Łukasz Putyra "Bibliodrama as a way of dialogue"

We consider here bibliodrama in the intercultural and interfaith use. It is an important limitation, as for instance in more homogeneous communities (common faith, common cultural background) this process can have a different sense and dynamic.

The purpose of using bibliodrama in this situation is not only to discover sacred texts, but also and even most of all to bring different people closer, to let them better know their own and other views of life, and the highest values involved in their lives. Of course the text and its meaning are still there, but in the centre are intercultural communication and interpersonal contacts.

This intercultural aspect makes these kind of bibliodramatic encounters different than “reading and acting” in a group of people with a common background, who want to better understand a text. 

I had the opportunity to take part in one workshop of this kind of bibliodrama and to help in gathering evaluation materials during over one year of the BASICS project, so I could also observe other workshops.

Now I would like to look closer at bibliodrama from the perspective of the philosophy of dialogue and philosophy of encounter. I believe that deep analysis of interpersonal encounter and communication made on this field touch the essence of the phenomenon of dialogue and on the other hand I assume that our purpose is to promote real dialogue and real knowledge about other cultures and traditions. I’m going to refer mostly to two philosophers – Martin Buber and Józef Tischner. In my opinion they are widely representative  in aspects of this problem which are important for us.

There are two, let’s say, axioms of the philosophy of dialogue. The first says that there are two completely different types of relations in our life – to objects and to other people. The second axiom says that the essence of humanity lays in being in a dialogic relation with other people, and that any description of humanity which forgets about this fact, is wrong.

The first axiom seems obvious. We often talk about “not treating people like objects”. We agree that we should follow Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. But this is not enough. It is not just about our actions, like treating people badly, manipulating, etcetera. We have to realize that dialogue is possible only when we perceive another person in a different way than we perceive objects. I’m going to develop this below.

The second axiom says that the primary way to consider a human being is in relation to another human being. The most important things in my life happen not “inside” me, not “inside” you, but between us. We never exist without relations with other people. Who we really are and who we are going to be lies in the space between us and others. So the theories of human being based primarily on “me”, my consciousness, the ideal “I”, self, do not reach the real sense of humanity. It doesn’t mean that there’s no “me” and there’s no “you”. They are and they are necessary to build relation, but what is most important for me and my life can happen only because of you, and vice versa – you are who you are only because of me.

What do we mean by “between”?

“Between” makes sense only “between people”, between me and you, not between me and objects. But also not always. Many times, living in society, we are in a group, among people. In a group, in a collective there are many people but there are often no personal relationships. Collectivity liberates [man] from loneliness, fear of the world, loss, but life between person and person seems to give up before collectivity. Collectives are very particular about the tendency to turn to each other.[1]

A good example of this fact can be a street demonstration. There the group is much more important than individuals. Being part of this kind of group you easily lose your individual identity. You are part of a group and only part of a group. You rather don’t move yourself (in the physical and psychological sense), it is the crowd that moves you. So you are more an object than a person. And other people are more objects than people

And this is not a question about identity based on nationality, religion, language etc.  It goes deeper. For instance, in the case of a political demonstration (no matter if “left” or “right”), I have no doubt that the people taking part have no problem with this kind of identity. But there’s still a question about their identity in the sense of individuality. The problem of identity rises not only when I have to find myself in a dialogue with someone different, for instance from another culture. It is even more complicated when I encounter someone just like me.

Of course, even in a crowd we can encounter others. Buber describes the situation, when he took part in a demonstration: Absorbed in the protest march, I blankly stepped together with others (…) A moment later we passed a café, in which the day before I ate together with a musician who I knew only briefly. At exactly that moment, the doors of the café opened, the musician stood in the doorway, and he saw me as if I was alone and made a gesture in my direction. Immediately it seemed to me that I was excluded from the march (…) and placed there, in front of the musician.[2]

The point is – to find a concrete person, concrete human being in a mass of people. Only then is encounter possible. I have to accept that my partner in dialogue is essentially different. Even when we fight in one way or another, and I don’t accept her or his point of view, I have to accept her or his individuality and independence. The most important thing is not to be an object for another and not to treat the other as an object.

With this comes another important element of encounter. In dialogue you have to be yourself,  not presenting yourself, not pretending to be anyone else.
We often want to make an impression on others, no matter whether it shows true or not. We must be very careful about this. If we care about real dialogue we have to be authentic and hope that the other side is authentic too. We have to show ourselves as we really are. When we pretend to be someone who we are not, when we show ourselves in a different way than we are, we simply lie, and this is a lie not about facts, but about the essence of existence, and it touches the sphere of the so-called interhuman. Any kind of pretending kills dialog.

Of course usually it is not easy to be 100% honest and open among people. Most of the time we hide something, we show only a part, we show ourselves in a “better light”, we wear masks. Sometimes we just don’t want to hurt somebody or to be hurt. One way or another, our existence among other people is always balanced between our essence and our view. It shows also very clearly how rare pure encounters are, how hard it is to achieve real dialogue with another person.

