Steiner’s Dramas: Why Do They Matter?

by John Beck

The August Mystery Drama Festival at Threefold was a profound experience for all who participated. In what ways can it matter to the world at large?

Rudolf Steiner’s perspective on the human story was as large as anyone’s who has lived, and he gave to these odd, long plays a large amount of his time for more than four years. Anciently we were told of being made in “the image and likeness” of cosmic creators, and dramas out of the ancient mysteries like Oedipus the King showed us, in beauty and ritual, deep truths about that relationship. There are a few mystery dramas of modern times: Goethe’s Faust and in Shakespeare’s canon A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear, Hamlet and The Tempest. Wagner’s Ring Cycle was meant to awaken myth, and Mahler’s “Resurrection Symphony” raises life’s tragedy to spiritual triumph.

Superficially, however, Steiner’s plays are less heroic. Johannes is not an appealing figure, truth be told. Maria is struggling at the start with how her devotion to a spiritual path is killing her relationships. And little in the way of drama in the usual sense happens on Steiner’s stage. These plays of the early 20th century may belong already to minimalist and existentialist art.

In minimalist music (Steve Reich, Philip Glass), giving up dynamics and seductive melodies can put the audience to sleep—or awaken it to deeper questions. Rudolf Steiner’s questions are of ultimate depth. From an ancient Egyptian woman’s love for a man who is abandoning her he draws out the essential drama of human individuality, of our becoming—in relationship with others—conscious actors in evolving worlds. We sense a higher human selfhood that seeks, life after life and day after day, a chance to grow. We come to appreciate that a great healing of cultural life may begin humbly, pouring our hearts into community theater.

This Festival’s community theater reached a level of sustained excellence: drama as art was fully served. If these plays had already lived for you, they reached a higher octave of active meaning. And both on stage and off, there glimmered a quiet inner heroism and inspiration, in and behind each human being’s life.