Mysticism in the Theater

Mysticism in the Theater introduces theater makers to the power and possibility
of using historical mystical ideas to inf luence all aspects of a production. His-
torical mysticism represents ideas developed by recognized spiritual thinkers
in all religions and time periods: individuals who stilled their ego, and per-
ceived the unity of all, hidden within the apparent multiplicity of existence.
This unique manner of spiritual inlay allows theatrical presentations to
find the height of artistic expression: art at the intersection of our historical
moment and the eternal. This study introduces theater makers to the history
of mystical inspiration within performance work and develops strategies for
inserting mystical ideas into their productions. The book ties this model into
theater’s history, as mystical ideas and quotes have been inserted into produc-
tions from Greek theater through Shakespeare and into the present day.
This book explores how teachings and ideas of specific historical mystical
thinkers might inf luence all aspects of contemporary theatrical productions
including writing, directing, acting, stagecraft/set design, lighting design,
costume design, sound design, and choreography.

Tom Block is the author of six books, a playwright, 25+ year exhibiting
visual artist and Founding Producer of New York City’s International Human
Rights Art Festival. His plays have been produced more than two dozen times
in New York City.
Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies

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edited collections. Considering theatre and performance alongside topics
such as religion, politics, gender, race, ecology, and the avant-garde, titles are
characterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innova-
tive studies on emerging topics.

Performance of Absence in Theatre, Performance and Visual Art

Sylwia Dobkowska

Commedia dell’Arte for the 21st Century

Practice and Performance in the Asia-Pacific
Corinna Di Niro and Oliver Crick

Christoph Schlingensief’s Realist Theater

Ilinca Todorut

Chinese Traditional Theatre and Male Dan

Social Power, Cultural Change and Gender Relations
Guo Chao

Mysticism in the Theater

What’s Needed Right Now
Tom Block

Copeau/Decroux, Irving/Craig
A Search for 20th Century Mime, Mask & Marionette
Thomas Leabhart

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Mysticism in the Theater
What’s Needed Right Now

Tom Block
First published 2022
by Routledge
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© 2022 Tom Block
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has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 9781032034348 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781032034362 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003187271 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003187271
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
For my first director, Roselie Vasquez-Yetter, who threw
open the door to the theater for me, introducing me to its
passion and possibility.
Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Mysticism: the human religion 5

2 History of mysticism in theater 46

3 Mysticism in theater: what’s needed now 97

4 Praxis: mystical theater in action 195

Index 223
Acknowledgments

One does not create theater work in a vacuum, and I have been favored with
much collaboration and support throughout my theater career, and in as-
sembling this model. First, I would like to thank Laura Hussey, Theater and
Performance Editor at Routledge, who showed a singular interest in helping
me bring this idea to the world. Her positive and consistent response and
support opened the doorway to fully developing and disseminating this new
mystical theater model.
I would like to thank Katrin Hilbe, a director in New York City, who has
spent many hours studying, shaping, and presenting my works on the stage.
Her sensitivity to my unusual voice and her willingness to discuss and un-
derstand the plays from within their strange world have taught me much, as
I continue to expand my theatrical oeuvre. She also provided much needed
advice as I wrote this book.
I would also like to thank Ramona Rose King, former editor at Howl-
Round Theatre Commons, who commissioned the first four articles on this
subject from me in 2017, which matured into this book.
Dr. Bahee Hadaegh, Associate Professor at Shiraz University, Iran, has
done much academic study at the intersection of mysticism and theater, with
a specific focus on Sufi inf luences on 20th-century drama. Her research, as
well as personal contact, provided much needed sustenance for the under-
standing of recent mystical theatrical work.
Other notable figures on my path, as I entered into and fell in love with
the theater, are Ellie Covan, founder of Dixon Place theater; Veronique Ory,
founder of Athena Theatre Company; Crystal Field, founder of Theater for
the New City—all of whom provided early support and presentations of my
work, after I arrived in New York City. I would also like to thank Michael
Scott-Price, Director of New Projects at Theater for the New City, who
picked my first play off a pile, leading to my first NYC production. Sheila
Joon Azim, an actor in New York, provided much needed encouragement to
transform the earlier articles into this book-length study.
Last, but certainly not least, I want to acknowledge my daughters Dalya and
Mollie who, though not theater makers, are definitely theatrical. Whether
near or far, they are always present for me, and provide a constant light and
inspiration, as I watch them blossom into their own lives.
Introduction

We live in an era of unique challenges.

As I sit at my desk in New York City, the very democratic foundations of
the United States tremble. Right-wing fascism, anti-Semitism, anti-Black,
anti-Asian, anti-brown, and anti-immigrant sentiment explode across the
Western world. Dictatorships continue to rule countries, from Myanmar to
Uganda to North Korea to Venezuela to Russia to China, bringing more
than a third of humanity under autocratic rule. And the mother-of-all-crises,
global warming, foretells the Apocalypse, as seen in the Book of Revelations.
But humanity has always felt existentially challenged. The invention of
the crossbow in the 4th century BCE foretold a time of unlimited casualties
in war, leading to the potential destruction of civilization. Fifteen hundred
years later, the end of the first millennium of the Christian era brought with
it prophesies of imminent doom. During the European “Dark Ages,” the
Bubonic Plague, now an easily treatable infection, destroyed one-third of
that continent’s citizens. And I spent my own childhood cowering under
covers whenever commercial jets passed overhead, wondering if the Russians
arrived to drop a nuclear bomb on me.
Although each of these crises has been factual and appeared catastrophic
within the worldview of their particular time period, the true human chal-
lenge represents an ongoing psycho-spiritual one. The true test of being hu-
man takes place inside of each individual’s head.
Even more than solving the symptom of the latest existential threat, each
epoch requires a soothing voice to still the interior confusion of being hu-
man, a person offering a manner for individuals to overcome their anxieties,
allowing them to connect to the spirit hidden within. And then understand-
ing a way of attaching personal and social actions to this soul force, instead
of their efforts emerging from the desperation and dread caused by the most
recent portents of doom.
Every era demands a particular, prophetic response to ease the psychic ills of
that time. Offering a way of reaching into the general populace, to raise their
spirit from the gloom of the surrounding zeitgeist, to the transcendence which

DOI: 10.4324/9781003187271-1
2 Introduction
awaits in their souls. And successful prophets speak the language of their time
period. They must be able to reach into the general society and mindset that
surrounds them in a manner that is contemporary and meaningful.
This book offers one manner of doing so.
It proposes using the ideals of mystical theater reclaimed from the begin-
ning of drama’s history, refashioned for our era. It offers a spiritual palliative
at a frontier that we have not much visited recently: where mysticism, crea-
tivity, and society meet.
The idea that classical mysticism or live theater might offer something
central to our need for transcendence seems quaint, antiquated, perhaps
even ­absurd. But it grows from history, not out of the fevered dreams of one
theater maker.
In ancient Greece, where Western theatrical history began 2,500 years ago,
Dionysian performances (in honor of the God Dionysus) created this sacred
space. At these festivals, the general society, its deepest spiritual yearnings,
and the theatrical impulse fused into creative worship. More recently, visits
to this vital frontier at the intersection of live theater and the spirit began
to take place with 19th-century Russian Symbolists, 20th-century Absurd-
ist drama, and through individual theater practitioners such as Konstantin
Stanislavsky, Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, Jerzy Grotowski, Howard
Barker, and others.
This book emerges from the ancient intersection of theater, spirituality,
and society, as well as the work of more recent practitioners, to create a
manual for prophetic renewal, set into the history of theater and mysticism.
It offers a return to the Dionysian theater, though using contemporary lan-
guage and aesthetic forms. This model fuses historical mysticism—defining a
shared human religion—and theater’s once and future role in leading specta-
tors from the particular of their mundane lives, into the eternal of the Divine
spirit, sparking a social rejuvenation based in each spectator’s experience of
transcendence.
No less today than at theater’s beginnings in ancient Greece, the stage of-
fers a doorway to a pristine, archaic spiritual state. The act of watching a play
has not changed since the beginning of drama. It removes the audience from
their mundane lives, inviting them into the possibility of sacred time.
Many contemporary theater makers appreciate this and believe that theater
can change the world. However, though they feel this in their bones, they
have lacked specific tools with which to implement their spiritual program.
This book lays out quite clearly how this might come about, sinking the
roots of this mystico-theatrical theory deep into the history of theater and
time-honored mysticism, explaining how their fusion creates a powerful en-
gine for social renewal.
Many great social movements began in one time and place, then suffused
the culture, creating a new imagination of possibility and, ultimately, inspir-
ing social change. And theater, though seemingly marginalized within con-
temporary mass culture, provides the perfect creative Petri dish to incubate
 Introduction 3
novel ideas and infiltrate them into the public square. In the same manner
that major change has begun with seemingly minor actions on a public bus,
in a small meeting of a vegetarian society, or at a local bar (see below for all
three), the theater might offer a place of regeneration, a space to nurture the
first inklings of a major, positive social revolution.
While this may appear overly hopeful, recent history provides many ex-
amples of profound and lasting social change beginning at a single point in
time and place. Although these did not begin specifically in a theater, they
provide examples for how other activists have used performative energy and
creativity to spark renewal.
A few examples:

• The first time that Mahatma Gandhi questioned authority (in 1890 at age
20), he felt it improper to exclude a man from the London Vegetarian
­Society because the man refused to regard Puritan morals as a central
pillar of society. The man in question supported newly available birth
control methods and had been preaching their use to the working classes.
He had been expelled from the group. Gandhi objected to the censure.
However, he was so shy about standing up for what he felt right, that
he wrote his views down on paper. The president of the society read
them out for him. His first act of civil questioning ended in failure. But
Gandhi’s activist career had begun, culminating in his overthrow of the
British rule of India 57 years later, through a nonviolent revolution.
• Many date the beginning of the (ongoing) civil rights movement to De-
cember 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, when Rosa Parks did not give
up her bus seat to a White woman. Parks became the tangible symbol of
the resulting Montgomery bus boycott (December 5, 1955, to December
20, 1956), which received national publicity. This lit the f lame which led
(seven years later) to the massive march on Washington, guided by Mar-
tin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and others. A year after that, the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color,
religion, and sex. Rosa Parks became known as the “mother of the civil
rights movement.”
• The LGBTQ rights movement can also be traced to a day and place,
June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn (53 Christopher St, New York City—
you can still grab a drink there). A spontaneous uprising by the LGBTQ
community responding to a police raid at the gay-friendly gathering
place began a series of demonstrations. It has been a long and sometimes
painful struggle, but this moment in the summer of 1969 led to LGBTQ
Americans getting legally married, serving in the army, and being open
and comfortable about their sexuality. Of course, the fight for equality
continues.
• Occupy Wall Street (starting on September 17, 2011, in Zuccotti Park,
in New York City’s Wall Street financial district) began as an unplanned
protest against economic inequality. It gave rise to the wider Occupy
4 Introduction
Wall Street movement throughout the United States. One main demand
was a livable, $15/hour minimum wage (the Federal minimum wage at
that time was $7.25/hour). Now, a decade later, although the Federal
minimum wage remains at $7.25/hour, 20 states and 32 cities and coun-
ties have raised their minimum wage. Additionally, 21 major businesses
such as Costco, Amazon, Target, Best Buy, and other multinational cor-
porations have raised their minimum wage to at least $15/hour. Cur-
rently, more than a third of the United States citizenry operates in locales
or businesses paying this living wage. Bank of America announced they
would raise their minimum wage to $25/hour in 2025. These changes
can be directly linked to that specific time and place, in the small park
on Wall Street, in the heart of New York City.

Many of these, such as the civil rights movement, the fight for LGBTQ
equality, and the Occupy Wall Street protests, involved creativity and art as
a central facet of their activism. And in each of these cases, the smallest spark
of energy lit a blaze of positive, restorative social change.
Now, theater spaces can provide a similar creative impetus for social revo-
lution, one which inf luences people deep beneath the obvious differences in
skin color, ethnicity, culture, and religion which divide us, to find the same
shared spirit which resides within everyone. This book explores how theater
makers can seed a restorative, necessary, and age-old mystical energy into the
general society, one theatrical production at a time.
A century ago, the playwright Eugene O’Neill challenged the theater to
re-create a dramatic vernacular which emerged from and returned to the
transcendent.
This book answers his call.
1 Mysticism
The human religion

The search for a restorative theater begins and ends in the spirit. Not with any
single religious path, mind you, but with the human religion: mysticism. The
beating heart lying at the center of all transcendent paths.
For whatever reasons, members of our species peer into the world and see
division between objects, people, and religions. This perception creates tribal
strife, religious tensions, social hierarchies, political parties, immoral patriot-
ism, economic divisions, and war.
This perception of separation represents the ultimate human challenge.
Mysticism offers an antidote to this dynamic. Mysticism soothes, heals, and
points toward the harmony lying latent and too-often unremarked beneath
the apparent multiplicity in the world. Mysticism unearths the interconnec-
tion between all people, as well as fundamental affinity of the individual with
the universal energy.
Applied mysticism—the application of spiritually healing ideals to social
and political interactions—moves people away from disunity, tribal silos, and
sometimes deadly strife, toward a healthier, unified, and more supportive
human community.
Theater offers a vital and time-honored manner of suffusing mystical ideals
into the general society: time-honored because theater began at the inter-
section of mysticism, creativity, and society. By reinserting mystical energy
into theater, we offer a manner of return to the earliest mystico-theatrical
impulse, as well as a novel (in recent memory) way toward a healthier society.
This book explores exactly how to do this: first, by understanding mysti-
cism and theatrical history, and then by exploring how theater makers might
insert restorative ideas into their production and aid in leading humanity
toward social and spiritual renewal.

A wry certainty

You should know that these philosophers whose wisdom you so much
extol have their heads where we place our feet.
(Isaac of Acre, d. 1330 in Perry, 1971, p. 734)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003187271-2
6 Mysticism
Our contemporary worldview emerges from the illusion that we might
rationally comprehend the predicament of being human. Beginning with
Enlightenment thinking (18th century), which proposed that science held
answers to all of life’s questions—from personal psychology to the distant ori-
gins and purpose of the universe—humans turned their backs on the mystery
at the heart of being, replacing it with a wry certainty. The Industrial Rev-
olution, 100 years later, brought further faith in human ingenuity, allowing
us to believe in the ability to master our surroundings through the force of
our intellect.
An arrogant confidence emerged, positing that things unseen do not exist.
But this belief in our capacity to “get to the bottom of things,” or control
them for our narrow benefit, has not borne out. Every time a gate of un-
derstanding swings open—from atoms to sub-atomic particles to quarks, for
instance—a new question emerges. And each time we think a new industrial
palliative responds to our most pressing need, it simply creates a host of new,
unforeseen, and oftentimes more dire problems. The 1950s faith in oil and
chemicals, for example, led to Superfund sites, global warming, more than
5 trillion pieces of plastic detritus in our oceans, and a Western population
riddled with cancer, dementia, and a growing collection of auto-immune
diseases.
This apocryphal tale captures our actual psychic plight with more cer-
tainty than all scientific comprehension and industrial progress combined:

A Western traveler encountering an Eastern philosopher asked him to

describe the nature of the world: ‘It is a great ball resting on the f lat back
of the world turtle,’ responded the philosopher.
‘Ah yes, but what does the world turtle stand on?’ responded the
searcher.
‘On the back of a still larger turtle.’
‘Yes, but what does that stand on?’
‘A very perceptive question. But it’s no use, mister; it’s turtles all the
way down.’
(Sagan, 1986, p. 343)

No matter how many theories or how small the particles unmasked or how
much computational power we create in the largest mainframe computer,
we can never move beyond the ultimate question: what is at the bottom of it
all? And every time we solve one problem, more crop up in its wake. Beyond
every door of explanation lies another question mark. Solve that deeper prob-
lem, and another question mark pops up. It is eternal, because the conclusive
question—why?—cannot be answered from within this realm.
The mystics—those who have turned every question over and over again
and always come up with the same answer: the question mark at the heart
of being—have a response to the final query. A story told about the Hasidic
 Mysticism 7
master, Rabbi Barukh of Mezbizh (d. 1811), expressed this conundrum and
its answer.

Rabbi Barukh’s student inquired into the nature of God, becoming lost
in an infinite regression of questions and answers. The Rabbi visited
him, finding him curled into a desperate ball in the corner of the room.
The Rabbi said: ‘I know what is hidden in your heart. You have passed
through the fifty gates of reason. You begin with a question, and think, and
think up an answer—and the first gate opens, to a new question! And
again you plumb it, find the solution, f ling open the second gate—
and look into a new question. On and on like this, deeper and deeper,
until you have forced open the 50th gate. There, you stare at a question
whose answer no one has ever found. But if you dare to probe still fur-
ther, you plunge into the abyss.’
‘So, I should go back all the way, to the very beginning?’ cried the
disciple.
‘If you turn, you will not be going back,’ said Rabbi Barukh. ‘You will
be standing beyond the last gate. You will be standing in faith.’
(Buber, 1991, p. 92)

Such represents the mystic’s response to the conundrum of life: move beyond
questioning, into acceptance of the mystery.

What mysticism is not

If we have to increasingly medicate ourselves to live within our current

model of society, then perhaps we should re-evaluate the model.
(McGraw, 2004, p. 163)

It often makes sense to understand something by first defining what it is not.

In the spiritual search, this represents “apophatic” understanding, or knowl-
edge of God obtained through negation. Some of the greatest thinkers fol-
lowed this path, from Meister Eckhart (d. 1328; Christian mystic and heretic)
to Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900; philosopher and, I propose, apophatic mysti-
cal thinker), Buddhists, Sufis (Islamic mystics, who assure that whatever you
think God is, God is something else), and many others.
As language becomes degraded by political dogma, advertising, and mass
culture, many misconceptions grow up around commonly used terms. We
lose sight of their particularity through the fog of disinformation. George
Orwell (d. 1950) noted:

Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their mean-
ing, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of
8 Mysticism
a prefabricated henhouse. [This] slovenliness of our language makes it
easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
(Orwell, 1946, online)

Ideas around mysticism fall prey to this linguistic disease. However, mysticism
represents the most powerful force in human experience. Ergo, it behooves
us to untangle this idea from the variety of spiritless attributions which have
overgrown it in the popular mind.
Mysticism does not represent clairvoyance. It has nothing to do with
ghosts. Nor does it concern itself with Ouija boards, fortune telling, thought
transference, luminous energy fields, long walks next to the sea, tourist visits
to ancient archeological sites, or weekend participation in indigenous sweat
lodges. It doesn’t concern hypnotism, Orgone Energy, idealism, positivism,
miracles, occult sciences, disembodied dreams, transcendental experiences,
or psychedelic drugs (sorry!). Forget about Theosophy, Freemasonry, crys-
tals, tarot cards, pyramids, astrology, and hermeticism. Reiki is out, as is
hot yoga.
You definitely do not need to travel to find it. Jerusalem, Cuzco in Peru,
or Sedona in Arizona are no more mystical than your living room.
Even worse than the linguistic word salad overtaking this ancient spiritual
path, mysticism has become monetized in the Western society. It has been
used to sell new personal awareness apps (Mystical Shaman Oracle: “Mystical
Shaman Oracle Readings anywhere,” or the Mystical Messenger, which “will
lead to chatting with hot guys!”). Mercedes-Benz went to a Zen monas-
tery to shoot an ad for their A 45 AMG, pairing their product with five
Buddhist monks practicing zazen meditation. Mysticism can also win bas-
ketball games, as Phil Jackson (b. 1945), one of the winningest coaches in
that sport, was referred to as the “Zen master,” because of his integration
of meditation, Buddhism, and other spiritual traditions into his coaching
practice.
Mistaken ideas concerning mysticism have brought people together under
the tent of a single autocratic leader (the QAnon conspiracy supporting Don-
ald Trump has been found to have a strong spiritual component). Sometimes,
it purports to offer fulfillment at a manageable cost. The Kabbalah Center
(with locations in more than forty cities in 19 countries) uses the heart of
Jewish mysticism to teach how astrology acts as a roadmap for life, to release
negative thoughts and emotions in personal relationships, and to help you
move toward prosperity and vibrant blessings of abundance and fulfillment.
With a series of classes, workshops, and books (all specially priced for even
the most frugal mystic), and a shopping page filled with amulets, trinkets, and
Kabbalistic texts published in Aramaic (not their original language), mystical
attainment can be had by simply opening the wallet.
The mysticism outlined in this book will be based in none of these spiritual facsimiles.
The ideals explored herein present timeless mystical concepts, grounded
to the historically-based spiritual search, growing from the deepest insight
 Mysticism 9
known to humanity, shared across all time periods, geographies, and reli-
gious paths.

Mysticism and religion

Most religion seeks to maintain itself by asserting dogmas, employing so-

cial and psychological persuasion or intimidation, invoking distinctness
of cultural or group identity, and, at the all-too-common worst, instigat-
ing or practicing persecution, torture, war, and murder.
(Peter Malekin in Yarrow, 2008, p. 47)

In addition to the misconceptions outlined above, it is vital to separate mys-

ticism from religion. Though mysticism emerges from the vessel of a host
religion, it quickly outgrows it, an orchid emerging from a pile of fertilizer.
Mystical comprehension leads to a deep understanding of the unity of all
people, the similarity of all spiritual yearnings within all religious paths, how
the same universal energy hides within the seeming diversity of the physical
world, and one’s personal connection with the Divine.
These apperceptions often lead the mystical thinker into conf lict with the
original religious impulse, its directives, and leaders.
Religions—all religions—represent political structures with doctrinal
rules which one must follow to be considered a member. Religions conf late
transcendental urges with temporal facts, attempting to ground their version
of spirituality in the arc of history. Religions offer definitive answers to what
are, ultimately, the unanswerable questions at the heart of existence.
What’s more, unlike mysticism, religions make different, competing, and
sometimes incompatible claims about the nature of ultimate reality, about
God, about human history, and about the pathway to “salvation.” Some ex-
amples of these competing claims include whether the Divine is personal
(Christianity) or impersonal (Buddhism), whether the Deity became incar-
nate (Christianity) in this world, if human beings are reborn (Hindu and
Buddhism) if unable to achieve some form of ultimate salvation during a sin-
gle life, what form the afterlife takes (many religions disagree on this facet), if
there even is an afterlife ( Jews and Buddhists are dubious on this matter), and
which of the many scriptures is the scripture (Qur’an, Torah, Bible, Bhagavad
Gita, words of Buddha, etc.).
Most importantly and divisively, religions demand that if a person accepts
the teachings of their system, then all of the others must be incorrect.
Within religious belief systems, God presents a parsimonious ultimate be-
ing, indeed. God is omnipresent, perhaps, yet available within only one path,
and eschewing, and sometimes damning, the rest. In point of fact, all reli-
gious worship represents various lower way-stations along separate pathways
leading up the mountain toward a single truth: a truth defined by mysticism.
As Sri Mahana Maharshi (d. 1950, a Hindu sage) said: “The goal for all is
10 Mysticism
the same. Yet different names are given to the goal, only to suit the process
preliminary to reaching the goal” (Perry, 1971, p. 798).
And at the top of this mountain reside the mystics from all faiths, in quiet
agreement, disturbing none of the other denizens of these transcendent
reaches.

What mysticism is
Mysticism comprises two complementary facets, both of which unify a single
worldview.
Outward-facing mysticism peers into the world, perceiving the unity lying
at the center of all apparent multiplicity. The spark of God resides as surely in
a coconut as a grass blade as a f lea as your enemy. And each spark fuses into a
unitary whole, at a level somewhere below quarks.
A second aspect of mysticism defines an inward-looking gaze, discerning
the place deep inside oneself where “within” and “above” melt into each
other. Where the individual “I” fuses with the universal “I.” Where one’s
particular experience as a person set within a time, place, and personality
coalesces with the absolute “is-ness” of the universe.
At its highest level of practice, mystical appreciation represents one in which
an adept loses all sense of their “self.” There is no subject-object distinction.
The individual moves beyond religion, outside of any beliefs, symbols, ritu-
als, interpretations, or images of the creed within which they practice, into
the realm of pure Divinity. The difference between the act of knowing (verb)
and the known (noun) disappears.
This comprehension represents the human religion, shared by all paths.
More importantly, a mystical appreciation of the world counters negative, divi-
sive, and sometimes violent social behavior. Violence begins in the creation of
the “other,” at the frontier where “us” meets “them.” The more one looks into
the world and perceives unity, the further outward from the center of society
pushes this frontier. The more peace and acceptance emerges within the world.
William James (d. 1910, American philosopher) noted the unity of mystical
ideas across religious paths in Varieties of Religious Experience:

In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in

Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about
mystical utterances an eternal unanimity . . . In mystic states, we both
become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness.
This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered
by differences of clime or creed.
( James, 1961, p. 329)

The only bone I have to pick with James is that he must include Judaism,
Buddhism, Taoism, and virtually any other human religious path in his
 Mysticism 11
exposition. At the center of all paths, the same thing: the experience of unity
lying at the heart of all external objects, and that which lies at the center of
our being.
However simple it may sound, mystical attainment is anything but easy.

Heresy!
One of the great challenges posed by mysticism, and one that opens a door-
way for theater makers (which we will explore in depth in Chapter 3), is
that mysticism represents a non-cognitive experience. Mysticism has often
been suppressed within religions for just this reason: as a purely personal,
indescribable, and visceral awareness of the Divine, mysticism bypasses all
religiously prescribed necessities.
Mystics do not drop money onto the collection plate.
For this reason, normative religious leaders have often considered spiritual
adepts heretical. Early in the Christian era, Emperor Justinian (d. 565) closed
down the Neoplatonic Athenian Academy, extinguishing “mystical philos-
ophy” as an accepted field of study throughout the entire Catholic Imperium
Romana, stretching from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (in today’s Iraq) to
Portugal.
Neoplatonism posited that everything emerges from a single divine cause,
representing the unity at the heart of being. Its ideas strongly inf luenced
early Christian thinkers and many other spiritual adepts. In addition to the
early Church fathers, this unifying vision inspired Greek Stoic philosophers,
Sufis of Islam, medieval Jewish Kabbalists, and other open-minded search-
ers. Justinian’s desire to control the religious narrative and quash mystical
appreciation helped usher in nearly 1,000 years in Europe, known as the
“Dark Ages.”
Mystical ideas within mainstream Christianity remained anathema
throughout this period. The Inquisition, an ecclesiastical tribunal established
by Pope Gregory IX (1232) for the suppression of heresy, codified Justinian’s
distaste for free thinking, lasting in Europe for more than 500 years. After the
Inquisition finished with Jews and Muslims (by late 15th century), it turned
its gaze to the mystics, repressing them with the passionate ferocity previously
reserved for non-Christians.
This paramilitary campaign safeguarding the Church’s doctrinal purity
was especially recognized for its use of creative torture methods to safeguard
the faith.
Charges of heresy within the Church have continued into our era, though
with lesser consequences. Liberation theology, emerging in the Americas in
the 1960s, emphasized social concern for the poor and political liberation for
oppressed peoples. It immediately came under Catholic Church scrutiny. In
the 1980s Cardinal (and future Pope) Joseph Ratzinger called liberation the-
ology a “singular heresy,” blasting the movement as a “fundamental threat”
12 Mysticism
to the Church. He prohibited some of its leading proponents from speaking
publicly. These free thinkers hardly found themselves alone, as in the latter
half of the 20th century, many prominent theologians—like Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin (Society of Jesus), Yves Congar (Order of Preachers), and John
Courtney Murray (Society of Jesus)—were silenced or disciplined.
As recently as this millennia, the writings of Thomas Merton (d. 1968,
American Trappist monk and spiritual seeker) received similar treatment.
The Church considered his book Peace in the Post Christian Era heretical due
to its anti-war posture. The Church suppressed its publication for more than
four decades, before its release in 2004.
As recently as 2007, the Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith issued a notification (similar to a Muslim fatwa) against Jesuit priest Jon
Sobrino (b. 1938) for his teaching of doctrines which were seen as “erroneous
or dangerous and [that] may cause harm to the faithful.” Among other “er-
rors,” Sobrino was said to place too great an emphasis on the human nature
of Jesus Christ.
Charges of heresy certainly do not confine themselves to the religion of
Jesus. All creeds, being first and foremost political organizations with a bu-
reaucracy, budget, lands, hierarchy, special clothing, titles, and lots and lots
of temporal power, do not look kindly on people claiming to be within their
faith, yet taking a spiritual end-run around their purview.
Islam has a long history of declaring as heretical free-thinking mystics
within their path. Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922), whose teachings inspired a
movement for moral and political reform in Baghdad, was accused of blas-
phemy, convicted, punched in the face, hung, decapitated, then doused in oil
and set alight, with his ashes scattered into the Tigris River.
He inaugurated a long line of Sufi mystics accused of heresy, with execu-
tions of Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani (1131), Ishraqi philosopher Shahab al-Din
Suhrawardi (1191), Ottoman mystic Sheikh Bedreddin (1420), and wandering
dervish Sarmad Kashani (1661) in India. Even today, not only does the destruc-
tion of Sufi shrines and suppression of its followers continue throughout the
Muslim world, but the members of the Ahmadiyya sect (a movement origi-
nating in Punjab, in the late 19th century, proposing that all the major world
religions have Divine origins) are regarded by many Muslims as apostate.
While these days most organized religions opt for shunning and exile,
occasional institutional death threats for open-minded thinkers remain. For
instance, in 1989, Iranian Shi’a Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a
fatwa (religious ruling), calling on “all brave Muslims” to kill Salman Rush-
die (b. 1947, novelist and essayist) and his publishers (Viking Penguin in the
UK), due to Rushdie’s literary work Satanic Verses, inspired in part by the life
of the Prophet Muhammad (d. 632).
Judaism, as well, has a long history of heretical designations, stretching
from Talmudic times (c. 4th century; the story of heretic Elisha ben Avuyah,
 Mysticism 13
C. 70, is related in the Talmud, a book of Jewish exegesis) through the me-
dieval period (c. 10th to 13th centuries; Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia,
d. 1291, found himself exiled on a small island off the coast of Sicily for his
non-traditional views), to the excommunicated Jewish philosopher Baruch
Spinoza (d. 1677), and into the 1960s, when British Rabbi Louis Jacobs (d.
2006) was accused of heresy for his view that modern Jews could remain
committed to tradition and religious observance without sacrificing their
intellectually honesty.
In almost all of these cases, the heretical ideas offer a more open-minded
and accepting vision than their host religion, something considered unac-
ceptable by the religious elite in each tradition.

Mysticism: the human religion

The needed Copernican revolution in theology involves a radical trans-

formation of our conception of the universe of faith and the place of our
own religion within it. It involves a shift from dogma . . . to the realiza-
tion that it is God who is at the centre, and that all religions of human-
kind serve and revolve around God.
(Hick, 1973, p. 131)

The impetus for religion stems from the human need to understand the
world and our place within it. We humans have been cast adrift on this earth
with enough of a consciousness to know that something is going on, but not
enough to figure out exactly what it is. Religion evolved to meet this des-
perate need to ground ourselves in this incomprehensible situation. A variety
of traditions, rituals, ideas, and stories emerged and separated, becoming the
various paths that we experience as different creeds.
Although seemingly different, and sometimes directly at odds, all religions
share a common core. Buried at the center of the various paths awaits the
same ideal of unity, both the experience of an individual’s internal union
with the Divine and an appreciation for the unity at the center of all apparent
multiplicity in the world outside of our heads.
Mysticism not only unites all religious paths, as well as individuals with
the Divine, but it also responds to the question: which religious tradition
embodies ultimate truth, and which are wallowing in pitiable (and some-
times homicidal) error? It answers succinctly: all religions have within them
not only a core of ultimate truth, but they share this same core. When this
common nucleus is overwhelmed by temporal exigencies, all doctrines are
in error. When the underlying spiritual ideals are forgotten, all creeds might
lead to mass murder in the form of religiously inspired wars. And yes, this
includes Buddhism.1
14 Mysticism
As the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (d. 1860) said: “All religions at
their highest point end in mysticism and mysteries, that is to say, in darkness
and veiled obscurity. These really indicate merely a blank spot for knowl-
edge, the point where all knowledge necessarily ceases,” (Schopenhauer,
1966, p. 610) and faith begins.
Though often overlooked or willfully ignored, mystical actuality offers the
answer of consilience for which humanity yearns.

Where does mysticism fit into society

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who look into the heart of
existence and see an exclamation point, and those who look into this center
and see a question mark.
The former are the institutionally religious, the politicians, the conspiracy
theorists, the billionaires who can’t retire because greed, desperation, and a
lack of spirituality drive them to always need more.
Those who perceive a question mark at the center of the universe are the
mystics, poets, philosophers, gentle souls, and healers.
Not everyone makes a conscious decision in this matter. Those who see an
exclamation point at the heart of being might well be devoutly religious—
Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and so forth—all equally
convinced there is one answer to the Divine question, and that their path is
the only way toward it.
Many without religion, however, also belong to this first group. They
might be singularly devoted to success in politics, finance, or business.
Perhaps, having access to none of these professional paths, they choose
from an increasingly bizarre series of conspiracy theories, all of which
purport to give access to an ultimate answer (e.g. Illuminati Freemasons
secretly control many major aspects of society and government and are
working to establish the New World Order! The Mayan calendar pre-
dicted the end of the world in December 2012!), proffering an ultimate,
digestible answer in the same manner (though certainly not in the same
language) as religion.
There is no opting out from a governing belief system. People always
will believe in something fundamental, to respond to the query hidden deep
inside: “who are we, and why are we here?” The ultimate question beats
too persistently in the breast to completely ignore. As Thomas Merton
noted:

No man can exist completely without religion. If he gets rid of a good

one, he will unconsciously exchange it for a bad one. If he is impatient
of “myth” in higher religion, he will fabricate a myth of his own, organ-
izing his own crude fantasies into another homemade “system” which
pleases him better—perhaps with unfortunate outcomes.
(Merton, 1971, p. 170)
 Mysticism 15
Or, as the British philosopher Karl Popper (d. 1994) noted: “The conspiracy
theory of society consists in removing God and then asking: ‘Who has taken
God’s place?’” (Almond, 2000, pp. 186–187).
Everyone—from the most devout, Puritanical evangelist assured that
the only way to God is through their unsmiling path, to the most obscure
conspiracist, equally convinced of the allegation that a cabal of Satan-­
worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and
plotting against the President of the United States—has answered the ulti-
mate question with an exclamation point.
On the other side of this important divide, those who look into the heart of
being and see a question mark, are, in some manner, the mystics. Not believ-
ing that they have access to the ultimate answer, they allow for and welcome
difference. They respect the views of others. They would never take up arms
in the name of God, for no one ever killed or died to honor a question. They
can be religious, certainly, but they can just as easily be secular. What defines
this group is their willingness to say: “I don’t know.”
They are comfortable with the psychic disquiet this causes. They honor
the impossibility of discovering a conclusive answer by moving, in some
manner, beyond the fiftieth gate, into the world of acceptance, feeling,
and faith.
They are more inclined to see what unites us, than the narrow differences
which appear to divide people.
Currently, more than two billion people fit into this latter category. They
might define their views in polls as secular, agnostic, atheistic, or as belong-
ing to a religious path without necessarily believing that it offers the only
pathway to the spirit. This group offers the possibility of a unified worldview
and peace among people. And this group must be expanded to include more
and more people, while those of a blind faith in their path must be softened,
opened to other possibilities, and helped to grow to accept the differences
inherent in human society.
Applied mysticism might play the role of softening hearts, expanding fron-
tiers of “us” outward, and linking more and more humans at a collective
sense of being.
Mysticism begins as an individual path. But from being a personal experi-
ence, mysticism might suffuse our society. And it must. The general society
needs mysticism, as surely as does each individual within it. However, I am
not advocating for the population to put on sack cloth, abandon their desk
jobs, and follow the path of the medieval mystic, dedicated to living in filth
on aught but maggots and dirty water or, even worse, being hung, f layed,
drawn and quartered, set afire, and then cast into a river, all the while sport-
ing an ethereal smile, as was Mansur al-Hallaj.
But I am advocating expanding the number of people who appreciate the
unity of all being and our personal connection with the Divine, while mov-
ing narrow certainty, conspiracy theorists, and murderous religious believers
as far to the fringes of society as possible.
16 Mysticism
Mysticism in today’s world

People of a spiritual and contemplative nature continue to appear even

in the darkest periods of spiritual eclipse, precisely because the economy
of a human collectivity necessitates their existence. Were human society
to be without any contemplatives at all, it would simply cease to exist.
(Nasr, 1999, p. 27)

In the past, spiritual seekers devoted themselves to harsh routines to help

them still the senses and their conception of the individual self to achieve a
glimpse of the Divine. From walling herself into a small cell in a church and
passing her full life there ( Julian of Norwich, d. 1416), to St. Simeon Stylites
(d. 459), who stood on one leg, the other being covered with hideous ulcers,
while his biographer stood by his side and picked up the maggots that fell
from his body, replacing them in the sores of the saint, and saying to the
worm, “eat that which God has given you,” no self-abnegating exercise ap-
peared too strict.
But not to worry. Mystical appreciation does not demand such extreme
measures.
The rest of this chapter explores more closely the various facets of the
mystic’s path, to prepare us for how this shared human religion might inf lu-
ence spiritually-based theater makers. Not by turning today’s dramatists into
mystics (in which case they would create no more theater!), but so they may
understand and then seed these ideals into the general society, one theatrical
production and one audience member at a time.
Theater makers can ignite a small spark of unifying energy which, if nur-
tured, will grow into a movement as strong, difficult, challenging, and last-
ing as Mahatma Gandhi’s (d. 1948) concepts of nonviolent civil disobedience,
Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement, or even the fight of a few be-
draggled campers in a downtown NYC park, which grew into a successful and
ongoing push for legislative change around a living wage in the United States.

Reality

Today, one often hears the claim that everything is relative. But the same
people who make such a claim often bestow an absolute character upon
the domain of the relative itself.
(Nasr, 1999, p. 87)

Truth resides within reality.

The outward-looking facet of mystical appreciation teaches that each ma-
terial aspect of reality, from a cooking pot to a f lower to a mountain, repre-
sents different manifestations of the same Divine energy. They share a single,
unalterable existence.
 Mysticism 17
As the contemporary Sufi thinker Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933) as-
sured, all that appears to us as “real” represents a sacred symbol of what
lies behind it. Only the Origin or the One is completely real and totally
Itself, and not the symbol of something other than itself (Nasr, 1997, p. 131).
Everything we perceive with our senses and thoughts represents a wayfinding
arrow to the Divine.
Coming to this appreciation, really internalizing it, is a path both circular
and eternal. Zen master Ch’ing-yuan Wei-hsin (c. 9th century) related a tale
of understanding and deliverance:

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains,
and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came
to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers
are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance, I am at rest. For
I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers.
Are the three understandings the same or different?
(Watts, 1951, p. 126)

Of course, a real Zen master finishes this question with the comment: “thirty
lashes if you answer; thirty if you don’t,” indicating the impossibility of an-
swering a fundamental question. The correct response to the ultimate ques-
tion of the universe is a question mark! These are challenging concepts to
assimilate, made even more so by the true state of mystical “comprehen-
sion” representing an open-minded bewilderment in every waking moment,
and existence itself. As the 20th-century farmer/philosopher Wendell Berry
(b. 1934) said, echoing mystics since time immemorial: “The mind that is not
baff led is not employed” (Berry, 1983, p. 203).
Confusing things further is that the “is-ness,” or “suchness,” as the Bud-
dhists call it, at the center of each object is the Divine Nought, an existing
nonexistence, the “nothing” from which everything emerges. Peel and peel
and peel and at the center: nada.
This clarifies the Divine question mark. The Geek Stoic philosopher Ploti-
nus (d. 270) said: “It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that
all things are from it” (Perry, 1971, p. 727). The 14th and current Dalai Lama
(b. 1935) concurred: “We are empty, or rather the matter of which we are
composed is empty” ( Jalesh, 2012, p. 2).
Apperception of true reality represents understanding everything as a
“suchness” which is nothing, beyond attribution, linguistics, purpose, mean-
ing, and so forth. Finding the unifying emptiness that is a fullness buried
within the folds of a blanket or curl of a rose petal. The Dalai Lama clarified:
“emptiness is form because all forms emerge from emptiness, from this ab-
sence of independent existence. Emptiness exists only to give rise to form”
( Jalesh, 2012, p. 2). And Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Buddhism
(d. 713), said: “When you hear me talk about the Void, do not fall into the
idea of vacuity” (Perry, 1971, p. 725).
18 Mysticism
How do we square this circle? Why does “emptiness give rise to form?”
The Prophet Muhammad expressed his conception of why nothingness be-
came manifest within time: “God was a hidden treasure and God wanted to
be known, so God created the world” (Rumi, 1999, p. xviii). Our challenge
becomes to see through the veil of objective “reality” into the heart of the
matter, comprising the nothing that is everything.
Incomprehensible? Of course it is—that’s the point.
This mystical appreciation might affect our relationship not only to the
world around us, but toward each other as well. The same Divine spark
(a “nothing” which is “everything”) burns at the center of a homeless person
in Penn Station as surely as the King of Jordan; within a grilled cheese sand-
wich as surely as an incense censer at the Vatican. The Creator exists within
all creation. The Absolute lives within every atom, every cell of every thing.
The process of achieving this perspective represents an unlearning. A for-
getting about hierarchies and histories, about religious rules and dogma,
about titles and names, and the ironic certainty that diamonds are worth
more than glass because the market says so. We must learn the ignorance
of the child, to be able to appreciate things in their “suchness,” before they
receive the attribution from our culture, the marketplace, and the latest con-
ceptions of “beauty” and “worth.”
We begin life with no names for things. We learn names. Then we must
unlearn the names. Or, as the artist Pablo Picasso (d. 1973) said: “It took me
four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

Divine Nought

Emptiness, the Void, Nothingness, the desert, the dark night of the soul,
the barren wilderness, the wild sea, the One — these are all equivalent
expressions of the same experience of an absolute unity in which there
are no empirical distinctions, and which is to be regarded as the pure
essence of the individual soul or the pure essence of the universe.
(Stace, 1987, p. 110)

The mystic’s path starts and ends at the same indefinable place: no-thing.
The Divine essence, as conceived by mystical thinkers, comprises a “noth-
ingness” which neither exists nor is nonexistent. According to Meister Eck-
hart, “all things are created out of nothingness, and thus their true origin is
the ‘Not’” (Eckhart, 1998, p. 128). Or as the great Sufi Saint Jalal ad-Dīn
Rumi (d. 1273) averred, writing a few years before Eckhart, though 1,000
miles to the east of him: “Hidden things are manifested by their opposites.
But as God has no opposite, It remains hidden” (Rumi, 1994, p. 23). And
in terms of “understanding” this ultimate universal essence, the Sufi thinker
Dhu’l Nun (d. 859) assured: “Whatever you imagine God to be, God is dif-
ferent from that” (Rumi, 1999, p. xvii).
 Mysticism 19
Finally, the Chinese Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu (d. 286 BCE)
stated: “I can conceive of ideas of existence and non-existence, but I can-
not conceive of ideas of non-existing nonexistence. Still, there must be a
non-existing existence. How is it possible to reach this?” (Chuang Tzu,
1971, p. 257).
This Divine Nought, that which created creation, represents bedrock for
mystical thought. And it is agreed upon in all religions and philosophies in
which mysticism plays a role. The Universal Self represents an essence with-
out quality, remaining inactive, static, and motionless, yet at the heart of
creativity and the universe.
The Divine comprises a “nothingness” which births everything, yet is it-
self un-birthed. A concept so terrifying to the rational intellect, that this
mystical ideal has been branded as “nihilism,” or perhaps even worse, the
denial of universal Divinity.
As Meister Eckhart assured, however, it is God’s nature to be without a
nature.
And the mystical path leads into this place, so bewildering, so terrifying,
so seemingly empty that until you arrive you are horrified, and after arriv-
ing, in the rare event that a human being actually does, you experience utter
bewilderment.

The self

Blessed is one who understands that within and above are synonymous.
(Sha’are Emunah in Patterson, 2001, p. 231)

All mystical paths assure that the road to understanding begins with and in
the self. The Stoic philosopher Plotinus envisioned the individual soul—the
“I” inside of you—not simply as a part of the vast universal essence, but ex-
actly the same as it (Plotinus, 1978, p. 130).
Each of us is confined within our minuscule and, according to mysticism,
mistaken sense of an ego-self, which sees the world through two peepholes
peering out of a single time and place. And in the narrowest of senses, this
is true. However, deeper into the human psyche, past the consciousness, the
subconscious, the primal drivers of hunger, fear, pain, and so forth, lies the
quiet and universal essence of the single human soul.
Picture this ego-self—the person with your name, age, characteristics,
family history, genetic structure, and so forth—as clinging to the top of a cage
in a vast sea. Around you are untold numbers of other pens, stretching out-
ward as far as the eye can see. You are resting in a warm liquid solution of your
individual ego. The walls of your personal enclosure descend into the inky
darkness below, seeming to define a limit to where your solution might travel.
However, deep beneath you, all of the cages open up and the solutions wash
together. Here, the universal essence collects the ideas, the vistas, the dreams,
20 Mysticism
the activities of each member of the collective, and generates a universal “I,”
shared between all people, regardless of who, what, where, and when.
The mystic learns the art of submerging their personal ego deep, deep,
deep within their cage, until they access the universal essence, shared by
all. This represents the only quest which has any meaning to a mystically-­
devoted person. One who decides that ultimate truth is the only truth, and
that all searching within the realm of society, history, and the little “self ” is
meaningless and in fact detrimental to spiritual growth.
For the fully realized mystic, one who has submerged oneself deep in the
sea, the internal “I” becomes associated with the Divine. This leads to a per-
sonal identification with God and, historically, to charges of heresy. The Sufi
mystic Mansur al-Hallaj was put to death for publicly conf lating his “I” with
the universal “I,” when he assured: “I am the Truth.”
Releasing the narrow “I” of the mundane self represents the greatest chal-
lenge in attaining mystical appreciation and explains the various extreme
techniques to still the personal ego. St. Macarius of Egypt (d. 391), during
the entire week, never lay down or ate anything but a few uncooked herbs on
Sunday. St. Bessarion (d. 466) spent 40 days and nights in the middle of thorn
bushes and for 40 years never lay down when he slept.
To most of us, the idea of losing one’s “self ” terrifies. The contemporary
Sufi Sheikh Nazim al-Haqqani (d. 2014) noted that when an individual at-
tains a state whereby they have abandoned their place at the center of their
own narrative (think about that one for a second!), they become as a drop of
rain falling from the sky into the sea of ultimate being, where they fuse with
the Divine Nought, becoming lost as individuals, though suffused into the
ocean of Divine unity (al-Haqqani, 2002, p. 102).
This release of the self—so terrifying, so difficult, so contrary to our West-
ern belief in our own autonomy and importance—defines the ultimate act of
the realized mystic.
“How shall you grasp it [meaning ultimate reality]?” asks the 14th-century
Hindu text, Panchadashi. “Do not grasp it. That which remains when there is
no more grasping is the self ” (Huxley, 1970, p. 226).

Fana and Baqa

The mystics, after their ascent to the heavens of Reality, agree that they
saw nothing in existence except God the One . . . From this, all plurality
entirely fell away. They were drowned in pure solitude: their reason was
lost in it, and they became as if dazed in it. They no longer had the ca-
pacity to recollect aught but God, nor could they in any wise remember
themselves. Nothing was left to them but God. They became drunk with
a drunkenness in which their reason collapsed.
(Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, d. 1111, in Almond, 1978, pp. 59–60)
 Mysticism 21
A number of specific practices and ideals lead to mystical understanding, and
then deepen it, as one empties themself of their ego, so that they might act
with pure intention in the world. The following specific concepts grow out
of the understanding that allows one to spiritually deepen every interaction
with the world. Additionally, new internal vistas open toward unity with
the Divine essence, continuing to inform both the internal aspects of Divine
comprehension as well as the exoteric spirituality of a mysticism of engage-
ment with a now-unified world outside of one’s head.
The terms fana and baqa come from the Sufi spiritual vernacular, though
the ideas exist in all mystical paths. They have been referred to as “dying be-
fore you die,” a reference to killing the personal ego, so that one might subsist
in the universal One. These ideals lead one to comprehend their unity with
the Divine, as well as the divinity of everything existing outside of the head.
Here, the journey toward understanding begins and ends.
Fana indicates the dissolution of the personal ego. Baqa means that they
now subsist in the universal essence. Like the drop of water, they have fused
with the ocean of Divine love. Taken together, these ideals represent the an-
nihilation of the self-awareness as an individual being, and awakening as part
of the universal essence.
Here resides the summit of the mystical path, the final destination or the
abode. And yet, like all circular aspects of the spiritual voyage, it leads back
to the world, and the necessity to spread Divine understanding through one’s
life and acts. The “drunkenness,” to which al-Ghazali referred above, rep-
resents a lesser mysticism, only half of the quest. The “drunken” mystic suc-
ceeds in uniting their soul with that of the Divine, the drop fallen into the
ocean, but they do not return to this world, to spread their understanding
through works within society. To people in the world of socially agreed-
upon reality, a “drunken” mystic might appear as insane.
The “sober” mystic represents the height of mystical attainment. Here,
the searcher returns to the world, reentering the stream of their ego and life,
to spread the universal energy they have accessed. This return represents
the vital second half of the mystical coin: the outward-facing appreciation
of unity.
According to the Persian thinker Jafar as-Sadiq (d. 765), considered the
progenitor of Sufism, “sober” mysticism represents the highest form of
prophecy, the nabi rasul (messenger prophet). This realized mystic accepts the
mission to transform their personal, spiritual understanding into social ac-
tion. This prophecy is called nubuwat al-tashri (active prophecy) (Blumenthal,
1984, p. 38). In active prophecy, the circle closes between personal salvation
and social engagement.
This idea echoes through spiritual teachings at the heart of the world’s
religions. In Zen terms, the mu (no-thing) is seen as the end point of true
faith, in which the self enters into conjunction with the Divine, which is
simply the world “as it is.” Of course, in Zen, one remains engaged with the
22 Mysticism
world, representing as-Sadiq’s active prophecy. As Zen scholar Katsuki Se-
kida (d. 1987) said:

When you attain enlightenment, you must come out into the world of
ordinary activity and life and help others . . . To work for others is really
to work for yourself, because it develops the fullness of your mind.
(Sekida, 2005, p. 214)

For the Christian Meister Eckhart, the “no-thingness” of the Godhead was
the ground of the individual’s soul. To realize this, the soul must let go of
itself and be united with God. Eckhart called this the “fundamental death,”
echoing the Sufi injunction to “die before you die.” Of course, Eckhart also
proposed the necessity of service, stating:

No person in this life may reach the point at which he or she can be
excused from outward service. Even if he or she is given to a life of con-
templation, still they cannot refrain from going out and taking an active
part in life.
(Petry, 1957, p. 207)

The Greek philosopher Plato (d. 347 BCE) referred to a teaching in which
one “died before they died,” offering that the highest form of wisdom rep-
resented the loss of individual self hood. Like all mystics, however, he put an
equal emphasis on bringing the personal appreciation of the Divine into the
world through action. He contended that justice was the quality of soul, in
which men set aside the irrational desire to taste every sensual pleasure and
acted with the single purpose of the common good (Bhandari, 1998, online).
Henry Suso (d. 1366), a German Christian mystic, echoed Sufi language in
his explanation of the Divine union:

When the good and faithful servant enters into the joy of his Lord, he is
inebriated by the riches of the house of God; for he feels, in an ineffable
degree, that which is felt by an inebriated man. He forgets himself, he is
no longer conscious of his self hood . . . he becomes one spirit with God
as a drop of water which is drowned in a great quantity of wine.
(Almond, 1978, pp. 146–147)

Suso, having achieved the ecstasy of Divine union, devoted himself to an ac-
tive ministry, spreading his transcendent understanding to students through-
out Switzerland and the Upper Rhine region, and as far north as Cologne and
Aachen, near the Belgian border.
This path—the journey, the union, and the return—represents the voyage
that theater makers might echo in their own work, as they come to under-
stand how creative mysticism might be applied to the social realm in which
we live. How to utilize the aesthetic, tropes, and unique opportunities of live
 Mysticism 23
performance to suffuse the audience with a sense of belonging, a brief expe-
rience of union. And, finally, to return them back to their lives, holding onto
some residue of this appreciation.
Perhaps without even knowing what hit them!
After all, if wisdom begins in ignorance, then being ignorant of one’s wis-
dom must be a step in the right direction . . . .

Divine bewilderment

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment; cleverness is mere opinion,

bewilderment is intuition.
(Rumi in Huxley, 1970, p. 141)

Divine perplexity represents a curious and difficult-to-assimilate idea at the

height of mystical realization, the “drunkenness” alluded to in the previ-
ous section. This mystical concept runs contrary to our contemporary faith
in knowledge, to our certainty in our ability to understand the world, and
to our educational system, which is predicated on mastering and applying
information.
But in the world of mysticism, two plus two does not equal four. It equals
utter and complete amazement that there even would be “two” in the first
place, and that it might possibly be added to another “two.” Two of what?
And in what manner are they combined? And who conceived of mathematics
in the first place, anyway? Who wrote these rules? And why?
Bewilderment—a state of being perplexed, puzzled, befuddled, baff led,
confused, and (yes) mystified—represents a central goal of the mystic’s jour-
ney, one which helps cleanse the ego of its attachment to ideas, knowledge,
and rational understanding. Although almost directly contrary to our con-
temporary zeitgeist of wry certainty, herein lies an end purpose of wisdom: to
move beyond comprehension. The great Jewish spiritual leader Moses Mai-
monides (d. 1204) titled his most important treatise Guide for the Perplexed,
for a reason. The Christian mystic Julian of Norwich asserted that the heart
of theology was not solving the Divine contradiction, but remaining in the
midst of it.
The mystic eschews the search for worldly knowledge, replacing it with
acceptance of the Divine question mark. It can lead to a psychic experi-
ence of extreme discomfort, an unmooring of all ideas upon which we
build our sense of self, an experience of being cast adrift in an ocean of
uncertainty. And this is, of course, exactly as it should be. This unmooring
from comprehension and submerging in the sea of bewilderment repre-
sents the most important currency of the mystical marketplace. As Sufi
Sheikh Saadi Shirazi (d. 1292) said: “Deep in the sea there are riches be-
yond your imagination. But if you seek safety, seek it on the shore” (Shah,
1990, p. 97).
24 Mysticism
Though mysticism is currently out of vogue (we live in a time and cul-
ture that is even more terrified of the ultimate question than past eras), there
are around the edges of the modern and contemporary world’s frantic and
knowledge-driven society those who have sat, and continue to sit quietly in
the midst of the Divine question mark, comfortable in the fact that they can
know nothing. This cultural space of bewilderment has never completely
emptied of thinkers and creators.
By opening books and listening to past thinkers, a direct line from earlier
mystical seekers through to today emerges. For instance, the French Enlight-
enment philosopher Voltaire (d. 1778) said: “Doubt is not a very agreeable
state, but certainty is a ridiculous one” (Horgan, 2004, p. 225).
Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset (d. 1955) said: “To be surprised,
to wonder, is to begin to understand” (Rosenberg and White, 1957, p. 42).
And contemporary writer, farmer, and philosopher Wendell Berry noted:
“When we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work. And
when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey”
(Berry, 1983, p. 203).
To believe that one can actually “know” something with the rational in-
tellect represents true ignorance, while to sit with the uncomfortable truth
that ultimate knowledge is impossible to access, constitutes understanding.

Wisdom

Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom.

(Bodhidharma, 1987, p. 51)

And thus the beginning of wisdom: in the baff lement of the child.
Mystics inform that self-awareness—that which most of us understand as a
sense of an “I” separate from and often in conf lict with the world outside of
our head—represents ignorance. The sense of your “self ” as a point in space
moving through time, that which almost everyone experiences as “life,” is
the height of unconsciousness.
Dissolving this narrow conception of living leads toward a complete in-
vestment in the moment. No longer beholden to an “I” watching everything
in one’s life as if from some objective space above the personal activity, the
individual suffuses completely into the moment. As Abu Muhammad al-­
Murta’ish (d. 940) said: “The true Sufi is one whose thought keeps pace with
his feet” (Helminski, 2017, p. 225).
This represents a letting go of what we think of as “understanding,” leading
to a purity of experience. Zen masters call this samadhi, a state of joyful calm
undisturbed by desire, anger, or any other ego-generated thought or emotion, in
which one maintains one’s full mental alertness and acuity. The Christian mystic
Meister Eckhart stressed this as learned ignorance—a knowledge which becomes
pure unknowing, to the point of forgetting of oneself (Eckhart, 2008, p. 234).
 Mysticism 25
This leads toward the “ignorance” of a child, where each moment is fresh,
full of surprise and wonder. The 20th-century Zen master D. T. Suzuki
(d. 1966) noted: “What is important is to remain ourselves in every way
possible with all our faults, moral as well as intellectual, and yet be ‘wise’ as
babies” (Franck, 2004, p. 102).
And Friedrich Nietzsche said of Socrates (d. 399 BCE, perhaps the first
mystic ever martyred for his heretical views):

Socrates found that he was the only one who acknowledged to himself
that he knew nothing. In his critical peregrinations around Athens, he
called on the greatest statesmen, orators, poets, and artists, and every-
where he discovered the conceit of knowledge . . . he perceived that all
of these celebrities were without a proper and sure insight [into their
own ignorance], even with regard to their own professions, which they
practiced only by instinct.
(Nietzsche, 1937, p. 253)

Here begins the mystic path. With an acknowledgment that we cannot

“know.” That the heart of being represents the acceptance of a question
mark, and not an exclamation point that we must strive to uncover. The path
begins with an unsheathing of the internal, eternal core: a cloud of unknow-
ing. A loosening of the bonds of the particular place and time, a stilling of the
individual personality, a step forward into the Divine mystery.
Toward a wisdom no more learned than that of a newborn babe . . . .

Equanimity

And it happened once that a sage and a great philosopher was traveling
on a ship and sat in the place of the refuse, until one, that is, one of the
people of the ship, came and urinated on him on the place of the refuse,
and he lifted his face and laughed. And they asked him: ‘Why do you
laugh?’ He answered them: ‘Because is it now absolutely clear to me that
my soul is on the highest level, because I did not at all feel the disgrace
of this thing.’
(Moses Maimonides in Idel, 1988, p. 146.)

The following series of practices represents the steps one must take in the
voyage across the arid, terrifying valleys of ego dissolution, toward Divine
union and ultimate understanding. These ideals offer doorways to the spirit,
manners of moving past the individual ego, beyond the world presented
in news accounts and history books as “objective” reality, and toward the
spiritual center of real reality. They offer specific practices for stilling the ego,
so that one may perceive the serene energy lying at the heart of existence,
both within oneself and in the world around them.
26 Mysticism
The story above concerning Ibrahim ibn Adham, one of the most promi-
nent early Sufi Saints (d. 777, born a prince, but abandoned his throne to fol-
low the Sufi path), represents the ideal of equanimity. Equanimity is not only
central to mystical practice, but runs contrary to our hysterical, YouTube in-
f luencer reality TV show celebrity anything-to-get-rich-and-famous, greed-
based capitalistic society.
Succinctly put, by the values of the Western capitalistic society: equanim-
ity is for losers.
For this reason alone, I love equanimity. Though if you try to practice
it yourself, as a first step on a mystic’s path, you will find it much more
difficult than you might at first imagine. A tale from the life of Sufi Saint
Bayazid Bistami (d. 874) showed just how difficult this ideal can be to
implement:

One day a man came to the teacher Bayazid and said, ‘I have fasted and
prayed for thirty years and have found none of the spiritual joy of which
you speak.’
‘If you fasted and prayed for three hundred years, you would never
find it,’ answered the sage.
‘How is that?’ asked the man.
‘Your selfishness is acting as a veil between you and God.’
‘Tell me the cure.’
‘It is a cure you cannot carry out,’ said Bayazid.
Those around him pressed him to reveal it. After a time he spoke:
‘Go to the nearest barbershop and have your head shaved; strip off
your clothes except for a loincloth. Take a nosebag full of walnuts, hang
it around your neck. Go into the market and cry out: ‘anybody who
gives me a slap on the neck shall have a walnut.’ Then proceed to the law
courts and do the same thing.’
‘I can’t do that,’ said the man. ‘Suggest some other remedy.’
‘This is the indispensable preliminary to the cure,’ answered Bayazid.
‘But as I told you, you are incurable.’
(Fadiman and Frager, 1997, p. 175)

Equanimity, as evinced in the tales about Ibn Adham above and that of Bis-
tami, represents a mystical station whereby a person remains completely
unmoved by either praise or condemnation, success or humiliation. Their
internal sense of self remains unchanged in either case.
This ideal originated with the Stoic philosophers (c. 2nd century BCE–
2nd century). Due to these thinkers, the word “stoic” took on the patina
of their mystical ideal, representing a person who can endure pain or
hardship without showing their feelings or complaining. What misses
from this definition is that a person should be just as unfazed by praise, re-
maining every bit as “stoic” in the face of approbation, riches, and worldly
success.
 Mysticism 27
Equanimity leads past the ephemeral sense of the individual self, that
which is mirrored back to them through the judgments of those around,
toward the ultimate solidity of the Universal Self. Epictetus (d. 135) noted:
“Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less
control we have.” He also said: “When someone is properly grounded in life,
they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval.” The Roman
emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius said: “The tranquility that
comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you
do” (Aurelius, 2003, p. 41). Or, and this is my favorite quote from Epictetus
(adorning the wall next to this desk as I write): “Wish for everything to be
exactly as it is, and your life will be serene” ( Johnson and Reath, 2003, p. 99).
This stoic thinking inspired spiritual thinkers who followed, defining a
central mystical tenet for successive Jewish, Muslim, and Christian mystics.
In Europe, we had Martin Luther (d. 1546, founder of Protestantism) noting:
“A person does not distinguish between friends and enemies, or anticipate
their thankfulness or un-thankfulness, but they more freely and willingly
expend themself and all they have, whether they waste all on the thankless or
they gain reward” (Luther, 2016, p. 524).
Meister Eckhart spoke more succinctly: “We ought to expect God in all
manners and all things evenly, not comparing or wondering which is more
important or best” (Eckhart, 1998, p. 249). And the Hasidic Rabbi Heshel
of Apt (d. 1825) concurred: “A person should be like a vessel that willingly
receives what its owner pours into it, whether it be wine or vinegar” (Buber,
1991, p. 117).
A lot more difficult than it sounds! We live constantly surrounded by opin-
ion, whether we are “good” or “bad”; whether our work is successful or not;
whether our net worth is “enough” or not quite there. We spend our lives
judging our own self worth by how others judge us. Marcus Aurelius noted
this as well: “It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than
other people, but care more about their opinion than our own” (Aurelius,
2003, p. 162).
Equanimity demands that we eschew valuing ourselves by the opinions of
others. We simply do what we must in the best manner we know how, and
let the chips fall where they may. Tests of this spiritual facet await us every
day—an example of mysticism of the mundane. Every slight from someone
cutting the line at the grocery store to cutting us off on the highway to
denigrating our work or life path or partner offers a chance to work on our
equanimity. And each instance should be met with the same response: a dis-
interested shrug.
If Ibn Adham, an erstwhile prince, can accept being urinated upon with a
smile, what’s a slight on the subway worth?
As challenging as overcoming slights, the other side of the equanimity
coin offers a powerful test: ignoring positive responses. How many people
can handle success, fame, fortune, and high praise without changing their
attitude toward themself or others? While this would fall under the umbrella
28 Mysticism
of a “good” problem, it presents a mystical test no less certainly than does
humiliation. In both cases, one must remain centered in their deepest sense
of self—and connection to the Divine.
The beauty of this mystical practice is that anyone can try it. If you begin
to see social interactions in this manner, and specifically how you react to
other people’s disapproval or approval, you will find that it is an extremely
challenging value to attain. We live in a success-driven society where the one
with the most toys and accolades wins.
All the more opportunity to practice this ongoing spiritual challenge!

