Nobody wants a shared religion to ruin their relationship

I was intrigued when I heard that Francesca Rose was starting to work on a play about personal conflicts of faith and how that affects personal relationships. We met in our first year at university and have stayed in touch.

We had exchanged news on how we were affected by our religious backgrounds and our own faith. It has not been an easy journey for either of us.

So, I was moved by the dramatisation of a woman (Debs in Learning) who has started to feel that her efforts, her compromises to the point of subordination, and her sense of religious identity have cost her much and rewarded her little. I identified with the anger which that sense of loss can cause, and the alienation of being the one who is needing to step back when her husband is feeling increasingly rooted and secure in a faith context. It was my anger and depression resulting from a sense of the absence of God that eventually contributed to my divorce from a Church of England vicar.

I found that the closing scene of Learning was inconclusive for me about whether Debs and Jonathan would stay together. The sadness, however, was palpable. We feel it should have the opposite effect.

It’s widely recognised that communication is key to comfortable relationships. When upset by religion not being what we used to think it was, it can be painfully uncomfortable to communicate personal faith and how we value or reject religious practices.

Learning will have raised different issues for members of an audience. For me, it was an occasion to identify with someone who was overwhelmed, angry and grieving about her loss. Jonathan, in his experience of feeling more rooted in his religious identity, could not empathise with Debs’s trauma. It is a rare privilege to spend time with characters who help to validate my own experience.

Thank you for this production.