A Theatre Director Journey.

Born May 11, 1952, the sign of the Taurus and the sign of the Dragon in the Chinese Calendar. Somewhere in Denmark, It was Sunday morning, and the sun was shining. As an introduction, you will see a huge BULL moving, steaming, and sweating over the hilltop with a dragon next to him in the same size and condition while scared morons run screaming away to all sides.

Educated Theatre Director 1984 From THE STATENS TEATERSKOLE. Denmark. Painter, Musician, Playwriter, Theatre Director, Teacher, Mask and HealingSilver Designer. My family gave me security and inspiration, music, love, and the art and joy of storytelling.

The Danish Elementary school gave me migraine.

This is very sad Story. My “two plus two is and will always be four”, executioners, called Bully Jesus because he was ruthless and sadistic. The name was created after his initials in his name by the older generation of students. He later became the executive of an institution that provided disabled people with care and security, and he let a disabled girl, as punishment for some disability-related acts, trim the large lawn in front of the institution's buildings for 9 (nine) hours. The principal, B.J., was expelled forever from teaching young and adult students.

I was shabby before in the middle and after his classes and didn't learn anything. I can’t learn anything based on fear.

But he was not the only one of his kind at that school. And there was a sultry silence among his colleagues about the poor man and his terror. But the scandal was all over the news, daily.

I must say that as a bandage on the mental wounds, we got excellent human beings as teachers in math. We deserved it. No one asked from the responsive authorities – what did he do in his classes here and did somebody vanish forever or. NOBODY dared to investigate the pain and terror we had lived under.

I often imagine what would have happened if I never had to go to school but played and developed my imagination in music and art genes... What will happen to a Human Being if, in her/his best time honing his WILL FORCE, he never has to do anything but develop dreams, imagination, and laughter?

I played Jazz. New Orleans Jazz. And Bach and Beethoven and grand piano and organ. Jazz and blues, preferably so that you could hear the crunchy sound of the grooves in the lacquer plate...But in it was a vitality I didn’t have words for. And it was sexual. But Jazz and Blues, yes. But what was behind it.?

I am 15 years, my will force is scattered, but there it all became alive again. Louis Armstrong Jelly Roll Morton and Billie Holiday

It was my first freedom. Violent even. A small-scale copy of one of Picasso's paintings GUERNICA dramatically crushed, the Donald Duck lamp, with Picasso's depiction of the prelude to World War II, where the Nazi-Germany pilots in their feared Stuka’s were learning how to kill over the Basque town of Guernica...Goodbye to Disney, Donald Duck, and his greedy old Scrooge Mc’Duck, and hello to Spear of Destiny and Lucifer's eye and Arlequin’s triangled hat symbolizing death.

My world was already Horror: The horrors stood out through the newly acquired instrument of Distant vision. Or Tele Vision: The Hungarian Crisis 1956 Vietnam War. The Cuba Crisis. The Kennedy Assassination 1963. The Martin Luther King Assassination 1968. The Robert Kennedy Assassination 1968 Mai Lai Massacre. more and more.

My first Jazz talk started with a meeting on November 7, 1967. Suddenly, all the musicians disappeared on their Puck Maxi and Velo Solex. They went home and watched television. I did the same. What’s going on? Oh, the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Russian revolution. We had only one channel in black and white, so it could only be what they were looking for.

In 1970, I was hired at the local theatre, which was called a regional theatre. I was hired as a “Student stage manager.” Later, I was promoted to “Assistant Stage Manager” and then “Executive Stage Manager.” I left after 8 years. The horror and tyrant, you know, the one with the 9-hour lawn mowing for the disabled girl, had mutated and found a thick branch to sit on in that workplace. But he was pinned out the first day I started, by the theater prompter greeting me nicely, then looking at me with sad eyes, and saying that it hurt her so deeply that I would be out of this job in less than 14 days because of him in the green smock.

He had a reputation for making life mentally unbearable for newly arrived stage managers, so they fled. That won’t happen, I grump. And it didn’t.

But not without the green smock trying all his tricks.

Joe Orton wrote a play called “What the Butler Saw.” 8 years of being a Butler.

It is 12 o’clock, and Ophelia isn’t here. I get hold of a phone; we did not have them on us in those old days. No Answer. I call her favorite bar. Yes, she was there to very late. Depressed. Call again. No answer. She didn’t stay far from the theatre, so I ran to her castle. No answer. Hammer on the door: OPHELIA. No answer. A terrible fear, knowing her fragile soul, arises in me so I have no choice: Call the police! Even though I prayed so fervently that neither the police nor the ambulance came with the sirens on, they did, and now I knew. It was their scene.

The hide out was all of a sudden full of Ambulances with professional staff and police as well and now going to enter through the door to Ophelia. Suddenly she did appear somewhat dazed in her underwear and looked at me angrily and started measuring me from head to toe and started to exhibit me as I was an idiot. “Ophelia. You were supposed to be at rehearsal for 2 hours ago. You damaged a dress rehearsal. Get dressed, Ophelia, and go to the theatre NOW.