Humility

If a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make any defense to what has
been told you, but reply: ‘That person did not know the rest of my faults,
for they would not have mentioned these only.’
(Epictetus, 1991, p. 33)

Humility presents a concomitant value to equanimity, growing from and

feeding back into it. Like so much of mystical practice, this ideal is coun-
terculture, as we live during an era when it seems agreed that the most im-
portant voices are those who bray the loudest on television or the Internet
or those that offer “performative politics” in the well of the United States
Congress, regardless of what, if anything, any of them are actually saying.
But, as Chuang Tzu noted: “A dog is not reckoned good because it barks
well, and a person is not reckoned wise because they speak loudly” (Chuang
Tzu, 1971, p. 284).
Humility, often taking place in silence and unseen by others, is central
to stilling the ego, allowing an individual to move deeper into the realm of
the Self. The loudest braying, basest emotions, and strongest reactions stem
from the personal ego. As humility takes root, one stops being personally
aggrieved by everything, from the necessity to wear a mask during a global
health crisis to a tepid response to one’s latest work. Humility shrugs its
shoulders and looks at the irony of life, instead of taking things personally and
reacting from a narrow, emotional place.
A Zen master offered: “Let a person’s ideal rise as high as the crown of the
highest divinity, but let their life be so full of humility as to be prostrate even
at the feet of a baby” (Suzuki, 1949, p. 123). A truly humble person looks into
the world and sees that everyone—every single person, from a president to a
homeless woman muttering to herself in Penn Station in New York City—
embodies the same spark of God. Each is to be fully and equally respected,
none more so than another.
It is in this realization and, more importantly, through acting on this real-
ization, where one begins stilling their ego. When Jesus stated: “The meek
shall inherit the earth,” he referred to the truly humble, those who dissolved
their individual ego.
 Mysticism 29
Like all other mystical ideals, we see this same, central concept scattered
like stars across the firmament of spiritual paths from all time periods and
creeds. The Chinese Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu explained how empty-
ing of self leads toward impunity:

If a man is crossing a river in a boat and another empty vessel comes into
collision with it, even though he is a man of choleric temper, he will not
be angry with it. Should there be a person, however, in the boat, he will
bawl out to him to haul out of the way . . . If a person can empty himself
of himself during their time in this world, who can harm them?
(Chuang Tzu, 1971, p. 227)

The Buddhist Hui Neng (d. 713) said: “One who is humble and meek on all
occasions and is polite to everybody has thoroughly realized their essence of
mind, so thoroughly that their path is free from further obstacles” (Price and
Mou-Lam, 1990, p. 105).
Andrew Harvey (b. 1952), a British writer on theology, stated:

When the Christian mystical tradition is seen in its entirety what will, I
believe, come clear is the radically subversive and sobering nature of its
humility—a humility that springs directly from the explosive and de-
ranging example of Christ himself.
(Harvey, 1997, p. xxix)

Humility, paired with equanimity, represent challenging, fascinating prac-

tices. Seemingly straightforward, they are anything but that. Nothing is more
difficult than to be simple.
This is the thing about the mystic’s path in our era: it is often taken as irrele-
vant, misguided, foolish, or perhaps even insane. There are many great think-
ers from the past who would be secured on the back wards of mental hospitals
today, “for their own good.” As Russell Shorto (b. 1959) noted in Saints and
Madmen: “Many of the great spiritual figures of history seem to have been, by
any measurable criteria, out of their minds” (Shorto, 2000, p. 37).
This points to another important point: the spirit cannot be measured by
contemporary cultural criteria.
Mystical ideals run contrary to accepted social values that we, in most
contemporary societies, hold important. However, insane or not, anyone can
walk this path, quietly and within their mundane lives. As the Stoic philoso-
pher Seneca (d. 65) said: “A person making their way toward an ideal should
be contemptuous of contempt” (Seneca, 1968, p. 209). Where else can the
true spirit be most clearly found than in the mundane moments of an every-
day life? Life offers a never-ending series of challenges to be better, to be
more aware, to be more humble.
And if no one knows, even enough, to respond contemptuously? So what
of it? As Nelson Mandela (d. 2013) said: “One must find consolation in being
true to one’s ideals, even if no one knows about it . . .” (Mandela, 1995, p. 390).
30 Mysticism
Silence

Silence is the first stage of worship.

(Prophet Muhammad)

We travel further along the mystic’s path. Sometimes in a straight line, some-
times in a circle. Occasionally, neither. The air grows hot and arid, water
thins to a trickle and evaporates completely, vultures circle overheard, our
mouth parches, and little sand crabs, once nuisances, begin to look like either
our only friends in the world or dinner.
Fear not: although I am suggesting that we apply mystical ideals to our
creativity, we are not mystics. This is not our path. We can enjoy our quest
to understand the soul of being through the written word, curled onto a sofa
with a cup of coffee steaming by our side.
We move from the ideals of fana and baqa, equanimity and humility, to the
mystical structure of how to achieve them. Silence, the first stage of worship,
represents one of the most important methods for stilling the cacophony of
the external world, to hear the inner voice. Not meditation or prayer, mind
you (though these certainly can aid, for one so inclined), but a simple quiet-
ing of the voices and noise within and without. As Meister Eckhart said: “If
anyone else is speaking in the temple of the soul, God keeps still, as if God
were not at home” (Eckhart, 1998, p. 159).
Quietude allows for a return to, as Meister Eckhart assured, the “silent
desert where distinction never gazed.” All spiritual thinkers envision the
mystic’s path as a return to a self which existed before ego, and awaiting after
the dissolution of ego, either through rigorous mystical practice or death.
The problem with awaiting death to provide the silence for a “return” to
the primordial essence, instead of following the mystic’s path, is that if one
dies in ignorance, one is met not with one’s own primordial essence, but
with the phantasms their egos created and believed in throughout their
lives.
Succinctly put: this is bad.
The Buddhist Treatise on the Transcendence of Cognition (c. 7th century) noted:
“If there are thoughts, then there is mind, and for there to be mind is contrary
to enlightenment . . . for there to be no-mind is true enlightenment” (Heine
and Wright, 2000, p. 67). “No-mind” awaits in silence.
Perhaps we don’t realize how un-silent is the world in which we live, hav-
ing grown so accustomed to the jingles, bings, bleating advertising, braying
pundits, Instagram movies, Facebook posts, email inbox, Royal interviews,
political posturing, TVs in elevators and at gasoline pumps, and any number
of other manners for distracting the self from the Self. Silence, like wisdom,
seems simple, but is almost impossibly difficult to uncover. To unplug from
out-there to access the in-here is no mean feat.
The 20th-century mystic Simone Weil (d. 1943) assured: “The word of
God is silence. In this world, necessity is the vibration of God’s silence”
 Mysticism 31
(Weil, 1999, p. 467). This makes perfect sense, when we fully appreciate that
the Divine essence for which we search is, as noted, the Divine Nought. The
sound of Divinity must be silence, an empty space filled with our own won-
der and bewilderment.
Meister Eckhart elucidated: “God is not at home in the soul where there
are strange guests—guests with whom the soul holds conversation. If God
is to speak in the soul and be heard, then the soul must be alone and quiet”
(Eckhart, 1998, p. 159).
Breathe. Deep breath.
Shhhhhh . . . .

Acceptance

When one rests in what has been arranged, and puts away all thought of
the transformation, they are in unity with the mysterious heaven.
(Chuang Tzu, 1971, p. 102)

Acceptance represents the psychological equivalent of silence, and another

central tenet of mysticism, also exceedingly difficult to attain. As I wrote into
a play of mine (and I’ll discuss in depth how I utilize mystical ideas in my
theatrical productions in the last chapter): “What does acceptance mean? Just
accept whatever the hell life shoves down your throat?”
Seems harsh, right? Does acceptance mean that whatever stretch of bad
luck befalls, one should just thank God and move on? Lose a job, diagnosed
with cancer, watch an investment shrivel to nothing, catch your partner in
flagrante delicto? A shrug of the shoulders and a quiet prayer of thanks?
Actually, yes. That is what it means.
Meister Eckhart said: “Everyday we shout and plead in the Lord’s prayer:
‘Thy will be done!’—and when God’s will is done, we grumble and are not
pleased with it” (Eckhart, 1998, p. 184). Sufi Sheikh Nazim al-Haqqani elu-
cidated: “They who surrender to God’s will, and see it behind all events, has
gained perfect vision” (al-Haqqani, 2002, p. 92).
It is a long road to get to that point, but acceptance might begin simply by
saying: “I have enough.” As the Hasidic Rabbi Yechiel Michel of Zlotchov (d.
1786) said: “I have been blessed in that I have never needed something until I
already had it” (Buber, 1991, p. 156). That would be a pretty good place to start.
Needless to say, this attitude hardly defines our Western capitalistic so-
ciety, whose economic growth is built on a combination of greed, specious
need, and hysteria. Psychiatrist George Frankl (d. 2004) offered this sense of
today’s counter-spiritual society in which we live:

Today’s consumer is driven by a ruthless and frantic search for grati-

fication without being able to still their hunger, like a bulimic person
who has to fill their stomach till it bursts and throws up and starts again
32 Mysticism
without ever feeling a sense of gratification . . . we never seem to reach
the limits of our always proliferating desires.
(Frankl, 2000, p. 178)

This explains why we live at the absolute best time in humanity, not only
to study and understand mystical practice but also implement it through our
theatrical offerings. To introduce to an exhausted and desperate audience, a
gentler and—dare I say—more real manner of living. To help still the unful-
fillable “proliferating desires,” cravings which lead to anxiety, neuroses, and
an unstable, often-drug addicted, and violent society.
Acceptance begins in the moment: I have enough right now.
From there, it suffuses into the heart. The Greek philosopher Epicurus
(d. 270 BCE), whose name has oddly become synonymous with a luxurious and
self-indulgent lifestyle (“Epicurean in their tastes”), actually had views more in
common with our mystical brothers and sisters. “One who has least need of to-
morrow will most gladly meet tomorrow,” he assured. He also noted: “He who
is not satisfied with little, is satisfied with nothing” (McGraw, 2004, p. 370).
Perhaps Epicurus’s message is so out of line with our consumerist society
that his words had to be twisted. These days, a quick Google search reveals
that his original philosophy of understanding, detachment, and acceptance
has been reduced to Epicureanism: the belief that the highest good is pleasure.
Sigh. You can’t fight city hall. Should you just accept it?
Perhaps. Sheikh Abu Said ibn Abi-Khair (d. 1049) added succinctly: “De-
tach from fixed ideas and preconceptions. And face what is to be your lot”
(Shah, 1971, p. 182).
This is an extremely challenging ideal to appreciate, let alone allow to in-
f luence one’s life. Acceptance represents the opposite ideal of social success,
where every personal or professional hill attained only reveals the view of a
higher hill to climb off in the distance. But silence and acceptance lead into
the heart, and from there into the soul of the ultimate ground.
Like the bewilderment lying latent beneath our wry, postmodern world-
view, acceptance seems simple, yet it almost defies understanding. It does not
mean, as might first appear, to lie down and go to sleep and never get up. It
means to do what you are doing to the fullest of your ability, passion, and in-
tention, and to accept whatever response the universe decides to return. Take
complete satisfaction from what you and only you control. Try as hard as
you can, and take total fulfillment from your intention, completely ignoring
whatever response there might be outside of your head.
Amen.

Time, science, and transcendence

Time is determined in two ways, linear and circular (spatial). These two
different dimensions of time are interwoven at every moment, whether
of individual life, or of the world.
(Takeuchi Yoshinori in Franck, 2004, p. 199)
 Mysticism 33
We experience life as a point moving through space. However, time is the
medium through which we move, not space. And as Einstein assured, space
and time are not only the exact same thing, but they are both relative.
All of this has been known to mystics since the beginning of, well, “time,”
but only recently approved by the science of quantum physics.
Many truths assured by mystics for millennia have been recently “proven”
by physicists, neurobiologists, and other scientists. And as science has caught
up with ancient mystical teachings, we have seen a proliferation of books
with titles such as The Tao of Physics (1983), The Spiritual Universe: How Quan-
tum Physics Proves the Existence of the Soul (1996), The Spiritual Brain: A Neu-
roscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul (2008), The Neuroscience of Religious
Experience (2014), plus an explosion of hundreds more folios, treatises, ac-
ademic papers, and scientific explorations, all attempting to “prove” what
mystics have known for thousands of years.
All these breathless tomes “prove” is the veracity of timeless mysticism,
and the still-backward state of science. I don’t believe that science will ever
catch up with mystical understanding, as our ability to see into the depths of
the universe is finite, while the universe and mystical understanding are not.
Sigh. The Western mind.
This Hasidic tale concerning the Baal Shem Tov (d. 1760) elucidates the
mystic’s idea of the interplay between science and transcendence:

A naturalist came from a great distance to see the Baal Shem Tov and
said: ‘My investigations show that in the course of nature the Red Sea
had to divide at the very hour the children of Israel passed through it.
Now, what about that famous miracle?’
The Baal Shem answered: ‘Don’t you know that God created nature?
And God created it so, that at the hour the children of Israel passed
through the Red Sea, it had to divide. That is the great and famous
miracle!’
(Buber, 1991, p. 71)

Regardless, time is of the essence, so we continue with our exploration of

the medium of corporeal existence: “time.” Time only exists within crea-
tion. The universe exists outside of time. This is another of those delightful
paradoxes which leads us away from understanding toward bewilderment.
Again, no need to worry. As Zen teaches, “the ultimate embraces all con-
tradictions and inconsistencies because the ultimate absorbs all” (Sekida,
2005, p. 187).
The universe appears to our narrow vision to exist within the time arrow,
with a past, present, and future, because without the movement of the time
arrow, eternity, stasis, and the Divine Nought would remain nonexisting
and unremarked. As the hadith (words of the Prophet Muhammad) assured:
“I was a hidden treasure and was not known; I desired to be known, therefore
I created creation and made Myself known to them so that they might come
to know Me” (al-Haqqani, 2004, p. 13).
34 Mysticism
God created the universe because the Divine, an existing nonexistence,
grew lonely.
Difficult to grasp, but as Meister Eckhart assured, there is the God of
time and place, and behind that, unceasing and unmoving, is the Godhead,
or the Divine Nought of mystical attainment. Here, only bewilderment
awaits.
French philosopher and political thinker Jacques Maritain (d. 1973) noted:
“God’s plan is eternal, as is the creative act, though it has its effect in time . . .
Eternity is a limitless instant which indivisibly embraces the whole succession
of time” (Maritain, 1957, p. 120).
Confused? Excellent! Perhaps you are moving toward understanding, to-
ward the wonder of the child, toward the perplexity of the mystic. As the
founder of the Baha’i faith, Baha’u’llah (d. 1892), said:

I knew not what amazement was

Until I made Thy love my cause.
O how amazing would it be
If I were not amazed by Thee!
(Baha’u’llah, undated, online)

Bewilderment awaits in the place beyond time.

Time, as we experience it, represents an abdication of eternity to provide
a space for being. The Jewish Kabbalist Isaac Luria (d. 1572) called this tsimt-
sum. God began the process of creation by “contracting” Its infinite light
in order to allow for a “space” in which finite and seemingly independent
realms could exist.
Simone Weil added an emotional note to this conception of time as
renunciation:

Time, which is our one misery, is the very touch of God’s hand. It is the
abdication by which God allows us to exist . . . God waits like a beggar
who stands motionless and silent before someone who perhaps will give
God a piece of bread. Time is that waiting.
(Weil, 1999, p. xxviii)

Uselessness

All people know the advantage of being useful; but no one knows the
advantage of being useless.
(Chuang Tzu, 1971, p. 79)

We circle back to the true Self, the place at the heart of each of us, where
the personal “I” intersects with the eternal. And here, we find the stillness
of the Divine search manifested in another counterintuitive spiritual value,
uselessness.
 Mysticism 35
It would seem to be a strange mystical practice: uselessness.
But it complements central pillars of the mystic’s path: the wisdom of igno-
rance, acceptance, humility, and equanimity. After all, the struggle for social
“relevance” driven by the ego leads inexorably to greed, bleating, braying,
screaming, demanding, asserting, gasping, grasping, conf lict, pain, and a lot
of anxiety.
Oh: and tears.
To find one’s sense of self through being “useful” in the eyes of others is
antithetical to the mystic’s path. As Zen thinker Katsuki Sekida noted: “To
be purposeful is much admired in the world at large . . . But in its pursuit
of the useful and profitable, consciousness has fallen into its deluded way of
thinking” (Sekida, 2005, p. 236).
A feeling of usefulness emerges from the ego, not the ultimate Self. By
achieving a sense that one is “useless” within the frantic world of society, one
begins to appreciate their deeper essence of being. A personal reality aligned
with the universe, and not with individual gain.
“Uselessness” does not represent a negativity, passivity, or absence of engage-
ment. It means removing one’s true self from the outcome of the actions. To
accept the uselessness of the ego, not clinging to the little “I,” yet continuing to
live and act, unattached to the fruits of these actions. Or, as Mahatma Gandhi
assured: realize that you are completely insignificant, yet absolutely necessary.
As a bonus, the “useless” one might find their way through life’s brambles
with greater ease than one attached to the social idols of beauty, wealth, and
power.

Chuang Tzu was once fishing when the King of Chu sent two great of-
ficers to him with the message: ‘I wish to trouble you with the charge of
all within my territories.’ Chuang Tzu kept on holding his rod without
looking round, and said: ‘I have heard in Ch’u there is a spirit-like tortoise
shell, the wearer of which died 3,000 years ago, that the king keeps in his
ancestral temple, in a hamper covered with a cloth. Was it better for the
tortoise to die and leave its shell to be thus honored, or would it be better
for the tortoise to live and keep on dragging its tail through the mud?’
The two officers said: ‘It would have been better for it to live and draw
its tail after it over the mud.’
‘Go your ways. I will keep on drawing my tail after me through the
mud.’
(Chuang Tzu, 1971, pp. 202–203)

In the mystic’s world, those who strive to be “useful” represent the lost.
These individuals submerge in the world of shades, the place which hides the
sun of transcendence behind momentary gain and recognition. Rumi said:

When God desires to chastise someone,

He grants them high rank in the world and a great kingdom,
36 Mysticism
like Pharaoh, Nimrod, and the rest.
All those eminent positions are like
the gallows from which God hangs people
for others to gaze upon and understand.
(Rumi, 1999, p. 184)

Better to drag one’s tail uselessly through the mud.

Like so many aspects of the mystic’s path, “uselessness” boggles the mind.
To be useless but still active; to quell desire so one might do what they must,
without yearning for a particular outcome. To become a force for good in the
world while exerting no ego-energy.
The straight path that is a circle is not easily understood by the rational
mind.
But as Rumi assured, no matter how many knots the intellect ties, the
string remains one . . . .

Mysticism of the mundane

A Hasid, who was traveling to Mezbizh in order to spend the Day of

Atonement near the Baal Shem Tov, was forced to interrupt his journey
for something or other. When the stars rose, he was still a good way away
from the town and, to his great grief, had to pray alone in the open field.
When he arrived in Mezbizh after the holiday, the Baal Shem received
him with particular happiness and cordiality. ‘Your praying,’ he said,
‘lifted up all the prayers which were lying stored in the field.’
(Buber, 1991, p. 65)

Moving from knowledge to bewilderment, from objective reality to eter-

nal wonder, from planning for the future to a complete dedication to the
moment, opens the doorway for experiencing every aspect of the world as
Divine.
That’s the funny thing concerning ultimate reality: it’s all around you. It’s
even inside of you. According to the most heartfelt teachings buried within
the world’s religions, mysticism and the mundane are the same thing! It’s not
that you need to see behind anything, it’s just that you need to realize that
what’s right in front of you at every moment is the mystical miracle.
The “miracle” is not the paranormal or occult or signs hidden on the dol-
lar bill or the goose bumps you get when sitting in front of an Ouija board.
Divine reality and “ordinary” existence are synonymous. God awaits within
the normal world in which we marinate every second of our lives.
Zen Buddhist thought assures that transcendence and our everyday life are
the same thing. The greatest error is to believe that there are two worlds, and
that we must turn our back on the one (that which is right in front of us) to
 Mysticism 37
discover the other. Zen Abbot Kosho Uchiyama Roshi (d. 1998) said: “We
cannot expect any ecstasy greater than right here, right now—our everyday
lives” (Uchiyama, 2015, p. 207).
The Chinese Taoist Chuang Tzu elucidated:

Tung Kuo Tzu asked Chuang Tzu, saying, ‘Where is what you call the
Tao to be found?’
Chuang Tzu replied, ‘Everywhere.’
The other said, ‘Specify an instance of it. That will be more
satisfactory.’
‘It is here in this ant.’
‘Is it in some lesser being?’
‘It is in the weeds.’
‘Can you go further down the scale of things?’
‘It is in this piece of tile.’
‘Further?’
‘It is in this turd.’
Chuang Tzu continued: ‘Tao is Great in all things,
Complete in all, Universal in all,
Whole in all. These three aspects
Are distinct, but the Reality is One. Therefore come with me
To the palace of Nowhere
Where all the many things are One . . . .’
(Chuang Tzu, 2010, pp. 122–123)

The Divine essence is present in every moment, inside of every person, in

every action: here resides the mystical answer. Meister Eckhart, hinting that
perhaps he knew of Chuang Tzu’s tale, said: “A f lea, to the extent that it is in
God (and it is!), ranks above the highest angel in its own right. Thus, in God
all things are equal and are God Itself ” (Santosh, 2005, p. 261).
So simple, yet so difficult to appreciate. We ignore what is right in front
of us, busy with our iPhones or social media feeds or schemes or dinner plans
or dreams. Reality, any mystic would tell you, can’t be found in any of these
devices or ideas or even in newspaper stories or on cable news.
It’s what’s right in front of you at every single moment.

Soon after the death of Rabbi Moshe, Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk asked one
of Rabbi Moshe’s disciples: ‘What was most important to your teacher?’
The disciple thought a moment and then replied: ‘Whatever he happened
to be doing at the moment.’
(Buber, 1991, p. 173)

Or, as Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “If you are going to be a street sweeper,
then sweep the street like Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel.”
38 Mysticism
The point being: full attention to life as it is lived represents the mystic’s
highest interaction with the Divine. It is in the respect for each object, for
each moment, that one finds their way toward appreciation.
I could write a complete book with quote after quote, story after story
from all religious paths concerning mysticism of the mundane. For me, this
represents the central jewel of the mystical crown. Forget about the guys
starving themselves scrawny and laying on a bed of nails. Who wants to do
that? But if you are able to expand your understanding to see eternity in the
bottom of a coffee cup, then you will have taken the first step not only to-
ward realization but also toward respecting your every waking moment, and
your place within this world.
Rumi said: “Those who know God see God in a glass of water. Those who
do not know God, see only themselves” (Fadiman and Frager, 1997, p. 97).
Meister Eckhart asserted that “to exist is God.”
Once you begin to experience the world as a manifestation of the Divine
essence, you relate differently to each moment, each thing, every person with
whom you come in contact. Life will no longer be a zero-sum game of win-
ners and losers, a political scrum of eat-or-be-eaten, a capitalistic Hunger
Games where a few gain great riches, while the rest serve them.
It is very difficult for me to bring this section to a close, as this represents
the beating heart of a mysticism that we can all practice, and which will be at
the center of the mystico-theatrical model in Chapter 3. I finish with a few
quotes from different traditions, which explore the idea of mysticism of the
mundane, and how we might attain this understanding:

If the soul could have known God without the world, the world would
never have been created. The world, therefore, was made for the soul’s
sake, so that the soul’s eye might be practiced and strengthened.
(Eckhart, 1998, p. 161)

And this: “The dervish — the servant of God — has this state: this hour and
the resurrection are the same for them” (Tabrizi, 2004, p. 240).
And this: “Rabbi Leib said: ‘I did not go to the maggid in order to hear
Torah from him, but to see how he unlaces his felt shoes and laces them up
again’” (Buber, 1991, p. 107).

Mundane acts as mystical prayer

Monks, if beings knew, as I know, the ripening of sharing gifts, they

would not enjoy their use without sharing them.
(Itivuttaka, a 6th century BCE Buddhist scripture,
in Perry, 1971, p. 597)

As one begins to appreciate the mysticism of the mundane, all actions might
become prayer. One worships God through each interaction with the world.
 Mysticism 39
As noted above, when asked why he went to see his teacher, a Hasid replied:
“to see how he laces up and unties his felt shoes.” A master’s attention to this
daily activity will be no less than in the most fervent meditation. Through
this intention, a mystical teaching f lowers.
For the mystically inclined, lacing up one’s shoes is prayer.
Like Eckhart’s f lea or Chuang Tzu’s ant (or turd!), God is within the lowly
as surely as within f lowing calligraphy, a crucifix, or the Torah. The seeker
treats all mundane aspects of our world as Divine.
Action and introversion represent two sides of the mystical coin. The
Christian mystic Origen of Alexandria (d. 253) captured the interplay be-
tween them, stating: “From one point of view the active life is purgative and
prepares the soul for the contemplation of God. But from another point of
view, contemplation bestows upon the soul the vision that enables it to act”
(Origen, 1979, p. 27).
This represents the unification of the internal and external experiences
of Divine understanding, where outward-looking and inward-looking mys-
tical appreciations coalesce. The Hindu holy book Bhagavad Gita (c. 3rd
century BCE) assured: “The world is imprisoned in its own activity, except
when actions are performed as worship of God” (Huxley, 1970, p. 272). And
the Prophet Muhammad explained in this hadith, the interplay between
contemplation and action: “Religious devotion is meant to make a person
fitter for the performance of their duties which they owe to others” (Ali,
2001, p. 16).
To the mystic, all acts should be self less. That is to say, not for the purpose
of what it can do for them, but for what it can do for the world. The Hasidic
Rabbi Yitzhak Meir of Ger (d. 1866) said:

‘A person should take the Torah upon themself, as the ox takes his yoke,
and the ass his burden.’ You see, the ox leaves his stall in the morning,
goes to the field, plows and is led home, and this happens day after day,
and nothing changes with regard to the ox, but the plowed field bears
the harvest.
(Buber, 1991, p. 304)

Here is where you, mysticism, and the world intersect. Forget about prayer.
Don’t worry about setting the glass of wine aside or eschewing your evenings
spent in a jazz bar or those languid afternoons by the sea. But even then—
when you lift the wine to your lips or interact with a server at the jazz bar
or talk to a stranger by the edge of the sea—do so with the intention and
understanding emerging from your spiritual center.
What’s more, no one is too small, too insignificant, or too sullied by life to
begin, right now, in correct and loving action. As Mahatma Gandhi stated,
in a little different context: “In nonviolent resistance, even a frail woman or
child can pit themself on equal terms against a giant armed with the most
powerful weapons” (Gandhi, 1965, p. 28). In point of fact, in this situation
the child or the frail woman might well represent more spiritual power than
40 Mysticism
the Goliath or the well-armed militiaman. Rumi’s teacher, Shams-i Tabrizi
(d. 1248), elucidated: “Two people are wrestling or battling. Of those two,
God is with the one who is overcome and broken, not with the one who
overcomes, for ‘I am with the broken’” (Tabrizi, 2004, p. 127).
Mysticism connects with social action, and prayer with social resist-
ance. The 20th-century prophet Thomas Merton noted, undoubtedly in-
f luenced by Gandhi: “What is needed now is the Christian who manifests
the truth of the Gospel in social action . . . Clear and decisive Christian
action explains itself and teaches in a way that words never can” (Merton,
1971, p. 222).
When Merton spoke of “Christianity,” he spoke of pre-4th-century
Christianity, when Christians would not join the army or engage in the ego-
driven ways of the world, living the life of love and self-abnegation advocated
by Jesus Christ. The ideal of a “muscular Christianity” spawning Inquisi-
tions, Crusades, World Wars, various genocides, and the storming of the US
Capitol in 2021 only emerged with the fusion of the Church and state, inau-
gurated by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 312.
The appreciation of a mysticism of action leads quite naturally to under-
standing not only shoelaces as Divine, but, more importantly for our pur-
poses, theater as worship. Theater has a unique ability to engage a wide range
of audience members and spread mystical wisdom. If the theater maker unites
their intention with that of true worship in the same manner that a mystical
master looks into the bottom of a water glass, then the message, couched
though it will be in a contemporary artistic voice and aesthetic, will be of-
fered as a prayer, suffusing the production with Divine energy.
The previous section (“Mysticism of the Mundane”) and this one denote
the heart of this mystico-theatrical model. If theater makers decide to be-
come part of a revolution of the spirit, they must base their aesthetic in their
deepest held transcendent beliefs, as well as present their creativity as an act
of worship. But they needn’t necessarily believe in God! As we’ll see in the
next chapter, some of the most spiritually-inclined modern theater makers
considered themselves agnostic, or even atheistic.
The mystically-inclined theater maker simply must believe in some
extra-­human energy at the heart of being, the importance of social good,
and their centrality in bringing renewal to our world through their creative
agency.
And remember, as the Prophet Muhammad said, even if you don’t see
God, rest assured that God sees you . . . .

Theater mysticism

Humans can find meaning in their life, short and perilous as it is, only
through devoting themself to society.
(Einstein, 1993, p. 5)
 Mysticism 41
This treatise offers an appreciation of mysticism, but certainly does not pro-
pose that the contemporary theater maker become a mystic. It does, however,
assure that by utilizing mysticism’s ideas, images, and lessons, theater makers
might seed this appreciation of unity into the general population, using the
unexpected infiltration vector of live performance.
Within society, mystical understanding presents itself as social cohesion
across ethnic, religious, and historical divides. The goal of mystical social
experience is to melt the boundaries between “us” and “them,” helping to
alleviate social conf lict.
If the complete dissolution of these perceived walls becomes an impos-
sibility, due to some people’s intractability in holding onto their ego-based
self-image as White nationalists, or corrupt African presidents, or North Ko-
rean or Chinese dictators, or Muslims, Jews, Christians, or what-have-you,
then we simply must expand the circle of the human “us,” marginalizing those
who cling to a more reductive and destructive image of the self.
While most of us will never practice the rigorous steps needed to achieve
a personal union with the Divine, the spiritual practices shared across all
religious paths and the ideals toward which they point offer a powerful and
necessary social palliative.
These conceptions and techniques developed at the heart of the mystic’s
path offer the specific ideas, templates, and inspirations for our work in Chap-
ter 3, as we look to insert mystical inlay into theatrical performances, and in
this manner begin a quiet revolution of the spirit.

Epilogue

The Western hunt for knowledge, analytic and objective to its core, has
violence built into it. For to know analytically is to reduce the object of
knowledge, however vital, however complex, to precisely this: an object.
(Huston Smith in Horgan, 2004, p. 24)

This study is not a theoretical, academic, or abstract exploration of mystical

ideas. This book offers a manual, a way of bringing the aforementioned ideals
into the living theater, and, through these productions, into the lives of a
growing audience.
Perhaps a human spiritual renewal begins here—with the individual
theater maker, echoing the original act of creation (for every artist in every
media literally creates something ex nihilo—out of nothing—as did the Di-
vine Essence). Every artist echoes the deep, primal inspiration of the original
act. Many, if not most, artists feel intimately aware of this, even if they might
not put it into words.
This study gives theater makers not only the words but also the methods
to appreciate their work as mystical action, and then to implement specific
production manners for inlaying this impetus into their productions.
42 Mysticism
Theater as a mystical act, sharing mystical insight.
By stepping down this path, we enter a foreign realm, a world of unan-
swerable questions and tremendous light. The antithesis of the Western con-
ception of “knowledge.”
“Sell your cleverness, and buy bewilderment,” said Rumi, or as Socrates,
the founder of philosophy, noted: “Only those who profess no real knowl-
edge are truly wise” (McGraw, 2004, p. 66).
Come on.
Let’s go. . . .

Note
1 “The ideas and people encountered in the subterranean realm of Buddhism are
the exact inverse of those on the surface. Down below, warfare and killing are
described as manifestations of Buddhist compassion . . . The purpose of Bud-
dhism is to preserve the state and punish any country or person who dared to
interfere with its right of self-aggrandizement” (Victoria, 2006, p. XIV).

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2 History of mysticism in
theater

Theater: a history unlike any other artistic media

Not music, nor visual art, nor decorative work has experienced so many ups
and downs, so many spiritual highs and so much social repression, so many
eras of censorship and short periods at the forefront of religion and culture,
as has theater.
It’s dizzying.
In one sense, the full breadth of mysticism in theater history might be thusly
summarized: “Greek Tragedy, Shakespeare, a few contemporary lights, and
the rest is commentary.”
But within the arc of the performing arts, from the Dionysian Myster-
ies (c. 3000–500 BCE) expressing people’s highest spiritual urges, to bawdy
Roman spectacles, sometimes offering little more than live sex shows and
even real murders, popular theater has soared to peaks and plunged to depths
far outside the realm of other creative expressions. There have been many
long periods in human cultural history when social leaders considered theater
anti-­religious, and they suppressed, censored, and literally damned (as in: “to
hell”) theater makers.
While there were great periods (Elizabethan drama stands out) and great
playwrights during the 2,500 years between Greek tragedy and our contem-
porary era, the political, religious, and cultural pressures against this art form
often worked tirelessly to suppress its expression.
The reason for this is not difficult to discern. The communal nature of
theater raised special concerns with authorities about the power of theater
to incite potentially dangerous emotions, instill novel ideas, and provoke ac-
tion in its audience. The theater has, since it disengaged from the spiritual
center of society in ancient Greece, offered a hotbed of potentially subversive
energy.
And it is this very power to evoke, instill, and incite novel ways of see-
ing, thinking, feeling, and behaving which opens the door for contemporary
theater makers to utilize this passionate creative media to begin a revolution
of the spirit.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003187271-3
 History of mysticism in theater 47
An antitheatrical prejudice

The theaters from being mute have become vocal, as though they had
understanding of good and bad . . . and instead of an aristocracy, an evil
sort of theatrocracy has grown up . . . For what is this shamelessness,
which is so evil a thing, but the insolent refusal to regard the opinion of
the better by reason of an over-daring sort of liberty?
(Plato, 1871, p. 223)

The fear and suppression of theater represents one of the most curious as-
pects of dramatic history. Against this backdrop of repression, suppression,
and censorship, the dramatic arts struggled, sometimes overcoming the social
pressures, and sometimes being overwhelmed by them.
Censorious attitudes against theater date back to the beginning of Western
drama, as drama separated from the transcendent rites of the Greek Mysteries
(secret rituals offering initiation into the deepest religious mythologies). Socrates
assured that dramatists traded only in fancies and opinions. Instead of dousing
the flames of desire, theater makers poured fuel on the most combustible and, in
the Greek philosopher’s view, lowest aspect of the human psyche: the emotions.
Socrates’ student Plato went even further. Plato (d. 348 BCE) assured that
the imitation underlying performance unleashed evils dormant within the
audience, producing a riotous mob and threatening the very fabric of the
state. To further his argument, Plato decried the fact that artistic creativity
sprang from the individual and was addressed to the individual in the audi-
ence, caring nothing for the common good of society.
Plato also opined that artistic creativity often worked contrary to statist
goals and rules. Like all dictatorial thinkers, past and current, Plato believed
that any social activity that expanded the individual’s emotional or intellec-
tual range imperiled the stability of the social order. Imaginative activity,
assured the Greek thinker, must be restricted at every turn.
Dating from the time of Plato, theater experienced many periods of censor-
ship throughout the Western world. Firstly, and most importantly, virtually all
governments until about the end of the 18th century were essentially theocra-
cies, with the temporal power of the king or leader resting in a unique relation-
ship with the Divine. The state religion, be it Christianity, Islam, or Judaism,
propped up the spurious relationship between temporal leader and God.
The last thing that either the leaders of the religion or the leaders of the
state desired was a free-thinking populace, stirred to action by the passions
of the dramatic arts. This is a standard dynamic—the terror that dictators
have for the arts—and one which The New York Times journalist Eve Ewing
outlined as an ongoing social and political dynamic:

Art creates pathways for subversion, for political understanding, and sol-
idarity among coalition builders. Art teaches us that lives other than our
48 History of mysticism in theater
own have value . . . artists who occupy marginalized social positions can
use their art to challenge structures of power in ways that would other-
wise be dangerous or impossible.
(Ewing, April 6, 2017)

In earlier times, when state religion and temporal leaders defined a single,
powerful unit, this suppression was even more pervasive than today.
Not just theater as a genre, but those who created it met with discrimi-
nation. Throughout much of theater history, popular belief stated that the
work of the actor (the most visible member of the theatrical community) was
idolatrous and, when impersonating a deity, blasphemous.
Additionally, a bizarre theory evolved that an actor who portrayed any
negative characteristic or action on stage actually embodied these impulses in
real life. This was based in Plato’s idea of mimesis (imitation), which consid-
ered acting as formative, shaping the mind and causing the actor to become
more like the person or object imitated. Kill someone on stage? You harbor a
murderer within your breast. Commit adultery as part of a production? You
undoubtedly have done so in real life!
Given the importance of Plato’s ideas to the development of Western
thought and religion during the following two millennia, it is not surprising
that his views concerning theater and theater makers became central to Eu-
ropean attitudes. All art, Plato assured (as did the Christian Church which
followed, and Jewish thinkers, Islamic dogma, the British Puritans, French
Catholics, early Americans, 20th-century fascists, and recent dictators like
Robert Mugabe, Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Communist
Party, Donald Trump, and other repressive regimes), must represent an ad-
junct to and expression of state policy, and nothing more.

Fuego

In the true theater, a play disturbs the senses’ repose, frees the repressed
unconscious, incites a kind of virtual revolt . . . and imposes on the as-
sembled collectivity an attitude that is both difficult and heroic.
(Artaud, 1997, p. 28)

Nothing affects and inf lames the passions as does live performance, in which
the audience and the performers share a unique time and space, known
only to them. Recent scientific research by the University College London
showed how watching a live theater performance synchronizes an individu-
al’s heartbeat with other people in the audience, regardless of whether they
know them or not. Theater literally creates a heartfelt collective! (University
College London, November 17, 2017)
This information will be central to our work in the next chapter, as we
use this vital aspect of theater to capitalize on the momentary unity found
 History of mysticism in theater 49
through live performance, to suffuse an appreciation for the shared, human
religion into audiences, which they will take with them upon leaving the
theater space.
This passionate and quantifiable unity inspired by the theater runs directly
contrary to religious and statist goals. Once Plato codified his antitheatrical
ideas in The Republic and The Laws, his views inf luenced later thinkers. Even
the language of the theater has undergone, and continues to undergo, down-
ward and disrespectful pressures.
While many words derived from the arts are positive and considered f lat-
tering, such as a “poetic” nature, an “epic” struggle, or “lyrical” turn of the
phrase, this is not true for theatrical terms. As the theater academic Jonas
Barish (d. 1998) wrote in The Antitheatrical Prejudice (a 522-page tome tracing
the fear of and distaste for theater and theater makers throughout history):

With infrequent exceptions, terms borrowed from the theatre — t­heatrical,

operatic, melodramatic, stagey etc. — tend to be hostile or belittling. And so
do a wide range of expressions drawn from theatrical activity expressly
to convey disapproval: acting, play acting, putting on an act, making a scene,
making a spectacle of oneself, playing to the gallery and so forth.

Barish assured that this is hardly an English language-only phenomenon. It can

be found in German, French, Italian, and many other idioms. This represents,
Barish assured, a prejudice that goes back to the progenitor of acting, Thespis
(c. 6th century BCE), who the Athenian statesman Solon (d. 560 BCE, often
credited with having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy) called a
“liar” because he was pretending to be someone else (Barish, 1981, p. 1).
Even today, as I sit at my desk in New York City in 2021, this prejudice
remains. I open the latest news in my browser and see this headline from The
Washington Post: “‘Here we go again with the theater’: Fauci pushes back on
Sen. Rand Paul’s amateur epidemiology,” implying that lying, theater, and
an anti-science response to the global Covid-19 pandemic were somehow
intertwined. The American infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony S. Fauci
(b. 1941) showed little patience for Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) “theatrics”
around his contention that protective face masks were not needed after an
individual had recovered from an infection or been vaccinated.
The antitheatrical prejudice remains woven into the fabric of our language.

The beginning of theater

The origins of theater, like of all human culture, recede into an indistinct past,
where it fuses with religion, the spirit, and the authoritarian structures of an-
cient societies. At the beginning of human history, be it in Sumeria or Babylon,
Egypt or sub-Saharan Africa, creativity, the state, and the spirit intertwined.
Greek tragedy unspooled from these earliest impulses. There is good reason
to believe that Greek theater, founded (we are told) by a man named Thespis
50 History of mysticism in theater
traveling as an itinerant actor and performing on the back of a wheeled cart
(c. 6th century BCE), emerged from earlier stagecraft in Egypt. Egypt birthed
drama within its religious rites as early as the third millennia BCE.
These earliest works in Egypt were performed in temples, by priests wear-
ing masks. The plots presented the specific steps a searcher used to climb
toward the Mystery of Light. The arc of these earliest theatrical productions
went thusly:

A. Imagination: The Deity appears to the adept

B. Inspiration: The Deity speaks through her own deeds or sufferings
C. The Deity unites herself with the adept.
(Rosenheim, 1952, p. 18)

In a nutshell, this represents the mystic’s path, that which all spiritual seekers
have traveled in all religious traditions throughout human history, explicitly
presented in the original dramatic performancs. From prehistoric times up to
the beginning of Greek tragedy (with Aeschylus, d. 455 BCE), theater always
treated the so-called “Mysteries of Light,” which “envisioned as their goal the
fundamental transformation of the inner structure of the pious adept—until
their inner sight was able to pierce the veil of sense-bound human nature and
experience the world of lasting beauty, truth, and goodness” (Rosenheim,
1952, p. 52).
Society, in this pre-Western era, represented unitary theocracies, in which
all members of the culture believed the same foundational myths. Because of
this singular faith system (a religious world with no competing claims), mys-
tical insight (not religious observance as we think of it) was regarded as the
only legitimate purpose of worship. It is here, in the faded human past, that
we arrive at the birthplace of, and lodestar for, drama’s holy trinity of theater,
spirituality, and society.
This intersection between theater, spirituality, and society, rejected by later
philosophers, religions, and states, represented the starting point for Greek
theater. Drama emerged from worship of the God Dionysius (the Olympian
god of wine, vegetation, pleasure, festivity, and madness). Over the first few
hundred years of Greek theater, from its Dionysian heights in the 6th century
BCE down through the more commercialized theater in the time of Aristotle
(d. 322 BCE), and then degrading into the vulgar drama of Rome, theater
lost its place at the center of the spiritual search.

Mystery theater

To live as human beings only in and for the present

Means to decrease for the eternal sphere.
Man once has fallen from the most lofty heights
Down into the illusions and lures of dying matter.
 History of mysticism in theater 51
But by regaining the forgotten memories
of his time of origin and destiny
He can attain to every form of wisdom
Transcending as the newborn son of God his mortal will.
(The Holy Drama of Eleusis, c. 7th-6th century BCE in
Rosenheim, 1952, p. 50)

The Mysteries represented the central facet of ancient Greek spiritual life.
Religious beliefs and rituals “elevated people above the human sphere into
the divine, to assure their redemption by making a person a god and so con-
ferring immortality upon them” (Nilsson, 1947, p. 44).
Greek religious worship emerged from earlier rituals in the Near East.
Precursor cults included the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris in Egypt (c. 24th
century BCE), the Adoniac of Syrian cults (c. 20th century BCE), the Persian
Mithraic Mysteries (c. 15th century BCE), and the ancient Greek Phrygian
Cabeirian Mysteries (c. 13th century BCE).
All represented the spiritual core of religious observance, before the rational
mind began to separate the “within” from the “above” in human experience.
Inf luence of the one (Egyptian and Near East ritual) on the other (Greek
religion) and the origins of Western theater are not difficult to discern. There
was a constant to-ing and fro-ing of merchants, travelers, wanderers, poets,
lovers, and warriors around the Aegean, Adriatic, and Mediterranean Seas
from earliest antiquity. As late as 450 BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus
(d. 425 BCE) noted the similarities between Greek performances honoring
Dionysius and Egyptian rituals dedicated to Osiris, going so far as to assure
that they were the same God under two different names, in two disparate
cultures.
The Egyptian God Isis morphed into the Eleusinian Mysteries (c. 15th
century BCE) of the Greek Gods Demeter and Persephone, the earliest and
most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece. The Egyptian God
Osiris repurposed as Dionysius, became the father of theater itself.
This understanding of the movement of spiritual theater—in particular
how, at its inception, drama pointed toward individual mystical realization,
and not simply social cohesion in the form of shared rituals and beliefs—­
recedes into the deepest past of human history. Yet for this book, this idea of
mystical theater points the way for theater makers today. The model outlined
here is in no way revolutionary, but reactionary. It represents a return, an
echo of our beginnings, when the audience entered the theater to shed per-
sonality, time, and space to return to their Divine origin.

Cult of Dionysius

In the Dionysian dithyramb, man is aroused to the highest intensity of

all his symbolic capabilities. Something never felt before forces itself into
52 History of mysticism in theater
expression—the destruction of the veil of Maya, the sense of oneness as
the presiding genius of form, of nature itself. Now the essence of nature
must express itself symbolically; a new world of symbols is necessary,
the entire symbolism of the body . . . the full gestures of the dance—all
the limbs moving to the rhythm. And then the other symbolic powers
grow—all with sudden spontaneity.
(Friedrich Nietzsche in Berberovic, 2015, pp. 34–35)

While the Eleusinian Mysteries opened a doorway for Greeks to the eter-
nal core at the heart of human experience, it was the Cult of Dionysius and
its mysteries which spawned theater. Emerging as early as the 13th century
BCE, this ancient Athenian spiritual worship would be far more welcome
today in New York’s East Village or London’s Brixton, than in Mecca, the
Vatican, or Jerusalem.
At its inception, it involved intoxication, sexual orgy, the tearing apart
and devouring of raw, sacrificial victims (sometimes including slaves or
conquered warriors), and other primal activities. By the 6th century BCE,
however, these more extreme forms of worship had abated, leaving incipient
theatrical production in their wake.
The dithyramb emerged from this Dionysian hysteria, manifesting as the
first iteration of live theater. This performance consisted of an improvised
story concerning a Dionysian theme sung by one actor, with a chorus re-
sponding with a traditional refrain. From this performance, Arion (d. 585
BCE) codified the dithyramb into a literary form. The stories originally con-
cerned only the life and worship of Dionysius. Later, these expanded to in-
clude peripheral tales of demigods and human heroes, ancient warriors and
Grecian ancestors. This became the basis of the first Greek tragedies.
Dionysian performances interlaced with other religious activities at the
yearly Great Dionysia, a festival held in Athens in March. The Theater of
Dionysius (c. 6th century BCE) was built in Athens on sacred ground, draw-
ing audiences from all walks of life. The Dionysian rites inspired the internal
spiritual experience shared by all members of society, regardless of economic
rank or social class. It created a single community from the entire polis, their
hearts beating together as they watched the performance, forging a mystico-­
theatrical community from the society’s individuals.
The audience was well aware of this. They arrived not simply to pass a
couple hours in passive entertainment, but to achieve a deeper understand-
ing of their own human spirit and to probe the nature of the gods and their
relationship to humanity. At this earliest birth of Western theater, dramatic
performance and religious experience were the same thing.
Friedrich Nietzsche assured, with no small sense of nostalgia, “the most im-
mediate effect of the Dionysian tragedy [was] that the state and society and, in
general, the gulfs between man and man give way to an overwhelming feeling
of unity leading back to the very heart of nature” (Nietzsche, 1937, p. 208).
How could you call this man a “nihilist?”
 History of mysticism in theater 53
There is nothing constant but change

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and
he’s not the same man.
(Heraclitus, d. 475 BCE)

Change is a natural state of the universe, be it represented by evolution,

devolution, or simply difference. And so change came almost immediately to
the original theatrical impulse. By the end of the 6th century BCE, Athenian
democracy emerged. The inhabitants of Attica (the peninsula projecting into
the Aegean Sea, hosting Athens and its surrounding countryside) split into
ten different clans. Intertribal tensions channeled into theatrical challenges
(when not exploding into bloody wars).
At the yearly Dionysian festival, each tribe presented its own version of
the dithyramb, and a contest developed between them to decide on the best
work. By the turn of the 6th century BCE into the beginning of the golden
age of Greek theater, the city of Dionysia grew into a sprawling complex of
performance and rehearsal spaces, with ancillary buildings for housing, din-
ing, and other aspects of a major, days-long cultural event.
While the earliest theaters—those which hosted the likes of Aeschylus
(d. 456 BCE), Sophocles (d. 406 BCE), Euripides (d. 406 BCE), and their
contemporaries—were built near a temple and operated as sacred spaces of
worship, the theatrical works began to disengage from the narrative of the Di-
onysian Mysteries. By the middle of the fifth century BCE, spectators judged
the dramatic works objectively, as works of art. While a couple hundred years
prior those entering into the Cult of Dionysius constituted a congregation,
the spectators evolved into an audience, replete with critics, judges, prizes,
and most probably posted reviews and bathroom graffiti.
The artistic quality of the work increased, and the anonymous improvisers
and chorus members of yore were replaced by the world’s first celebrities, many
of whose names we still know, some 2,500 years later. However, the spiritual
depth of the performances began to wane. The audience’s gaze lowered from
the ineffable Divine toward the artistic quality, political and social mores, and
travails of the contemporary culture. Now, instead of doorways to the spirit,
5th-century Greek tragedians employed contemporary religious practices and
ancient myths as plot devices, dramaturgical tools which moved the story for-
ward, instead of mystical truths which moved the human spirit inward.
Theater had not yet denatured itself of the Divine, but the process had be-
gun. Critics now opined on the quality of acting, writing, directing, dance,
and music. Playwriting awards were won and lost. Economics became a fac-
tor in theater, as it has certainly remained to this day. The city’s wealthiest
denizens were charged with underwriting each production, the forerunner
of today’s Broadway producer.
This de-linking of the theater from the great spiritual mysteries hardly
attenuated Greek theater’s popularity or extensive production values. In what
54 History of mysticism in theater
is considered the first century of Western theater’s history (5th century BCE),
more than 1,000 plays were written by dozens of playwrights which were
performed in and around Athens.
These Golden Age Greek tragedies operated as social commentary, un-
settling the staid Athenian middle-class worldview, holding up a mirror to
Athenian life, and shaking at the foundations of the institutions and myths
that the middle-class society held dear. These works asked questions of the
audience, exposing social tensions and class divisions. Contrary to earlier
theater, which used shared myth and experience to create a collective of the
audience and point their gaze, together, toward a shared image of the Divine,
these tragedians challenged the spectators’ perceptions, asking them to assess
their society and their place within it, and even testing their long-held beliefs.
Socrates, and then Plato were none too pleased.
Theater disentangled itself from the trinity of society, religion, and the
state, and turned around to gaze back at the Athenian culture, sometimes
with irony, sometimes with activist intent, and sometimes through the scrim
of accepted social and religious mores.

Roman theater
Throughout the ensuing few centuries, Aegean hegemony ceded its power to
Rome. In 146 BCE at the Battle of Corinth, Greece fell definitively, and the
Greek era ended. By this time, theater had mostly de-linked from its mystical
beginnings and become, much like today’s Broadway or West End specta-
cles, focused on entertainment and economics, and less so on the spirit. This
movement away from the ethereal beginnings of theater in the Eleusinian
and Dionysian Mysteries accelerated during the Roman period, when theater
experienced an artistic dark era.
The first Roman theatrical production dates to 240 BCE, when full-
length, scripted plays were introduced to the capital by playwright Livius
Andronicus (d. 205 BCE). The last Roman play on record graced the stage
in 549. During these nearly 800 years, though there were a few bright spots,
Romans generally favored entertainment and performance over tragedy and
drama. Theater displayed an aesthetic more in keeping with vaudeville, con-
temporary reality TV, or even strip clubs, than the erudite offerings of earlier
Greek drama.
Spectacle became an essential part of everyday Romans’ expectations
when it came to theater. Popular Roman productions most closely resembled
what we’d call “circus” today. We can best appreciate the Roman audience’s
taste by thinking in terms of the lowest of American television program-
ming. Roman theater included acrobatics, trained animals, jugglers, athletic
events, music, burlesque dancers, dramatic skits, and short farces, which were
often indecent, salacious, and lionized greed, adultery, and lascivious behav-
ior, leavened with copious drinking by the audience. Live sex shows were a
not-unusual facet of Roman Theater.
 History of mysticism in theater 55
The theater academic Debra Bruch (b. 1951), founding editor of The Jour-
nal of Religion and Theatre, noted the depths to which theater fell during the
Roman era:

With the mime, Roman society attacked Christian morality by focusing

on behaviors repugnant to Christian believers [who were prosecuted in
Roman society until 312]. For instance, the Ludi Flores honored the god-
dess Flora, who was a prostitute. During the festival, actors undressed
onstage, goats copulated in the circus, and audience members were in a
constant state of inebriation . . . Criminals—Christian or otherwise—
were forced to act a character in a mime or drama before death. A man
named Laureolus acted in a popular Atellan farce which ended with his
crucifixion and tearing apart by animals. Others were costumed as vari-
ous characters and then castrated . . . some audience members responded
to the slaughter in the arena by engaging in sexual intercourse.
(Bruch, 2004, pp. 3–4)

Shakespeare, it was not.

A few Roman playwrights did stand out. Plautus (d. 184 BCE), considered
the founder of modern onstage comedy, created work which was both eru-
dite (for the time) and sensitive to his audience’s degraded desires. Terence
(d. 159 BCE) was lauded in his lifetime, and became one of the most impor-
tant theatrical inf luences on later European writers, including Elizabethan
playwrights. And the great Stoic philosopher Seneca’s (d. 65) plays, though
never produced, were recited at elite gatherings of aristocracy and intellectu-
als. Italian humanists rediscovered Seneca’s works in the mid-16th century,
making them models for the revival of tragedy on the Renaissance stage.
As popular as the more vulgar offerings of Roman theater were in their
time (contemporaneous audiences and critics valued the popular aesthetic),
the Roman era began the downward social and even religious pressure on
theater makers themselves. Thus began a social dynamic lasting for nearly
2,000 years, until the 20th-century finally brought fame, fortune, and re-
spect to those few actors and playwrights who thrilled the public enough to
achieve acclaim.
But not so in Rome.
Professional theater folk, often performing at the intersection of the worst
of commercial theater and Barnum and Bailey Circus, found themselves cast
out of polite society, forbidden to serve in the army, and hounded by the
magistrates. The actor was often a slave, and his master a producer whose
only motive was to make a profit. Theater producers squeezed as much out
of the actor for as little remuneration as possible, offering the most grotesque
and sometimes dangerous spectacles for an audience that desired blood, guts,
and sex, with a strong drink on the side.
It was legal for police to whip a theater maker, leaving the actor with no
recourse but to gut out the punishment and return to the stage the next day,
56 History of mysticism in theater
bruised, bloodied, and traumatized. The Roman statesman Cicreo (d. 43
BCE) noted that his fellow Romans “considered the dramatic art and theatre
in general disgraceful,” with the public desiring that all people involved in
this line of work should not only be denied their civil rights, but also their
very identities as members of society (Barish, 1981, p. 39).
Like prostitution, theater was considered a necessary evil.
This is not to say that people didn’t love their theater in the same way that
they love their Netf lix, binge watch their favorite Reality TV show, or visit
their chosen escort. By the 1st century of the Common Era, theaters had been
built all over Italy, in Spain, in France, and across North Africa. And anyone
who has ever had the pleasure of visiting one of these open-air performance
palaces feels as if the architectural implication represents an art that was not
only respected, but also presented at a very high level.
They were beautiful and empty shells, however, hosting a sick art. The
Roman theater, as historian Phyllis Hartnoll (d. 1997) asserted in her Concise
History of the Theatre, seemed to die of its own inanity.

Beginning of the Christian era

Drama was fiction and therefore false, for it embellished and portrayed
a life that was different than the reality of the times. Being false, theatre
manipulated people into believing a lie, which was the work of Satan.
Furthermore, because drama was false, it led to spiritual agitation. Peo-
ple experienced an emotional upheaval that affected their spiritual state.
Emotional upheaval was immoral because God commanded people to
deal calmly, gently, and quietly with the Holy Spirit.
(Bruch, 2004, pp. 3–4)

On October 28, 312, the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, an important route
over the Tiber, took place between two competing Roman Emperors, Con-
stantine I and Maxentius. This day marked the beginning of Christian he-
gemony over the Western nations.
From being a pariah religion and having its believers oppressed, Christi-
anity ascended to become the state creed when Constantine and his soldiers,
before winning their battle, experienced a shared vision believed to be sent
by the Christian God. They interpreted this as a promise of victory, and
before heading into battle, painted the sign of the first two letters of Christ’s
name on the soldiers’ shields.
Constantine vanquished his rival, and dedicated his victory to the Chris-
tian God. Christ and war entangled in Western civilization from that time
onward.
For theater as well, this battle had ramifications. While actors had been
repressed under Roman rule and theater degraded, they were both still a
central facet of cultural life. However, the early Christian fathers halted even
 History of mysticism in theater 57
these creative outpourings, asserting that theater was blasphemous and must
be outlawed in any Christian society.
The stricture against theater went back to the founding of the second
Abrahamic faith. The early Christian fathers, those who lived between the
death of Christ and 312, were adamant in their prohibition of theatrical per-
formance. Tatian of Adiabene (d. 185) offered the earliest, though certainly
neither the last nor most vitriolic, treatise against the theater. As so often hap-
pened throughout the history of performance, Tatian specifically denounced
the actor on the grounds of being a liar and “outwardly counterfeiting what
he is not,” a person offering “an epitome of superstition, an actor of murders,
a chronicler of adultery, a storehouse of madness, an instigator of capital sen-
tences” (Barish, 1981, p. 44).
Tertullian (d. 220) called theater a frank lie. He forbade Christians from
attending theaters. He spoke of its seductive manners thusly: “Granted, you
have in theatre pleasant things both agreeable and innocent in themselves,
even some excellent things . . . the devil puts into his deadly draught things
most pleasant and acceptable, stolen from God” (Brockett, 1995, p. 80). St.
Ambrose (d. 397) ordered the theater to be utterly abolished.
For St. John of Chrysostom (d. 407), not only pleasure, but the mere talk of
pleasure degraded the soul. “He who converses of theatre and actors,” he stated,
“does not benefit [his soul], but inf lames it more, and renders it more careless.”
Better, he assured, to spend your time ruminating on hell and on how to stay
out of it than to pass a pleasant evening in the theater (Barish, 1981, p. 51).
Throughout these early centuries of ascendent Christianity, the actor was
always singled out as a particularly odious member of society, one, in fact,
who should be excluded from it. Actors equated to rogues, vagabonds, beg-
gars, the homeless, harlots, and thieves. This negative energy toward the most
visible member of the theatrical production, which began in Roman times,
did not wane until the 20th century. Many contemporary actors would tell
you that it continues to this day!
By the time of St. Augustine (d. 430), who penned some of the most pow-
erful treatises in the early Church, the die was cast concerning Christian
theological attitudes toward the theater. And perhaps Augustine’s vitriol in-
creased by the fact that in his youth he had been a theater maven himself.
There is no more passionate believer than a convert!
St. Augustine, in City of God, asserted the similarity between the plague,
which kills the body without destroying the organs, and the dramatic arts,
which provokes passionate (and negative) alterations in an individual or even
a whole population, while leaving no scar.
St. Augustine pulled out all rhetorical brick-bats to beat back the contagion
of drama, asserting that it was false, morally detestable, frivolous, and (gasp!)
puerile (aka: juvenile). For St. Augustine and therefore early Christianity, the
theater was not just an idle and wasteful diversion, but the epitome of all evil
lying dormant within human nature, an activity which unleashed internal
demons, leading people in a straight line to hell.
58 History of mysticism in theater
St. Augustine became the single most inf luential medieval theologian. His
ideas reverberated down through the centuries. In 692, more than 250 years
after his death, the Trullan Council, meeting under Emperor Justinian II,
sought to have all theatrical performances banned, as well as expelling pro-
fessional entertainers and anyone who married them from the Church. Like
earlier in Rome, basic civil rights were denied to actors and performers.

