Courtyard Studio becomes a chapel of contemplation in 'Quiet Faith'

Convert or cynic? Disbeliever or devout disciple? What part does faith play in every person's life? Writer, director and performer David Williams and his fellow performer Rose Maher invite the assembled congregation in the Canberra Theatre Centre's Courtyard Studio to consider the nature of faith in the new age of modern Christianity. Based on a series of interviews with a wide range of people including teenagers, religious leaders, social workers and educators, Quiet Faith challenges the conservative view of faith and confronts conventional attitudes and notions of the Christian ethos.

Williams and Maher move through the audience, between designer Jason Oxenblade's spiralling wooden pews upon a blood red carpet and beneath a halo of light. Candles flicker, serenely lighting the face of someone nearby and church bells ring out their invitation to song and prayer. An atheist, expelled as a child from the church for disobedience, recounts her expulsion. A young man affirms the sense of community through fellowship. A chaplain confesses to a struggle with alcohol, following the trauma of a school suicide.

Faith challenged, faith affirmed and faith abandoned become the subject of debate. What justification dwells in the mind of the bigot, the heart of the judgemental or the actions of the radical? With the rise of the Australian Christian Lobby, Family First or the Christian Democrats, what place has Christianity in the politics of the state? What place has the newly-formed Christian movement for compassion, Love Makes A Way, in today's political protests?

Quiet Faith blows no trumpets, breathes no hellfire and damnation, utters no sanctimony. It moved the lady I saw with tears rolling down her cheek during the communal singing of Amazing Grace. It aroused a sense of shared community during the audience's uttering of the Lord's Prayer. Devoid of pretension, the simple roleplay exposed the irrational, challenged the prejudicial, lauded love and compassion and left the audience to determine the nature of their faith and how it is manifest in their daily lives.

Quiet Faith is neither theatre nor church service, although the audience participates in the rituals of a service. It is more closely aligned with theatre-in-education, provoking debate but leaving the answers to the individual to decide the quality of their faith for themselves.

The Courtyard Theatre becomes a chapel of contemplation, irritating for some, affirming for others and possibly inspiring for the truly faithful. For just over an hour, Williams and Maher relate their various tales of faith, any one of which would have offered a far more dramatic and dynamic investigation of faith, its conflicts and its conquests. But that would be a different show.