The problem is wider. We don’t only hide ourselves in our conversations or our acts with other people. We also don’t really perceive the other side of possible dialogue. Doubtless the vast majority of what is today called conversation between people should be more accurately, in the exact sense of the word, defined as a prattle. Usually people don’t talk really to each other; everyone, although turned to the other, talks in fact to a fictional instance , whose raison d'être is just to listen.[3]

As I said before, a basic requirement of a real conversation is to notice the partner as a concrete person. That means also that I have to perceive a human differently to objects, which “act” according to my will.

Usually I can perceive or experience objects as a closed whole, an entirety. I can define it, describe it precisely. When I want to describe it, I list its attributes like a shape, colour, size, location, relations with other objects, purpose, ways of use. This way I show the appearance of an object. It is important that my perception of the objects depends not only on the object itself but also on its environment, its background (also on my way of perception, but this is another story). The object is always seen against some kind of background. Without this context we couldn’t experience and describe an object, or we would do it in a completely different way (an example – black letters on the white paper).

Descriptions of humans slip out of these kinds of categories. With them we would not really describe a human but an appearance of a human.
But as objects have their appearances showed on backgrounds, people have their faces appearing on horizons. I would like to use this metaphor of “face” from two philosophers - Emmanuel Levinas and Józef Tischner. Tischner says To have the originary experience of another human being is to have an encounter[4] and To encounter is always to be “face to face” with someone.[5]

What is the face? First of all the face is not our external view. Face is not a an appearance. When you think about a visible face with eyes, nose and mouth, it is not the face which Tischner has in mind. We need to experience a view of face, but it only shows us the way to the face in exact meaning.
We should think about the face rather like we think about it, when we use expressions “to lose face” or “to keep face”. Saying that, we don’t think about a part of the human body. We think about whole human being. To “lose face” means sometimes to lose everything, to stop being a human or at least to lose a great part of our humanity. To “keep face” in some situations means to save our humanity, our authenticity, our identity.

The human face exists always in a specific horizon, which Tischner calls a horizon of drama. The name and its reference to the literary genre is not accidental. A drama is a logical sequence of events at the end of which lies the possibility of either tragedy or victory. Something is always happening in a drama, it has to be happening: words happen, events happen, life goes by. The logical space of the drama includes two extremes: final victory and final defeat. It is within this space that human life takes its course. This does not mean that one or the other extreme must necessarily find its fulfilment in the drama. (…) All this means is that victory and defeat are the possibilities among which life happens.[6]

The human drama takes place on the stage of objects and happens between people. It has its time and spaces – a space of my reference to objects and a space of my relationships with other people. These are completely different spaces, even when I use some objects in contact with other.

The horizon of human encounters shows two possibilities – tragedy and victory.

For example, when I meet a poor man on a street begging for something to eat, the first element of this experience is that there is something happening which should not happen. This constatation is the beginning of action, the beginning of a sequence of events, which depends on the people taking part in this drama.

An experience of what should and what shouldn’t wouldn’t be possible without a specific horizon, on which I “see” this poor man – without a horizon of good and evil. I couldn’t say there is something wrong about this man without an intuition of good, which he is missing. I couldn’t see him this way without the horizon of good like I couldn’t see the shadow without a light.

As encounter always takes place on the horizon of good and evil, and the good is “stronger”, is “higher” Tischner calls this horizon an agathological horizon (Greek “agathon” – good and Greek “logos” – something rational and wise).

In an encounter somebody shows me his/her face. I cannot escape this fact, I have to answer. My answer must be a concrete act (axiological level). Even when I ignore him, it will be a kind of act. My acting will lead our drama into tragedy or victory. Regardless of what I practically do, I can answer him in three ways: I can show him my face, I can cover my face with a veil or I can wear a mask. Only the first option, the face, is the correct option for dialogue. The veil and the mask are ways of escape.

The vail and the mask however, are different. We can briefly say that a veil only hides the view, whereas a mask (...) proceeds to introduce illusions, deformations, games.[7] The best way to exemplify the process of hiding face behind a veil, is shame – the most natural and spontaneous impulse.
First of all shame is a reaction of the act of another. When I am ashamed, I usually try to hide behind what we have called here a veil. The point is that someone on the other side can see my shame, the movement of hiding and the veil – a pose which I chose. However the person on the other side cannot see me.

They only know that something is wrong. They see that it is not me who is in front of them, but something I am using to hide myself.

A veil only hides the face, a mask lies. A mask, like a veil, only appears alongside another human being – in solitude both masks and veils lose all meaning. (...) The intentionality of the mask is quite twisted: it tries to create an illusion completely unlike the real state of affairs. The dishonest man tries to put on the mask of honesty, the lazy man pretends to be hardworking, the unjust one wants to seem just, the unfaithful one pretends to be faithful, etc.[8] (55)
Let’s try to summarise. We, as people, are built in relations with other people, which are, when they are what they should be, completely different than relations to objects. Most important things happen between people. Thus who we are depends on our relationships with people. I, as a unique individuality, develop thanks to you, another unique individuality, and you develop thanks to me. We are built by encounters – unique events, which change us and never leaves us the same.

