Peter Rollins's Blog, page 42

A Reading of “The Gallows”

Suppose that someone says his lust is irresistible when the desired object and opportunity are present. Ask him whether he would not control his passion if, in front of the house where he has this opportunity, a gallows were erected on which he would be hanged immediately after gratifying his lust. We do not have to guess very long what his answer would be

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason

At the Wild Goose Festival next week we will be having the first public reading of a play I wrote a few months ago called The Gallows. I am hoping that the play will be published and performed later in 2013. The play itself seeks to flesh out and traverse the central struggle/theme of my theological work. Because the script is still in draft form we are keeping the audience to a small and intimate size. I am very fortunate to be working with two great actors for this script reading who I would like to introduce.

Lynn Witty is a singer, actress, and artist.  She studied musical theater at Walnut Hill School of the Performing Arts, earned a Bachelor’s Degree from The University of Arizona and a Master’s Degree from Sacred Heart University. Lynn has performed on national television with George Clooney and James Earl Jones.  Her stage performances include: Carnegie Hall, SUNY Purchase, Merrill Auditorium in Portland Maine, The Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, The Comic Strip (NY), Westchester Dinner Theater (NY) and the Kennedy Center Theater.  Television and film include: Confessions of a Shopaholic, Lipstick Jungle, Salt, Gossip Girl, What Happens in Vegas and Are We There Yet on TBS.  She has also done numerous television commercials, voice-overs, and jingles.  Her recording credits include: Vanessa Williams, Steve Green, Holidaytime Soap Opera Christmas, Maranatha! Music, Tim Janis American Christmas Carol, as well as her own albums. She resides in the Boston metropolitan area with her family.

Daniel Robertson owns a small business and lives in Birmingham, AL with his wife, Brittany and 2 daughters, Natalie and Maya. He is an actor, songwriter, and Theologian who attended Southeastern Bible College where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Bible and Theology. Daniel’s acting experience is as varied as doing street performance art while working to fight homelessness through the Los Angeles Dream Center in California, doing commercial work for Slaughter Hanson Advertising in Birmingham, and performing in leading roles of local productions such as: Anything Goes, Our Town, and The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940. Daniel enjoys gardening, playing disc golf, and blogging at Rahab’s Attic.

The Well, Rapid City, SD

More information to follow

Towards a Description of Pyro-theology

Increasingly my work is being referenced via the term, “pyro-theology” or “pyrotheology” (which one do you think is better?)

The term was first coined by ikon (by Chris Fry) for a transformance art gathering we put on at Greenbelt Festival in 2009. Since then it has become a useful signifier for the work I am engaged in. Below you will find a provisional (and inadequate) overview of this new theological term. It is taken from the Pyrotheology Facebook page. There isn’t much happening on it at the moment, but in the coming months that will be changing…

Contrasting the typical understanding of Christianity as offering satisfaction and certainty pyrothology unearths a more radical and disturbing alternative. Pyrotheology is an approach that explores how the event testified to in the founding documents of Christianity invites us into a different mode of life. One in which we learn how to embrace the idea that we can’t be whole, that life is traumatic and that we don’t know the secret.

Decrying the popular view of God as a type of product that will render us complete, remove our suffering and reveal the answers, pyrotheology offers the blueprint for an incendiary faith that courageously embraces brokenness, resolutely faces up to unknowing and joyfully accepts the difficulties of existence.

Pyrotheology does not seek to draw people into some kind of fractured existence, but rather to draw out the ways in which we already are fractured; a reality that our various cultural, political and religious narratives eclipse. By short-circuiting the various techniques we use to avoid such a confrontation with ourselves, and encouraging us to embrace what we unveil, the pyrotheological thesis is that we will find that death is robbed of its sting.

 

New Zealand Tour

More details to follow. However I will be visiting Auckland and Whangerei.

The Wisdom Centre, Calgary, Alberta

Friday evening session – Offensive in all the Right Ways: The Theory of Pyro-Theology

Saturday Session 1 – Breaking our Addiction to Satisfaction

Saturday Session 2 – Breaking our Addiction to Certainty

Saturday Session 3 – The Practice of Transformance Art

 

For more information click here

 

 

Australia Tour

Over the coming months the details will be finalized and published. However I will be visiting Melbourne, Sydney and Queenscliff

 

Australia/New Zealand tour

Over the coming months the details will be finalized and published. However I will be visiting the following,

- Melbourne

- Sydney

- Queenscliff

- Auckland

- Whangerei

Awaken Community, Lilydale, MN

Time – Christ and the Cosmic Joke

Location – The Joke Joint Comedy Club

Time – 6pm

There will be music followed by and talk and discussion. This will be a ticketed event. More details to follow.

Canvas, Orlando, FL

I am the Stranger

Here I explore how we attempt to protect ourselves from the strangeness of our own beliefs by treating those with different beliefs and practices as strange. For more in-depth reflections on this theme check out my latest book ‘Insurrection’ and my forthcoming book ‘The Idolatry of God’.