Beauty in Theatre

“Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter,” says Roger Scruton.¹Roger Scruton, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 161. If we look around us, it is hard to disagree with him. Classical schools attempt to swim against this cultural tide by teaching truth, goodness, and beauty. However, while truth and goodness are certainly woven into our lessons and our curricula, how much do we include beauty among our priorities? If we do not, it is not hard to understand why.

As a relatively recent movement, classical education has had to feel its way forward in the dark. It is blessed by clarity of vision, but also frequently plagued by uncertainty about how to reach that vision. We know that we should be seeking beauty, for example, but we are not sure how, and often enough we are not even really sure what beauty is. Part of our problem, of course, is that beauty is famously difficult to define. We tend to avoid the issue by treating it as a matter of personal taste, as if we agree that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” But this subjective approach sounds suspiciously like the “my truth” of the modern intersectional West. Yet there is no “my truth” and “your truth”—there is one truth, and we can seek it. Similarly, there is no “my beauty” and “your beauty.” Beauty can be objectively defined, and we can seek it too. Indeed, not only can we seek it, we must.

As Dr. Denis McNamara puts it, “Beauty is to truth as deliciousness is to food.”² Robert Mixa, “Beauty Will Save the World—But How? Part 1: Elements,” Word on Fire, May 18, 2021, https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/fellows/beauty-will-save-the-world-but-how-part-i-elements/. We can easily prefer junk food to nourishing food, but if the nourishing food is also delicious, then we choose it because it is appealing. Likewise, we can easily prefer comfortable falsehoods to truth, but when truth is presented in a beautiful way, truth becomes appealing. When goodness is made beautiful, we not only know what it is, but also come to desire it.

Making truth and goodness beautiful in the classroom can be more or less difficult depending on the subject matter that we are teaching. In literature class, we have recourse to a huge body of beautiful literary works, and it would not be hard to steer classroom conversations or assignments toward beauty. In mathematics, numbers and the relations between them are inherently ordered and beautiful, awaiting only the math teacher to bring this beauty out. Science, of course, has the privilege of studying the overwhelming beauty of the natural world.

Drama, it might be thought, would enjoy the same privilege that literature has, but in reality, we cannot simply take refuge in the great works of the past as we do in literature class. This is because, let’s face it, almost all classic works of theatre are intended to be performed by adults, whether because of mature subject matter or because they require skills beyond those of a child. “What about Shakespeare adaptations?” would be the obvious objection, and there are certainly some wonderful versions of Shakespeare’s plays for children. But just as we do not limit our literature studies to only one great author, nor should we limit our theatrical productions to only one playwright, no matter how great. Part of the mission of literature classes is to pursue our goals of truth and goodness by exposing our students to the many ways that different authors can use a variety of beautiful styles and narrative structures. Drama should be no different. But this is precisely where drama programs suffer a serious handicap: when trying to stage a child-friendly version of one of these great works of literature, we are limited to whatever children’s scripts are available for purchase. These adaptations, by and large, were not written by people motivated by classical principles. They were often written by people who think that if a script is to be accessible to children, its complexity and quality need to be lowered. These scripts focus on being funny, or engaging, or simple, or catchy—all good things—but were they designed to be beautiful? Were they written with the idea that children can delight in difficult, complex productions because they are of good quality? Generally speaking, no.

Perhaps this handicap has not been addressed so far because drama is so often undervalued as a school subject. It is not considered as important as mathematics, grammar, Latin, and science. Yet if we in classical education believe that embodying a truth is the ultimate way to learn it, then drama, in which we literally embody narratives of truth and goodness, is enormously important.

In this article, I am proposing a reorientation of our drama programs to aim not only at truth and goodness, but also at beauty. We need to make a variety of great works of literature available to children in scripts that value, and seek to transmit, the beauty of the original text. This will require us to write our own scripts, in many cases, but within our movement we have people of great and varied talent. We can do it. In short, what we need to produce is musical theatre—and I will be insistent on the musical part—that is designed to be acted, sung, and danced by children—I will be insistent about the dance part too. We need compelling narratives that express truths about human nature, about the nature of good and evil, and about our relationship with God, and that, as a whole, create beauty.

Now, declaring this is the easy part. It is the sort of conveniently clear vision that is typical of classical education. The real question is: how do we do this? To answer this, I will be depending on two key concepts: the idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk and the concept of objective beauty.