Medieval Christian Europe

Things did not get much better for European theater makers in the ensuing
centuries. The oppression, ostracization, excommunication, and repressive
laws lasted for another millennia and, as we shall see, in many cases, up until
the footsteps of the 21st century. However, as Christian Europe recovered
from the terror of the Muslim invasion, stopping the century-long Islamic
expansion at the Battle of Poitiers in southern France (732), and began em-
barking on their own religious crusades (beginning in 1095), the Church
itself turned to the theater to help spread and solidify its message.
Ironically, after stamping creative performative energy in Europe into dust
for the second half of Christianity’s first millennia, the Church looked to use
what was left of the theatrical impetus to educate, inspire, and amplify its
message.
The first European “playlet,” replete with stage directions, was written
around 970 by Ethelwold (d. 984, the Bishop of Windsor). Within a few
decades, liturgical theater became endemic throughout Europe. Over the
ensuing several hundred years, countless church and cloister plays were writ-
ten and produced, leading to passion plays and festivals as far east as Russia,
and all over the continent from Scandinavia to Italy. At first, these plays
represented direct presentations of Christian scripture, though later, morality
plays, with characters such as Good, Evil, and the Seven Deadly Sins person-
ified, were staged.
The subject matter was entirely Christian, and morality, needless to say,
always won.
You might think that this, then, was another answer to the original dra-
matic impetus: how to bring theater, society, and the spirit together. After all,
for nearly 500 years beginning at the dawn of the second Christian millen-
nia, virtually all European theatrical works based themselves in the Christian
scriptures and religious ideals. However, let’s remember what early Greek
theater highlighted: the Mysteries. The question mark at the heart of being.
Religious theater, by definition, focuses on an imagined exclamation point,
sequestered within that religious path only, as the endpoint of meaning.
The more dogmatically religious theater is, the less spiritually oriented it
becomes. Far from opening a doorway into the ineffable and inexplicable
spirit, these works pounded a religio-statist message of certainty, temporal
laws, royal power, and divine retribution into the vulnerable craniums of the
audience.
Not mystical.
 History of mysticism in theater 59
Regardless, this European theatrical movement from about 1000–1500,
predominantly within churches, or in church yards and using scriptural stories
as the text, paved the way for a return to secular, professional theater. The
two centuries between 1350 and 1550 presented the height of these Christian
productions, with drama expanding from liturgical presentations of scripture
to works written in the lingua franca of the audience (no longer in Latin), and
dealing with a wider selection of stories from the Bible, the Apocrypha, and
the lives of the saints.
Concomitant of this, a secular theater industry began to emerge. By the
end of the 14th century, theatrical productions moved beyond the church
walls into town squares, presented by professional guilds (with masons build-
ing stages, carpenters building sets, weavers creating costumes, painters mak-
ing backgrounds, leatherworkers fashioning props, etc.) on “mansions,” or
movable stages. The Church elders still controlled the content, but the loom-
ing presence of the physical church receded into the background. Productions
began concentrating more on the art and artifice of the craft.
It should also be noted that by the 14th century, pushback against the
Church censorship and strictures on theater emerged among the European
literati. The greatest creative minds of the era argued that theater, which
deviated from the Church line, was actually allegory and still pointed in the
correct religious direction (toward Heaven, not Hell). No lesser writers than
Dante (d. 1321), Petrarch (d. 1374), and Boccaccio (d. 1375), basing their ideas
on earlier Stoic philosophers, attempted to broaden the artistic license of their
contemporary theater makers.
They had about as much success as Galileo did in convincing the Church
that the earth revolved around the sun. The Church remained the dominant
dramaturg of pre-Renaissance productions.
This remained true throughout all of Christendom. In the 15th and 16th
centuries, as the first stirrings of Elizabethan theater began in London (with
its beginning dated to 1558), smaller towns and cities in Britain hosted “cycle
plays,” full-day productions evincing the complete cycle of God’s experi-
ence, from the creation of the universe through the end of the world and the
Last Judgment. These were known as “mystery plays.” Perhaps more than
any other work between the earliest Greek drama and the late 19th century,
these productions based themselves in the question mark of mysticism, rather
than in the exclamation point of religion. While certainly based in Christian
teaching, they took the “mysteries of God” as their theme.
However, ultimately, these dramas—like their cousins, the morality
plays—provided the audience with Christian moral guidance. Their char-
acters and themes grew out of the accepted Christian tradition, remaining
tethered to its views and laws.
A short synopsis of the most popular of these works, Everyman, gives a
sense of these dramas, as well as their importance to theater history. Everyman
continues to inspire artists to this day, with a version appearing on Australian
TV (1964); adapted by the UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and per-
formed at the National Theater (2015); reconsidered as Everybody (finalist for
60 History of mysticism in theater
the Pulitzer Prize, 2018) by American playwright Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins
and appearing in many other versions, from Broadway to the cinema.
The original story ran like this:

The titular character discovers that he is about to die. He must provide

God with a book of accounts, detailing the good deeds he has done, in
order to save his soul and gain access to Heaven. In despair, Everyman re-
alizes that he has misspent his life and his account book is almost empty.
The play follows him on a spiritual journey, where allegorical characters
such as Friendship and Beauty desert him but others, for example Good
Deeds and Confession, instruct and advise him, helping him to turn his
life around before his death. The play not only teaches the audience some
complex Christian doctrine, but more importantly it encourages them to
look to their own lives and souls, before it’s too late.
(Howes, 2018, online)

As works such as Everyman f lowered across Europe, the Church attempted to

keep a tight lid on what was produced and what was forbidden. After all, the
untoward emotions and sweaty passions inspired by theater led to only one
place—and not the Good Place, either. The Roman Catholic Church acted
as theater’s censor, safeguarding the souls of the too-often wayward f lock,
regulating scripts and performances, keeping all content focused squarely on
Christian scripture and teachings.
After the Reformation (1517) and the founding of the Protestant Church,
this new set of prelates rolled up the sleeves on their vestments, immediately
involving themselves in suppressing theater, as well as deleting all references
to Catholicism, when Protestant performances were allowed.
This censorship tightened the Church-state bond in Europe. In France, the
government performed this suppressive service until the revolution of 1789.
In Germany and other parts of Europe, government permission was neces-
sary to open a theater, and the work presented was tightly controlled. And
in Spain, the restrictions, inspired as they were by the Spanish Inquisition
(1478–1874), were even more severe than in the north.
However, to offer a slim note of hope for our beleaguered brethren and
sistren, professional, secular theater did emerge from the European “Dark
Ages”. Around the middle of the 16th century, in the markets of Italy, a new
form of nonreligious performance appeared, with men and women signing
their first professional performance contracts in Christian Europe. This f low-
ered quickly throughout the continent, and by 1591, Shakespeare presented
his first play, Henry VI, Part I, as part of a burgeoning London theater scene.
Granted, actors still comprised vagabonds, libertines, free-thinkers, prosti-
tutes, deserting soldiers, peasants, fallen aristocracy, runaway children, and a
whole host of like-minded social outcasts. But when they were able to escape
the magistrates and police, they could perform what they liked. And they
were paid . . .
 History of mysticism in theater 61
Shakespeare shakes things up

If it be asked whether we have the right to place any of Shakespeare’s

plays in the category of sacred art, a powerful plea for yes is implicit in
the fact that the central theme of these plays is not merely religion, but
the very essence of religion, namely the Mysteries.
(Lings, 2006, p. 13)

William Shakespeare (d. 1616) dropped into the tightly controlled medieval
creative world, exploding like a dye pack, coloring the path for nearly all
the theater that followed. This one playwright became drama’s single most
important voice, resonating strongly to this day. He was one who, while
skirting around censorship, religious proscriptions, a growing Puritanical re-
sponse to drama (which would outlaw theatrical activity completely in the
decades after his death), used subtlety, artistry, poetry—and yes—spirituality,
to remake the living stage.
Born in 1564, at a time when theater was emerging from the shadow of
the medieval church, Shakespeare’s creative life began just as professional
secular theater birthed in Italian markets. By 1592, Shakespeare’s works were
being performed on London’s stages. For the next two decades, and two
decades only, William Shakespeare created a body of 37 plays, with a creative
equivalence to the five most important early Greek tragedians combined, far
outpacing any theater writer before or since.
The Tempest (1611) represented the last work which Shakespeare wrote in
its entirety. This final play ends with the singular figure of Prospero alone on
the stage, speaking Shakespeare’s farewell to the audience:

Release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Personally, I get goosebumps, imagining the fading Bard, sitting in the Globe
Theater for one last performance of his work. The character onstage speaks
his final farewell of melancholy satisfaction as he, already enfeebled by age,
is days from his final move north to Stratford-upon-Avon, to live out his last
years on this mortal coil.
62 History of mysticism in theater
However, in the two previous decades of work, the Bard of Avon did,
indeed, remake the possibility of the theater. And it is vital to keep in mind
the cultural headwinds he faced. The Puritans (c. 1533–1660), a rising force
in British politics and culture, completely eschewed theater (as well as pretty
much everything else falling under the rubric of “fun”). They succeeded a
couple decades after Shakespeare’s death in overthrowing the King, installing
Oliver Cromwell, and, among other things, outlawing stage presentations
entirely during their reign in Britain from 1648 to 1660.
These repressive headwinds blew strongly throughout Shakespeare’s career.
In 1597, the Lord Mayor and Alderman of London requested that the Crown
suppress all performances in and around the capital. Among other sins, he
accused theater of corrupting the youth; offering succor to vagrants, thieves,
horse-stealers, and whore mongers (!); promoting idleness in the workers and
servant classes; and leading to the increase in pathogens, viruses, and sores
passed among the tightly packed audiences.
Additionally, due to the religious pressures of the day (engendered by the
struggle between Catholicism and the upstart Protestants), Christianity itself
became a dangerous topic. By the end of Shakespeare’s career, it became
forbidden by law to use the word “God” onstage. One could still refer to
the pagan “gods,” however—a device which Shakespeare employed with
frequency.
Lastly, and perhaps most interestingly, in his own day Shakespeare was not
even recognized as the most important playwright in London. Ben Johnson
(d. 1637, considered England’s first Poet Laureate and the towering literary
figure of his day) turned his nose up at the middle-class-bred “hack” writer
(Shakespeare never attended university). Playwright and moralist Robert
Greene (d. 1592) called Shakespeare “an upstart crow” (Hartnoll, 1976, p. 82).
Well, we know how that ended. But the most amazing thing among all
of this drama is how Shakespeare leap-frogged over nearly two millennia of
theater history, hearkening back to the mystical beginnings of the craft. He
wove the deepest spiritual yearnings of humanity into his work, as well as
utilizing mystical inlay, which will become central to our work together in
the next chapter.
The mystical inf luence on Shakespeare ran so deeply that British philos-
opher and Sufi scholar Martin Lings (d. 2005) penned a book titled: Shake-
speare’s Window into the Soul: the Mystical Wisdom in Shakespeare’s Characters.
As Lings noted: “Shakespeare’s . . . are visionary works, that, through the
use of esoteric symbol and form, mirror the inner drama of the journey of
all souls” (Lings, 2006, back cover). Additionally, Shakespeare quotes appear
more than 100 times in W. N. Perry’s A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, which
is a compendium of spiritual thinking from all traditions. Shakespeare is the
only artist appearing alongside the world’s greatest wisdom masters.
Shakespeare’s themes presented the essence of religion: the Mysteries.
While we cannot say with certainty that Shakespeare acquainted himself
with mystical teachings from Meister Eckhart to the medieval Sufis to the
 History of mysticism in theater 63
Jewish Kabbalists to the Greek Stoic philosophers, much of his work appears
to be directly inf luenced by all of these earlier spiritual paths.
The Sufi ideal of “dying before you die,” or releasing the attachment to the
personal ego so that one might dissolve their ego-self into the universal es-
sence, appeared throughout Shakespeare’s oeuvre. This is known to the Sufis
as fana (annihilation of the personal ego) and baqa (subsistence in the universal
ego). For instance, in Measure for Measure (c. 1604), Claudio says to the Duke
(III, 1, 42–44): “I humbly thank you. To sue to live, I find I seek to die, and
seeking death, find life. Let it come on.”
This echoes the Sufi ideal. Building their idea on a hadith (recorded say-
ing of the Prophet Muhammad) “People are asleep and when they die, they
awake,” the Sufis created a philosophy of stilling the personal ego to awaken
into the Divine. The 8th-century female Sufi Saint Rabi’a expanded on the
hadith:

Die Before You Die

Ironic, but one of the most intimate acts
of our body is
death.
So beautiful appeared my death–knowing who then I would kiss,
I died a thousand times before I died.
‘Die before you die,’ said the Prophet Muhammad.
(Ladinsky, 2002, p. 27)

In Hamlet (1601), we find the same spiritual ideal. Contemporary Persian

theater academic, and one who has delved deeply into the intersection of
mysticism and the theater, Dr. Bahee Hadaegh (b. 1974, Associate Professor,
Shiraz University, Iran) equated Hamlet’s madness with this path. Hadaegh
saw Hamlet experiencing the mystic’s untangling of the eternal Self from
their personal ego, causing ego-death. She noted:

Hamlet . . . inclines toward the inner self-dissolving mode of the quest

for higher self-realization manifest in . . . the idea of ‘dying before death.’
Hamlet’s inwardness and inaction reveals catastrophic failure only in
the outer, material aspect and demonstrates the inner attainment of the
looked-for higher-self represented in his majestic death.
(Hadaegh, 2011, p. 56)

Hadaegh also noted Hamlet’s mystical appreciation that reason cannot offer
a means for self-realization. Quite explicitly, Hamlet’s descent into mad-
ness represented the mystical attainment of Divine bewilderment, where
one accepts the Divine question mark at the heart of being and sits with it
in utter perplexity. Hamlet discovered the impossibility of consciousness as
a governing manner for understanding and “switches” his consciousness to
madness.
64 History of mysticism in theater
Hadaegh stated: “Hamlet’s specific way of the quest is penetrating into
the dark realm of imagination and inwardness . . . to the manifestation of
the truth” (Hadaegh, 2011, p. 99). This represents “drunken mysticism,”
or complete dissolution in the Divine essence, without the “sober” return,
to spread this ineffable energy through action in the world. Madness and
spiritual attainment have been linked as far back as the Biblical Jewish
prophets.
In Cymbeline (1610), Posthumus traveled the path of the Mysteries, “dying
into life” as well. Lings noted that Posthumus’s certainty that death offered
the purifying touch was confirmed by a vision of Elysium’s spirits interced-
ing with Jupiter on Posthumus’s behalf (V, 4, 99–106). Jupiter replied to the
ancient Greek god:

How dare you ghosts

Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt, you know,
Sky-planted batters all rebelling coasts?
Poor shadows of Elysium, hence, and rest
Upon your never-withering banks of f lowers:
Be not with mortal accidents opprest;
No care of yours it is; you know ‘tis ours.

“The way I am going is the straightened way that leadeth unto life,” assured
Posthumus in response. And then he noted to the jailer, about to lead Posthu-
mus to his death: “I am merrier to die than thou art to live.”
In the end Posthumus did not literally die, though as Lings noted, he “died
into life” through his travails and, most importantly, by giving up grasping at
his ego, assuring that that he was “merrier to die than thou art to live” (Lings,
2006, p. 154).
In King Lear (c. 1606), Edgar’s destitution personified the ideal of complete
humility as a worldly, and then spiritual, goal. King Lear said to him:

Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the
cat no perfume . . . Thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no
more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.
(III, 4, 111–117)

Martin Lings noted that spiritual teachings around the world assure that
spiritual poverty, a turning away from matters of the f lesh both internal
(ego) and external (physical pleasures), points a person toward the original
perfection.
Shakespeare, in this work and others, pointed his ultimate goal very much
toward this mystical, primordial state. Lings assured that this mystical ideal
of complete spiritual poverty and humility presented itself as the ultimate
goal for Shakespeare’s characters in As You Like It, Cymbeline, The Tempest,
Measure for Measure, Macbeth, and Hamlet, and that it runs as an undercurrent
 History of mysticism in theater 65
through virtually all of his other works. It would not be too much to note,
Lings asserted, that a medieval spiritual Golden Age inspired Shakespeare.
The yearning for a return to the Divine spirit along the mystic’s path affected
all of the Bard’s works (Lings, 2006, pp. 117–118).
Martin Lings filled a complete treatise with examples, quotes, and cross-­
references to mystical antecedents predating and inf luencing the Bard’s work.
I will finish this section with one last example. In mystical lore, the path to-
ward realization is profoundly difficult and must completely take over one’s
every waking moment. Early Christian mystics stood on one leg for years,
ate maggots, grazed like cattle, and underwent other extreme vilifications to
still the sensual urges and find the Divine light. The Sufi writer Farid ad-
Din Attar outlined the spiritual path in Conference of the Birds, an allegory of
a collective of thousands of birds embarking on the mystic’s journey, passing
through seven impossible valleys where bird after bird dropped dead, before
a few hands-full of seekers attained the goal of their voyage, featherless and
burnt, in complete bewilderment.
Shakespeare explicitly noted the danger of the spiritual path in Measure for
Measure (1604). He represented the voyage as if through a desert of negative
psychic elements which must first be realized, acknowledged, and then re-
deemed. In the play, an irresistible lust overpowers Angelo, and he exclaims
to the devil, in describing his sensual reaction to Isabella’s beauty: “O, cun-
ning enemy, that to catch a saint, with saints dost thou bait thy hook” (II, 2,
179–180). The chaos residing in Angelo’s soul represents his journey, as the
seven valleys allegorically represent that of Attar’s birds. In Angelo’s case, his
internal struggle transforms into the quietude of acceptance in the final scene
through a f lash of truth, representing the “lightning bolt” of realization pro-
posed by medieval Sufi thinkers.
Lings alludes to the similarity of Angelo’s spiritual voyage with the seven
valleys of Attar’s journey: “at the outset of the path, perverted psychic ele-
ments are more or less dormant and remote from the center of consciousness.
They must first all be woken and then redeemed, for they cannot be purified
in their sleep” (Lings, 2006, p. 80).
The character Mariana provides the final word on Angelo’s search, which
took Angelo through “ten thousand deaths” before his realization: “They
say, the best men are molded out of faults” (V, 1, 470). Lings explained: “The
fallen soul in quest of perfection has first to be made complete by the addition
of faults, which are subsequently purified” (Lings, 2006, p. 81). In so many
mystical paths, this “purification” takes place in, as St. John of the Cross (d.
1591) stated, the “dark night of the soul.”
Shakespeare’s work represented a spiritual oasis in a nearly two millennia-­
long theatrical detour from the spirit into either religious dogma or the baser
aspects of human nature. However, Shakespeare’s magic did not convey to
later playwrights. From these heights, we descend, once again, into the world
of censorship, commercial concerns, and the social outcasts who continued
along the denigrated but noble path of theater-making.
66 History of mysticism in theater
Back to the future
Despite Shakespeare’s work, and the thriving Elizabethan stage in general
(1558–1642, which included England’s first professional actors performing
plays with nonreligious themes), the general pressure of censorship and deg-
radation for theater makers did not abate.
About the time that theater took off in England, dramatic productions
virtually ceased in Italy and were completely forbidden in Paris. In Spain,
complaints continued, opining that theater was licentious and voluptuous,
and dances morally questionable. In Germany, the late 17th century still
found the successful actor-manager Johannes Velthen (d. 1692, founder of the
Velthen Company, considered one of the best troupes in Germany) denied a
Christian burial.
In England, as mentioned, the ascendent Puritans sought to stamp out
theater entirely, outlawing it in the land during their brief reign (1642–1660),
apprehending all actors as rogues. John Northbrooke (Church of England
clergyman), in his Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing, Plays, and Interludes, assured
that “Satan hath no more a speedy ways and fitter school to work and teach
his desire, to bring men and women into the snare of concupiscence and
filthy lustre of wicked whoredom, than those places and plays and theatre”
(Bruch, 2004, p. 15).
It should be noted that the Puritans, when run out of power in 1660 by the
return of the British monarchy, took their antitheatrical prejudice with them
to the New Israel: the North American continent.
Back in England, the charges and counter-charges around theater f lew back
and forth. Elizabeth I (1558–1603), who had seen how theater could be weap-
onized as a social and political tool, forbade playwrights from treating religious
or political subjects. This led to the proscription against using God or Christian
symbols under which Shakespeare and his contemporaries operated. However,
secular theater under her reign was not outlawed, and she saw a handful of plays
herself each year. James I (reigned 1603–1625) attended on average a dozen and
a half productions, while Charles I (reigned 1625 until his execution by Oliver
Cromwell and the Puritans) saw about two dozen dramas a year.
While the English Elizabethan era (so named for Queen Elizabeth) pro-
duced some of the most compelling drama in Western history, this did not
signify that England became a shining beacon of theatrical freedom. In fact,
theater censorship on the island kingdom was notable not only for its severity,
but also for its longevity. Until the late 20th century, theater in Great Britain
suffered censorship at a more onerous level than the press, and other arts. It
was only in the past 50 years or so that the shackles of state control in England
finally loosed once and for all.

The Age of Enlightenment?

From the Elizabethan era in England, the Western world moved into the so-
called Age of Enlightenment (1685–1815). Enlightenment thinkers proposed
 History of mysticism in theater 67
that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy in the human
realm. This worldview developed many of the anti-spiritual and industrial
progress-oriented trends, which devolved into our current state of nihilism,
capitalism, greed, fouling of the earth, and an untenable cult of individual
pleasure.
Enlightenment thinking certainly inf luenced the theater, while not com-
pletely ameliorating the pressure and censorship of the past millennia and a
half.
The three central ideas of the Age of Enlightenment revolved around the
use of reason to understand the world, the scientific method to conquer it,
and unlimited potential for human progress. Enlightenment thinkers believed
they could help create better societies and better people. Ideas ranging from
eugenics to capitalism to Marxism to humanism to utopianism to secularism
and other “isms” proliferated, any of which promised to harness the limitless
power of human reason and drive for progress to create a perfect world.
Sigh. You can see how that turned out.
Theater followed the new intellectual trends as well. While we do find
whispers of the eternal in some works, commercialism and an expression of
the contemporary Enlightenment zeitgeist defined the themes of most oth-
ers. At the same time, the strong antitheatrical sentiments remained in the
Church and state throughout Europe and, by the 17th century, thanks to the
inf lux of f leeing Puritans, in the British colonies of North America.
A brief spark of the transcendent f lared in this era. In 1791, Wolfgang Am-
adeus Mozart brief ly reprised Shakespeare’s foray into the spirit, premiering
his opera The Magic Flute in Vienna. This work included esoteric doctrine
fused with Enlightenment philosophy, creating an opera unlike any other.
The historical background of Gnosticism and mystic teachings concerning an
unknowable god and a feminine deity inf luenced the opera, as did rationalist
ideas of the 18th century (Sedia, 2005, online). This spark of mystical inlay,
of the combination of the particular and the eternal, offered a bridge to the
past Greek Mysteries, to Shakespearean spirituality, and a way forward to our
work together.
Mozart, however, like all mystically-inclined theater since the 5th century
BCE, represented an aberration.
The Enlightenment began unleashing the religious bonds which had
suppressed theater, and society in general. With new merchant and middle
classes, and a loosening of the religious reins on the population due to the
ascendent faith in the rational mind, a modern energy began to creep into
performance houses.
In 1727, German performer Caroline Neuber (d. 1760) founded a theater
company to “reform theater.” Neuber, considered one of the most inf luen-
tial dramatists in the development of modern German drama, tried to raise
the quality of the work through more intensive rehearsals, better writing,
higher-level dialogue and characters, and more erudite themes. Although
she was to have a lasting effect on the theater, her experience represented
68 History of mysticism in theater
one of disappointment. While she could raise the quality of her work, it
was impossible for her to raise the level of the audience to match her artistic
vision. The lack of commercial success for her new work led to the necessity
of bringing her theater back down to the vaudevillian level of the spectators’
desires.
Like all great but underappreciated artists, she resorted to rebuking the
audience for their lack of taste.
Despite this incipient f lowering of modern theater, pressures against it
continued apace. Due to an act of Parliament in 1713, magistrates in Brit-
ain could still prosecute “common players” as scoundrels and vagabonds. In
France, actors were considered rogues and whores. The actress Adrienne Le-
couvreur (d. 1737), considered the finest of her era, had a passel of lovers, in-
cluding the great French philosopher Voltaire. She acted in many of his early
plays, even dying in his arms. However, she was unable to have her burial in
a church, due to the continuing proscriptions against actors.
Throughout the 18th century in France, theater makers remained legally
chained to the profession, as had been the rule for earlier Roman slave-actors.
French law subjected theater makers to grotesque indignities and petty legal
processes. The Church denounced them, forbidding them sacraments when
alive and religious burials when dead.
The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (d. 1778), reprising
Socrates’s and Plato’s ideas, attacked drama and all arts, assuring that every
great civilization of the past—Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, Byzantium—
succumbed to the effete and weakening effects of such creativity. One must
live simply and devote themselves to “tillage and soldiership,” he thundered,
while he lived unmarried with his lover, abandoning their five children to
orphanages.
Back in England, plays were said to interfere with marital function and
procreative energy, while 17th-century Geneva and Edinburgh outlawed the
theater entirely.
The antitheatrical prejudice followed the Puritans across the Atlantic
Ocean, infecting the American colonies. Before liberty arrived in 1776, plays
of all sorts were denounced as immoral and un-Christian. After political
freedom was achieved, the Congress of the United States immediately passed
a resolution (1778), condemning all theatrical productions as sinful and intol-
erable. John Witherspoon (d. 1794), Founding Father, signer of the Declara-
tion of Independence, and sixth president of Princeton University, assigned
theater a preeminent spot in the panoply of human sins. He represented the
usual Puritanical attitude toward fun, asserting: “The need for amusement is
much less than people commonly apprehend and, where it is not necessary, it
must be sinful” (Barish, 1981, p. 297).
The attraction of theater, however, could neither be denied nor stilled.
Throughout the 18th century, theaters were built in the British colonies in
Williamsburg, VA (1716), Charleston, SC (c. 1730s), Philadelphia (c. 1740s),
and New York City (1750).
 History of mysticism in theater 69
This energy whipsawed between the passion of the audience and the op-
pression of the authorities. In 1809, theater producer John Philip Kemble (d.
1823) enlarged his theater at Covent Garden in London to hold a Broadway-­
sized house of 3,000 people. Ticket prices skyrocketed at the same time that
economic pressures increased. As theater historians Jack Mitchley and Peter
Spalding noted in 5000 Years of Theatre:

Immediately, there was a protest, with the boxes joining gallery and pit
to organize demonstrations and placards, chanting of slogans, ringing of
bells etc., so that the actors were drowned out night after night for no less
than 67 nights until Kemble conceded defeat.
(Mitchley and Spalding, 1982, p. 99)

The strange and contradictory history of theater, conf licted unlike that of
any other creative art, continued on apace, across the ocean’s divide and spill-
ing into the 19th century. The only consistencies seemed to be both the on-
going popularity of live performance with the audience, and religion’s—and
sometimes the state’s—horror of it.
The approbation of the spectators and the oppression of the authorities
ebbed and f lowed together: the bitterest opposition to the theater f lowered
when it achieved its strongest measure of popularity.

Beginnings of the modern era

Creativity evolved in Western society at the beginning of the 19th cen-
tury, with visual artists dedicating themselves to the naturalism of the world
around them (as opposed to strictly religious themes) and with philosophers
plumbing the depths of human existence, yet theater remained in its tenuous
position: loved by audiences willing to literally be brought to riot by its pas-
sions, while state and the Church continued to attempt to suppress and censor
its offerings. The growing middle class, now comfortable with three square
meals and a roof over their head, increased the impetus for entertainment.
The pressure against theater at the beginning of the 19th century remained
strong. Auguste Comte (d. 1857), founder of the philosophical school of Pos-
itivism, echoed the Enlightenment ideal that by utilizing science, people
could find solutions to social problems. His ideas did not include a space for
the theater, however. He stated: “It is for Positivism to finally suppress the
theater, as an institution both irrational and immoral” (Barish, 1981, p. 323).
French novelist and essayist Leon Bloy (d. 1917), writing some half-century
later, elaborated: “The vocation of the theater is, in my eyes, the basest misery
of this abject world, and passive sodomy is, I believe, slightly less infamous”1
(Barish, 1981, pp. 321–322).
Wow!
At the same time, throughout the 19th century, theater f lourished. And
with the easing of religion’s hold on the general society, the audience began,
70 History of mysticism in theater
for the first time in more than two millennia, to approach the theater (de-
spite the hysterical protestations of continuing antitheatrical prejudice)
for spiritual sustenance. New ideas f looded into the zeitgeist of the 19th-­
century citizen, just as the Industrial Revolution began to open up new
geographic vistas, as well as supplanting so much drudgery with free time.
The society, so recently confined within the straight jacket of the statist re-
ligions, now exploded with a plethora of different spiritual, philosophical,
and artistic ideas.
Romanticism, one of a growing collection of “isms” which would whip-
saw human thought between hope (Positivism, Romanticism, Perennialism)
and despair (Nihilism, Futurism, Post-Modernism) over the ensuing two
centuries, continued to untangle spiritual urges from religion. Ascendent be-
tween about 1800 and 1850, Romanticism assured that all creation shared
a common, Divine origin, and that all participated equally in the eternal
Truth. The less unspoiled something was, assured Romantic thinkers, the
closer it remained to the universal essence.
Romanticism believed that creativity offered one of the few manners of
returning humans to their essential spirit, by transforming higher truth into
concrete form, accessible to the senses of the audience. Oscar Brockett, writ-
ing in History of the Theatre, noted: “To perceive the final unity behind the
apparent endless diversity of existence requires an exceptional imagination,
one found fully active only in the artist-genius and the philosopher” (Brock-
ett, 1995, p. 329).
For the first time since the ancient Greek Mysteries, some social leaders
saw art in general and theater in particular as a pathway to the spirit, instead
of a hindrance. Romanticism went much further than simply rehabilitating
performance work, to utilizing it in place of traditional worship. And just
in time, too, as the crumbling church structures, combined with the bur-
geoning freedoms in time and thought occasioned by the Enlightenment and
Industrial Revolution, left the middle-class audiences suffering from excess
leisure time and spiritual undernourishment.
A number of German, French, and other mid-19th-century playwrights
followed the path of Romanticism. The plays of Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe (d. 1832), Friedrich Schiller (d. 1805), and other playwrights inspired
a growing faith in feeling and instinct (as opposed to religious strictures) as
guides to moral behavior. After its beginnings in Germany, Romanticism
was adopted in France with the plays of Victor Hugo (d. 1885), Alexandre
Dumas (d. 1870), George Sand (d. 1876, pen name for female writer Aman-
tine Lucile Aurore Dupin), and others.
Proving that the historical concern regarding unbridled passions of
theater-­goers was not misplaced, a riot ensued when Victor Hugo (d. 1885)
premiered his Romantic play Hernani in 1830. The large crowd that attended
the premiere was full of conservatives and censors who booed the show for
disobeying the classical norms. But Hugo organized a Romantic army of
Bohemian and radical writers to ensure that the opening would go ahead as
 History of mysticism in theater 71
planned. The resulting rampage, led by those sympathetic to the new ideals,
represented the rejection of the classical traditions and the triumph of Ro-
manticism in France.
Although Romanticism opened an important doorway for theater makers,
artists, and thinkers, it still did not stem the noxious tide of antitheatrical sen-
timent. The French priest Jacques Paul Migne (d. 1875) assured:

The excommunication pronounced against comedians, actors, actresses,

tragic or comic, is the greatest and most respectable antiquity . . . One
must deal with comedians as with public sinners, remove them from par-
ticipation with holy things while they belong to the theater, admit them
when they leave it.
(Barish, 1981, p. 321)

In the United States, censorship continued into the 20th century, even as
theater became more deeply intertwined with both society and the human
spiritual search.

Among the most famous cases of local prosecution in the early twentieth
century were Jane Mast’s 1926 play Sex (in which actress Mae West was
arrested and jailed for several days), Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude
(1928), and Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour (1934). In midcentury,
many theater workers—like their counterparts in the film industry—
faced persecution that amounted to censorship at the hands of Senator
Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunism campaign.
(eNotes Editorial, 2015, online)

With the burgeoning middle class, however, oppressive tendencies against

theater (finally!) began to wane. In 1895, a new era for theater makers began
when actor Henry Irving (d. 1895) became the first performer to be knighted
in English history. Actors had finally achieved complete social acceptance,
birthing today’s era of the performer/celebrity/politician!
Ronald Reagan (40th President of the United States), a former actor,
would have been impossible even 100 years prior to his election as US Pres-
ident in 1980.
Additionally, a new, underground current in theater writing emerged. The
19th century had too often seen degraded artistic offerings, regardless of the
desires of Romanticism. As theater director and writer Richard Rosenheim
(d. 1964) noted of 19th-century theater:

Theatre declined into a stock exchange of international dramatics, ori-

ented first to the box office, second to the corrupted taste of a chaotic
society, and last but not least to certain political and social tendencies
which had nothing to do with art at all.
(Rosenheim, 1952, p. 227)
72 History of mysticism in theater
This degradation in the face of greater creative and social freedom provided
the necessary fertilizer for a genuine, though often overlooked, theater to
evolve. And one which presages the work that we will explore in Chapter 3
of this book—and which will inspire you, dear theater maker, to join the
vanguard of a fresh, new, and mystically inspiring creative era.

Russian Symbolism and the return to theater’s roots

The earliest, consistent spiritual-theatrical roots in modern Western his-
tory f lowered in the far east of the Western world: Czarist Russia. As the
19th-century eased toward sunset, a collection of theorists, poets, artists,
political philosophers, and agitators built a utopian vision out of a stew of
intellectual inf luences simmering on the European continent, including Ro-
manticism, human and civil rights, democracy, industrialization, and free
market systems, all of which ushered in a period of opportunity and change.
These inf luential creations included the operas of Richard Wagner
(d. 1883), the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (d. 1860) and Friedrich
Nietzsche, French Symbolist poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé (d. 1898), Paul
Verlaine (d. 1896), Charles Baudelaire (d. 1867), and the earlier Romantic
theater makers.
Russian thinkers, building on these pan-European inf luences, proposed
to transcend mundane reality through beauty and aesthetic creativity. Con-
sidering themselves mystics, they offered that only the artist might open the
doorway to spiritual reality. The creation of a new, utopian society repre-
sented their ultimate goal.
These pre-Bolshevik Revolution (1917) ideas strongly inf luenced theater
in that far north country. Confident that an underlying mystical unity existed
between all people, Russian Symbolists set out to create performances which,
though based in the religious language of their time and place, pointed to
universal truths. Their work hearkened back to the earliest Greek mystery
plays, believing that truly great art echoed the myth of creation. They based
their works on unifying symbols, on non-realistic emotional impulses, and
on producing a mood to access the unconscious, thereby unleashing the sense
of oneness which unified all people. They repudiated what had been the cor-
nerstone of theater over the previous half-millennia: realism.
Alexander Scriabin (d. 1915) provided one prime example of the syncretis-
tic, all-encompassing avant-garde productions of the movement. In Scriabin’s
performances, music, poetry, dancing, colors, and scents fused to bring about
“supreme, final ecstasy” seeking to express “the evolution of the human spirit
from pantheism to unity with the universe” (New World Encyclopedia,
2015, online). He presented his music-based performances in Switzerland,
Italy, France, Belgium, and the United States.
Russian Symbolism and its inf luence on the theater emerged from an in-
credibly fertile and unstable time in human history, just in advance of the Rus-
sian Revolution and two world wars. In fact, Russian Symbolist work helped
soften the ground for the Russian Revolution and the implementation of the
 History of mysticism in theater 73
first Communist regime. Many, if not most, of these theater makers, thinkers,
and artists fully supported this new political way, believing that it extended
their philosophical and artistic ideals into the social and political realms.
The first few years of Communist rule after the Revolution justified their
belief. In the first decade of the new Soviet Union, a secular spirituality did,
indeed, become the raison d’etre of theater. A “theater of communion” became
the central focus of Russian theater work, both before and after 1917. In The-
atre as Church: The Vision of the Mystical Anarchists, Theater Professor Bernice
Glatzer Rosenthal (b. 1938) explained:

A return to the mythico-religious roots of theater was, [Vyacheslav Iva-

novich Ivanov, Russian Symbolist playwright, d. 1949] argued, the task
of the Symbolists. It was their recognition of the primal importance of
the symbol, the “forgotten experience and lost property” of the people,
that allowed them to reforge the link of symbol and myth (he believed
that myth is immanent in the symbol, like the oak in the acorn), to assert
once more the spiritual power of the collective human experience as em-
bodied in the ‘psychological necessity and metaphysical truth’ of myth.
(Rosenthal, 1977, p. 128)

As an aside, this represents exactly what is being proposed in this work: to

return to the historical roots of theater by reforging the link between myth
and symbol, as represented in live performance.
However, the model outlined in Chapter 3 differs from our Russian broth-
ers and sisters in the mystical ideal we follow. The Symbolists often based
their unifying imagery on that of their community, creating “liturgical”
modes of expression expressed through the imagery and ideas of the Russian
Orthodox Church. The idea I am proposing digs far beneath the liturgical
symbols or beliefs of any single system, into the human religion, shared by all.
However, it cannot be denied that the Russian Symbolists lay the first
bricks on the path that we now follow.

Inf luence of Russian Symbolism

To understand the breadth and reach of this new spiritually-oriented theater,
we need only look at a few of its best-known names: Ibsen, Checkov,
Stanislavsky, Strindberg, Meyerhold, and many more 19th-and early
20th-century theater makers around the Baltic Sea, inspired by the mythico-­
Symbolist ideas of Romanticism and nascent Russian Symbolism, who
brought the movement deeper into Europe and the United States, from Paris
to Berlin to London to New York City.
And while these theater makers utilized the Christian symbolism that they
believed represented a shared spiritual life of their audience, they also dipped
liberally into the well of past mystical thinkers and more open-hearted ideas
within the human religion. Mystical theater gained a consistent foothold in
staged works for the first time since ancient Greece.
74 History of mysticism in theater
Other dramatists throughout the northern climes presaged and inf luenced
this pathway, forging the link between live performance and the spirit. They
predated or operated concurrently with their Russian brethren, often inf lu-
encing them in the path toward mystical theater. These playwrights often
viewed themselves as seers and prophets, creators with a transcendent vision.
Henrik Ibsen (d. 1906, Norwegian) introduced many of the ideas of mys-
tical (not religious) theater, asserting that neither truth nor beauty alone can
save humanity, but that they must be united in art in order to penetrate into
the heart and soul of the audience.
Specifically, in Ibsen’s work, we see some of the mystical themes explored
in Chapter 1 of this treatise. In his Brand (1865), the eponymous main char-
acter asserted: “Soul, be steadfast to the end. The victory of victories is to
lose everything” (Act IV, 1228–1229). This echoed the Sufi Saint al-Ghazali,
who stated: “We only retain that which cannot be lost in a shipwreck.” The
Sufi ideal of ego dissolution and the impermanence of the physical, wrapped
into the Norseman’s play!
Many other of Ibsen’s characters echoed this mystical ideal of “dying into
life.” In Peer Gynt (1867), we witness the self-realization of the characters
through inner liberation from the bonds of the sensual world. As Iranian
theater academic Dr. Bahee Hadaegh noted, this mystical ideal is also evident
in Ibsen’s characters like Hedda (Hedda Gabler, 1891), Nora (A Doll’s House,
1879), Solness (The Master Builder, 1892), Hilda (The Master Builder, 1892), and
Rubeck (When We Dead Awaken, 1899) (Hadaegh, 2012, p. 137).
August Strindberg (Swedish, d. 1912) also presaged and influenced the Rus-
sian Symbolist ideas in his work. Dr. Daniel Whistler (b. 1978), Professor of Phi-
losophy at the University of London, noted that Strindberg played with time in
a mystical manner, mixing past, apocalyptic future, and pragmatic, foreseeable
future, adding to the layering of meaning in his works (Whistler, 2017, p. 32).
Moving past linear time into the realm of nonlinear time, circular time or
even eternity, outside of time, represents one important device when think-
ing of creating one’s own mystically infused theater pieces. Linear time, after
all, is solely a representation of a narrow, egocentric point of view, centered
on the small “i.” Other forms of time bleed “i’ into the universal “I,” and the
universal “I” into the eternal “I.” The single drop of rain dissolved into the
ocean of forever.
In his Road to Damascus II (1898), Strindberg utilized the story of the Tower
of Babel, as told within the 13th-century Jewish mystical tract The Zohar.
In the play, we find this mystical nugget, one which expressed clearly the
ideal of the drunken mystic, submerged in God, but mad to the world. The
Stranger said:

If some mortal is able to penetrate the secrets of the powers, no one will
believe him and he will be marked with madness . . . only the mad are
reasonable, for they see, hear, and sense what escapes their eyes, ears, and
heart, but they cannot communicate their experiences to others.
(Whistler, 2017, pp. 10–11)
 History of mysticism in theater 75
This echoed the Sufi tale called When the Waters Were Changed (Dhu’l Nun),
in which one day Khidr (the Sufi mystical teacher) arrived and announced
that on a certain date, the waters would be changed and anyone who drank
of them would go mad. Most ignored this information, but one person se-
cured safe drinking water in a cave. On the appointed day, the waters in the
village did indeed change, and everyone but this one person drank of them
and went mad. However, the one who conserved his sanity was viewed as
insane. Though his former compatriots understood his words, none could
understand the import of them. In the end, loneliness drove the only sane
man to drink the water, thereby rejoining his community as someone who
had miraculously been returned to health (Shah, 1993, p. 21).
The 19th-century Swedish playwright acknowledged his interest in and
inf luence of earlier, spiritual teachings. In his Occult Diary, Strindberg noted:

November 18, 1901. Am reading about the teachings of Indian reli-

gion. The whole world is but a semblance (= rubbish or relative noth-
ingness). The Divine Primary Power allowed itself to be seduced by
Maya, or the Procreative Instinct. Hereby the Divine Primary Element
sinned against itself. (Love is sin; therefore the pangs of love are the
greatest hell.)
The world . . . is really only a mirage (consequently my Dream Play is
an image of life), a phantom, and it is the task of asceticism to destroy it.
But this task comes in conf lict with the love instinct, and the sum total
of it all is a ceaseless wavering between sensual orgies and anguished
penitence.
This seems to be the answer to the riddle of the world!
Now Indian religion showed me the meaning of my Dream Play. The
Secret of the Door = Nothingness.
Read Buddhism all day.
(Strindberg, 2007, p. 94)

Mystical inf luences on Strindberg’s work run deeply. In Mystics in the Mod-
ern Theatre, Winifred Smith asserted that Strindberg’s Damascus trilogy built
on a variety of mystical sources, including oriental (i.e., Buddhist, Sufi,
Hindu), Platonic, and medieval Christian ideas, all of which allowed him
to give meaning to his personal agony (Smith, 1942, p. 37), and through
finding such personal meaning in these mystical concepts, to infuse his
work with them.
Strindberg acknowledged that his return to the origins of theater inf lu-
enced his utilization of spiritual inlay. He noted:

In order to provide resting places for the actors and the audience without
breaking the illusion for the latter I have used three art forms that belong
to drama, namely monologue, mime, and ballet, all originally connected
with Greek tragedy.
(Strindberg, 2007, p. 69)
76 History of mysticism in theater
The conception of the ephemerality of life hiding a deeper meaning certainly
presented itself with earlier theater makers, most notably Shakespeare. But
Strindberg became even more explicit in its presentation. The Belgian play-
wright Maurice Maeterlinck (d. 1949) noted of Strindberg’s works:

Time and space do not exist. On an insignificant background of reality,

imagination designs and embroiders novel patterns, free fancies, absurd-
ities, and improvisations. The characters split, double, multiply, vanish,
solidify, blur, clarify. But one consciousness reigns above them all — that
of the dreamer.
(Brocket, 1995, p. 446)

A central mystical theme is that the universe represents God’s dream, and
that “one consciousness reigns above them all.” According to the Hindus (of
whom Strindberg was well aware), this entire universe is a dream of Maha
Vishnu (God).
Konstantin Stanislavsky (d. 1938) emerged in the wake of these great
Scandinavian theater makers, at the height of Russian Symbolism’s revolu-
tionary utopian dreams. A well-recognized actor and director in his own
time, he is best known today as the creator of his eponymous acting phi-
losophy, which inf luenced rehearsal rooms and performances from his time
to ours.
Stanislavsky’s theory mobilized the actor’s conscious thought and will to
activate other, less-controllable psychological processes, such as emotional
experience and subconscious behavior, sympathetically and indirectly. His
work, like a growing collection of theater makers in his era, was inf luenced
by mystical thought. For instance, actress Vera Soloviova’s (d. 1986) mem-
ory of working with Stanislavsky revolved around his spiritual training. The
work was clearly inf luenced by Indian yoga practices:

We imagined a circle around us and sent Prana rays2 of communica-

tion into the space and to each other. Stanislavsky said: ‘Send the Prana
there—I want to reach reach through the tip of my finger to God . . . I
believe in my inner energy and I give it out—I spread it.’ This exercise
involved no words, but we gave whatever we had inside of us.
(Carriere, 2010, p. 5)

Basing his work on Hatha Yoga exercises, Stanislavsky asked his actors to be
radiated, irradiated, close the circle, develop internal powers of observation,
and work on their creative self-awareness. The construction through these ex-
ercises of the “three engines” (mind, will, and feeling) was heavily inf luenced
by yogic ideas of chakras (energy points in the body) (Carriere, 2010, p. 152).
Stanislavsky’s work with yoga inspired all aspects of his theatrical work,
leading to a holistic vision of the actor’s craft. He believed that the soul acted
as a mediator between mind and body, as well as the individual and the
 History of mysticism in theater 77
spectator. His system represented a deeper foray into the mystico-theatrical
conception begun by the Russian Symbolists.
Other historical, spiritual thinkers inf luenced Stanislavsky. Plotinus’s (one
of the most inf luential philosophers in antiquity after Plato and Aristotle)
ideas resonated through Stanislavsky’s work. The Russian theater maker bor-
rowed conceptions of the soul’s dual nature of creativity from the ancient
Stoic philosopher, who contended that the universal soul displayed two as-
pects of creativity: one looking inward toward the ultimate essence and orig-
inal creativity, and the other translating this Divine energy into the lower
realm of the existence, of the senses. For Stanislavsky, these defined Book I
of his system, including the internal experiencing (perezhivanie) and incarna-
tion, and outward expression in Book II (voploshchenie) and communication of
these ideals (obshchenie) (Carriere, 2010, p. 66).
All individual souls are emanations of the original soul and therefore might,
with the correct impetus, communicate directly with it. Once garnered, the
energy can be translated into communication.
For Stanislavsky, this took place on stage, in conversation between the
actor and the audience.

Mid-century modernism and a return to ancient theater

I am interested only in the relation between man and God; that is to

say: something outside of ourself, whether this something is the universe
itself or the laws of being . . . But the would-be writer of tragedy today
labors under an almost insuperable difficulty. He lives in a society most
of whose members are either confused and uncertain, or explicitly deny
that any such relation between man and God exists.
(Eugene O’Neill, d. 1953 in Rosenheim, 1952, p. 217)

The mystical-creative ferment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries hardly
confined itself to the northern neighbors. All across Europe, as the twin
shackles of statist religions and its attendant censorship began to crumble, the
human religion began to shoot green sprigs of unity into the theater. While
commercial productions remained as box-office-focused and unimaginative
as ever, a new era dawned: that of the non-commercial theater. Suddenly—
though underfunded, often overlooked, and certainly not at the center of the
mainstream cultural conversation—venues emerged which experimented in
all directions, from political to artistic to spiritual.
Mysticism played a central role in this renewal. As theater writer Winifred
Smith wrote in the middle of the last century:

The return to mysticism, so characteristic a feature of early twentieth

century philosophy and poetry, has nowhere been more vigorously ex-
pressed than in the contemporary drama. Sensitive souls like Strindberg
78 History of mysticism in theater
50 years ago, O’Neill, Claudel, and many others today, have sublimated
their personal conf licts in symbolic plays which draw both their gen-
eral ideas and their imagery from Theosophy or Platonism or Cathol-
icism, turning away from the restless everyday to promises of hope or
certainty of rest, based on one or another intuitive revelation of abso-
lute truth.
(Smith, 1942, p. 35)

The modern era arrived. Playwrights inlaid mystical ideas into their works,
inset carefully within the dialogue of the characters, or inf luencing plot
structure or stage design.
One of the most important innovations was, as all great revolutions tend
to be, completely reactionary. These mid-century theater makers explored
manners for breaking down the barriers between the actor and audience,
finding a path beyond the passive spectator toward the engaged participant.
Whether by design or unconscious inspiration, something dredged up from
the furthest reaches of history through a kind of theatrical muscle memory,
these theater practitioners brought back an element of shared ritual, to small
and under-visited spaces around Europe and, more and more frequently,
the United States. Although this ideal had never been lost around Africa or
throughout the Eastern world, for Western theater it represented an innova-
tion from a past so-long forgotten as to appear “novel.”
Antonin Artaud (d. 1948), in Theatre and Its Double, argued that theater
could alchemize the human spirit from the particular individual, to the eter-
nal essence, in the same manner as base matter transformed through alchemy.
Artaud based his ideas in part on the ancient Greek Mysteries, believing that
contemporary theater must reclaim that original impetus. “The terrorizing
apparition of Evil which in the Mysteries of Eleusis was produced in its pure,
truly revealed form corresponds to the dark hour of certain ancient tragedies
which all true theater must recover” (Artaud, 1997, p. 30).
Theater loosed psychic toxins within the spectator, beneath which lurked
absolute truth. Drama might dig beneath the illness of the ego, so that the
mystical realities might be experienced. Theater, Artaud asserted, must re-
gain its primordial function: offering the ritual and metaphysical impulse to
allow the audience to partake in the cosmic “becoming.”

Theatre of the Absurd

What seems to be absurdity and is not, is better than the ignorance of the
person who thinks it is absurd.
(Farid ad-Din Attar in Shah, 1990, p. 78)

Antonin Artaud’s contemporary theater makers answered his call for a

return to origins, hearkening back not only to ancient Greece, but to its
 History of mysticism in theater 79
mystical inspirations. Hungarian-born dramatist Martin Esslin (d. 2002)
said that Theatre of the Absurd (a term he coined in his eponymous 1962
book)

represented a return to the original, religious function of the theatre—the

confrontation of man with the spheres of myth and religious ­reality . . .
the Theatre of the Absurd is intent on making its audience aware of man’s
precarious and mysterious position in the universe.
(Hadaegh, 2012, p. 27)

The Theatre of the Absurd designates a series of post-World War II plays

written by a select group of European playwrights, such as Ionesco, Beckett,
Sartre, Albee, Pinter, and a few others. The plays focused largely on ideas
of ultimate meaning, expressing what happened when human existence ap-
peared to lack the meaning or purpose commonly attributed to it (i.e., by
normative social metrics, such as wealth, success, personal happiness, and so
forth). The works often contained a breakdown of language as an aspect of
communication. The structure of the plays was often circular, with the fin-
ishing point the same as the starting point. Seemingly logical construction
and argument broke down into irrational and illogical speech, often leading
to an ultimate conclusion of silence.
Of course, this arc might also describe the mystic’s path, away from un-
derstanding toward bewilderment and, finally, to the ultimate silence of the
Divine Nought.
Iranian theater academic Bahee Hadaegh asserted that the conscious self-­
annihilation and renunciation of the outside world exhibited by many Ab-
surdist characters remind of the great Sufi Saint Muhyiddin ibn Arabi’s
(d. 1240) self-annihilating ideas, which lead to ultimate realization of the
Divine. She noted: “Making songs, singing, laughing, weeping, and growl-
ing exemplify the effort of the Absurd characters to transmute the ego to the
spiritual world of the unconscious through the expelling of egoistic desires”
(Hadaegh, 2011, pp. 195, 200).
Fana (annihilation of self ) and baqa (subsistence in the Divine) never ap-
peared so absurd!
Absurdist characters often appeared foolish. And it should be noted that
making a fool of oneself is an important step in mystical realization, as it
points toward humility, a lessening of the valuation of the self, and equanim-
ity, where one cares not a whit what other people think of them, either for
the good or ill. Bayazid Bistami outlined this idea, with an Absurdist tint, in
the story from the last chapter, when he told the proud man to “strip off your
clothes except for a loincloth. Take a nosebag full of walnuts, hang it around
your neck (etc.)” (Fadiman and Frager, 1999, p. 175). The “Fool for God”
represents a spiritual figure in many wisdom traditions, including Russian
Orthodox spirituality, the Sufis, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, and within
some Jewish spiritual paths.
80 History of mysticism in theater
The mystical ideal of self-annihilation, as proposed by such thinkers
as Meister Eckhart, the Tao Te Ching, Buddhist, Jewish, Sufi, and Hindu
spiritual writings appear to be woven through many Absurdist plays, where
emptying the self leads to a larger non-self.
This inlay has strong inf luence on the spectator. Martin Esslin posited that
viewers respond to Beckett because he engages them in “an overwhelming
emotional, almost mystical, experience” which causes them to be “clearly
impelled by a profound experience of insight which has obviously had an
exhilarating effect on them” (Esslin, 1965, p. 14).
While mystical ideas might be found inf luencing many mid-20th-century
playwrights’ characters, a deeper exploration of one writer will suffice to give
the sense of how far toward Greek ideas, if not methods, these playwrights
moved in their creativity.
Samuel Beckett’s (d. 1989) work provides a deeper sense of how Absurdist
drama presages our work in mystical theater. In Waiting for Godot, the char-
acters’ forgetfulness represents part of the process of personal ego dissolution,
the holy grail of mystical practice. The characters’ forgetting names lead not
to frustration or concern, but to moments of epiphany. The lyrical cross-talk
of Vladimir and Estragon directs toward forgetting reality, instead of attempt-
ing to figure it out. All of these theatrical methods lead toward annihilation
of the mundane self, making room for apprehension of the transcendent self
(Hadaegh, 2012, pp. 2642–2643).
In Beckett’s Endgame, the ideal of self-reduction is paramount. The char-
acter Hamm says, echoing mystical adepts of all eras (with Beckett’s stage
direction: with prophetic relish):

One day you’ll be blind like me. You’ll be sitting here, a speck in the
void, in the dark, forever, like me . . . You’ll look at the wall a while, then
you’ll say, I’ll close my eyes, perhaps have a little sleep, after that I’ll feel
better, and you’ll close them. And when you open them again there’ll be
no wall any more . . . Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the
resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn’t fill it, and there you’ll be like a
little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe.

It should be noted that China’s First Patriarch of Zen Buddhism, Bo-

dhidharma (6th century), purportedly spent nine years staring at a wall, in
spiritual preparation to cleanse his mind, before bringing Buddhism to China
through teaching. Beckett’s passage represents a translation of this energy
into theater, as a goal of the spiritual path: emptying the Self of “self.”
References to other mystical masters operate as spiritual turbines in Beck-
ett’s work. The appearance of the little boy in Endgame who contemplates his
navel echoes an image of the Buddha, symbolizing that spiritual path’s ideal:
achieving a meaningful nothingness. Remember, in mysticism, being useless
offers one manner of appreciating what is truly meaningful. As Katsuki Se-
kida said in Two Zen Classics: “To be purposeful is much admired in the world
at large . . . But in its pursuit of the useful and profitable, consciousness has
 History of mysticism in theater 81
fallen into its delusive way of thinking” (Sekida, 2005, p. 236). For Buddhists
and Beckett, staring at one’s navel offers a “profitable” use of one’s time.
In Beckett’s Happy Days, Winnie’s plight (her body stuck inside of a large
dirt pile) demonstrates the burial of her sensual life. The outset of self-re-
nunciation in Beckett’s plays, which began with waiting in Waiting for Godot
(1949), continues onward toward resolution through excessive exercises of
ending in Endgame (1957), finally culminating in the attainment of peace and
the ultimate disregard for the sensual self in Happy Days (1961).
The voyage across these plays of Beckett embodies the pathway toward
annihilation of the sensual life, leading to realization of the deeper, transcen-
dental self. The Sufi Saint Rumi referred to the spiritual ecstasy awaiting
upon superseding sensual desires:

How joyous the time that I silence my voice

Spirit’s voice my soul with joy inf late.
I shall pack my bags, leave this world for that
Witness the order that Thou will create.
(Rumi, 1998, p. 44)

This recurrent motif of self-annihilation represents Beckett’s most prevalent

mystical idea. Beckett’s biographer Andrew Gibson (b. 1949) surmised that
Beckett was directly inf luenced by Sufism through the writings of French
Sufi scholar Louis Massignon (Hadaegh, 2012, p. 2647).
Rumi’s fingerprints can be found on other works in the 20th-­century-
master’s oeuvre. In Endgame, the play begins with the word “finish” and
ends with the word “remain,” which suggests the ubiquitous (within Beck-
ett’s plays) mystical goal of annihilation of self for rebirth into Self. We
find in this seemingly reverse movement echoes of another Rumi quote:
“Between my Beloved and I this [my earthly body] is the only veil. It is
time to unveil and disrobe the light that brightly shines” (Hadaegh, 2012,
p. 2643). By “finishing” with attachment to the ego at the beginning of the
play, one loses their true self to “remain” present in the eternal Divine, by
the end of the piece.
Endgame utilizes other mystical ideas. The protagonist Hamm, immobi-
lized by old age in a wheelchair, believing that no one suffers more than he
does, switches into ritualistic storytelling, with a repetition of certain words
and motifs. As Dr. Hadaegh noted:

This maddening repetition of certain words or recurrent storytelling cre-

ates three important facets for Beckett’s characters: ‘The first moment
is Regression . . . the second key moment in the rite of storytelling is
Encounter . . . the third moment is the ritual moment of Reawakening.’
This threefold function is comparable to . . . the function of repetition
in Sufism . . . in Endgame, Hamm demonstrates such a regressive process
where the conscious ego is cyclically denied.
(Hadaegh, 2012, p. 2646)
82 History of mysticism in theater
Hamm would seem like an odd mouthpiece for a mystical truth. But re-
member, truth might use very strange vessels in which to distill its healing
draught.
As Dr. Hadaegh detailed in her article “Quasi Mysticism in Beckett’s Ma-
jor Plays,” inf luences on Beckett’s writing include Sufi ideas from Rumi, as
well as Attar, al-Hallaj, and others. But for our study, this will have to suffice.

Post-World War II and the beginning of the Golden Age

Commercial theaters remained, for the most part, unadventurous and

uninspired. Non-commercial theaters were experimenting in all direc-
tions . . . especially in attempting to break down the barriers between ac-
tor and audience. Consciously or unconsciously, they were trying to bring
back the element of shared ritual into European and American drama.
(Mitchley and Spalding, 1982, p. 126)

By the mid-1940s, after two major world wars in 30 years (think about that:
many adults in the West lived through two major, all-encompassing con-
f lagrations in the prime of their lives!), theater in the United States shrank
to a small number of Broadway (500+ seats) houses and a hands-full of re-
gional spaces around the country. Running up against the cinema, live per-
formances had difficulty finding paying audiences. Dwindling attendance
pushed newer, experimental works off Broadway and into smaller theaters.
Much of the money supporting performance-based work transferred to Hol-
lywood, on the cusp of its own gilded age.
While theater makers in Europe were just beginning to explore the pos-
sibilities of Absurdism and other novel forms of avant-garde drama, those
in the United States operated within a tiny circle of opportunity and even
smaller commercial possibility.
However, after the nadir of theatrical output in the postwar period, the
1950s saw an explosion of creative energy in the United States. This bur-
geoned out of the strong economy, aided by the Federal G. I. Bill, passed in
1944, which offered returning service men and women dedicated payments
for tuition and living expenses to attend high school, college, or vocational
school. This expanded the opportunities not only for the theater artists, but
for an educated audience as well.
Within 20 years—by the 1960s—the brush fire of education plus eco-
nomic stability led to New York’s off-Broadway (100–499 seats) and off-off-
Broadway (99 seats or less) theaters, a robust and growing regional theater
culture, and an explosion of new dramatic ideas, methods, thinking, and
performances. By 1965, a total of 400 plays by 200 playwrights had been seen
in off-off Broadway theaters in New York City. This energy continued to
grow: at the time of this writing, there are nearly 200 theaters—from 20 to
2000 seats—active virtually every night in New York City.
 History of mysticism in theater 83
Additionally, the onerous censorship and Puritanical mores finally crum-
bled. In 1968, the oppressive laws in place in Britain since 1737 were repealed.
Across the Atlantic, plays like Hair (1967), Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), and
Godspell (1971) burst through the final guardrails of “propriety” on the Amer-
ican scene. After 1968, “fringe” groups pushing at the boundaries of theat-
rical presentation proliferated, presenting creatively and socially-­challenging
work everywhere from off-Broadway houses to universities, pubs, basement
performance spaces, and even in the streets.
The Golden Age of Theatre, in all its messy vitality, arrived.

Theater makers at the intersection of spirit and the stage

The world is, literally, created from Story. Therefore, to engage in thea-
tre is to engage in the raw materials of the universe.
(Ellenwood, 2013, online)

Eugenio Barba (b. 1936), one of the most important theater makers in this
new era, who found inspiration in the realm of past mystical thinkers while
working quietly and passionately with his Odin Theatre in Holstebro, Den-
mark, remarked of the thrust of 20th-century theater, that “another impera-
tive arose: to . . . attain a metaphysical dimension” (Barba, 2002, p. 17).
Barba has not worked alone at the intersection of theater and the spirit.
The contemporary era represents the most explosive, open, accessible, and
spiritual theatrical time since ancient Greek tragedy. Ever more theater mak-
ers around Great Britain, the United States, and the world have pushed, and
continue to push, at the spiritual, dramatic, and emotional boundaries of live
performance.
The combination of society’s crumbling religious structures, the con-
comitant emergence of unaligned spiritual yearnings unburdened from a
particular religion, the growth of the largest middle class in the history of
humanity, the end (finally!) of theatrical censorship, and the explosion of
alternative theater spaces (in 2018, 3,500+ different shows were presented in
300+ venues in less than one month at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival alone!)
have led to a contemporary era of theatrical possibility unheard of in human
history.
While hundreds of recent theater makers have worked at the intersec-
tion of spirit and the stage, we will look at a few of the most dedicated, and
explore how they softened the earth for all of us to approach this frontier.
Playwrights and directors such as Jerzy Grotowski (d. 1999), Peter Brook
(b. 1925), ­Howard Barker (b. 1946), Erik Ehn (b. 1936), and Harold Pinter
(d. 2008, who bridged the gap between the mid-20th-century Absurdist/
mystical writers and contemporary spiritual dramatists) all worked with
spiritual ideas, often inspired by specific mystical thinkers, in the same man-
ner that will be codified in Chapter 3 of this book.
84 History of mysticism in theater
These represent the explorers. From their initial forays, we create the new
world of mystical theater.

Jerzy Grotowski

The spectator, perhaps, is content. The spectator likes easy truths. But
we are not there to please or pander to the spectator. We are here to tell
the truth.
(Grotowski, 1968, p. 237)

Jerzy Grotowski was a Polish director and drama theorist whose innovative
and deeply mystical approaches to training, acting, and production signifi-
cantly inf luenced contemporary theater. Grotowski believed that the stage
functioned like an “elevator going toward the higher connection,” lifting
actor and spectator into another dimension, where greater truths might be
accessed. He remained adamant that for live performance to have relevance
in today’s society, it must present works as akin to religious ritual, not simply
for entertainment and commercial success.
Grotowski took inspiration from humanity’s spiritual past. Like Stanislavsky
a century before, Hatha Yoga emerged as one of Grotowski’s primary inf lu-
ences. The ancient Indian philosopher Patanjali (c. 350 BCE), considered by
many to be the father of yoga, asserted: “The purpose of yoga discipline is to
eliminate impurities caused by the process of conditioning so that the Light
of Pure Unconditioned Awareness may shine.” As theater director Dr. Jen-
nifer Lavy noted: “We could simply insert Grotowski’s ideas into Patanjali’s
sutras to arrive at his basic philosophy for actor training, as Grotowski agreed
that the actor’s main task involves not accruing skills, so much as eradicating
obstacles” (Lavy, 2012, pp. 181–182).
Eugenio Barba, who worked intimately with Grotowski in the 1960s be-
fore forming his own intensely spiritual theater collective in Denmark, noted
how many of Grotowski’s training exercises borrowed directly from the an-
cient Hindu practice. Barba elaborated:

These exercises are in accordance with the rules of Hatha Yoga, and
performed at a very slow pace. One of the principal aims during their
execution is the study of the changes which take place in the organism;
namely the study of the respiration, the rhythm of the heart, the laws of
balance, and the relationship between position and movement.

Barba also noted that the purpose of these exercises was to “accustom oneself
to total respiration,” a practice derived from the ancient spiritual practice
(Barba, 2002, p. 137).
For Grotowski, actor training represented a process of “devolution,”
a uniting of the inside and outside. The performer, said Grotowski, “goes
 History of mysticism in theater 85
inward, seeking always the cause behind the appearance, and then the cause
behind the cause, until the innermost reality is reached.” From this central
and unifying point, energy f lowed out, as an echo of the original Divine cre-
ative act, manifesting the innermost reality through physicality and impulse
(Lavy, 2012, p. 183).
Of course, this movement also defines the mystic’s quest, with the “inner-
most reality” representing the Divine Nought, or absolute truth, from which
all energy emerges.
The need to still and remove obstacles and impurities led Grotowski to
another central mystical figure in the Western history: the Christian here-
tic Meister Eckhart. In later writing from Grotowski (1990), his essay “The
Performer” contained an extract borrowed from the 13th-century mystic.
Grotowski explored the possibility of the actor breaking through all obstacles
to the essential state of being, a place “which is no longer linked to begin-
nings but, if I dare say, to the beginning.” At the end of the essay, Grotowski
quoted Eckhart to communicate the desire for a spiritual breakthrough: “In
the breakthrough,” Eckhart wrote, “I am above all creatures, neither God
nor creature; but I am what I was, what I should remain now and forever”
(Groves, 2014, pp. 67–68).
Like the Absurdist playwrights who preceded him, Grotowski utilized
mystical inlay, applying spiritual language and ideas to his plays, giving them
deeper import. However, he worked a little bit more subversively than they
did. Grotowski used well-known religious words and ideas such as sacrifice,
atonement, communion, and holiness (though attaching the prefix “secular”
to holiness, representing a vital aspect of post-religious spirituality), but in
each case giving them a different and deeper meaning. While the words
might at first appear as known quantities within specific creeds, he excised
them from their religious paths and their exclamation points of certainty and
exclusivity, reattaching them to the question mark at the center of the spirit.
In Grotowski’s seminal work, The Constant Prince, which traveled the
world between 1965 and 1970, the actor Ryszard Cieslak acted the role of
a crucified character. The Constant Prince ended with direct reference to the
Crucifixion of Christ, with the court, which tortures the main character to
death, drinking the blood and consuming the body of the Prince, employing
gestures which drew unequivocal comparisons with the act of taking Holy
Communion. However, Grotowski, a religious agnostic, hardly pointed to
the Christian symbols as the end point. He asked the audience to move be-
yond the imagery, to consider the actor himself.
The sacrifice is not of the character, but the actor (Cieslak), who undertook
his intense work with the attitude of giving and receiving which sprang from
true love. In other words: self-sacrifice. While using the known symbol as
a reference, Grotowski dug much deeper, implicating both the actor (as the
self-sacrifice) and the audience (as witnesses).
The play “ends” with a question mark, as the reality of the character’s
death was annulled by the actor’s forceful, joyous, extraordinary laughter. His
86 History of mysticism in theater
murderers then formed a procession, exiting the performance space, leaving
the martyr’s body on the wooden chest covered in a red overcoat. The other
actors did not reappear to receive applause, nor did they give any of the other
conventional signals that indicate the end of a performance. The Prince’s
body was left untouched until the final spectator left the room (Grotowski.
Net, 2012, online).
Needless to say, this ending did not provide the cathartic button of com-
mercial theater, raising more questions than it answered, representing the
ultimate purpose of mystical theater.
How did this twisting and deepening of the religious narrative land? Here
is a passage from New York’s The Daily Times review of this play’s first per-
formance in that city (1969):

I doubt greatly if you would enjoy (there is no such word in the vocab-
ulary of Grotowski) “The Constant Prince,” but you would be startled
and unnerved, absorbed and involved in a kind of shock treatment. To
quote [theater critic] Miss Margaret Croyden, here is ‘a new language of
body and sound.’
(Oppenheimer, 1969, online)

Further instances of mystical inlay abound in Grotowski’s work, though for

our purposes, I will elucidate but one more. Grotowski referred to one of the
most important historical spiritual images, shared between all three Abra-
hamic faiths. As Dr. Catharine Christof (Senior Lecturer in Theatre Arts at
Loyola Marymount University, CA) stated, Grotowski proposed that creators
might build a “Jacob’s Ladder” through theater, as a vehicle to the spirit,
with each rung comprising a performance aspect such as movement, rhythm,
sound, and the actor’s craft. The mystical pathway thus created within the
performers’ body allowed them to move beyond their normal capacities, into
another, more spiritual plane (Christof, 2017, p. 224).
For historical mystics, Jacob’s Ladder, or the Ladder of Ascent, represented
the mystic’s path to the Divine (as well as their return to this world, for the
greatest mystics might climb as well as descend this spiritual path) via prayer.
Originating in the Torah (Book of Genesis, Chapter 28), the image appeared
in the Jewish Kabbalah, Sufism, and Christian mysticism. The Prophet Mu-
hammad also climbed Jacob’s Ladder to the heavens on his Mi’raj, or Night
Journey (Qur’an, Surah 17).
Margaret Croyden’s comment that there was “a new language of body and
sound” would verify Grotowski’s success in his translation of the mystical
ideal into theater.
Grotowski’s method in general looked to break down the actors, strip-
ping them of their “self ” in order to create a deeper openness to the spirit
he wished unveiled. This “stripping down” of the actor reminds us of the
Bistami story, where the “antidote” for the religious man was to literally
 History of mysticism in theater 87
strip themself down to a loin cloth and humiliate themself in the market and
outside the law courts. Grotowski used the demand for equanimity and hu-
mility of the actor to have the actor move beyond projecting their character
from their ego, into a passive readiness, where the archetypes unleashed by the
dissolution of the personality emerged into the theater space, instead of being
imposed by either the director or performer (Home-Cook, 2001, online).
This ideal informed the title of Grotowski’s manual for theater: Towards a
Poor Theatre. Written by himself and fellow travelers in the way such as Peter
Brook (see below), Eugenio Barba, Richard Schechner (b. 1934, University
Professor Emeritus at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYC), and others, the
name echoed a mystical goal: to be poor in spirit. For as Jesus assured, and the
Qur’an reiterated: the meek shall inherit the earth. Grotowski believed that
theater might lead the way there.
One last note before leaving this seminal Polish mystico-dramatist:
Grotowski, like his protégé Barba, was an avowed agnostic. However, they
represented the next wave not only in theater, but of spirituality: the belief
that the human spiritual search and mystical realization might take place out-
side of religious structures—the spiritual straight jacket in which humanity’s
immanent yearnings have been sequestered since the dawn of history.
For Grotowski and Barba, theater provided a tangible spiritual connec-
tion, filling the space vacated by oppressive religious cultures. It utilized the
unique lives and immediate contact between actor, audience, time, and place
to facilitate an opening to a meditative and spiritual understanding of the
world and oneself.

