[Dialogue] Satyagraha, Opera and Wall Street.

[Lynda Cock]

 I just forwarded this message to my two special theater friends:  my cousin
Laley Lippard who is completing her MFA in dramatic directing at
Northwestern and to our friend Dipankar Murkerji and wife who are the
artistic and literary directors at Pangea Theater in Minneapolis. (They are
college friends of Jono's from India.)

I first learned of Satyagraha from Bishop Jim's book on Gandhi by the same
name with the subtitle The Matchless Weapon.  

I imagine you had a special connection to the video of the production from
your friend.  Do you know how it is available since I doubt that I will get
to NYC to see the opera and that it may be a few years before it comes this
way?

Thank you for sharing this informative letter and links with us.  

Lynda



-----Original Message-----
From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of icataiw at ms69.hinet.net
Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2011 4:41 AM
To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Subject: [Dialogue] Satyagraha, Opera and Wall Street.

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
3F, No. 12, Lane 5, Tien Mou West Road
Taipei, Taiwan 111
8862) 2871-3150
SKYPE   gwestica
www.icatw.com

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