The Huntress and the Holy Mother: Symbolic Integration in Berni Stapleton’s The Pope and Princess Di

• Published in: Theatre Research in Canada
• Main Author: Fralic, Michael
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 2008
• Subjects: Visual Arts and Performing Arts; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/tric.29.2.194; https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/tric.29.2.194

This article examines the treatment of symbols in The Pope and Princess Di, a recent comic/satiric play by a renowned Newfoundland theatre artist, Berni Stapleton: their inherent organicism, their constant subjection to alteration and hybridization, and their destructive potential when viewed as sacrosanct. The essay examines crucial changes in the self-images of the play’s central characters, Bernadette and Diana, two women recently diagnosed with breast cancer.These changes arise fromthe reconfiguration and re-evaluation of deeply embraced religious, quasireligious, and cultural symbols as the two women provide each other with new insights necessary for their emotional and spiritual healing.The article draws on Christian and radical feminist analyses of Christian religious symbols and the relationship between symbolismand idolatry and is informed by feminist endorsements of an organic rather than fixed relationship with cherished or otherwise powerful symbols. The article also draws on a vision of historical process articulated by Alfred North Whitehead. According toWhitehead, the dominance over others of particular models of understanding is historically inevitable but is also dangerous because of the high likelihood of a stifling or destructive resistance to crucial new input among those most invested in the status quo.Though change will arise in any case, it will bemore humane and nourishing if both the necessity of the new knowledge and the best parts of the old are acknowledged. In accordance with a Whiteheadian vision of change at its best, Stapleton’s play challenges prevalent norms and symbols while keeping a critical eye on ways of understanding that would sweep in to replace them. In The Pope and Princess Di, the new symbolic order is tentative and rooted in the day-to-day perplexities of lived experience, rather than founded on elusive absolutes.