Unexpectedly, synchronistically, and strangely, I am back in Buenos Aires for a few months. It seems appropriate to send my last posts regarding Unveiled, from where I first announced the Canada Council of the Arts grant award that made the whole production possible.
Some events in life define direction and character. They touch the essential, the eternal, and thus carry the indelible stamp of immortality. Unveiled was such an event for me.
I have wondered at my silence regarding the run in Edinburgh and the completion of the two-month tour. There was certainly a lot to say. So much happened. I have had many thoughts on all that transpired, but I wanted to be clear on what to share, what I felt was necessary, and what I felt might be helpful for readers to hear.
The short version is that the show was "all things." And this is what I have been telling those who've asked – a true union of opposites.
There were levels of solace I touched during the first performances that I had never experienced before. There were excellent reviews: "A deeply resonating piece of theatricality and truth," "Ethereal," "A deeply personal testimony of a life by a powerful 21st-century woman," "Mozol stirs the depths of the female psyche," and so on. There were enthusiastic audiences and several compliments on the writing and the depth of symbolism in the piece. A typical response was that audience members couldn't believe an hour had passed. They were completely absorbed.
And so was I.
In each show, I discovered new depths and levels of relaxation on stage, places of embodying the script. I had fun. (One man who reminded me of the director of Salomé sat with a grimace throughout the show. I thought he hated it. He approached me after and said it was the best solo show he'd seen). Others feared seeing it. My poster was ripped down off the main wall at some point. Men laughed out loud, tried hard to stop, and lost the battle. This delighted me, as did the comments on the acting being strong—especially coming from other actors. I was focused, reviewed each show, went over the areas of the script in the morning I wanted to strengthen, warmed up for two hours in the afternoon, and then got dressed and headed back to the theatre each night. It was exhausting and exhilarating.
Then ecstasy hit me one night in Edinburgh. I touched something onstage that had been mainly elusive to me in life. A moment where my body moved of its own volition, separate from my consciousness, my voice spoke without thought or preparation. I've touched such states in dance, sexual intimacy, and dreams, but here I was, accessing it on stage. That night, when I returned to my rooftop apartment in Old Town, I fell hard into an ecstatic state.
This was the core of the journey for me and something I knew the show was always about. Delving into the deep, the dark, the truth of women's position in this "world of the fathers." What it costs us, and what it forces into the unconscious.
Finding the words, the stories that honour not just my own life but the lives of my ancestors and all women before me.
I have been courting this ecstasy that we have been separated from, and I believe Salomé and Wilde through Salomé was also doing. Ecstasy came like a lightning bolt, and I lay on my bed, unable to move. It unfolded around me, within me. An ecstasy of the body, a surrender to the larger forces, a "faith" in the "lived life," spirit alive in the body– Sophia. And then things came undone.
After his first heart attack in 1944, Jung experienced ecstatic states; he claimed to have said that he believed ecstasy was not for this world. He was also fond of saying after an intense spiritual experience in life or dreams that it's best to stay in bed the next day because you're sure to get slammed. Marion Woodman said that you can have as much ecstasy in life as you want as long as you're willing to suffer for it.
I have not found ecstasy that easy to come by. But there might be something to the suffering on the other side of it —a type of compensatory function of the psyche, or the destructive side of the archetypal energies unleashed needing somewhere to go, or a challenging experience bringing to light what needs to be worked on before the next phase of the coniunctio can take place or all of the above.
On the other side of my ecstatic state, things started to unravel: My stage manager and tech person walked off the show because I pointed out (gently) that I needed the tech to run smoothly. It was a solo show, so there were only two components –me and the tech, and if the tech wasn't running, then half the show wasn't running. There had not been one issue the entire run of shows in Hamilton (with a technician doing the job for the first time). We had not had one clear run in Edinburgh, and we were almost halfway through. On average, there were between 6 and 15 cues off per show. It took enormous energy to keep the flow and not be thrown off each time. I had to redo my tech run with a new person, and things kept going off.
Then, out of nowhere, I had one night that stood out as nightmarish.
A smile from a veil, an energetic attack, a reviewer with a pointed agenda. I felt the energy hit me on stage, and it took me outside myself, outside the performance. I was 18 shows in, and I didn't understand what was happening. I wanted off-stage. I skipped some lines, some of the most intimate and intense. I didn't feel safe. It was humbling. It took immense energy the next day to come back. I didn't want to perform again. I went to The Meadows lay on the earth and remembered all the dreams and the deep creative sources that had brought me to this moment. That night was my best show.