Peter Brook

Being with the mainstream isn’t very difficult—the tide is powerful, and
it is easy to let it sweep us along with it. But going against the tide is very
difficult. First of all, one must recognize very exactly what the tide is and
where it is going.
(Brook, October 2, 2017)

Like many of the great spiritual theater makers of the late 20th century, di-
rector Peter Brook studied with Grotowski, writing the preface to the afore-
mentioned book by the seminal thinker. As Brook noted in that preface, after
visiting Grotowski at the Polish Theatre Laboratory: “For Grotowski acting
is a vehicle. How can I put it? The theatre is not an escape, a refuge. A way
of life is a way to life. Does that sound like a religious slogan? It should do”
(Brook, 1968, pp. 13–14).
Brook continued his mentor’s work. He co-founded the International Cen-
tre for Theatre Research (1970), dedicated to the development of a universal
theater. The work highlighted and expanded ideas of the transcendent and
fundamental aspect of theater: the desire for unity.
88 History of mysticism in theater
The “desire for unity” is the central tenet of the human religion. In “Play-
ing with Religion in Contemporary Theatre,” Dr. Kees de Groot (Professor
of Practical Theology and Religious Studies at Tilburg University in the
Netherlands) noted that “in post-secular artistic milieus, theatre is often de-
picted as a contemporary alternative to church . . . the church has become ob-
solete, the quest for meaning persists, the theatre deals with this” (de Groot,
2012, p. 459).
The important difference between theater and religion is that spiritually
inclined drama can point to the question mark at the heart of each human’s
quest for meaning, that ultimate question shared by all humans. Religion
points to a subset of rules and symbols only available to the “initiates,” and
promising, without being able to produce, ultimate meaning to the human
conundrum: who are we and why are we here?
Echoing mystical ideas concerning the “nothing” at the heart of everything,
Brook asserted that the acting space comprised an empty space, a void to be
filled with the performer. Reprising spiritual language, he stated that the
emptiness was devoid of boundaries, an abnegation of our “identity.”
Brook said: “In the theatre, one can taste the absolute reality of the extraor-
dinary presence of emptiness, as compared with the poverty-stricken jumble
in the head jammed with thoughts” (Yarrow, 2007, p. 50). This conception
of the stage echoed the idea of the Divine Nought, proposed by Meister
Eckhart, the Greek Stoic philosopher Plotinus, Lao Tzu, and others. Brook
appeared to be quoting from these earlier, mystical thinkers, who emptied
their heads of their “self ” to achieve union with the Divine.
He also reprised the Sufi idea of God and reality, stating: “Truth in theatre
is always on the move” (Brook, 1996, p. 174). The Sufi Dhu’l Nun, of course,
said: “Whatever you think It is, It is something else.” Brook also noted: “‘Re-
ality’ is a word with many meanings” (Brook, 1996, p. 30).
Brook was well acquainted with mystical writings. In 1979, he theatrically
adapted and produced the Sufi thinker Farid ad-Din Attar’s spiritual quest book
Conference of the Birds, presenting it in villages across the Sahara in northwest Af-
rica, with an ensemble collective of actors including Helen Mirren (b. 1945, has
won an Academy Award, four BAFTA Awards, three Golden Globe Awards,
four Primetime Emmy Awards, and one Tony Award). A few years later, Brook
adapted the foundational Hindu text the Mahabharata (c. 3rd century BCE) into
a nine-hour epic production, which toured around the world for four years. In
1989, he turned the piece into a movie by the same name.
All of this work fell under Brook’s belief that a mythical narrative, pre-
sented in the contemporary era, might aid in reuniting the community
within a shared experience, in a world of increasing diversity. And by basing
his drama on works expressing the human religion of the mystic’s path, as
both Conference of the Birds and the Mahabharata (which includes the Bhagavad
Gita as one of its books) certainly do, Brooks cut through the fat (religion
based on exoteric rules and rituals) to the heart of the matter: the Divine
question mark at the center of human experience.
 History of mysticism in theater 89
Howard Barker

It’s time we started taking our audiences more seriously, and stop telling
them stories they can understand.
(Hales, 2015, online)

As we move into the 21st-century, society, religion, and the spirit seem to
separate even more. For proof of this fact, one need only look at religious
attitudes toward war, as a headline on a 2006 Gallup poll noted: “Protestants
and Frequent Churchgoers Most Supportive of Iraq War; Least supportive
are non-Christians and people with no religion.” Religion = war, something
many in the “secular” world have always suspected, though it is certainly
affirming to have this truth borne out by polling data.
Theater makers, sensing the need for communitarian spirituality outside
of divisive (and apparently violent) traditional religious paths, continue to
deepen their commitment to expressing the human religion. This quest has
occasioned a strong interest in the origins of theater, wherein the original
mystico-theatrical purity was found. In Britain, for instance, the late 20th
century saw an explosion of interest in Greek tragedy. Edith Hall (b. 1959,
Professor in the Department of Classics and Centre for Hellenic Studies at
King’s College, London), noted: “More Greek tragedy has been performed
in the last thirty years than at any point in history since Greco-Roman antiq-
uity” (Groves, 2014, p. 160).
While we cannot explore the mystical underpinnings of every contempo-
rary theater maker, it behooves us to look at a couple more, to see how much
ferment in this arena exists and how important is this study, to continue mov-
ing the practice of mystical theater forward. Howard Barker (b. 1946), a Brit-
ish dramatist, has been deeply inf luenced by spiritual antecedents. The goal
of his work, said Barker, is not the theatrical “button” or “ah-ha” of a rid-
dle solved, but to inspire in his audience the “amazement” of the m ­ ystic—a
world disturbed; the structures of accepted reality shaken.
Christian mystic Meister Eckhart deeply inf luences Barker, specifically
Eckhart’s apophatic theology, which defines God by what God is not. Theater
doctoral student Peter Anthony Groves noted:

The value of looking at Eckhart’s theology in relation to Howard Bark-

er’s plays is that it begins to cast light on aspects of his drama which were
previously unclear and obscure, particularly the precise significance and
relationship between his characters and “God”. . . It also allows an un-
derstanding to form about the somewhat paradoxical question of Barker’s
apparent atheism and his plays’ preoccupation with religion.
(Groves, 2014, pp. 95–96)

As an aside, it should be noted that Barker’s “apparent atheism” in no way

represents a “paradox” vis-à-vis his interest in Eckhart and the human spirit.
90 History of mysticism in theater
As the above Gallup Poll headline noted, in today’s world, the religious often
seem to be furthest from the spirit, while the secular hold closer to timeless
values.
Eckhart’s ideas infuse character after character in Barker’s works. In The
Bite of the Night (1988), the play revolves around the mystic’s search, rehearsing
themes from the pantheon of earlier thinkers, though focusing specifically on
Meister Eckhart. The main character, “Savage,” the name itself reminding of
a primal state of return, shows his awareness of the need to carefully negotiate
the journey toward oblivion/realization when he states: “Dance on the rim of
knowledge but don’t fall through, you’ll drop forever.” This echoes a Hasidic
tale, which stated: “The way in this life is like the edge of a blade. On this
side is the netherworld, and on that side is the netherworld, and the way of
life lies in between” (Buber, 1991, p. 92).
Savage also bases his ideal of self-knowledge on another well-known, and
universal, mystical ideal: that within and above are synonymous. Savage
notes: “To go beyond. That’s our hunger, that’s our thirst. To go beyond,
you must stand still. First paradox of all great journeys.” And of course, the
“paradox” represents ultimate truth, and the first step into this journey rep-
resents no step at all . . . .
Eckhart’s inf luence appears more clearly a bit further along in this play.
The main character formulates a model for the inner journey into the self that
parallels Eckhart’s process of detachment. Barker even borrows the human
skin and animal skin (pelts) metaphor from his muse. Eckhart noted:

A person has many skins in themself, covering the depths of their own
heart. People know so many things. They do not know themself. Why,
thirty or forty skins or hides, just like an ox’s or a bear’s, so thick and
hard, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know your-
self there.

In Savage’s mouth, Barker echoed the far-off master’s language:

Knowledge is a suit of rooms. Dirty rooms, unswept as museums in the

provinces. And to enter each room you must leave with the woman at the
door some priceless thing, which feels part of yourself and your identity,
so that it feels like ripping skin. And the keepers sit in piles of discarded
treasures, like the pelts of love or children’s pity, and at each successive
door the piles are less because few stagger such long distances, until there
comes a door at which there lies a small, white rag stained as a dishcloth,
which may be sanity. And if you think that is the end you are mistaken,
it is the beginning.
(Groves, 2014, pp. 102–104)

The end is the beginning. Time is circular.

Is Barker himself a mystic?
 History of mysticism in theater 91
Time and again in Barker’s plays we see the whispers of Eckhart’s ideas.
And Barker uses these concepts not as bludgeons or direct quotes, but in the
manner of mystical inlay to inf luence the action and, he hopes, open the au-
dience to a new way of seeing, beyond religion, beyond the narrow zero-sum
vision proffered by contemporary society.
In Barker’s play 13 Objects (2003), mystical theology inf luences an unusual
scene in which a suicidal youth, disturbed by the ability of a camera to record
the imperfect world in perpetuity (thereby solidifying its seeming “reality”),
instead, removes the film, freeing himself to exist in his own, deeper truth.
This removal of the external to subsist in the internal reality echoes the Sufi
ideals of fana and baqa.
In Death, The One (2004), the continual meditation on the collapse of all
meaning leads to the realization that this collapse is, in fact, an end to the
search for meaning. Within the seeming reality of the physical world, the col-
lapse of “meaning” leads to ultimate meaning. This not only echoes Eckhart’s
ideas of reducing the mind until it achieves the Divine Nought, but Zen
conceptions of the “is-ness” of what surrounds us. We needn’t look for deeper
meaning, because truth is what we see in front of us, each moment—without
attribution or understanding.
Remember, ultimate reality cannot be perceived with the rational mind.
One must move beyond it toward bewilderment. The world awaiting beyond
rational attribution represents “truth,” while that which we can consciously
understand is provisional.
Even Barker’s understanding of his artistic inspiration reminds of Eckhart.
Barker remains adamant that his theme and writing do not present truth: “All
I describe is theatre, even where theatre is not the subject.” Peter Anthony
Groves stated in his PhD thesis on Barker’s work:

This continual negation of any concrete truth-value in the text . . . has the
effect of threatening to unravel or deconstruct each idea soon after it has
become established in the reader’s mind. The apophatic process is there-
fore constantly invoked about the stability of the text itself and therefore
(in Eckhartian/Dionysian fashion) about the inadequacy of all human
attempts at conceiving and defining the nature of reality and truth.
(Groves, 2014, p. 91)

Barker also hearkens back to the earliest Western productions, when society,
mysticism, and theater twined together into a single esoteric strand. His work
The Road, The House, The Road (2006) contains a structure reminiscent of the
Katabatic (trip to the underworld) ritual of the Greek mystery cult, an original
theatrical device inf luencing the earliest Greek tragedy. His play The Bite of
the Night (1988) echoes the foundational moment of destruction within the
European zeitgeist: the fall of Troy. Herein, Barker resurrects these original
myths and long-ago whispers of Western culture and spirituality as a buried,
though sacred, space awaiting disinterment within contemporary society.
92 History of mysticism in theater
I could go on and on—as did the doctoral candidate Peter Anthony Groves
of the University of Warwick (UK), whose 400+ page treatise explored the
deep and specific spiritual connection that inf luenced Howard Barker’s
oeuvre. However, for our purpose, one more example will suffice.
Barker does not rest with having his text ref lect the Mysteries and core of
the human spiritual search, but he demands a holistic presentation in which
each aspect of his productions—sound, lighting, costumes, properties, etc.—
points together toward an experiential journey (and not simply an entertain-
ing couple of hours) into the deepest recesses of the human spirit.
This model inf luences our work together in Chapter 3, where all aspects of
the production intertwine with one end goal: to lead the spectator from the
particular into the realm of the eternal.

An explosion at the heart of theater and the spirit

We too-often conf late “religion” with “God” in our thinking, which leads
to some confusion as to who is truly religious, and who God-less. Barker the
atheist, Grotowski the agnostic, and Brook, who put into the mouth of the
eponymous main character of his play Tierno Bokar (a theatrical exploration
of the power of tolerance): “God is an embarrassment to human intelligence,”
all sink their work deep beneath the strictures of religion, into the heart of
the human religion, which unites us all.
Recent theater makers began to unearth and pry open the musty and al-
most completely forgotten vault of drama’s majestic mystical past. A quiet
explosion of spiritual energy, dislodged from both religious structures and
censorious cultures, has suffused through the recent living stage.
First in the far north with the pre-Bolshevik Revolution Scandinavian
playwrights, then with the Russian Symbolists, and from there seeping into
Europe and birthing Absurdist-mystical theater, the possibility for theater
to return to the earliest era of Greek Mystery plays, as well as point the way
forward out of the dark ages of religious silos and forward into the human
religion, arrived.
While a full review of contemporary theater makers in this Golden Age
would fill another entire treatise, it is vital to appreciate that from the West
End to Broadway, from basement theaters in the East Village (NYC) to the
Edinburgh Fringe Festival to Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret in Holstebro,
Denmark, the new era has begun.
The work presented in this chapter, and even more importantly in the next
chapter, “Mysticism in Theater: What’s Needed Now,” offers a structure and
methods for implementing this new way, not just for an individual theater
maker here or there, one production, a single performance space, a teacher
or company, but across the vast and exploding landscape of contemporary
drama.
Not just to renovate theater.
But to renovate humanity.
 History of mysticism in theater 93
Notes
1 Bloy explained:
The male whore, even when venal, is obliged to confine his debauchery to
cohabitation with a single other person and can still—in the midst of his
frightful ignominy—preserve a certain freedom of choice. The actor aban-
dons himself, without choice, to the multitude, and his industry is not less
ignoble because it is his body which serves as the instrument of pleasure.
2 Prana is a word in Sanskrit (an ancient Indian language) which means “life force.”
In the Yogic, Ayurvedic, and Martial Arts traditions, the term “Prana” refers to
a cosmic energy which comes from the sun and embodies the power which con-
nects all elements in the universe.

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3 Mysticism in theater
What’s needed now

I am a poor theorist.
I am not interested in elegant ideas which, gleaming and erudite, gain
repute at academic conferences and in obscure journals, but remain still-
birthed, too complicated, or too untethered from reality to implement.
I not only devote my time to creating artistic models which can be accom-
plished, but I develop them only after I, myself, have utilized them in my
own practice.
The ideas which I discuss forthwith emerge from my three decades of being
immersed at the intersection of mysticism, contemporary culture, and creativ-
ity. I have worked as a theater maker, visual artist, novelist, non-fiction author,
and founder of an arts and human rights NGO, International Human Rights Art
Festival, which itself is based on mystical ideals of unity. All of this artistic en-
ergy fed into the development of this theoretical structure which is not only
feasible, but which I have applied during my decade of theater practice in New
York City. Artistic practice feeding into theory, and theory feeding back into
practice. A mystico-theatrical ideal generated in my creative work, and then
fermenting under the hot lights of theaters around New York City.
And now, finally, ready to share with you.

Theater today
We live in the golden age of theater.
We no longer have censorship in the West, a repressive force which as re-
cently as the 1960s circumscribed what might be presented on stage. Today,
unlike the vast majority of theater history, actors, playwrights, and designers
are definitely not considered prostitutes, rogues, or vagabonds. Far from be-
ing grudgingly “accepted” by society as a necessary evil, successful actors and
playwrights are now lauded as cultural icons.
Theater makers now can become millionaires, achieve knighthoods and
marry into the royal family in England, are revered as sages in France, inhabit
seats of government throughout the Western world, and even rise to the pres-
idency, as did playwright Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, for a decade
beginning in 1993.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003187271-4
98 Mysticism in theater
Additionally, an explosion of opportunity awaits today’s theater maker.
By the late 1940s, the US theater had been reduced to a small number of
Broadway productions (Brocket, 1995, p. 521). Now, there are hundreds of
theaters in New York City, and nearly 3,000 around the United States. In
spring 2016, over 47 million Americans had attended a live theatrical event
within the past month (Statista Research Department, 2020, online), while in
Great Britain, 19 million theater tickets were sold across the country that
same year (Statista Research Department, 2020, online). At the Edinburgh
Fringe Festival alone, 55,000 performances were presented in the month
of August 2018. In Ireland, the 2019 Galway International Arts Festival at-
tracted a quarter million spectators at more than 200 events during a couple
weeks in July.
Given the explosion of alternative spaces throughout the Western world,
theater can be produced for only a few hundreds of dollars, opening the pos-
sibility for virtually anyone with a passion and an idea to present work to the
public. This expansive opportunity represents a novel dynamic in the 2,500
years of Western theatrical history.

We live in the golden age of theater

What’s more, the rise of cinema freed theater makers to concentrate on what
they do best: engage an audience through text, acting, and unusual staging,
instead of the pre-cinematic era, when a huge premium was put on staging
“spectacles,” and perhaps less so on psycho-spiritual depth, writing quality,
and meaning of the work. Theater makers have risen to this challenge, push-
ing at its boundaries since the late 19th century, beginning with the work of
Ibsen, the Russian Symbolists and others, opening a vast new range of artistic
possibilities.
Money? Well—theater makers are certainly no worse and perhaps a lot
better off than they were one, two, or three hundred years ago. Take a cur-
sory look through any book on the history of theater, and we find the ca-
reer of important dramatist after important dramatist seems to end with such
words as “bankruptcy,” “alcoholism,” or simply “faded away.”
Our era offers creative and professional possibility unlike any other time in
the nearly three-millennia-long history of our art form.
Appreciate it, grab it, and get to work!

The fertile audience

By offering new images and symbols, the prophet helps communities

engage with all aspects of the human experience—including brokenness,
pain, and injustice. It is only after this time of lamenting and criticism
that the prophet takes on his second task: energizing the people with rad-
ical hope. Though their frustrations are heard and validated, the prophet
 Mysticism in theater 99
never leaves the people wallowing in them. In spite of the reality of the
dominant cultural narrative, the prophet seeks ultimately to evoke an
alternative consciousness and vision.
(Sachs, 2016, online)

Very few people attend theater expecting numinous clarification. So the au-
dience enters with a soft and open mind, thinking of little more than enter-
tainment. This state of mind represents an untapped potential, an open field
rife with possibility for the prophetic dramatist.
Expecting nothing, the audience can leave an evening in the theater with
much to think about. Ideas percolate and inf luence, joining with streams of
their internal monologue, resolving into new manners of seeing the world,
and their place within it. New and previously unasked questions percolate
concerning their faith in the contemporary wry, ironic, and spiritually des-
iccated worldview as seen on TV. Messages of unity and acceptance, hints of
equanimity in the face of normal daily obstacles, appreciation for the Divine
ground of being, lying below yet superseding the news, the latest fashion fad,
the most recent political kerfuff le.
In the dark of the theater, the mystical message might slip beneath the
absurdity of certainty, offering a return to primal wonder. As Lao Tzu said:
“Nothing is as soft and yielding as water, yet for dissolving the inf lexible,
nothing is more powerful” (Lao Tzu, 2000, p. 80). The stirrings of a be-
wildered engagement with the world might seep into and then beneath the
softened consciousness of the congregants.
An art form with such a strange and illustrious history as theater, which
developed out of the spiritual search, beginning its long arc at the heart of
human society, provides the perfect space to spark a return to the center of
the spirit. The original Mystery plays in ancient Greece linked the whole
culture—political, social, and creative—with religious ritual and the founda-
tional myths of civilization.
The theater represents a space once sacred, fallen on rough times, and
then shunted to the edges of culture. Yet theater remains, despite its mar-
ginalization, uniquely suited to reintroduce the audience to their spirit. As
was earlier noted, this idea is based on biological fact: watching a live theater
performance synchronizes one’s heartbeat with other people in the audience,
regardless of one’s previous relation to them. Dr. Joseph Devlin, Head of Ex-
perimental Psychology at University College London, said: “Experiencing
the live theatre performance was extraordinary enough to overcome group
differences and produce a common physiological experience in the audience
members” (Miller, November 15, 2017).
The nascent community of a shared human experience f lowers in the dark
space of the auditorium. This represents the jumping-off point for mystical
theater: a simple, irrefutable biochemical reality which f lares into existence
during the time together in the theater, then usually fading almost immedi-
ately into the ether at the end of the production.
100 Mysticism in theater
This chapter explores how to knit tighter and more permanently the ephem-
eral bonds created in this short time together. How mystical tinting and inlay
might create diaphanous connections of unity between people (exoteric mysti-
cism), and insert a small seed of understanding which can blossom into a greater
appreciation for one’s connection to something greater, to an eternal Truth, to
the Divine (esoteric mysticism). Playwright Leon James Bynam noted: “[Theat-
er’s] elements of incarnation, community, and presence are also the rudiments
of the relationship between humankind and the Divine” (Bynam, 2010, p. 441).
For many people living in the West, the foundational myth of their birth
religion is based on the Book of Genesis, in which the world literally rep-
resents an ongoing story told by the Divine. Genesis 1:3 states: “And God
said, Let there be light: and there was light.” God’s spoken word created the
known universe. For mystics, the universe represents an ongoing recitation of
the Divine. The moment God stops speaking, the universe disappears.
Mystical theater, suffused with the words and ideas of the Divine (medi-
ated through great spiritual thinkers from all traditions), represents an echo
of this original moment.

Theater as religion

Drama arose out of religious liturgy and dare not depart too far from it.
(T. S. Eliot, d. 1965 in Friesen, 2005, p. 8)

Historically, religions jealously guarded the search for the spirit. They assured
that to achieve ultimate realization or eternal salvation, it was their way or the
highway. Even today, religious elders attempt to keep the spiritual yearnings
of humanity cloistered within their grasp. For instance, Lillian Daniel, a senior
minister in the United Church of Christ, in her book When “Spiritual But Not
Religious” Is Not Enough, stated: “I actually believe that in an age of spiritual
people who are not religious, we need religion, and its dearest expression to
this particular Christian person, the Church” (Daniel, 2013, p. 11).
I certainly don’t want to get into an argument with a woman of the cloth,
but the short of it is this: violence begins in the creation of the “other.” Noth-
ing separates people more clearly into “us” and “them,” than does religion.
The human religion, defined by the mystical core of all creeds and existing
both within each individual’s heart and outside of all historical paths, is the
antidote to the age-old question: “why can’t we all get along?”
The parallels between drama and religious practice are legion. This
opens the space for theater spectators to begin with the known—a religious
sensibility—­for a trip into the unknown, the mystery at the heart of be-
ing. Norman Bert (b. 1942, Texas Tech University, pastor and Professor of
Theater and Dance) noted in “Theatre is Religion”:

Theatre, like religious cultus, always takes place in the present. In reli-
gious worship, the point of the liturgy and ritual is to reenact myth in
 Mysticism in theater 101
such a way that it becomes part of the worshippers’ current experience.
In similar fashion, regardless of the time frame of the events portrayed on
stage, the audience perceives them as occurring in the present.
(Bert, 2002, p. 5)

Bert goes further, noting that “the experience of theatre is similar to the
mystical experience of religion . . . ecstasy, insight (epiphany), inspiration,
attachment to the community, or a sense of apotheosis [deification]” (Bert,
2002, p. 6).
Contemporary playwrights already operate in religion’s realm of
myth-building without, for the most part, realizing it. While ancient mystery
theater formed a seamless connection between the Divine, the creative act,
and society, the appreciation of this connection has dulled and, if not disap-
peared, certainly become so deeply buried and ephemeral as to be invisible,
even to the creators themselves.
Its reality, however, cannot be denied.

Theater as ritual

The crisis in theatre cannot be separated from certain other crises in

contemporary culture. One of its essential elements—namely the disap-
pearance of the sacred and its ritual function in theatre—is a result of the
obvious and probably inevitable decline of religion. What we are talking
about is creating a secular sacrum in the theatre.
( Jerzy Grotowski in Barba, 2002, p. 49)

Ritual represents the manner in which myth becomes shared among individ-
uals and suffuses a society. Ritual engages all senses: visual, auditory, tactile,
smell, and taste. All perceptions work together toward creating a common
conception of a shared Divinity. Historically, of course, specific rituals have
been sequestered within each particular religious path, so the symbols and
stories sunk deep into a shared history, enjoying continuity.
Although religious structures no longer retain a monolithic hold on most
contemporary societies, their doctrines, images, stories, and ideas often un-
derpin the secular conception a society has of itself. For instance, President
George W. Bush (b. 1946, 43rd President of the United States), talking after
the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center by self-avowed Muslim terror-
ists (who were themselves inspired by twisted religious beliefs), declared the
American response a “Crusade.” This language hearkened back to one of the
many bloody periods in Christianity’s past, a series of religious wars initiated
by Christians against Muslims to conquer Jerusalem, between 1095 and 1291.
Other leaders frame contemporary political and social concerns within the
context of the shared religion. Donald Trump (b. 1946, 45th President of the
United States), surely the most godless president ever elected in the United
States, was shown to have the highest use of religious language and explicit
102 Mysticism in theater
references to God than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt (d. 1945,
32nd President of the United States) (Hughes, 2019, p. 528).
This religious framing in politics and society defines a central challenge of
creating a new human spiritual path. Religious myth has crept into culture
and history, becoming embedded there as supposed “fact.” Religions solidify
their hold on society by placing their foundational stories within the stream
of the historical narrative. The Patriarch Abraham’s tomb can be found in the
cave of Machpelah, in the West Bank city of Hebron. Jesus lived, and his Via
Dolorosa can be traced and walked. The Prophet Muhammad left a footprint
in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem on his way to visit heaven, leading
to more than a millennia of conf lict between Jewish and Muslim followers
in the heart of Jerusalem. One can visit the exact spot where the Buddha
achieved enlightenment. The historicity of the Hindu text Mahabharata is
proven by numerous archaeological sites and scientific evidence.
By embedding ritual myth in history, as most religious paths do, the transcend-
ent mythical aspect diminishes, and political conflict with outsiders arises.
The spiritual response is to gently disengage myth from both religion and
history, grafting its roots deep beneath both of these, into the human soul.
While keeping to the basic formulation of ritual—that it represents a shared
experience around a common set of values and symbols leading into the deep-
est spirit—contemporary theater makers must remake it. They must create a
numinous theatrical aesthetic and language speaking to all audience members,
not just to those privy to the specific history or symbols of a single religion.
The basic structure and idea of ritual remains the same. However, it be-
comes incumbent on today’s mystical theater maker to develop new strategies
to expand the conception of “us,” collected into a theater space, their hearts
beating in a shared rhythm. Drama therapist Susana Pendzik noted in “The
Theatre Stage and The Sacred Space: A Comparison”:

The stage’s incarnation of an archetypal image may account for its ability
to amplify emotions, sharpen conf licts, accelerate time, and make any
action that occurs on it look meaningful. It is known that a minute on
stage bears no resemblance to a minute in real life. The same intensity
applies to actions performed on stage, where even the most trivial thing,
like brushing one’s teeth, becomes significant.
(Pendzik, 1994, pp. 32–33)

The doorway to a new communal human myth leads from the lobby into
the theater.

Theater as mysticism
While Christian symbols touch Christians and Islamic images inspire Mus-
lims, those of the human religion must be forged from the deepest wellspring
of the spirit, so that they might reach all people, from Bristol to Bordeaux
to Times Square. By developing an idea of this human religion, the theater
 Mysticism in theater 103
maker will tap into hidden archetypes, lying buried yet shared at the place
where all individual “I’s” meet: in the universal essence. Though perhaps
ignorant of it, we share a universal “I,” and it is in this place that symbols
resonating with all spectators can be found, and then inlaid carefully into
dramatic expression, in an untold number of manners.
Perhaps the Zen koan represents the metaphor most resonant with this
new way. These strange stories from Buddhist lore offer a surprising method
for teaching direct spiritual experience, bypassing the rational, left brain and
diving deep into the intuitive right lobe, where intuition is immediate and
beyond words, concepts, and rational understanding.
Like the Zen koan, mystical theater will never provide a button, an “ah-ha”
moment, a cathartic release which dissipates when the audience exits the
theater. Mystical theater opens a doorway into the spirit through disturbance
of the shared, mundane dream. As contemporary Greek theater maker Tasos
Prousalis noted:

Metaphysics and esoteric traditions, when using theatrical pattern as a

vehicle . . . aid us to escape the conventional, everyday life, by creating
a gate in the cosmic time-f low. The human being may pass through and
reach the spiritual hilltops where Gods and Ideas reside.
(Prousalis, undated, online)

The audience should leave a production with an open heart. And a query
that will, over time, seep into their being and become fundamental to their
worldview: if no one has the ultimate answer, perhaps all of us share the same
questions?
Theater can point the way toward a mysticism of the mundane. Open a
doorway to the immanence of all moments, the spirituality underpinning
science, the connectivity of all created matter, from a dancer to a dung beetle.
It can help efface the line between “us” and “them,” a sad but present separa-
tion of people into political, ethnic, or religious tribes, which represents the
birthplace of strife.
This chapter explores specific manners for applying mysticism to the living
stage, opening creative doorways for you, prophetic theater maker, to step
through and find your own path on this journey.

Mystical theater: genesis of a new and necessary myth

The metaphysical truths contained in myth constitute the link between

the “inner experience” of the individual and the timeless supra-personal
“I” of the World Soul. The attempt to create new myth will be successful
only so far as the new myth penetrates the reality that lies beyond the
world of phenomena . . . new myths constitute a new revelation of the
same underlying reality.
(Rosenthal, 1977, p. 130)
104 Mysticism in theater
Like all successful revolutions, mystical theater is both reactionary (taking its
cues from the past) and renegade (creating novel ideas).
Producing contemporary, Divinely-inspired, and referential myths rep-
resents the most important work of the mystical theater maker. To create
ex-­nihilo (out of nothing) a new mythos which combines liminality (disorien-
tation), Divinity, and aesthetic integrity, suffused with spiritual energy, as well
as seducing the audience—all without necessarily being noticed. These new
symbols, incipient rituals, mystico-philosophical systems embedded in the liv-
ing art will incite new ways of thinking, as well as behaving within society.
The creation of a new myth represents the highest potential for contempo-
rary theater artists. No longer maligned by society, censored by religious and
political structures, or condemned only to producing mindless entertainment
for a degraded cultural milieu, theater has been released to return to its pri-
mal purpose: the creation of myth and social unity.
It falls to today’s theater maker to step into the breach created by the dis-
integration of religious vessels. To help create these new human traditions.
Stories, feelings, and connections which can begin to replace the cornucopia
of conspiracy theories, bastardized and hateful religious teachings, and the
false gods of greed, politics, and worldly success. Fables which engage the
battle at the heart of the human spirit, replacing the dark energies which have
rushed into the void created by the receding religious structures. Which can
lighten the internal experience of society’s citizens, providing answers to the
most pressing psychic challenges of our era.
Let’s get after it . . . .

Mystical tinting
There are two manners of infusing mystical teachings into theatrical pro-
ductions. One represents tinting the whole production with these concepts,
while another form is to inlay specific mystical ideas and even quotes into the
play, through some or all facets of the production.
The first manner, tinting, colors mystical theater with the eternal hue of
the Divine. It offers a manner of structuring dramatic works that, while not in
keeping with the traditional “cat goes up tree, people throw rocks at the cat,
cat is rescued” arc of normative playwriting, provides different manners more
in keeping with Divine rhythms, and less concerned with commercial theater.

A mystical narrative arc

Whatever you think It is, It’s different than that.

(Dhu’l Nun in Rumi, 1999, p. xvii)

The Sufi way of teaching explores an idea, event, or thing from many an-
gles, offering a 360° exploration of a topic. Since within mystical philosophy
 Mysticism in theater 105
“objective reality” does not exist, the more one explores a thing or event, the
more facets will appear, all adding to, though not definitively defining, an
understanding of it.
This idea holds for all aspects of human experience. The world is not lit-
tered with a set of facts such as “tree,” “worldly success,” or “personal love.”
Each aspect of experience represents a kaleidoscope, where the closer you
look at it, the more it dissolves into hundreds of different, apparent meanings,
instead of resolving into a single perspective.
Of course, beneath this apparent multiplicity resides the single, inconceiv-
able Truth.
This idea might inf luence the narrative arc of a theatrical production. A
Sufi presentation might look at a single event from several different, and
conf licting, points of view. An action could look moral and positive from the
point of view of one character, immoral from the perspective of the character
acted upon, and perhaps neutral from a third observer. And then maybe the
third observer undergoes some action which reverses all of these schematics.
And either is inf luenced by this change, or doesn’t even note it.
It might also present all of the action as if seen from within one character’s
point of view. This might twist and shape the other characters and the action
itself, as the protagonist’s worldview, prejudices, beliefs, and (limited) under-
standing affect the “reality” outside of their head.
This needn’t be noted. The audience may or may not be aware that the
presentation represents a personal point of view. This framing, far from the
“eye in the sky” objectivity thought of as “realism” in today’s theatrical pro-
ductions, might raise more questions than it answers, as the action and char-
acters pass through the scrim of the protagonist’s point of view. But this
would engage the audience as co-creators, trying to figure out what is “real,”
and what is simply a fiction of the character’s imagination.
A question which might never be answered . . . .
A playwright might base their underpinning narrative structure in the idea
that one cannot, ultimately, approach a rational conception of God. As Rumi
said: “Things are known by their opposites, but as God has no opposite, God
is impossible to ‘know’” (Rumi, 1994, p. 23). This might situate the ultimate
“meaning” or “button” of the play in a metaphorical black hole, which can
only be perceived by what is around it, and never directly “seen” itself.
How might a production be built that treats everything but the main mat-
ter? Where the specific issue, say one character’s search for meaning through
the accrual of money, actually represents their desperate search for the Di-
vine? It might be that everything except God and faith are mentioned, yet it
becomes clear throughout the frustrating narrative of the play that something
else, hidden, remains at the center of the protagonist’s search.
A Sufi narrative arc might dwindle into a shrug, and a def lated exit. Frus-
trating to the character and the audience, it might become a burr under the
saddle, raising questions which remain with the spectators as they exit the
theater. A novel story might be defined by a twisting plot line that goes a lot
106 Mysticism in theater
of places and never gets anywhere. A coil becomes a labyrinth devolving into
a quagmire.
The point in mystical theater is to take the straight line of normative story
building, hurl it against the wall, and then turn your back on it. Look to other
manners of conceiving how to structure a work. Perhaps base your idea in an
all-over abstract expressionist painting by Jackson Pollock, or the dumped-
in-the-middle-of-the-canvas look of Phillip Guston’s early work. Maybe in a
Zen koan that runs like this: “A monastic asked Zhaozhou, ‘I have heard that
you closely followed Nanquan. Is that true?’ Zhaozhou said, ‘Jin province
produces a big radish’” (Sekida, 2005, p. 225).
How might a Zen koan-like narrative arc look in theatrical practice? Well,
two-thirds of the play might seem to be a parlor production, a normal story
line, and then it might become something completely different, ending far
from where the audience believed the work headed. In retrospect, it might
become clear that hints of another way sprinkled through the earlier text and
design, but these were mostly unremarked until the strange turn toward the
end.
Looking to any nonrational manner of conceiving reality aids in creating
novel narrative structures. From abstract painting to Sufi or Hasidic tales to
Zen koans to Buddhist ideas of “nothingness,” these offer ways into a deeper
dramatic conception, and away from the well-known 90-minutes of enter-
tainment, signifying little and leaving no trace in the spirit of the spectator.

Beyond good and evil

Mystics do not hold the understanding of “good” and “evil” as two opposing
moral forces, as do normative, heaven-and hell-bound religions. Mystics of-
ten believe that these ideals, worthy as they might be within human society,
exist only in the lower realm of the senses, human interaction, and religious
injunction. The world of the spirit f loats out beyond these opposing concepts.
Additionally, “good” and “evil” are considered relative. As mystics assert,
in our world of relativity, there is nothing in the world that is good for one
person, which isn’t bad for someone else.
This short saying about the 8th-century Sufi female Saint Rabi’a captures
the sense of heaven and hell for the spiritually inclined:

O my Lord, if I worship you from fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I wor-

ship you from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates. But if I worship
you for yourself alone, grant me then the beauty of your Face.
(Fadiman and Frager, 1997, p. 229)

Zen scholar Katsudi Sekida explained: “When you remain attached to the
notion of right and wrong, you stand caught in the world of good and evil.
But everything is alright to an enlightened person. Hell or heaven: they don’t
mind which way they go” (Sekida, 2005, pp. 71, 72).
 Mysticism in theater 107
This counterintuitive and anti-moralistic point of view might inf luence
the tinting of a production, to deepen the questioning in the audience, lead-
ing away from certainty toward baff lement. Although it takes a deft hand to
utilize this idea, as one does not want to assert that murders don’t matter and
racial oppression is all good, nonetheless, moving beyond normative ideas of
good and evil can inf luence writing, direction, and design attitudes, opening
the doorways of perception to other ways of seeing.
Eschewing a religious conception of morality, and good and evil, mystical
theater might circle around some ultimate moral answer without arriving.
A character loses a love only to find some kind of internal, though lonely,
peace, while the jilting lover goes on to riches and fame. Don’t be fooled by
the Prosperity Gospel (a religious belief among some Protestant Christians
that financial blessing and physical well-being are always the will of God for
them). Mystics assure that the meek shall inherit the earth, not the ones with
the most toys.
As you’ll remember what Rumi said (and it certainly bears repeating):

When God desires to chastise someone,

He grants them high rank in the world and a great kingdom,
like Pharaoh, Nimrod, and the rest.
All those eminent positions are like
the gallows from which God hangs people
for others to gaze upon and understand.
(Rumi, 1999, p. 184)

Or, perhaps within the course of a play, the more successful one gets, the
more one becomes morally unhinged, as their social stature and respecta-
bility grows. Maybe no one notices the devolution, leading to a question as
to whether the character really is morally disintegrating, or if the audience
just imagines it. Perhaps, in interactions with some characters, he presents
as increasingly negative in his social actions, while with others, he grows in
competence, assuredness, and charity. These interactions might themselves
point to a deeper truth. Or to a question mark beneath a medical diagnosis or
apparent psychological issue.
The moral arc of a play might question, confuse, and enlighten through
bewilderment instead of the theatrical button. The “button” of commercial
theater represents a dead-end for the prophetic theater maker. We are here
to open doorways into the spirit, doorway after doorway which only lead
to further questions and, at the very end, beyond the fiftieth gate: faith and
acceptance.
“When one rests in what has been arranged, and puts away all thought of
the transformation, he is in unity with the mysterious heaven” (Chuang Tzu,
1971, p. 102).
Counterintuitively, and uncomfortably, mystical theater dissolves the
boundary between what is “good” and what is “evil.” As the Zen monk
108 Mysticism in theater
Mumon Ekai (d. 1260) assured: “Think neither good nor evil. At this very
moment, what was your original self?” (Sekida, 2005, p. 81). As disquieting
as this might feel, the true self awaits, as the unappreciated mystic Friedrich
Nietzsche assured, beyond good and evil.
A Qur’anic tale, which became an important mystical teaching for Islamic
mystics, gives an idea of how confusing a view of right and wrong might be.
In Surah al-Khaf (18:65–82), Moses1 meets Khidr (a hidden Islamic mystic
considered a messenger, prophet, and angel). Moses asks for permission to ac-
company the Servant of God so Moses might learn the correct way of acting.
Khidr informs that Moses might not understand everything he sees, but he
may not ask any questions. Moses promises to be patient and obey, and they
set out together.
After they board a ship, Khidr damages the vessel. Forgetting his oath,
Moses asks, “Have you made a hole in it to drown its inmates? Certainly you
have done a grievous thing.” Khidr reminds Moses that he had promised not
to question his actions.
Next, Khidr kills a young man. Moses again cries out in astonishment and
dismay, and again Khidr reminds Moses of his warning. Moses promises that
he will not violate his oath again. They then proceed to a town where they
are denied hospitality. This time, instead of harming anyone or anything,
Khidr restores a decrepit wall in the village. Yet again Moses is amazed and
violates his oath for the third time, asking why the Servant did not at least
exact some revenge.
Khidr replies,

Many acts which seem to be evil, malicious or somber, actually are mer-
ciful. The boat was damaged to prevent its owners from falling into the
hands of a king who seized every boat by force. And as for the boy, his
parents were believers and we feared lest he should make disobedience
and ingratitude to come upon them.

As for the restored wall, the Servant explained that underneath the wall was
a treasure belonging to two helpless orphans whose father was a righteous
man. As God’s envoy, the Servant restored the wall, showing God’s kindness
by rewarding the piety of the orphans’ father, and so that when the wall be-
came weak again and collapsed, the orphans would be older and stronger, and
could take the treasure that belonged to them.
Confusing, anti-religious, and even disturbing, the Qur’anic story and its
ideas about the levels beneath the obvious intent and reaction open pathways
to different manners for imagining a theatrical arc. The same character might
be hero, anti-hero, and then irrelevant. The same exact action, say, giving
money to a homeless person, might be enacted several times within a pro-
duction, and each time lead to a completely different outcome. The “good”
person might have all of their deeds backfire (charity toward others leading
to other people’s negative actions), while indifferent or deleterious activities
might lead to positive growth in the recipients of said actions.
 Mysticism in theater 109
This shattering of standard morality might inf luence everything from dia-
logue to directing to lighting to costume design. Light moments might take
place in dark places. Seemingly “evil” characters might have a love of bright,
sunny colors. Positive interactions might take place clandestinely, hidden as
if in shame.
In all cases, thinking in terms of using the facets available to live theater
to open pathways toward questioning, and not offering the obvious, easy,
or clear answer. To create work which will challenge without answering,
disturb normative conventions, and create conversation at the outer edges of
morality and Truth.

Desire

The appetite by which humans are said to act is one and the same appetite
as that by which they are said to suffer.
(Baruch Spinoza in Jones and Sontag, 1977, p. 196)

Or, as the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (d. 1950) said: “There
are two tragedies in life: One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to
gain it.”
The story of Majnun (“crazy”) and Layla (“daughter of the night”) is a
Muslim story of an impossible love. Penned in Persia in the 7th century, it
describes poor Majnun, who hopelessly desires Layla with an overwhelm-
ing heart. This plot line became fodder for many Sufi tales about devotion,
yearning, acceptance, and how temporal love might lead to a pure love, by
taking the same desperate appetite and pointing it toward the Divine.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (d. 1927, founder of the Sufi Order of the West) noted:
“Majnun means absorption into a thought and Layla means the night of ob-
scurity. The story is from beginning to end a teaching on the path of devo-
tion, the experience of the soul in the search of God” (Khan, 1996, online).
Hasidic masters concurred, asserting that temporal, and even immoral,
devotion might lead to Divine commitment:

A Hasid complained to Rabbi Zev Wolf of Zbarazh (d. 1822) that certain
persons were turning night into day, playing cards. ‘That is good,’ said
the Tzaddik. ‘Like all people, they want to serve God and don’t know
how. But now they are learning to stay awake and persist in doing some-
thing. When they have become perfect in this, all they need do is turn to
God—and what excellent servants they will make for God then!’
(Buber, 1991, p. 161)

A bit confusing, right? Spinoza (and many other spiritual thinkers) assured
that desire represents the beginning of unhappiness. As St. Gregory Nazian-
zen (d. 390) noted: “Could you from all the world all wealth procure, more
would remain, whose lack would leave you poor” (Perry, 1971, p. 111). And
110 Mysticism in theater
the Chinese philosopher Mencius (d. 289) said: “There is nothing better for
the nurturing of the heart than to reduce the number of one’s desires” (Men-
cius, 1984, p. 201).
However, like so many mystical truths, this one is paradoxical. Shams-i
Tabrizi, teacher of Rumi, said: “I want nothing at all—only the need of the
needy. Only need—not just its form, but its form along with its meaning”
(Tabrizi, 2004, p. 266). Our mystical sisters and brothers assure that desire
itself is not the problem. In fact, it might be the answer. Where you point that
desire represents the ultimate test and opportunity. Point the desire toward
cards and women? No. But the same burning, desperate need pointed toward
the Divine? Oh, yes.
The contemporary structure of quest and catharsis, desire and achievement,
represents the standard dramatic narrative. However, in mystical theater, the
narrative arc might represent a seeming devolution, as the protagonist moves
with alacrity and success toward their “heart’s desire,” yet the closer they get
to grasping it, somehow the further they move from something fundamental,
though unnamed. Whatever they seek, it’s something else—and so the cer-
tainty of the original motivation dissolves, even as the apparent goal appears
to round into view.
In one Sufi account of Majnun and Layla, Layla says to Majnun: “I’ll see
you in the graveyard,” meaning after they are both dead. Majnun, being a bit
dense, heads immediately to the graveyard to wait. There, he becomes so lost
in devotion of his love that Layla disappears as an object of desire for him,
replaced simply by the ideal of a perfect love: that is, the Divine. The object
of his human desire has been replaced by desire itself, as Shams noted above:
the Sufi ideal.
For the Sufi adept, yearning and attainment represent the same circular
goal, the ouroboros2 of spiritual realization. One day, the Sufi master Ju-
nayd (d. 910) sent Abu Yazid al-Bistami (d. 874) a letter which read: “What
would you think of a person who must drink the whole ocean to slake
their thirst?” Bistami shot back: “What would you think of a person who
drank the whole ocean, yet was still parched and dying of thirst?” (Sells,
1996, p. 127).
The point is this: in contemporary theater, the “button” comes at the end,
the riddle is solved, catharsis is proffered by the production with a satisfied
sigh, and the audience leaves the theater spiritually unscathed. But a desper-
ate, lonely, and bereft character, always dressed in the most important color;
accompanied onto stage by the sweetest smells of spring and saffron and pine;
stepping onto parts of the playing space unavailable to the other characters; or
accompanied by quiet but beautiful sounds, full of an unfulfillable, desperate,
and growing desire, will open doorways of insight, instead of simply letting
the audience off with an easily digestible answer.
If the playwright and production team consider desire as the purpose of
the play, instead of its completion through satisfaction, then a whole world of
possibility opens up, from paradoxical dialogue to contrary design to strange
 Mysticism in theater 111
directorial decisions, highlighting a world in which one can drink an ocean
of sweet water and still be dying of thirst.
Amen.

Effect and then cause

Many Sufis do not believe in cause and effect in the linear manner, as we
Westerners normally consider it. Sufis assert that God can create caused
things without means. The 20th-century philosopher Carl Jung concurred,
asserting that things might happen completely de-linked from any source: an
effect with no cause. He coined the term “synchronicity” to designate this
idea, representing a simultaneous occurrence of events which appear related
but have no causal connection.
Jung also stated that this idea of causeless effect so boggled the Western
mind that all manners of causes needed to be invented for any perceived
action, from gremlins to Big Foot to shadowy control of forest fires effected
through space lasers controlled by philanthropist George Soros (b. 1930, a
Hungarian-born American billionaire investor and philanthropist). This was
an actual conspiracy theory explaining the forest fires in California in 2020,
proposed by an American congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
However, the boggled mind represents the goal of mystical theater. So uti-
lizing causeless effects offers a powerful device to be considered in creating
these works.
This device of effects without an originating event has some history within
theater. The deus ex machina of ancient Greece, Elizabethan stage, and even
in our times (Harry Potter comes to mind) offered an act of God (or in the
case of Harry Potter, an act of sorcery) which might completely change the
arc of the play at a moment’s notice. However, in virtually all of these cases,
the deus ex machina operated as the recognizable “cause” and pushed a story
along a normative arc, often honoring both the time arrow and religious ideas
of good and evil. It represents a theatrical device, but not a philosophical or
mystical one.
Moving beyond the unseen mover that often represents the cause of ac-
tions, mystical theater makers might upset the normative and highly in-
grained Western conception that life offers a chain of linked events. This idea
of causality subconsciously underpins everything from our comprehension of
the passage of time to the belief in our agency in actions, to our relationships
with other people, to morality (e.g., that bad actions rebound open them-
selves and good actions are, in some manner, compensated, either here on
earth or in the world beyond).
Unspooling the cause and effect schematic unsettles the accepted narrative
of life, leading past rational understanding toward bewilderment. This might
be utilized in mystical theater in a variety of manners. For instance, the main
character might undertake the same action over and over again and, unlike
Einstein’s definition of insanity (undertaking the same action over and over
112 Mysticism in theater
again and expecting different results), in mystical theater, a different outcome
would result each time.
Does Einstein’s conception of insanity represent mystical understanding?
There are many mystics who would agree with that. In this case, the apparent
“cause” would remain stable (from the main character’s point of view), while
the “effect” would veer wildly across the stage.
The cause and effect arc of a plot might be seriously compromised, re-
versed, or completely ignored. What if one of the characters acted in bad faith
on a regular basis, but never suffered any consequences (think of Khidr in the
Qur’anic tale above)? Or if good was not rewarded, or was even denigrated
by the other characters, and brought on negative effects, though the “good”
character remained stubbornly attached to that ideal until the bitter end? Is
the fealty to an ideal, regardless of, and sometimes in spite of, recompense,
representative of truth faith?
For mystics: yes.
What if a character’s reward seemed out of sync with their intent or ac-
tions? Or there seemed to be no connection between action and reaction?
Something beyond absurdity, where things actually did happen, but more
akin to a hall of mirrors or voyage in a crazy car.
A Simone Weil comment concerning the direction of human civilization
might offer the underpinning structure for a theater piece: “Our present sit-
uation more or less resembles that of a party of absolutely ignorant travelers
who find themselves in a motorcar launched at full speed and driverless across
broken country” (Weil, 2004, p. 114). How might this look as a narrative arc?
Or perhaps one of the characters suffers under the normative “cause and
effect” cycle, while none others in the piece do?
Confusing? Certainly. Thought provoking? If successfully presented, abso-
lutely. A strange and uncomfortable frame for a dramatic arc:

Cat goes up tree; Billy gets an ice cream cone; cat falls on Billy’s head;
Billy’s Mom calls Billy home for dinner: ‘I made your favorite meal! Pigs
in the blanket.’ Billie’s Dad does a somersault. Billie’s Mom leaves the
family to join the circus.

Decimating the cause and effect dynamic leads the mystical theater maker
into a high-mountain meadow filled with an array of beautiful wildf lowers,
with the possibility to pluck them!

Real reality

You cannot describe it; you cannot picture it; you cannot admire it; don’t
try to eat it raw. Your true self has nowhere to hide; when the world is
destroyed, it is not destroyed.
(Mumon Ekai in Sekida, 2005, p. 82)
 Mysticism in theater 113
One of the most important mystical ideals is that real reality lurks beneath
agreed-upon objective reality, something on the other side of TV shows and
Instagram feeds, restaurant happy hours, sales at Best Buy stores, and what
momma told you when you were a child.
Remember the clarion call of mysticism: whatever you think it is, it’s
something else.
The acknowledgment across mystical systems that agreed-upon objective
reality is an illusion or dream, represents another important device for the
mystical theater maker. This might be honored by presenting reality as pro-
visional. Or never agreed upon. Or perhaps agreed upon within the play at
all times, yet changing to the audience.
This does not mean offering two competing ideas of the truth, as we so
often see within political discourse. But offering a dissolution of reality into
various points of view, or constituent parts, or into . . . nothing at all. As
something impossible to grasp, to hold onto, to build into a worldview.
Perhaps a whole play takes place in some liminal place where no one can
ever agree on what’s really happening. Where actions begin, but never lead
anywhere because fundamental aspects of the world give way or change rad-
ically and immediately. Forcing the characters to constantly reconsider the
world within which they operate, instead of operating in an agreed-upon
world. Where the narrative arc is based on the game Chutes and Ladders,
instead of the normative time arrow.
Or a play might f latten the “reality” of the piece into a single point of view.
The personalities of all characters and impact of all actions pass through the
sieve of a single consciousness, twisting, discoloring, and disturbing the ac-
tion outside of the head of the main character, while that character remains
solid and apparently stable in their “reality” of the play.
The presentation of a single point-of-view such as this, or a kaleidoscope of
different, sometimes overlapping, sometimes conf licting, truths, represents a
more “realistic” conception of human experience than the current theatrical
idea of “realism.” Today, in productions around the Western world, reality is
presented from the eye-in-the-sky point of view, where all characters share
the same actuality.
But life doesn’t work like this.
All humans experience the world from their particular point of view.
There is no such thing as objective reality. There are currently 7.7 billion
different realities on this earth, while mystics assure that behind all of these
rests a single Truth.
An important point to keep in mind when creating mystical theater is the
illusion of reality, and the real reality that lurks behind it.

Using myth to create myth

The reconsideration of a production as myth (as opposed to a realistic,
politically-­oriented story) infuses a production with timeless import. Ancient
114 Mysticism in theater
Taoist thinkers, medieval Sufis, Zen masters, and 18th-century European
Hasidic teachers all utilized strange, sometimes seemingly incomprehensible,
teaching stories as a method of meditation, learning, and, after a particularly
intense prayer session in which the adept experienced ego-dissolution, to aid
in rejoining one’s ego and then the stream of this world.
These tales, aphorisms, and allegories represented fables, pointing toward
and clarifying deeper truths.
Reading through various spiritual tales opens doorways to new manners
of imagining reality. They might inspire novel conceptions of a narrative
arc, of effect and cause, and of strange characters to populate the plays. Their
messages will offer fresh ideas for envisioning concepts of wisdom, human
interaction, good versus evil, attainment versus uselessness, and even sanity
versus insanity. These tales unveil fresh ways of steering the theatrical pres-
entation into uncharted waters.
Remember: “deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek
safety, it is on the shore” (Saadi of Shiraz in Shah, 1971, p. 192).
I would strongly urge mystical theater makers to explore these historical,
mystical tales in more depth, by reading some of the collections noted at the
end of this chapter. It behooves us now, however, to brief ly peruse a couple
of the stories, to give examples of how these might inspire contemporary
theater-making.
The Sufi tale called “When the Waters were Changed” (Dhu’l Nun),
which we saw in the previous chapter (and synced with ideas expressed by
Henrik Ibsen), might well inspire a creative manner of framing the myth of a
production. The story, to refresh your memory, is as follows:

Khidr, the teacher of Moses, visited a village and told the denizens that
on a certain date, all the water in the town which had not been specially
hoarded would be replaced with water that drove humans mad. Given
the propensity for humanity to ignore the warnings of prophets, only
one person collected the sweet water and stored it.
Sure enough, on the appointed date, the streams stopped running, the
wells ran dry, and the person who had listened to Khidr went to his re-
treat and drank his preserved water. Then, when the water began to f low
again, the singular person re-entered the community to find the rest of
his community thinking and talking in an entirely different way from
before; yet they had no memory of what had happened, nor of having
been warned, or even who they had been prior to that day.
When the one who hoarded the old water tried to talk to the mem-
bers of this new society, they thought that he had gone insane, and they
showed hostility or compassion, but not understanding.
This single remaining sane person grew so lonely as an outcast over
the days and weeks that followed, that he finally drank the new water
and became like the rest. Once separate, he became embraced, forgetting
 Mysticism in theater 115
about his own store of special water. His fellows looked upon him as a
mad person who had miraculously been restored to sanity.
(Shah, 1993, p. 21)

Needless to say, this story opens a wealth of dramatic possibilities. Often

in contemporary theater, the protagonist-hero twists fate in their direction.
However, what if the direction of fate twists the hero? And not as a morality
tale, but in strange, unforeseen ways. Fate twists the hero in two moral direc-
tions at once. Or fate turns the hero around in circles, twists their lives into
a pretzel, then leaves them exactly where they began the play. Or the same
fate—not “drinking the Koolaid”—takes two similar characters and moves
their story lines in opposite or skew directions.
The point is not to reprise the Sufi tale, but to use its unusual juxtaposi-
tions and strange narrative proposition (insanity = normality) to inspire fresh
manners of seeing and presenting theater.
As Thomas Merton assured:

The sanity of the modern man is about as useful to him as the huge bulk
and muscles of the dinosaur. If he were a little less sane, a little more
doubtful, a little more aware of his absurdities and contradictions, per-
haps there might be the possibility of his survival.
(Merton, 1971, p. 162)

Help, us, O theater maker, to move past passive agreement with the norm to
deep questioning!
Other possibilities abound. What if the sane protagonist remained sane,
having to live outside of a society which changed around them, believing
in their heart that they were correct and everyone else mad? Or what about
some unusual device within the play, either otherworldly like special water,
or simply a book with special import that everyone sees differently, but only
one person sees correctly, which framed the action of the play?
What if the idea of sanity became the protagonist, and the concept of
belonging become the antagonist, with the characters orbiting around these
two poles?
Another morality-bending idea for mystical tinting, one which turns nor-
mative, religious thinking on its head, appeared within both the Sufi and
Hasidic traditions. An act such as stealing, considered a sin in mainstream
Judaism and Islam (among most other religions), evinces esoteric meaning
for mystical thinkers. Mystical practitioners view everything as belonging to
God alone, so medieval thinkers developed a conception of thievery contrary
to that stated by the exoteric laws of their respective religions.
Additionally, the achievement of the spiritual state of equanimity suggests
that a practitioner of either path will never take thievery in a personal way.
Their individual ego and attachment to things has been completely effaced
116 Mysticism in theater
through prayer and correct living. The act of stealing ref lects only on the
actor, and in no way on the victim.
A story concerning the Sufi Junayd, who was also a judge in Baghdad’s law
courts, runs thusly:

It is said that one night a thief entered Junayd’s house but found noth-
ing to steal except a shirt, which he took. The next day, Junayd passed
through a bazaar and saw his shirt being sold by an auctioneer. The pro-
spective buyer was insisting that someone be provided who would testify
that the seller really owned the shirt. Junayd stepped up and said, ‘I am
ready to testify that it is his.’
(Fadiman and Frager, 1997, p. 189)

Similarly, a short tale was told about the Hasidic Rabbi Zev Wolf of Zbarazh
(d. 1800):

One night, thieves entered Rabbi Wolf ’s house and took whatever they
happened to find. From his room, the tzaddik watched them but did not
do anything to stop them. When they were through, they took some
utensils and among them a jug from which a sick man had drunk that
very evening. Rabbi Wolf ran after them. ‘My good people,’ he said,
‘whatever you have found here, I beg you to regard as gifts from me. I do
not begrudge these things to you at all. But please be careful about that
jug! The breath of a sick man is clinging to it, and you might catch his
disease!’ From this time on, he said every evening before going to bed:
‘All my possessions are common property,’ so that—in case thieves came
again—they would not be guilty of theft.
(Buber, 1991, p. 161)

What about a production in which the moral universe revolves around some
normative center, as light around a black hole? Not centered on the growth of
a character (thief turns out to be good at heart), but orbiting a moral universe
defined by strange, indistinct, and perhaps shifting rules. Where thieving is
not thieving, or where right and wrong become muddled, indistinct, incom-
prehensible. How disturbing to the audience, to see a sympathetic character
they relate to, ill-treated, yet responding without concern. Or stealing with-
out penalty.
Can the theater maker create a new myth which stands normative moral
or social framing on its head, or ignores it altogether, in such a manner as to
engage the spectator in questioning their assumptions? Allowing the query
to fester, then seep below the consciousness, into the recesses of their mental
processes?
Zen koans offer an even stranger framing for a theatrical presentation.
These short vignettes are, by design, incomprehensible to the rational thought
process. Their answer is not to be reached by reasoning and deduction. They
 Mysticism in theater 117
offer brief anecdotes which appear both intractable and insoluble, yet which
the student must untangle. For instance, one important koan goes like this:
“A monk asked Ummon (d. 949): ‘What is Dharmakaya?’ Ummon said: ‘Be-
yond the six’” (Sekida, 2005, p. 277).
The explanation by Zen scholar Katsuki Sekida sheds a (very) little light
on the matter:

‘Beyond the six’ seems highly obscure. But this obscurity arises because
we are in the habit of working with sharply defined concepts arrived at
by the operation of our intellect. If only we return to direct intuitive
understanding, such seeming obscurity, along with all the pointless elab-
orations, will vanish like mist.
(Sekida, 2005, p. 278)

Reading through a collection of Zen “cases,” as they are called, opens a well-
spring of bizarre possibility for reimagining story arcs, as well as characters’
interrelationships.
This is also a fun one:

Hyakujo asked Ungan, ‘With your mouth and lips closed, how would
you say it?’ Ungan said: ‘Osho, do you have them or not?’ Hyakujo said,
‘My successors will be missing.’
(Sekida, 2005, p. 335)

These represent but two of thousands of such brief, seemingly opaque, sto-
ries and aphorisms in the Zen vernacular. Of course, there is an underly-
ing purpose to these mind-bending moments. In the case of Hyakujo and
Ungan, we are told by Sekida that Ungan still groped blindly in the dark,
as evidenced by his dull and irresolute response. (Though how Sekida can
see Ungan’s response as dull and irresolute, instead of on-point and elu-
cidating, escapes me.) Hyakujo’s response indicates that after he is dead,
if the world is to rely upon Ungan as his follower, his “successor will be
missing.” Ungan does not have the irrational conception of reality needed
to be a Zen teacher.
Remember, though, the point is not to “understand” what it means. In
Zen teaching, the goal is to use the seeming absurdity or opacity of the tale as
a jumping-off point to move beyond understanding, toward pure cognition.
By appreciating that there is meaning in these stories, that it takes place
on a plane beyond the rational, conscious thought process, and that it points
to ultimate reality, opens a gate toward more profound theater. A theater of
surprise, which approaches a direct intuitive connection with the audience,
helping to clear the mists of rational thought and replacing it with a deeper
comprehension, beyond conscious understanding.
In fact, we have already have seen koan-like mystical inlay utilized on the
living stage. In the mid-20th century, Absurdist drama entered the theater
118 Mysticism in theater
through the fringes of dramatic history, enlightening by confusing, upsetting
the faith in the conscious ability to comprehend and get to the bottom of
things. However, far from presenting silly, meaningless expositions, these
plays were “about making life meaningful given our absurd situation” (Ben-
nett, 2011, p. 4). They represented commentary on the deepest aspects of the
human situation.
Zen koans offer a holistic and encompassing frame for theatrical produc-
tions. As the Chinese Zen master Mumonkan noted: “make your whole body
one great inquiry. Day and night work intently at it. Do not attempt nihilistic
or dualistic interpretations” (Shibayama, 1974, p. 9). Move beyond discursive
thought, yet continue thinking.
How to apply this Zen ideal to a 21st-century theatrical production? Well,
what is the sound of one hand clapping? For a playwright, it might represent
a piece written first in subtext, then shrouded in dialogue and action exhib-
iting everything except what it means. Perhaps one or more characters speak
in Zen koan-like dialogue, and the other characters either don’t notice, un-
derstand them perfectly, or respond to them as the insane water hoarder from
the story “When the Waters were Changed” above.
The point is to think about what you want to do, decide on a clear
course of action, and then forget about all that and get to work on the
play. Or, as Setcho Juken (d. 1052) said: “Putting aside the four proposi-
tions, the hundred negations, you can only nod to yourself ” (Sekida, 2005,
p. 337).
Gather bits of dialogue from the subway and knit them into one char-
acter’s speech. Insert Zen koan fragments verbatim into the theatrical
presentation. Perhaps one of the characters speaks with the lilt and vocab-
ulary of a six year old. Are they wise beyond their years? The village id-
iot? Do they present the mystical ideal of wise ignorance? Or are they just
simpletons? Is there a difference between learned ignorance and childish
ignorance?
How about a character that doesn’t appear particularly sympathetic, yet
expounds the most meaningful comments at all the right times?
The point is to trust your instincts. Connect to your inner self, and let
the words and production fall where it may. A tightrope walk of ultimate
purpose above an abyss of meaninglessness. Moving along this knife’s edge
represents the first step toward mystical clarity in your work. As the Per-
sian poet Mahmoud Shabestari (d. 1340) noted: “A narrow path between
Hell’s bottomless abyss, fine and sharp as a sword blade” (Perry, p. 205,
1971).
Walk it.
While it is true that if you want to be successful, you must do what everyone
else is doing, but a little better. But if you want to make a difference, set your
creative sail toward unknown lands and never look back. Mystical theater
might not always be the quickest route to Broadway or London’s West End,
but great art forges at the outer edges of popular culture.
 Mysticism in theater 119
Time
One final idea for mystical tinting concerns time: the passage of it within
a play, and the presentation of it within the narrative. Mystics conceive of
time as a lower entity, one that the uninitiated consider bedrock, but the seer
experiences as provisional. After all, mystics travel to the eternity outside
of time during their practice. From there, they perceive how the illusion of
time simply represents another hurdle on the tariqah, or pathway to the Self.
Meister Eckhart informed:

Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater ob-
stacle to God than time. And not only time but temporalities, not only
temporal things but temporal affections; not only temporal affections,
but the very taint and smell of time.
(Huxley, 1970, p. 189)

The 20th-century Sufi Sheikh Nazim al-Haqqani offered a more succinct

explanation: “Time and space are the illusions which bind us” (Al-Haqqani,
2002, p. 97).
How might a broadening of the conception of time inf luence a theatrical
production? Well, consider the entrance into the theater as a step from “time”
into “eternity.” How will this inf luence the pre-show? The lighting? The
sound design? Any hidden actors placed around the audience, creating con-
tent without the spectators knowing they are being acted upon?
How about running time backward? Shattering it into a thousand pieces,
and putting it inexpertly back together, like a child gluing a broken vase back
together before their parents get home? Or having two of the characters oper-
ating in different times: one with a normative time arrow and the other exist-
ing in eternal, mystical time? Or one in the past and the other in the present?
How might circular time affect the drama? How about a full production
taking place at one single instant? Or seeing the effect before the cause, lead-
ing to something completely skew or unexpected? Or removing cause and ef-
fect entirely, with seemingly disparate events happening at different “times”
within the play, but all synchronously linked in the Jungian fashion.
What about a series of different time perspectives? We humans anthropo-
morphize time, to the extent that many people genuinely believe that when
God created the universe in six “days,” these “days” correspond to one rev-
olution of our earth around our sun. Even though time is relative, as a f ly
might live a full life in hours, a sequoia will in hundreds of years, a moun-
tain in millions of years, a solar system in billions of years, and a universe in
eons. For each, a “day” will appear markedly different from the outside, yet
perhaps be experienced as exactly the same from within their internal experi-
ence. Can characters live in different time frames? Can some experiences take
place over seconds or minutes, while others (perhaps more spiritually true)
take hundreds or millions of years?
120 Mysticism in theater
Certainly, there is some precedence for this kind of time-bending, as
Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Skin of Our Teeth takes place
over both minutes and eons. And Absurdist plays often take place entirely
outside of time.
Once the timeline of normative theater and mundane life becomes ques-
tioned, a wealth of creative options appears. Granted, it takes a deft surgery,
working with an artistic scalpel, to find the knife’s edge of possibility be-
tween here and eternity, but the field of possibility revealed by dissociating
time from our 24/7 conception of it opens a doorway into the hidden spirit.
Follow the pathway beyond time, whether it leads to a point in the future,
in a circle, deep into a labyrinth, or to somewhere completely unexpected . . .