Embarred to my fingertips, I left, and on my way out and back to the theatre, the police were walking behind me and said ”You did the right thing” and then they asked me what I was doing in the theatre… “I am a real bad guy, psychiatrist, dresser, underdog, held responsible when things go wrong, underdog when things go well.… a hell of a job.” And then I looked into two pairs of smiling eyes, and then I understood… “I am like you”. And then the sirens were turned into laughter and jokes at the gate to Ophelia's maiden farm. At least Ophelia was alive! And no one got hurt. Not even the door. Then, all three of us could climb our jobs and continue playing as underdogs. To be or not to be.

This sad situation of a human being, being sacrificed on the altar of the theatre needed clarification. But no one came to me. No one came to her. It was just a late coming for an important rehearsal. There wasn’t any basic education that made the students strong enough or aware enough. This is such an episode that sent me out in the wilderness to look for material that knew something about body and soul and the need to be on a stage. At that theatre, I did see and heard something that I thought was impossible. First: There are Artists and non-artists mixed up, and that itself creates some unwanted tensions, especially when the artists near the opening night get caught by the Aesthetic Arrest and can’t wait any longer on that non-artist that all of a sudden becomes an unwanted partner and destroyer. Another thing was where they were educated and by whom.

For think, brethren, how it was with yourselves when you were called: You were not many wise in the worldly sense, not many mighty, not many distinguished. But that which is foolishness in the world, God chose to put the wise to shame, and that which is weak in the world, God chose to make the strong ashamed, and that which the world looks down upon, and that despise, that which is nothing, God chose to do what is something, to nothing. Letter to Corinths by Paul.

But it was also a house of damn brilliant people and a possibility for a good discussion of the art theatre and music.

Even if it sometimes was boring and dragging and hurting, it was an excellent crossroad of life and education, like all the spirits in the walls of the theatre pushing and forming me every day. It became very useful in my later world tours. I will place the name here of a colleague and stage manager with a very kind and brave heart:

Claus Gam, who died untimely of alcoholism.

There is a little Nota Bene. It was a treat I did sometimes. When all sound systems and all were in their dressing rooms singing, screaming, and yelling, the stage got silent. Only one person took care of the last duties, and that was the sound and light engineer. I let the door be open from my office so I could say an honoring “good night” and closed the door.

I knew that he now would turn on a huge lightbulb hanging high up in the curtain tower among painted decoration parts. The effect of it was sinister, and the stage was all of a sudden opposite of what just happened there 15 minutes ago.

When everything was silent, I walked onto the stage to silence myself and enjoyed the walls and the stage floor open up and saw and heard monsters crawl in with only sound like when you throw a large stinky floor textile from a wet bucket, sometimes scary laughter was silent, sometimes they throw unknown things at me.
was confronted by my demons.

The wise men say Saturn’s orbit is 28 years. The Wise men also say that when you turn 28, the universe is done with you. You are free to create and live like an artist or anything else you like. I am 28 years old, and on that day, I was admitted to the Danish State Theatre School. As a “Theatre Director Student” or just a student. As an entrance key, I used Pirandello’s unfinished play, THE MOUNTAIN GIANTS. I finished the missing last scene. It is about art and fascism and actors arrogance that cost them their lifes. Many years later, I staged the play in the USA. It had its US premiere at the Stella Adler Academy, Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

After the first meeting with all classmates together, the content of the theatre school became clear to me. It was not an artistic, political, or social-related education. And actually, we were asked not to think about being artists.

In my search for a plausible exit for good, I find in a pile of rubbish a photocopy of Antonin Artaud's The Theatre and its Double, translated to Danish by the great Danish director Klaus Hoffmeyer, and discover that there is an essay Artaud calls “On the Balinese Theatre.” And the text is as surreal as Picasso's Guernica. It begins slowly to take shape. I stayed at the school and maintained my Artaud dreams. All Alone. I had to. I got mocked for it. Fantastic. As long as you kick a resting dog there is still a future. I did not know anything about Bali Balinese Theatre, or Artaud. I barely understood what he was talking about.

My departure assignment will be Nigel Williams’s “The Class Enemy.” There, I forced so much art into the wildness. But because the piece is so violent, I had to use a counterpart, so I listen to Glen Gould's recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations on my walk to and from school...The electronic gadget I used during that walk to and from school was called a Walkman at the time. The record time fit the time of walking to school and back again. What a treat. The music permeated the basis of the performance so much that when the play was over at the Opening Night, an opera singer from the Royal Theatre Opera Ensemble came up to me and said it was like hearing a piece of music by Bach.! It worked. And when I told him about the Goldberg Variations recorded by Glen Gould and only that version, he was about to faint, so I had to hold him. But it also puzzled him as me. What is going on beyond the beyond? I consider Glen Gould to be a shaman who lifts Bach out of the music conservatism.

