Scenery and Setting / Beginning

The backdrop is tall wide panels set like a symmetrical screen, mountain peaks,
looks heaved up from volcanic layers, a silver circle in the center with great licks of yellow streams, solar radiances coming out of clefts, vision mountainscape, Tantric focus-center out of which everything balances, unbalances, and balances again. A giant rug on the ground, except when played on grass. Torches circling the staging area and Coleman lanterns in front for greater light. A sense of openness, cave-throat space at a pinnacle in psychic geology. We tread this space, pound it and caress and finally all meditate together in it, players and audience, so that it is communal and open.

All props are present, arranged symmetrically before the mountainpeaks, a plat-
form in the center back against the mountain with a mandala painted on it and a
pink-lipped conch shell at its center. Flanking the platform like black wings are
coffins which don’t appear as coffins until the funeral later in the play. Great painted cloths which are used as visionary mandalas to cover and reveal entrances of characters are folded in accordion pleats and placed lengthwise at the foot and back of the plat-form. The area is semicircular, torches surrounding the circle from the front, Egyptian-eyed faces staring out from Matter, faces in the back mountain peak, wavy yellow horizontal stripes running out to the edges, splashing up and out, curling clear white-silver purple-blue yellow-red arctic sunlight glowing colors behind the apocalyptic energy that spins out before it. During the performance, five sun-discs are raised on poles behind the peaks and fastened there, so that at the end of the opera five suns, each one a different color scheme, a central Tantric gold sun at the highest center peak, are raised blazing in the air above the mountains.

The ritual area is dark. The Orchestra at the side is quiet. The actors come out and sit in a circle at the center of the stage. There is a meditation centering which lasts a few minutes, then the mantra of Padma Sambhava, Indian saint who brought Buddhism to Tibet, chanted three times. It goes: OM AH HUM—VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM! and it means roughly “OM Primal Sound of Wisdom, Achieved Realization, NOW—Thunderbolt-Diamond of Quick Insight Teacher in-side Us, Lotus Perfection Consciousness, HUM!” Everyone then chants a single tone, the Orchestra joins in, all the actors, except the Chorus and the Sun-Dancer, bow and leave the circle, going to positions at the back of the stage. The Sun-Dancer lights a torch, stands up, faces the audience.

SUN-DANCER:
THIS AGE BRINGS US FACE TO FACE WITH THE MIRACU LOUS!
              Lightningbolts jutting through the air! OOOOOOOOOOO
                       Frozen golden eagle of America!
     Some are born with Heads on FIRE to ignite the Light of the air!
     Some are horn with Heads cased in IRON to clank Heads against
          the Spirit of Daylight as Messengers of Light
                             GO FORTH BY DAY!

(He lights the standing stage perimeter torches with his torch.)

CHORUS VOICES: Giant singing in Waves! Ancient riddle rising! America Sphinx re-
flected in floods of Sky!

CHORUS, in unison: THIS IS THE DOOR OF DEATH!
                         This is the Door of BIRTH!
                                THIS Earth!

The Chorus makes an archway, the Sun-Dancer comes through.

SUN-DANCER: O we flow, we flow!
Between deep Earth and endless Space we create this Planet of our Mind heartbeat
       blood-screen tidal wave—crackling, rushing, changing!
               Old Worlds die! Who will cling to the wreckage!
                       New Worlds flash around us each instant!
Everywhere the Sun is rising! One Mind Radiant!
O Face to Face with the Spirit of Enlightenment
AWAKE! AWAKE! LIGHT FLOWS UP THROUGH OUR SPINES!

The Chorus is moving fluidly, circling the Sun-Dancer.

SHAMAN, as a voice from the Orchestra: Dance of the Molecules!
             O Cave of Enlightenment, open, ARISE!
             O Spark of Consciousness, ignite, ARISE!
             O Mind of Man, rise to the divine size of this Planet!

The Chorus is in a circle around the Sun-Dancer, they breathe three times together, facing inward, then kneel and turn outward drifting cornmeal from little bags in petal-arcs making cornmeal mandalas, and as each one makes an arc he also chants improvised prayer-images to the Earth: “Earth of Rivers,” “Reptile-Green Planet,” “Desert Sand Sunset,” going around the circle and overlapping phrases, coming together with chanting around the Sun-Dancer, building the Aum tone, building and building.

SUN-DANCER, bursting suddenly from the center: But THERE’S A WAR IN THIS WORLD!

The Chorus freezes. The Women dance between the Men as planet-waves.

WOMEN: While the World spins serenely...

MEN: WAR!

WOMEN: On this Planet...

MEN: HEAD!

WOMEN: Under storms of our atmosphere, while the World spins serenely...

A Man runs forward, everyone else crawls together on the ground, buzzing low, forming a Serpent which finally roars and thrashes, primordial, then at the end bursts apart.

MAN: Swift interstellar sperm swimmer, expanding green SERPENT of Universes!

The People-Viper thrashes, raising its snake-head (a boy held by the waist, leaping, facing the audience) into the air.

SUN-DANCER, zigzagging alongside, shouting: Roaring up from streets
pig-python gods rear bloody heads out of clouds—

The Serpent breaks, the rib-people fall, silence.

SUN DANCER: Peaceful and Wrathful Visions fill the air! O there’s a War in this World…

He stands still, everyone sprawled around him; he moves off. A Girl gets up. Haunting flute music.

next page

back to top of page