Religion and theatrical drama, an introduction / Larry D. Bouchard, Charles A. Gillespie -- Go and sin no more: the afterlife as moral teaching in Italian catholic educational theatre / Daniela Cavallaro -- Gertrude Stein and the metaphysical avant-garde / Dana Tanner-Kennedy -- Toward witnessing the other: Syria, Islam and Frans van der Lugt / Michael VanZandt Collins -- Theodramatic themes and showtime in Nassim Soleimanpour's White rabbit red rabbit / Charles A. Gillespie -- Nora's ironic longing for Christlike love: self-sacrifice, self-love and the "religion of Torvald" in Ibsen's A doll house / David V. Urban -- Religion and the limits of metatheatre in Our town and Sunday in the park with George / Larry D. Bouchard -- Bewitching power: the virtuosity of gender in Dekker and Massinger's The virgin marty / Tom Fish -- "Fantastic tricks before high heaven", Measure for measure and performing triads / Emily Bryan -- "Beautiful and new": the logic of complementarity in Hedwig and the angry inch / Adam Beyt

With an introduction on how to redefine our thinking about religion and theatrical drama, these nine essays on contemporary and classic plays rehabilitate the link between theatrical performance and dramatic stories for the study of religion. These new and distinctively interdisciplinary perspectives will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of religion, theology, theatre and performance studies, literary studies, and philosophy