18.08.2011

The Fundamentalist in NY Fringe reviewed:

Juha Jokela's THE FUNDAMENTALIST was reviewed by Case Aiken, nytheatre.com:

I think The Fundamentalist is a very well developed discussion of religion versus human sexuality.

Read the whole review.

Juha Jokela: The Fundamentalist

The story is told in these times (year 2006). The events are located to have happened between two and twenty years from present day.

Markus wants to tell in public his own version of the events that led to his parting of the priest’s ministry. 

The process got started when Heidi, the supervisor of a confirmation class that took place twenty years ago, and who now has come to faith, arrived to convert the liberal minded Markus. The retrograde memory of closeness had left a painful feeling of guild in both of them. The play pictures how Heidi’s and Markus’ debates about the historicality of the bible and the confessionality of faith rise and come to a crisis. Eventually, the sexual closeness between them becomes unavoidable. Yet Markus draws back from the relationship as he understands that his love is only based on imaginations. Heidi can not handle to get abandoned and gets caught in a psychosis.

During the play Markus’ lonely contemplations with the audience take turn with flashbacks of his and Heidi’s shared meetings. The play does not give any final answer nor makes any judgement, but leaves – without forgetting a good-hearted irony and humour – the spectator to ponder the difficult moral and ethical questions by himself.