Even if encountering other people is crucial for our lives, we cannot lose ourselves in this relationship, as we usually do being in a group.

To keep the dialogic relation, I have to avoid any pretence. Being in front of another, I have to answer showing my face, when another person shows me her face. These are the minimum criteria. Without that, we can be together, but our conversation will be at most two different monologues.

Knowing what is behind these words, one can say, that these are very high standards. But they have to be, as it is about our lives. In our case, when we talk about bibliodrama, it is also about the most important aspects of our lives – the highest values, our faith and a sphere which it refers to. If we want to touch God in our common encounter, we have be aware of its “quality”.

How does a bibliodrama session look from this perspective?

Before answering this question I’d like to make one point:

I don’t distinguish here so called Morenian bibliodrama and bibliolog by Peter Pitzele, although I realize a differences between them in some aspects as shown below. There’s no enough time for these distinctions, but they can be a subject of the further discussion.

So what about bibliodrama?

At first glance, especially for an external observer, it is rather opposite to a dialogic encounter. A group of people acting funny scenes, seems to be far away from dia-logos – a place of two rationalities (even emotional rationalities), two orders coming to common point.[9] There’s often chaos instead of rationality, there’s a crowd instead of you and me. Even if we communicate something, very doubtful is the possibility of finding faces here. Instead of that, we have scarves which can be used as either veils, when you are not very used to this kind of activity, feeling new and shy, or masks, when you are a professional bibliodramatist. The essence of bibliodramatic techniques is acting, pretending. So, are we, me and you still there? Doubtful.

Will we then say that bibliodrama is just a weird play, a waste of time in the issue of intercultural dialogue?

It would be too bold. Also, valuation of this phenomenon only from outside, without looking from inside, would be reductional and simply unfair.

It would be, especially taking into account the opinions of people taking part in these sessions. They describe the bibliodramatic experience as something which changes people and their view of others in a very special way, as something which brings people together what helps to see that despite cultural differences, we can share common values. They also say that it adds something more (something emotional, intuitive) to discovering sacred texts, and then it is possible not only to read and know these texts, but also feel them, live them, and be closer to them.

So, if there is something important happening in and between people during bibliodrama sessions, the situation is not so clear.[10]

And there are also some important details about dialogists’ thoughts to clarify. Most of all two of them – one that in fact there is possible a dialogue between more than just two people, and the second that acting, pretending not always means lying.

Yes, dialog is not reserved just for you and me. It is possible also between larger numbers of people. The problem is that this is much more difficult and much more risky. Three or more people means – more group power above entities, more possibility of pretending (more watchers).

There are also possible “private” encounters inside the group, when I and another person(s) are “taken” from the crowd to another “space” (like in the example with the demonstration and the musician). From my personal bibliodramatic experience I remember two such encounters very well, and in fact they are the most powerful memories from bibliodrama sessions for me, but I’m not sure, if it was thanks to the group or rather despite the group?

Another thing is acting. There are some special moments, when acting is not lying. Martin Buber writes about “truth pretence”, when we want to show something real but not present here at the moment. “Let me pretend till I become what I pretend” – these words exactly express this mystery.[11] This pretending is real pretending, not cheating. So maybe even a mask or a scarf, as in ancient theatre can play a different role? – not hiding the truth, but showing something which is most important (this way a mask can be a profile of a face)?

Role-playing has great power and potential. It helps some people to express themselves. It also helps us to give new life to characters from the sacred texts and in this way to invite them into our dialogue. Our aim is wonderful – to bring to life characters from the past and talk with them about the most important things in our lives. To show others that in fact these characters are still alive in our culture, that we still live with them, that their stories are a part of our horizon. But do we really meet this aim?

How often does this great power of role playing turn against the people and the meaning of the text? How often do we slip into frivolous play, forgetting what it is about?

Sometimes we are so focused on acting, on the aesthetic instead of agathological or even axiological horizon of our meeting, that it is hard not to recall Tischner’s words: Idolized beauty abolishes freedom in men, and in such a way that man is not aware that his freedom is being abolished. He is convinced that this is the way it should be, and that it is good. The idol exacts a sacrifice of one’s freedom. (…) The sacrifice of freedom is a choice of slavery. Idolized beauty abolishes man’s freedom without fulfilling it. (…) Man’s entire “ethos” revolves around one axis – the inner experience of enchantment. Enchantment  by the other becomes food for the soul, and testing the enchantment is his conscience.[12]

How much does this concern our bibliodrama experience? I don’t know. I just feel it is quite close.

There are more questions than answers in the previous part. There are still more questions beyond it, questions to be answered by bibliodramatic participants and facilitators.

One of them is, taking into account all the risks and all the chances of bibliodrama techniques, is it worth to risk? Aren’t there less risky methods to discover other faiths and cultures?

I’m not going to answer these questions now. I have inadequate time and in fact no answers to do it. And just as the philosophers of dialogue and encounter, I believe that the truth is not in me, not in you, but between us, and I hope we will be answering above questions in the future.

So I have one request for the end. Please take my opinion as full of respect and concern about what we are doing; not as a judgement but as a voice in dialogue with an invitation to discussion.