Gesamtkunstwerk is one of those deliciously long German words that contain a whole concept within themselves. A literal translation would be “total work of art,” but “total” in the sense of all-inclusive. When referring to theatre, it means a union of all the arts—music, language, visual art, and dance—to serve a single narrative. Gesamtkunstwerk comes out of the nineteenth-century Aesthetic Movement in Germany, which proposed aesthetics and good taste as a metric by which to measure artistic value and even morality. This is emphatically not the context in which I wish to use the word; rather, I want to repurpose it slightly. Instead of all the arts being brought together to serve a single narrative, I propose that we bring them together to seek and portray the logos within the narrative—the central truth or truths that every great work of literature contains. We should use every kind of beautiful art that we have access to in order to portray the truth and goodness within the story. And, crucially, through beauty we can make that truth and goodness desirable.

This brings me to my second key concept: objective beauty. It is all very well and good to say that we should use beautiful arts, but first we have to know what beauty is. Once again, McNamara puts it clearly: a thing is beautiful if it reveals its deepest reality to our senses—its essential nature as known to the mind of God.³Mixa, “Beauty Will Save The World – But How?” To explain this more specifically, we need to turn to Thomas Aquinas, a great thinker of the medieval Church. Beauty, says Aquinas, can be identified by three characteristics: integritas, consonantia, and claritas. Integritas means wholeness or perfection, in the sense that a thing has all the parts that it should have. Consonantia means having all those parts in correct proportion to each other and in proportion to the thing’s God-given purpose. Achieving consonantia will bring us some way toward the last element of beauty, claritas, which means something like transparency or clarity. A beautiful thing reveals its true nature to us, in the sense that its outward appearance matches its inner essence.⁴Christopher Scott Sevier, “Thomas Aquinas on the Nature and Experience of Beauty” (PhD diss., University of California, Riverside, June 2012).

Now that we have defined our terms, how do they relate to drama programs in the classical school movement?

Integritas, or wholeness, I would suggest, would be achieved by carefully structuring a script to include all—and only—the key parts of the narrative, in other words the parts that best reveal the narrative’s deepest truth. A good example of where this is often not done is in adaptations of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Far too many student productions of this play use scripts that incomprehensibly sideline the death and resurrection of Aslan, which is the very heart of the story. Either it is played out offstage or else passed over quickly and incompletely onstage. These same productions, however, make sure to include the inconsequential pre-Narnia scenes in Professor Kirke’s house.

Scripts also lack integritas when the key events of the story are kept but reinterpreted to make the play serve some other agenda. For example, Prince Caspian, another C. S. Lewis classic, is a story about faith in an age of atheism, but a recent Canadian stage production turned it into a call for environmental activism instead. One senior figure from the production declared, “The ultimate good in these stories is the natural world,”⁵Marilyn Baillie, “A Swashbuckling Tale,” program notes for Prince Caspian, Shaw Festival, May 2023. while another publication explained that Prince Caspian “is a story about the incredible magic and power that trees have and why it is our duty to protect them.”⁶“The Shaw Festival Presents Prince Caspian,” student learning resource, Shaw Festival, April 2023, https://www.shawfest.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/caspain-learning-resource.pdf. This version of the story no longer knew what it was really about—it had lost its logos. Yes, it had kept the main parts of the narrative but twisted them into something that they were not meant to be. Because these productions have failed to achieve integritas, they lack the beauty of the original story. They fail to express its truth.

However, not only in narrative structure can integritas be achieved, but also by bringing all the arts together in the production. Here is where the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk is useful because once you have your whole—perfect and logically complete narrative—the Gesamtkunstwerk then creates an artistically complete representation of that narrative. A beautiful theatrical production that has attained integritas, therefore, would combine all proper elements of logic, sight, and sound to reveal the narrative’s logos.

Consonantia, or correct proportion, would mean that not only are all parts present but that each part is given its correct weight and importance. For example, the sacrifice of Aslan in a production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe should properly be the focus of the entire work. This has implications for the length and staging of that scene in order to have the correct proportion in relation to the other scenes. Similarly, no one artistic component should take absolute precedence over the others, but rather, all the different artistic parts of the play should respect each other and work together to serve truth and reveal goodness. One could almost call consonantia the Romans 12 aspect of beauty (see Rom 12:3­–6).

