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manifesto: THE NEW MAGIC THEATRE


this is my idea of the new theatre. it starts like a marriage, merely with the dream, the projected mystique, and the ripened bloom of attraction.

then the attendants to the blessed product are gathered together, one by one: technicians with lights, costumes, instruments, and artists who are all where they're at because they've had to go there. people who aren't hung up, sicksouled, undependable or self consciously insane. with belief in each other. there's a director, & some others who organize & make posters & promises & some who sweep floors. then the actors, chosen as lovers are chosen - for sensitivity, devotion, perception, strength.

and writers. the scripts to be of the most universal & pertinent content for this new age, so that if the plays were to tour the entire world the simplicity & beauty & impact would always be right on. (hopefully the poets will respond to this call.)

in a generation that professes so much love, on a path constructed of the caked blood of the prophets before them, there must be some whose only concern is not wealth & power & private adventure. and the theatre, ideally, would belong to them - not steel & snob appeal, but an old barn, a living structure of any kind especially sanctified for this one purpose & used only for this. no matter that the velvet covered chairs are missing, it's the people - always the people, who make things come to life.

of course, the magicians are the ones who must find the spot. the two coasts of n.y. & los angeles have opposite (& sometimes interchangeable) energies - one expands, one contracts; one relates in smoggy heat, one ingrows in violent contrasts; one is concrete repression, one sprawling freedom; and one is happening & one is becoming...

and san francisco is always there, rich in layers of hardcore bohemians, warm baked bread, north beach & haight-ashbury, and a certain sophistry about the whole act of creation.

but a troupe is a troop is a multitude and it can be anywhere. a place accessible to all three (& the world) would be ideal, so that members are always free to come & go if the work calls for it, while resident members mind the store. more on place later.

of course the whole concept would go far beyond the realm of theater as we know now. it would be a combination troubador training center, circus, Zen temple, university, lovenest, freakout, and, more closely, a tribe, with the directing Elders -maybe 5 or 7, who would be mutually chosen & trusted by each other because it was the reality. much the feeling of the indians, who believed their visions, enacted them, and then incorporated them as the law & legend of their tribe.


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