The most theatrical moment of the Christian faith is the Good Friday liturgy of Christ’s death on the cross with the loud cry and the dead silence. It is the sacrifice of life with the gift of death offered to God the father. The crucified is the silenced cry of God who stands as a sacrament of God to humanity. It is the peak moment of the Theo-Drama of Christian revelation. The notion that the stage is a place where the invisible can appear has a deep hold on our thoughts and life. “A being appears, it has an epiphany: in that it is beautiful and makes us marvel. In appearing it gives itself, it delivers itself to us: it is good. And in giving itself up, it speaks itself, it unveils itself: it is true (in itself [and] in the other to which it reveals itself)”.

In the Natyasastra of Bharatha Muni called Natya Veda, considered as the fifth Veda, Kalidasa( 8th cent. A.D.) has called dramatic performance a visual sacrifice offered to Gods. The temple gave not only an impressive architectural background to the drama, but also a stirring quality to its music, and a bond of faith between the performers and the spectators the performers playing as gods, the spectators watching as devotees. “Theatre and rituals have many elements in common such as speech, dialogue, songs, enactments, impersonation, make-up, masks, dance, music, gestures language and on the top of all the elements of make-belief.” The similarity is so striking that a number of scholars tend to believe that drama actually originated from primitive ritualistic practices and performances. For instance, Kathakali seems to have been influenced by the ritual performance associated with the spirit cult of Teyyam, and the Yakshgana theatre of Karnataka. “So the act of performance is the act of sacrifice, of sacrificing what most men prefer to hide. This sacrifice is the performer’s gift to the spectator. Here there is a similar relation between priest and worshipper. There are laymen who have necessary roles in life. The priest performs the ritual for himself, and the performance is a ceremony for those wish to assist or attend: …this theatre is holy because its purpose is holy; it has a clear defined place in the community and it responds to a need the churches can no longer fill.” Writes Peter Brook in Holy Theatre. The spectator is always hungry for new spiritual experience. What, however, is this hunger? Is it a hunger for the invisible, a hunger for a reality deeper than the fullest form of everyday life, or is it hunger for the missing things in life?

“Quality is real and has a source. At every moment a new and unexpected quality can arise within a human action – and just as quickly it can be lost, found and lost again. This unnameable value can be betrayed by religion and by philosophy; churches and temples can betray it; the faithful and the unfaithful betray it all the time. Still, the hidden source remains. Quality is sacred, but it is also in danger.” He argues that “It is one thing to suggest that God chose a ‘theatrical’ mode of self-revelation and quite another to propose that human art may conjure up an incarnation in the theatre”… “A moment of grace lies in all beauty: it shows itself to me far beyond what I have a right to expect.” The human being as homo religiosus is not satisfied to occupy just any reality, but instead thirsts for the “Real”. The religious person seeks to participate fully in a reality that stands qualitatively above all others. He or she strives not just to perform any acts, but acts that place him or her in harmony with the paramount reality. To act in accordance with what is considered the “ultimate reality”, a reality which exists against the backdrop of a variety of ways of being, the religious individual also has a need of guides to channel conduct in a manner conducive to what is believed to be real. In a liturgical action, faith is seeking understanding.The holy teaching is a sort of impression of the divine knowledge, which embraces all things in its simple oneness. Love alone is the principle of the Gift of death on the cross. The silent dead body is God’s sign to humanity.