The Elijah Educational Network has added Bibliodrama to its repertoire of techniques for interreligious dialogue. Elijah has conducted a series of Bibliodrama workshops in Jerusalem, held under the skilful leadership of Yael Unterman where Christians, Muslims and Jews have explored stories from various traditions using this unique methodology. The workshops were part of an international project to explore the effectiveness of Bibliodrama as a tool for interreligious dialogue, funded by the European Union.
For the first meeting, we decided to use a culturally/ religiously neutral text, to introduce the method and avoid some of the sensitivities that can arise when we tackle sacred texts. Hansel and Gretel is well-known to all who have grown up in a European context. There are Hebrew (Ami and Tami) and Arabic versions, too. It is a story with characters who (potentially) can be interpreted in various ways and who undergo various tests, it has a sinister overtone, raising questions about the existence of and response to ‘evil’, and it has an ending of the victory of virtue or ‘happily ever after’, which is in itself worthy of analysis. In other words, it has many of the elements we might find in a sacred text without the claim of ‘truth’ or even ‘morality’.
Yael skillfully took the group through the experience of responding in the voices of the various characters, (including even the gingerbread house), of creating dioramas with empty chairs representing characters, of hypothesizing about what might have been and finally, of putting God into the picture. Participants were totally engaged in the process and even those who were quiet at the outset seemed to get into the mindset. The success of the process is testified to by the fact that we ran out of time to do very much training or analysis. What we succeeded in achieving was enthusiasm for the process and drawing out people so that they were not self-conscious in each other’s company.