Things continued to be a gong show all around me; however, the next reviewer canceled at the last minute. The night the show was to be videoed, the main camera battery died, so we didn't get the footage, and so on. The stage floor was painted, making it nearly impossible to do my dance turns on stage for three shows. A new show booked the theatre next to mine, and the sound bleed was terrible. I had to extend myself further to hold my focus and the audience's attention.
I had a dream one night where an older priestess asked me to follow where the energy was going, and I said the energy was moving into my heart and behind me. This confused me in the dream as I thought it should somehow not be through me and behind me. She said that's right, there is a mound of earth there, and the ritual can occur when you are safe on top of it. As I moved towards it, hungry spirits came out of the ethers and tried to stop me from reaching the mound and completing the ritual.
The mound symbolized the stage where the ritual was taking place. I made it there and sent powerful energy into this world and the spirit world.
I didn't read the review when it came out. I knew it was bad, but I didn't think it was that bad. I had felt the energy on stage. She was writing during the performance. She was the only reviewer not to give me notice of her attendance prior.
I read it the morning after my last performance on a Thursday, which was a nightmare of a different sort, as I started to come down with a fever on Wednesday (my one-off day) and didn't sleep most of that entire night. I was conflicted the next day as I was sick, but I didn't want to cancel as my last review was scheduled, and I wanted to get a fair review from Edinburgh. I didn't. I continued a downward spiral physically; my throat was utterly raw the next day from trying to do the voices when I should have been in bed. I had to cancel my last 2 performances as there was no way I could leave my apartment. That's when I decided to read the original review. I was done, and it was probably not as bad as I imagined. When I read it, I spontaneously laughed. It was so over the top that I couldn't take it seriously.
I was admittedly shocked at how hard it hit me later. Why did it get so far in?
There was a place for comments. I wanted to say things, such as in response to her referring to Salomé as toxic, but I didn't. There is a fuller story here, including that I discovered I had correspondence with this person previously, which threw me for a loop, but this is not the place to go into further details.
I was speaking out for the women of my line, for women who had lost their lives, and part way through the show, I realized it was not only for women who physically died but for those who died in their relationships—grandmothers, aunts, my mother. And I was speaking from outside the acceptable personas of the feminine within patriarchy. I was speaking against the collective, and the collective was hitting back.
Sometimes, the archetypal swings are so intense they demand silence and stillness. As the existentialists say, freedom is the space between stimulus and response. I took my freedom. I went, as always, to the inner work. I recognized there was a time when I feared Salomé and thought of her as destructive and dangerous, but 30 years of in-depth work has brought me to a very different place.
For most women, the feminine individuates along the archetypal path of Persephone, Ariadne, Salomé, and Sophia. You can't skip the Salomé phase if you're doing the work.
I let go but was occasionally haunted by a line or two from the review. I reflected deeply on relationships with significant women in my life who had tried to silence me in different ways.
On the Isle of Iona near twilight at the nunnery, I reflected on the communities of women scholars, artists, and crofters whose stories had never been told or danced. I buried the remnants of the review there symbolically as I gave thanks for the rare opportunity to tell my own.
After reading the review, my dramaturge, TJ Dawe, sent me an encouraging email that included this quote:
The Soviet composer Shostakovich said that if you create something everyone loves, you know you've failed. If you create something everyone hates, you might have something. But if you create something that makes half the audience want to kiss you and the other half want to kill you, that's when you know you've succeeded.
So apparently, I have something with Unveiled, given the extreme responses, but I always knew that.
Roses or daggers, in the end, matter not; the work is the work. It stands alone. The ritual of the show was always about courting the ecstatic, the inner marriage, and entering the garden of pomegranates under the moon tree. I am filled with gratitude for all those who made it possible: the Canada Council of the Arts for the significant grant, David MacMurray Smith for being impeccable in all ways, and TJ Dawe for being a formidable ally in navigating the world of theatre.
I leave with a quote from Jung, who understood well the delights and perils of following one's destiny line.
Not the opinion of any individual contemporary will decide the truth and error of what has been discovered, but rather future generations and destiny. There are things that are not yet true to-day, perhaps we are not yet permitted to recognize them as true, although they may be true tomorrow. Therefore every pioneer must take his own path, alone but hopeful, with the open eyes of one who is conscious of its solitude and of the perils of its dim precipices. Our age is seeking a new spring of life. I found one and drank of it and the water tasted good. That is all that I can or want to say. My intention and my duty to society is fulfilled when I have described, as well as I can, the way that led me to the spring; the reproaches of those who do not follow this way have never troubled me, nor ever will. —C. G. Jung
