Proposal/ Rationale:Two Genres
First Genre: Play
Rhetorical Situation: The Baroque iconography during the Counter Reformation was direct and dramatic, intending to appeal above all to the senses and the emotions for Christains. Incorporating baroque style into Bernini’s sculpture of Teresa was needed during the Counter Reformation to incite strong faith and devotion to God.
Genre: I wanted to create a play to portray St. Teresa’s love with God- that all Catholics share and need during the Counter Reformation.
Audience: To connect with people that are involved in religion. It does not have to be surrounded by Christainty alone but generalize this to other religions to show how anyone has a love for their religion.
Purpose: To dramatize a believer’s experience with their religion, and how the sculpture Bernini wanted to emphasize a lot of emotions of a human beings interaction with a divinity.
Medium: Playwright scene
Stance: To show when the odds are against you your beliefs will guide you.
Second Genre: Painting
Rhetorical Situation: As Bernini had expressed raw emotion and an open audience to witness a divine intervention through the use of baroque architecture and sculpting to incite strong faith ,there is a way to add colors to convey Teresa’s epiphany.
Genre: I had chosen to create a painting that dwells on St. Teresa expression and her vision of God’s love. Colors are used to arise feeling.
Audience: To connect with people that are involved in religion through the use of color.
Purpose: To appeal to people who like color to understand Teresa’s tone and what she had felt in that moment.
Medium: Acrylic paint Stance:Welcoming
Two Genres
Enter the Nun
St. Teresa burst through Santa Maria della Vittoria’s door and had turned and put the wooden plank across the door. The once grandeur sanctuary is vandalized. The windows are shattered. The divinity window colors no longer descend on floors of white light but blood red from the sky, and marble floors are now engulfed in dried wax from fallen candles.
BANG!!! ANGERED SCREAMS are heard
The gold angels adorned on pillars cry soft tears as the nun runs for salvation.
She collapses, tired breaths exhaust her lungs as she stares at the Mary and infant Christ statue. Her heart aches, still disgraced with cold sweat of being captured. She clings on to her rosary and bow her head down, praying.
St. Teresa- Our Father,
Who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses –
Death Enters
Death- You will die tonight. ( exhales icy breath ) COUGHS
St. Teresa observes the tired man whose face had mapped the very existence of time for he had aged, wearing a tailored suit and briefcase
Death- I am your ending, your God is not here before you.
ERY SOUNDS at work
St. Teresa- You question my faith?
Death- I’m all you have here now- ( extends hand ) outstretch your fingers you too will soon die until they come through the door. Ending you and your faith with them.
BANG BANG!!!
The Nun stares and continues her prayer.
St. Teresa- …as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen
Death- You look towards God in your hour of need he has abandoned you, but yet you don’t take my comfort.
St. Teresa- You are a mere mirage of what is to come, you are fictitious just like their ways.
God will take my life in any form as he pleases, not them.( Bows head and grasp her rosary)
The banging of angered fists pounding against the thick door gets louder, and shattered glass taps the ground as Death hand creeps closer to the Nun. A light comes, her eyes look above her being and her rosary falls. The ceiling had cracked open and a bright light peeks through the red sky above. A winged creature descends towards the Nun with his gold weapon. Death inches towards a corner as he sees the scene unfold.
St. Teresa- Come and claim me! My eyes do not fool me. God has come to whisk me away with his divine love-
The sound of flesh tears as God’s love has touched her, tears form in her eyes and spill like the gold liquid from her chest with the arrow deep inside.
St. Teresa- Leave tears! Do not cloud this holy divine scene.
BANG!!!!!!
St. Teresa- Welcome me in your Kingdom of Heaven!!! (Her eyes close)
Death Exits
Mob Enters
Mob(1)- She’s dead? She was such a young woman.
Mob(2)- The Nun died with God’s love on her mind. See as how her face is adorned in ecstasy?
Teresa face has tears and a smile with no golden blood and a missing arrow.
Reflection
When I had worked on the first genre which was the playwright, I had wanted to attract audience. I wanted the play to be intended for those who had felt they were pressured to lose faith in what they believed in. In the play Saint Teresa is running away from the mob that is trying to take away her faith in God but she resist and locks herself in a church that is a sanctuary for her faith. To test her faith further, Death that represents the mob in an ambiguous way wants her to accept her end and that God will not save her. However, she remains strong and in her own reality, an angel appears with the arrow of God’s love and Death disappears. She dies from divine love, and when the mob appears they see no foul play don’t to the nun so the whole act had happened in her mind. The play’s setting happened during the Counter Reformation so I had incorporated writing opposed to Bernini’s sculpture.
For the second genre, I had wanted to attract an audience who did not find the baroque style appealing so they would look towards colors. Even though Bernini had expressed raw emotion to an open audience to witness a divine intervention through the use of baroque architecture and sculpting, I had wanted to add colors to convey Teresa’s epiphany. In the painting I had wanted to place awe in her facial features looking above at a divine light as she is pierced in her heart.