I left with the translation of The Theatre and its double under my arm. I saved it, and I hold on to it. It is a loan. Then, somebody can send it back to Denmark when I am gone.

But I do not leave without mentioning Nina Schiøttz Klaus Hoffmeyer Frederik Dessau Mogens Rukov Keith Johnstone Did I make it clear that the Theatre school suffered from the same problem? Artist – non-artist. Group or Ensemble. We did. But nobody knew how to break it down.

These are two actors from the same Theatre Ensemble, “Møllen”, The Mill, Haderslev, Denmark. Flowers for Algernon is by Daniel Keyes, translated by Jesper Vigant. I dramatized and directed the text, and Jacob Mendel (1950 – 2001) was the solo actor. And “The Infection of Rumors” by P.C. Jersild, Translated by Alexander Kørschen with Ole Sørensen as the solo actor.

Both performances were artistically framed and supported by Møllens Set Designer Gitte Kath. It was Art and Theatre in its highest potency vigor. The most inspiring and artistically united process. It was musically orchestrated, with a delicate understanding of tempo and rhythm, like conducting a symphony orchestra with only one musician. But both actors had all instruments alive and dynamically built into them. Here, it was the use of tempo rhythm staccato legato that created the aesthetic arrest that made it possible to develop and direct endlessly. Even my artistic demon got a breach to come out of the box. It is crazy and can go on forever because it is captured by instinct - art when it is present.

It is known that there is only a growing ferocity towards the solution to the experience. It is rarely present, but when it is, there is an experience. So never mind the difficult mountain climb.

Mephisto was dramatized from Klaus Mann’s Novelle of same name and translated and staged for Théâtre du Soleil, Paris by Ariane Mnouchkine. We got her permission to perform it at a small theatre in my hometown called "Svalegangen." The play is Translated into Danish by Hans Christian Ægidius. It was during the rehearsals of that performance - a Saturday rehearsal - that I made my first drawing of a mask in deep pain. The Mephisto Mask. The drawing later played a huge role in the first meeting with the mask maker in Bali. And for thousands of actors all over the world. But we are a few years ahead of that experience. Unfortunately. It was a damn good performance.

Warrior on the path of the heart!

June 16, 1988, is my real spiritual birthday…that day, I arrived in Bali for the first time. I had just turned 37, and huge eagle wings unfolded and took me over Bali,s biggest volcano Gunung Agung, where all the Balinese gods dwell, welcoming me with laughter and mantras.

I just don’t know anything about 37 as well I didn’t know anything about Saturn’s return when I turned 28. When I look at the number it is 9 years from Saturn Return. It was those 9 years Van Gogh used to do all his paintings. And then he died, but not for his own hand. For some, 37 will be the highlight of life, for me, it was a renewed vitality that took off from another platform that I had never lived from before. It was wild before. Now, it just got better and more confrontational. I never mentally or spiritually returned to Denmark again.

"Is it your fault if you remind others of dreams they don't want to have? And who can blame the GROUP for its resistance to you or for the life-and-death struggle that follows? These people are fighting for their lives, for equilibrium, for homeostasis - yes, for the perpetuation of history. "Don't disturb us more than we can handle," they say. Arnold Mindell. (Book Title unknown)"

In Bali, I found my inner child again. I was allowed to be who I wanted to be. And Balinese Humor and my humor fit together vividly. In the following years, it became important when I came back to Denmark after my trips to Bali to measure how long my inner child could stay alive.

On my first Bali trip, I did not find Antonin Artaud. I find elements of it in the finest of the dances where they do not entertain. It is the most impossible because it is a tourist show and not a ceremony. And in many performances, they must reach out to the audience and entertain.

It becomes clear to me that it is an exhausted Indonesia I visit, as the money disappears into the wrong pockets. So, you have to work hard to survive. The notable dancers, too. Compromises for food.

In all the searching days in and days out, I finally found a house with only one wall of masks, all unique and creative, carved and painted. Radiating Charisma of unknown force. This is the man I need.

The master is the Mask artist/Mask maker Ida Bagus Anom. It didn’t take many minutes before the two artists clinched this topic on their first meeting around the first of July 1988.
We could both hear the god’s applause from Gunung Agung. It is a genuine instinct, where the real art spirals from. Ida Bagus Is an honorary title for those persons who are born into the Brahmin clan. It means “The Good.” The Female Brahmin Honorary title, Is IDA AYU, “The Beautiful.” It also indicates a possibly huge amount of knowledge and spiritual wisdom. When he saw my drawing from Mephisto, he immediately hammered his index finger on the drawing, looked up at me, and asked when do you go home. About 14 days. Give me a copy of the drawing, and I will make a mask for you. NOW.

At the same time, I reached a chapter in a Danish book about Niels Bohr, The Danish theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory. The title of the book is THE INDIVIDUABLE, by Thor Nørretranders, I see, to my great surprise, that Niels Bohr, according to the book, in his search for the solution to the crucial principles of his science and unable to go any further finds out that it was already written down in the old Hindu scriptures. He started to unite the two worlds. If Niels Bohr can, so can I.

