The Last Fire: Cormac McCarthy, Religion, and Embodied Performance

Drawing from the work of William Robert (Unbridled: Studying Religion in Performance), Cia Sautter (The Performance of Religion: Seeing the sacred in the Theatre), and others, I propose to present a paper inquiring into the experience of adapting and directing the first staged adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's final novel Stella Maris (as part of my doctoral dissertation at Columbia University). This play is ensconced within a more traditional dissertation manuscript asking whether or not McCarthy ought to be considered a "religious" writer and is a way to investigate this question(s) by other means, namely through the body in the context of live performance. Additionally, I am not only the director but am the one completing the adaptation. The final performance also contains 20 minutes of original film footage that I and small team are shooting on location later this spring in Arizona, Montana, the Yukon, and the Boundary Waters of far northern Minnesota. These filmed pieces are intended to expand the thematic and emotional scope of the play as well as to solicit wilderness itself into the theatre. Also of note: the title of the play -- The Last Fire -- differs from the novel's title (although this titular phrase comes directly from the last page of the book) in part as a way to acknowledge that this is not a "purist" adaptation; however, neither is it so loose as to be deemed "based on." It is a faithful adaptation, albeit not entirely straightforward. The play premieres in Phoenix in November and if those in charge of this unit wish, my team and I could bring the show to one of San Diego's smaller theatres (perhaps "The Light Box") for a one-night only show. This would give those audience members present for this paper the chance to see the show in its totality. Because my dissertation regarding whether or not McCarthy ought to be considered a religious writer is read viz-a-viz the work of philosopher of religion Mark C. Taylor, I do ultimately conclude that McCarthy is a religious writer of a more Dionysian sort. As Taylor writes early on in defining religion in his path-breaking 2007 book After God, "It is important to emphasize at the outset that this definition of religion identifies two interrelated moments: one that structures and stabilizes and one that destructures and destabilizes. These two moments are inseparable and alternate in a kind of quasi-dialectical rhythm." Following Taylor, I conclude that McCarthy is a religious writer in the second sense; in the "destabilizing" sense/moment. This is important as it relates to the body in general and the play in particular, and is part of why a body-including method of inquiry is relevant and necessary. In other words, this second ("destabilizing") “moment" of religion is particularly relevant to theatre, dance, and movement pieces moreover because of the fact that this destabilizing moment is so difficult to represent linguistically in scholarly (or for that matter any) textual format. One is reminded here of a line from Alfred Schutz (which Maxine Greene was fond of quoting), namely that "Every word has an aura of meaning that words themselves cannot express, but which gesture(s) can." Applying Schutz's sensibility to Taylor's definition, we could say that religion – especially in its destabilizing mode – has auras of meaning which words themselves cannot express but that bodily performance (sometimes) can. Lastly, I would advocate for this paper by noting that audience members will have the chance to hear from a practitioner-scholar about a recently completed creative endeavor; something which may not only prove relevant intellectually, but inspiring to their own projects, scholarly or otherwise.