Metaphysical revolt in the face of faith, examined through the play Insular: A contemporary Australian context

Metaphysical revolt arises from conscious awareness of the divorce between the experience of life and the emptiness of reason for it. To explore this, the play Insular is situated within the philosophical framework of Albert Camus’ approach of atheistic absurdism. The first part of this volume is an exegesis of qualitative practice-led research that applies a hybrid methodology of performative, bricolage and hermeneutic praxes. It includes a literary review of Islam, tragicomedy, metaphysics and Camus. This study demonstrates distinct correlations in applying tragicomedy to investigate the experience of the absurd in a twenty-first century Australian context with theatrical conventions of Brecht’s twentieth-century Epic Theatre. The creative practice of writing the play Insular (the second part of this volume), explores metaphysical revolt through framing a tragicomic narrative around experiences of an Australian Muslim character living in a contemporary Australian context. This volume undertakes a comparative examination of the contrast between the concepts of the ideal of God and hegemonic corruptions of versions of the ideal by all too human societal and theological practices.