Mystical inlay
Mystical tinting inf luences the full breadth of a production. It states: you en-
tered the world of mystical theater. Mystical inlay, on the other hand, suffuses
what might appear to be a more normative production with concealed gems
of eternal wisdom, offering a subtle manner of infusing mystical moments
into the thoughts, hearts, and souls of the subjects.
I mean: “audience.”
Mystical inlay comprises a variety of devices, including specific quotes
from mystics, images, ideas, and other facets taken from the human religion,
inserted into the dialogue, staging, acting, design, or direction of the produc-
tion. Its symbols might be borrowed from mystical poetry such as Sufi wine
poems (in which “grapes” represent mainstream organized religion, while the
“wine” refers the distilled, esoteric heart at the center of the teachings), the
words from Christian mystics (such as St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of
the Soul), Hasidic tales, Kabbalistic tracts, Zen koans, and other texts created
at the absolute height of the human spiritual search, where all paths unite.
The ideal of mystical inlay emerges from medieval poetic forms. First
Muslim Sufis and then Jewish Kabbalists (both c. 8th–12th century) infused
their work with “spiritual turbines,” text taken verbatim from their holy
scriptures and inlaid into their poetry. This provided a connection between
the particular of the specific poem, and the eternal, toward which the poetry
ascended. At that time, any educated reader would immediately recognize
the scriptural text, as well as its import, and be borne along on the spiritual
wings of the known language and symbols.
We live in a different era. Mystical inlay must plumb depths deeper than
any organized creed. It infuses spiritual energy into the living theater, not
with known religious symbols and language but as an unremarked and odor-
less essence of eternal wisdom. It permeates the sacred space, and then the
mind and heart of the spectators. Oftentimes, the audience will not recognize
the original texts, symbols, or ideas, or even be aware of what they ingested.
Mystical inlay is not didactic. It does not represent the protagonist step-
ping downstage into a spotlight, clearing their throat, and intoning in direct
 Mysticism in theater 121
address: “And so, as you can see, we all can get along. We just need to under-
stand how deeply we are connected at our innermost spirit.” As Martin Lings
noted in Shakespeare’s Window into the Soul: “The true function of art is not
didactic . . . It’s function is not so much to define spiritual wisdom as to give
us a taste of that wisdom” (Lings, 2006, p. 194).
Clarity and simplicity will be spoiled if one relies on spiritual symbols from
any single culture, no matter how much the artist themself may relate to and
be touched by them. Greek theater academic Antigone Katsouri noted, con-
cerning the use of traditional symbols in theatrical productions:

A director may falsely believe that they suit [the production] because they
transmit the exotic aura of tradition . . . such an amalgam not only spoils
the efficacy of tragedy but also confuses the spectators who no longer
know what they are watching.
(Katsouri, 2014, p. 396)

Mystical inlay should be inset as carefully as mother-of-pearl into an ancient

cedar chest. It should support, expand, suffuse, but never overwhelm, preach,
or teach. The vessel in which the spiritual turbines operate should be recog-
nizable: a theatrical production in a space in New York or London or Toronto
or Paris or Rome or Buenos Aires or Kansas City. Yet, the mystical moments
should remain hidden as diamonds sprinkled through their host kimberlite.
The timeless ideals are carefully harvested from the buried igneous rock of
the world’s exoteric religious paths, alchemized through their insertion
into the production, inspiring playwriting and acting, choreography and
movement, lighting and sound design, music, creation of the playing space,
theatrical direction, and interaction between the actors and the audience.
This thaumaturgy (wonderworking) in no way changes the original, time-
less messages. It simply transforms them into tiny spiritual engines embedded
in a format recognizable as contemporary, avant-garde theater.

The playwright

The playwright today must dig at the root of the sickness of today . . .
the death of the old God, and the failure of science and materialism to
give any satisfying new one for the surviving primitive religious instinct
to find a meaning for life . . . anyone trying to do big work today must
have the big subject behind all the little subjects of their plays, or they
are simply scribbling around the surface of things and have no more real
status than a parlor entertainer.
(Rosenheim, 1952, p. 217)

Two manners exist of infusing a play script with mystical inlay. One being in
the original, medieval poetic manner: by placing the words of mystics into
122 Mysticism in theater
the dialogue. Another facet utilizes the ideas explored in Chapter 1 of this
treatise, such as equanimity, acceptance, mysticism of the mundane, bewil-
derment, humility, uselessness, and the Divine Nought, to inf luence one of
the characters or interactions between personages.
In theory, mystical inlay differs from tinting in that these spiritual turbines
are inlaid into what appears to be a “normal” theatrical production. The ideas
or dialogue don’t completely inf luence the whole arc of the work. Of course,
in practice, the lines between inlay and tinting are fungible. A play might
employ both at different times, or overlay them, or use only one or the other.
For our purposes, however, we draw lines as clearly as we can, and then
encourage you, the passionate theater maker, to smudge, rearrange, change,
complete, or ignore as you see fit.
This section on playwriting, and those which follow on other facets of
a theatrical production, do not represent the last word in mystical theater-­
making. This model represents an introduction to a new and deeper manner
of imagining your work as a theater artist, and the spiritual possibility of the
living theater. After reading the section, read further mystical texts, kick
ideas around with other creators, think more deeply about whatever specific
aspects of the mystic’s path most interest you. Gather with like-minded artists
in salons or stand at Hyde Park Corner or meet in coffee houses or pubs or
train stations to develop new manners of suffusing your work with mystical
meaning. Use any impetus to devise new, surprising, and mystically bewil-
dering narrative situations, language, and outcomes.
Remember, the mystical theater maker works to open doorways into the
spirit, not to offer an easy answer to some social or political riddle. No “ah-
hah, I get it moments” here.
Just a voyage through the 50 gates of understanding, and beyond …

Language
Like the universe itself, theater begins with the word.
And like the universe, a play script is some-thing crafted from no-thing,
then taking sensual form in time and space. This human act of creativity
represents an echo of the original generative act. An individual, from out of
empty space, conjures a world which is then made real by actors, director, and
designers upon a stage.
In human interaction, words are used as often to obfuscate and confuse,
as to clarify and enlighten. Language sometimes represents a chimera, the
building blocks of illusion, something which fools us into believing we can
understand. Yet it also provides the doorway to the deeper spirit lurking
beneath the sounds and meaning of words. Communication is vital to both
learning and unlearning, both of which must occupy the forefront of the
mystical theater maker’s consciousness.
What are we to make of this paradoxical situation? That words must some-
times be used to overcome the fallacy provided by our ability to understand
their meaning? Simone Weil offers an explanation: “The world is a closed
 Mysticism in theater 123
door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through” (Weil, 1973,
p. 145). This attribution might apply directly to language, which is how we
humans build our world, and the comprehension of it.
So how to create theater using a medium (language) which might just as
easily confuse, as enlighten? A medium which is also, according to the Book
of Genesis, the fundamental creative building block of the universe.
This is first of many paradoxical challenges along the road to a mystical
theater production.
For the playwright, the illness and the antidote stem from the same source:
language. As Zen master Ummon said: “Medicine and illness cure each
other” (Sekida, 2005, p. 370).
Do not underestimate the power of language. Its tint is the color of water.
Words can be used for good as well as for ill. From Rumi’s poetry of love
to the crassest political language driving a nation to war, the raw material
remains the same.
At its best, language represents, as Simone Weil hinted, the way through.
Nelson Mandela said: “if you talk to a man in a language he understands, that
goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
The Sufi al-Suhrawardi explained: “if words come out of the heart, they will
enter the heart, but if they come from the tongue, they will not pass beyond
the ears.”
On the f lip side, in his chronicle of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides (d.
400 BCE) noted that in war, “language is a deadly weapon and early victim”
(Lakoff, 2000, p. 253). And George Orwell assured: “the mixture of vague-
ness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern
English prose” (Orwell, 1946, online).
Point being this: playwright, tread softly and with great respect for what
you write. For the mystical theater maker, words represent a first step on
the path toward mystical bewilderment, but only the first step. Zen master
Mumonkan said: “Words cannot express things; speech does not convey the
spirit” (Sekida, 2005, p. 110). The female Sufi Saint Rabi’a went further,
assuring: “asking for mercy with the tongue is the business of liars” (Sells,
1996, p. 164).
You traffic in a medium which has launched a thousand ships, which has
slaughtered millions of people, which has assured every statesman, dictator,
and genocidal maniac not only that they were doing “good,” but convinced
millions to follow them over the cliff of death and destruction.
Of course, Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, the crafters of all scriptures, and every
mystic known or unknown have all used this delicate and dangerous imple-
ment as well.
Take a moment. Appreciate the power and awesome history of human lin-
guistics. Also, understand the Divine paradox within which you write. Kat-
suki Sekuda noted: “There is a saying that Zen truth cannot and should not
be preached . . . from the principles of Zen, talking about Zen is nonsense.
But to initiate a novice, it is absolutely necessary to talk about it” (Sekuda,
2005, p. 221).
124 Mysticism in theater
Fear not, though, as Sekuda also assures, “the ultimate embraces all contra-
dictions and inconsistencies” (Sekuda, 2005, p. 187).
When fully respected, language offers a powerful manner for mystical in-
lay. As noted above, one of the best manners is to place mystical words or
sayings directly into the dialogue—brief notes such as “doubt is not a very
agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one” (Voltaire), “cleverness is
mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition” (Rumi), “so long as one retains
their sword, they have not attained fearlessness” (Gandhi), “wisdom begins in
ignorance” (Bodhidharma), “I was fortunate in that I never needed anything
until I already had it” (Rabbi Mikhail), or “you only truly possess that which
cannot be lost in a shipwreck” (al-Ghazali). Any of these statements delicately
inlaid into the mouth of a character will strike with a gentle but persistent
power, especially if f lowing naturally from the action in the play!
Needless to say, as a playwright reads through mystical texts, noting down
strange, thought-provoking, and beautiful quotes, they can discover hun-
dreds or even thousands of moments which can alter and deepen the meaning
of their work. I would suggest keeping a notebook, or even individual note-
cards, with quotes. When you are writing, these can be by your side for easy
access, inspiration, and usage.
The trick, of course, is to drop these lines unremarked into an interaction,
thereby exploding the normative narrative, moral, and personality walls of
the moment, opening a pathway to a more profound meaning.
The voice matters as well. Drop these mystical moments into a surpris-
ing mouth: a homeless character, the Wall Street-working financial analyst,
a broken-up boyfriend, a person who appears more foolish or unschooled
than the rest. The more tactfully embedded in an unsuspecting character,
the more surprising, powerful, and thought-provoking. “Truth often chooses
very odd vessels through which to manifest itself ” (Catlin, 1939, p. 31).
Antonin Artaud, writing in Theatre and Its Double, expressed the plasticity
of language and offered a novel way of thinking about dialogue:

To make metaphysics out of a spoken language is to make the language

express what it does not ordinarily express: to make use of it in a new,
exceptional and unaccustomed fashion, to reveal its possibility for pro-
ducing physical shock, to divide and dismantle it actively in space . . . to
consider language as a form of incantation.
(Artaud, 1997, p. 46)

Of course, language in theater often presents as “heightened,” sometimes

even poetic. But with mystical inlay, another “new, exceptional and unac-
customed fashion” deepens to amber, the import of the dialogue. If at first it
shocks, it should then sweeten into wonder. If at first it entertains, perhaps
these words evolve into shock. And if at first the words seem simple, perhaps
upon further inspection, the import unravels, and one is left deeper in the
realm of bewilderment: the Divine question mark at the heart of being.
 Mysticism in theater 125
The wisest minds appear simple to the uninitiated.
The mystic conceives of language as a barrier as well as a doorway, and this
must be kept in mind as one builds their work. Language within mystical
theater might well appear to follow normative pathways, but it must ulti-
mately rest on quicksand. Something with seeming solidity which gives way,
dragging the audience deeper into their own unconscious, the place beyond
language where mystical perplexity awaits.
The Persian theater academic Dr. Bahee Hadaegh, in writing of the
13th-century Sufi mystic Muhyiddin ibn Arabi and similarities with
20th-century Theatre of the Absurd, noted:

The radical devaluation of language . . . lack of communication, irrele-

vancy of speech, and addiction to silence take the individuals from the
conscious world into the spirituality of the unconscious . . . the whole
process of transmutation cuts off the relation of the individuals from the
meaningless void of the surrounding reality.
(Hadaegh, 2011, p. 196)

The devaluation of language, of course, means that other aspects of the

production must rise in importance. We’ll discuss this further along in the
sections on other designers’ mystical work. But with a reconsideration of
language, the holistic aspect of the piece rises in importance, with mystical
ideas inf luencing equally all other design and presentation aspects of the play.
Finally, building on the uncertainty of language, silence might become an
important textual aspect of a mystical play. The Prophet Muhammad stated
that silence is the first stage of worship. Meister Eckhart assured that “noth-
ing in creation is so like God as stillness.” And the 20th-century mystic Si-
mone Weil said: “the word of God is silence” (Weil, 1999, p. 467).
Silence means far more than a momentary pause between speech. If a play-
wright gives silence as much weightage as text and dialogue, how might this
affect the play and the audience? What fills the silence? Discomfort? Relax-
ation? Tears? A slow awakening or unraveling? The sound of the characters
chewing ref lectively on a slice of pizza?
In silence, another world awaits. Used with dexterity and sensitivity, it of-
fers the mystical playwright another doorway into the soul of their characters
and, more importantly, past the thin consciousness of the spectator.
Shhhhhh . . .

Myth

The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the “founding of the

world:” where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself,
the world comes into existence.
(Eliade, 1987, p. 63)
126 Mysticism in theater
Ancient theater presented unifying myths.
A return to this sacred space should be central in the mind of the mystical
playwright. Drawing a strong connection between the particular and the
eternal, and recapturing theater’s roots as a creator of myth through shared
language, ideas, symbols, and ritual, all mined from the human religion.
Building myth through mystical theater presents a unique challenge, of
course, as this model strips the normative religious symbols and stories from
the production. No crosses, no Biblical tales, no Qur’anic injunctions, no
Moses and the burning bush, all representing stories and images which would
be clearly understood by some subset of the audience, though all pointing to
the exclamation point of religious certainty at the heart of being.
The underpinning ideas for a new myth draw from the wellspring of the
human spirit. The symbols emerge from the mystical concepts that we have
explored, be it equanimity, bewilderment, faith’s abode (beyond the 50th
gate), the knife’s edge of the spiritual path (with the abyss always lurking
on either side of the narrow path), the surreality of accepted reality, the
wisdom of the awareness of one’s ignorance, acceptance of all outcomes of
actions while still actively engaged with life, and so forth. These ideas be-
come bedrock for the new human tale. From this ancient mystical marble, a
new parable is sculpted, polished, and inserted into the center of a theatrical
production.
These new myths, built from symbols out of the mystics’s quest, act as
glue for the plot structure, as nontraditional as that structure might be. They
provide the internal coherence of the production, activating the connection
between the shared, spiritual pathways latent in all religions and the con-
temporary theater audience. The resonance emerges from the fact that all
religions have within their teachings these mystical nuggets, though often
overlooked, trampled upon, or denied.
The specifics of a new myth must emerge from each playwright’s passion,
personal beliefs, and spiritual predilection, but some general ideas might help
spur the creation. The main symbols, dialogue, character, or plot can be
drawn from any number of innumerable mystical stories and antecedents, but
might be inspired by one or more of the following:

• The wise fool.

• A contemporary character involved in the worldly struggle, yet steeped
in equanimity.
• A counterintuitive plot diagram through the seven valleys of a painful,
mystical search only to find success, alone and bewildered.
• The meek, who don’t inherit the earth, but are trampled, but in being so,
leave the audience with more questions than answers.
• The temporal leader hanging upon Rumi’s “gallows,” swinging there as
a warning to others.
• The use of any of the thousands of mystical stories and aphorisms to pro-
vide the narrative structure.
 Mysticism in theater 127
• The basing of the story in the counterintuitive twisting of a moral uni-
verse, where thieving is forgiven, worldly success is eschewed, and Truth
exists beyond good and evil.

As the ideas are novel and unrecognized by the audience, the themes and
“structure” should be unveiled in the first scene, and then infused throughout
the action from different angles and in different ways. Remember, the Sufi or
Zen way of teaching is to look at the same thing a hundred times, each time
seeing something completely different, yet fundamentally the same. Every
image, every idea dissolves into a kaleidoscope, on the other side of which
resides the singular reality.
One might use Plato’s Cave as a structural element, with normative char-
acters and situations helping to throw the mythical ideas into relief. The
audience sees the shadows of the idea thrown, yet the nugget of truth re-
mains hidden. Perhaps the issue addressed is faith, with the normative char-
acter attempting (and failing) to find it within a religious path, while another
character, seeming to want nothing, exhibits clear (though unremarked by
the play’s other characters) signs of humility, equanimity, and acceptance.
The religiously yearning character is “successful” in business, while the other
might be a more modest success, yet somehow not worried about it.
And at the climax of the play, or in the case of mystical theater, the devo-
lution of the plot into the bewilderment and faith beyond the fiftieth gate,
the main symbol, made clear throughout the play by its opposite (normative
religious yearning, for instance, versus the mystical ideal of acceptance), sud-
denly stands clearly forth, emphasizing the intensity of its reality and psycho-­
spiritual truth.
Or, perhaps it doesn’t stand forth at all, but submerges in the confusion of
the character who is successful, but unfulfilled. Remember, these mystical
ideas might not be clearly stated or triumphant. Myth based in the human re-
ligion ends in a question mark for the audience. No Zeusian victories or Bab-
ylonian cathartic matricides. The goal is not to present mystical truth—far be
it from us to claim such understanding! It remains the mystical playwright’s
desire to open doorways, ask questions, and leave the spectator shaken, at least
a little bit, in their certainty that the myth of their lives they e­ xperience—due
to their education, the Internet, cable news, and advertising represents the
ultimate myth.
Psychologist Jordan Peterson (b. 1962) paraphrased Carl Jung: “Everybody
acts out a myth, but very few people know what their myth is. And you
should know what your myth is because it might be a tragedy and maybe
you don’t want it to be” (Peterson, 2017, online). The mystical theater maker
opens the doorway to a shared myth based on timeless ideals, beyond the per-
sonal dramatic tragedies in love, yearning for success and money, or family
tribulations that so many of us live.
Many other ideas come into focus in this work. A few to consider when
building a new tradition, which might inf luence any one or more of the
128 Mysticism in theater
action, characters’s interactions, dialogue, framing of the action, and so forth
of the drama, include:

• Strength versus weakness (spiritual power often resembles temporal

weakness: “Jesus Christ was pleased to assume the likeness of every poor
man and compared himself to every poor man in order that no man who
believes in him should exalt himself over his brother” St. Simeon, d. 459,
in Harvey, 1997, p. 61).
• Wisdom versus knowledge (wisdom often appears as ignorance, while
worldly “knowledge” stands as a veil between the personal “I” and the
universal Self: “Mind is not what you think it is; the Buddha is not what
you think him to be” Sekuda, 2005, p. 105).
• Understanding versus bewilderment (“understanding” represents a
spiritual faux pas: “knowing anything about the essence of the real is
ignorance” Bistami in Sells, 1996, p. 239).
• “Reality” versus Reality (“The Way is not a matter of knowing or not
knowing. Knowing is delusion” Nansen in Sekuda, 2005, p. 73).
• Acceptance versus struggle (a particularly challenging idea, as captured in
this statement by the Chinese Taoist Chuang Tzu}:
Great truths do not take hold of the hearts of the masses. And now,
as all the world is in error, how shall I, though I know the true path,
how shall I guide? If I know that I cannot succeed and yet try to
force success, this would be but another source of error. Better then
to desist, and strive no more. But if I do not strive, who will?
(Huxley, 1970, pp. 139–140)

• Good/evil versus Truth (Truth lies out beyond good and evil: “Those
who argue about right and wrong are those enslaved by right and
wrong . . . Hell or heaven, the enlightened person doesn’t mind which
way he goes” Sekuda, 2005, pp. 71, 72).

There are myriad ways to embed these mystical ideas into the plot and char-
acters. Paradox and bewilderment remain at the core of the mystical ex-
perience. Building a play that meanders, confuses, answers, takes off like
a Wright Brother’s airplane, and then f lutters away crazily like a butterf ly
makes perfect sense in mystical theater.
A myth might grow in Glasgow or London’s East End or NYC’s East
Village or Oakland, California, as easily as they are proposed in the Vati-
can, al-Azhar, or Jerusalem. And unlike those myths, the mystical theater
maker’s story will be open to everyone, not just to a member of the correct
tribe.
Now, we will look at a couple specific mystical ideals—the Divine Nought
and the wise fool—to give some idea of how the cornucopia of possibilities
might be translated into specific inspiration for the stage.
 Mysticism in theater 129
Divine Nought

We do not know what God is. Even God cannot say what God is because
God is not anything . . . Literally God is not, because God transcends
being.
( John Scotus Eriugena, d. 877 in Carabine, 2000, p. 61)

The Divine Nought represents a central concept in all mystical paths, and
one which might inform the creation of a new theatrical myth. This concept
represents ultimate reality: the place from which all emerges, and to which
all returns. The challenge becomes to hollow out the middle of the plot, or
even a character, and yet show this very same emptiness to be the ultimate
purpose, the summum bonum of experience.
The manner of inlaying this “nothing” certainly challenges a writer and
will change from play-to-play. Bartleby the Scrivener, by Herman Melville (d.
1891), represents one interesting historical work to consider when thinking
of how this might unfold. In Melville’s piece, the main character simply says,
“I’d prefer not to,” to every question asked of him, losing his job (I’d prefer
not to work), losing his home (I’d prefer not to pay rent), and ending in jail
(I’d prefer not to obey any request at all), starving himself to death (I’d prefer
not to eat). Why? What does it mean? Did Bartleby achieve nothingness, and
therefore he had nothing left to achieve? We are not told.
The action in your play might ref lect the aspect, as Greek philosopher-­
emperor Marcus Aurelius assured, “that everything that exists is already
fraying at the edges, and in transition, subject to fragmentation and rot” (Au-
relius, 2003, p. 137). And this is true. But just as true is that the engine for the
emergence of everything and its demise stems from the same place: nothing.
What does nothing look like (theatrically) when it frays at the edges? Can
nothing only be defined by what it is not? Or, like a black hole, by that which
surrounds it? A dumb (unspeaking) character might be defined by other’s
perceptions of them, perceptions which change, conf lict, and jumble into
the corner of the stage, and none of which capture the depth or reality of the
person.
What about a character who runs toward some ultimate goal the whole
play, only to find, with great fanfare, nothing at the end? Anti-climactic? Im-
possible? How about taking inspiration from the Sufi Saint Junayd, who said:
“From realization of existence one falls into realization of witness through
the vanishing of existence; with the loss of his existence, his existence is puri-
fied . . . He is non-existent in his existence and existent in his non-existence”
(Sells, 1996, p. 254).
Can one of the characters attempt to reach a place of nonexisting exist-
ence? Not through a didactic, direct address voyage into the heart of Junayd’s
quote, but in (say) a futile attempt to “find themself ” through changes of
jobs, changes of partners, changes of clothes, meditation exercises, and so
130 Mysticism in theater
forth? And who might this character be set off against? Some wise fool who
rests secure in their own “nonexisting existence,” or someone who thinks the
search of the protagonist to be crazy?
Rumi assured that “things are known by their opposites,” so having the
mystical ideal set against “common sense” (a delightful oxymoronic, in and
of itself ) throws both into relief.
The Buddhist monk Bodhidharma assured that “when you understand,
reality depends on you. When you don’t understand, you depend on reality”
(Bodhidharma, 1987, p. 57). Let’s assume that few in the audience “under-
stand” in the sense that the Indian mystic meant. Hence, it might be that
a plot unfolds where the audience relates far more to the person trying to
muscle and master their reality, their fate, their future, operating under the
umbrella belief we have in the West, that humility and acceptance are for
losers. Set this character against one who lives life as a leaf in a stream, even
if the leaf is shunted into a cultural eddy or torn to shreds.
Who is correct? What is the end goal? Does the person who dies with the
most toys really win? You lead your f lock into what is considered insanity.
The slow unraveling of a character or your plot might ref lect this fact.

The mind as a whole—including the unconscious, the place of dreams

and phantasms and the source of awe—is like an ocean, of which the
ego remains mostly ignorant. But a psychotic is in touch with it; they are
swimming (one might say drowning) in it. They are not “out of their
mind,” but submerged into it.
(Shorto, 2000, p. 14)

Can you write a theater piece where the “insane” character appears as the
only one in touch with something primal and Divine, a nonexisting exist-
ence, while the confidently successful unravel before our eyes, regardless of
whether the character themself knows they are unraveling, or not?

The wise fool

There is no mystical ideal so contrary to popular belief as the wise fool.
We live in an era of the bleating pundit and economic expert, a deep faith
in the ability of science to solve our problems and tear open the universe
to understanding. We are defined by an overeducated yet spiritually adrift
society where “wisdom” and “Ivy League education” are considered synon-
ymous. (As I write this, eight of the nine United States Supreme Court Jus-
tices, considered the height of American legal wisdom, attended either Yale
or Harvard law school.)
The fool for God dives into paradox, bewilderment, and unknowing, ac-
cepting the incomprehensible as their bedrock faith. This makes them appear
ignorant and even idiotic to the culture around them. He or she lives in per-
plexed wonder at all aspects of the created world, which point in a straight line
 Mysticism in theater 131
to the incomprehensible heart of being. They have also achieved equanimity,
caring not a whit about what other people think of them, for good or ill.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 6th century, a neo-Platonic mystic)
captured this dynamic of eschewing human comprehension to arrive at be-
wildered ignorance: “Emptied of all knowledge, a person is joined in the
highest part of themself, not with any created thing . . . but with the One
who is altogether unknowable” (Harvey, 1997, p. 51).
Modern and contemporary thinkers have found themselves in this space
as well, thinking their way out beyond the fiftieth gate and coming to terms
with the unfathomable abyss in front of their gaze. Spanish philosopher Jose
Ortega y Gasset (d. 1955) noted: “To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to
understand” (Rosenberg and White, 1957, p. 42).
Michel Foucault (d. 1984), the 20th-century thinker, said: “Unreason is
in the same relation to reason as dazzlement to the brightness of day itself ”
(Foucault, 1988, p. 109). Farmer-philosopher Wendell Berry assured: “When
we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work. And when
we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey”
(Berry, 1983, p. 203).
The dramatic and linguistic possibilities of this ideal are manifold, extrap-
olating from the idea that “wisdom” is different from and even contrary to
worldly “knowledge.” The pundit (well-respected and successful) encounters
the wisely ignorant homeless person. The educated, silver-tongued politician
set off against a truth-telling “buffoon” or child. The slow dawn of recogni-
tion within the audience, as the fool from the beginning of the play slowly
reveals to be the one with their feet on the ground and their head in the
Divine essence, while the smarmy, self-assured protagonist unravels into the
internal doubts hidden beneath their thin veneer of confidence.
The fool might play a deus ex machina role, adding the wisdom of correct
action to move the plot along, stop it, or send it careening in an unforeseen
direction. Foolish younger brother; lazy, seemingly good-for-nothing friend;
barroom f lop; or failed businessperson, all provide odd vessels for plot move-
ment, wise sayings, and other surprising moments, inspiring the audience to
consider their own suppositions in a new light.
Or, the wise fool might appear nearly mute, arguing with no one, simply
listening and accepting. As Junayd noted: “the mark of the truly poor is that
he does not ask, does not argue, and if someone argues, desists” (Sells, 1996,
p. 205). Often, one builds their sense of self through exposition and argu-
ment, “proving” their truth loudly, while cowering on the inside. A character
onstage who never contradicts or even proposes, but simply listens, perhaps
dropping the occasional (and seemingly foolish or irrelevant) mystical mo-
ment into the conversation, might highlight the protagonist’s struggle and
genuine foolishness. A dynamic which might unfold slowly over the course
of the drama.
Ultimately, the wisdom of the fool—dedicated only to seeing through
the veil of accepted, objective reality into the inner, universal, and eternal
132 Mysticism in theater
Truth—should unspool slowly, as their fealty to this unseen and unspoken ideal
remains constant, while the world of shades shimmers and blinks around them.
It is not for this book to decide how you will best utilize the wise fool, but
it represents an important tool in the toolbox of mystical theater. While con-
temporary commercial theater loves a good “button,” “moral of the story,”
or strong (and correct) political stance, the wise fool opens doorways to a
completely different field of theatrical possibility: “that particular intellectual
perplexity which can be viewed not as a failure to achieve knowledge, but
as the result of confrontations with certain questions too deep for discursive
intellect to fathom” (Sells, 1996, p. 272).

The actor

The belief in a f luid materiality of the soul is indispensable to the

actor’s craft. To know that passion is material, that it is subject to
the plastic f luctuations of material, makes accessible an empire of
passions that extends our sovereignty . . . To know that the soul has
a corporeal expression permits the actor to unite with this soul from
the other side . . .
(Artaud, 1997, p. 135)

Mystical theater is not about feeding the fragile ego of the player. As Rumi’s
teacher Shams-i Tabrizi said: “They’re all in love with this word: ‘Bravo!’
They kill themselves for the sake of ‘Bravo’” (Tabrizi, 2004, p. 284). But far
from yearning for celebrity or the automatic standing ovations on Broadway,
filling the ego full of itself, the mystical actor empties their “self,” so that the
fullness of the universal soul might inform their work.
The mystical actor creates the unitary, beating heart of the audience.
Channeling the spirit’s ineffable power through the mind of the actor into
the production and, thence, straight into the heart of the audience, represents
the mystical end of Thespis’s ancient craft.
If the playwright, director, and designers represent the wax and wick of a
production, the actor blazes as the f lame. The yearning of the performer, the
burning from within, should be total. As Rumi said:

Burn this house thoroughly!

The lover’s house improves with fire.
From now on I will make burning my aim,
From now on I will make burning my aim,
For I am like the candle: burning only makes me brighter.
(Rumi, 2005, p. 183)

Do you burn? As an actor? Because you must burn.

 Mysticism in theater 133
For 20th-century theater visionary Jerzy Grotowski, acting became
holy, defining a person who, through their craft, attached themself to
a blazing stake (like every burnt and martyred mystical heretic in the
history of religion), performing an act of self-sacrifice through their art.
Grotowski said:

I speak about ‘holiness’ as an unbeliever. I mean a ‘secular holiness.’ If

the actor, by setting himself a challenge publicly challenges others, and
through excess, profanation, and outrageous sacrilege reveals himself by
casting off his everyday mask, he makes it possible for the spectator to
undertake a similar process of self-penetration. If he does not exhibit his
body, but annihilates it, burns it, frees it from every resistance to any psy-
chic impulse, then he does not sell his body but sacrifices it. He repeats
the atonement; he is close to holiness.
(Barba, 1968, p. 34)

The actor must empty themself, so that their character might live. To ex-
perience fana (the death of the self ) and baqa (subsistence in and through
the new character) in every performance. Acting as performative worship.
Grotowski noted: “Art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which en-
ables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light” (Grotowski, 1968,
p. 256).
Like any fire, this spiritual burning, this self-sacrifice must be nurtured
and fed. At the beginning of the Western theater, priest-actors went through
purification ceremonies before attending to the audience. Jerzy Grotowski
reclaimed this ideal, asserting that the actor must approach their craft as a
priest to prayer.
In his article “Theatre is Religion,” the pastor/professor Norman Bert
asserted that by recapturing the ideal of mystical theater, actors are priests
(Bert, 2002, p. 9). A fresh (though as old as theater itself ) conception of the
relationship between actor and the audience might develop. An ideal which
inf luences all aspects of the actor’s craft, from interactions with the director
to rehearsals to acting techniques to conceptions of self-development and the
player’s place within society.
We will explore a couple of general ideas at the intersection of acting and
the spirit. The specific methods and exercises which help lead an actor from
the mundane to the mystical, and onward to the mystical mundane, will then
be covered in the section “In the Rehearsal Room,” exploring the unique
relationship that develops between the performer and the director, in mysti-
cal theater.
For the director is to the actor what the sheikh is to the student in Sufism,
master to novice in Buddhism, or rebbe to Hasid in Judaism. The actor’s
emptying of self takes place in the rehearsal room, under the watchful eye and
insistent ministrations of the director.
134 Mysticism in theater
Toward the Divine Nought

Only those who have dared to let go can dare to reenter.

(Meister Eckhart in Fox, 1999, p. 92)

The mystical actor’s craft begins and then disappears into the eternal and
nonexistent “place” from which every mystic draws their inspiration: the
Divine Nought. The performer dissolves themself into their center, so that
their character might emerge on the other side. Like the black hole, which
British physicist Stephen Hawking (d. 2018) postulated bled back into the
universe one quanta at a time, a theory recently proven correct by a team of
theoretical physicists (Musser, 2020, online), the actor returns the universal
energy discovered at the heart of their being into the theater, and to the wait-
ing audience.
For Jerzy Grotowski, the spark of creativity drawn out of the Divine void
represented Prana, or the ray of creation, brought to life in the actor’s craft by
commitment and specific exercises, and then released through the presentation
on stage. Grotowski explained that for him, the energy movement was like an
elevator providing the actor with the ability to pass from normative manners
of understanding to higher planes. This spiritual movement also allowed the
performer to draw down, through the same channels, spiritual energy into
their body and craft. Grotowski assured that awareness of this spiritual elevator
provided appreciation of “the consciousness which is not linked to language
(the machine for thinking), but to Presence” (Christof, 2017, p. 223).
This spiritual movement, from here to above to within, and then explod-
ing outward to the spectators, represents the most important connection in
mystical theater. This defines where the dramatic presentation and the spec-
tator meet: in the ephemeral space created between the actor and audience.
The Divine connectivity of the actor’s presentation is essential. By connect-
ing to Grotowski’s “spiritual elevator,” the player centers their craft in the
deepest recesses of their heart. And as the Sufi al-Suhrawardi assured: words
spoken from the mouth never get past the ears, while words spoken from the
heart enter the heart.
The emptying of the self to accept the universe into oneself represents the
center of the actor’s work, where acting, mysticism, and theater history fuse.
A friend of mine and successful actor, Anna Khaja (b. 1974, The Good Place;
Madam Secretary, Quantico, etc.), said to me when discussing her acting: “I just
disappear.” And so it should be. As Jerzy Grotowski noted: “Our [work] then
is not a collection of skills but an eradication of blocks” (Grotowski, 1968, pp.
15–16). The largest block, of course, is the mistaken sense of the solitary and
autonomous “I” experienced by the ego.
The spirit of mystical acting becomes both ineffable and appreciable. In-
effable, because in truth, the mystical actor operates from the realm of the
unspeakable. Appreciable, because the audience can feel the energy and is
taken on a voyage by it.
 Mysticism in theater 135
The Divine Nought, the heart of everything, becomes like a spiritual black
hole to this method. The light of expression swirls and swirls ever faster
around it, brought to white heat by the actor’s commitment, and yet at the
middle, the inspiring energy remains incomprehensible, unreachable, and
indefinable.
Mystical acting as an act of pure faith.

The director sheikh

By yourself, you can do nothing: seek a friend.

(Nizami Ganjavi, d. 1209 in Shah, 1971, p. 389)

Grotowski found inspiration for his ideas in the early-20th-century mystical

thinker George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (d. 1949), who noted that the actor finds
freedom by “putting the function of observation completely in the hands
of the director. The performer can discover total doing, full, without self-­
judgement” (Christof, 2017, p. 213).
This handing over the complete sense of self and action to a direc-
tor echoes the ideal of the mystical teacher in most paths, from the Sufi
sheikh to Hasidic rebbe to Zen master. As the Sufis note, a person with-
out a teacher has Satan for a teacher. Sufi master Abu Hafs al-Suhrawardi
(d. 1234) stated:

When the sincere disciple enters under obedience to the master, keeping
their company and learning their manners, a spiritual state f lows from
within the master to within the disciple, like one lamp lighting another.
The state is transferred from the master to the disciple by keeping com-
pany and by hearing speech. This only applies to the disciple who . . . is
annihilated in the master by giving up his own will.
(Ernst, 1997, p. 124)

Of course, this demands a relationship with the director based on complete

trust. We will discuss the role of the director in the next section, but as
mystical theater represents a holistic presentation, not only within each
participant but between them as well, a team must be assembled that be-
lieves completely in the power and possibility of this form of production.
As successful as a Broadway-bound, musical theater director might be, they
probably wouldn’t be a good fit for a production based on spiritual, not
commercial, values.
The goal of the director/actor relationship is first and foremost to aid the
actor in achieving a removal of the “blocks” of the self ( fana) so that the new
character might subsist (baqa). Not just within the actor, but as a spiritual force
in the production.
And this relationship forges in the rehearsal room.
136 Mysticism in theater
In the rehearsal room
The true work of a mystical theater piece takes place in the quietude of the re-
hearsal room. Far from the audience and theater space, the egocentric blocks
become dissolved and spiritual tiles are carefully laid into the production.
The rehearsal room is to the mystical performance what the khanqah is to the
Sufis, the monastery to the Buddhists, the cheder to the Hasidic master, or the
hermitage to the medieval Christian mystic. It represents the quiet place of
discovery, return, and deep internal connection with the actor’s deepest self.
In New York City, many of the most important and oft-utilized rehearsal
rooms—for a Broadway show or off-off Broadway reading, and everything
in between—reside in office buildings along 8th Avenue, just north of Penn
Station. The area also hosts methadone clinics, swirling trash bits, McDon-
ald’s and KFC restaurants, yearning beggars, people hobbling on crutches,
disoriented tourists, disquieting smells, screaming voices, discarded souls
smoking crack pipes in doorways, and other disenfranchised members of so-
ciety scrabbling along the pavement.
Yet there is not a single actor who, after passing through this phalanx of
humanity, walks into one of those spaces (often windowless and airless) and
doesn’t feel as if they aren’t entering a sacred space. Perhaps only the theater
professional can fully appreciate the magic of the rehearsal space, where the
outside world dissolves and a fresh new universe of collaborative creation awaits.
Given the aura of the rehearsal room and the unique relationships emerg-
ing within it, as well as its centrality to creating a production, this space
represents an omphalos (center of the universe) for each mystical theater pro-
duction. Here, mystical inlay might be developed and carefully placed into
the dialogue, the movement, the interactions, and the manner in which the
actors will inf luence and inspire the audience.
This section outlines a series of exercises and ideas which will move the
actor out of their ego-cage, and into the realm of the Divine. It offers specific
manners of dissolving the “self,” so that the drama’s character might fill the
emptied internal space.

The tales they tell

Setting the sacred tone of this hallowed space becomes the first task in the
rehearsal room. While there are many physical activities which begin nor-
mative rehearsals, from “zip-zap-zop” to “busted-T,” I have yet to run into a
spiritually-based warm-up method. This section helps rectify this situation.
One shared activity which might begin the rehearsal process, and indeed
each individual rehearsal, would be the reading and short discussion of a
mystical tale, especially one which dovetails with the underlying themes of
the production. Spiritual stories play a vital role among seekers of all paths,
from Zen Buddhism to Taoism to the Christian Scriptures. Medieval Jew-
ish and Muslim mystics told tales around the circle after prayer sessions, to
 Mysticism in theater 137
“re-center” themselves in their temporal personality, after having dissolved
their essence into the Divine Nought.
Additionally, the layers of messaging within the tales offer a staircase into
the heart of being—or Grotowski’s elevator to the spirit. As Sufi writer Idries
Shah (d. 1996) stated: “In Sufi circles, it is customary for students to soak
themselves in stories set for their study, so the internal dimensions may be
unlocked . . . they provide nutrition on many levels” (Shah, 1993, p. 11).
Tales from any spiritual path spark much conversation and help remove the
actor, director, and other members of the team from their everyday worlds in
the hurdy-gurdy of the city, centering them in the sacred space of the theater.
Another interesting exercise might be to perform an improv exercise of a
mystical story, inserting the actors into the story itself. They might feel the
energy, the confusion, the f low of meaning as experience, instead of simply
reading the work as an intellectual exercise. It might be worthwhile to see
how different actors interpret the same stories or scene, leading to further
discussion around the unusual ideas contained in the tales.
For instance, the following two tales might be improv-ed by different
pairs of actors at the beginning of a rehearsal. A story told about the Hasidic
Rabbi Elimelekh of Lyzhansk (d. 1786) clearly originated with an earlier Sufi
source, being traced back to Abdul-Qadir Gilani (d. 1166), the founder of the
Qadiriyya Sufi lineage. Acting these out, even at separate rehearsals, might
open pathways to a deeper understanding of the similarities between mystical
paths, as well as the difference between spiritual and worldly success.

Rabbi Gabriel, a disciple of Rabbi Elimelekh’s, once went to visit his

master in a carriage he had rented from a man of uncouth bearing who—
to his annoyance—insisted on telling him course and improper jokes
during the entire drive. When they came to the Rabbi’s house, Elime-
lekh ran toward the coachman, greeted him with great happiness, and
scarcely noticed Rabbi Gabriel. On the way back, Gabriel wanted to
perform services for the man who had been treated with such respect, but
was rejected with a curt phrase.
A few months later, Rabbi Gabriel went to the city and there saw the
coachman talking to a mason. He followed the two men to their inn,
unobserved, and heard one say to the other: ‘At Melekh’s you hear a bit of
truth, but nowhere else.’ And the other repeated: ‘At Melekh’s you hear
a bit of truth!’ Then they happened to see the Rabbi in the corner and
shouted at him, ‘Get out! What are you doing among common folks?!’
And there was nothing for it; the Rabbi had to go.
(Buber, 1991, p. 263)

The Sufi version, told some 700 years prior:

Such was the repute of Abdul Qadir that mystics of all persuasions used to
throng to his reception hall, and the utmost decorum and consideration
138 Mysticism in theater
for traditional manners uniformly prevailed. His manners were impecca-
ble, and nobody of low intelligence or lack of training was seen at these
assemblies.
One day, however, the three sheikhs of Khorasan, Iraq, and Egypt
came to the Dargah, guided by three illiterate muleteers. Their journey
from Mecca, where they had been on a pilgrimage, had been plagued
by the inelegance and caperings of these men. When they saw the as-
sembly of the Sheikh, they were made as happy to think of their release
from their companions as they were by the desire to glimpse the Great
Sheikh.
Contrary to the usual practice, the Sheikh came out to meet them. No
sign passed between him and the muleteers. Later that night, however,
finding their way to their quarters, the three sheikhs glimpsed by acci-
dent Qadir saying goodnight to the muleteers. As they respectfully left
his room, he kissed their hands. The sheikhs were astonished and realized
that these three, not they, were the hidden sheikhs of the dervishes. They
followed the muleteers and tried to start a conversation. But the chief
muleteer only said: ‘Get back to your prayers and mumblings, sheikhs,
with your Sufism and your search for truth which has plagued us during
36 days’ travel. We are simple muleteers and want nothing of that.’
(Shah, 1993, p. 178)

Numerous books offer specific and digestible tales such as these two, which
begin the journey of leaving the mundane world behind, and entering the
ethereal, counterintuitive, and sacred space of mystical theater. At the end
of this chapter I have included a collection of books from which to choose
such tales. I would, however, note that it will be incumbent on the director
to choose stories which further the specific mystical goals of the piece, and
dovetail with the text as well as imagery, ritual, myth, and so forth to be de-
veloped through the production.
The director might also use this improv exercise to recreate the Sufi di-
rective that the true adept should be like a corpse hurled onto the sea, with
every movement actuated by the waves. A movement exercise is undertaken,
based on the eradication of the actor’s will. As American literary critic Leslie
A. Fiedler (d. 2003) said, in speaking of 20th-century mystic Simone Weil:

In the ultimate ‘nuptial yes,’ we must de-create our egos, offer up

everything we have ever meant by ‘I,’ so that the Divine love may pass
unimpeded through the space we once occupied.
(Weil, 1973, p. 38)

To begin building a deeper trust, the director might change and develop the
direction of the improv at a moment’s notice, perhaps inserting new material,
or fusing stories, or adding or subtracting text, or even having two characters
switch places in the middle of the exercise. The director might bring stories
 Mysticism in theater 139
together from different spiritual paths, which share the same import, thereby
underlining the connection defining the human religion.
These exercises begin the process of dissolving the personal ego, opening
a space for the character to emerge.

Meditation
Mind-body practice might also play a role in separating the rehearsal room
from the mundane spaces familiar to the collective. These exercises can be
reconsidered to fit in not only with the specific project but also with the fact
that actors will be bringing their energy to the public, and not simply disen-
gaging for an individual, spiritual experience. For instance, Jerzy Grotowski,
while deeply inf luenced by yoga, reconfigured these exercises, changing the
function and practice of asanas (body postures), inverting the energetic affect
from inward-centric to one in which the actor used the energy to make con-
tact with the audience (Wolford, 1996, p. 23).
Light yoga, brief meditation, ancient mystical prayer rituals from Abraham
Abulafia (13th-century Kabbalist and Jewish heretic), or simply sitting in
silence (the first stage of worship, after all) will continue to pull back the veil
between the normative world and this new realm of thaumaturgy (wonder-
working), as well as open doorways into the spirit.
For instance, Abraham Abulafia suggested a meditation method based on a
constantly evolving stimulus. His intention was not to relax the consciousness,
but to purify it via a high level of concentration required in doing many actions
at the same time. For this, he used the sound of individual letters of a word,
instead of the word’s meaning. Abulafia’s method included a number of steps:

• Writing out specific letter groups and their permutations. (These might
be taken from a single word which defines the mystical theme of the
production.)
• The mystic chants the letters in conjunction with specific respiratory
patterns, as well as head positioning.
• The mystic mentally imagines the patterns of letters (Arzy et al., 2005).

This process not only activates the deeper consciousness but also engages a
variety of energy centers, which might then be utilized within the building
of the character.
Other specific prayer techniques might be inspired by Sufi practices, Bud-
dhist and Hindu breath meditation, or other exercises. In Zen practice, lan-
guage samadhi entails repeating the same phrase over and over (and over and
over and over). For instance, the line “each branch of the coral embraces the
bright moon” contains buried within it a purified condition in which one
finds themself freed of all worries, including subconscious ones—“As if they
were cut off with a sword sharp enough to sever a hair blown against it” (Se-
kida, 2005, p. 401).
140 Mysticism in theater
Other potential exercises might include mystical dancing, which will free
both the body as well as the mind, and activate (rather than suppress) energy.
Acting is, after all, a somatic experience. Aligning mind and body becomes cen-
tral to this work. Movement exercises might be based on any of the following:

• Rumi’s whirling dervishes

• Hindu Sanskrit text Natya Shastra
• Christian liturgical dances
• Hasidic joyful rites
• Syncretic Afro-American religious tradition Candomble, which makes
use of music and ecstatic dance in which worshippers become possessed
by their own tutelary deities
• Indigenous circle and cycle dances, perhaps even including a drum circle

Actors might also develop dance movements based on their particular char-
acter’s personality traits.
A number of other spiritual movement exercises might be added to, or
used in place of, the earlier meditation and spiritual dance. Tai Chi (typified
by its slow movements and based on principles of yin and yang) and Qigong
(a system of coordinated body posture and movement, breathing, and med-
itation) are both centering activities based in ancient Chinese practice. The
20th-century Sufi-inf luenced mystic G. I. Gurdjieff invented a number of
specific exercises, some set to music. Yoga might be expanded into a rhyth-
mic selection of specific postures, ever-moving in a f low.
I know, I know. Cultural appropriation!! How could I??
But remember: this work emerges from the human religion, that which
unifies all paths. Ergo, neither one nor another religio-cultural manner of
worship is more appropriate than any other. Mystical theater encompasses all
spiritual practices and their ideas for accessing the Divine spirit latent within.
The energy created within the Chinese, or Indian, or Islamic systems all
emerge from the same place in the human soul, and feed back into it.
The point is not to become experts in the specific practice or movement,
but to continue the work of separating from the mundane to experience the
eternal, and remove the self to experience the Self, all the while building a
unified connection between the soul, mind, and body, as well as creating a
collective from out of the individuals on the production team.
A simple five minutes at the beginning of a rehearsal will not only create
a collective from the individuals in the production, but also open up spiritual
pathways, quiet external “noise,” activate Prana, and lead to a deeper sense
of self. This method does not demand a lifetime of commitment, but a few
minutes at the beginning of each session!
Mysticism’s two goals: the esoteric (personal connection with the Divine)
and exoteric (appreciating the unity hidden beneath the apparent multiplicity
in the world), f lowering into life in an airless, poorly lit rehearsal room. Om-
phalos for a new spiritual theater.
 Mysticism in theater 141
Mystical ideals
Another exercise might center around discussion of the mystical concepts
providing the subtext for the production. Not every production will include
all ideals, of course. The team will work to choose from those highlighted in
the dramatic text and direction, relating them to the play. This will deepen
the cast’s appreciation for the piece upon which they work, as well as bringing
a more holistic production into being. It will also draw energy and wisdom
from the participants, and feed it back into them.
Specific ideals to discuss might include the wisdom of ignorance, the Di-
vine Nought, the Divine question mark, mystical bewilderment, mysticism
of the mundane, fana and baqa, equanimity, humility, the first stage of wor-
ship being silence, and ideals of both acceptance and, at the very outer edges
of mystical thought, personal “uselessness” (which really represents a lack of
grasping), leading to an empty interior space for accepting what is truly useful
(i.e., channeling the Divine).
These might be illustrated with specific tales from one of the wisdom
traditions. Or, each actor might relate a personal story expressing how they
fought to achieve, should have sought to achieve, or will definitely work
harder next time to achieve the mystical concept in their own lives, whether
at an interaction in the bodega, driving on the city streets, or traveling on
public transportation. Mundane life never lacks for mystical challenges. By
recognizing this and bringing these stories into the rehearsal room, the circle
might be closed between “in here” and “out there.”

Beyond table work

Once the mind has cleared and the pathways to the sacred swing open, the
real work begins. Peter Brook, 20th-century theater director, offered com-
mentary on how normal rehearsals take place, moving from “table work”
(in which the play is first read and discussed), through “getting up on the
feet” (when the first rudimentary “blocking” or movement choreography
emerges), to “locking down” the production, making sure there are no sur-
prises coming and that everything is set in place like a puzzle.
Needless to say, mystical theater sets off on a different, less-traveled path. Brook
asserted: “It is always a mistake for actors to begin their work with intellectual
discussion, as the rational mind is not nearly as potent an instrument of discovery
as the more secret faculties of intuition” (Marshall, and Williams, 2000, p. 179).
This advice moves us into the Sufi world of effect and then cause. Turn the
rehearsal process inside-out. Begin with movement, exploring the subtext
before the text becomes “known” (and calcified). Allow the inspiration for
interpretation to emerge from the body, and not the reverse, in which the
mind dictates the motivation.
A number of spiritually-based methods emerge. Keeping in mind that the
first stage of worship is silence, the first run-through of the piece might take
142 Mysticism in theater
place in complete silence. Each actor playing their role, finding their moti-
vation, and improvising their movement, but only acting, with no speech at
all. Script in hand, the actor connects to the text at a far-deeper level than
linguistic.
The performers might act the scene, but verbalizing on the possible mystical
subtext for the words and action, leaving the text (for the moment) on the
page. While these moments may or may not inf luence final decisions for the
production, they will open for the actors a myriad of different ways to under-
stand and present the work.
Zen koans inspire another nonverbal exercise. Here, actors take on the
exaggerated attitude of mimes and, in the shadow of Zen, utilize “demon-
strative nonverbal gesture which is particularly exaggerated and even vio-
lent” (Heine, 2000, p. 140) to indicate the language, the action, and even
the mystical subtext of the work. This work opens and frees the body, while
connecting through to the mind.
Another possibility might be to set the movement of the piece to music, such
as liturgical work, Hasidic music, Sufi sama, Buddhist chant, or anything which
breathes of the spirit, from jazz to Bob Dylan. Dramatic blocking moving in
sync to the underlying sound, with text silent. Suffusing the actors’ introduc-
tion to a new mystical play with these aural notes deepens and tints the piece, as
the presenters move into their initial interaction with the script.
Any movement exercise which emerges from a more profound place than a
rational exploration of the language might open pathways and different ways
of experiencing and understanding. And all of these activities should take
place before dissecting the text. This method does not eviscerate or replace
normative theater-building, but adds to and expands it. These exercises will
open up worlds of potentiality and understanding. The possibilities of the
piece will explode, re-forming at the intersection of theater and the spirit.

Masks
The use of masks represents a challenging and surprising rehearsal possibility.
Granted, in some mystical drama the mask, as they were at the beginning of
Western theater, might be central to the production itself, but in the rehearsal
room, they offer another manner for breaking with the mundane and moving
toward a ritualistic understanding of the piece. Putting an actor in a mask
removes their facial expression as the most obvious manner to relate their
emotions, ideas, motivations, and other aspects of their character.
Remove their countenance, and the player must become more holistically
engaged with their part.
The Sufis inform that the true adept is one whose thought keeps pace
with their feet. With mask use, the actor’s thoughts and feet become fused.
They must devise a variety of external manners for expressing their inter-
nal state. Peter Brook utilized masks in rehearsals, conceiving them to be
methods of (paradoxically) uncovering the inner self of the actor, presenting
 Mysticism in theater 143
a “soul-portrait, a photo of what you rarely see . . . an outer casing that
is a complete and sensitive ref lection of the inner life.” Writing of Brook’s
methods in 20th Century Actor Training, Lorna Marshall and David Williams
informed:

A mask is two-way traffic all the time; it sends a message in, and projects
a message out. It operates by laws of echoes; if the echo-chamber is per-
fect, the sound going in and the one going out are ref lections; there is a
perfect relation between the echo-chamber and the sound; but if it isn’t,
it’s like it is distorted.
(Marshall and Williams, 2000, pp. 187–188)

This conception itself echoes the ideal of the mystical mirror. Rumi wrote:

Once the mirror of your heart becomes pure and clear,

you will see pictures from beyond the domain of water and clay,
Not only pictures, but also the Painter, not only
the carpet of good fortune, but also the Carpet-spreader.
(Chittick, 1984, p. 38)

Or, as the Zen Buddhists assure: “You have in yourself a mirror which re-
f lects objects clearly” (Sekida, 2005, p. 222).
This purification, in which the mask provides either proof for or against
the clarity of the actor, represents the height of mystical achievement. For the
spiritual adept, once the heart becomes cleansed, the human soul becomes a
polished mirror ref lecting the form of God. Hence, the mystical saying: your
eyes are the eyes through which God sees the world. That is to say, the image
enters through the human eyes and ref lects back to the Divine unsullied, by
virtue of the polished mirror of the soul.
The mask aids in this cleansing, as it literally effaces the actor, leaving
them both hidden (in their visage) and naked (in their movement). In the
rehearsal room, this unsheathes the spiritual sword to cut the actor off from
themself, from their easy answers, and from their normal acting responses.
It forces them into the unknown, where they might discover the underlying
motivations and import of their movement. The mask challenges the actor to
understand the purities or impurities in their heart and use this knowledge as
they build their stage character.
Of course, all of this rehearsal work takes place at the insistence of, and in
conjunction with, the director.

Director

The director, having become kind of a demiurge, at the back of whose

head is this idea of implacable purity and of its consummation whatever
144 Mysticism in theater
the cost . . . must conduct in the physical domain an exploration of in-
tense movement and precise emotional gesture equivalent on the psycho-
logical level to the most absolute and complete moral discipline on the
cosmic level to the unchaining of certain blind forces.
(Artaud, 1997, pp. 114–115)

Ernest Hemingway (d. 1961, American writer and Pulitzer Prize winner)
developed a theory of writing which he called the Iceberg Theory. This rep-
resented a model for omission in which the deeper meaning of a story should
not be evident on the surface, but should shine through implicitly.
French theater maker Jean-Louis Barrault (d. 1994) agreed, asserting
that the text of a play resembles an iceberg, in that only about one-eighth
of the final production is visible. The director’s task becomes to orchestrate
the transformation of the massive, latent subtext of a drama into movement,
light, sound, choreography, and so forth by shaping the text as well as utiliz-
ing the nonverbal aspects of the stage to subtly unveil the quintessence of the
piece to the audience.
In many cases, the director plays a role equal to the playwright, defining
how the text resonates, which aspects bump to the fore, which submerge, the
general atmosphere of the production, movement, and characterization on
stage, and so forth.
There is no relationship in the world like that of playwright and director.
As a playwright myself, I can assure you that I believe in the need for the
creation of a new genre of couple’s therapy: playwright-director. These two
are not (necessarily) lovers or friends, business partners or adversaries—yet
all of these might well play a role in specific collaborations. However, what
remains certain in every pairing of playwright-director is that the director
controls how the work is presented, what the audience will experience, and
the ultimate meaning of the play, while the playwright stands to the side,
biting their nails.
A successful director will expand the import of the work. They will create
a production which introduces aspects of the hidden iceberg that even the
playwright might not have perceived. A poorly matched director will destroy
the piece, leaving the playwright hunched over a cheap whisky in an empty,
dark bar at noon.
(Been there and done that, boy).
The point here is that finding the correct director for a mystical theater
piece is central to its success. A director must have a visceral sense of the
subtlety of the underlying ideas. They must appreciate how to punch up the
mystical inlay without becoming didactic or obvious. They must understand
nontraditional theater. They must desire to use the play as more than enter-
tainment or for their personal, professional gain. Someone who feels that
all art must be political and deal with the specific social concerns of the day
from a “correct” cultural position also might not fully appreciate the timeless
import and spiritual goals of this type of work.
 Mysticism in theater 145
Choose wisely, dear theater maker.
Or end hunched miserably over a glass of gravelly whisky in a dark bar on
a sunny day that everyone else assures is a “beautiful spring day, full of life
and possibility.”

Staging
The primary role of the director is one of translation, or in the case of mystical
theater, alchemy. The director will bring life to the cold black marks on the
white page, transforming the playwright’s bon mots into a living, breathing
experience. The director manages many moving parts, from sound, lighting,
and costume design to movement of the actors, set design, dramatic pacing,
and so forth. But the one thing all of these facets have in common is that they
come to pass upon the physical support of the stage.
A space, in mystical theater, consecrated as sacred. An omphalos (center of
the universe), a doorway to the spirit, an entranceway to the Divine.
Numerous considerations arise in mystical theater which would never oc-
cur to a commercial director or producer. These sometimes run contrary to
the normative ideas expected by the audience, those accustomed to the the-
atrical tropes delivered by compliant mainstream theater makers. The mys-
tically inclined director, however, throws normalcy in the garbage the first
time they pick up the text, answering only to their desire to open pathways
into the spirit.
All staging ideas should be considered at the outset, even the most outland-
ish, provided they align with mystical ideals. While they might not be kept
in their entirety, they could inform a single scene or one of the character’s ac-
tions. Perhaps subtle echoes of these initial, extreme responses remain within
the final gestalt of the production.
For instance, how might the Divine Nought look in staging? A set with
nothing? Not an “empty” stage, but one pregnant with possibility? How
about one of the characters followed by a cloud of “nothingness,” as a cloud
of dust followed the Peanuts comic book character Pig Pen? What might a
personified “nothing” look like? Superscript quotes from mystics projected
when the personage entered or left? Specific costume design, indicating their
social worthlessness?
How many ways might a director conceive manners for echoing the noth-
ingness at the heart of being? Counterintuitive, certainly, but a challenge
that the mystical theater director accepts, rolls up their sleeves, and conquers.
Other ideas might be explored. A character who is “useless?” Their block-
ing and verbal intonation informed by this counterintuitive trait. A character
completely unmoved by any activity foisted upon them, presenting perfect
equanimity. Another who represents the wisdom of ignorance, all of their
lines inf luenced by their Divine idiocy.
Again, some of these ideas might inform rehearsal, stretching an actor’s
understanding of their character. And perhaps some will stick through to the
146 Mysticism in theater
production. But mystical theater is one of exploration on every level. Always
better to try too much, look ever-deeper, and perhaps discover a buried nug-
get of mystical inlay which might then be set carefully into the production.
Staging might challenge normative theatrical assumptions, pushing for-
ward into the spectators’ lives. It could thrust toward the front of the prosce-
nium, spilling over into the seats, implicating the audience on a more visceral
level. The director might also mix actors into the audience, further involving
the spectators in the piece.
On the other hand, staging might push to the back of the stage, voices
lowering to a whisper, bringing the audience to the edge of their seats to
participate more fully in the experience. These methods might be combined.
When the message represents the muddle of the mystical search (somewhere
in the seven valleys of the spiritual voyage), it might become more accessible,
while obvious ideas of a narrower and more plebeian import move further
upstage, into quietude, obscurity, or nothingness. This dynamic might also
be reversed.
The point is to use the staging to deepen the meaning, the mystical subtext
of the action, sometimes subtly, sometimes obscurely, sometimes counterin-
tuitively, and sometimes with great fanfare. Moving past the obvious toward
amazement.
Mysticism originates from and feeds back into the world of question marks.
While there is an extremely fine line between confusing the audience—
which might cause them to “fall out”—and bewildering the audience, which
might further engage their attention, it is along this knife’s edge that the
mystical theater director tightropes.
The element of surprise represents a central aspect of staging. The obvi-
ous cross, the angry thrust, the gentle retreat of the downtrodden recede in
the mystical theater director’s playbook. These clear, specific, and normative
actions should be reconsidered in light of the timeless ideals at the heart of
the work.
How about an entrance onstage which leads to a different place every time
that a character walks through it? How about a character who, no matter
where they turn or how they enter or exit, always ends up at the same place?
How about using only half the stage in one act, and the other in the second
act? Yin and yang. Or a layered stage, where the higher off the ground the
actors rise, the closer to hanging on Rumi’s gallows of worldly success?
The staging inspiration offered by a saying such as the Simone Weil ex-
hortation (“The world is a closed door. It is a barrier. At the same time, it is
the way through”) or Rumi’s gallows or ancient concepts such as the Divine
Nought is only bounded by the imagination of the director and their com-
mitment to moving past commercial theater into the airy reaches of mystical
theater.
The director might reconsider the physical set. Though this aspect will
be treated below, in the section on the Stage Designer, the director will cer-
tainly develop ideas in this arena and share them with that creator.
 Mysticism in theater 147
In Greek drama, the surrounding mountains or far-off sea often formed
the stage’s backdrop. The connection between the sacred theater space and
the world outside became explicit. How might a return to this ancient ideal
inf luence staging? Perhaps through the smells or sounds of the surround-
ing area? A projection in real time of what is going on right outside of the
theater, or a realistic painting of some aspect of the play? The smell of the
street around the East Village, or the sounds of London’s West End? These
devices are to be used judiciously, of course, at surprising and perhaps even
inappropriate moments.
Or to remain present and ignored throughout.
I have variously assured that staging must help create a sacred space, sep-
arate from both normative theater and outside of accepted, objective reality.
Now, I suggest suffusing a production with something literally taken from
the surrounding world. This seems paradoxical, right? But paradox is the
bedrock of faith. As St. Augustine (d. 430) noted, the imago Dei (image of
God) reveals the deep paradox and mystery that each element is within the
whole, and the whole is also within each element. The Sufi mystic Sahl
al-Tustari (d. 896) assured that “God is only known through the union of
contraries attributed to God” (Perry, 1971, p. 835).
And the mundane, in mysticism, symbolizes the Divine. As Carl Jung said:
“Matter is nothing other than the concreteness of God’s thoughts” ( Jung,
1958, p. 67). Or, as Zen Buddhism assures: “You have to become enlightened
in relation to the slightest object. The ‘slightest object’ is a blade of grass, a
drop of water, a stone by the roadside, a dog’s droppings on the path in the
park” (Sekida, 2005, p. 167).
Objective reality is to be ignored. Objective reality comprises the heart of
mysticism. The world is a closed door. It is also the way through. How do we
find our way in? How do we get out?
Incomprehensible mystical thinking: beneath all certainty lies another
question. The staging should exacerbate the questioning, while engaging the
audience. Perhaps spectators will get a glimpse of something they recognize,
and feel that they begin to “get it,” only to have that understanding ripped
from them the next instant. As the American philosopher William James said:
“Reality ‘independent’ of human thinking is a thing hard to find . . . we may
glimpse it, but never grasp it” (Blackburn, 2005, p. 86).
Each production calls for a completely novel response, in the same way that
Zen Buddhism assures that no two moments are alike. A book about Zen
practitioner Katagiri Roshi (d. 1990) was titled: Each Moment is the Universe.
Of course, there’s the old saw, first proposed by the Greek philosopher Hera-
clitus (d. 475): you never step in the same river twice, as the river is constantly
rushing onward, and you change from moment to moment, whether you
realize it or not.
On stage, dear director, this obliterates linear thinking. Paradox is normal,
the sound of one hand clapping is the soundtrack, and the shortest distance
between two places on stage is a line, is a circle, is a point. Blue is speed and
148 Mysticism in theater
up is a hot dog. Though all are linked by a diaphanous thread to the center of the
universe. Which is, of course, “nothing.”
Confused?
Perhaps the director will feel as much discomfort in their decisions as the
audience. The director, however, must be centered in the ultimate purpose of
their piece: to open doorways from putative understanding toward mystical
bewilderment. Staging decisions represent a vital doorway toward the spirit,
as they nonverbally soften the earth for deeper messaging. Richard Schech-
ner, 20th-century theater maker, noted that transformation first takes place
at the level of staging. “If the transformation works, individual spectators will
experience changes in mood and/or consciousness” (Katsouri, 2014, p. 358).

