In every culture, from the dusty plains of ancient Greece to the polished pews of modern cathedrals, there has always been performance. We see it in the way we gather, in the way we dress for occasion, in the way we speak lines that are not wholly ours. Whether whispered behind curtains or echoed through marble sanctuaries, there is something primal about the rhythm and ritual of performance. But what if the most ancient stage was not a wooden platform, but an altar? And what if the first actor was not a tragedian, but a priest?
There is a theory, whispered among scholars and spoken boldly in some circles, that theatre and the Eucharist share more than symbolic overlap. Not merely as metaphor, but as lived enactment. The Mass, that central rite of Catholic worship, follows a script older than most plays. A priest, robed, rehearsed, and revered, stands before the gathered. He speaks in measured cadence, words not his own but handed down like a sacred libretto: "Take this, all of you, and eat of it…" And as he lifts the bread, the congregation watches, hushed and still. It is not entertainment. It is something deeper: transformation.
Long before prosceniums and box offices, human beings gathered in circles. Around firelight, in open courtyards, in temples. They came not to be amused, but to remember, to reenact, to reenter a story that held them together. The Greek chorus, the medieval mystery plays, even the modern monologue each finds a strange sibling in the structure of the Mass. There is a call and response. There is symbolism and staging. There are props, the chalice, the book, the bread. There is even costume.
And unlike the theatre of passive viewership, the Eucharist insists on participation. Stand, kneel, speak, be silent. This is not spectacle from afar; it is intimacy. You, too, are onstage. The lines may be prescribed, but the belief behind them is live.
We tend to think of theatre as artifice, illusion. But the early Church Fathers might have argued the opposite: that the Mass is a drama of truth. Not fiction performed for applause, but mystery enacted for transformation. In the theatre, we suspend disbelief. In the Eucharist, we believe in what is not seen. One calls for imagination, the other for faith. And both demand the body, its posture, its breath, its presence.
Consider too how every performance, sacred or secular, seeks to answer a question: What does it mean to be human? The plays of Sophocles asked it. So does the Gospel. The audience watches a struggle, between sin and salvation, fate and freedom, despair and grace. The altar becomes a kind of proscenium, the liturgy a script etched in spirit.
Even now, in our secular age, echoes of that original stage remain. We rise when the curtain parts. We fall silent before the actor speaks. We leave transformed, or we hope to. In churches and theatres alike, we gather not to escape life, but to encounter it more deeply. And when we leave the sanctuary, much like the theatre, we do so a little quieter, a little more attuned. You may even say restored, stirred by mystery, or subtly enlightened by the words we received.
So perhaps it is not that theatre was born from the Eucharist, but that both are rooted in the same human hunger: to embody meaning, to give form to mystery, to make the invisible visible. The Eucharist may not be the first theatre, but it remains among the most enduring. Not because it entertains, but because it remembers. Not because it dazzles, but because it dares. In it, we find ourselves rehearsing eternity, not with pretense, but with awe.
And whether we sit in a velvet seat or kneel on a stone floor, we are all part of that long, unfolding performance. A play with no end. A story that begins with a whisper: This is my body...
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
—Romans 12:1 (KJV)