[Dialogue] Satyagraha, Opera and Wall Street.

[icataiw at ms69.hinet.net]

A friend and colleague from the UK who is in the theater business, is 
currently in New York City preparing for his second appearance at the 
Met.  I saw a video of the production 3 years ago.  This one at this 
particular time portends to be even more powerful.  Don't miss if if 
you are anywhere near!

Gail



 From Phelem:
It is an amazing time to be here in NYC. As you may remember three 
years ago we came here and mounted our Philip Glass opera 
"Satyagraha" which some of you saw. At that time we had a great ad 
campaign which was almost cheeky in it's proposition:

"could an opera make us stand up for the truth?"

(Links here to the publicity and poster:

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/news/features/detail.aspx?id=3624

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/news/features/detail.aspx?id=3674 )

"Satyagraha": At that time in NYC no one knew what the word even 
meant! How times have changed.

Glass's piece is a thirty year old opera about Gandhi's Satyagraha 
campaign which first emerged and was enacted in South Africa. The 
Satyagraha protests involved the burning of record cards and the 
Newcastle march changed the rights of Indians in South Africa forever 
and was the beginning of the movement which brought India out from 
beneath the oppression of the British Empire.

At the time of first doing the Opera I was so drawn to it because of 
the personal connections to working with open space and it's power to 
help "peace break out". I was excited by how I saw that Gandhi's idea 
of Satyagraha meant how leadership, activism and protest starts with 
work on the self. The intangible "inner work cooking" that if we are 
lucky can happen whilst opening space for transformation and self 
organisation. All these are open space practices. All these are 
Satyagraha practices. A discipline of forged vulnerability or 
"soul-force", "truth-force", "love-force." I felt it was important to 
do the piece as it re-imagined and stated the true nature of what had 
become mistranslated and interpreted incorrectly as  "passive 
resistance" an unhelpful term to truly explain Gandhi's concept.

Now just three years later we are remounting the production whilst an 
open space/Satyagraha movement breaks out around us and worldwide.

The irony that our production will be playing to the Metropolitan 
Opera house audiences whilst Occupy Wall Street is so near cannot be 
avoided! I am fascinated to see how the audience will respond to the 
piece this time around, especially as many of them no doubt could 
well be considered to be part of the "1%".

I have also found myself feeling how strangely complicated the 
politics of this piece playing in the opera house is for myself and 
here of course the fifth principle seems all the more important and 
helpful to me.  I ask myself what am I doing not down on Wall street 
but inside an opera housed doing a piece about activism and protest 
portrayed by singers with amazing voices. Is this just decadent?

"Wherever it happens is the right place."

I have found myself in the past questioning during extreme times what 
is the point of doing theatre? This thing that can seem so frivolous 
whilst world events seem so overwhelming. However it is in theatre 
that I first experienced the transformative nature of space, 
atmosphere, silence and emergence. True theatre holds space for the 
imagination, dreams and the future when events, despair or beliefs 
could close that space down. This is the frontier I personally have 
known since childhood where a true conversation with the unknown and 
chaos can be had (as David Whyte says) and the imagination can be the 
first step towards opening space beyond my own prejudice and limiting 
beliefs into possibility.

So I have realised how important this piece is to perform right NOW 
because it manages to communicate what is behind or beneath a 
Satyagraha protest: this is the power of Spirit. How important it is 
to speak from my own place of truth. To be present in this a-causal 
connection with world wide events and to let theatre do what only 
theatre can do: to communicate the mysterious nature of the spirit 
that exists out there as the space opens. To speak tangibly of the 
spirit that so easily can be dismissed or made invisible in media 
coverage or polarised reactions. To use art to do what its purpose 
is: to say the unsayable, speak the ineffable.
As Gandhi sings in the opera (in words from the Bhagavad Gita)

"These are the Athletes of the Spirit"

Love

Phelim

www.improbable.co.uk
@openspacer


-- 
Gail West
ICA
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Taipei, Taiwan 111
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SKYPE   gwestica
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