"CONTRARIA SUNT COMPLEMENTA" "THE CONTRARY IS THE COMPLEMENT")

From 1988 to his death in 2020, Anom and I created a gallery of fantastic masks the first group was dedicated To the Actors: The Grotesque (for Russia) and the Criminals. The Celebrities. (Investigate if a photo holds on to certain things about the person in the Photo – It does.!!) The opera Singers. The Hieronymus Bosch mask from his painting Jesus Carrying the Cross. Angels from old painters’ paintings or frescos. Later, another set of angel masks. (created from the heart) No Fear of Death mask. Inner Child Masks. Painted by Children from UBUD. Gold Leaf decorated Healing masks. The Banana Leaf Mask was Created from the images of a sunset seen through a banana leaf. The Banana Leaf mask is full of light and ease. The first time it was in use, the actress was singing “The Sun Only Shine on Me, The Sun Only Shine for Me.” And she radiated the most amazing light! Such a distinct power of an image raises a need for many conversations for those in charge. This is not a toy and a craven for an ethical dialog among those in charge is required.

“Nirvana Masks” were made as an eminent support to Anom’s House after September 11, 2001. And some of the crown jewelry, the 3 TAKSU MASKS. Taksu/ Charisma/ Duende. it is a human quality we all have, more or less, but it can be activated through the musicians and the dancers. Many of those Charisma dances around the world operate with similar gestures and strong will force.

We began the work east-west on the artistic level we both came from. Placing my drawings in front of him year by year wakes up his instinct/ his aesthetic Arrest. In all those years, we worked intensely together on finding the mask material that could give us access to what is the basis for Artaud's description of the Balinese Theater. What did he see and feel that was Beyond the Beyond? Anom was also a brilliant ceremonial dancer but was not sure about the beyond-beyond.

I got my MEPHISTO mask on time, it is wonderful. I only know of one Russian student who accidentally used it, and I have heard that my shared apartment in Copenhagen those years was intruded on by my roommate's friends who used the mask.. "The road of sighs" is what I call the road to the Balinese airport. It's terrible. I do not want to leave the Bali Island and their beautiful people.

I was asked to a meeting at one of the 3 Danish state Theatre Schools. The school is located in HC Andersen's birthplace; the city is called Odense, which means Odin's Shrine. Odin, in Norse mythology, has a similarity to the Hindu God Shiva.

They wanted to offer me a job! Which Andersen fairy tale should I die in? "The Brave Tin Soldier," "The Ugly Duckling," or "Clumsy Hans." First and foremost, I have to teach them with the material I have, and it is not enough, but it could be created. I show up with a NO on my lips. But let me hear a bit more about what it is and why the school has a bad reputation aura around it. More than usual for Theatre schools.

A phone call from a teacher explained to me that many students lose their enthusiasm after just one year at the school, so all the talent and enthusiasm they saw in the beginning disappears. Why? Can you help us to find the monster!?

As a carrot, they want me to go with nine students to GITIS in Moscow. It's an exchange program. We will go there, and the Russian students will go with us back to Denmark. That's completely unheard of and will never happen, I laughed. But it was a socio-political-environment program called Next Stop Soviet, and all the crucial factors were cleared. NO, I DON’T BELIEVE! It's tempting, but for me, it's also risky. If I compare the material I had up in my sleeves, and I do, with what I saw of qualities in Russian Theatre and education on my visit in 1984, I will be blown out of the country and asked to come again when I know more about theatre. I went there for the first time on behalf of my education and with the blessings from the Danish Ministry of Culture. I was a guest in Leningrad, now Sct.Petersburg!

Ok, a yes for now and a prolonged contract, so I couldn’t be kicked out of the students after 14 days. Which was one of the rumors.

I slowly crawled under the skin of the school’s students. And very soon we had our first meeting!

But the team in Odense doesn’t know what to exchange with. Maybe that is what “The Brave Tin Soldier” was supposed to be used for. But he only had one leg. But found the love. I also have no suggestion that I think we can exchange with. Compared to Russian theatre and literature, we are a desert.

I ask them to find a solution, and then I will come back 14 days later.

When I returned, they all sat with ashen faces, and some even looked angry at me. That is why I was hired: to find an artistic solution for the nine students. We can find it together, yes, but I do not belong to the rescue team.

They have not been able to imagine anything, and it might be connected with the fact that they are a GROUP and not an ENSEMBLE.

I remembered this atmosphere from my education program. 3 always talk without listening, but they have no solution when it finally comes to the big decisions. Or they overwhelmed us with manipulation and tons of gibberish.

A group is a gathering of people where one or three always speak out and give sparse space to those who also want to say something but who choose to keep quiet for the sake of peace. They bow their heads, and it becomes a mental torment for the individual who "unwillingly submits."

Here was the reason for the lack of enthusiasm at the end of the second semester.

