Dark Matter: Invisibility in Drama, Theater, and Performance

Dark Matter: An Introduction

Dark Matter An Introduction We know very little for sure about dark matter. —Frank Wilczek, Nobel Prize winner in physics Sometimes you see ideas in the way an astronomer sees stars in the far distance. (Or it seems like that anyway.) —Ludwig Wittgenstein At the heart of English medieval liturgical drama lies the Visit to the Sepulchre by the three Marys on Easter morning, with its revelation of Jesus’ Resurrection at the empty tomb. Various versions survive, but all incorporate the famous Quem quaeritis (Whom do you seek?) trope, originally sung in tenth-century monastic churches as part of the Easter service. The clergy was actively encouraged to develop the trope in the direction of performed drama. For example, in The Regularis Concordia of St. Ethelwold, a liturgical script prepared at Winchester for Benedictine use in England, three brethren dressed in copes are instructed to haltingly approach the “tomb” area of the church, bearing thuribles with incense to suggest the three Marys. There they discover a fourth cleric, wearing an alb and holding a palm in his hand in imitation of the angel seated on Christ’s tomb. “Whom do you seek in the sepulchre, O followers of Christ?” chants the Angel (in Latin). The three answer with one voice, “Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, O heaven-dweller.” The angel responds, “He is not here, he has risen as he had foretold . . . Come and see the place.” In what can only 2 • Dark Matter be called stage directions, the scene reaches its climax as the Angel reveals the empty tomb with a flourish. Saying this, let him rise and lift the veil and show them the place bare of the cross, with nothing other than the shroud in which the cross had been wrapped.1 The scene ends with the three Marys taking up the shroud and spreading it out before the assembled clergy (chanting “The Lord has risen from the sepulchre”). They then lay the shroud on the altar as the bells peal in unison, and the community unites in a joyful hymn. Communal faith is reaffirmed by a double metonymy: the cloth stands in for the absent cross that was previously wrapped in it, and that ghostly presence in turn stands for Christ’s invisible, miraculously resurrected body. Centuries later this enacted scene climaxed the Passion Play portion of England’s medieval Corpus Christi Cycles. Performed in English verse by lay actors under the sponsorship of trade guilds, the cycles publicly celebrated the Festival of Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist. Here the Visit to the Sepulchre is not proto-drama but full-blown theater. In the Play of the Resurrection of the Lord (Wakefield version), the three Marys approach the sepulchre and are met by two angels, and the “Whom do you seek?” exchange recurs. The First Angel intones: He is not here, the sothe to say. The place is voide therin he lay. The sudary [burial cloth] here se ye may Was on him laide. He is risen and gone his way, As he you saide.2 The ocular proof of Christ’s resurrection—eagerly awaited by the crowd—is again twofold. The bloody cloth, which the audience has followed through the cycle, symbolizes Christ’s Passion and the salvific power of Christ’s blood. But the true proof of Christ’s divinity is the equally flourished absence of his physical body (“He is not here”).3 The real presence of Christ is paradoxically guaranteed by his felt absence—an absence designed to move the crowd from theatrical wonder to reaffirmed faith. Inscribed in liturgical rite at the foundational moment of postclassical Introduction • 3 Western drama, Christ’s absent body is a striking example of what I call dark matter. In physics dark matter refers to nonluminous mass that cannot be directly detected by observation. Thanks to infrared astronomy, we can now see so-called cold matter—that is, the clouds of dust and gas between the stars. But because it does not emit light, x-rays, or any other radiation, dark matter can only be inferred by its gravitational effects on the motion of ordinary matter. According to physicist Frank Wilczek, “Galaxies of ordinary matter are surrounded by extended halos of dark matter. The halo weighs, in total, about five times as much as the visible galaxy. There may also be independent condensations of dark matter.”4 We infer that dark...