Dear friends of the Goethenaum Stage
Rudolf Steiner's Mystery Dramas are a gesamtkunstwerk and must be experienced on stage. As artistic reflections on the spiritual situation of our time, they are more topical than ever for the individual destiny. Unfortunately, the Goetheanum Stage is now restricted to trying to convey something of the message of these dramas through film and audio recordings. Instead of welcoming hundreds of guests to the Goetheanum’s Main Auditorium, we are prevented by the Coronavirus situation from performing before a live audience and from meeting you in person. Culture is seen as a leisure activity rather than as the booster of the mental and spiritual immune system that it is.
We have been able to continue our work on the Goetheanum Stage, we rehearsed and hoped until the last minute to perform the Dramas before a small audience in an unconventional format. But then that hope vanished, too: all bookings had to be cancelled and those who had planned to attend turned away.
We have nonetheless used the time well, on the one hand to deepen our work and on the other to try and capture some of this work in a documentary that can be presented digitally. From 14 to 18 December, filmmaker Bernard Bonnamour accompanied ensemble members as they worked on various scenes. Included in the documentary are also introductions to the scenes and conversations between ensemble members about their experience with this work and its relation to current challenges. The vignettes and impressions from the Dramas are loosely arranged and assembled. They do not constitute a documentation of the production but try to capture something of the relationships among the protagonists and of the way individual performers approach the Dramas.
The lectures that would have been given as part of the performance at Christmas can also be accessed online. You can hear two lectures by Peter Selg, one on the original background of the Mystery Dramas in connection with the Anthroposophical Society and a second one on the working of evil in the Dramas and in relation to our time. Wolfgang Held, in his lecture, speaks on the present constellation of Jupiter and Saturn as a ‘call for the cosmic I’.
We would like to invite you to take part in the work of the Goetheanum Stage and to support this artistic endeavour. Maybe, as you view the film at home, you will be inspired to study the Mystery Dramas anew.
Gioia Falk, Christian Peter, Nils Frischknecht und Stefan Hasler