An ensemble is a gathering of people who give each other space so that everyone is heard and that everyone lifts and solves problems together. But that has to be taught by well-educated teachers I didn’t have the material to break that fear down that in fact, is the reason for those Groups. But it's waiting for me.

There was enough intelligence in those people, and there was wisdom. But no art to be exposed yet!!

It's a bad soup we're sitting in up to our necks - or I. Because that was me, wasn't it!! My damn situation doesn't even exist as a fairy tale. They've already fired me.

As we all sit there more or less lost and without creativity my “inspiration helpers” come along, who I've met a few times before. At that point, you have no idea what it is. But it's liberating and comes suddenly. It is a force of unrest.

“I can go to Bali in March and talk to the mask maker I just met. Maybe he can make 18 masks we can exchange with??? When we have the masks on, we can all speak with extreme body language, and everyone will understand it because the spoken language we use is gibberish. Gibberish/ Nonsense is universal.
Even Plays of Shakespeare or Anton Chekhov can be formed in Russian / Dane. Letter to GITIS if we can do the mask work. It got cleared.

I prepared myself and went to Bali in March 1989.

I financed all of that part: Airfare, Hotel, and the cost of 18 masks.!

I am standing again in Anom's house at the same place where we met less than a year ago. Why are you here? You didn’t get my letter? No. I lost it. What now? If he didn’t have the time? A long, killer trip for no reason.! I need 18 masks!!

Why 18? Is that wrong..." No, NO 1 plus 8 is 9, and since nine is the best number in Bali, this project will be a success." Let's do it. And consolidate our artistic collaboration. “Remember only to touch the drawing on a good day!” I will have half made, that is, 9, which I can take home. The other nine will be sent. I have to make 18 drawings only when joy arises in my body. It needs an overwhelming focus and inspiration.

It is the Balinese New Year. NYePI I hear that they will bring big offerings to the beach the night before Bali total turn into stillness and no light and no airplanes to and from for 24 hours. NO cars etc. I have a nice photo from where all at the same time lift a flower over their heads and pray. That was the last picture in my film. We did not have digital cameras at that time. I get so sad every time I see the photo, for soon after next to the scene of the offerings and prayers, 10 men go into a wild trance…. And now I have no photos! But for the first time, I saw something that was above the above.

I have written permission with me that says that I can teach masks at the theater school GITIS. We are traveling behind a fragile iron curtain, and it is still called the Soviet Union...but not much longer...

What now? A week after arrival, we were allowed to work with the masks……and the three artistic professors, Cheifec, Oleg Kudrjasov, and Natalja Zvereva, whose competent teaching I had never received or seen from others ever, made an indelible impression on me.

They sit and take notes with concentrated stone faces, and the only thing I think about is this spoiled and massive propaganda-infested body that stands on the raw pine boards stage. Helpless but must radiate courage and knowledge after two days of work in Denmark. What if they don’t like it or can’t use it?

One mask is special. For two days before our departure from Denmark, we had to prepare the masks, whose functions were unknown to all of us. That was our total investment in preparation! Two days. So, one of the masks is extremely aggressive. The first Nine masks are built as a kingdom. The King, the Queen, The Prince, the Princess, the Jester the Premier Minister, the Clown, and two Crazy soldiers. One of the soldiers was a very aggressive one, leaning towards rage. So the rage was so uncanny, and he moved towards the corner of the room so I couldn't touch his back and calm him down. So we just let him be and started to do other things, and that took the air out of the rage.

If I feel it is too much for the actor, I can say TAKE THE MASK OFF, and she/ he must do it. If not, they are in another world, and I will be the one that talks the actors out of the masks or wait until I can grab the masks and run away and stop the influence of the mask. But I am also the first one to knock down because I as a teacher represent the teacher/father/brother from the student’s own history.

On the second day, another student with the same mask does the same thing… The intelligent group leaders know better: It is plagiarism from the day before. But I was near the mask, and I saw the same pair of eyes. No one except me knew that fire. When we get to the day of the first hour of mask work at GITIS, I place the aggressive mask on the cutest Russian, and she transforms into the same as the two students in Denmark. But she knew nothing. She had never seen that mask work before. They all have claws and a tight fist.

When the class is over, all three professors come up to me with big smiles all over their faces and say that my masks work as really good students of Michael Chekov. All three of us are taught by one of Michael Chekhov's most famous students, MARIE KNEBEL.

When they find out that none of us know Chekov and that his material lives so vividly in the masks, everything takes a turn, and here starts a new chapter for me. From this moment, all will be changed. For all of us. Nothing in the mask work will be as before. It is much more unique than anyone knows about. It is itching all over my body to go back to Anom in Bali and tell him that we have hit something very special and unknown And unveil the unknown qualities in the mask work.

There is much more inside each mask that, in the future, will be a great inspiration for the students at the theatre school, and in combination with Michael Chekhov’s exercises, both materials will be enriched, and vice versa, as well as the students. Anom’s Work and my work. It is a theatre historical Miracle. SEPTEMBER 1989 GITIS MOSCOW. .

