Preview: the Annual General Meeting, Oct. 2–4, 2009 Creating Living Connections: Christian Rosenkreutz and the Social Impulse is the title for this year’s annual conference and members’ meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in America. The conference is scheduled for October 2–4, 2009, and is being developed by the Anthroposophical Society in collaboration with The Threefold Educational Center of Chestnut Ridge (Spring Valley), NY, and will be held on the campus of the Threefold Educational Center. The Eastern Regional Council and the Threefold Branch are also actively participating in conference preparations. Creating Living Connections features a new format intending to give anthroposophic organizations, initiatives, groups, and individuals opportunities to meet, interact, share their work, and truly “create living connections.” Members and friends are invited to arrive early in Spring Valley to participate in the local community’s Michaelmas Festival on Tuesday afternoon. Space will be provided on Wednesday and Thursday for preconference meetings, and planned social events will enable participants to share ideas and information about their work. A highlight of the pre-conference activity will be a performance of Aeschylus Unbound on Thursday evening, October 1 (see below). This original play will launch a weekend rich in lectures, art, drama, eurythmy, conversations, and lively evening cafés. A Friday morning forum will gather the fruits of the working groups that met during the week.
On Friday afternoon, annual conference activities will commence with Elizabeth Wirsching, leader of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, guiding us in forming interconnections on the theme “Recognizing my inner tools—the living lemniscate.” Virginia Sease, from the Executive Committee of the Goetheanum, will speak on the “Living Connection between Rudolf Steiner and Christian Rosenkreutz.” Additional featured speakers will be Dr. Gerald Karnow of the Fellowship Community, and Michael Ronall of Sunbridge College. The weekend will culminate with the Anthroposophical Society’s annual members’ meeting on Sunday morning. This opportunity to gather is conceived in service to anthroposophic impulses of all shapes and sizes, and we invite you to participate in forming the events. To schedule a pre-conference meeting or activity, please contact Jordan Walker at the Threefold Educational Center by phone (845-352-5020 x19) or e-mail (jordan@threefold.org) As they develop, details will be posted on both the Society’s website (www.anthroposophy.org) and the website of the Threefold Educational Center (www.threefold.org). You can also follow and participate in the planning process by visiting Threefold Educational Center’s blog. Go to www.threefold.org/events, and click on “2009 Michaelmas Conference.” Brochures will be mailed in the spring.
Greek Mysteries & the Father of Tragedy when we could on one coast or the other to flesh out the story and gradually negotiate and hammer out an outline. In May, 2007, while I was on my way to California for a week of work with her on the play, Mala was diagnosed with leukemia and checked in to the hospital. She insisted that I come to the hospital each morning so we could work while she was receiving treatment. We finished a rough draft and read through it out loud together, in the hospital on May 14th, for the first and last time. Mala crossed the threshold of death on June 11, 2007 surrounded by friends and love. Aeschylus Unbound premiered on schedule on September 22, 2007, at the Los Angeles Branch. Mala’s young protégée Kim Barrett played Mala’s role of Dona, the priestess, and also directed and designed the lighting, set, and costumes. On June 11, 2008, singer and Broadway actress Dorothy Emmerson played Dona in a staged reading at the Christian Community in New York City. Mala has continued to influence and encourage the further development and polishing of the play from where she is now—through Kim’s extraordinary talent and devotion to Mala, through Dorothy’s painstaking insistence on clarity and flow, and through Laurie’s immediate, heartfelt, and comprehensive grasp of the role of Dona and the meaning and arc of the play.
Acclaimed film star Mala Powers collaborated with Glen Williamson to write Aeschylus Unbound, an original play about the “father of tragedy” and the origins of drama in the Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone in ancient Greece. Laurie Portocarrero plays the Priestess. Premiered at the Los Angeles Branch of the Anthroposophical Society, it will be seen in March at the conference in Fair Oaks, CA (see page 9) and April 4 at the New York Branch (www.asnyc.org).
How this play came about... The destiny of Aeschylus in relation to the Mysteries of Eleusis has been a deeply felt interest of mine since seeing “The Oresteia” as a teenager. So when Mala shared with me in December of 2003 her imagination of a priestess in Eleusis and her young pupil Aeschylus, I was so stunned and shaken that I could hardly contain myself. Having discovered our shared passion for this subject, Mala asked me (in June of 2004) to collaborate with her to create a piece about Aeschylus and the priestess for the two of us to perform together. In the summer of 2005, the Los Angeles Branch of the Anthroposophical Society offered us a venue for the premier. That invitation helped focus and sustain our work even beyond Mala’s crossing. In between various other projects, we immersed ourselves in imaginative, intuitive, and historical research, meeting
Glen Williamson, August 2008 20
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