Principle 1st. That the Poetic Genius is
the true Man, and that the body or outward form of Man is derived from
the Poetic Genius. Likewise that the forms of all things are derived from
their Genius, which by the Ancients was call’d an Angel & Spirit &
Demon.
–William
Blake 1788
Poetry is the language
of mystics. Our name for the theatre company expresses the hope that we
desire to transcend, through performance the mundane and trivial minutiae
of daily
living and arrive at the Poetic Genius that is our source.
The transcendent event is that one glimmering moment when a person is forced
out himself and briefly is connected with that which is larger than himself.
Our search for theatre
has always been for performance that occasions a transcendent event. Even
though live performance contains the capacity for such an event, the frequency
of such an event occurring is rare. When is does happen the recollection
of the event is life-long.
The most gratifying response
to our production of Murder in the Cathedral came from a Hunter
College student, when he said, “When intermission came,
no one in the audience moved. I usually cannot sit still for a minute but
when the lights came up, I did not dare get out of my seat because I was
too excited."
The Word contained in
poetry possesses power of image, feeling, and action. Our belief is that
verse drama offers an opportunity to create transcendent event because
of its capacity to
plumb the depths of human experience.
The dramatist, Maxwell Anderson (Winterset,
High Tor) expressed the necessity for verse drama, “To me it is inescapable
that prose is the language of information and poetry the
language of emotion. Prose can be stretched to carry
emotion, but under the strain of an emotion the ordinary prose of our stage
breaks down into inarticulateness, just as it does in life.
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"Hence the cult of understatement, hence the
realistic drama in which the climax is reached in an
eloquent gesture or a moment of meaningful silence.
“The great poetry of Greece,
of Italy, and of England is nearly all as mystic in concept and as prophetic
in tone as the Old Testament itself. Prophetic with the eye on the distant
horizon...for what poets are always asking for and projecting
is man as he must and will be, man a step above and beyond his present,
man as he may be glimpsed on some horizon of dream, a little nearer what
he himself wishes to become.”
Anderson speaks for the
poet/dramatist, all of which we affirm. Theatre, however, is larger
than just the word on the page.
We approach the poetry of drama
not only through writing but through acting, powerful visual staging, dance
and music. Our performance is not literal,
suggesting life as it is. We manipulate the world that
we perceive to bring about a new creation.
We use the tools of improvisation,
physicalizing symbols, sound, the voice to exegete (call out) the meaning
of the poetry. The other production elements, design, choreography, music,
all serve
the Word contained in the poetry by making the Word a
visual and aural experience.
Verse, by using rhythm,
imagery, lyricism, provides us the opportunity to be expansive in our approach.
This is how we approach the transcendent, through expansion. Our
performances in turn will plunge the audience into the power of the Word
contained in image and feeling, and action, or as Blake said, “Angel &
Spirit & Demon.”
We recognize the limitation
of realism and
having moved beyond we are as Emily Dickinson said, “I
dwell in possibility, a fairer land than
prose.”
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