Improvisation

It is better not to command wherever one has the power to do so. If this
thought fills the whole soul and controls the imagination, which is the
source of our actions, it constitutes true faith.
(Weil, 1973, p. 148)

Or, as Lao Tzu noted: “If you want to govern the people, you must place
yourself below them. If you want to lead the people, you must learn how to
follow them” (Lao Tzu, 1988, p. 66).
Question: to what extent will a director relinquish power, becoming a
co-creator instead of a marionette? Mystical theater demands nothing less.
The production should materialize from the deepest wellspring of the human
spirit, with the director massaging but not completely managing its creation
and final form.
Faith plays a central role. Faith in the co-creators, certainly, but even more
so, a bedrock belief in the task at hand: that theater can provide a regenerative
social force. If the director does not believe this to the very cockles of their
soul, the production will never rise beyond the clunky and commercial limits
of “entertainment”—an inconsequential though pleasant bridge for the audi-
ence to perambulate between “now” and “then.”
A central aspect of creative faith bases in spontaneity. The acknowledg-
ment that each moment is new, cannot be foretold, and holds untold richness
and surprise. Generally, most directors would agree that the idea of sponta-
neity is fine in early rehearsals, but by the time a production heads toward
opening night, they will want to “lock things down,” presenting a well-oiled
machine of a performance. One which replicates more or less the exact same
blocking, intonation, meaning for the language, lighting, sound cues, and so
forth, night after night.
However, mystical theater, based in the unknown, must allow for the un-
expected, especially during productions, with the audience present. This ele-
ment of surprise, more to the actors and director than to the audience (who
 Mysticism in theater 149
will generally see a play only once), provides breath and life outside of the
known, the foretold.
Jerzy Grotowski assured that spontaneity and discipline, seemingly oppo-
site energies, reinforce each other. The discipline imposed in the rehearsal
room provides a structure, while the potential spontaneity within the pro-
duction provides the surprise, the life, and the glowing ember of the unseen
energy at the center of mystical theater. The creative role of the “arbitrary”
becomes an important facet of directing and presentation.
Improvisation as an accepted directing convention represents an important
facet in mystical theater. An interesting scene from Russian actor Mikhail
Chekhov’s (d. 1955, Konstantin Stanislavsky’s “most brilliant student”) inter-
pretation of Khlestakov in Nikolai Gogol’s (d. 1852) The Government Inspector
evinces how directed improv might work:

Critics were stunned by the scene in which Khlestakov improvises fantas-

tic lies in the Mayor’s house, because Chekhov would play it differently
every night. Opening to the higher ego involved a means of accessing the
creativity and spontaneity that Stanislavsky had been searching for, and
provided an alternative approach to his creative state of mind.
(Chamberlain, 2000, p. 82)

While it may appear that improvisation represents an actor’s decision, in point

of fact, the director sets the structure and limits, and then allows the actor to
improvise within them. If the director simply throws up their hands, announc-
ing “have at it,” then chaos and anarchy overtake the stage. Each actor’s impulse
for center stage might become the central theme of the play, and little else.
Subtlety, sensitivity, training, trust. Jerzy Grotowski and George Ivanovich
Gurdjieff required performers to develop an “essence of their being” prior to
entering the stage, to put themselves in service to the creative act. A relation-
ship develops, not just between the director and actor, or actor and audience,
but, more importantly, between the actor and themself. A call and response
between text, movement, and internal experience of the player, even into the
deeper recesses of their subconscious and spiritual selves. Grotowski devel-
oped methods for incorporated movement to have a transformative effect on
the actor, opening avenues into the organic stream of inner experience (Lavy,
2012, pp. 182–183).
All of this experience leads to the improvisation stemming from the deep-
est wellspring of the actor, as well as aligning with the ideas and values of the
theatrical presentation.

Movement

What the theatre can still take over from speech are its possibilities for
extension beyond words, for development in space, for dissociative and
150 Mysticism in theater
vibratory action upon the sensibility . . . Here too intervenes (besides the
auditory language of sounds) the visual language of movements, attitudes
and gestures, but on the condition that their meanings, their physiog-
nomies, their combination be carried to the point of becoming signs,
making a kind of alphabet out of these signs.
(Artaud, 1997, pp. 89–90)

No playwright will take kindly to having their bons mots relegated to a sec-
ondary status in the play. However, it behooves the playwright, at this point,
to recall the words from the Sutra of Hui Neng: “They who are humble and
meek on all occasions and are polite to everybody have thoroughly realized
their essence of mind, so thoroughly that their path is free from further ob-
stacles” (Price and Mou-Lam, 1990, p. 105). Faith runs in many directions—
and one must be from the playwright to the director, and the production.
Movement, in mystical theater, evolves to become more than a supportive
activity. Blocking and choreography provide subtext, confusion, extrapola-
tion, clarification, bewilderment, paradox: the full complement of the mys-
tical menu.
Each performance and every director will decide how best to stretch
movement into the realm of language, creating dynamics which offer a
hieroglyphic of wordless language and sound to deepen the import of the
presentation. For instance, what if movement becomes ritualized? Perhaps
only during one section of the play, or within one character, a fact which
might bewilder the audience, deepen the import of the words, yet remain
unremarked and seemingly unnoticed by the other characters in the play? A
slow-motion choreography of movement-prayer, informing the blocking of
one personage, adding layers of meaning to the dialogue and drama.
Think even more deeply about stage areas, as well as entrances and ex-
its. Yoga deeply inf luenced Stanislavsky, Artaud, Barba, Grotowski, and other
20th-century theater makers. One could assign different parts of the stage to
represent one of the seven chakras, or energy points in the body. The direc-
tor might designate separate entrances as different energy points. These ideas
might inform the blocking of the piece without even telling the actors. Perhaps
the actors would know, but not the audience. Or, a map of the chakras and
how they relate to movement on the stage might be included in the program.
Of course, seven is not the only holy number to consider. The number
three, the trinity, is sacred in many religions, ranging from the Hindu Tri-
murti (the three forms of God: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver,
and Shiva the destroyer) to the three Jewels of Buddhism (the Buddha, the
dharma or teaching, and the sangha or community), the three Pure Ones of
Taoism (the Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three;
Three produced all things), the Christian Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and the
Holy Ghost), ancient Roman paganism (Capitoline Triad: Jupiter, Juno, and
Minerva), Islam (the three holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem), and
finally to Judaism (the Hebrew Bible comprises three sections: Torah, the
law; Nevi’im, the prophets, and Ketuvim, the writings).
 Mysticism in theater 151
Given the spiritual breadth of this number, found in virtually all wisdom
traditions, three might become a manner for ordering movement, offering a
structure channeling an ideal lying dormant as an archetype within the audi-
ence’s subconscious minds, no matter from what tradition they come.
Another shared mystical path represents a wealth of inspiration for move-
ment ideas. Geomancy (known to the Chinese as feng shui) contains impor-
tant choreographic possibility. This ancient spiritual art defines specific and
vital earth energies, informing human interaction with the ecosystem, as
well as solar system above. Geomancy connects the spirit of the earth with
the human spirit, and up to the universe, creating a diaphanous connective
tissue between all three.
Specifically, geomancy represents the study of the Earth’s subtle magnetic
and electrical energies which f low around the globe, how they connect to the
stars, and the effect these have on places and people’s well-being.
Though mostly unremarked as a spiritual science today (as opposed to med-
itation or chanting, for instance), geomantic ideas can still be found in all
major religious paths. For Islam, this means siting mosques toward Mecca. For
Sephardic Jews, it means creating an interior space of worship reminiscent of
eternity (as opposed to the linear vision of Ashkenazi Jews or Christianity).
For Christians, it has meant placing important crypts in churches over un-
derground energy lines (divined by “geomancers”). For many ancient civili-
zations this meant creating alignment to the summer solstice (seen from the
Egyptian Pyramids to Chichen Itza in the Yucatan to Newgrange in Ireland),
or situating vital spiritual structures in meridional lines with other ancient,
holy sites (Salisbury Cathedral in England lies on meridional alignment with
Stonehenge).
While a full and fascinating study of geomancy lies outside the scope of
this book, the general idea of thinking of space and movement as aligning
with natural and ancient forces can strongly and positively inf luence a mysti-
cal theater production. Whether the director overlays a spiritual energy field
upon the stage, creating a geomantic interpretation, or actually discovers the
specific geomantic language inherent in that theater (studying, for instance,
the sites of the Lenni-Lenape indigenous nation of Manhattan, or ancient
Roman sites or natural energies latent in London), this manner of reconceiv-
ing space and movement within it will add depth and spiritual import to all
aspects of production.
This idea will be explored in more depth below, in the section on stage
design. But it certainly offers one more important tool for the director to
consider as they build their ephemeral, mystical structure out of the script.

Ritual

Ritual is God’s way, as opposed to man’s way. It is a medicine, an anti-

dote, a corrective, a restorative, a healing balm, a power outside of our
own limitations . . . Its usage differs following each revelation, each age
152 Mysticism in theater
and society, but its end is always the same, a support capable of putting us
in contact with the Divine Center.
(Perry, 1971, p. 272)

Ritual movement represents the heart of many sacred performances. The

Etruscans (8th to the 5th century BCE) felt that perfect presentation of the
ritual festival was so important that if a single mistake was made in a day-
or days-long presentation, the whole festival had to be replayed from the
beginning.
While I would not advocate such an extreme position regarding ritual
movement, ceremonial gesture provides a powerful manner of removing the
spectator from their daily experience, signifying not just a sacred space but
a sacral event. Used judiciously, either within one or more central scenes, or
by one of the characters set off against the other, more realistically choreo-
graphed characters, ritual adds spiritual depth to a production.
This does not mean borrowing from known religious rituals, but from
the idea of ritual itself: an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set and
precise manner. Again, these might be unknown, obscure, or even absurd. A
formal pattern might become central in binding seemingly disparate charac-
ters together. Or it might signal underlying similarities between apparently
different plot lines. Ritualistic movement might inf luence all blocking or
inlay in one particular scene.
Geomantic ideas might be translated into ritualistic movement. Working
with the energy fields discovered from the study of the specific space, or
emerging from the script and overlaid on top of the stage, new ritualized
movement might be deduced and implemented. This might take the form, for
instance, of characters moving in a very particular manner when approaching
a spot designated as the omphalos of the production. Or characters’ movements
might be circumscribed by unseen, though very real, magnetic or fault lines
running through the surrounding area and into the theater space.
Movements might follow underground water sources. Or the characters
might avoid certain points which are designated (within the stage and play)
or really are (as discovered in the specific neighborhood of the theater) areas
of “geopathic stress,” a place where harmful rays emanate from the earth and
cause discomfort and ill-health to those living above. In geomantic science,
these are created by various underground formations, such as subterranean
water currents, specific mineral deposits, or different fault lines which emit
electromagnetic fields that can be harmful to humans.
Ritual might also be built around ley lines, which are lines of energy
running over-ground in straight lines, often ref lected in the paths of ancient
trackways and in alignments of prehistoric and historic sacred sites in the
landscape. This ritual crossing and recrossing of the stage by one or more
characters might signify a connection to the earth, or provide the literal
structure for ritualistic movement which expands, constrains, or otherwise
adds to the mystical subtext of the play.
 Mysticism in theater 153
Ritual choreography might be built by subtly basing repeated blocking and
physical interactions on the universal mystical number three. Or by finding
rhythms within the text or through discussions with the cast and crew about
underlying mystical ideas inlayed into the play, and then translating these into
ritualized action.
One character might spend the entire production set into a repetitive
movement system, only to escape into another, freer posture at the end, rep-
resenting their ascendance through fana (self-annihilation) to baqa (subsist-
ence in the Divine). Patterning might grow as a character becomes more
spiritually certain. Or it might devolve, as their certainty evinced at the top
of the show disintegrates into questioning. Stricter ritual movement might
pair with growing bewilderment, a counterintuitive presentation highlight-
ing the goal of all ritual: approaching and then accepting the impossibility of
comprehending the Mysteries.
While a full replication of religious ritual movements should be avoided,
bits and pieces of known spiritual choreography, dances, prayers, and so forth
might be combined with other movements, known or unknown. A Sufi
dance appears in the middle of a club scene, only to disintegrate back into the
normative club movements. Gregorian chant opens a scene at a bar, dissolv-
ing into jazz, though leaving the residue of a question: could a bar be a house
of worship? After all, as a space almost completely devoid of hypocrisy (no
one ever claimed to enter a bar looking for God), perhaps this gathering space
represents a surer pathway into the spirit than a religious house of worship.
This might be signaled by ritual movement or sound, which only accompa-
nies scenes in this counterintuitive haven of sincerity.
Creating these rituals not only indicates that the audience has moved be-
yond entertainment and into the realm of myth, but it also allows for deeper
connections to be made between the action of the play and the human spirit.
As philosopher Mirce Eliade (d. 1986, a leading 20th-century interpreter
of religious experience) explained, ritual offers a vehicle of “eternal return”
to the mythical age. The signaling of this nonverbal facet of a production
indicates that the spectator has entered a universal time frame, beyond the
normative time arrow.
The challenge, as ever, is to embed this ritualistic presentation within the
time and space of the production. To speak the aesthetic language of the
contemporary audience, as well as that of the spirit. As the 20th-century Sufi
thinker Seyyed Hossein Nasr said: “God only speaks to people in their lan-
guage . . . But by virtue of its inner levels of meaning, it has a meaning that
transcends those conditions” (Norton, 2004, p. 41).
Other possibilities might include using the circle as an underlying format
for ritualized movement. This ancient image, represented in virtually all cul-
tures as the Divinity, eternity, or infinity, operates in a similar manner to the
Trinity, tapping into a symbol all paths share. It is certainly present in each
spectator as an archetypal image of unity. While the “circle” seems simple
and even obvious, remember, the most profound wisdom appears as that of
154 Mysticism in theater
an innocent child. A circle not only offers access to a deep place of return in
the audience, but also subtly references this mystical ideal of original purity.
Zen scholar Katsuki Sekida explained:

The use of the circle as a Zen symbol . . . represents the universe, ulti-
mate truth, Buddhism, and so on. Everybody is encircled in it; no one
can get out of it. But in Zen you are supposed to embody it in yourself.
(Sekida, 2005, p. 331)

The circle might inf luence the blocking of one character, or all personages
in one scene. There might be an invisible circle, into which, for some or all
of the play, the characters cannot step. It might represent the Divine Nought.
The circle plus dance could inf luence a bar or a wedding scene. It might be
paired in movement with a homeless character. Or only appear choreograph-
ically when a character gets further from temporal success, but closer to the
spirit.
By thinking of and playing with the circle as a blocking element, the direc-
tor moves beyond the linear staging of normative theater, and into the realm
of the omphalos, Divinity, nothingness. Put two circles together in motion and
you have the symbol for eternity. Again, a seemingly simple facet, the circle,
but one which might open unbounded possibilities for deepening meaning
and attaching seemingly mundane actions to the more profound spirit.
The director might also base blocking ideas in ancient ritualistic move-
ments reminiscent of meditational prayer. They might devise novel move-
ment patterns which repeat at similar moments in the play, or which appear
at seemingly disparate places in the production, though knitting together the
import of the action, at a deeper level.
Spontaneity and ritual might be brought together in surprising combi-
nations, reprising the strange and thought-provoking methods of Zen Bud-
dhism. As Steven Heine (b. 1950, a scholar in the field of Zen Buddhism)
noted concerning Zen, which could easily inf luence ritual-building in mys-
tical theater productions:

In many cases the demonstrative nonverbal gesture is particularly exag-

gerated and even violent, such as putting shoes on one’s head, kicking
over a bucket of water, twisting a disciple’s nose or ear, cutting off the
finger of a disciple, or jumping off a high pole. The impact of these
actions forces a degree of humiliation, ridicule, or hazing that paradoxi-
cally enables the disciple to overcome the final psychological obstacle to
liberation.
(Heine and Wright, 2000, p. 140)

An actor might be tasked with creating some movement in each produc-

tion, which then becomes the basis of a ritual within that evening only. It
might represent aspects of that individual character, or could take over the
 Mysticism in theater 155
production, slowly, throughout the play. The next night, a different move-
ment would be created, though playing the same role: improv + surprise +
ritual = eternity.
Remember, the audience, unwitting though they may be, represents the
“disciple.” The mystical theater maker: the “teacher.” The director/sheikh
subtly unveils new rituals, fresh myths, pegged not to the language of a par-
ticular religious path but attached to the heart.
The director must also appreciate this fact: they traffic in the ancient lan-
guage of drama. Their sacred task is to alchemize this experience into the
idiom of the soul.
The point in mystical theater is not to present and underscore the known,
but to defamiliarize elements of the everyday world, obliterating what the
audience believes they “understand.” Every aspect of life that we, in our day-
to-day life, believe solid and understood (from a table to a tree to the news),
appears to the mystic as a mystery. As Thomas Merton noted: “Anyone can
say: ‘this is a tree; that is a person.’ But how few are ever struck by the re-
alization of the real import of what is really meant by ‘is’?” (Merton, 1966,
pp. 200–201). Or as Seyyed Hossein Nasr assured: “The miracle of existence
itself is the greatest of all miracles” (Nasr, 1997, p. 30).
The director’s role is to infiltrate the ultimate question of existence into
the production. Bill Clinton (b. 1946, 42nd President of the United States)
opined, when talking about his relationship (or alleged lack thereof ) with
Monica Lewinsky: “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
This query should appear at the center of all the answers in mystical theater.
Anyone who comes to a mystical theatrical production should be struck by
this exact thought: what is “is”?
Other ritual acts might be included, alluded to, or half-formed, such as
sacrifice (human or animal) or dancing in a circle around a scapegoat and
then the exile thereof. The scapegoat, in ancient times, was said to be exiled
along with all bad energies, thereby protecting the majority population from
an ill fate. But what if the majority population actually worshipped the nor-
mative, capitalistic anarchy of contemporary Western society and the ritually
banished character took the spirit with them?
The implementation of ritual in contemporary theatrical practice is
bounded only by your imagination.

Faith

Don’t go out there to succeed; you will only fail. Go out there prepared
to fail, and you might succeed.
( Joan Littlewood in Barker, 2000, p. 124)

While director Joan Littlewood (d. 2002) spoke of the actor, this ideal could
just as easily be applied to the director. The bedrock of the director’s work on
156 Mysticism in theater
a production must be faith: faith in the power of theater, faith in the power of
the spirit, and faith in their collaborators.
For instance, would a director have the courage and creativity (and be
prepared to fail) to change one major aspect of each night’s production, be
it textual, design-oriented, movement, or in any other aspect of the play?
Trusting that the deepest themes underlying the play would inform the novel
facet, syncing with the rest of the production?
Richard Wurmbrand (d. 2001, a Romanian dissident who spent three years
in solitary confinement in a cell 12 feet underground) stated: “Dare to walk
in the foolish, completely unreasonable paths of love. Love, and your foolish
actions will be wiser than the wisdom of men” (Wurmbrand, 1969, p. 143).
Can theater direction grow from such a place—unreasonable, granted, but
as Martin Luther (d. 1546; founder of Protestantism) noted: “Reason is the
fountain and headspring of all mischiefs” (Luther, 1961, p. 128).
The director’s ultimate work remains to build a bridge from the rational
to the irrational. For agreed-upon, objective reality lies within the rational,
while Truth and ultimate reality await within the irrational.
Might a director develop such a love, faith, and trust for their actors—
not as individuals, but as representations of Prana energy, drawn down from
above, as well as from deep within—to co-create a mystical theater piece
onstage? Antonin Artaud, 20th-century theater prophet, provided a manner
of thinking beyond the commercial stage:

A director becomes a manager of magic, a master of sacred ceremonies.

And the material on which they work, the themes they bring throb-
bing to life are derived not from them, but from the gods. They come
from elemental interconnections of nature which a double spirit has
fostered . . . This is the primary physics, from which the Spirit has never
disengaged.
(Artaud, 1997, p. 60)

This belief might color all aspects of the directorial relationship with the
rest of the creative team. It points not to a pyramid, with the director/
maestro at the top, but to a collective. Not to consensus, mind you (the
death of creativity), but to trust in each individual participant, as both an
individual creator and a part of the single organism. St. Augustine’s great
paradox: that each element is within the whole, and the whole is also within
each element.

First entrance into the theater

Once the rehearsal period is complete, there is another threshold to cross. Or,
in mystical parlance, another gate swings open.
The first day in the theater where the production will take place—empty,
dusty, and full of possibility—usually defines a rambunctious tumbling by
 Mysticism in theater 157
the actors, stage manager, designers, and director, all marking their territory
with cold coffee cups, half-filled backpacks, and costume bits splayed about
the seats and onstage.
However, in mystical theater, one enters the space as if for worship.
I strongly urge the company to take this moment as another singular
and central pillar in building the temple of sacred theater. To step across
this doorjamb is to enter the Holy of Holies, the inner shrine, a space that
will define the omphalos of all the actors’ lives for the duration of the pro-
duction. This moment should be treated with the quietude, hushed voices,
and awe that one experiences upon entering the world’s hallowed spots, be
it the Pyramids in Egypt, Notre Dame in Paris, the Mosque in Cordoba,
Spain, the ancient Greek theater at Epidaurus, Gandhi’s ashram, the Ed-
mund Pettus Bridge in Alabama, or any other place that brings goosebumps
to one’s skin.
The whole team should gather together outside of the theater door, wait-
ing until all who are going to enter have assembled, and then cross into the
space together.
The ensemble enters in silence. They carefully stow all extraneous mate-
rials backstage. They gather just off the precincts of the acting surface. They
begin by defining the boundaries of the omphalos by joining together in si-
lent perambulations around the theater. This represents an acknowledgment
dating back as far as the first human settlements, of a community creating a
hallowed territory.
This first act, based on ancient “beating the bounds” rituals, begins with
ritual striking, undertaken by the director and playwright, one in front and
one in back of the single-file line of theater artists. This claims the space
for the production, as well as reenergizing the latent energy dormant in the
empty auditorium. Whether the vitality emerges from the furthest past of
theater history, or the theater’s placement in relation to the sun, or the ancient
denizens on that very soil, the point is to reclaim its sacral past.
In terms of what object should be used to strike the way around the theater
space for the ritual, it might stem from some aspect of the specific production,
or one of the tales told or improvised during rehearsal, or something found at
an auspicious time by one of the participants. It will present a regular intona-
tion, a metronome, a ritual sound as the collective makes its way wordlessly
through the space.
This activity should take place in single file and in silence, the company
walking around the outer limits first of the stage, then the stage and seats, and
finally the whole interior space of the theater, encompassing the backstage,
entrance lobby, outer aisles, and so forth. Throughout the peregrination, the
ritual striking takes place at regular intervals.
The auditorium, now claimed for the production, should be consecrated
through further action. Sitting in a circle in the center of the stage, a series of
activities might deepen the connection with the space, and from the physical
space, through to the spiritual energy, now activated, within. Mystical tales
158 Mysticism in theater
might be shared; mundane moments which presented spiritual challenges
might be discussed; a quiet meditation, chanting, or movement exercise
undertaken.
Perhaps a bowl with water is passed around, and a ritual washing of hands
continues this shared reclamation time. Known as wudhu to Muslims, netilat
yadayim to Jews, ablutions for Christians, or water taken from a tsukubai at
Japanese Buddhist temples, this act leads to ritual purity, as well as a demarca-
tion between “out there” and this now consecrated space. Indeed, any other
manor of integrating the energy developed during the rehearsal process and
this omphalos might be implemented.
At the end of the process, the collective will have successfully connected
the spiritual energy activated themselves through the previous rehearsal pe-
riod, with the production venue. Centered now in their deepest essence, and
this deepest self present within the theater, the sharing activities complete the
transformation of the theater space into a doorway to the sacred.
Many other possibilities for this in-between period exist, from lighting
candles around the outside of the stage, burning incense, or simply sitting in
silence for some period of time, perhaps holding hands in a circle, or perhaps
not.
The point is to find connection with each other, and then have this ensem-
ble link to a shared spiritual center and to the spiritual home of the theater.

Set design

All that is objective reality is sacred and symbolic of a reality that lies
behind it. Only the Origin or the One is completely real and totally itself
and not the symbol of something other than itself.
(Nasr, 1997, p. 131)

In theater today, we often assume that set design is subordinate to and sup-
portive of the dramatic production. But in mystical theater, the creator of the
stage space is, in fact, a builder of hallowed architecture, on par with the great
cathedral builders of medieval Europe, or those who fashioned consecrated
spots from Stonehenge to Delphi to Macchu Piccu and others.
The set designers carefully study the internal aspects of the play, of course.
In addition, they explore how the specific theater space connects along en-
ergy lines; astrological movements; synchronicity between the stage, sunrise
and sunset, and other symbols and relationships between the space, the his-
tory of the land, the sky, and any other facets at the intersection of the par-
ticular and eternal. All of these once primary aspects of geomancy affect the
creation of physical performance spaces in ancient Greece and other locales,
but are now fallen into disuse, forgotten or disrespected.
The mystical set designer takes on the role of master builder, as the creator
of a world, however ephemeral, which becomes the omphalos for both the
 Mysticism in theater 159
actors and the audience. Even the ephemerality of a production represents
a part signifying the whole, the microcosm echoing the macrocosm, as the
brief period of a single human life is a microcosm to the macrocosm of uni-
versal time, or how a single kalpa (Hindu or Buddhist eon) is one in an eternal
succession of kalpas.
All aspects of the physical space—the foyer, the entrance to the audito-
rium, the audience’s seats, and the stage itself—must be considered as a seam-
less whole. The complete experience from the moment the searcher (aka:
spectator) walks through the outside doors into the lobby, exiting the stream
of their life and entering this place of mystical return, must be treated as
an indistinguishable part of the holistic experience. Remember the ultimate
paradox: the finite exists within the infinite as surely as the infinite exists
within the finite. In the same way that the human soul represents the micro-
cosm of the universal soul, the specific place—in this case, a theater—offers
an entranceway into the world of the infinite spirit.
From the time that they enter the lobby until the moment when the audi-
ence emerges back into the streets around the theater, this site represents the
most important place in the universe for them. Space reconceived as voyage.
“Spirit” as a verb. And remember, the eyes of the heart do not see with ra-
tional thought. In mystical theater, we don’t want the audience to think about
what they are seeing, but to feel what they are experiencing.
The entrance itself and the moment in the lobby must be thought of as part
of the experience. And the production offers a double entrance, first from the
street into the auditorium, then from the lobby into the playing space, echo-
ing the winding and difficult entryways into spiritual sites around the world.
The initial entrance (from street to lobby) may be conceived as offering an
initiation, while the entrance from the lobby into the theater can be imagined
as that into the Holy of Holies.

Gateway to the spirit

Gateways into shrines in many cultures create an initial entrance to separate
the daily life from the consecrated, as well as to protect from evil spirits.
For the mystical theater designer, a myriad of manners for expressing this
voyage might be signaled. The audience must understand that they are not
entering a place of thin entertainment. They transition from mundane into
sacral time.
This might be indicated by a dark curtain one must walk through between
the outside and the lobby. Perhaps one of the actors playing a gatekeeper
passes out an amulet, related to both the play and some underlying mystical
ideal. Or maybe this character hands out on a card or in an envelope, one
of the short tales discovered, read, discussed, and improv-ed, which came to
have especial meaning to the cast and the production. The audience might be
met by a wise fool, or one of the play’s personages, already acting their part
and beginning the show, without the audience even being aware of it.
160 Mysticism in theater
Consider other manners of creating the original separation between “out
there” and “in here.” In Asia, Arabia, and throughout southern Europe, run-
ning water—both its presence and its gentle, timeless sound—often marks
the entryway into a sacred precinct, temple, or garden. Long, labyrinthine
hallways have been created since the earliest temples, to make entrance by
dark forces impossible. The soft sound of f lowing Buddhist chants or the
rhythmic chiming of a quiet bell might also welcome the spectator. Anything
that indicates the arrival at somewhere special. A place where the spirit rises
to the fore and daily concerns melt away.
Once in the lobby space, the audience becomes a Ward of Spirit. The
spectators have entered a hallowed space and should be informed of this fact.
There might be special lighting. Or more quiet music. Perhaps there is si-
lence, even signs informing that “silence is the first stage of worship” (Prophet
Muhammad) or “to hear the spirit, there must be perfect silence” (Meister
Eckhart). Of course, a theater audience will expect being “entertained,” so
the time can be filled with images—pictures relating both to the play and to
the mystical ideas. Perhaps an acted scene takes place, bleeding the “in there”
of the stage into the foyer. Perhaps the gathering multitude has no idea they
are witnessing part of the spectacle.
How about a lobby space lit only with candles? Even adding subtle, visual
messaging to their placement, which might echo the circular shape of the
omphalos, or be placed in a manner that suggests eternity instead of a linear
entrance. They might create some kind of space referencing ideas drawn from
earlier rehearsals, specific mystical ideas, or the narrative and characters of
the drama. The candles alone, f lickering in silence or to Gregorian chant or
Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” or the Sufi sounds of Nusrat Ali Fateh Khan
(d. 1997, a Pakistani singer of qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music) or
the contemporary meditation of the Portuguese band Madredeus or any of
thousands of musical scores which, themselves, plug the listener through their
heart and souls into the Divine.
Any manner in which the circle might be closed, visually, aurally, even
by smells, between the mundane space of the lobby and the eternity of
sacral time, can be considered. The specifics remain for the stage designer
to decide, using the combination of the themes in the play, the spiritual
ideas found in the rehearsal room, and a quiet nod to the Divine question
mark.
The point is not to convince the spectator that they have entered some spu-
rious recreation of an ancient Mayan shrine. As Hui Neng, the Sixth Patri-
arch of Chan Buddhism, noted: “Argument is unnecessary for an enlightened
disciple” (Price and Wou-Lam, 1990, p. 94). This is not a matter of cajoling,
convincing, asserting, but simply presenting. To create surroundings which
impact the audience’s emotions and experience, without engaging their ra-
tional thought process. You don’t want them thinking about what this or that
aspect of the design means, but to simply experience the space as something
outside of the mundane.
 Mysticism in theater 161
The playing space: geomancy

Artaud maintained that ‘special proportions of height and depth’ should

prevail in the room, that action should take place in the ‘four cardinal
points’ and that a ‘central place’ should be set up, as an informal stage,
for the concentration of the action. These elements trace back to the
times when the stage was inseparable from sacred space, where dimen-
sions were decided upon by rules of sacred geometry, the four directions
established as a means of orienting performance, and the central place
reserved for the altar or pillar of the shaman’s tent.
(Pendzik, 1994, p. 28)

Take a deep breath, dear stage designer: you are about to step out of the con-
temporary theater and into the world of spiritual architecture: the ancient art
of geomancy. Although mostly forgotten and even derided today, for most
of human time, the art of living with the environment was considered a
primal relationship. Geomancy took priority over economics, ease of travel,
and even common sense. The relationship between human construction, the
earth, and the Divine was central in constructing an edifice, laying out a
town, plotting the dimensions of a farm, or designating a consecrated spot.
In this discipline, the world, from human spirit to dirt, represented a con-
tinuum in which all facets—natural, human-made, supernatural, conscious,
unconscious, and so forth—inextricably linked together at the subtlest level
of connection.
Geomancy represents the mystical ideal of finding God in every aspect of
creation, written into a spiritual earth science.
These days, physics has proven this connection to be true. In the suba-
tomic realm, all physical matter defines a seamless whole. David Bohm (d.
1992, one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century)
defined this as the “implicate order,” an underlying field of existence from
which the “explicate order,” or discernible universe, emerges and sinks back
into. Even space and time are ephemeral manifestations of this deeper, un-
derlying order. Bohm’s idea represented a nexus between mystical thought
and science.
This linkage between the rational and the inconceivable has not cured the
Western society of our attack on the world in which we live. The more we
have “proven” these mystical facts to be true through quantum physics, neu-
robiological studies, and other scientific methods, the less have we honored
them. We, in the West, have lost our connection with the Divine earth.
In the quote at the beginning of this section, Antonin Artaud desired re-
capturing the arts of geomancy and applying them to the stage. There are
many interesting aspects of this spiritual science which might be inlaid into
set design and, though unnoted by the spectators, will affect the holistic
experience in the room. Atmosphere affects emotions. Using geomantic de-
vices will subtly inf luence the ambiance, leading to harmony between the
162 Mysticism in theater
spectator and their surroundings. Using these ancient methods for aligning
human space with geography and earth energy accentuates the transcendence
of the dramatic encounter.
Some facets of geomancy require research by the designer, to understand
where the stage sits in relation to earth’s energy points, sunrise and sunset,
the four cardinal points on the compass, and other external (outside of the
theater) physical characteristics. Others take place within the theater space
itself.

Alignment of energy

The geomantical basis of the temple is deliberately designed as a micro-

cosmic image of universal order, acting as a catalyst which enables the
individual to harmonize with the cosmos.
(Pennick, 1979, p. 118)

Before the Western society turned to mastering our surroundings, our spe-
cies worked carefully, respectfully, and in concord with nature. The land,
the ecosystem, was not only a living entity, but also filled with powers that
must be respected. From the neolithic Dolmens in western Spain (c. 3500
BCE, said to have been erected by the Lost Tribes of Israel) to Stonehenge in
England (c. 3000 BCE) to the Nazca Lines in Peru (c. 500 BCE) to the Great
Serpent Mound in the United States (c. 350 BCE), these ancient and massive
structures align with important geomantic points, and sometimes, across vast
distances, with each other.
Two aspects of geomancy might inf luence the set designer. The first rep-
resents alignment with the energy and history of the land upon which the
theater sits. And while few stage designers in Manhattan or Edinburgh or
London spend a lot of time exploring the energies latent in the geography
upon which the stage rests, or the earliest inhabitants of the land, there are
stirrings of just such a movement within contemporary theater.
I have sat in performances in New York City where the introduction in-
cludes an acknowledgment that we inhabit the ancestral home of the Lenni
Lenape Indians. And that the name of the island upon which we sit de-
rives from the indigenous term manahahtaan, meaning “place where wood
is gathered to make bows.” Performances in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
or Galway International Arts Festival sometimes tip their cap to the original
Celtic Brythonic who inhabited those lands. Some plays are performed in
that original language.
Having considered the precursor societies inhabiting the land, and assimi-
lated any design ideas therefrom, the stage designer turns their gaze to the ge-
ography itself. Taking sitings or spending time researching online to discover
the specific energy and geological history of the neighborhood, then map-
ping the theater space into it, the stage designer begins the search to align a set
 Mysticism in theater 163
design with earth’s energies. Paging through old books or on the outer edges
of the Internet, the stage designer uncovers energy fields, precious stones, and
ancient waterways buried, mapped to the location of the performance space.
All edifices are sited, though in modern times their position has nothing to
do with natural energies, but with artificial grids and property lines, which
lay like invisible chains of iron upon the earth. Regardless, the stage designer
might find the position of the stage in relation to the four cardinal points, the
rising sun at the summer solstice (a vital geomantic coordinate), the equinox
(the instant of time when the plane of Earth’s equator passes through the ge-
ometric center of the Sun’s disk), and other astral aspects. While one cannot
pick up and move the building, sight lines, staging, audience orientation, and
other aspects of the design might be inf luenced.
A stage designer might spend a few days next to a cooling cup of coffee,
poking around on the Internet to discover these and other ancient rhythms
and connections inherent in the particular space they are about to enter.
They might explore the specific mystical ideas uncovered in the rehearsal
room, operating as spiritual turbines in the production, and align these to
discovered energies and cardinal points. For instance, the Divine Nought
might be designated in the geomantic center of the stage, though this might
not be the literal middle. Jacob’s Ladder of mystical ascension (a spiritual path
for mystics heading into the Divine spirit, and then allowing them to return
to the world to spread the prophetic energy, which aligns with Grotowski’s
idea for the “spiritual elevator”) might grow out of the stage, though attached
to ancient energies discovered beneath the theater. Labyrinths might be uti-
lized to create vast journeys, even on a small, black box stage. In geomancy,
the labyrinth represents an archetypal pattern leading one on a journey along
a prescribed, meandering path to a central goal: the Self. Historically, these
unicursal paths have been used for meditation and engagement with that
place where within and above fuse.
Of course, labyrinths also lead, at their center, to humanity’s greatest
dreads. In the ancient labyrinth of the Knossos of Crete, these fears were
personified by the Minotaur of Greek mythology, awaiting at the center of
the unicursal path. The Minotaur represented the primal human fear of the
unknown, which must be conquered to attain true knowledge.
Yet another paradoxical mystical theater reality: geomantic designs inte-
grate and highlight positive energies, yet they might also lead toward our
darkest subconscious terrors.
The omphalos remains central to geomantic stage design. The exact spot
should be decided by the principles running through the space, and not just
unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the stage. Perhaps it will be off
center, perhaps to one side, full downstage, or in another, seemingly odd
placement. Yet, in this way, an important connection is created between the
surrounding earth, the stage, the dramatic action, and the deepest spirit. It
will not simply represent a disembodied idea of a universal center, but connect
directly to ancient energies and link into the hearts of the viewers.
164 Mysticism in theater
Other sacred geomantic gems lie buried and awaiting disinterment. For in-
stance, in Manhattan alone, veins of blue-green aquamarines, smoky quartz,
golden beryl, topaz, black tourmalines, and wine-red garnets have been
discovered. Here rests a treasure trove of information to begin aligning a
production with the earth. Color ideas from the stones, orientation of their
magnetic pulls, specific meanings from their history with indigenous peo-
ples, or alchemists (whose true work involved alchemizing the spirit): con-
ceptions of the spiritual weight of each gem might open up avenues of design
which deepen the impact of the play.
Any of these ideas, or some combination, add spiritual connective tissue
to the production. And with mystical inlay, one need not have explanatory
notes or pre-show declarations of intent, explanation, or apology. The atmos-
phere created affects the audience. The conversation between the production
and the audience takes place on a plane deeper than the verbal discussion,
beyond the reaches of rational mind.

Microcosm

Absolute space is located nowhere. It has no place because it embodies

all places.
(Yarrow, 2007, p. 186)

Geomancy bases in the idea that here and eternity link inextricably. Every aspect
of the sensual world represents a microcosm of the universe. For mystics through-
out time, within and above, have been synonymous in humanity as well. As the
Sufi martyr Mansur al-Hallaj stated: “I saw my Lord with my heart’s eye and I
said to my Lord, ‘who art Thou?’ And my Lord said: ‘Thou’” (Nasr, 1999, p. 174).
And thusly should stage design be viewed: as an echo of the universal
order, the Divine pattern writ small. Geomancy provides a wellspring of
manners to align the particular with the eternal. One of the most important
geomantic and alchemical symbols is the squaring of the circle, a problem
proposed by ancient geometers. It represented the challenge of constructing
a square with the same area as a given circle by using only a finite number of
steps with compass and straightedge. In geomancy, this brought together the
heavenly plane (the circle) with that of matter (the square).
When synchronized, the circle and square reconcile the two different
planes of existence, presenting a fusion of the complete universe of spirit and
matter. Magnificent, soaring Gothic cathedrals, early neolithic structures,
and even a contemporary theater space in New York (the Circle in the Square
theater on Broadway), honor this idea.
For the stage designer, this concept might inf luence the structure of the
stage itself, with circles in squares, circles of deeper meaning set off against
squares of rational thought, or even subtle designs in rugs, wall coverings, or
lines on the stage, with the circle motif representing the higher self, while the
square stands for the scientific, conscious, or rational aspect.
 Mysticism in theater 165
Circle and square designs might define actions taking place on different
planes, as perhaps subtextual moments might be staged in the circle, while
“mundane” in the square. Or all action might take place in a circular playing
space carved out from the normative rectangle, indicating that no matter
what is the action, it connects with the astral plane.
A stage designer might sit in rehearsal with a pad and doodle. They might
create circles and spirals with a spirograph, a child’s toy. They might print
squares with ink and blocks of wood. Employing any manner to break out-
side of their own well-worn understanding of the stage and move toward a
visceral fusion of here (square) and HERE (circle).
The double square, one laid at a bias overtop another, represents another
important image for geomancy. We know this as the eight-sided star, seen
often in Islamic imagery. A double square also enclosed the Holy of Ho-
lies in Jerusalem, in the original Temple (completed in 957 BCE). These
two, overlaid squares also symbolize the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism
(Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right
Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration) and
underpinned ground plans of ancient Chinese Confucian temples. The oc-
tagon created by the overlaid squares became known to medieval Christian
architects as the ad quadratum. This double square was the ground plan for St.
Paul’s Cathedral in the heart of London.
This symbol represents the intermediate stage between the earth and the
heavens. It offers a fertile symbol for creation of an intermediary space in
the theater, where the audience indeed enters a liminal and sacred place, one
between the mundane and the spirit. How to utilize this octagon, whether
through movement pathways, structures, curtains, or other staging devices,
will vary from designer to designer and production to production. However,
it represents a shift in consciousness, the designation of this theater and this
time as a doorway toward the Divine.
The labyrinth represents another, though more challenging, ancient geo-
mantic form. These designs were created in ancient times as literal pathways
through shrubbery, or as images on stones or walls, or represented in myth
such as that of the Knossos of Crete, where the Minotaur awaited the traveler
at the center of the voyage.
Spiritually, the labyrinth represents a journey to our own center, con-
quering our deepest, subconscious fears and then returning, to arrive back
where we started, though with a deeper knowledge of self and the universe.
Ergo, it makes perfect sense that at the midpoint of the journey, awaits the
primal fear of ultimate knowledge. In the case of the mystic’s path, this
represents our terror in letting go of our personal ego to submerge in the
Divine ocean.
Nigel Pennick (b. 1946), writing in The Ancient Science of Geomancy, noted:

On multiple levels, physical, psychological, spiritual, and astral, the lab-

yrinth acts as a boundary between various states of being, preventing the
166 Mysticism in theater
unauthorized from treading on a holy place, defining its nature to the
initiate, acting as a practical channel of energy for the adept.
(Pennick, 1979, p. 65)

The labyrinth image might be used in a variety of manners. The entrance

from the lobby to the theater might take place through a labyrinth, with
obvious import (the audience’s greatest fears and deepest spiritual possibility
await in the theater space). Strange circumlocutions onstage might turn the
small space into a winding movement emporium, with different mystical
stages represented by different places on the physical journey. Twisting, cork-
screw blocking might reference the labyrinthine journey into the spirit, as
the play unfolds. Some characters might be able to enter the labyrinth, some
might not. At the center of the voyage, the Minotaur might be represented by
money, fame, and other aspects of human experience that seduce us and stand
between our understanding of our eternal spirit-place within.
As with the other geomantic designs, the manners of utilizing the laby-
rinth are bounded only by the imagination of the stage designer.
Respect what you do. Respect the audience. Walking this pathway in hu-
mility, appreciation, and with a sense of spiritual awe will aid, as you, the
mystical stage designer, tap into these timeless powers.
We may pass through life with our mask of irony and wallowing in our
postmodern malaise. But these universal forces exist within us, beneath this
mask, and outside of us, in the earth upon which we walk.
Tread softly and with great care.

Choreography/Movement

Ritually perambulated routes, integrating the human-made and the nat-

ural with the intention of harmonizing the activities of the human race
with the patterns of time were . . . related to both the macrocosmic order
of the heavens and to the microcosmic reenactment of its active phase.
(Pennick, 1979, p. 63)

Now that the stage is set—literally—how to fill it with life and spirit through
movement? And to what extent does movement become ritual? Or blocking
become dance? After all, theater began in dance, predating the first Greek
tragedies by nearly 1,500 years. Sophocles claimed Pan, the dance maker of
the gods, invented dances based on the movements practiced in ancient Crete
(c. 2,000 BCE).
Choreographed movement represents the historical origins of sacred
theater. As theater evolved, dance developed into stylized movements, and
then further to become “blocking” in drama. However, the sacred choreo-
graphic roots have reemerged. Over the past half-millennia, various theatri-
cal forms from Flamenco to Ballet to Broadway musicals have brought dance
 Mysticism in theater 167
back onto the stage, infused into the center of narrative dramatic produc-
tions. These are entertaining and often beautiful. Furthermore, dance and
choreographed movement can offer a manner of reaching into the heart of
the spectator, beyond the linguistic and rational understanding of the text.
Movement and blocking might be considered material language and mu-
sic, the harmony of the spheres in visible form. As Friedrich Nietzsche, the
hidden mystic, said: “I would believe in a god who could dance” (Nietzsche,
1978, p. 41).
The challenge is to ritualize movement without becoming redundant, or
to insert dance without the dance overwhelming the production. Basing cho-
reography, blocking, and dance in specific mystical teachings aids in thinking
about how best to expand the movement idiom.
For instance, perhaps three different characters move very differently
­onstage—with some kind of exaggerated walk, a limp, a wheelchair, lan-
guidly, quickly, and so forth. And perhaps each is on a very different life path,
for instance a homeless person, a business person, and a musician. Yet by either
aligning some aspect of their varied movement, thereby showing wherein
lies the underpinning unity, or exacerbating their differences through move-
ment, yet, in the end, having them spiral to a similar movement place, the
similarity latent beneath diversity might be unveiled.
In the previous section we explored the ancient symbol of the labyrinth.
This image might become an interesting element to work with in building
blocking. Not that the audience would necessarily recognize that actors fol-
lowed a labyrinthine structure, but the movement itself—strange, inexplica-
ble, yet clearly planned—will add to the questions of the piece, as well as its
mystical coherence. The inexplicable, labyrinthine movements repeating at
intervals, linking different aspects of the narrative and different characters to
each other.
Silence and stasis might also become important as choreographic elements.
As Chuang Tzu said:

Heaven does nothing and thence comes its serenity. Earth does nothing
and thence comes its rest. By the union of these two inactivities, all
things are produced. Hence it is said: ‘Heaven and Earth do nothing, and
yet there is nothing they do not do.’
(Chuang Tzu, 1971, pp. 206–207)

How might one represent the inactivity at the heart of all activity? A silence
not of word or thoughts, but of the soul? Blocking which incorporates long
periods of stasis, perhaps? Not a parlor scene, but someone stopping in the
middle of a stage cross, or dance choreography which has long periods of lit-
tle or no movement, yet still holds the attention. Not something f laccid and
shorn of meaning, but pregnant with depth and expectation. How do you,
as a dance designer, blocking captain, or fight choreographer, utilize silence
and inactivity?
168 Mysticism in theater
Remember, mystical theater does not create a position paper or newspaper
article in three dimensions. A fight that stops in the middle, or immediately
goes into a profound slow motion, might have more effect on the emotions
than one pegged to real time. Stopping physical action while increasing the
pace of the language or even narrative might access parts of the audience’s
psyche unavailable to normative “I get it” realistic theater. The action’s
surprise, well-wrought and tied to a deeper meaning, begins to unveil the
Divine question mark, leading the spectator away from the comfort of under-
standing, toward a more honest and mystically pure bewilderment.
Inspiration for further movement ideas lay embedded in mystical teach-
ings. Rabbi Moshe of Kobryn (d. 1858) said:

When you walk over a freshly plowed field, furrows alternate with
ridges. The way in the service of God is like that. Now you go up, now
you go down. Evil gets a hold on you, now you get a hold on it. Just see
to it that it is you who deal the last blow!
(Buber, 1991, p. 162)

How about a character who literally has a strange, lilting walk which some-
how accords with their internal spiritual state? When in distress, regardless
of the words or action in the play, their walk somehow descends. And when
their spirit rises, their walk becomes ascendant. After some time of the play’s
action, the ebb and f low would begin to resonate with the audience, perhaps
at a conscious pitch, or maybe somewhere beneath their conscious appraisal
of the piece.
There are countless movement inspirations buried in the sayings, tales, and
thoughts from the mystical thinkers referenced at the end of this chapter. But
one more short note, a hadith (saying from the Prophet Muhammad) will
spur more movement ideas: “If you walk toward God, God comes to you
running.”
There might be some spot on stage, the omphalos, representing spiritual
realization. Movement might quicken in this direction, informed by an invis-
ible gravitational pull. The omphalos might move in relation to the action or
language or narrative of the play. Throughout the production, the stage itself
might move, becoming reconfigured in relation to the spiritual growth of the
characters. Maybe it moves around the static actors. Or perhaps it moves in
relation to the action, or time passing. The characters might notice and react
to the movement. Or remain unawares of it, all depending on the interplay
between character, narrative, and the spirit.
Subtle stuff, indeed.

Dance
Dance might be slipped into nondance and nonmusical productions, adding
surprise, depth, and a nonverbal doorway to deeper understanding. Knit into
 Mysticism in theater 169
a narrative production, moments of dance or ethereal blocking add to the
ideas presented, accessing important levels of questioning (never understand-
ing!) in the audience.
What does this moment of dance mean? How do these movements add to
the narrative? If the choreography seems contrary to the textual narrative of
the work, which of the two messages represents the “correct” narrative line
and which the dead-end? Open the doorway to questions without answers.
As Simone Weil said: “All that I conceive of as true is less true than those
things of which I cannot conceive the truth” (Weil, 1999, p. 418).
Dance within mystical theater provides a connection to the earliest dra-
matic works, when performance, society, and the spirit operated as a single
shared experience. G. I. Gurdjieff, 20th-century mystic and theater-inspirer,
referred to Sacred Dances, Sacred Gymnastics, or simply Movements, which
harmonized the complete performer (mental, emotional, and spiritual) within
the individual, and then through public presentation, with the audience. As
Gurdjieff noted: “Each gesture, each position, is like a word of this language.”
Professor of Theater Arts Dr. Catharine Christof continued, in speaking of
the similarities of approach between Jerzy Grotowski and Gurdjieff:

When every aspect of the art form is distinctly quantified, an objec-

tive experience can be virtually guaranteed because the participant has
connected with a universal state of consciousness through the execu-
tion of proper motion. Grotowski . . . provides a location for objective
consciousness: within the performer’s physical body, which is therefore
included in the context of a spiritual experience.
(Christof, 2017, pp. 219–220)

From Monty Python’s “ministry of silly walks” to Merce Cunningham or

­Balanchine-inspired moments, dance might be considered as yet another
whisper in the mystical language of the theater.

Lighting Design

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of
life is when men are afraid of the light.
(Titus Lucretius Carus, d. 55 BCE in Carus, 2007, p. 30)

Like other design elements discussed, lighting design has most often been
used to underscore and support the action of realistic plays—with eerie light-
ing and strong shadows in scary scenes, spotlights for the star player, or a color
wash to indicate the proper emotion. In mystical theater, lighting designers
become co-creators, sometimes even taking the fore in the quest to disturb
the audience, open channels into deeper ways of experiencing, and leading
toward perplexity.
170 Mysticism in theater
Lighting design offers a powerful manner of creating ambience, layering
depth into the messaging of a piece, and affecting the audience beneath cog-
nition. Paired with sound and movement, it can help create a unique, com-
pelling, and otherworldly atmosphere of an omphalos, not just a stage.
Much like silence is to sound design or dialogue, in mystical theater, light
can be dark and vice versa. Darkness might well force our gaze inward and
unveil deeper truths, while light can obscure by giving us the (mistaken)
impression that by seeing, we understand.
Lighting designers in mystical theater need to be present in rehearsals, in-
stead of simply retreating to their studio with the script in hand, to emerge
into the theater on load-in day. Their work must seamlessly intertwine not
only with the text and acting, but also with the other designers, as sometimes
sound rises to the fore, sometimes lighting, sometimes the set or costumes,
and so forth. They also should become well-read in the mystical themes of
the production, participating in rehearsals with the readings, watching the
improv work, and experiencing the meditational moments with the rest of
the cast and crew. Of course, this goes for all other designers and team mem-
bers, as a single unit is built from the individual creators on a production.
The ideas of “light” and “dark” are vital mystical elements. From the
beginning of the universe by the creation of light (“God said: let there be
light”), to St. John of the Cross’s (d. 1591) spiritual autobiography Dark Night
of the Soul, to Plato’s Cave (in which the society builds reality from shadows
cast on a cave wall, while the lighted objects which are true remain beyond
their vision), lighting has underpinned humanity’s search for meaning within
this world.
The lighting designer taps into a primal energy underpinning not just hu-
man existence, but all reality in the universe. The design might elucidate,
true, but it might also obfuscate when things seem obvious, clarify when the
situation muddles, or disappear completely at a climactic moment. As with
other aspects of mystical theater, the lighting will add spiritual texture and
layering to the production.

Light
In all mystical paths, light equals Truth. While the path to light might lead
through intense periods of darkness, the end of the tunnel of searching leads
to an overwhelming, clarifying light of realization.
The mystical and metaphorical power of this ethereal substance cannot
be overstated. In the Baha’i faith, the sun symbolizes the Creator. Within
Baha’i tradition, prophetic figures such as Arjuna (Hindu), Moses ( Jewish),
Jesus Christ (Christian), Mohammad (Islam), Zarathustra (Zoroastrianism),
Buddha (Buddhism), and Baha’u’llah (founder of the Baha’i faith) act as pure
and perfectly polished ref lectors of the sun’s rays.
The sun as spiritual purity has been central to spiritual paths since the
dawn of history. Geomancers have been orienting their structures toward
 Mysticism in theater 171
the sun, and all that it represents, since the beginning of human time. By
the 25th century BCE, the Egyptian Sun God (Ra) had become one of the
most important gods in ancient Egyptian religion. Hindus extoll the sun as
the highest God Brahma. For Sufis, the Prophet Muhammad was referred to
as the “sun of reality.” For Jewish mystics, Ohr (light) is a central Kabbalistic
concept.
More recently, Mahatma Gandhi stated: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,”
indicating that it scrubs impurities and reveals the truth.
The lighting designer might take many ideas from mystical concepts con-
cerning light. The most important premise is to think in terms of using light
to elucidate the subtext, the subterranean mystical currents, that which is
hidden beneath the obvious. In this way, lighting should surprise.
For instance, at a moment of mystical illusion, which might be couched
within the play as Absurd, simplistic, or mundane, perhaps the house lights
could pop on momentarily, implicating the audience in the action and im-
port. Conversely, lighting might power down to gray at times which appear
most propitious, like a job promotion, monetary bonus, purchase of a beauti-
ful new car, or other worldly gain. Perhaps a shadow of Rumi’s gallows f lares
brief ly on the back wall?
Half the stage might be blazing while the other half could be dark, with
a clear line of demarcation between them. The ideas represented might be
“good” and “evil,” but they might as easily represent “yin” and “yang,” or
two aspects of the exact same thing, with the darkness hiding the deeper
truth of an action or object, while the light illuminates the obvious, though
meaning of lesser import.
Color palettes have a role to play. What shades might represent different
mystical ideals? Is “acceptance” amber? An amber wash appearing when one
of the characters speaks. Or signaling that some action, no matter how coun-
terintuitive or seemingly irrelevant, leads toward acceptance? How about
uselessness? Gray or deep blue? Equanimity: pink or rose? The point being
that perhaps a lighting designer’s color wheel connects mystical concepts with
specific colors, and in working with the other designers and the director,
figures out the best manner to use these markers. Sometimes to signal, some-
times to foretell, or sometimes to counteract the narrative. A subtle, yet clear
(to the production partners, at least) mystical lighting structure to be devel-
oped and implemented.
The spotlight might also be reconceived within this work. Instead of the
“main character steps into the spotlight and addresses the audience,” perhaps
the spotlight follows a secondary character around stage. Or if it only is avail-
able to a seemingly broken character, one who “loses.” As was earlier noted,
Shams-i Tabrizi said to his student, Rumi: “Two people are wrestling or bat-
tling. Of those two, God is with the one who is overcome and broken, not with
the one who overcomes, for ‘I am with the broken’” (Tabrizi, 2004, p. 124).
What if the spotlight defined the Divine Nought, presenting a place on
stage that none ever entered? Or cast a circle mysteriously onto the side wall.
172 Mysticism in theater
What is on the wall? Sometimes, a message, sometimes, nothing, or perhaps
a window appears. How do all of these images connect, to each other and to
some underlying theme? Or if the spotlight echoed the image of Plato’s Cave,
throwing only shadows, and never elucidating the object itself. Or, when the
object finally appeared, it is completely different than imagined by the shad-
ows (the point of the parable of Plato’s Cave, after all).
Think, think, think, dear designer! Sit surrounded by mystical tales. Talk
to the other team members (over coffee, a glass of wine, a grass-tasting mat-
cha, etc.) about the spiritual ideas latent within the piece, which ones you
want to uncover, and which obscure. You are a leaf in a turbulent stream
of creativity—get others to join you there in the rapids and build concepts,
break them apart and rebuild them. Always keeping the end goal in mind: to
provide a window away from certainty, and into that hidden place inside of
the spectator, where within fuses with above.

Dark

Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light, but making the darkness

conscious.
( Jung, 2014, p. 265)

Like silence, darkness should be considered in its full possibility. Light, after
all, allows us to believe we comprehend. When we see something, we feel
that we understand it. But as Saint Gregory of Nyssa (d. 395 CE) said: “The
true vision and true knowledge of what we seek consists precisely in not see-
ing, in an awareness that our goal transcends all knowledge” (Harvey, 1997,
p. 45). Truth lurks in the dark of night—not in the bright light of the day,
when a thousand shiny objects stand between us and the question mark at the
heart of being.
Also in darkness, fear lurks. But not the fear of an approaching intruder or
a failed business enterprise. The fear at the center of the labyrinth. The fear
of what lies within us, not what awaits outside. The uneasy and too-often
misplaced fear that somehow our lives have become untracked from what
truly matters. As Simone Weil noted: “People feel that there is mortal danger
in facing ultimate truth squarely for any length of time” (Weil, 1999, p. 488).
In darkness awaits the peril of ultimate truth. The mystical theater maker
will lean into this dynamic, afraid of nothing except leaving their audience
undisturbed and unchanged.
Combined with various types of music, with threatening dialogue, with
abrupt and cacophonous sounds, darkness might produce an intense feeling
of instability. Fear in darkness represents a vulnerability, and an opening into
the deeper recesses of the audience. Darkness may be used in any myriad of
ways, echoing the number of words that Inuits have for snow (53, according
to science writer David Robson).
 Mysticism in theater 173
It might be used to surprise (lights power off at an unforeseen moment), of-
fer a moment of ref lection (a monologue taking place in the dark to heighten
the sense of the character talking from deep within themselves), or frustrat-
ingly hide some tender moment in the play (frustrating the audience, and
further engaging them when the lights come back on). Its inky blackness
could offer an interlude, with sound sweeping into the empty visual space. It
might give a breather to the action and signify subtext, asking the audience to
ponder the deeper import of an action just completed. It might be paired with
silence, exacerbating the quietude, or with loud dialogue, moving spectators
to the edge of their seats to “see.”
Darkness might also be used to paint pictures, another unusual manner
of reaching past the rational and into the soft, spiritual underbelly of the au-
dience. Not the darkness between blasts of strobe lights, but used at gentler
intervals, allowing events to unfold in stop action, bringing all into relief as
equal aspects of a unified narrative. To paint a picture on stage in stop motion
through the use of darkness will sear the images into the sight of the specta-
tor, causing them to consider more deeply any hidden messages or unusual
concurrences.
Obscurity might also underscore the circular nature of being, the truth
beyond the time arrow, the unified essence beneath all seeming disparity. If a
series of stop-motion images lead in a circle, it might echo the Jewish heretic
and mystic Baruch Spinoza, who said:

Nature does nothing for the sake of an end, for the eternal and infinite
Being acts by the same necessity by which It exists . . . since the Divine
has no principle or end of existence, the Divine has no principle or end
of action.
( Jones and Sontag, 1977, p. 190)

Darkness can signify eternity, as easily as fear, obscurity, and a lack of under-
standing. It might represent the arrival at a deeper place of realization. Like
so many aspects of mystical theater-making, it’s not what it “is,” but how you
use it.

Sound Design

What power was it that freed Prometheus from his vultures and trans-
formed the myth into a vehicle of Dionysian wisdom? It is the Herculean
power of music: which, having reached its highest manifestation in trag-
edy, can invest myths with a new and most profound significance.
(Nietzsche, 1937, p. 232)

I have heard theater makers deride the use of music, or even sound cues in
general, as “cheap” manners of eliciting emotions from the spectators. As if
174 Mysticism in theater
language, being primary, shouldn’t have to rely upon something as viscerally
“easy” as music or sound to tug at the soul-strings.
Needless to say, mystical theater makers employ all weapons in their
spiritual arsenal, laying none down before entering the field of spiritual bat-
tle: aka the theater space. Mystical theater represents a holistic experience. All
senses must be engaged to remove the veneer of understanding and gently
transport the audience into the realm of Divine befuddlement.
Sounds which oppose or deepen the import of the narrative, perplex the
mind, question the patina of normalcy, and so forth represent powerful
additions to a production. As ever, the challenge is to bewilder without
confusing—an extremely fine line. The desire is to have the spectators
leave the theater arguing with each other about exactly what the piece
meant, not to scratch their heads, shrug their shoulders, and reenter the
stream of their life unburdened from the need for further investigation of
the issues raised.

