrida and Patti Smith on the same theme.
Robert seemingly opens Unbridled in a way that sets it apart from other works in religious studies. The book is organized with theatrical terms, using “Playbill” in place of the usual “Table of Contents” and “Acts” instead of “Chapters.” Each part of his method is crafted to offer a unique way of experiencing religions. Robert even describes his decision to use endnotes instead of footnotes as a director’s choice, shaping the way he introduces his through the method he chose. Rather than assume an analytic framework from outside sources or theories, Robert uses Equus itself “as a prism” (3) which contains ways of channeling the affective energy directed toward it. Equus is a “hot” play in Schaffer’s own estimation, and had a power “that seemed to be constantly inside me, telling me where to go with it” during the rehearsal process (Peter Schaffer, The Collected Plays of Peter Schaffer, New York: Harmony Books, 1982: xiv-xv). This insistence that the play carries affective, religious forces to an audience and its performers makes it an ideal lens for examining two religions within its boundaries: that of “The Normal” and Strang’s personal religion of the horse god Equus (46). Robert introduces both his own approach as well as the common themes that Equus provides for the audience to understand itself on its own terms (12, 26).
Structurally, Robert gives Unbridled the same traditional approach of an academic work. Act 1 shows the foundational issues common to examining a new text, performance, or object of analysis. This section lays out the key methods and stakes of the chosen analytical approach. Equus acts as a test case to enact problems in the study of religion: it “makes us move: into a case’s territory, onto a case’s stage. They make us act, on their terms. . . . They perform, pedagogically, things are complicated in this case—and this case complicates things” (28). However Robert offers more questions than answers in some ways, bringing the audience to see themselves imbricated into the rehearsal of analyzing Equus in many ways alongside the psychologist Dysart. However this is only one approach among many of the refracting beams the play as a prism reveals. Indeed, Robert argues that Equus is a case, a mystery both to the characters’ understanding its psychological aspect and as work requiring investigation.
One of the most pivotal moments in Equus, Dysart’s last lines, is explored in dramaturgical terms as the final action of the play (24). Everything leads up to this single line of religious import: “There is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain. And it never comes out.” (Schaffer, 476). Dysart never finds an answer to this question, but how the performer enacts this scene charges it with different meanings and induces new and affective routes for understanding its stakes. Robert’s attention in Act 1 therefore is to show us where the chain might be staked.
Act 2 goes into the particular performative aspects and mechanisms for understanding Equus in religious studies terms. Robert relates these terms to performance studies, psychology, and affective studies to rehearse Equus for his aforementioned class. This brings the relationships between the characters in Schaffer’s play into alignment with the plot, costuming, and staging, where each element contributes to shaping how their interactions are experienced. For instance, for the scene on “masking,” Robert examines how the metal frames of the horse heads and shoes the actors wore both reveal the humanness of the performers and the majesty of the divinity the horses embodied onstage. The masks create “interspecies players . . . the masks make them: horse-actors” in a play of ritual placement (42). Robert’s attention to the ritualization of play showcases how changes in this staging might affect the overall tenor of the play, shifting its meanings, linking it to mystery religions, and “unmasking” of religious phenomena by critical thinkers (44).
Act 3 turns to the more grounded nature of Equus and how the play’s themes embody its affective religious power. From the choice of casting to the power of images for cast members, such as the hybridization of the suffering Christ in Strang’s upbringing with his devotion to horses, the religious power of each of these sets of material phenomena are intertwined with the bodies of the characters, cast, and audience members connected through the performance. Act 4 takes this to the climax of the play and its dramaturgical teleology; the ends, values, or meaning which come out of Robert’s finale invite his audience to question how we might come to terms with religious studies in new ways. Robert’s final scene/chapter ends much like this read: “Equus’s ending leaves us questioning. This book’s will too” (102). If you’re interested in bringing novel approaches and inquiries to an introduction to religious studies course, Unbridled will provide a script to help entice undergraduates to the field.
Jeremy Hanes is an independent scholar.
Jeremy Hanes
Date Of Review:
September 30, 2024