But first, we have to exchange. We have to take the Russian students back to Denmark. But they are not given the plane tickets. Not until the evening before departure the next morning do they receive the tickets and can travel to Denmark. It is still an impossible thought. But it happens, and on the entire long two-hour trip to Denmark, not a single Russian expresses joy or excitement. Not before the plane's wheels hit the runway at Copenhagen Airport do, they all burst into a roar of jubilation. They told us that at any time, the KGB can call the plane back as long as it is in the air. TERROR. I am invited back to GITIS - but this time to instruct and teach mask technique together with the text. NEW. But if all of Chekhov's material is found in the masks, then it is also found in Bali.

And here arises the phenomenon from Niels Bohr That two opposites meet, and something new and elegant arises. ЭТТА КЛАСС.

VYSOTSKY. Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (Владимир Семёнович Высоцкы (January 25, 1938 – July 25, 1980) was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor whose career had an enormous and lasting effect on Russian culture. I had the great artistic pleasure of being a spectator at the performance or artistic, spiritual event that honored Vysotsky. The Taganka Theater was packed to the brim, and the audience who could not get a seat were offered to stand, and they did so for the two hours that the show lasted.

Vysotsky was an icon in his own right and almost a god. His early death in 1980 occurred 8 years before he could reap the fruits of the impact of his protest songs and the change of the old political system in Russia. The performance was not entertainment but a gathering of many united souls who were charged and shaken together. The performance had the character of the Russian church tradition. Solemn and dignified. Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov Ю́рий Петрович Люби́мов (September 30 (1917 – October 5, 2014) was a Russian stage actor and director associated with the Taganka Theater, which he founded in 1964. It was an icon. An icon has a double perspective. It looks at you no matter where you stand in the room. You are never alone. God is always with you, and you are with him. It has a very profound effect on the audience. And here I am again, an inch or maybe closer to revealing the secret of the Balinese theater. Many times, the actors stand completely still on the stage and look directly at the audience while one of Vysotsky's songs plays across the auditorium. We are together we listen together. And I am sitting there between the Taganka Theater and Bali. The performance is so full of theater that it flies around the room like unknown energies and affects my body so that I can't leave the theater...or, for that matter, it is so full of theater in all directions that it is impossible to get out of the doors. There is a certain scene that is unforgettable. The actors stand still on the stage and look directly at the audience. From the ceiling comes a five-by-ten-meter frame that is slowly lowered over the heads of the actors who appear between the large rows as it is and is supposed to function as an auditorium for the audience. There, a scene is played, and then the frame is driven back but hoisted up from the back seat steel rail so that you can hear and see the seats slam together like a theatrical cacophony of something that can begin or end. None of the actors moved an inch, and the frame hit no one, but the stage floor, and the scene started.

Whatever theatre we saw was of a high standard. No more, thank you. I am full, and I needed it, nothing like it would be around me for a long, long time.
There was a little fine episode between a Russian student and me upon our arrival. It is the student’s first meeting. We are all brought to GITIS before we know where we are going to stay.
The Russians think I am too young to be a professor, and I end up over in the corner from where I can observe the whole “circus.;” But I am not alone Natascha asks me with sweet, sparkling eyes.” Who is your favorite Russian author? Luckily, I am so deeply involved in Russian literature that it is easy to give a quick and honest answer, Dostoevsky.!!!
“Me too, Me too, and laugh and start dancing. “We are together. We are together,” she sings while dancing with joy! No one can separate human beings. We will always find something east-west/north-south that we can share.

3 Wings of Fire on a Mystery tour

I was invited back to GITIS and teach and direct Strindberg... A collage of fragments from various works. 2 months alone in Moscow at a time when there was an unusual shortage of everything, and when a cola was so full of addictive caffeine that it was enough for 10 hours of uninterrupted work.

The students and I shared what we could find of food around Moscow. It was something for an overfat spoiled Dane who eats and consumes whatever he wants because there is so much of it in Denmark that if everyone on earth should live like the Danes…we would need 3 more GLOBES.

Yes so before going to a long day rehearsal, I drank one Coca-Cola besides that the student’s emphatic care helped me a lot.
The class of 18 students was separated into small ensembles, and the 4 director students got one of them each. And I would visit the classes and enjoy their progress during the rehearsal days. It was my montages of text that it all whirled around.
I got an emergency call from Iliad and walked to his rehearsal room: Iliad explained to me that his scene in Strindberg's play, THE FATHER, is supposed to collapse towards the end of the play due to the psychological pressure of his wife. But since the father is a military person who is also wearing a uniform, the play cannot be performed in Russia. The student instructor is the KGB's designated informant in the class. So here I come up against severe issues and must tiptoe dancing delicately and have to deal with freedom of expression in arts, Strindberg’s idea of a father collapsing in an army uniform, art, and my safety, and the democratic artistic Danish integrity. It didn't work. He was given carte blanche to cut and trim to fit the norm of Russian respect for army politics and society.
капитулирует is the Russian word the wife uses at the end of the play when her husband is close to madness. KAPITULERITZZ! Do you Surrender The drama starts when the wife wants their daughter to go to a religious school and the father opposes it.
Who is the strongest?