Finally, claritas, or intelligibility, is almost self-explanatory. Not only must the language be clear (neither overly fussy, nor so preoccupied with entertaining that it forgets to serve the clarity of narrative), and not only must the scene progression be clear and easy to follow, but the students’ voices must be intelligible too. Many of us have probably sat through children’s plays in which we wondered what it was all about because we could not hear the actors. A play cannot be beautiful if we cannot hear the beauty. Insisting on basic skills like clear diction and powerful projection, therefore, is also a way to create beauty.

It is finally time to get down to the nitty-gritty. How does all this work out in detail when creating theatrical works worthy of the classical education movement?

Language might be a good place to start. The language used in scripts needs to be proportionate to the telos—the intrinsic purpose—of the piece as a whole. The words spoken also need to be proportionate to the truth within each fictional character who speaks those words. I have seen a musical of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in which the White Witch sings how sorry she is that Edmund is outside “without a cozy coat.” It fits the rhyme scheme of the song, certainly, but the word “cozy” does not fit her haughty, formal personality at all. It is jarring enough to destroy the perfection—indeed, the beauty—of that scene. In contrast, Gabriel Dean’s version of Beowulf uses language that serves the narrative well. It is plain enough to be understood and performed by twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, allowing it to provide claritas, but strongly evokes the original poem’s Old English alliterative style, maintaining consonantia with the world of the narrative.

I could, theoretically, finish the article here. Most plays, after all, are only spoken. The problem is that we humans are not only (and perhaps not even principally) speaking beings. From the dawn of humanity, we have been making music—the bone flutes of pre-historic man make this clear. Furthermore, since at least the time of ancient Greece, people have known that music has an unusually strong effect on people’s thoughts and emotions.⁷ The examples of emotive music in theatre are too numerous to name, but one might think of Verdi’s “Va pensiero” from his 1842 opera Nabucco. This chorus so powerfully expresses longing for a homeland that it became a sort of anthem of the emerging Italian state in the 1860s. More recently, the chorus “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the hit musical Les Miserables has been taken up by protesters against authoritarian governments as recently as 2019 in Hong Kong. Neither the nineteenth-century Italians nor the twenty-first century Hong Kongers were reciting spoken poetry to express themselves, they were singing it. The music made all the difference to the power that those lyrics could have. Plato said that “more than anything else, rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it.”⁸Plato, The Republic 3.401d, trans. Paul Shorey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930).

Unfortunately, in children’s theatre, there are few really good musicals. For one thing, most composers seem simply uninterested in writing for children. It’s not hard to imagine why: most children’s singing abilities are naturally very limited, and the commercial potential of a children’s musical is small. This is not a criticism. Composers need to earn a living, and it must be frustrating to be constrained by the limited vocal range and singing abilities of ordinary, untrained children. However, it does mean that for drama teachers, the pickings are slim.

As for the children’s musicals that do exist, they almost exclusively use a pop style both in their musical structure and in their singing lines. Indeed, the tendency is to assume that children need the simplicity of pop music because sophisticated music is beyond them. But that is not a position that should ever be taken by classical schools because we know better. We know that children can love difficult and beautiful things. We also know that when given a high standard to achieve, children will, by and large, rise to the occasion. Why should it be any different in musical theatre? If we are going to give them pop-style musicals, we might as well give them comic books in literature class. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with pop music, just as there is nothing intrinsically wrong with comic books, but part of our mission is to train students’ tastes to what is beautiful, not to what is easy. If we are to train their tastes to what is beautiful and good, we need to feed them with those things.

So, instead of pop musicals, let us give them complex vocal lines that reveal with claritas the complicated emotional and spiritual development of the characters. And not just a few main characters, either; let the musical be structured so that a wide variety of characters have a chance to sing on their own, even if just a verse here or there. This not only takes the vocal burden off the main characters (which can often be too heavy a load for many children) but also communicates to children that even as part of the chorus, they are an important part of the production. Children often do not have strong voices, so we should include duets or trios as well, so that the young actors can help each other.

Let the music express the atmosphere of each scene, which will, in turn, serve the logos of that scene. To respect consonantia, the music should not go on too long, or simply serve the composer’s personal taste. It must not obscure the words, but partner with them so that they can be understood by the audience. Let the music deepen the impact of the words, strengthening their ability to draw us into the narrative and meet the logos within it.

