The Invisible Theatre is a creative workshop community. Three well delimited issues need to be clarified here:
- What are the creative characteristics of the Invisible Theatre? The short answer is in revival: let the angel appear.
- The consequences of the revival are the experiences a distantly related with initiation.
- The attitude of the Invisible Theatre Company according to these:
- From the side of revival: responsibility
- From the creative aspect of the Invisible Theatre: a certain kind of humility
Expounded issues: The creative characteristics of the Invisible Theatre
The performance may cause conversions or births in a certain sense in Wanderers who are opened and rely on Ferrymen. There is a word from the formation of something. The performance is only the framework for this kind of birth. It is more important how these frameworks may come to life. The main point is how to find the evocative strength, and how to conjure it into the devices. Can we find a form in which these creative strengths may become lively?
The most important aspect of the Invisible Theatre could be grasped as a kind of birth. Birth is an occurrence. It happens between two persons. The woman bears, and the child is coming into the world. Both are going on simultaneously. But something more happens still. The woman bears young she has to bear, the child is born he/she has to be born. What transacts all this is some kind of natural evocative compulsion and world order. This causes the rule of life and what is beyond life. The noblest aim of the Invisible Theatre may be to make the revival of something possible. We do not give this something to the Wanderers. Of course we give our affection, attention, touches, intimacy, etc. But the aim is beyond this kind of giving. Therefore the purpose is most of all spiritual. The spirit is never something that we give, but an evocative strength, revival itself. In other words, revival is when the angel appears.
What may this angel be? It may be a light beam on the road, making the Wanderers aware of something very important in their life: faith, feelings, etc. It may be a single step forward on their paths of life.
We have to make it possible for the angel to appear. We have to do everything that we can to let him appear. That something really happens in the Wanderer's soul during the performance or later in the silence room should we entrust it to the angel. We have to do everything, build up the framework of the performance in such a way that the angel appear. We can not do anything more.
The consequences of revival
The word angel can be found in the word gospel with a Greek origin, which means good news according to a word. So the word angel means mainly the news coming to life. As reviving news is it not passive, cannot be written down, cannot be formulated and cannot be read. It is an occurring event rather, and in this manner can be distantly connected with the concept of initiation.
According to our Christian concepts initiation means the moment when the believer has the experience which the Son of Man formulated in that manner: I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you (John 14:20). This should be an experience for something more total, a radical consciousness transformation. This happened to Saul on the Damascene road, he was initiated. The initiation is worthy to catch as a consciousness transformation. With no exaggeration it is a certain kind of death. And here the word Ferryman may gain a deeper sense. In the mythologies he helps one’s crossing between the riversides. This traversing is often the metaphor of two crucial states, passing from life to death.
Certainly the performance is not a case of life and death. It is important to emphasize the difference to avoid misunderstandings. But a special kind of change of state is involved anyway. And various changes of states are simultaneously deaths and births depending on the side from which regard at it. There is death if we take a look at the previous state and it is birth concerning the next state.
Thus the performance may include a special sort of change of state, a special kind of awakening. Because if the angel appears this evocative experience raised in the Wanderer’s soul may take on a character of becoming aware of certain things.
The attitude of our company according to the above
Since revival is not a plain process, it results in several things. To experience any kind of change of state, becoming aware of important issues is many times accompanied by shocks. The reason for this is the fact that our previous state attracts us heavily and so does the visible world in which we identify ourselves.
The performance may cause such spiritual phenomena, e.g. the Wanderers become more sensitive and open. This requires huge responsibility, care and and attentiveness from the Ferrymen. The frameworks of Invisible Theatre must be constructed such a way that this sensitivity and openness let the Wanderers build themselves not downwards but upwards.
The Ferrymen’s attitude should be based on responsibility and humility. Humility is subject to superior strength. This is necessary for creation. The artist has to submit himself to something which is bigger than him/her. The artist has to be a means through wich the work of art is written. This writing must be fluent and to that is it necessary to be in possession of self-discipline, perseverance, concentration and even much other similar regularity, because without these there is no required freedom in creative work. This artistic freedom must be limited by this kind of regularity to let the angel appear if he wants to.