& Friends - Anthroposophical Society in America

Inner Impressions of The Portal of Initiation:From Laura, a musician—with the privilege of being involvedyet viewing it as audience from the back of the auditorium.Highly professional quality of performance, very uplifting andinspiring; but morethan that.Deep soul stirring.Utmost seriousness ofevery moment andsmallest details of life.Dissolving of usual“importances.”Being touched inspiritual essence.Deep reverence forSpirit. Being drawn forward to spiritual goals of mankind;dropping away so much of the trivialities of ordinary life.And an experience of a high canopy of spirit presence enveloping bothstage presentation and audience as one.Laura Langford-SchnurPreparing The Portal of InitiationIt was quite a moment, the day in mid-July when some fifteenof us met in the side room of the Auditorium in Spring Valley,NY, ready to work together on the 99-year-old play The Portal ofInitiation. I had always found these plays hard to relate to whenread, even aloud: now we were on a journey of discovery thatwas to last five weeks.Gradually the socialconnections formed, weate meals together, met atthe Co-op, and found thedelicious swimming-pool.All the while the workwent on. I was to playthe part of Luna, the soulforce connected to thewill. I learnt that the textgiven to these forces teaches the voice by its very structurehow to deliver the lines: the delivery develops with every practice.In addition I was working with ‘my own’ eurythmist at leastevery other day. This laid a fundamental structure, and thenthe task was to find freedom for the movement of the thoughtwithin that structure, to let it live. It was both artificial, in thatit was pre-formed by being written down, and yet a living beingwhen it was spoken aloud and was moved by a eurythmist.It happened that we actors speaking the three soul forceswere all from the same speech training at Artemis in Sussex,UK, and this provided a sheath for our work together: methodsalready laid down for us, and a certain style that bound ustogether. During the day, we would all try to watch scenes wewere not in so as to get a sense of the whole play—so that itsmeaning gradually could speak to us. It was indeed an educationin anthroposophy.Vanessa UnderwoodPhotos courtesy of Maria Ver Eecke, Gino Ver Eecke, Barbara Renold, Hsin-Shih Lai.Fall-Winter 200945