A New Portal of Initiation in Dornach (2009)

by Linda Connell

Well, I was wrong. I had heard that the old productIon of the Mystery plays and the scenery were finished and put away. so I thought the new production would be bare, boring or painfully avant-garde. Not so. The new production of The Portal of Initiation is simple, elegant, and contemporary. It is also a compelling dramatic piece. It is altogether a success in my view.

In case you don’t know what I am talking about, Rudolf Steiner wrote four plays which he called Mystery Dramas. The first play, The Portal of Initiation, originally performed in 1910, tells the story of a group of people who are interested in their personal spiritual development and who have the same spiritual teacher. Some of their inner experiences are dramatically portrayed, as are their friendships and inner conflicts.

The new production is filled with luminous color. The scene where the friends meet after a lecture by their teacher, Benedictus, can be stiff and dull. This scene was in front of a rich reddish wall and all the characters were strikingly dressed in shades of red and related colors. The scene was well directed and acted and kept me interested throughout.

The scenes in the spiritual world are an endless pale blue with panels of paler shades of blue.

The enormous Spirit of the Earth (below) was a favorite of mine. He hovered in the air with multiple huge wings.

There was, of course, beautiful eurythmy with speakers in the wings. And Lucifer and Ahriman were there and familiar, but Ahriman looked fancier than ever. Well, the way the world is going, he can afford a fancy costume. The four hierophants in the temple scene were dressed like the kings in Goethe’s The Green Snake in gold, silver, copper, and mixed.

The scenery and props were sparse but effective. A huge portal served as the door from the lecture hall and door to the spiritual world in different scenes.

The play is long. It began at 10 am and didn’t end until 6:30 pm but there were long breaks. It is all in German, but I had read the play and seen some English productions, so I recognized where I was in the story. My seat was more than halfway back and it is hard to hear in the large main hall. I speak some German but I missed a lot of the text. That is why I suggested we read it as a summer project in the Los Angeles Branch. It is definitely worth the trip.

[About current productions of the Mystery Dramas visit goetheanum.org.]

Costume studies for the Spirit of the Earth (1 of 5)