Before I agreed to solve the task of the Odense Theatre School's travel plans and the lack of enthusiasm among students and teachers for that matter, I was already involved as an all-over consultant in a huge project that converted an old power plant into a cultural center, and another more interesting project to build an oval theatre building on a large floating barge as an alternative Theater-stage that could sail from port to port in Denmark. THE FLOATING THEATRE or THEATRE PRO, as we later renamed it. Writing and directing of a Total Theatre Project were also planned, and since the school had very conveniently changed management it was only a matter of finding a way out and further managing the collected material from Bali and Russia and having it developed and implanted SLOWLY into Danish Theatre.

But there is an evil spirit that needs to be suffocated. Two students are not allowed to participate in LES MISERABLE on the Theater's main stage. The two students asked me if I would help them, and we agreed to make Shanley's; Danny and the deep blue sea. Or Danny and Roberta, as it was called in Danish. We were assigned a room in the basement that was called the “subterranean vault”. We got three old spots “buckets” as they were called, and a cardboard wall, and behind that cardboard we have the exit door where all the garbage bins are full of the trash from the theatre. Every time they emptied them they got full of shit again. In addition, what was meant to be an insult. We also got a whole lot of unnecessary comments from various employees when we passed through the canteen to our stage. The two students were a bit surprised. Remember I was stage manager for 8 years. This is nothing!!! If you can’t handle all this right now then drop working in the theatre. This is just the beginning. And I follow the Empty Space philosophy. So, what we had to use for the play was fantastic and inspiring. They just now will know that I was full of gratitude for delivering such artistic help.

That made our survival muscle tighten up, and I laid out a strategy and a production plan that would give us all the advantages. Any Harassment would be transformed to our advantage. One time Stage manager always Stage manager!!!

It was chilled to return to the tone and the evil with a grateful look back at my first years as a stage manager, and enter the combat for the two young actors and guide them through the mud-throwing. As part of the research work, we used a film titled Brooklyn, where there is a boy who defends a man he has chosen to protect. He stands on a mound of dirt with the Archangel Michael's sword and bravely defends his friend. It was replayed in our everyday lives without us knowing it.

During the work, we discovered that Shanley had consciously or unconsciously used some energies in the piece that were unknown in the stage and script arts – at least for all three of us. So we used it scene by scene clarified it and loaded it with that energy. Another unknown tool to place in the already heavy toolbox. Lotte Arnsbjerg and Thomas Bo Larsen worked 6 hours every day. 6 hours or more is my standard, less than 6 hours is nonsense. The two actors filled every rehearsal day with vitality and art. Yes, they are ARTISTS.
The play was an overwhelming success, and especially our "overuse" of Shanley's implanted secret, was monitored by me, and saw that it had a profound impact on the audience. The two actors went straight to fame and left the school and Les Miserable behind them forever…..outstandingly performed….. ……Congratulations artists. We separated. I had to go to Bali and get some very special masks the life force gave me wings. Now, it was to consolidate the magic.

I later used the “Shanley concepts” in the total theatre performance with the same shocking powerful effect. When I write this I send a letter to Mister Shanley but haven’t heard from him. So we keep the secrets.

On behalf of what the Russians saw of Danish Theater during our exchange visit, they recommended that I open a Michael Chekhov Studio in Denmark. As soon as possible. And I did. In my hometown. Aarhus. I had a couple of good travels forth and back between Russia to gain more knowledge about Michael Chekhov and much more.

We had a good amount of artistic material as a foundation, where the 18 masks filled up the material box plus 9 new masks created from the police Mug shots grabbed from a garbage bin in Paris\ by a Danish artist. At the same time, books and written notes piled up.

After my Strindberg performance at GITIS, the professors gave me a booklet of notes from Michael Chekhov’s happiest years outside Russia. Kaunas in Lithuania. I got it translated as quickly as possible, and in that collection of exercises, there are a lot of ensemble exercises. I am now able to teach a school how not to be a group but an ensemble.
Rudolf Steiner. Masks made in Bali and Michael Chekhov were like throwing a bomb into the crowd of amateur theatres, members of groups that were amateurs, who were soon amateurs, performing as actors. The material of the Michael Chekhov Studio indicated professionalism. And there was certainly no room for that. It was an interesting first year. The students had to carry a lot, especially about the masks made in Bali. It almost looked like a regular witch hunt with roots in Luther's adherence to the Catholic Witch Burning. There was just the curse thing about it that the witch could not be arrested because the masks did not have spirits and ghosts incorporated but simply gave people their will fore and freedom back. But that was also terrible enough. If you want to talk about it and criticize my material, come and confront me. But no, no....they should not be possessed by evil spirits. It is also nicer to gossip.

