Theatre for Peace
OPEN THEATRE/DC REGIONAL TOUR February - March 2005 OPENING: HARTKE THEATRE, Washington DC, February 19 & 20 2005
MARCH SCHEDULE
TRIANGLE THEATER, Philadelphia March 10-13
CREATIVE ALLIANCE at the Peterson, Baltimore, March 19 &20
Contact information below. Use this web site to find future bookings. __________________________________________
Performances are followed by a Peace Session
AND THE "UNITY-OF-BEING"
The Poet Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273 CE) some years ago became the best selling poet in the United States, and continues to be. In much of the Islamic world the poet is known as Mevl?na: “Our Master.” A thirteenth century poet born in the area of the old Persian Empire, today Balkh Afghanistan, and who lived most of his life in Turkey wring some of the greatest Persian poetry and spiritual discourses, finds a sudden and massive resurgence of interest – this has been a topic of much discussion lately among poets and scholars. Some attribute it to New Age thinking, or millenarism. Others, reading the free, accessible and amusing Coleman Barks English versions of Rumi may sense he is working in something like the traditions of Whitman, Blake and even Allen Ginsberg, and thus has appeal for the new “spiritual seekers.”
The poet and author Andrew Harvey suggests that Rumi’s method for spiritual growth through deep attachment to his earthly teacher and spiritual beloved, Shams-i Tabriz, was an ingenious approach to the mystical path. It set off an explosion in this former Muslim and Sufi scholar who had never really written poetry, so that his Divan-I Shams comprises seven volumes and 20,000 lines of mystic ghazals (our closed equivalent is the sonnet form) and his Mathnavi is six books of 15,000 verse lines. But Harvey also thinks that when we read or hear Rumi, we can find the deeper answers for he plight of the planet, our reasons to care for the natural world, and our own conscious evolution. The most impressive scholar of Sufism in the West, Anne Marie Schimmel, in The Triumphal Sun has placed him as a sort of vortex through which older traditions of Islamic and pre-Islamic mysticism pass, before fanning out on the other side into the coherent system of spiritual practice and psychology we call Sufism today – even while she finds that much of the startling imagery that has made him one of the planets 4 or 5 most important poets derives from the Qu’ran. She also finds that his use of unexpected paradox resembles that of the Zen Buddhist writers and teachers.
The Mathnavi derives its name from the twenty two syllable lines that Rumi recited by and large spontaneously to his scribe Husamuddin Chelebi, while walking in the gardens of Konya, or spinning around a pole, or seated in contemplation. It weaves together ancient and original parables, stemming from the many literary and religious traditions, then reflects on platonic philosophy, the science of Galen, and then rises to Lyric eloquence in descriptions of the “unseen” world based upon some very vivid and earthly metaphors. The Mathnavi is sung in Chai houses and homes from he Middle East to Central Asia to the Indian Subcontinent. Some of its parables are told as ribald jokes. The parables are also summoned up to teach lessons by teachers of Sufism, and Gnostic Islam. Yet while it is popular, it is perplexing. The structure goes from story-telling, to commentary on those stories, to yet another story as an example for the commentary, to a lyric sidetrack of a poet burning in the cooking pot of love. Then the poet might warn the listener that he has “come to the edge of the roof,” and will cut off his discourse, only to return to the parable he was telling twenty pages earlier.
Rumi almost never mentions the philosophy of “Unity of Being” (Wahdhat-al Wujud) which lies at the heart of Sufism. For that matter, it lies at the center of the work of the famous Andalusian Sufi Ibn Al-Arabi (1165-1240). But as Kabir Helminski, the representative of the Mevlevi Sufi order founded by Rumi (known to many Americans as the “whirling dervishes”) told us: “He didn’t have to mention it. It is everywhere in Rumi.” The idea that each of us carries something “the same” in us – “pure water to the ocean” as he sometimes says – that we are all fundamentally related to all other beings, and even to the life of particles and energies that “live” in so-called inanimate matter – that we are all part of one cosmic evolution: this can be found everywhere in his poetry. So the “prophetic tradition” so important to Rumi, that everywhere one looks one can see the face of the Divine, tells us something fundamental about his works.
Yet Rumi, like Shakespeare in the Western tradition of great poetry, knew that human beings can’t suddenly make themselves spiritually or fully conscious beings, or even true lovers. He knew that they could talk a lot, and read a lot about these things. But the problem for him was one of experience. Perhaps that is why, during many years investigation of his work, we have discovered that he returns time and again to the market place, the place of selling and buying, of bickering and lawsuits, of chance meetings in the corridors of perfumes leading to earthly love and secret crimes; tales of officials, merchants, beggars and dervishes; as well as tales of the officials of the ruling classes, Jesus and Mary, the Prophet Mohammad, and the chivalrous heart of Ali. Yet he has also the Shakespearean ability to scour society and the world of human beings from top to bottom, as he teaches the way to peace, both inner and outer, passes away from the trap of the grasping, domineering self -- or ego -- through the gate of the heart.
Joe Martin, Director
Music direction by Kasem Davoudian
Music performed by the Hamnava
Group.
Choreography by Christel Stevens
Lighting by Tom Donahue
PRIMARYCAST
Kim Curtis
Elizabeth Jernigan
Jai Khalsa
Bette Casatt
Nick Scott
Lee Ordeman
Brandon Welch
Jamahl Rahmaan
HARTKE THEATRE : Harewood Rd, NE
Catholic Univ of America
Washington DC
Sat. Feb. 19 7:30pm, Sun. Feb 20 3pm
Reservations 202.234.9816
TRIANGLE THEATRE
1220 N Lawrence Street, Philadelphia
Thurs - Sat. March 10-12 8pm
Sun. March 13 2pm
213.763.0110 or tickets@triangletheater.com
THE CREATIVE ALLIANCE at the Patterson, 3134 Eastern Ave., Baltimore
Sat March 19, 8pm
Sunday March 20 3pm
410.276.1651 www.creativealliance.org