Michaelmas 2009 in the Berkshire Taconic Region

In June 2009, senior members of the Camphill Copake community approached the initiative group of the Berkshire Taconic Branch to ask if the branch would support a Michaelmas festival built around a Michaelmas play by Karl Koenig. The thought was that this effort would reach out beyond the borders of Copake Camphill and be imagined and incarnated together with all in the wider community, including the Christian Community who felt moved to participate. For readers who have been following the “big picture,” what was just described is a kind of microcosm of what stood behind the 2009 MichaelmasConference in Dornach, Switzerland. The very same play was rehearsed and performed there. From the program notes of the Dornach conference:

“The theme for the Michaelmas Conference at the Goetheanum is Building Community in the Light of Michael. This conference has been prepared together with the Camphill Movement as a result of annual meetings between members of the Focus Group of Camphill and the Executive Council at the Goetheanum. To create intentional, lifesharing, therapeutic communities as a form of social renewal has been the task of the Camphill Movement since its founding by Dr. Karl König, a medical doctor, Viennese war refugee and humanitarian, in 1940 in Scotland. Community building is a central issue today in which on the one hand the individual seeking soul strives to become capable of community, and searches for new community forms that transcend traditional structures and ties. On the other hand each person in the age of the consciousness soul has to struggle consciously to build community out of the forces of the individual ‘I,’ as this no longer arises by itself. To build and sustain communities in the context of the Time Spirit Michael, who champions individual freedom, is the theme to be explored in this Conference.”

How could the initiative group not support such an impulse? It was wholeheartedly endorsed by all members. Shortly thereafter, a parallel initiative got underway at Copake, where individuals got together to study Rudolf Steiner’s The Michael Mystery early each Tuesday morning. This outwardly less visible deed was intended to build a connection to the upcoming Dornach Michaelmas Festival, as well as to create a context for the Branch festival. The preparation for the “outer” festival got going in earnest in the middle of August, when Patrick Doyle stepped forward to oversee the whole festival, and Stephen Steen and Ben Madlock agreed to produce the play. From that date forward, an enormous amount of “visible” work got underway and, as befits any genuinely meaningful human endeavor, a great deal of personal sacrifice went into it as well.

Once the call to come and create the festival was sounded, a whole host of individuals answered. Musicians, singers, carpenters, set painters, eurythmists, cooks, actors, speech artists, technicians, and just plain willing hands all pulled together to engender the performance and all that was connected with it. Possibly the most remarkable aspect was the venue: the festival took place in an old foundry building near the Amtrak station in Hudson, New York, a small but dynamic city on the banks of the river from which the city gets its name. The building is now called Basilica Industria and is owned by Patrick Doyle, who poured his heart and soul and countless hours of time he didn’t have into the event. In the cavernous, dimly lit brick-walled former forge, a set was designed and built, towering flats painted to resemble an Egyptian temple. This backdrop soared up into the steel trusses that support the building’s terra cotta tile roof. A series of broad steps leading to the sealed temple doors comprised the stage. At great personal risk, Deena Pewtherer and Patrick Doyle cobbled a lighting system together out of salvaged bits and pieces, mounted it into the grid work of rafters and bracing, and made it operational. Meantime, rehearsals got underway. With their deeply felt culture of consciously celebrating festivals, the two area Camphill communities, Triform and Copake, contributed the bulk of the players, but many others outside Camphill got involved, so the hope of including the widest possible community went a long way to being realized. The play was rehearsed on Saturday afternoons. It has musical and speech choruses, some operatic solo parts, and a small orchestra with sound effects. Diane Barnes prepared and conducted the musical parts of the performance. As Michaelmas drew closer, activity intensified.

The day came. There was an air of quiet confidence amongst performers and others involved. With the sun setting behind the Catskill Mountains to the west, the audience streamed into the “hall,” led by Patrick Doyle and flag-bearing members of the Camphill communities. The building was no longer a gritty, dreary relic of America’s industrial greatness. Enormous paintings and drapes now adorned the walls. A harvest table decorated one end, and a simple but attractive supper was laid out at the other. Patrick then bounded up onto the stage and spoke briefly but forcefully to open the festival. He pointed to the fact that iron had formerly been forged and formed within the very walls of the building, and that it was that self-same iron that coursed through the blood of all those gathered, who were united in seeking to build community based on individual self-awareness. The applause and cheers from more than five hundred audience members quickly turned to listening silence when the Grasshopper Production eurythmy ensemble performed a part of a poem by Denise Levertov called “Two Threnodies and Psalm,” punctuated by the wail of an Amtrak diesel engine’s air horn hauling a passenger train into the nearby station.

Then the Michaelmas play commenced. For those who do not know the play, it is, according to the program notes, “an attempt to acknowledge the needs and aspirations of the human soul to understand the transformations that it must be willing to undertake in order to bring about a healthy social life and true goodness in the world.” The performance did not include eurythmy, but there was almost everything else in the way of performing arts: orchestral music, choral singing, speech chorus, dramatic acting, and operatic singing. Christoph-Andreas Lindenberg composed the score for the play, and at least to this listener, the performers, a mix of professionals and amateurs, filled the very large space with strength and sensitivity.

The dramatic thread of the play is certainly unconventional. It is a relatively short one act play— though “play” doesn’t quite fit what is actually presented—in a series of tableaux that reveal aspects of the human soul’s experience. As the play builds towards the moment when the temple doors are opened by the words that the working man speaks, it gradually becomes clear that through suffering and sacrifice, what lies hidden is revealed, and wholeness is achieved out of what is broken or lost. The performance ended with a procession of the speech chorus, singers and actors walking down the center aisle to the rear of the factory building while singing a hymn. Then Patrick Doyle went on stage to the sacred flame burning in front of the temple, lit a torch mounted on a long stick, and walked resolutely through the audience to two large torch lights mounted high on the rear walls, which he then ignited. This heart-stopping gesture signaled that it was supper time. Was the smoky torchlight a reminder that one festival was not enough to overcome the dragon? He smolders on. Much good work remains to be done, so all who initiated the event now will ponder how to make this festival impulse alive and active in the future. At the same time that the regional Michaelmas festival took place in Hudson, the General Society’s festival was held in Dornach. Regional member Penelope Baring, who attended the Dornach event, reported back emphatically that “the community came to Dornach.” Here in the Berkshire Taconic region, the community came to Hudson.

report by Nick Franceschelli