Music
Richard Wagner (d. 1883, who revolutionized opera through his concept
of the Gesamtkunstwerk, “total work of art,” synthesizing the poetic, visual,
musical, and dramatic arts) stated that drama should be “dipped in the magic
fountain of music” (Brockett, 1995, p. 425). Music not only accentuates emo-
tion, but through melody, tempo, and other aural aspects, provides greater
emotional and spiritual control to the creator, rather than relying on language
and movement only. Music infiltrates beneath the thin consciousness, ap-
proaching the emotions directly from the ears.
Most often in theater, music is utilized to extend the meaning of the words
in the direction of the obvious narrative. A love song accompanies a love
scene. Scary music underscores a dangerous turn in the action. Airy mu-
sic plays along with a lighter moment. This is obvious. But mystical theater
makers go further, and then continue on the ever-narrowing path of Divine
exploration, bushwhacking away from convention.
Music which runs skew or contrary to the action, yet jibes with a deeper
emotional or mystical meaning, makes better sense within a mystical theater
production. Taking cues from the deepest mystical beliefs, one can find inspi-
ration for stretching the bounds of the auditory experience. For instance, the
Sufi Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Niffarī (d 965) said of God: “I am near, without
sign of nearness. I am far, without sign of distance. I am the apparent, without
appearance” (Sells, 1996, p. 295). By now we should recognize this inscruta-
bility of ultimate truth. Our work here, however, becomes to translate this
into a sound score.
How about this: the audience enters through some of the aforementioned
pre-show mystical production ideas, into a theater that appears off-kilter
somehow (though aligned, through geomancy, with deeper energies). The
music is light and airy, perhaps cool jazz. They settle in. OK—this is more
 Mysticism in theater 175
like it! The lights dim. As they go down, the music turns increasingly dark.
The lights remain off for a bit too long. The music darkens even more. The
lights pop on with a sound, breaking that mood and stilling the music. Now,
in silence, a seemingly normal play begins.
Already, at the very beginning of the show, the audience has been through
several different emotions and spiritual levels. What took place in the lobby,
what took place upon entering the auditorium, the cool jazz of the pre-show,
then the dark music of the opening, and finally a silent normality. Their
senses now awakened, their bewilderment growing: their feeling of certainty
in what to expect wanes. Here is an audience prepared to experience some-
thing more than 75 minutes of wan entertainment!
Music might also be used in the counterintuitive manner outlined for
above designers. The successful character accompanied by darker or discord-
ant music. The homeless woman bringing an airy soundscape with her. Mu-
sic offers a powerful device, almost drug-like. Additionally, when watching
a play, spectators remain focused on the action and dialogue, so music and
sound might penetrate through the consciousness without the audience even
being aware, setting up layers of meaning, inspiring different ways of seeing
and experiencing.
Like dance and movement choreography, music might utilize known
sounds and tropes to deconstruct meaning, rather than underscore. A bar
scene begins with some background rock music, which then morphs brief ly
into Sufi music, before returning to normalcy. Perhaps this moment accom-
panies the entrance of a character whom we already know, but now become
suddenly uncertain if we really do know them.
Could this schlub be a hidden mystic of the dervishes?
Perhaps each character has their own musical score attached to them, but
the sounds are skew, contrary, or otherwise bewildering. The boorish brother
accompanied by Mozart, the slick winner by hurdy-gurdy cartoon music, or
the physically attractive person accompanied by discordant music. Or, per-
haps by monastic music, indicating a hidden desire to loose themselves from
the bondage of their beauty, which causes everyone around them to treat
them in a certain, typical manner.
Like all design work, these ideas simply open the doorway to the store-
house of sound and, most importantly, to thinking about what is called for by
the character and action, and then thinking again. And yet again.
Try various musical scores on like someone at the shoe store attempting
to find the perfect jogging shoe. Listen to the music of the streets, what ap-
pears in subways. Might Muzak be appropriate for a scene of deep emotional
impact? How about an advertising jingle, expertly inlaid into a love scene?
What is love? For the mystic, sensual love can represent a veil between the
self and the Self.
Of course, human love might also be the way through. Remember Ma-
jnun, whose love of Layla opened the doorway to Divine love! And Simone
Weil: “the world is a closed door. It is also the way through.”
176 Mysticism in theater
The storehouse of musical possibility remains vast, from serpentine Middle
Eastern tunes to folk music tied to the ancient past to Indigenous drumming,
anything which points to the spirit, and beyond, should be considered.
And remember, the mystical theater maker tills in the field of the human
religion, opening all paths and possibilities for usage. We move past the par-
ticular to the archetype, and through the archetype, access the indomitable
Truth at the heart of being.

The sound of language

Utterance brought forth all the universe.

(Yajnavalkya, c. 7th century BCE,
in Perry, 1971, p. 1003)

The Austrian philosopher and theater maker Rudolf Steiner (d. 1925, founder
of anthroposophy, which attempted to find a synthesis between science and
spirituality) embedded ultimate dramatic meaning in sound. He believed that
sound waves affected the audience, whether through music, sound cues, or
the articulation of language, more than any other aspect of a production. The
meaning of spoken language was important, but also the intonation, vocal-
ization, modulation, and so forth of the spoken word affected the energy in
the room, and thereby the spectator.
Steiner’s contemporary dramatist, Konstantin Stanislavsky, also believed in
the music of dialogue. He stated:

The actor must feel the letters, syllables, and sense their souls. Speech
becomes experience in the soul-representing intoning of the vowels and
the spiritually-empowered colors of the consonants. It attains to an un-
derstanding of the secret of the evolution of speech. This secret consists
in the fact that divine spiritual beings could once speak to the human
soul by means of the word.
(Carriere, 2010, p. 194)

Each sound must be given birth and nurtured in the secret places in the
soul, emerging through the vocal apparatus with the essential feeling of the
melody of the words, not only their meaning. The universe began with
the word. As the Gospel of St. John opens: “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Perry, 1971, p. 1001).
The sound of language represents the ongoing speech of the Divine. Textual
presentation might echo this primal, mystical fact.
By disentangling speech and sound, the production adds subtext, layering,
and deeper spiritual import to the intention. If language and its presentation
disagree with each other (whispering apologetically when absolutely certain;
screaming when speaking of mundane concerns; laughing when talking of
 Mysticism in theater 177
the serious; talking confidently when spewing lies, etc.), questions are raised,
forcing the audience to more deeply consider what exactly is being said, and
what it might mean.
A few sayings elucidate the importance of separating the sounds accompa-
nying dialogue from their supposed meaning. Confucius (d. 479 BCE) noted:
“Clever talk and pretentious manner are seldom found in the good” (Confu-
cius, 1992, p. 84). A later Chinese thinker, the Taoist Chuang Tzu, expanded
on his earlier mentor’s idea: “The intercourse of the superior person is taste-
less as water, while that of mean people is sweet as new wine” (Chuang Tzu,
1971, p. 230).
Of course, this aspect of sound work must be undertaken in conjunction
with the director and actors, though it can be considered as part of the sound-
scape. As I noted at the beginning of this chapter, in practice, mystical theater
is a holistic production, involving many different participants in building
across disciplines and practices, though for the sake of this exposition, these
ideas are treated within specific sections.
The possibility for this idea of utilizing sound—either in intonation,
soundscape, or music—to separate the aural experience of dialogue from its
meaning becomes vast, bounded only by the imagination of the design team.
The mystical theater sound-score moves far beyond the realistic internal
sounds of the Starbucks coffee shop or the train whistle or the murmur of the
street crowd. Here, the soundscape speaks to a different facet of the audience:
the heart, the subconscious, the soul.
While the words of the dialogue might say, “I am walking to the refrigera-
tor to get a cup of milk,” the sound might suggest a person walking delicately
on the knife’s edge of life overtop the abyss which lies in wait on either side.
Or this simple act becomes a culmination of something, as the character has
been unable to sink themself into each moment of their lives (a mystical di-
rective, as the true Sufi is one whose thought keeps pace with their feet). And
this moment, when the character finally achieves symbiosis between within
and above during the mundane activity of crossing to the refrigerator, might
be represented as Zen samadhi, mystical realization, through intonation of
the dialogue.

Silence

God utters a word and utters it eternally; and in the word, he expends
all God’s power. The word lies hidden in the soul. To hear it, all voices
and sounds must die away and there must be pure quiet—perfect stillness.
(Eckhart, 1998, p. 242)

Or, as Simone Weil assured more than 600 years after the Catholic Church
declared Meister Eckhart a heretic: “The word of God is silence.” Using
“silence” as sound represents a device as important as music, intonation, and
178 Mysticism in theater
other potential aural cues. A vital design element, it heightens tension, opens
doorways to discomfort (after all, the true purpose of art is to disturb), and
causes the audience to feel, beyond simply reacting to what they see.
A sound designer might make a list of different kinds of silence, from
a pause in dialogue to action without sound to something frozen in time.
Sound designers should develop as many ideas of silence as the Inuit have
words for snow, or the lighting designer has ideas for darkness.
Its usage might be ligated to specific underpinning mystical ideas, to subtly
underscore their importance. Silence might overtake, for instance, when the
Divine Nought appears as subtext. Or to indicate the death of self leading
to subsistence in the Self. It might infiltrate the stage at moments when the
rational mind gives way to bewilderment. It could be attached to a single
character, who’s “simplicity” actually represents a deeper wisdom. As Lao
Tzu said: “The greatest wisdom seems childish” (Lao Tzu, 1988, p. 44). Wash
the stage in silence and let the audience chew on that for a moment, before
tugging them back into the stream of the narrative.
Dig deep: devise different types of silence. Is silence absolute? Provisional?
Deafening? Gentle? Suffocating? Opening and welcoming? Or a void, a
deep abyss: terrifying? British theater academic Peter Malekin said in Sacred
Theatre:

Silence and stillness are either vague and empty, or are charged with
emotion, or resonate with life’s fullness. In the latter case, they become
a kind of alert rest in which a regrouping, a re-disposition of intellectual
and emotional forces arise together . . . they become part of the per-
formance rhythm of the whole play, action, and participatory audience
moving toward rest, toward Plato’s ‘instant’ [a moment existing outside
of time] and reemerging from it with new force and direction. The per-
formance breathes with its whole life.
(Yarrow, 2007, p. 56)

The challenge is to unify all of these aural and silent aspects of sound de-
sign holistically, so they support the play, true, but also expand the mystical
subtext and, even more importantly, the impact on the audience. Sound
design offers a powerful manner of moving beyond the rational discussion
between two minds, into the realm of the unspoken language of the heart
and soul.

Costume design

‘Wisdom, like other precious substances, must be torn from the bowels
of the earth.’ This knowledge, so inaccessible, so formidable, the fool, in
his innocent idiocy, already possesses.
(Foucault, 1988, p. 22)
 Mysticism in theater 179
In mystical lore, the foolish, the poor, the downtrodden, the broken re-
main closer to God than the most erudite scholar or renowned religious
leader. The Sufis assure that a donkey with a load of holy books is still a
donkey. And as Zen Buddhism notes: “Scholars labor at their formulas like
monkeys struggling to catch the moon ref lected on the waves” (Sekuda,
2005, p. 179).
God’s grace and mystical truth reside in the experience of the discarded.
Start here for costume design: with the foolish, the unlearned, and the broken.
While costume designers normally place their work in service to the text’s
narrative and the shaping of the play by the director, in mystical theater, the
costume designer offers a unique manner for mystical inlay, inserting their
mother-of-pearl carefully into the final production.
O costume designer, consider the unexpected, the counterintuitive, the
strange, absurd, shocking, and yes—simple. As Lao Tzu noted concerning
language: “True words aren’t eloquent; eloquent words aren’t true” (Lao Tzu,
2000, p. 79). This provides an interesting entry point in thinking about cos-
tume design. The more “eloquent” the clothing, perhaps the less valid the
character’s worldview? In virtually all mystical traditions, those who turn
their backs on worldly possessions represent the “knowers,” while those at-
tached to the objects they surround themselves with are ignorant. The Sufi
al-Ghazali noted, “You only truly possess that which cannot be lost in a
shipwreck” (Shah, 1990, p. 63).
How might this transform into costume design? Or a prop? A beloved
book carried around by an important and successful character—the reveal
being that it is a copy of Henny Youngman’s (d. 1998, a comedian considered
the master of the one-liner) Take My Wife, Please.
What the heck would that little prop mean?? Perhaps it is meaningless.
Though in its meaninglessness, it hides meaning: this character is, genuinely,
an empty suit. Of course, a character might just as easily be carrying around,
and hiding from others onstage, a copy of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, the reveal
being that this seemingly meaningless or blustering character hides a deeper
sense of understanding. And is embarrassed about it!
Don’t underestimate the importance of the props and costume, not only
for the audience, but the actor as well. These signifiers help obliterate the
actor inside of the character, recreating them in a symbolic role for the public
and themself. As contemporary actor Anna Khaja said about acting: “I just
disappear.” Costuming might aid in this transformation, especially if it points
away from the obvious, and into the spirit.
The costuming of a character might also follow an arc, highlighting the
mystical subtext: clothing as mystical inlay. Perhaps the clothing evolves from
shabby to eloquent and then back to shabby. The circle is a vital symbol in
mysticism, evincing not only unity, but a different sense of time, outside
of our narrow, linear understanding. This might well be represented in a
“costume arc,” as a character goes through various styles, perhaps ebbing and
f lowing, perhaps ending right back where they began.
180 Mysticism in theater
Specific cultural signifiers might be turned on their head. The tie, in West-
ern culture, is currently conceived as a marker of serious intent, monetary
success, and power. However, every Western mass murderer (i.e., “states-
man”) has worn this horrid appurtenance. Same with military garb, worn by
autocrats all over the world.
How to play with these symbols? For instance in Islam, greater jihad repre-
sents the spiritual struggle within oneself. Might military garb reference this
internal path, paired with a pacifist character? Could the tie be denigrated
by a more enlightened character, worn around the head or as a belt, as they
follow an arc not unlike that of Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville’s
character, who refused to engage in the world in any way, and ended up
starving to death in prison? Maybe they starve to death impeccably dressed,
in a Brooks Brothers suit.
The point is to reconsider, deconstruct, and refashion what is known into
that which becomes meaningful, but bewildering. Perhaps one first step
toward mystical understanding is when the known becomes recognized,
though seen in a fresh light, and thence dissolves into the unknown. This
might be represented in costume choices: what clothing is worn, how it is
worn, and why it is worn.
The answer becomes to move several steps further in the conception of the
costume, beyond “what would a suburban Dad wear,” to what would a hidden
mystic living in the suburbs wear? How does spiritual struggle look coming out
of the closet? How does wisdom appear covering the back of a homeless person?

Color
As in lighting design, color presents a rich mother lode for mystical inlay to
the costume designer. Historically, specific colors have been assigned to mys-
tical ideals or teachers. For instance, in Sufi mystical poetry, the blood red of
wine represents the height of spiritual understanding; the purple of the grape
stands for the exoteric, lesser-practice of normative religion. As Rumi noted
in one of his hundreds of khamriyyaat (wine poems):

The grapes of my body can only become wine

After the winemaker tramples me.
I surrender my spirit like grapes to his trampling
So my inmost heart can blaze and dance with joy.
(Harvey, 2009, p. 109)

What about a color scheme of red for realization, purple for normal? This will
appear contrary, as in the West, purple has often been represented as a regal
color, and red one of passion, a lower emotion. But if one uses color not in
sync with the normal understanding, but coherent within the production, it
will force the audience to stop, consider, and reassess.
 Mysticism in theater 181
In Jewish mysticism, the white of the prayer shawl stands for purity. Uti-
lizing white for a character that appears to be an antagonist, or degraded in
the eyes of the normative characters who judge the world from the point-
of-view of worldly success, adds depth, questioning, mystical subtext to the
production without saying a word. Purity coupled with dirt. Set off against
the regally clothed baron, whose purple cravat really represents capitulation
to worldly success, borne on the wings of war. And remember, these costum-
ing ideas don’t develop in a vacuum. They will grow out of conversations and
collaborations with the lighting designer, set designer, director, and other
members of the team.
White allows for another possibility, the use of lighting gels to color the
characters in different ways. Although the purity of the character might be rep-
resented by the white color, different mystical ideas might literally be projected
onto them, as color changes move the clothes from white to red to purple (as
the character loses their way?), or cycling through other possibilities such as
saffron (a color sacred to Hindus) or the blue of the deep sea (wherein lies the
hidden treasure of understanding), all decided upon by the design team.
Khidr, the teacher of Moses from the Qur’an, is known within Islamic
mysticism as a messenger, prophet, angel, teacher of secret knowledge, and
aid to those in distress. More importantly for the costume designer, Khidr
is known as the Green Man, for the color of his tunic. Green might fig-
ure prominently in color design, representing a hidden prophet in the play.
If the Divine Nought is represented by green (the color of the Sufi mysti-
cal knower), then perhaps this color washes over the character at important
(spiritual) points in the narrative, and then dissipates into purple, as the char-
acter returns to normative yearning for money, for sex, for fame, and so forth.
A character might appear foolish, annoying, or with any other non-­
mystical outward appearance, yet be the keeper of the Mysteries, identified
by their green clothing.
Of course, green has many other connotations, for instance signifying the
leprechaun (perhaps a cousin of Khidr?), a diminutive supernatural being
of Irish folklore, a solitary fairy. Additionally, green heralds spring, rebirth.
Another important aspect of the color, as fana (annihilation of the self ) and
baqa (subsistence, then, in the Divine) echo the idea of rebirth in spring after
winter’s death. The evolution from the little “I” of the individual to the re-
birth within the Divine essence.
Other colors might be considered and applied. Black for the death of “self ”
leading to the green of rebirth. Orange is the color of creativity, sexuality,
joy, enthusiasm—this might represent a color standing between a person and
ego dissolution. Brown, the color of earth, might represent a character find-
ing the mysticism of the mundane.
Color schemes must be used judiciously, and with deep intent. Simply
“coloring up” a production might make it quite beautiful, but will it add to
the spiritual depth of the piece? Like all other aspects of the production, a
182 Mysticism in theater
strong understanding of the imagery, import, and history of the color must be
achieved, and then considered along with other members of the production
team, for how best to use them in a subtle but powerful manner.
In mysticism, up is sometimes down, backward is forward, to run quickly
is to devolve into quicksand. Lao Tzu noted:

The path into the light seems dark,

the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure.
(Lao Tzu, 2000, p. 39)

This manner of looking at costume design will open new avenues. No longer
beholden to matching the narrative, or the obvious characteristics of the per-
sonage, the designer might begin to think about how to expand, deepen, and
bewilder through color usage and other aspects of props and clothing.

Masks
The mask represents a central historical production element, fallen into
disuse.
At the beginning of Western theater in Greece, virtually all actors wore
masks. These served several important purposes: their exaggerated expres-
sions helped define the character the actor played. They allowed actors to
play more than one role (or gender). They helped audience members in the
distant seats see the facial expression. And, by projecting sound like a small
megaphone, they filled the vast reaches of the outdoor auditoriums with the
dialogue.
While we explored their use in rehearsals, to bring masks into the pro-
duction opens doorways not only for the audience, but for the actor as well.
Though many of the initial theatrical impetuses for the mask have waned
in importance, the device offers a very interesting set of possibilities for the
mystical costume designer. Dr. Margaret Coldiron, a specialist in Asian per-
formance and masks at the University of Essex (England), noted in Trance
and Transformation of the Actor: “To don a mask is to lose oneself,” and a mask
offers “a kind of metaphorical death . . . to bring the mask to life” (Yarrow,
2007, p. 154). Of course, this represents an almost verbatim definition of fana
and baqa.
Australian theater maker and academic Gregory McCart ran workshops for
15 years utilizing masks:

McCart notes that often . . . when actors first put on the masks they
forgot their lines, they did not know what to do with their hands, they
 Mysticism in theater 183
became confused by the removal of the peripheral vision affecting their
walking on stage, their voices sounded strange from inside the mask, and
their bodies appeared to them too small for the masks.
(Katsouri, 2014, p. 26)

This confusion engendered by donning the mask ref lects an important stage
of the mystical path. Sufi writer Farid ad-Din Attar (d. 1221), writing in his
mystical allegory Conference of the Birds, noted the loss of self in the sixth valley
to be crossed on the way to personal realization, the Valley of Bewilderment:

The Unity you knew is gone, your soul is scattered and knows nothing of
the whole. If someone asks: ‘what is your present state?’. . . The pilgrim
will confess: ‘I cannot say: I have no certain knowledge anymore; I doubt
my doubt, doubt itself is unsure.’
(Attar, 1984, p. 196)

Like Attar’s pilgrims, McCart’s actors grew “confused” and “didn’t know
what to do with their hands.” They forgot their lines (i.e., literally their
“self,” in the guise of their character). Simply donning the mask gave the
actors an experience deep into the mystical search. Not the final endpoint,
submerged and one with the Divine essence, but in the grueling desert of
confusion, lost to the self, and experiencing echoes of the desperation that
precedes the final goal.
The internal experience created by the mask might point the actor, their
motivation, and their impact in a far deeper direction. As Ken Elston (Direc-
tor of Performing Arts at High Point University, NC) noted: “The mask is a
catalyst for transportation out of the self and into something transformative”
(Elston, 2004, p. 226).
Other facets affected by mask usage are the demands made on vocaliza-
tion, movement, gesture, and interaction with the other characters. From
the point of the view of the audience, the strange apparition of one or more
characters wearing a mask will raise questions and disturb the normative
theater-­watching experience. The actor will be forced to use a variety of
novel methods to connect with the other actors onstage, as well as the spec-
tators. These fresh manners of interaction will expand the depth of the char-
acter, relationships, and meaning of the play.
To deepen the connection between the actor and the mask, actors might
make their own masks. This could represent a mold of their own face, cre-
ated in the rehearsal space. They might make more than one, representing
different aspects of their character’s “self,” from the most obvious, to the
psychological, or the spiritual, to be donned and doffed at different times
within the play.
The connection between the actor and the mask is vital. The actor must
develop a relationship with the object, as with an alter ego. The mask be-
comes the face to the world; it embodies the character for the audience. A
living fusion of actor, character, and the spirit is created in the unalterable
184 Mysticism in theater
object. The inanimate f lowering into life: the mask remains perfectly stable,
yet moves, speaks, breathes—it exists.
Working with masks in a contemporary theater piece will be no mean feat.
A rare device, which is almost never written into today’s drama, it offers an
opening to a netherworld of possibility—the “netherworld” being that of the
spirit, not of Hades. Use of the mask represents a collaboration between the
playwright, director, costume designer, and actor—all working together to
utilize this unusual, though potentially extremely powerful device.

Smell design

As you smell the fragrance of a f lower by handling it or the smell of san-

dalwood by rubbing it against a stone, so you obtain spiritual awakening
by constantly thinking of God.
(Sarada Dev, d. 1920, spiritual consort of Sri Ramakrishna in
Nikhilananda, 1982, p. 218)

I had a production once in which the main actor wore the same costume all
through the rehearsal period, waiting to wash it until just before previews
began. Toward the end of the several-week rehearsal process, one of the other
actors walked by and wrinkled his nose. “I’d like a word with the smell de-
signer,” he said moving quickly away from the offending olfactory encounter.
To be honest, other than that ad-libbed moment, I don’t ever remember
smells being a part of a theatrical experience. However, this is like leaving
money on the table at a casino. After all, there are only five senses through
which to approach the audience, and tactile is usually off the table, as is taste.
Remove the olfactory avenue, and a production is left with only two senses
with which to affect an audience: sight and hearing.
Smell can have profound effect, especially since it represents a secondary
sense. It can be utilized to add to, contradict, or otherwise deepen the import
of the two major senses consciously experiencing the production. It might go
unremarked by the spectator, yet set in motion their subconscious mind of
associations and ideas, adding depth to their conception of the piece.
For instance, the sense of smell might be used to underpin the sacral aspect
of the space. Smells of incense, essential oils, rose water, or other f loral scents
might waft through the theater, adding a subtle and subconscious spiritual
depth to the drama.
Fragrances might be more clearly linked to a production. For instance, the
Hindus believe that light and dark forces are in a continual, universal battle.
Light will never eradicate dark, nor will dark overcome light. When energies
are in alignment, the dark forces are pushed to the margins. When forces
become unmoored from this optimal dynamic, the dark bleeds toward the
center. This dynamic was—and as I currently write this, still is—in view in
the United States, as the presidency of Donald Trump unleashed America’s
 Mysticism in theater 185
darkest forces from the fringes of the Internet into the middle of the United
States Capitol.
A play centered on using the eternal struggle between light and dark as
mystical framing of the action, might underpin light forces with the smell of
saffron, the sacred essence of the Hindus. This elegant spice represents fire:
impurities are burnt by fire, so this color symbolizes purity. This smell might
be attached to an unlikely fool or a hidden mystic.
As the saffron smell becomes attached to a specific character, even though
this personage might at first appear to be derelict, unwise, and so forth,
the connection would be made within the spectator at a place deeper than
“understanding.”
Contrariwise, a completely mundane smell such as a hot dog stand, diesel
oil, or even old fish might accompany a worldly successful character. One of
society’s winners, wheeling across the stage in their elegant clothing spouting
eloquent bons mots. But my goodness, something just doesn’t smell right!
Smells might buttress, contradict, or provide skew messaging, but in any
case, its noninvasive and invisible impact represents the dramatic power
of this design method. Unlike sound cues, music, choreography, lighting
changes, blocking, and costume design, smell design can suffuse the atmos-
phere without, potentially, even being noted. Smell provides a direct access
to the unconscious, to associations felt but unthought, to memory sequestered
in the recesses of the hippocampus.
The untapped possibility for a smell designer remains vast. A 2014 study
showed that humans distinguish at least one trillion different odors, as op-
posed to a paltry 10 million different colors, or minuscule total of 100 sounds,
constituting the distinct tones present in all languages spoken on earth.
Within theatrical history, the few times that smells were used remain no-
table. For instance, a medieval production showing Barnabas (d. 61, an early
Christian, one of the prominent disciples in Jerusalem) burnt at the stake,
utilized an effigy filled with bones and animal offal so that when burnt—
which the effigy most certainly was—a properly realistic smell of burning
f lesh wafted over the spectators.
Smells of burnt wood, lavender, cooking meat or stews, roses, spices, gaso-
line, the filth of the urban street—any of these and more might be paired to
exacerbate a scene, or contradict it, in either case expanding its import.
For instance, the sounds of the street might be paired with jasmine, rep-
resenting the internal peace of a person surrounded by chaos. In Zen Bud-
dhism, samadhi brings “peace in the marketplace,” with the mind remaining
serene regardless of the hustle and bustle encountered outside of the head.
Or the successful business person in an elegant salon might be accompa-
nied by smells of offal, representing the filth of their soul. The smell of fire
might represent the burning, mystical desire of a character who seems lazy
and unmotivated.
An often unutilized design element, awaiting only the mystical smell de-
signer to bring it to life.
186 Mysticism in theater
Audience

Green wood can be bent; when it is dry, it is only straightened by fire.

(Sheikh Saadi in Shah, 1990, p. 93)

And now, the final, and most important, aspect of the mystical theater pro-
duction: the congregants.
I mean: the audience.
In theater such as this, the audience represents more than ticket sales,
standing ovations, or reviews. They are a rich field of spiritual possibility to
be tilled, and to receive the seed of mystical sustenance. Success lies in affect-
ing these unwitting members of the production, co-creators in this novel (yet
age-old) theatrical presentation.

Entering the theater space

The concept of sacred space goes back to the beginning of civilization . . .

This fact points to its significance as an archetype—a universal construct
that has concerned all people of all times across the world.
(Pendzik, 1994, p. 25)

The theater space must become more than a place of escape. It must of-
fer more than a bubble where an audience comes to be entertained, to stop
thinking, to mindlessly enjoy, forgetting their worldly cares, before being re-
gurgitated back into the stream of their life, unchallenged and without being
changed in any manner.
In mystical theater, the assembly enters a primal and sacred space. The
messaging upon their ascension must indicate this fact.
In the extension of the above quote, Professor Pendzik references numer-
ous theater cultures throughout history, from ancient Greece to Japanese
Noh stages to Balinese puppet theaters to the Elizabethan playhouse to me-
dieval European mystery plays, all of which created this sacral stage. Even
post-Renaissance theaters have the sacred embedded (though unremarked)
in their design, with the curtain and proscenium creating a threshold to the
Divine, allowing the audience, when the curtain rises, access to the internal
workings of the universe.
This idea of stepping through a portal into another world remains a
ubiquitous symbol in theater, of the movement from the mundane into the
hallowed.
The theater, for the time spent there together, represents the omphalos, not
just for the production, but for each of the witnesses. The audience should
be welcomed as if into a temple. Numerous manners of separating the lobby
from the entrance into the auditorium come to mind. The audience might
be asked to remove their shoes. They might be met at the entrance to the
 Mysticism in theater 187
theater with a ritual hand-washing. They might be handed a short, mystical
tale which holds some key to the action they are about to see. The smells of
frankincense and myrrh might waft through the air. The audience might
be met with sacred symbols. They could be asked to ritually perambulate
through the space, in silence or accompanied by soft music or natural sounds,
before accessing their seats.
Contrary to convention, the audience might be invited by a shamanistic
figure to walk upon the stage, form a circle, and spend one moment in silence
there, before sitting in their assigned place. The circle serves a number of
important functions, including joining people together who have not met be-
fore (those standing across from each other might be asked to look into each
other’s eyes), and obliterating hierarchies, as all are equal in such a formation.
Additionally, the circle rehearses the underpinning themes of unity, close-
ness, community, continuity, eternity, and belonging. It hints at the omphalos
(center of the universe) and the ouroboros (the circular symbol depicting a
snake swallowing its tail, an emblem of wholeness or infinity). There might
be some small exercise, or an object in the middle of the circle, around which
the nascent congregation gathers.
Most importantly, this act of breaking the theater plane, the fourth wall,
implicates the spectators in the ensuing action. By fusing this rupturing of
the fourth wall with the image of the circle, ideas such as wholeness, infinity,
historical sacred spaces (like Stonehenge or magic circles) begin to vibrate,
even before the audience settles into their seats.
The design team might explore the use of other sacred symbols for this
welcoming exercise, from the Tree of Life (a fundamental archetype in many
of the world’s mythologies, religious, and philosophical traditions), to the
Axis Mundi (a pole at the center of the world, serving as a microcosm of or-
der, a symbol shared across ancient and recent spiritual paths).
A ritualistic activity might be employed: clapping off, or moving slowly to
one’s left, or beating the bounds (echoing the manner in which the production
team first entered the playing space), or having one of the actor-shamans enter
the center of the circle to read a short mystical tale. Anything which signals a
break with daily life and a step toward the spirit, as well as complementing the
themes of the play, creates the necessary numinous atmosphere, as the production
prepares to synchronize the hearts of the individuals into a spiritual collective.
The attention of the audience is now captivated and focused. As Sri Ram-
akrishna (d. 1886, Hindu mystic, saint, and religious leader) noted:

In the theatre, the audience remains engaged in all kinds of conversa-

tions, about home, office, and school, till the curtain goes up. But no
sooner does it go up than all conversation comes to a stop, and people
watch the play with fixed attention.
(Perry, 1971, p. 989)

For this brief period, you have the undivided attention of the students.
188 Mysticism in theater
The sacred space created operates as a microcosm, to the macrocosmic
universe. The theater space must be consecrated as the physical manifestation
in time and space of the eternal universal essence.

Smashing the fourth wall

Productions take shape at the very heart of matter, life, reality. There is
in them something of the ceremonial quality of the religious site, in the
sense that they extirpate from the mind of the onlooker all pretense of
cheap imitations of reality . . . The spiritual state it seeks to create, the
mystic solutions it proposes are aroused and attained without delay.
(Artaud, 1997, p. 60)

Implication represents an important challenge for mystical theater. The pro-

duction must involve the audience as more than spectators. Ultimately, they
arrive in the sacred space of the mystical theater, not to sit passively and be
entertained but (whether they know it or not) to be engaged on many levels
of their psyche, and evolve.
Can the writer, director, actor, and designers “corner” the audience, leav-
ing them no escape but into the depths of their own spirit? A hostage-taking
situation, perhaps? An imprisonment? An invitation to a cocktail party gone
awry? Turning the audience from a collection of bystanders into accomplices?
Moving the audience from a noun to a verb represents the ultimate purpose
of mystical theater. Everything must be on the table to do so. Surprise, bewil-
derment, incomprehensibility, strangeness, disquietude, even fear.
Sit the audience onstage and the actors in the seats. Move the audience
around in the middle of the production. Hand out a few lines to random
members of the audience, and have them participate in the drama. Distribute
food or drink from the stage, engaging a fourth sense (taste). Stage actors in
the auditorium, thereby stretching the action directly into their world.
While in normative theater there is usually a great respect for the fourth
wall (the invisible demarcation between the stage and the audience), in mys-
tical theater, this wall might be defined by water, by emptiness, by chains of
iron, or nothing at all. Whatever dynamic forces the spectator to become part
of the creative act must be considered.
Keep in mind that it also remains the obligation of the performance not
to lose the attention of the audience. Mystical theater must entertain and
engage. No long-winded, didactic monologues; no esoteric language, con-
fusing plot, or turgid script.

“Audience” is a verb
One of the greatest hurdles for the mystical theater maker to overcome is
contemporary drama’s desire to create work with a “point.” Something solid
 Mysticism in theater 189
that the audience can agree on, and never think of again. The “Oh, I get it”
of shallow artistic catharsis. But as the Persian mystic al-Hujwiri (d. 1077)
said: “The poor man is not he who is empty of provisions, but he whose
nature is empty of desires” (Perry, 1971, p. 157). The mystical theater maker
leaves the audience hungry, perhaps even desperate with a desire for more.
A successful mystical performance will leave the audience arguing as to
the meaning of the piece on the way out of the theater and have as many in-
terpretations as there are congregants at the show. However, the impetus for
these varied reactions stem from the shared experience of a psycho-spiritual
discomfort, a disturbance of the dream that “reality” is exactly as they be-
lieved it to be, before entering the theatrical temple for the spiritual voyage.
The French philosopher Roland Barthes (d. 1980) said: “It is the secret: that
which, concealed in reality, can reach consciousness only through a code,
which serves simultaneously to encipher and decipher that reality” (Blau,
1990, p. 128). The “secret” to which Barthes refers? None other than the
Divine question mark at the heart of being. And the “code,” of course, rep-
resents our work here together.
The ideal of the mystical audience has existed around the edges of theater
and philosophy since the time of the true and original theater-goers—those
who entered the Eleusinian Mysteries or participated in the Dionysian the-
atrical rites.
The time for return has arrived.
The place for return is your next theatrical production.

Books for mystical tales and ideas

Attar, F. D. Conference of the Birds
Aurelius, M. Meditations
Bhagavad Gita
Bayat, M. and ali-Jamnia, M. Tales from the Land of the Sufis
Bodhidharma. The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
Bonhoeffer, D. The Cost of Discipleship
Buber, M. Tales of the Hasidim
Chuang Tzu. The Genius of the Absurd
Chuang Tzu. The Way of Chuang Tzu
Confucius. The Analects
Eckhart, M. Meister Eckhart
Epictetus. The Enchiridion
Fadiman, J. and Frager, R. Essential Sufism
Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias
Price and Wou-Lam. The Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui Neng
Huxley, A. The Perennial Philosophy
Julian of Norwich. Showings
Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching
Mencius. Mencius
190 Mysticism in theater
Merton, T. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Merton, T. Peace in the Post-Christian Era
Neihardt, J. G. Black Elk Speaks
Patterson, D. Greatest Jewish Stories
Plotinus. The Essential Plotinus
Rumi. The Masnavi
Rumi. Signs of the Unseen
Sekida, K. Two Zen Classics
Shah, I. Tales of the Dervishes
Shah, I. The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mullah Nasreddin
Shah, I. The Way of the Sufi
Sproul, B. Primal Myths
Tabrizi, S. Me and Rumi
Upanishads
Vatsyayana. The Kama Sutra
Weil, S. Waiting for God
Weil, S. The Simone Weil Reader
Wurmbrand, R. With God in Solitary Confinement

Notes
1 Moses is the most frequently mentioned individual in Qur’an, his name being
mentioned 136 times.
2 An ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, representing
eternity and endless return. Originating in ancient Egyptian iconography, the
ouroboros entered Western tradition via Greek magical tradition and was adopted
as a symbol in Gnosticism and Hermeticism and most notably in alchemy.

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4 Praxis
Mystical theater in action

All of my creative work over more than three decades has taken place at the
intersection of mysticism and contemporary society. I have written theater
pieces, painted paintings, authored novels and nonfiction books, and founded
a nonprofit organization, all based in the timeless ideals of classical mysticism.
Although mysticism is historically a solipsistic activity in which an individual
searches for a personal relationship with the Divine, I believe that this under-
appreciated heart of all religions provides the antidote to our ongoing social,
political, and growing environmental catastrophes.
The ideas in this book emerge from my practice as a playwright and
theater maker, and feed back into it. And so, I want to show how I have
utilized these ideas to inlay mysticism into my theatrical productions. I will
discuss three of my plays (at this writing, I have penned 15 full-length pieces
and more than 50 short plays), showing how the mystical ideals discussed
throughout this book inf luenced my work. How I have moved from theory
to practice, utilizing mystical inlay and mystical tinting within my dramatic
presentations.

Duck
(Produced at the IRT Theater, Greenwich Village, NYC, October–­
November 2019)

Wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life
will be serene.
(Epictetus, 1991, p. 16)

Duck follows the internal struggle of a CIA statistician who learns that 1% can
be the difference between life and death. Sitting in a basement office in Lang-
ley, Virginia, he uses intercepted communications and research into a Middle
Eastern person’s acquaintances to create a probability table for the odds that an
individual is a terrorist. Before the play begins, he rated an individual living
in Damascus, Syria, as having a 59% chance of acting on terroristic beliefs,
but then changed the number to 60%, as 59% seemed “messy.” Unbeknownst
DOI: 10.4324/9781003187271-5
196 Mystical theater in action
to him, 60% represents the “threshold of certainty.” The wheels deep within
the CIA grind into motion to assassinate the purported terrorist.
The play opens after Duck has found out that his probability table con-
demned a man to death. We meet him in a state of psychic devolution. So
distraught with learning that his rounding up led to a death sentence, he can
no longer speak, choosing only to “quack” when addressed. He sits alone on
a park bench, the very same bench, it turns out, under which his homeless
older brother lives.
The narrative arc, which meanders backward through time from this mo-
ment and then forward to it, ends where it began. Events jumble out of the
past, appearing as discrete scenes, removed from the original time arc in
which they took place. This muddling of time concretizes Meister Eckhart’s
assurance: “Things that are widely separate here are together up yonder,
where everything is present at once” (Eckhart, 1998, p. 141).
A woman, Abbie, approaches Duck in the opening scene. She represents
temporal hope and perhaps absolution for a crime that only Duck (and his
older brother, Crumb, who we soon meet) believes Duck committed. As we
learn by the end of the drama, temporal success and legal absolution (Duck’s
CIA work is highly lauded) only confuses spiritual matters further, leading
Duck deeper into an emotional and spiritual cul-de-sac.
But for now, we simply watch the voiceless man listen to Abbie’s own story
of loss and desperation (her fiancé abandoned her). He cannot talk to her. She
speaks; he quacks. She has long and involved monologues, mistakenly believ-
ing that his silence (and quacking) represents understanding. “Knowledge is
obscured by desire,” the Bhagavad Gita whispers. Abbie’s desperate desire
for human connection obscures the fact that Duck remains wrapped into his
own solipsistic struggle.
Crumb appears suddenly. Crumb once worked with his brother at the
CIA. In fact, Crumb was the operative tapped to complete the assassina-
tion, the operation Duck set in motion by rounding up. However, Crumb
abandoned the work, as he could not be complicit to a murder on such thin
grounds, even though the State assured him it was legal and “good.” Crumb
lives in the play’s present as a homeless man.
Crumb represents the mystical knower, the living embodiment of fana (dy-
ing to the self ) and baqa (subsistence in Truth). He abandoned his life with
the CIA, his home, the world, to live in abject poverty. Marcus Aurelius
provided the inspiration for Crumb’s life: “Think of yourself as dead. You
have lived your life. Now take what’s left of it, and live it properly” (Aurelius,
2003, p. 94).
Unfortunately, living life “properly” and living it comfortably can be in di-
rect conf lict. Shams-i Tabrizi noted: “As soon as you begin to speak the truth,
you have to go out into the mountains and deserts” (Tabrizi, 2004, p. 214).
Later in the play, we learn that after abandoning the CIA, Crumb was
found and tortured by an operative sent by his former employer. Shams again:
 Mystical theater in action 197
“If I begin speaking truthfully, I’ll be thrown out . . . If I were to speak the
Truth, all of you in this madrasa would aim for my life” (Tabrizi, 2004,
p. 214). So it was with Crumb.
The world often honors the spiritual hero only after they have passed, if
ever.
Crumb’s name offers a subtle mystical message, as well, referencing
how difficult it is to remove completely the final stain of the personal
ego. Even in his degraded physical state, though spiritually enlightened, a
“crumb” of ego still remains. The mystics of yore slept in marshes and ex-
posed their body naked to the stings of venomous f lies and lived for three
years in a dried up well and would only eat corn that had become rotten
and for 40 years never lay down and crawled around like wild beasts and
ate grass off the earth like cattle. All to remove completely the stench of
the personal ego.
Crumb, as far as he has gone, has not gone far enough. He is left only with
the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I would rather die in abject poverty
with my convictions than live with inordinate riches with a lack of self-­
respect” (King Jr., 1992, p. 27).
Crumb will not let his brother escape his true, spiritual fate by sitting
in confusion on a park bench quacking. He drags Duck from the present
into the past to see, “really see,” exactly how Duck came to this. The
reference to Dante’s Inferno and Virgil ushering Dante through the cir-
cles of hell is unmistakable. Through it all, Duck attempts to understand
what true agency in his actions he had, and what responsibility he shares
in the consequences of his actions. As the Buddha noted: “Actions ex-
ist, as do their consequences, but the one who acts does not” (Horgan,
2004, p. 115).
Since the action was murder by the State of a man who was probably inno-
cent, Duck has a hard time accepting his responsibility.
The brothers return to the moment when Crumb, then still a member
of the CIA, learns that he must travel to Damascus to kill a man due to his
brother’s statistical analysis. Duck, for his part, learns that his rounding up
made the target “actionable.” He says he can change the number back to
59%. Crumb cuts him off: “You can’t reverse engineer the thing.” Time
in the Divine essence may not exist, but in the here and now, it most cer-
tainly does—and our actions take place within the ever-f lowing stream of
time moving through us into the past. Persian philosopher and poet Omar
Kayyam informs from the past:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
(Omar Kayyam, d. 1131)
198 Mystical theater in action
In this scene, a mystical ideal turns on its head, as Duck asserts that he is
simply “a leaf in the stream.” In one sense, this represents mystical apprecia-
tion, that one’s “self ” does not exist, while the forces surrounding them do.
Isn’t this a mystical goal? To give in to the stream of life? As Lao Tzu noted
in the Tao Te Ching:

The Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
(Lao Tzu, 2000, p. 4)

In this case, Duck attempts to use the mystical argument to abdicate respon-
sibility for his “rounding up.” But Truth is a stubborn thing. As William
Cullen Bryant (d. 1878, American romantic poet and journalist) said: “Truth
crushed to earth will rise again” (King Jr., 1992, p. 23).
This rehearses an important point I’ve made throughout this book: mys-
tical theater is not didactic. It does not present “ultimate Truth.” Use your
work to open doorways, pose questions, turn ideas around and around, and
then dump them onstage, for the audience to turn over again, ponder, con-
sider, and take home with them.
It’s impossible to present ultimate truth, for whatever we might think it is,
it’s something else. The Sufi Saint Muhyiddin ibn Arabi assured: “Truth has
confused all the learned of Islam, everyone who has studied the Psalms, every
Jewish rabbi, every Christian priest” (Shah, 1990, p. 86). Mystical theater
should engage, titillate, and confuse your spectators as well.
The last words Duck says before being dragged deeper into his psyche to
see the consequences of his rounding up are: “I’m not doing anything. I’m
not.” Again, a mystical ideal, correct? To sit inactively, allowing the force of
the universe to wash over and through you? This represents a subtle misun-
derstanding of mysticism. Neale Donald Walsch (b. 1943, author of a series of
“Conversations with God”) said: “All we need to perpetuate evil is for one
good person to do nothing.” This echoes the statement of the Jewish thinker
Abraham Joshua Heshel (d. 1972): “The opposite of Good is not evil, it is
indifference.”
Morality and mysticism circle each other in an uneasy dance. Is mysticism
a moral path? Narcissistic? Incomprehensible?
The point here represents Duck’s twisting of a mystical idea—acceptance—
into an excuse. While it is true that, as the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu
noted: “When one rests in what has been arranged, and puts away all thought
of the transformation, they are in unity with the mysterious heaven” (Chuang
Tzu, 1971, p. 102), and this might be the basis of Duck’s plaintive “leaf in the
 Mystical theater in action 199
stream” comment (a theme which he returns to repeatedly throughout the
play), one cannot participate in the world without acting. Marcus Aurelius
noted: “Any action not directed toward a social end (directly or indirectly)
is a disturbance to your life, an obstacle to wholeness, a source of dissension”
(Aurelius, 2003, p. 123).
And an action pointed toward the health of the State instead of the health
of its inhabitants or the individual soul, surely represents a mistake. Russian
novelist and mystic Leo Tolstoy (d. 1910) succinctly noted: “Patriotism is
very stupid and immoral” (Tolstoy, 1967, p. 75). Immorality has lain at the
heart of all nation-states since the beginning of time. Submerging one’s
will into that of the nation leads a person away from their spirit, instead of
into it.
Actions must accord with mystical truths, not temporal or statist goals. As
the hidden mystic Friedrich Nietzsche noted: “The state tells lies in all the
tongues of good and evil; whatever it says, it lies—and whatever it has, it has
stolen” (Nietzsche, 1978, p. 49). Duck’s continuing confusion around his ob-
ligations, to the state or to his internal core, torture him throughout the play.
And though he repeatedly tries to use the ideal of “acceptance” for not taking
responsibility for his actions, well, Truth is a stubborn thing . . . .
Crumb whipsaws Duck through his past. Duck repeats his plaintive cry:
“I’m not doing anything. I’m not.” But as the Sufi Sheikh Ziauddin Madani
(d. 1981) said, “self justification is worse than the original offense” (Shah,
1990, p. 153). In Duck’s attempts to defend his actions (well, “inactions,”
as he states, in another attempt to defend himself ), he sinks deeper into the
morass of ego, and away from understanding.
Crumb drops Duck into the middle of the event his rounding up set in
motion: the killing of the man in Damascus. While we surmise that the
event actually took place by drone in the dead of night by an army sergeant
stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, Duck (as well as all of
us) must realize our complicity in events undertaken in our name. If we buy
the cheapest good made in a sweatshop in China or Cambodia, we should be
aware of this fact. If our electricity comes from coal and not wind, we must
know. If our taxes fund military actions in more than 150 countries around
the world, we should acknowledge this.
Our ignorance of these facts and our helplessness to change them cannot
protect us. Every aspect of our lives presents a moral challenge, and no two
are ever alike. How we navigate this perilous path defines who we are. Not
the accolades of our society or burgeoning (or shrinking!) bank accounts.
This represents an uncomfortable Truth, made even more so by the fact that
there is no correct answer.
Duck is forced to live the results of his seemingly innocuous rounding
up action. His brother transports him to Damascus and declares “kill me.”
Crumb becomes the mark. And Duck, who “murdered” Crumb by setting
the wheels in motion to have Crumb abandon the CIA and his middle-class
life, must understand viscerally and, firsthand, the consequences.
200 Mystical theater in action
Duck recoils from the killing. “I don’t want to,” he says.
“You have to,” replies Crumb, morphing into the Syrian orphanage di-
rector. “Do it.”
Duck apologizes to the mark for having to kill him.
The mark asks, “why are you doing this to me? Why?”
Duck assures that he isn’t actually killing him.
“Then who is?” demands the Syrian.
“I don’t know,” replies Duck. “The United States of America. The Presi-
dent, or something.”
“I don’t see the President of the United States here,” replies the mark, be-
fore expiring.
How complicit are we in the actions of our country? Of how our tax dol-
lars are spent? What responsibility do we bear for how our elected politicians
behave? For actions taking place in the dead of night in a far corner of the
world, about which we may never even know? The question hangs in the
air . . . “State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters” (Nietzsche,
1978, p. 48), whispers Friedrich Nietzsche from the past.
As Duck successfully kills the man (in the Virgil-like fantasy created by
the guide, Crumb), Crumb himself is murdered. Crumb had operated as a
respected CIA member, and now that self has been “murdered” by Duck,
by the simple arithmetical action of changing “59%” to “60%.” Did Duck
unwittingly perform a mystical favor, despite the temporal destruction? As
Simone Weil noted: “Suffering alone gives us contact with that necessity
which constitutes the order of the world” (Weil, 1973, p. 130).
A bit later in the play, the following interaction takes place, as Duck
tries (yet again) to justify his actions (well, inactions) that led to his brother’s
situation:

Duck: But you’re alive.

Crumb: If you call this living.
Duck: Well. But you chose this.
Crumb: If you believe that one chooses their fate.
Duck: And. And you have your.
Crumb: What? Soul intact? Heart unfettered? Self respect?
Duck: Yeah. Those.
Crumb: You’ve already given those up. Right? So what’s left?

What is the price one pays for spiritual realization? While Duck looks out
from inside his miasma of guilt and struggle to understand what role he
played in the far-off murder, Crumb lives homeless, underneath a park
bench. “What do you do, when you just can’t take it anymore?” asks
Duck.
Crumb shrugs. “I steal something from the Food Emporium,” he replies.
“I don’t understand,” says Duck. “How does that help?”
Crumb shrugs again. “It doesn’t,” he says.
 Mystical theater in action 201
Simone Weil explained Crumb’s plight of surrender: “The only way into
Truth is through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humil-
iation” (Weil, 1999, p. 331).
What does spiritual acceptance look like for a contemporary seeker? Has
“Crumb” arrived? His strongest action toward some sort of joy is to steal
something from a store, which doesn’t even help. Does this represent accept-
ance? What is acceptance, anyway?
Duck’s work in rounding up catches some eyes at the agency. He is pro-
moted to “do a job,” that is, kill a coven of Arab women in Egypt who
formed a study group, exploring 19th-century Continental philosophy. Duck
asks his superior how they know these women are marks. She replies that
he no longer has to worry about that, he’s in operations now, and anyway,
they meet the “threshold.” Duck knows all-too-well how fungible is that
threshold.
Again, Duck seeks out his brother, his mentor/tormentor. His brother
questions the CIA’s motivation for sending Duck on the mission. Maybe
Duck is questioning things a bit too much, and this represents a manner of
erasing the problem? As Duck notes, a Jewish hijab dealer from New York
City won’t embed very easily in Egypt. His superior placates him: “They
won’t know you’re Jewish,” she assures.
This dialogue between the brothers ensues:

DUCK: I don’t want to – I can’t do it.

CRUMB: So don’t do it.
DUCK: But look at you.
CRUMB: I lost faith. It happens.
DUCK: I’ve never done a job.
CRUMB: First time for everything. All you need is faith.
DUCK: What faith?
CRUMB: That everything’s exactly as it should be?
DUCK: What if it’s not?
CRUMB: Don’t think like that.

The point in mystical theater is to chew over mystical ideas, see them in
different manners, explore them through real-world events, and leave the au-
dience questioning. What is right? What is wrong? Crumb is a strange vessel
for truth, and his responses are often cryptic or even contradictory. However,
Truth often chooses very odd vessels through which to become known. Even
Crumb’s rough edges are a message to the audience: treat everyone as the
Buddha, for you are not wise enough to know exactly what form the Buddha
will take.
Crumb indicates that he “lost faith.” Did Crumb lose faith? Or has he found
it? What he means, we surmise, is that he lost faith in the “system,” to find faith
in the universe. And what is the “acceptance” of which he speaks? To float
along as a “leaf in the stream,” being loyal to what you’re told to do, wishing
202 Mystical theater in action
for everything to be exactly as it is? Or must one put up a hand and say stop
like a man alone, standing against a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square, thereby
removing themself from the stream of life, regardless of the consequences?
These questions are raised, but never answered.
The action whipsaws from this scene to one of great triumph. Duck re-
ceives the Intelligence Star, the CIA’s highest award for valor. He attempts
to reject it. It is foisted upon him. He speaks to a journalist, a therapist, his
superior at the agency. At each turn, he tries to express his growing sense that
things are not “exactly as they should be.”
His therapist diagnoses him with “survivor’s guilt,” due to what happened
to his brother (Crumb, remember, was tortured into silence after he left the
agency). Duck’s superior informs him that far from questioning his work, he
should be proud—“that rounding up thing was genius,” she informs him,
“saved countless lives. And more importantly, opened up a lot of targets. Lot
of bombs being dropped with your name on them,” she crows.
“I don’t want any bombs dropped with my name on them,” replies Duck,
horrified.
“Just kidding,” she replies. “We don’t put names on bombs.”
Duck desperately wants to be heard. He tries to unveil his truth with the
journalist sent to cover the story of the youngest recipient in history to re-
ceive the CIA’s Intelligence Star:

DUCK: Well, first of all Frates, as one learns more and more about the inner
workings of our security apparatus, the generally accepted narrative be-
gins to disintegrate –
FRATES: You think that you know something that everyone else doesn’t?
DUCK: No. Yes. I see the Truth. Beneath the veil of –
FRATES: You’re certain it’s not just a matter of perspective? Perhaps you have
just lost your bearings now, and are no longer able to see things the way
you should.
DUCK: But there is Truth. A right and wrong. There has to be. Something
solid. Like mathematics.

Truth dissipates in the world of journalism, where we discover that the “nar-
rative” overwhelms the need to worry about such matters as absolute reality.
The journalist will not listen to Duck, so Duck goes and sees a Priest. “So,
you’re Jewish and you want to confess?” asks the Priest, confused.
“Please, Father,” replies the nonreligious Duck. “I need to talk to someone
who understands the difference between right and wrong.”
The Priest acquiesces, and Duck, at last, feels as if he has reached bedrock:
a place from which moral truth emerges. But the Priest’s truth, representing
the certainty of religion, disintegrates, as well:
DUCK: I’ve done something. Wrong. But no one will admit it’s wrong. Ex-
cept my brother. And they–he got in trouble. And I just–I think I know
what reality is but it isn’t the reality that everyone else says. It is.
Priest: That does sound confusing.
 Mystical theater in action 203
Duck: Oh thank you, Father. You understand.
Priest: But still. Don’t you think that reality might be different for every in-
dividual? The kaleidoscope of life. Things might not always be clear to
us. In the moment.
Duck: No. There is a reality. One reality. Truth. There has to be.
Priest: Yes, of course. In the ultimate sense.
Duck: Faith. I’m looking for – I need to find faith. In actions – well, not my
actions. But someone’s actions. Or something else.
Priest: (Long pause.) Faith can take many forms. Yes?
Duck: Of course it can. But when one is complicit in something that they
don’t agree with –
Priest: It doesn’t mean that they were wrong. Perhaps they are misguided
now, and they were correct in the original action. Who are we to judge?
We are fallible. The final judgment is all that matters.

So much for the Priest.

Mahatma Gandhi informed that “there is no halfway point between Truth
and untruth” (Gandhi, 1965, p. 24). Does this mean that Duck must turn his
back on every voice of reason, from therapist to superior to Priest? And that
homeless, tortured, and abandoned Crumb represents the only other option?
The Sufi Junayd of Baghdad noted: “None attains to a degree of Truth until
a thousand honest people have testified that they are a heretic” (Shah, 1990,
p. 268). Are “Truth-teller” and “heretic” really synonymous?
In the second-to-last scene of the play, Duck finally finds the courage to
stand up for Truth. He will go on a hunger strike, “like Cesar Chavez,” he
says. Although it represents a change of narrative, Frates the journalist still
“sees some air,” the possibility of a different, and perhaps even more compel-
ling, story, as he pursues his goal of leveraging this piece to a pundit gig on
CNN. Tess is Duck’s wife:

FRATES: Still, there could be some air here. We could follow you live-cam as
you got smaller and smaller, desiccated, begged for sustenance — people
around the world could see how heroism metastasizes, turns in upon it-
self. Human interest meets geo-politics. Self-abnegation as social torture.
The Times would love this!
TESS: Frates! It’s not a hunger strike! He’s just hungry. He. Gets. Peckish.
FRATES: (Pause.) You’re probably right.
DUCK: No! I —
FRATES: Bill [Duck]. We were really onto something. Why did you have to
mess with the narrative?
DUCK: But this is the narrative now—it always was. How I don’t believe. And
our country. Lost. What they did to John [Crumb]. You weren’t listening
to me in the earlier interviews–
FRATES: Who wants to read a story about some ingrate who has a rumbly tummy?
Great stories can make a career. Look at Deep Throat. He made Woodward’s
career. I won’t get anything out of this. “Hungry ingrate slams CIA.”
204 Mystical theater in action
During this interchange, Crumb enters, unseen by all but Duck. “They won’t
listen,” he says, “just eat one of your cheese puffs.”
“But I’m doing it for you,” Duck replies. “For us.”
Crumb is unmoved, returning to the central theme of the play—which is
really the central question the production hopes to leave the audience with:
“The only way to find Truth is through acceptance,” he shrugs.
Duck already turned this idea around and around in his head and simply
succeeded in getting dizzy. Acceptance of what? Loyalty to whom? Duck re-
plies, growing ever-more desperate: “What about positive action? Learning?
Growth? Change?”
“Don’t be absurd,” replies Crumb, “you can’t change anything. Just eat
your little cheese puffs.”
Chuang Tzu, writing two-and-a-half millennia before Duck walked across
a stage, captured the import of Duck’s inf lection point: act or accept?

Great truths do no take hold in the hearts of the masses. And now, as all
the world is in error, how shall I, though I know the true path, how shall
I guide? If I know that I cannot succeed and yet try to force success, this
would be but another source of error. Better, then, to desist and strive no
more. But if I do not strive, who will?
(Huxley, 1970, pp. 139–140)

Call this “the mystic’s conundrum.” The question staring contemplatives in

the face since the beginning of human time.
The play ends where it began: Duck finds himself back on the bench,
quacking, with Abbie unloading her heart to the strange man. If silence is
complicity (as well as the first stage of worship, another confusing paradox to
breakdown), then Abbie convinces herself that Duck understands her.
Crumb appears.
The play has moved in a meandering figure eight, the symbol of eternity,
from the present, into the recent past, through Duck’s childhood, back into
the recent past, and finally dumps back into the present. “Time and space
are illusions,” whispers Sufi Sheikh Nazim al-Haqqani (al-Haqqani, 2002, p.
97). But the illusion, in this case, represents a hall of mirrors.
Duck’s bifurcated expression continues. Only able to quack in response
to Abbie, he argues with Crumb in front of her. Language liquifies. Rabbi
Yaakov Yitzhak of Pzysha (d. 1813) assured: “When you get to the point of un-
derstanding the very core of what you yourself are saying, you will understand
the language of all creatures” (Buber, 1991, p. 229). But does Duck understand?
Or is he awash in a sea of confusion? And do we, the audience, comprehend?
Abbie believes she understands: Duck quacks not only as a cry for help, but
also because he intuits a deep understanding of her needs. We have watched
throughout the play as every time that Duck tries desperately to make him-
self heard, he has been met with cliché’s, boilerplate certainty, knowing and
ironic replies: from the Priest, his superior at the agency, Frates the journalist,
 Mystical theater in action 205
and even his wife, Tess. The dialogue of Duck’s interactions with the normal
world surrounding him represented “the muddleheaded, frustrated, stub-
born, and obtuse assumptions that underlie our view of the world and its
problems, producing no clarity . . .” (Merton, 2004, p. 121).
Does Duck’s insistent quacking when speaking to Abbie represent an appre-
ciation and acceptance of this fact, the impossibility of language to truly com-
municate? As Shams-i Tabrizi said: “Language is narrow. All these struggles are
so that you may be released from language . . . ” (Tabrizi, 2004, p. 112).
Does Duck’s quacking represent a “release from language?”
Abbie remains focused on the injured Duck. She speaks to Crumb:

ABBIE:Duck. He’s obviously going through something. Right now. Life

changing. And he’s trying to figure it out. Who he is. His place in the
world. He’ll land. And when he does, he needs someone to catch him.
DUCK: Quack.

Crumb will not give up on leading Duck toward the Real, like Virgil with
Dante or Shams-i-Tabrizi with Rumi, in both cases unremittingly. He pushes
back against Abbie, finally revealing a Truth embedded in the play: “Maybe
I’ve actually arrived. And anyway, what are we but the sum total of our ac-
tions. Right?” (Bhagavad Gita, al-Ghazali, Buddhism, etc.)
Abbie, however, refuses to see that “actions exist, as do their consequences,
but the one who acts does not.” She replies: “We’re not just a collection of
the things we’ve done. It’s what’s inside. Hidden. And all we all want is to
be seen for who we really are. By one special person, at least.” Abbie opts for
transitory, temporal love.
Duck remains seated, in between here (Abbie) and the HERE (Crumb),
still unable or unwilling to communicate with this woman. He faces a choice
between the unforgiving ministrations of his brother, or some temporal and
temporary hope, as represented by Abbie. We know that Duck is married, as
in the previous scene we saw him with his wife, saw how he tried to break
out and explain to her how his viewpoint changed, saw how dismissive she
was of his concerns, his tiny spasm of a hunger strike, his cauterized desire to
“set things straight.”
Crumb, however, like any true teacher, allows his student to make his own
decision. “C’mon,” says Abbie, offering to take Duck away from that moment
and the homeless man, to a new life. “Duck and I can be together,” she says.
Crumb is incredulous. “Duck? Do you want to be with this woman?”
Duck quacks.
Abbie and Crumb argue about whether one quack is acquiescence or rejec-
tion. Abbie stands from off the bench and holds out her hand to Duck. Duck
looks back and forth between his brother and this woman he just met. Duck
will be a leaf in a stream, the imitation of acceptance, the coward’s mysticism.
He rises.
He exits with Abbie.
206 Mystical theater in action
Crumb sighs. He moves to the bench the couple just left. He puts his hands
behind his head ref lectively. He nods. “I give that thing about a 59% chance
of making it,” he says.
Curtain.
The final moment receives a laugh from the audience. But it is no button.
It presents a doorway. Duck, while sympathetic in his struggles, has moved
in an emotional, spiritual, and literal (time) circle throughout the play. Now,
he leaves the stage with a woman he just met, while his wife awaits him at
home. Crumb is right back where he began: on the bench in the park where
he now lives.
“If anyone has understood this sermon,” Meister Eckhart said from the
pulpit, some 700 years ago, “I wish them well! If no one had come to listen,
I should have had to preach it to the offering box” (Eckhart, 1998, p. 226).

Actuary Day
(Produced at IATI Theater, East Village, NYC, June 2020)

For something genuinely new to begin, the vestiges and ruins of the old
cycle must be completely destroyed. In other words, to obtain an absolute
beginning, the end of the world must be total.
(Eliade, 1968, p. 52)

Few plays of mine so directly address the idea of “reality” as does Actuary Day.
Taking place in a liminal space outside of time—perhaps, as the characters
believe, post-apocalyptic, though it might just as well be a hospital or an asy-
lum, or even take place inside one of the character’s head—a random group
is thrown together in a room, apparently without exit. As the opening scene
directions note: “Scene opens on some kind of living room, or waiting room. Maybe
a prison or a hospital.”
The characters struggle to assess their situation, which itself echoes our
human situation. Bodhidharma’s teachings hang over the proceedings: “If
you use your mind to study reality, you won’t understand either mind or re-
ality. If you study reality without using your mind, you’ll understand both”
(Bodhidharma, 1987, p. 55).
The play begins with a woman alone in a white, windowless room, eating
popcorn and watching an exceedingly strange 30-second video featuring an
old man, a couple little girls, and a comment from the three year old: “Don’t
I look strange, like I just came out of a comic book?” She references the odd
distortions to her head, created by the digital media.
The film ends. The woman begins to pace. She has been sent to this sacred
cabin to “begin again,” with the video the only clue. She will recreate the
founding myth of humanity! This becomes the conceit of the play, as charac-
ters become thrown onto stage, wander in, or enter with clipboards, claiming
to be in charge, all arguing over what “it” means. Though it becomes abun-
dantly clear that whatever they think “it” is, “it” is something else.
 Mystical theater in action 207
Jennifer is thrown into the room. Susan, who arrived first, nods her head
in appreciation. “They sent me a good one,” she says, though it is not entirely
clear why that might be so. Good, bad, strong, weak—what is the ultimate
bedrock of these values?
The two main characters are a road construction worker (Susan) and an
actuary ( Jennifer). One who builds paths, and one who quantifies past actions
with the aim of controlling the future. These represent two main human
activities, building and controlling, and both trades are decidedly contrary to
mystical thought, leading into the world of senses and away from the spirit.
This dialogue takes place, representing their desire to hold onto their fictions
of understanding in the face of this overwhelming challenge:

SUSAN: They sent me here to control the situation.

