[OSList] Satyagraha, Opera and Wall Street.

[icataiw at ms69.hinet.net]

Phelim,

Greatly appreciate your reflections on the NOW and Satyagraha.   I 
shared it with friends in the US and got the following information 
(sadly too late to tune in).
The Metropolitan Opera is doing a series of simulcast opportunities 
for us out here in the "wilderness."
Satyagraha was simulcast yesterday and I couldn't go. It is having an 
encore in local theaters across the country on Dec. 7. According to 
the internet it will be at the Brassfield Cinema 10 and Greensboro 
Grande Stadium 16 in Greensboro.
Anyone not in NYC...or near...look up Metropolitan Opera live in HD 
on Google. Faust is 12/10/11.
There are 11 opportunities during 2012. I've been to several.
Went to Seigfried a couple of weeks ago. It is better than being in 
New York. The camera gets up close and personal with the singers. 
Plus they go back stage and talk with folks.
Congratulations to all of you!  And may there be more...........

Gail

>Dear Raffi, Harrison, Michael, Suzanne, Christine, Peggy, Karen, and 
>all, how great to hear from you around the world.
>
>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


-- 
Gail West
ICA
3F, No. 12, Lane 5, Tien Mou West Road
Taipei, Taiwan 111
8862) 2871-3150
SKYPE   gwestica
www.icatw.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20111121/f9e33d12/attachment-0007.htm>