Performing 'The Rapture' - by Maeve Herd

I came across advertisements for Ed and Norman’s “The Rapture” on Audition Oracle not long after the vain attempts of Royal Opera House leadership to take a Palestinian flag from dancer Danni Perry at the curtain call of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Frustrated that dancers, singers and a composer widely renowned for intentionally politically charged works were being forcibly rendered “apolitical” by the leaders of our industry, I couldn’t have come across a more worthy story to be told from our perspective as Westerners in Britain — the empire that brokered Zionist colonisation of Palestine.

​Despite all of my formal training being in music, my mother’s longstanding job as an administrator at St Patrick’s Cathedral back in my home country — New Zealand, meant that I had the rare privilege of growing up constantly arguing with many Catholic priests! This intensified into a special interest in theology, especially in the Apocalyptic literature such as in Ezekiel, Daniel and the Book of Revelation: which has a significant part to play in The Rapture. Apocalyptic literature is a natively Hebrew genre of religious literature, it is uniquely allegorical, metaphorical, descriptive, gorgeous… and also some of the most frequently misinterpreted by those who take the bible at face value! The documentary that inspired Ed and Norman, Praying for Armageddon, in which American Evangelicals attempt to accelerate “The Apocalypse” by assisting in the colonisation of Palestine via a religious ethnostate, is a profound and deadly example of this beautiful literature’s misinterpretation. The “prophecy” which the preachers in Praying For Armageddon attempt to accelerate via colonisation of Palestine is only a 200 year-old concept in Christianity. The Rapture of the “faithful” Christians to Heaven is not explicitly detailed in the Book of Revelation. It is an idea invented by preacher John Nelson Darby in the 1820s as a means of converting Catholic Irish to the Church of England, the idea legendarily occurring to him when he hit his head falling off his horse! If you’d like to learn more about eschatology (the study of the end times) and especially the beauty and meaning behind the allegorical style of Apocalyptic literature, look no further than the work of Dr Justin Sledge and James Tabor: both important inspirations to me!

Throughout our production rehearsal process, we were continually confronted with the urgency of telling this story, which speaks to the responsibility of Western Christian hierarchy for the state of colonial, racial and religious affairs in Al Sham, more commonly known to westerners as the Levant region. The IDF’s bombing campaign in Gaza City intensified to never before seen levels, including targeted intimidation by the IDF of the Zeytoun neighbourhood, which is home to the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church community: the last standing Christian community in the city. The 23rd of September saw a failed “Rapture” prediction by American Evangelical Christians, leaving many disillusioned. On the night of the 1st October, the voyage of the 44 boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla — the largest
civilian humanitarian attempt to break the illegal siege of Gaza since its annexation in 2008 — was illegally intercepted in international waters by the IDF, with participants being imprisoned and subjected to torture “like terrorists” on the explicit request of Likud government Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. On 2nd October (the night of our premiere) two men were senselessly killed in a terrorist attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in my UK base: Manchester, on Yom Kippur: the holiest day of the Jewish liturgical year. If our piece portrays anything with overwhelming clarity, it is that the beautiful, vivid prose of the Book of Revelation is blasphemously misappropriated when placed in the hands of Empire, producing deadly consequences. The Book of Revelation was written in a Roman Empire prison camp on the island of Patmos, and was addressed to seven churches across Turkey facing brutal persecution at the hands of the Romans for their beliefs, and for organising in collegia: proto-workers' guilds. It speaks to the second coming of Christ liberating the downtrodden and oppressed from the beasts of empire: Nero, Diocletian, and their occupying armies. It was not written for those in palaces, or those who line their pockets with money from cultures of power. Genesis’ Eve: Ed and Norman’s symbol of resistance and creation amid chauvinist colonisation, knows this. In the long, wailing whole-tone scales of her Lament, she states that the words of this book contain no true meaning for the rich, powerful and “war-thirsty” who wrongfully use them to justify genocide. Instead of allowing people in palaces to interpret scripture written by people in prison for us, may we recognise true patriotism and love of the land in the bravest people in the world: Palestinians. "May the Lord wipe the tears from their eyes. May death be no more; may mourning and crying and pain be no more, For these first things will pass away." (Revelation 21: 4)
Maeve Herd