Language and music provide the sound of a play, but audiences come to see a play, not just hear it. One main thing that audiences see is the actors as they move. I will begin, therefore, with choreography. Where and when do the actors walk, stop, bend, turn, raise their arms, or fall to the ground? This is a crucial part of the storytelling, and it must complement the words being spoken, the emotions inherent in those words, and the personality of each character. It must also complement the overall style of scenery. Is the scenery stark and stripped-down or lush and opulent? Is it naturalistic or stylized? The actors’ bodies, in short, should move in a manner that is in consonantia with the style of the setting.

If the play contains music, their bodies should also move in consonantia with the music. Here, choreography can move into dance. Just as music expands the communicative power of language, so dance expands the communicative power of music. Skeptics need only consider the entire genre of ballet to see what I mean. Likewise, in musicals, it is said that when emotions become too strong for spoken words, the characters break into song; and when their emotions become too strong for song, they shift into dance. Classical dance, in all its different forms, uses the human body to further serve the narrative. It could well be argued that it empowers the body to speak out truth and goodness through beauty and, as such, enables the body to glorify God.

Once again, however, there are examples of what to avoid. Dances that mimic the aesthetic of show business are the choreographical version of pop music; they are easy and fun, but they are not appropriate to deep, rich narratives that seek to express great truths. Let our children instead learn how to use movement in modest but expressive ways to serve the narrative and express emotion, such that the choreography is proportional both to the language and to the music of the play. If designed to respect consonantia, choreography will both increase claritas and help achieve integritas.

I have left the most obvious source of visual beauty until the end: the costumes. We have probably all seen some play advertised as “visually stunning” or a “visual masterpiece.” When I see that, I suspect that the play has not achieved consonantia. I think that the Hollywood-style visual effects of some modern musicals overwhelm the narrative as a whole. The resulting lack of consonantia distracts the audience from the logos; thus, neither truth nor beauty is attained. Rather, we should design our costumes and scenery to be graceful and not overdone. The scenery, furniture, and props need to be in harmony with the costumes, lighting, and any other audio/visual effects.

To achieve claritas, the costumes must reveal important aspects of the characters. Returning again to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, we can see the importance of costume in the different ways in which Aslan is depicted on stage. One production that I have seen used a child’s commercial lion costume (the zip-up kind that children might use for Halloween). This turned Aslan into the living version of a plush toy, devoid of all kingliness, dignity, and authority. He was horrendously cute. Conversely, I have seen Aslan dressed as a tawny-coloured, vaguely Renaissance-style prince. This was more successful in capturing his royalty, but it also reduced him to a mere man, on the same visual level as the Pevensie children. Once the Pevensie children became crowned, the costumes silently proclaimed that they were the equals of Aslan. The most successful costume that I have seen is the one created for the 2022 London West End production: the actor’s opulent but rough fur robes captured both his majesty and his wildness, his beard and long hair further emphasized his untamed nature, the simplicity and humanity of his costume preserved his dignity, and the massive articulated lion puppet that shadowed his every move not only expressed Aslan’s great size, but pointed to Christ’s double nature as both God and man. This, indeed, was a beautiful costume. It possessed integritas, consonantia, and claritas and revealed the spiritual truth of the character.

Naturally, no school will be able to provide giant articulated puppets. However, when designing costumes for a school production, we must consider whether the costumes are intelligible, and if so, whether they reveal the true nature of the characters. We must ensure that the costumes are appropriate (proportional) to the fictional world of the story and proportional to the other arts by not taking over or distracting the audience’s attention from the narrative.

To sum up the preceding pages, I am calling on anyone who loves the classical movement to re-think how we approach drama. Do we take seriously our dedication to truth, goodness, and beauty? Do we truly believe in the primacy of narrative to lead us to truth? If so, do we hold that embodying and mimicking good lessons or truths is the best way to make them part of us? Do we honestly see all school subjects as interlinked and merely different expressions of God’s creation? If so, how can we do any less than strive to put on stage stories that lead us to goodness and truth, and to do so in a beautiful way? Let us create plays that present great works of literature, great stories whose compelling narratives express deep truths about ourselves and our souls. And, crucially, let us do so in such a way that the work as a whole creates beauty—beauty that is designed to be spoken, sung, danced, and acted by ordinary children. It might sound like a hard thing to propose. But, as a friend of mine is fond of saying, hard does not equal bad.