JENNIFER: Who sent you here?
SUSAN: Infrastructure Management. Obviously.
JENNIFER: And what is our situation, exactly?
SUSAN: (Sweeps her arm around the room.) This.
JENNIFER: (Long pause.) Oh. That’s right. Actuary Day.
I tell you, they come
up with something new every year. Gotta hand it to them.
SUSAN: What the hell is that?
JENNIFER: The day when they measure and manage risk and uncertainty. In
the world. And then they release the numbers and we know exactly how
many people are going to die, and how many live and all of that.

Lao Tzu provides the unspoken counterpoint: “Not knowing is true knowl-
edge. Presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; then
you can move toward health” (Lao Tzu, 2000, p. 73). These two women
represent the narrow human faith in knowledge, and our ability to control
our surroundings, even in the face of insurmountable odds. The bottom line
for humanity: we have been given enough of a consciousness to figure out
something is going on, but not enough to figure out what, exactly, it is.
Hence our problems.
What is the proper response to such a situation? The mystics assure: in
accepting that knowledge is impossible, one remains in the midst of a Divine
bewilderment that surpasses rational understanding. “Emptied of all knowl-
edge,” Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite informed, “humans are joined in
the highest part of themself . . . with the One who is altogether unknowable”
(Harvey, 1997, p. 51).
Few reach these metaphysical heights. Susan and Jennifer represent the rest
of us, literally, as at this juncture in the production, they appear to be the only
two remaining humans on earth.
Jennifer attempts to leave, exiting the stage. There is a long, uncomfortable
silence, then she walks back into the scene. “I’m back?”
“You never left,” says Susan, smugly. As Marcus Aurelius informs from
two millennia ago: “Nature has no door to sweep things out of ” (Aurelius,
2003, p. 112).
208 Mystical theater in action
Pat and Chris rush on, claiming to be in charge of the “experiment.” They
work for “him,” the old man pictured in the movie. They indicate there is
a plan, but they cannot exactly pinpoint what it might be. Although com-
pletely in control, things seem to have gotten away from them. They try to
exit, but cannot. They pretend that everything is exactly as it should be, a
twisted version of Stoic philosophy come to life on the stage. They eat pop-
corn and settle in to “keep an eye on things.”
Susan, the builder, grows unnerved. She turns the video on to explain to
Jennifer, and placate her own unease, what exactly is “going on.” She stops
the film and explains: “Comic books. Modern myth. Don’t you get it? (Long
silence.) The circle closes between the Bible and the comic book! Between
then and now. Past and future. We have been chosen to return. To begin
again. After the fall.”
An argument ensues: how can civilization be rebooted without a man?
Ted walks into the room looking at his watch. He is a stay-at-home soccer
dad with a PhD in philosophy. Chris implies that he brought Ted here to aid
with the plan.
Pat is unimpressed. “Is this your idea of a joke?” he asks.
“Just wait,” replies Chris, “There’s more to him than meets the eye.”
Ted represents reason and knowledge. He will provide a calming inf luence
and thought-structure for what is going on. There is not more to him than
meets the eye. He is anthropocentric comprehension writ small.
This type of understanding will not aid the true searcher. As Chuang Tzu
said:

There is great disorder continually in the world; the guilt of it is due to

the fondness for knowledge. All people know to seek for the knowledge
that they have not attained to; and do not know to seek for that which
they already have in themselves.
(Chuang Tzu, 1971, p. 126)

Jennifer, the actuary, continues to declare her certainty, announcing to the

newly arrived man: “Ignore her. We’re not at the beginning of anything. It’s
Actuary Day. At first, anything seems possible. Then we’ll quantify it. And
then, everything will be clear. Foreseen.”
Ted responds by informing that he is writing a book called “The Meaning
of Life and Other Things.” Ted majored in the Meaning of Life.
The play now has four different views of what is going on: Jennifer (the
actuary) believes this is her recertification test; Ted thinks it is a quick de-
tour from which he can return quickly to baking brownies for his children’s
school bake sale; Susan believes that they have been sent to rebuild humanity
from the ground up; and Pat and Chris think they are running some kind of
experiment for the man in the movie.
Carl Jung offers a fifth possibility: “It is only the ingrained belief in the
sovereign power of causality that creates intellectual difficulties and makes
 Mystical theater in action 209
it appear unthinkable that causeless events exist or could even occur” ( Jung,
1958, p. 280). A belief borrowed from the Sufis, who remain perfectly com-
fortable with the idea of effect happening first, followed by its cause. Or
events without either cause or effect. Maybe what’s going on in the white
room just “is”?
Pat and Chris grow worried. Things definitely aren’t unfolding as planned.
There is talk of poetry and paradox. Of beauty and brownies. The path be-
comes a labyrinth, but instead of moving toward a center of hidden and ter-
rifying knowledge, it careens further and further away from understanding.
In mystical terms, of course, this might bring the characters closer to the
goal of true worship: bewilderment. But the characters are too human. They
continue to move in circles around the Truth, represented by Divine perplex-
ity, the unseen omphalos at the center of their quest.
A homeless man wanders into the room. Well, now we’re getting some-
where! He must represent the answer, correct?
All spiritual paths strongly agree that personal humility is the first step to-
ward understanding. “The meek shall inherit the earth”—these exact words
appear in both the Christian scripture and the Qur’an. Confucius assured
that a “gentleman does not grieve that people do not recognize his merits; he
grieves at his own incapacities” (Confucius, 1992, p. 188). The Buddhist Hui
Neng said: “He who is humble and meek on all occasions . . . has thoroughly
realized his essence of mind” (Hui Neng, 1990, p. 105). And finally the Sufi
Abdullah Ansari of Herat (d. 1089) said: “A Sufi is a handful of dust, passed
through a sieve, then moistened with a few drops of water. Trodden upon, it
neither bruises nor muddies the foot of the passer-by” (Fadiman and Frager,
1999, p. 193).
Perhaps this old homeless man dressed vaguely as a Franciscan Friar holds
the key?
Sadly: no.
He appears befuddled and hungry and simply seems to have lost his way,
walking up First Avenue toward the Queensboro Bridge on Manhattan’s East
Side. Pat and Chris initiate a session to see how the patients are feeling. Chairs
are brought in. All sit. Everyone expresses different views on the matter,
though now another voice has been added. The homeless man, Benedict,
roots around for food.
The ouroboros, representing eternal cyclic renewal, lurks underneath the
action, as the narrative continues to circle around some indistinct center. Pat
and Chris call the office, but no one answers. Susan declares she is in charge
(again). Ted philosophizes that the narrative they are living is simply a spoken
or written account of connected events, whether it has an arc or not. Jennifer,
the actuary, smugly asserts that this proves it is Actuary Day, as that describes
statistics: a narrative without an arc. Benedict asserts that those in the office
probably just stepped out. “They’ll be back,” he says confidently, sitting on
the f loor, munching on his food.
Pat and Chris continue to assert that they are in charge:
210 Mystical theater in action
PAT: We’re in charge of it. He sent us here to –
CHRIS: To run the experiment.
BENEDICT: I’m in. (The other internees look at him, surprised.) Anything for a bed
and three squares.
CHRIS: He said we had to get it right this time.
BENEDICT: It won’t hurt, will it?
PAT: No more so than usual.
JENNIFER: I don’t want to be experimented on!
BENEDICT: What is life out there, anyway?
JENNIFER: But they don’t call it that.

The internees tie up Pat and Chris. But why? The orderlies have nowhere
to escape. Ted continues to rely on rational and ironic thought, the safe har-
bor of the contemporary zeitgeist. Benedict, slowly unveiling himself as the
homeless “knower,” opens the doorway to a deeper way of looking at their
situation.

JENNIFER: (Returning.) Ted and I aren’t sure we should have tied them up.
SUSAN: But they might escape.
TED: Where to?
SUSAN: Back where they came from?
TED: We came from somewhere, too. Even reductionism posits an original
point in time and place.
BENEDICT: (Through a mouthful of something.) Not exactly. Aliquid ex nihilo.
Something from nothing. That’s how the universe began.
TED: You’re going to tell me the Big Bang emerged out of nothingness?
BENEDICT: From where else could it emerge?
SUSAN: Don’t argue with him. He’s just some homeless guy. He might not
even be a part of this.

The ouroboros continues to eat its tail. Susan, the road construction worker,
continues to assert her understanding, in spite of the gathering clues that
neither she, not anyone else, has any idea of what is going on. A metaphor
for life?
Remember Socrates, I scream into the emptiness surrounding me:
“Socrates found that he was the only one who acknowledged to himself that
he knew nothing” (Nietzsche, 1937, p. 253).
Benedict tells a long and meandering story, placing himself on the New
York subway on a weekend, yet wandering as if through the ancient Knossos
of Crete. So, a clue! This is a labyrinth. But if so, the ultimate question still
remains: What is at the middle? Is there an omphalos, the Minotaur, or simply
nonexisting existence?
Jennifer asserts that far more than being simply an ordinary actuary, she
writes poetry. And all myth begins in poetry. Myth, after all, is the prover-
bial ring around the black hole, the light that proves the Divine emptiness
 Mystical theater in action 211
at the heart of being. “All myth begins in poetry,” agrees Benedict, who has
assumed the mantle of wisdom.
Ted realizes that he forgot his daughter’s math summative. He promised
to help her study. Ted exits. The others look on, dumbfounded. Where has
he gone? Just outside the room, after all, lurks the Divine Nought. The room
holds the only shared reality.
Susan asserted control at the beginning of the play, but now realizes that all
her suppositions are wrong (hinting at the spiritual journey through the dark
night of the soul, through emptiness and unknowing). She begins to grow
hysterical. “Where did he go?” she asks.
Benedict shrugs: “out.” Then he asserts that this is, in fact, a new begin-
ning, not a place for understanding data points, but for creating them. They
arrived in a liminal place from which reality begins, and then becomes cod-
ified into religion through the myth-telling of the poet.
Pat and Chris attempt to exit, to corral Ted and bring him back. They
are unable to leave the room, and crumple onto the f loor. Benedict goes
and stands over them, staring out to where Ted exited. He shrugs, and then
returns. “The primal mystery can be quite bewildering,” he states. This, as-
sures the playwright, represents the omphalos. But like all Truth in our world,
it quickly submerges beneath further dialogue and activity, disappearing into
the past. As Zen scholar Katsuki Sekuda assured: “It is like throwing a ball
into the rapids. Moment after moment, the ball f loats with the stream. It has
no time to stop and ref lect upon itself ” (Sekuda, 2005, p. 355).
Our coterie barrels along into the future.
In a mondo cane (world gone to the dogs), perhaps beauty and poetry are
the only sane response. To become part of the act of creation, ex nihilo as
Benedict asserted, unifies the human creator with the universal energy. For
the artist, like the universe, creates poetry or paintings or music from the
nothing space inside of themself. Jennifer, the actuary-poet, begins to quote
beautiful poetry as Susan asserts that she no longer understands. Susan begins
to weep. Jennifer quotes Stoic philosophy: “Everything is exactly as it should
be.” Jennifer fills the void: a collective in need of a leader:

SUSAN: I’m in control! I’m the first creator. I’m the mother, Eve. The builder.
The orange cones of civilization laid with care, one after the other,
pointing a new way forward. Me!
JENNIFER: You need rest. Rest. (Pushes Susan back on the lounge chair.)
SUSAN: No! No! You must tell me. What is the beginning? Again? (Strug-
gling.) And why are you suddenly in control? I was. I am.
JENNIFER: Because I understand.

And then, the resurrection of Ted, returning as he left. Dressed for a date (we
have been earlier informed that he and his wife have an open marriage), he
looks for Jennifer. And Jennifer, now the poet in charge of creating the first
myth of the new kalpa (eon), notes: “Like Homer, he has gone and returned.
212 Mystical theater in action
One of those few who escape precipitous death and arrived safely home,
having survived the great voyage.” The circle tightens between the earliest
human stories and this current though liminal moment.
Jennifer waxes poetic, asserting that no matter how far we think we grow
from poetry, we always return thence. Ted informs that he “minored in Par-
adox and Conundrums” in his doctoral program, and Jennifer nods approv-
ingly: “You have come to the right place.”
We voyage deeper into the labyrinth. We move further around the edge
of the circle. We travel along the knife’s edge in a straight line which leads
nowhere. And by design. Desperately trying any number of ways to give
their experience meaning, some of the characters seeming more self-as-
sured, some more pointed, some more in control, some wiser, some com-
pletely lost.
But what of it?
At the unspoken center of the tale lurks true wisdom. Simone Weil noted:
“The role of intelligence—that part of us which affirms and denies, formu-
lates opinions—is sadly one of submission. All that I conceive of as true is
less true than these things of which I cannot conceive the truth” (Weil, 1999,
pp. 417–418).
Benedict bumps back into the scene, quoting an Attar poem to assert that
the final station, for the mystical knower submerged in the will of God, is
love, represented by fana and baqa, and fusion with the Divine:

In Love, no longer “Thou” and “I” exist,

For self has passed away in the Beloved.
Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,
And in the temple of mine inmost soul
Behold the Friend: Incomparable Love.
(Pickering, 2008, p. iii)

Benedict seizes control of the proceedings, as denoted by the appearance

of a clipboard and white lab coat. He institutes a test for the other inmates.
Though to obscure ends, not unlike our daily test of human existence. Are
these mortal toils obscure and meaningless? Is the only true response to this
world a complete surrender to God’s will? Whatever it might be?
The question reverberates from the previous play, Duck. Duck said: “What
are we supposed to do? Accept whatever life shoves down our throat?”
Though of course, it reverberates in a different form and perhaps with a
different answer. Such is mystical theater: whatever you think it is, it’s some-
thing else.
The test comes and goes without resolution. Benedict quotes Attar again:

This sacred cabin is a closed coffin, in which

We are shut and in which, through our ignorance,
We spend our time in folly.
 Mystical theater in action 213
When Truth comes to open the lid of the coffin,
Each one who has wings of faith will f ly off to Eternity.
(Harvey and Hanut, 1999, p. 10)

A struggle ensues. Pat and Chris attempt to push Benedict out of the room.
Then they try to get rid of Susan. All remain onstage. Then, the realiza-
tion of how human myth and experience must truly begin: “The vestiges
and ruins of the old cycle must be completely destroyed. In other words, to
obtain an absolute beginning, the end of the world must be total” (Eliade,
1968, p. 52).
Jennifer, now the myth maker, references the Divine Nought from which
all originates:

It’s a nothingness which isn’t

like the void we all know all too well:
A place inside ourself
That’s keeps us up at night.
Nor the emptiness which is nothing but
a lack of place or things —
or even the nothing awaiting in an empty room.
But:
That nothingness where absolutely nothing truly exists:
The existing non-existence,
Beyond space.
Beyond time.

Finally, the dialogue which explains all, preceding what must be the final
and ultimate creative act. Ted finally gets it:

TED: Myth must summarize the essential moments of a beginning hewn from
a nothing from which some “thing” emerges.
SUSAN: How does something emerge from nothing?
BENEDICT: How many times do we have to say aliquid ex nihilo. Everything
comes from nothing.
TED: This “something” thus produced is codified through violence, the orig-
inal creative act. Now —
SUSAN: Violence? I thought that the answer was love. Love!
BENEDICT: The buoyancy of love, an alchemical quintessence, a shimmering
aliveness that is both still and in motion, emerges from the violence of the
primal explosion. It is then quantified in myth.

Jennifer says she will kill Susan, thereby beginning (again) the cycle of myth
and human time, wrought from the nothingness of this liminal place beyond
existence. The lights power off to the sounds of a struggle. Then all is silent.
Light reemerges. Benedict, Pat, and Chris remain onstage. An image of the
214 Mystical theater in action
other three participants comes onto the screens. They are bewildered, in a
different white room, unsure of what comes next.
Perhaps Benedict has been in charge, all along, as Pat and Chris vie to
prove to him they have done a good “job,” whatever that job might be. Ben-
edict tries to figure out exactly what the two orderlies have done:

BENEDICT: Now. They seem.

PAT: Confused?
CHRIS: Lost?
BENEDICT: That’s standard. And sometimes the most obvious way is the best
way.
PAT: (Sigh of relief.) Occam’s Razor.
CHRIS: Oh shut up.
BENEDICT: But maybe next time, we can go for something a little more.
(Long pause.)
PAT: Yes?
CHRIS: What?
BENEDICT: Heroic? Unpredictable?

And so the play ends where it began.

But where was that, again?

Oud Player on the Tel

(Produced at the Theater at the 14th Street Y, East Village, NY, June 2014)

There is nothing in the world that is not a blessing for one person, which
isn’t a curse for someone else.

Mystical theater and political issues can go together. Not to answer the most
pressing social concerns of our era, but to raise ever-deeper questions about
them. Like the turtles that the wise man assured hold up the world (turtles
all the way down), so it is with mystical thought. When applied to current
events, however clear the issues may seem on the surface (who is right and
who is wrong, for instance), mystical tinting uncovers questions “all the way
down.”
The goal of the mystic remains to fuse the particular with the eter-
nal. By treating an ongoing political concern from a mystical point of
view, the theater maker engages the audience by using a common matter
about which most people in the audience know. To this known quantity,
however, layer upon layer of mystical ideas, inlay, and queries are added,
not to elucidate a correct political answer, but to twist, derange, change,
turn inside-out, and investigate the issue in ways that jar the spectator
from complacency and open doorways to the “within,” synonymous with
“above.”
 Mystical theater in action 215
Oud Player on the Tel explores the founding of Israel from the point of view
of the Palestinians. Obviously, a political hotspot. The work puts mystical
ideals in service to an ongoing political issue with tremendous emotional
impact: the Palestinian/Israeli struggle over a small patch of dusty soil on the
far side of the Mediterranean Sea.
It seems that everyone has an opinion on this issue, more so than other
political hotspots like Tibet/China, Kurdistan/Turkey, Ethiopia/Eritrea, and
Bosnia/Serbia. And note that the Mediterranean Sea represented an ompahlos
in the ancient world, the body of water causing Noah’s f lood, and around
which the earliest trade routes, armies, and civilizations emerged. The word
“mediterranean” itself means: “The middle of the earth.”
The play draws the circle tightly between contemporary politics and the
heart of mysticism, as the main character is a Sufi. Additionally, two dancers
are written into the text, representing the deeper emotional and spiritual
import of the action, offering subtext, emotional underpinning, and visceral
counterpoints to the spoken words. They appear and disappear, underscore,
sometimes add to the action, sometimes contradict, and even play an occa-
sional deus ex machina role, bringing the Jewish settler Moritz and the Pales-
tinian Rashida together for their first tryst.
In the action of the drama, we see the manner in which the “winds of
history” overwhelm good intentions and the gentle nature of mystical
thought. The mystic is not built to operate within the world of politics and
nation-building. The main Palestinian character, Amir, has his world shat-
tered, while attempting to retain his deepest spiritual beliefs.
Amir retains his humanity to the bitter end of this tale, after his land has
been taken, his village destroyed, and his family killed. As Thomas Merton
said:

Detachment is not pure indifference, but only a concentration of atten-

tion on the subject of the act itself, not on the results or the consequences.
We are not responsible for more than our own action, but for this, we
should take complete responsibility.
(Merton, 1966, p. 105)

Amir answers this call, even in the face of his profound, personal loss.
The play also explores a feeling that each of us experiences in the face of great
injustice: helplessness. What is the mystical response to events, as we involve
ourselves in the world? We cannot simply withdraw. We have variously seen
quotes throughout this book struggling with exactly this idea—how to be both
removed from and indifferent to, as well as interact with and be a part of society.
Ultimately, the scales of mysticism always tip toward engagement. Simone
Weil assured: “where there is a need, there is an obligation” (Weil, 1973, p.
99). And Gandhi said: “the business of every God-fearing person is to disso-
ciate themself from evil in total disregard of the consequences. They follow
216 Mystical theater in action
the Truth, though the following of it may endanger their very life” (Merton,
1966, p. 102).
Mysticism both demands that we accept the world on its terms and impli-
cates us in making it a more spiritually-healthy place.
Confusing.
Melke, the main Jewish character, personifies this conundrum. He arrives
in the little Palestinian village of Bayt Jiz from the German destruction of
World War II. He simply wants to live in security, to grow olives, and to
experience a peace impossible for Jews in 20th-century Europe. He immedi-
ately befriends Amir. Amir informs Melke that Amir will share his knowl-
edge of growing olives, and gives his new friend some cuttings and some of
his land, so Melke might start afresh and in safety.
Amir, the unofficial leader of the small village of Bayt Jiz, assures that “We
are a small village, and certainly not rich, but we can always find room for a
few more.” Amir welcomes the northern cousins to his land, offering a safe
space for the beleaguered Jewish refugees. Amir assures that Jews and Mus-
lims are “two cuttings from the same tree.”
The mystico-political dynamic emerges. As the Roman philosopher Cicero
(d. 43 BCE) noted: “It is not those who inf lict injury, but those who prevent
it that we should consider the men of courage and great spirit” (Reichberg,
Syse, and Begby, 2006, p. 50). Thusly unfolds the struggle throughout this
play, as Melke and Amir’s friendship grows, and first Amir, and then Melke,
attempt to prevent injury to the other.
The question of mystical action remains until the end, an unanswered
challenge, a demand of the audience, not just the characters. Is trying and
failing enough? Should one risk everything? Are “victory” and “mysticism”
antithetical to each other? These questions, like those within the play Duck,
will not, and perhaps cannot, be answered.
In Oud Player on the Tel, not all of the characters are unsure of their actions.
Other than Melke and Amir, the Jewish and Muslim members of the play
are quite certain of what they want. The two young men, the Palestinian
Mahmud and the Jew Moritz, each take the name of an American car dealer,
Herb Gordon, as they want to emulate that great nation, the winner of the
recent war. “Cars are the way of the future,” they declare.
They both see the future: that Israel will be the new America (turning the
Puritan’s founding idea that America was the new Israel, on its head). And, as
the future in America will be ruled by the motorcar, the same should be true
in this ancient land. They both quickly research the field and discover a car
dealer in Washington DC, the Jerusalem of that great nation, named Herb
Gordon. They both change their names to Herb Gordon, and set about the
business of starting their “New Used Car” dealerships.
They discover that the other has adopted their chosen name, and declare
that the land only has room for one Herb Gordon. Something they can both
agree on. Unfortunately for Mahmud, might makes right in the temporal
realm, and he ends up dead and buried, while Moritz corners the market in
New Used Cars, even though there are not yet even roads in Bayt Jiz.
 Mystical theater in action 217
Such is the capitalistic-prophetic vision, to see roads where there are none,
and money in motorcars in a land with only asses and burros.
Rashida, Amir’s niece, decides to marry Moritz and “go with the win-
ners,” though she will ultimately be killed during Israel’s war of independ-
ence. Moritz is heartbroken at first, but his mother (Shoshana) assures him
that there will be plenty of Jewish girls f looding in from the northern lands.
He will have no problem finding a mate.
Fatima (Amir’s sister) and Shoshana (Melke’s wife) openly and honestly
despise each other.
Oud Player on the Tel implicates the audience in the struggle between truth
and propaganda, as well as mystical striving versus worldly success. Many
of the spectators will have undoubtedly chosen a side in this conf lict and
have a strong emotional connection to it, generally around one of two ideas:
“they want to kill us” ( Jewish partisans) or “they are killing us” (Palestinian
partisans).
Additionally, the Palestinian narrative has often been overwhelmed by the
strong marketing of the Israeli and Jewish perspectives. From the Jewish per-
spective, of course, the struggle with the Palestinians over the land extends
a two millennia-long existential struggle against outside forces that want to
obliterate them. From the Palestinian point of view, they were unwitting
pawns in an international game of nation-state after World War II, seeing
their land simply given to the Jews, without having any say or exercising
agency in the matter.
Which narrative is correct? Which represents “truth?” Sufi thinker Seyyed
Hossein Nasr urges us to think deeper on the subject: “To seek to discover
the truth in any matter is the most constructive of all acts” (Nasr, 1997, p.
136). Unspoken is the fact that, in geopolitical situations, we probably can’t
arrive there, because there is no such thing as “absolute political truth.” His-
tory is written by the victors, and this often becomes codified through “ed-
ucation” as the reality of any historical matter.
But what if, from a social and political point of view, both sides have grains
of “truth” in their stew? How can we discover the mystical point-of-view to
something embedded in the contemporary, international political zeitgeist,
such as the Palestinian/Israeli conf lict, and each side’s interpretation of their
own history?
Amir represents the mystical knower stuck in the middle of this conf lagra-
tion. As he notes: “History is there to be changed. In fact, if you ignore it, it
just goes away. Poof.” History intersects with mystical thinking in only the
most peripheral way, so can’t the spiritually inclined person simply bypass it
on the way to deeper meaning?
Mystical inlay sprinkles Amir’s dialogue. He tells a Sufi tale of Moses ap-
proaching and arguing with God, who patiently responds to Moses’s con-
cerns. For the Sufis, Moses represents the prototypical “knower” of God,
the only historical figure who actually spoke with the Divine, and certainly
the only one with the temerity to argue with God. Early in the play, Amir
relates this Sufi tale to his Jewish visitors as a mark of respect, adding that
218 Mystical theater in action
Moses is the most-often mentioned historical figure in the Qur’an. “The
Qur’an,” Amir informs, “is like 50% about the Jews.”
After Amir finishes the story, a long silence ensues. Then:

SHOSHANA: Are you saying that we’re an argumentative people? Jews. Are you?
JEWISH REFUGEE: If you don’t want us here, you can just say so. Don’t give
us tea and then insult us.
AMIR: No – you don’t understand. It’s a mark of respect. In Islamic tradition,
Musa was the only prophet who met God face to face. The only prophet
with the standing to talk to God as an equal. For Sufis, he’s the perfect
example of the mystical knower.
SHOSHANA: But all Moses wants to do is argue with God?
PALESTINIAN: Perhaps if you stopped arguing with Sayeed Amir, you would
find out what it means.
FATIMA: They are kind of an argumentative people, aren’t they?
SHOSHANA: Who?
JEWISH REFUGEE: What’s a Sufi?
SHOSHANA: Sometimes Moses talked with God, you know. And thanked
him. We’re a very thankful people.
MELKE: Please! Our host is sharing a story with us.
JEWISH REFUGEE: So why is he telling a story about the Jews? Why doesn’t
he tell us more about how to scrape a living from the eretz?
FATIMA: What’s an eretz?

Needless to say, the message is lost on all present, except perhaps Melke. One
must listen with more than the ears to truly understand.
Mystical inlay also takes the form of historical, though legendary, figures
entering the scene. After all, in mystical time, all things exist in an eternal
present, so the appearance of the father of Judaism and Islam, Abraham (d.
1975 BCE), makes perfect sense. Echoes of the Sufi tale where Moses argued
with God rehearse when Amir meets the Patriarch Abraham:

AMIR: Look what you’ve wrought!

ABRAHAM: Oy!
AMIR: Seriously, father. How could you let this happen?
ABRAHAM: When God says you have to choose, you have to choose, my son.
At least he made of Ishmael a great nation.
AMIR: Numerous maybe, but not so great.
ABRAHAM: You had a good run in the Middle Ages. al-Andalus.
AMIR: True, but still, Musa argued with God. Why didn’t you?
ABRAHAM: Musa was a Jew. I wasn’t really Jewish.
AMIR: You could have been the Muslim mystical knower.
ABRAHAM: I wasn’t really Muslim, either. I was kind of a –
AMIR: Ibrahim, please. We need to live here together. There’s going to be
mayhem here in the Holy Land.
 Mystical theater in action 219
ABRAHAM: What else is new?
AMIR: But for God’s sakes.
ABRAHAM: Exactly. Perhaps mayhem is holy. This is the natural state of
humanity.

Is “mayhem” holy? Looking around the world, it might appear to be so.

Rumi informed: “Hidden things are manifested by their opposites.” With-
out the mayhem, how would one come to know personal tranquility, social
good, morality, and be challenged to search for deeper truths?
Ka’ab (d. 652), a Jewish rabbi who converted to Islam and became one of
the Prophet Muhammad’s most important followers, also makes a cameo
appearance, highlighting how deeply intertwined are the two currently war-
ring religions. Ka’ab helped explain the Jewish path to the Prophet Muham-
mad, as the new religion emerged from the very f lesh and bone of the earlier,
Abrahamic faith. In the play, he presents the unity latent beneath apparent
diversity.

KA’AB: My name is Ka’ab. A Jewish rabbi from Yemen –

MELKE: You don’t look Jewish!
AMIR: You don’t know what our Jews look like.
KA’AB: Actually, I’m not Jewish.
MELKE: Paradox?
AMIR: Conversion.
MELKE: What?
KA’AB: What he’s trying to say is that I was a Jew before I was a Muslim.
MELKE: You don’t say?
AMIR: Look. Melke. If you’re going to live here, you’re going to have to learn
that Jews and Muslims have been intermingling forever. It’s not like the
north. Here, the same blood runs through both branches. Of the same
tree.

Another mystical ideal is that God will not choose sides. This is up to us.
“God cannot prevent what has happened from happening,” Simone Weil in-
formed. “What better proof that the creation is an abdication?” (Weil, 1999,
p. 423). And the Prophet Muhammad said: “Neither will Allah change the
condition of people until they change it themselves” (Qu’ran, Surah Ar-Ra’d
13:11). Nelson Mandela, writing nearly 1,500 years later and from a com-
pletely different tradition, concurred: “If God does not show more initiative
in leading humans to salvation, then humans will have to take matters into
their own two hands” (Mandela, 1995, p. 265).
The “natural state of humanity” is one of struggle—herein lies the chal-
lenge to be most human. Mahatma Gandhi said: “To befriend one who re-
gards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion” (Gandhi,
1965, p. 62). Amir does just this. But his “reward” does not include a tem-
poral victory.
220 Mystical theater in action
Contrary to religious belief based in the fact that God’s strength is proven
by military victory, mystical realization does not equate to “winning” in this
world. Sometimes, it means spending three years in solitary confinement
in a cell 12 feet underground, with no lights or windows, as did Richard
Wurmbrand in Romania. Sometimes it means spending 18 years in jail, as did
Nelson Mandela and Wei Jingsheng. And sometimes it means taking a bullet
to the brain, as did Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.
Were they wrong to live as they did? Trying to apply mystical values to the
world, to make the world a more spiritually-healthy place?
Such is the plight of Amir. While the narrow-minded hatreds of those who
surround him, both Muslim and Jewish, clarify his struggle, the true antithesis
to Amir is Melke. His heart is good, but his will is weak. Or is it? What choice
does he have? Must one spend three years in a hole or 18 years on a windswept
prison off the coast of Africa to achieve realization? To be their highest self?
The play barrels toward its end with no answer to this question in sight.
Amir’s Palestinian family has been obliterated by the winds of fate (and the
Irgun), and his lands taken for the Jewish replacements. Melke’s son informs
his father that he and Amir are now on opposite sides of history, no matter
what his father might think:

MORITZ: It’s time for your friend to go. Or else.

AMIR: Or else?
MORITZ: There is space next to the other Herb Gordon.
AMIR: I’m sorry. I’m – where is he again?
SHOSHANA: In the ground.
MELKE: Stop it! You stop talking to my friend like this!
MORITZ: It’s time to choose.
MELKE: I can’t.
AMIR: History arrives even in a quiet corner of the world like Bayt Jiz.
MORITZ: Then we must choose for you. (Raises rod.)
MELKE: (Throws himself in front of his friend.) No!
SHOSHANA: Melke. You are either with us or against us. The Jewish people
hang by a thread in the world right now. We cannot afford to –
MELKE: My own wife?
MORITZ: (Pleading?) Papa.
AMIR: Melke. My friend. I will go.
MELKE: Amir.
AMIR: It is the only way. There is nothing left for me here.

So what is the answer? Is Amir correct to hold fast to his values? Should
Melke sacrifice himself on the altar of Truth?
David Patterson, writing about the Jewish spiritual teacher Baal Shem Tov
in Greatest Jewish Stories, might have proffered the best answer I have ever seen
to this conundrum: “When neither revolt nor submission is the answer to the
turmoil of life, what remains is a mystical, metaphysical madness” (Patterson,
2001, p. 299).
 Mystical theater in action 221
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Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes.

Absurdist plays 2, 80, 85, 117–118, 120 Aristotle 50, 77

Abulafia, Abraham 13, 139 Artaud, Antonin 2, 48, 78, 124, 132, 144,
acceptance 5, 7, 10, 15, 23, 25, 31–32, 150, 156, 161, 188; Theatre and Its
35, 65, 71, 99, 107, 109, 122, 126–128, Double 78, 124
130, 141, 171, 198, 199, 201, 204, 205 Ashkenazi Jews 151
activism 4 As You Like It (Shakespeare) 64
actor 48, 52, 55–58, 60, 66, 68, 69, 71, Attar, Farid ad-Din 78, 82, 189, 212;
76–78, 82, 84–87, 93n1, 97, 116, 119, Conference of the Birds 65, 88, 183
121, 122, 132–143, 145, 146, 149, 150, audience 2, 16, 23, 32, 40, 41, 46–62,
154–159, 167, 168, 176, 179, 182–184, 68–70, 73–75, 77–79, 82, 89, 91,
187, 188; beyond table work 141–142; 98–107, 110, 113, 116, 117, 120, 121,
director Sheikh 135; masks 142–143; 125–127, 131–134, 139, 144–151,
meditation 139–140; mystical ideals 153–155, 159, 160–180, 186–190, 198,
141; in the rehearsal room 136; tales 201, 204, 206, 214, 216; entering the
they tell 136–139; toward the Divine theater space 186–188; smashing the
Nought 134–135 fourth wall 188; theater 98–100; as
Actuary Day 206–214 verb 188–189; as Ward of Spirit 160
ibn Adham, Ibrahim 26–27 Aurelius, Marcus 27, 129, 189, 196, 199,
Adoniac of Syrian cults 51 207
Aeschylus 50, 53
Age of Enlightenment 66–69, 70 Bank of America 4
Ahmadiyya sect 12 baqa 20–23, 30, 63, 79, 91, 133, 135, 141,
al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid 20, 21, 74, 124, 153, 181, 182, 196, 212
179, 205 Barba, Eugenio 83, 84, 87, 92, 101, 133,
al-Hujwiri (Persian mystic) 189 150, 190
alignment of energy 162–164, 184 Barish, Jonas 56, 57, 68, 69, 71; The
Almond, I. 15 Antitheatrical Prejudice 49
Almond, P. C. 20, 22 Barker, Howard 2, 83, 89–92, 155; The
The Ancient Science of Geomancy (Pennick) Bite of the Night 90, 91; Death,The One
165 91; The Road,The House,The Road 91;
Andronicus, Livius 54 13 Objects 91
antitheatrical prejudice 47–48, 49, 66, Barrault, Jean-Louis 144
68, 70 Barthes, Roland 189
The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Barish) 49 Bartleby the Scrivener (Melville) 129, 180
“apophatic” understanding 5, 7 Battle of Corinth 54
applied mysticism 5, 15 Battle of Poitiers 58
ibn Arabi, Muhyiddin 79, 125, 198 Battle of the Milvian Bridge 56
224 Index
Baudelaire, Charles 72 change 2–4, 16, 39, 53–54, 75, 84, 105,
Beckett, Samuel 2, 79, 82; Endgame 111, 113, 129, 138, 147, 148, 156, 181,
80–81; Happy Days 81; Waiting for 199, 203–205, 216, 219
Godot 80–81 de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard 12
Bedreddin, Sheikh 12 Charles I 66
Berry, Wendell 17, 24, 131 Chavez, Cesar 203
Bert, Norman 100, 101, 133 Chekhov, Mikhail 149
bewilderment 17, 19, 31–36, 42, 65, 79, Ch’ing-yuan Wei-hsin 17
91, 99, 107, 111, 122–124, 126–128, Chittick, William 143
130, 131, 141, 146, 148, 150, 153, 168, choreography 121, 141, 144, 150–154,
174, 175, 178, 180, 182, 183, 188, 166–169; dance 153, 154, 166–169,
207, 209, 211, 214; defined 23; Divine 175
23–24, 63 Christian era 1, 11, 12, 56–58
Bhagavad Gita 9, 39, 88, 189, 196, 205 Christianity 9, 11, 40, 47, 56–58, 62, 79,
al-Bistami, Abu Yazid (aka Bayazid) 26, 101, 151; and heresy 11–13; Merton
79, 110, 128 on 40; muscular 40; and mystical ideas
The Bite of the Night (Barker) 90, 91 10, 11, 86, 198; views on theater 48,
Bloy, Leon 69, 93n1 55–60, 66, 73, 89, 102, 120, 136, 151;
Boccaccio 59 see also religion
Bodhidharma (Buddhist monk) 24, 80, Christian mystics 7, 10, 22–24, 27, 29, 39,
124, 130, 189, 206 65, 86, 89, 120, 136
Bohm, David 161 Christian Scriptures 58, 60, 136, 209
Book of Genesis 86, 100, 123 Christof, Catharine 86, 134, 135, 169
books for mystical tales and ideas Chuang Tzu 19, 28–29, 31, 34, 35, 37, 39,
189–190 107, 128, 167, 177, 189, 198, 204, 208
Brand (Ibsen) 74 Cicero 216
Broadway theaters 53, 54, 60, 69, 82, 83, City of God (St. Augustine) 57
92, 98, 118, 132, 136, 164, 166 Civil Rights Act of 1964 3
Brockett, Oscar 57, 76, 98, 174; History of Civil Rights Movement 3, 4, 16
the Theatre 70 classical mysticism 2, 195
Brook, Peter 83, 87–88, 141–143, 180; Clinton, Bill 155
Tierno Bokar 92 Coldiron, Margaret: Trance and
Bruch, Debra 56, 66; The Journal of Transformation of the Actor 182
Religion and Theatre 55 color and costume design 109, 145, 170,
Bryant, William Cullen 198 171, 178–185
Buber, Martin 7, 27, 31, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, Comte, Auguste 69
90, 109, 116, 137, 168, 189, 204 Concise History of the Theatre (Hartnoll) 56
Bubonic Plague 1 Conference of the Birds (Attar) 65, 88, 183
Buddha 9, 80, 102, 128, 150, 170, 197, Confucius 177, 189, 209
201 Congar,Yves 12
Buddhism 8, 9, 10, 13, 17, 42n1, 80, 133, Constantine I (Roman Emperor) 40, 56
150, 154, 165, 170, 205 The Constant Prince (Grotowski) 85, 86
Buddhist breath meditation 139 costume design 109, 145, 170, 178–185;
Buddhist ideas of “nothingness” 75, 80, color 180–182; masks 182–184
106, 145, 154 Cromwell, Oliver 62, 66
Bush, George W. 101 Croyden, Margaret 86
Cult of Dionysius 51–52, 53
Carriere, P. C. 76, 77, 176 Cunningham, Merce 169
Carus, Titus Lucretius 169 Cymbeline (Shakespeare) 64
Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith 12 The Daily Times 86
Chamberlain, F. 149 dance 52–54, 66, 90, 100, 140, 153, 154,
Chan Buddhism 160 166–169, 175, 198, 215
 Index 225
Daniel, Lillian: When “Spiritual But Not ego-self 19, 63
Religious” Is Not Enough 100 Egyptian iconography 190n2
Dante 59, 205; Inferno 197 Ehn, Erik 83
dark, lighting design 172–173 Einstein, A. 33, 40, 111–112
“Dark Ages” 1, 11, 60, 92 Eliade, Mirce 125, 206, 213, 153
Dark Night of the Soul (St. John of the Eliot, T. S. 100, 123
Cross) 120, 170 Elizabeth I 66
Davis, Miles: Kinda Blue 160 Ellenwood, Matthew 83
Death,The One (Barker) 91 Elston, Ken 183
desire 11, 22, 24, 32, 35, 36, 47, 55, 66, 68, Endgame (Beckett) 80–81
71, 79, 81, 85, 87, 107, 109–111, 127, energy, alignment of 162–164
138, 144, 145, 161, 14, 175, 185, 188, Enlightenment thinking 6, 67
189, 196, 205, 207 Epictetus 27, 28, 189, 195
Devlin, Joseph 99 Epicurus 32
Dhu’l Nun 18; When the Waters Were epilogue 41–42
Changed 75, 114 equanimity 5, 25–28, 29, 30, 35, 79,
al-Din Suhrawardi, Shahab 12 87, 99, 115, 122, 126, 127, 131, 141,
Dionysian Mysteries 46, 53, 54 145, 171
Dionysian performances 2, 52 Ernst, Carl 135
director 71, 76, 83, 84, 87, 121, 132, 133, Esslin, Martin 79, 80
137, 138, 141, 143–158, 171, 177, 179, Etruscans 152
181, 183, 184, 188, 200; faith 155–156; Euripides 53
first entrance into the theater 156–158; European “Dark Ages” 1, 11, 60
improvisation 148–149; movement Everyman 59–60
149–151; ritual 151–155; staging Ewing, Eve 47–48
145–148
director Sheikh 135 Fadiman, James 26, 38, 79, 106, 116,
Divine 2, 5, 9, 11, 13–18, 21, 22, 25, 189, 209
28, 31, 33, 34, 36–41, 47, 51, 53, 54, faith, director 155–156
4, 65, 67, 70, 77, 79, 81, 85, 86, 88, fana 20–23, 30, 63, 79, 91, 133, 135, 141,
99–105, 109, 110, 122–124, 130, 131, 153, 181, 96, 212
138, 140, 141, 143, 145, 147, 160, 161, fatwa 12
164, 165, 168, 173, 174, 176, 181, 183, Fauci, Anthony S. 49
186, 195, 197, 207, 209, 210, 212, 217; Feng Shui 151
bewilderment 23–24, 63; rhythms 104 Fiedler, Leslie A. 138
Divine Nought 17, 18–19, 20, 31, 33, 34, 5000 Years of Theatre (Mitchley and
79, 85, 88, 91, 122, 128–129, 134–135, Spalding) 69
137, 141, 145, 146, 154, 163, 171, 178, Foucault, Michel 131, 178
181, 211, 213; playwright 129–130 Frager, Robert 26, 38, 79, 106, 116, 189,
drunken mysticism 21, 64, 74 209
Duck 195–206, 212, 216 Frankl, George 31, 32
Duffy, Carol Ann 59
Dumas, Alexandre 70 Gandhi, Mahatma 3, 16, 35, 39–40, 171,
Dylan, Bob 142 203, 215, 219–220
Ganjavi, Nizami 135
Each Moment is the Universe (Roshi) 147 gateway to the spirit 159–160
Eckhart, Meister 7, 18–19, 27, 38, Geomancy 151, 158, 161–165,
89–90, 119, 125, 160, 177, 196, 206; 170, 174
on Chuang Tzu’s tale 37; on God 22; Gesamtkunstwerk 174
God of time and place 34; learned G. I. Bill 82
ignorance 24; self-annihilation 80; on Gibson, Andrew 81
silence 30–31 Gilani, Abdul-Qadir 137
effect and then cause 111–112, 141 Gnosticism 67, 190n2
226 Index
God 7, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 18–22, 26, Heraclitus 53, 147
27–31, 33–40, 47, 50, 51, 56, 57, 59, 60, hermeticism 8, 190n2
62, 66, 74, 76, 77, 79–82, 85, 88, 89, 92, Hernani (Hugo) 70
100, 102, 103, 105, 107–111, 115, 119, Heshel, Abraham Joshua 198
121, 125, 129, 130, 143, 147, 150, 151, Heshel of Apt 27
153, 161, 168, 170, 171, 174, 176, 177, Hick, John 13
179, 184, 212, 215, 217–220; Eckhart Hindu breath meditation 139
on 22; in religion 9; and silence 30–31; historical mysticism 2, 86, 114
see also religion History of the Theatre (Brockett) 56, 70
Godspell 83 Howes, Hetta Elizabeth 60
Gogol, Nikolai: The Government Hugo,Victor: Hernani 70
Inspector 149 Hui Neng 17, 29, 150, 160, 209
good and evil 106–109, 111, 114, 127, human religion 2, 5, 10, 13–14, 16, 49,
128, 171, 199 73, 77, 88, 89, 92, 100, 102, 120, 126,
The Government Inspector (Gogol) 149 127, 139, 140, 176
Greatest Jewish Stories (Patterson) 190, 220 humility 5, 28–29, 30, 35, 64, 79, 87, 122,
Greek magical tradition 190n2 127, 130, 141, 166, 209
Greek Phrygian Cabeirian Mysteries 51 Huxley, Aldous 20, 23, 39, 119, 128,
Greene, Marjorie Taylor 111 189, 204
Greene, Robert 62
Gregory IX, Pope 11 Ibn Abi-Khair, Abu Said 32
Grotowski, Jerzy 2, 83, 84–88, 133, Ibsen, Henrik 73, 98, 114; Brand 74; Peer
134–135, 137, 139, 149, 150, 169; Gynt 74
The Constant Prince 85; Towards a Poor Iceberg Theory 144
Theatre 87 improvisation and director 148–149
Groves, Peter Anthony 85, 89, 90, 91, 92 Industrial Revolution 6, 70
Guide for the Perplexed (Maimonides) 23 Inferno (Dante) 197
Gurdjieff, George Ivanovich 135, 140, International Centre for Theatre
149, 169 Research 87
Guston, Phillip 106 inward-looking gaze 10
Isaac of Acre 6
Hadaegh, Bahee 63–64, 79, 81–82, 125 Isis (Egyptian God) 51
Hadith 33, 39, 63, 168 Islam 11, 12, 47, 115, 150, 151, 180,
Hair 83 198, 218, 219; and heresy 12; see also
Hales, Sally 89 religion
Hall, Edith 89 Islamic mystics 7, 108
al-Hallaj, Mansur 12, 15, 20, 82, 164
Hamadani, Ayn al-Quzat 12 Jackson, Phil 8
Hamlet (Shakespeare) 63, 64 Jacobs, Louis 13
Hanut, Eryk 213 Jacobs-Jenkins, Brandon 60
Happy Days (Beckett) 81 James, William 10, 147; Varieties of
al-Haqqani, Nazim 20, 31, 33, 119, 204 Religious Experience 10
Harry Potter 111 James I 66
Hartnoll, Phyllis 62; Concise History of the Jesus Christ 12, 28, 40, 87, 102, 128, 170
Theatre 56 Jesus Christ Superstar 83
Harvey, Andrew 29, 128, 131, 172, 180, Jewish Kabbalists 11, 34, 63, 120
207, 213 Jewish mysticism 8, 13, 74, 136,
Hasidic tales 33, 90, 106, 120 171, 181
Havel,Vaclav 97 Jingsheng, Wei 220
Hawking, Stephen 134 Johnson, Ben 62
Heine, Steven 30, 142, 154 Jones, W. T. 109, 173
Hemingway, Ernest 144 The Journal of Religion and Theatre
Henry VI, Part I (Shakespeare) 60 (Bruch) 55
 Index 227
Judaism 12, 47, 115, 133, 150, 218; and Maha Vishnu 76
heretical ideas 13 Maimonides, Moses 23, 25: Guide for the
Juken, Setcho 118 Perplexed 23
Julian of Norwich 16, 23, 189 Malekin, Peter 9, 178: Sacred Theatre 178
Jung, Carl 111, 127, 147, 172, 208, 209 Mallarmé, Stéphane 72
Mandela, Nelson 29, 123, 219–220
Kabbalah Center 8 Maritain, Jacques 34
Kabbalistic tracts 8, 120 Marshall, Lorna 141, 143: 20th Century
Kashani, Sarmad 12 Actor Training 143
Katsouri, Antigone 121, 148, 183 masks: actor 142–143; costume design
Kemble, John Philip 69 182–184
Khaja, Anna 134, 179 Massignon, Louis 81
Khan, Hazrat Inayat 109 Maxentius 56
Khan, Nusrat Ali Fateh 160 McCart, Gregory 182–183
Khomeini, Ayatollah 12 Measure for Measure (Shakespeare)
Kinda Blue (Davis) 160 63, 64, 65
King, Martin Luther, Jr. 3, 16, 27, 37, 156, medieval Christian Europe 58–60
197, 220 meditation and actor 139–140
King Lear (Shakespeare) 64 Melville, Herman 129, 180; Bartleby the
Scrivener 129, 180
Ladinsky, Daniel 63 Mencius (Chinese philosopher) 110, 189
language 2, 8, 14, 22, 49, 72, 79, 85, 86, Merton, Thomas 12, 14, 40, 115, 155,
88, 90, 93n2, 101, 102, 120, 126, 134, 190, 205, 215, 216; Peace in the Post
139, 142, 148, 150, 151, 153, 155, 162, Christian Era 12
167–169, 174, 178, 179, 185, 188, 204, microcosm 159, 162, 164–166, 187, 188
205; playwright 122–125; sound of Migne, Jacques Paul 71
176–177 Mirren, Helen 88
Lao Tzu 88, 99, 148, 178, 182, 189, 207; Mitchley, Jack 69, 82: 5000 Years of
Tao Te Ching 179, 198 Theatre 69
The Laws (Plato) 49 Monty Python 169
Lecouvreur, Adrienne 68 movement 2, 3, 4, 12, 16, 33, 51, 54, 59,
Lewinsky, Monica 155 72, 73, 81, 82, 84–86, 121, 131, 134,
Lewis, John 3 136, 138, 140–145, 152–156, 158,
LGBTQ rights movement 3, 4 162, 165–170, 175, 183, 186; director
liberation theology 11, 74 149–151
light and lighting design 92, 109, 121, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 67, 175
135, 145, 148, 158, 160, 170–172, 178, MuhyiddinIbnArabi 79, 125, 198
179, 180, 181, 185; dark 172–173 Mumon Ekai 108, 112
Lings, Martin 61, 62, 64–65; Shakespeare’s Mumonkan (Chinese Zen master)
Window into the Soul: the Mystical 118, 123
Wisdom in Shakespeare’s Characters mundane acts, as mystical prayer 38–40
62, 121 Murray, John Courtney 12
Littlewood, Joan 155 al-Murta’ish, Abu Muhammad 24
London Vegetarian Society 3 “muscular Christianity” 40
Luria, Isaac 34 music and sound design 121, 174–176
Luther, Martin 27, 156 Mysteries of Isis and Osiris 51
Mystery of Light 50
Macbeth (Shakespeare) 64 mystery plays 59, 72, 92, 99, 186
McGraw, J. 7, 32, 42 mystical ideals 5, 19, 26, 29, 30, 64, 73, 74,
Madani, Sufi Sheikh Ziauddin 199 80, 86, 90, 97, 113, 118, 127, 128, 130,
Madredeus (Portuguese band) 160 141, 145, 154, 159, 161, 171, 180, 195,
Maeterlinck, Maurice 76 198, 215, 219
Mahabharata 88, 102 mystical ideas, books for 189–190
228 Index
mystical inlay 41, 62, 67, 85, 86, 91, 117, novel story 105–106
120–122, 124, 136, 144, 146, 164, 179, nubuwat al-tashri 21
180, 195, 217, 218
mystical tales 114, 136, 157–158, 172, “objective reality” 25, 36, 105, 113, 131,
187; books for 189–190 147, 156, 158
mystical theater 2, 51, 73, 74, 80, 84, 86, Occult Diary (Strindberg) 75
89, 92, 99, 100, 102–104, 106, 107, Occupy Wall Street 3–4
110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 118, 120, 122, Omar Kayyam 197
123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 132, 133, 134, omphalos 136, 140, 145, 152, 154, 157,
135, 136, 138, 140, 141, 144, 145, 146, 158, 160, 163, 168, 170, 186, 187,
148, 149, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 209–211, 215
163, 168, 169, 170, 172–174, 176, 177, O’Neill, Eugene 4, 71, 77, 78
179, 186, 188, 189, 195–220 Oppenheimer, George 86
mystical theater in action 195–220; Origen of Alexandria 39
Actuary Day 206–214; Duck 195–206; Ortega y Gasset, Jose 24, 131
Oud Player on the Tel 214–220 Orwell, George 8, 123
mystical tinting 104–120, 195, 214; Osiris (Egyptian God) 51
beyond good and evil 106–109; Oud Player on the Tel 214–220
desire 109–111; effect and then cause outward-facing mysticism 10
111–112; real reality 112–113; time
119–120; using myth to create myth Panchadashi 20
113–118 Parks, Rosa 3
mysticism: correct representation of Patanjali 84
10–11; and heretical ideas 11–13; Patterson, David 19, 220: Greatest Jewish
history in theater 46–92; human Stories 190, 220
religion 13–14; overview 5–7; and Paul, Rand 49
religion 9–10; and society 14–15; Peace in the Post Christian Era (Merton) 12
theater 40–41; in theater 97–190; Peanuts comic book 145
theater as 102–103; in today’s world Peer Gynt (Ibsen) 74
16; wrong representation of 7–9 Peloponnesian War 123
mysticism of the mundane 5, 27, 36–38, Pendzik, Susana 102, 161, 186
103, 122, 141, 181 Pennick, Nigel 162, 165, 166: The Ancient
mystics 5–6, 7, 10–12, 14–17, 20, 22, 24, Science of Geomancy 165
27, 30, 33, 65, 72, 75, 86, 100, 106, 107, Perry, Whitall Nicholson 6, 10, 17, 38, 62,
108, 112, 113, 119, 120, 121, 126, 136, 95, 109, 118, 147, 152, 176, 187, 189;
137, 163, 164, 171, 197, 207; and self- A Treasury of Traditional
awareness 24 Wisdom 62
Mystics in the Modern Theatre (Smith) 75 Persian Mithraic Mysteries 51
myth: playwright 125–128; using myth to Peterson, Jordan 127
create 113–118 Petrarch 59
Petry, Ray C. 22
nabi rasul 21 Pickering, Judith 212
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein 16, 17, 153, 155, Pinter, Harold 79, 83
158, 164, 217 Plato 22, 47–49, 54, 68, 77; The Laws 49;
Neoplatonic Athenian Academy 11 The Republic 49
neoplatonism 10, 11 Plato’s Cave 127, 170, 172
Neuber, Caroline 67–68 Plautus 55
The Neuroscience of Religious Experience 33 playing space 110, 121, 159, 161–162,
Nietzsche, Friedrich 7, 25, 52, 72, 108, 165, 187
167, 173, 199, 200, 210 playwright 4, 46, 55, 60–62, 65, 66, 70,
Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism 165 73–76, 78–80, 82, 83, 85, 92, 97, 100,
Northbrooke, John 66: Treatise Against 101, 105, 109, 110, 118, 121–132, 144,
Dicing, Dancing, Plays, and Interludes 66 145, 150, 157, 184, 195, 211; Divine
 Index 229
Nought 129–130; language 122–125; Rumi (Sufi Saint) 18, 23, 35, 36, 38, 40,
myth 125–128; the wise fool 130–132 42, 81, 82, 104, 105, 107, 110, 123, 124,
Plotinus 17, 19, 77, 88, 190 126, 130, 132, 140, 143, 146, 171, 180,
Pollock, Jackson 106 190, 205, 219
Popper, Karl 15 Rushdie, Salman 12; Satanic Verses 12
Prana 76, 93n2, 134, 140, 156 Russian Symbolism: influence 73–77; and
Prophet Muhammad 12, 18, 33, 39, theater 72–73
40, 63, 86, 102, 125, 160, 168,
170–171, 219 Sachs, Hannah 99
Prosperity Gospel 107 Sacred Theatre (Malekin) 178
Prousalis, T. 103 as-Sadiq, Jafar 21, 22
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite Sagan, Carl 6
131, 207 Saint Gregory of Nyssa 172
Saints and Madmen (Shorto) 29
Qur’an 9, 86, 87, 181, 190n1, 209, samadhi 24, 139, 177, 185
218, 219 Sand, George 70
Qur’anic tale 108, 112 Sarada Dev 184
Satanic Verses (Rushdie) 12
Rabbi Barukh of Mezbizh 7 Schechner, Richard 87, 148
Rabbi Elimelekh of Lyzhansk 137 Schiller, Friedrich 70
Rabbi Moshe of Kobryn 168 Schopenhauer, Arthur 14, 72
Rabbi Zev Wolf of Zbarazh 109, 116 science 6, 8, 32–34, 49, 69, 103, 121, 130,
Rabi’a (Sufi female Saint) 63, 106, 123 151, 152, 161, 165, 172, 167
Ratzinger, Joseph 11 Scriabin, Alexander 72
Reagan, Ronald 71 Sekida, Katsuki 22, 35, 80, 106, 117,
“realism” 72, 105, 113 123–124, 154, 211
reality, and mysticism 16–18 self 5, 10, 16, 19–21, 23, 24, 26–30, 32,
real reality 25, 112–113 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 63, 74, 79, 80, 81, 86,
rehearsal room 76, 133, 135, 136, 139, 88, 108, 118, 119, 128, 132, 133, 134,
140, 141, 142, 143, 149, 160, 163 135, 136, 140, 142, 158, 165, 175, 178,
religion: God in 9; human 2, 5–42, 49, 73, 181, 183, 196, 198, 200
77, 88, 89, 92, 100, 102, 120, 126, 127, self-annihilation 79–81, 153
139, 140, 176; and mysticism 9–10; Seneca 29, 55
theater as 100–101 Sephardic Jews 151
The Republic (Plato) 49 set design 158–166; alignment of energy
ritual: choreography 153; director 162–164; gateway to the spirit 159–
151–155; theater as 101–102 160; Geomancy 161–162; microcosm
The Road,The House,The Road 164–166; playing space 161–162
(Barker) 91 Shabestari, Mahmoud 118
Road to Damascus II (Strindberg) 74 Shah, Idries 23, 32, 75, 78, 114,
Robson, David 172 115, 135, 137, 138, 179, 186,
Roman Catholic Church 60 190, 198, 199, 203
Roman theater 54–56 Shakespeare, William 46, 55, 60, 61–67,
Romanticism 70–73 76, 121, 123; As You Like It 64;
Roosevelt, Franklin D. 102 Cymbeline 64; Hamlet 63, 64; Henry
Rosenheim, Richard 50, 51, 71, 77, 121 VI, Part I 60; King Lear 64; Macbeth 64;
Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer 73, 103: Measure for Measure 63–65; The Tempest
Theatre as Church:The Vision of the 61, 64
Mystical Anarchists 73 Shakespeare’s Window into the Soul: the
Roshi, Katagiri 147: Each Moment is the Mystical Wisdom in Shakespeare’s
Universe 147 Characters (Lings) 62, 121
Roshi, Kosho Uchiyama 37 Shaw, George Bernard 109
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 68 Shirazi, Sheikh Saadi 23
230 Index
Shorto, Russell 29, 130: Saints and Sufi tales 75, 106, 109, 115, 217, 218
Madmen 29 Sufi way of teaching 104–105
silence 12, 28, 30–31, 79, 81, 125, 139, al-Suhrawardi, Abu Hafs 123, 134–135
141, 142, 157, 158, 160, 167, 170, 172, Surah al-Khaf 108
173, 175, 196, 202, 204, 208; sound Suso, Henry 22
design 177–178 Sutra of Hui Neng 150, 189
Skin of Our Teeth (Wilder) 120 Suzuki, Daisetsu Teitaro 25, 28
smashing the fourth wall 188
smell design 184–185 table work: actor 141–142; beyond
Smith, Huston 41 141–142
Smith, Winifred 75, 77–78; Mystics in the Tabrizi, Shams-i 38, 40, 110, 132, 171,
Modern Theatre 75 190, 196, 197, 205
Sobrino, Jon 12 Tai Chi 140
society and mysticism 14–15 Take My Wife, Please (Youngman) 179
Socrates 25, 42, 47, 54, 68, 210 tales 6, 17, 26, 33, 37, 52, 75, 90, 106, 108,
Soloviova,Vera 76 112, 114–117, 120, 126, 136–139, 141,
Sontag, F. 109, 173 157, 159, 168, 172, 187, 212, 215, 217,
Sophocles 53, 166 218
Soros, George 111 Taoist Chuang Tzu 19, 28, 29, 31, 34, 35,
sound design 119, 121, 170, 173–178; 37, 39, 107, 128, 167, 177, 198, 204,
music 174–176; silence 177–178; 208
sound of language 176–177 The Tao of Physics 33
sound of language 176–177; sound design Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu) 80, 179, 189, 198
176–177 Tatian of Adiabene 57
Spalding, Peter 69, 82: 5000 Years of The Tempest (Shakespeare) 61, 64
Theatre 69 theater: audience 98–100; beginning
Spinoza, Baruch 13, 109, 173 of 49–50; director 156–158; fear and
The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case suppression of 47–48; first entrance
for the Existence of the Soul 33 into 156–158; golden age of 98; and
Spiritual stories 136 mid-century modernism 77–82;
The Spiritual Universe: How Quantum mystery 50–51; as mysticism 102–103;
Physics Proves the Existence of the Soul 33 mysticism in 97–190; as religion
Sri Mahana Maharshi 9 100–101; as ritual 101–102; Roman
Sri Ramakrishna 184, 187 54–56; today 97–98
St. Ambrose 57 theater history 46; beginning of theater
St. Augustine 57–58, 147, 156; City of 49–50; change 53–54; and Christian
God 57 era 56–58; medieval Christian Europe
St. Bessarion 20 58–60; modern era 69–72; post-World
St. Gregory Nazianzen 109 War II 82–83; Roman theater 54–56;
St. John of Chrysostom 57 see also theater
St. John of the Cross 65: Dark Night of the theater mysticism 40–41
Soul 120, 170 Theatre and Its Double (Artaud) 78, 124
St. Macarius of Egypt 20 Theatre as Church:The Vision of the Mystical
Stace, Walter 18 Anarchists (Rosenthal) 73
staging, director 145–148 Theatre of the Absurd 78–82, 125
Stanislavsky, Konstantin 2, 73, 76–77, 84, theatrical production 4, 16, 31, 50, 52, 54,
149, 150, 176 57, 59, 68, 104, 105, 118, 119, 121, 122,
Steiner, Rudolf 176 126, 155, 189, 195
Strindberg, August 73–77; Occult Diary 13 Objects (Barker) 91
75; Road to Damascus II 74 Thucydides 123
Sufi mystical poetry 180 Tierno Bokar (Brook) 92
Sufi narrative arc 105 time 1–4, 9, 10, 16–19, 24, 26, 29, 30,
Sufis 7, 11, 62–64, 79, 111, 114, 135, 136, 32–34, 47–51, 54–57, 61, 69, 70–76,
142, 171, 179, 189, 209, 217, 218; on 81, 89, 90, 97–103, 108, 111–113, 116,
Hadith 64 119–120, 122, 123, 127, 134, 139, 141,
 Index 231
143, 145–148, 153, 157–168, 171–173, Western tradition 190n2
178, 186, 188, 189, 196, 197, 201, 204, When “Spiritual But Not Religious” Is Not
206, 211–213, 220 Enough (Daniel) 100
Tolstoy, Leo 199 When the Waters Were Changed (Dhu’l
Torah 9, 38, 39, 86, 150 Nun) 75, 114, 118
Tov, Baal Shem 33, 36, 220 Whistler, Daniel 74
Towards a Poor Theatre (Grotowski) 87 Wilder, Thornton: Skin of
Trance and Transformation of the Actor Our Teeth 120
(Coldiron) 182 Williams, David: 20th Century Actor
transcendence 2, 32–36, 162 Training 143
A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom (Perry) 62 wisdom 5, 22, 23, 24–25, 30, 35, 40, 51,
Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing, Plays, and 62, 79, 114, 120, 121, 124, 126, 128,
Interludes (Northbrooke) 66 130, 131, 141, 145, 151, 153, 156, 173,
Treatise on the Transcendence of Cognition 30 178, 180, 211, 212
Trump, Donald 8, 48, 101, 184 the wise fool 126, 128, 130–132, 159
tsimtsum 34 Witherspoon, John 68
al-Tustari, Sahl 147 Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann 67, 70
20th Century Actor Training (Marshall and World War II 79, 216, 217
Williams) 143 Wright, D. S. 30, 154
Two Zen Classics (Sekida) 80, 190 Wright Brothers 128
Wurmbrand, Richard 156, 190, 220
Universal Self 19, 27
uselessness 5, 34–36, 114, 141 Yajnavalkya 176
Yarrow, Ralph 9, 88, 164, 178, 182
Varieties of Religious Experience (James) 10 Yechiel Michel of Zlotchov 31
Velthen, Johannes 66 Yitzhak Meir of Ger 39
Verlaine, Paul 72 Yoshinori, T. 32
Virgil 197, 205 Youngman, Henny: Take My Wife, Please
Voltaire 24, 68, 124 179

Wagner, Richard 72, 174 Zen 21–22, 33, 35, 91, 103, 106, 107, 114,
Waiting for Godot (Beckett) 80–81 116–118, 120, 123, 127, 135, 139, 142,
Walsch, Neale Donald 198 143, 147, 154, 177, 211
Watts, Alan 17 Zen Buddhism 36, 79, 80, 136, 143, 147,
Weil, Simone 30–31, 34, 112, 122–123, 154, 179, 185
125, 138, 146, 148, 169, 172, 175, 177, Zen koans 103, 106, 116, 118,
190, 200–201, 215, 219 120, 142