Exploring the Living Faith in an Era of Fear and Hope

The spectacular courtyard of the Hsi Lai Buddhist Temple in Hacienda Heights, overlooking the San Gabriel Valley, was alive with theatrical activity last weekend.

But it wasn’t all Buddhist-related. True, the dance-based opening performance was informed by Buddhism, but other actors took the stage to invoke the Book of Mormon, Eugene Ionesco and the Sufi poet Rumi. A few minutes later, a woman in the traditional habit of a Catholic nun crossed the courtyard while a lone bagpipe wailed.

Cornerstone Theater Company’s Festival of Faith has come to town. The festival marks the beginning of a three-year examination of communities defined on spiritual terms--and how they relate to one another--by L.A.-based Cornerstone, which specializes in site-specific theater created in partnership with communities.

The project has been in the works since 1998, but it acquired a sense of urgency after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when religion was thrust into a higher profile. Exiled Saudi militant Osama bin Laden defined the essence of the conflict as Muslims against Christians and Jews.

Within the Cornerstone ensemble, conversations began immediately over whether to continue with business as usual or hold a special event related to the events of Sept. 11. The former opinion prevailed, said artistic director Bill Rauch, because “happily, the business as usual was about exploring religious pluralism.”

The heart of Cornerstone’s festival is taking place at venues associated with five faiths. Besides the Buddhist temple, the venues are the Los Angeles Baha’i Center in Baldwin Hills (Thursday through Sunday); Faith United Methodist Community Church in South Central (Nov. 1 through 4); Temple Emanuel, a synagogue in Beverly Hills (Nov. 8 through 11); and New Horizon School, an Islamic institution in Pasadena (Nov. 15 through 18).

The September attacks “increased the stakes,” said Mark Valdez, the festival’s producer and Cornerstone’s associate artistic director. “They underlined the importance of bringing people together for interfaith dialogue. Otherwise, it’s very easy to start blaming a faith instead of individuals.”

Of all the venues involved in the festival, the one that has gone through the most soul-searching in recent weeks is the Islamic-oriented New Horizon School, where some of the students will appear in the plays. Because school officials were wary of anti-Muslim reactions, “it has been a little harder for us to do things as usual,” said Amira Al-Sarraf, director of the middle school. “We have to be more conscientious about who’s coming on campus. There was conflict about whether we should isolate ourselves or be out there.”

The school’s board considered its options, and rehearsals were temporarily suspended. A few parents withdrew permission for their children to appear in her production, said Antonia Smits, who is creating one of the four plays at the New Horizon venue.

Cornerstone was very helpful in “giving us space in which to make the decisions,” said Al-Sarraf. Eventually the board decided to continue but with heightened security. “The spirit of interfaith dialogue is something we can’t abandon.”

That spirit is more important now, said Smits, who was raised a Dutch Catholic but now is a believer in Sufism, which often is described as a mystical variant of Islam. “Before Sept. 11, there was a feeling that this festival was nice, but how seriously was anyone going to take it? Now, there’s a different attitude. It’s a desperate time for people uniting, not just Americans but human beings.”

Smits is using 23 New Horizon children as the birds in her “They Simply Said Enter,” based on the Sufi poem “The Conference of the Birds.” Although the children sense some of the anxiety of the larger society, they don’t appear self-conscious about it, she said.

Roxanne Rogers, a well-known director from the L.A. small theater scene and the writer of another New Horizon play, is not a Muslim, but she was introduced to the religion when she was a high school exchange student in Tunisia, and she is married to Turkish architect Alp Atman, who recently wrote a book on Ottoman mosques.

She was in Istanbul writing her play, “The Green Parrots Speak,” on the day of the attacks. The traumatic events, she said, “pushed me to say more and made it harder not to get emotional.” The play is about girls who face a conflict between the requirements of Ramadan and their upcoming soccer competition. It was based not only on the people at New Horizon but also on her experience of seeing a group of wild parrots flying over the school.

Not all of the festival’s Islamic work will be presented at New Horizon. “The Life of a Muslim,” written by the Ilm Foundation and created by 25-year-old Qiyamah Aquil-Shah, an African American Muslim, will be seen at Faith United Methodist Community Church in South-Central. She wanted to perform in the community in which she had grown up, Aquil-Shah said.

“The Life of a Muslim” will include a few minutes of material that directly addresses the aftermath of the September attacks among U.S. Muslims--for example the dilemma facing women over whether they should remove their scarves in public places--but it “won’t dwell on negativity,” said Aquil-Shah. Andrew Robinson Gaither, pastor of Faith Church, said he welcomes “The Life of a Muslim” to his congregation because “Americans are paranoid about Islam,” a fast-growing faith among African Americans. Gaither’s congregation, he said, is “very progressive” and “likes to identify with movements that challenge and change America.”

Gaither’s remarks inadvertently point out that the relatively small audiences at each festival venue are likely to be made up of people who already consider themselves “progressive” and open-minded. Religious dogmatists may be less likely to attend a festival devoted to interfaith dialogue.

Atheists and agnostics, however, may find as much to their taste in this festival as orthodox religionists. At Hsi Lai last weekend, the specific religious content of some plays was quite covert. Valdez said the plays represent individual responses to spiritual quests and are not necessarily representative of religious institutions.

There is no religious content in “Zones,” an adjunct show that Cornerstone created as a conversation starter for the festival. Written by company member Peter Howard, “Zones” is set at a zoning hearing at which the primary agenda item is a proposal to allow the construction of a center by a fictitious religious organization called Exquisite Balance, whose adherents believe in two gods. The “Zones” audience--restricted to 60 at each performance--is encouraged to speak out at pre-designed intervals during the play. A performance of “Zones” precedes the arrival of the festival’s main events at the five venues, and “Zones” is also being performed at five additional religious-oriented sites.

Howard, who also works for the ultra-ecumenical National Conference for Community and Justice (formerly the National Conference of Christians and Jews), said that far more conversations on interfaith issues may have been started by the special episode of “The West Wing” on Oct. 3 than will ever be kindled by the festival. That episode was about the White House staff dealing with a terrorist threat, and a subplot dealt with a student group asking questions about terrorism and religion.

But the majority of TV viewers probably aren’t in the same room with people of different faiths. “I continue to be moved by the possibilities of face-to-face conversations,” Howard said.

For Cornerstone artistic director Rauch, learning about different religions is a family tradition. His family moved often as he grew up, and in each new town, the family would sample several Protestant churches and then vote on which one to attend.

As an adult, Rauch had not practiced organized religion. But recently he started attending a Congregational church. He was motivated by his work on the Festival of Faith as well as by the fact that he recently became an adoptive parent, he said. But especially after Sept. 11, Rauch said, he “felt the need for a community connected to spiritual issues.”

Information: (213) 613-1740 or https://www.cornerstonetheater.org.