Reflections on “Reflections on Playing Maria”

by Travis Henry

From Chanticleer December 2014

To find ourselves, we must unfold that power first that penetrates into our inmost being. The word of wisdom says in truth: Evolve yourself, in order to behold yourself.

- Rudolf Steiner, The Portal of Initiation, Scene Eight, spoken by “Maria”

What did you need to do in order to prepare to play the role of Maria in the Mystery Dramas?

Out of this question asked of actress Laurie Portocarrero by the Berkshire-Taconic Branch, arose the presentation that took place on November 22, 2014.

The following double question became, for her, the only place from which to begin: Who and what is Maria? And who is Laurie Portocarrero?

Many of us have witnessed her skillfully portraying a role on stage, or have experienced her poised, smiling presence as a colleague or passing acquaintance. Yet on this evening, up on Windy Hill, we got to hear not only the behind-the-scenes story of what it was like for her to play Maria in the Mystery Dramas, we also glimpsed the biography of Laurie herself. What an honor. Afterwards, someone in the audience observed how nice it is to hear the biographies of those in our midst...before they die! Otherwise we pass like ships in the night.

The glimpses of her life ranged from her childhood in the sunny soul warmth of Latin America... to her beginning as a Waldorf student in Washington, DC. ...to the biographical synchronicities which needed to happen for her to become the actor and human being she is today...to her vocational evolution from “not a Maria” (in the words of one-time mentor and speech teacher, Christy Barnes) into quite a fine portrayal and embodiment of Maria.

Having performed one Mystery Drama each year for the past four years, this past summer she and the rest of Barbara Reynolds’ cast performed all four plays at the significant international conference held in Spring Valley, New York in August. Laurie shared that for the main characters, each play contains six times as many lines to memorize as an ordinary play. That means last summer, she and her fellow actors performed the equivalent of 24 “ordinary” plays in the span of a couple weeks. Twice. Once for a public full-dress rehearsal (which I was lucky to attend along with a van-load of friends), and then the real deal. A beautiful and heroic accomplishment.

Following the summer performance, she and Glen Williamson have been touring anthroposophic communities throughout the United States and Canada, performing excerpts from the scenes with Maria and Johannes. Laurie has served as Maria in the Mystery Dramas for six years. Besides perhaps a few actors in German-speaking countries, how many individuals have so immersed themselves in this role, for such a span of life?

Laurie frankly shared some of the challenges of this performance. Whereas in the previous four productions, she gladly made herself available to coach and advise her fellow cast, composed mostly of amateur volunteers, this year she felt as if she were pregnant with quadruplets and was impelled to pare down everything in life to the barest essentials.

Maria in her medieval incarnation as a priest, between the adversary powers, is advised by the spirit of her teacher Benedictus, in the 2014 performance of The Trial of the Soul, Rudolf Steiner’s second mystery drama [Photo: Threefold Educational Foundation]

In this way, though, she unexpectedly felt more akin to Maria’s expectant, space-creating quietude.

Maria. The name resounds from ancient times. Laurie shared how in the Mystery Dramas, Maria is one who holds the space for others to become who they are striving to become—a space where something new and fresh may enter into the community. Maria’s power of witnessing attention is a circle within which the new social mysteries unfold. Laurie brought the well-known quote by Christian Community priest Adam Bittleston pointing out that “In the new mysteries the whole earth becomes an altar... our friends and colleagues become for us, though we and they may know but little of it, the terrible and wonderful actors in the ceremony of our initiation.” Maria is also the one whose thinking, feeling, and willing are most balanced: both radiant and enveloping. She is devoted to the spiritual world and its aims for our time. One could say Maria is a picture of the higher or spiritualized self we are each striving toward.

As a portrayal of the most advanced student of Benedictus, the actor takes on the mantle of what could be called a priestly, sacerdotal role. Laurie’s long experience playing Dona the Priestess in Aeschylus Unbound turned out to be a preparation for this.

Yet Maria is not perfect. Laurie shared how in the first drama, Maria experiences that, like the Beautiful Lily in Goethe’s Fairy Tale, her loving interest in others evokes their own self-destruction. Her overwhelming pain of soul drives her in the second play to her spiritual teacher Benedictus, seeking karmic insight. He discloses to her that she was chosen to be the bearer of a great “cosmic being.” The seemingly harmful effects she has on those she loves is only because this Being must burn up in her and in others all that is temporal and less than eternal: “...What flourishes for higher life must bloom from death of lower being.”

Laurie herself experienced something like the Lily’s wilting touch, in that as the preparations for this summer commenced, all of her usual circle of friends disappeared through various coincidences—a long-distance move, a new job—and whoever new she tried to lean on, somehow become unavailable. She felt that she was “not allowed” to have that external support during this unique experience. In this way she came to lean only on deepening reserves of vertical relationship to the spiritual world.

Laurie also shared about how Maria struggles with her own “dragon of self-conceit”—of subtle spiritual pride. Yet she continually surmounts and overcomes these inner and outer hindrances, and as the story unfolds, she stands among the circle of friends who supersede the Mystic League.

A few further anecdotes from Laurie’s story: Laurie’s mother promised the Washington Waldorf School that if they let her attend for extremely lowered tuition, Laurie would grow up to serve anthroposophy. No time limit was mentioned on this term of service! Thankfully, Anthroposophia is surely a more gracious master than Rumpelstiltskin.

As a nine-year-old, Laurie entered her new classroom on the cathedral grounds...on the same day that twentythree-year-old Barbara Reynolds first walked into that same room as her class teacher.

From an early age, Laurie wanted to be an actor. She would speak entire Shakespeare plays in her room, playing every role! In the 5th grade class play, Laurie coveted the lead role of Pallas Athena. Miss Reynolds, “for pedagogical reasons,” gave the part to another girl, while Laurie was assigned the role of a foot soldier, with no lines. In rehearsals, the other girl’s acting did not look promising, but on the day of the performance, something clicked and she stunned the audience, by “becoming” gray-eyed Athena. Decades later, the role of Maria, who is a human face of Sophia, is in a way the fulfillment of that long-ago wish.

After the closing at Windy Hill, Laurie expressed: “I am so grateful to have been asked the question that led to this presentation! And to be given the opportunity to live with the character of Maria, into my own destiny.”

In regard to Laurie’s further course of life, I wonder: What’s next?

Travis Henry is author of a remarkable series of books, newsletters, and works of art about the threefold organization of human society and social healing. Links to the various works are found at http://sites.google.com/site/threefoldnow

Laurie Portocarrero trained in the Chekhov method under Ted Pugh and Fern Sloan, and has studied and taught movement, drama and speech in the US and abroad. A member of The Actors’ Ensemble, Walking the Dog Theater, Shakespeare Alive!, and Threefold Mystery Drama Group, Laurie has recently been seen in The Mystery Journey of Johannes and Maria, The Little Prince, Under Milk Wood, Touch of the Celtic, and Thornton Wilder’s 3-minute pieces. With the Threefold Mystery Drama Group, she has played Maria in Rudolf Steiner’s four mystery dramas. Laurie directs The Art of Acting: Drama as a Path of Inner Development (www.threefold.org/education/art_of _acting), a year-long course beginning October 10th. Waldorf-educated, Laurie holds a BA in Theater Arts, and also trained at Sunbridge College and Rudolf Steiner College.