That summer, Michael Chekhov Studio went to Moscow for an international Michael Chekhov conference. All of a sudden we were outside our own small country, and there we met artists and people who worked with the same material as us, where mask work and brilliance of det Danish acting students were valued highly, and where we were filled with so much inspiration and wisdom that we got our ballast through this meeting and many meetings later. It was in stark contrast to the nonsense we were met with in the small hometown..

The material is not easy to handle at such international conferences. Already at our first one, we were confronted with all sides of Chekhov's interests. The American sentimental and commercial Chekhov The Russian artistic and realistic Chekhov. The congregation of Rudolf Steiner's believers. And the Western European pragmatic theater tradition.
So the first thing I decided was to find out where the artists are and where the non-artists are. Who makes theater and who doesn't? At the first conference, I met Slava Kokorin. He wanted to check my students and their work with the masks. After the first class, he decided to work only with the Danish students.
Slava Kokorin wasn’t an unknown character in the Russian Theatre and he was boss for the regional theatre in Irkutsk. On the spot, we got an invitation to go to Lake Baikal in Siberia for a summer conference with only Russian actors and Danish Actors. And only theater. It is 1993. We were going to sleep in tents and work in the open wild area near the lake of Baikal. It sounded exotic and it was more than that.

At the faculty meeting at the same conference, the door opened cautiously, and a Russian person crept in and asked permission to sit next to me. YES Sir, But only YOU. It was the famous Russian actor Alexander Kaidanovsky, whom I knew from Andrei Tarkovsky's film STALKER. I watched that film repeatedly in a 14-day script analysis course at the STATES THEATRE SCHOOL. We used that film to analyze its dramaturgical construction, content, and the unknown effect that came out of the slow pace. After the meeting was over

I ran after Kaidanovsky to ask him if I could have a conversation with him the next day – if he was still here. He was, and we had an interesting discussion about his work and Tarkovsky's way of working with actors. Wisdom. He said they made three films – one was technically destroyed by the laboratory, and everyone said it was the Russian authorities who did it, and then two more films were made. He didn't know that the film was written over the spiral model with a central scene. He just did what he was told and expected the film editor to do the rest.

All of a sudden, he got distracted and told me that everyone was talking about your mask work, can I come and see a class? Yes YOU can. And there he came and saw it and left the conference shortly after. I would see him again a few years later for a conference when I visited the Vagthangov school on Arbat Street in the middle of Moscow. Ok, we got our ballast in place and strengthened our Will, Feeling, and Spirit.

Michael Chekhov left Russia when he was 37 years old. He gets lost in the heyday of European fascism, and there is little that gives him artistic freedom or encouragement.

But he gets a few years in KAUNAS in Lithuania, which in his small workbook left behind really seems like the happiest time outside of Russia. He is also close to his homeland and his language and hopes that the dictatorship will collapse as soon as possible so that he can return home.

It does not happen, and he leaves Europe. His last station in Europe is Dartington Hall in southern England, and when it becomes clear that German fascism can destroy everything in southern England, Chekhov moves again, this time to the United States. He did some play and got in touch with some famous names or opposite and even though time and progress eat up their fame and reputations some still keep going and keep them alive.

He played a character in the Movie Spellbound directed by Alfred Hitchcock

And there he died of alcoholism in 1955. In Los Angeles. 64 years old.

His sweet P. A. told me that on Chekhov's deathbed, she called him from Long Island to LA...and he talked about his future...I'm sure when I get out of this hospital I'll start working with masks. It's not the last thing he says, but close because the next day he dies.

Thirty-three years later I arrived in Bali to start working with masks. Thirty-three years is the orbit of the moon, and that's it.
Sometimes I say that I spiritually picked it up from him. Who knows.
I get headhunted and go to the US for the first time in 1997...with no idea what theatre I'll encounter there.' I packed a little of each of the masks and hoped it would suit the well-being of the method actors. I had my angel masks with me. They didn't work in Denmark, so maybe the New Yorkers could breathe some life into them.

And at a Chekhov Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Centre, I am invited to teach there and elsewhere. Eugene O’Neill and the program for young actor’s aspirants at the National Theatre Institute will be my base for all the 15 years I have been working and living in NYC since 1998. The base is extremely healthy and inspiring. But I have also been at NYU all those years in different salary ranges and conditions.

DAMN!

A final interlude of my exit from Denmark, I got a call from a Swedish actor, Thomas Gabrielson. I'm a split second away from being off the phone and the office for a month and go home and do the final repacking for Bali. Let me get out and over to the sun in BAli. He wants me to direct a play called EVIL! dramatized after a book by Jan Guillaume Sweden. Now I say no. Loudly and irritated. I can't, I don't want to and I'm so busy with a lot of other fantastic things. And then came one of these ping pong arguments that are a bit silly. Ok, I give in and ask him to send the play to Ubud in Bali, but under my nickname, Mister Topeng, otherwise they can't find me. Good luck with the mail. I later asked Thomas if it was at that moment with the strange nickname that I felt for a split second: No, let's drop it, I'll find another one. So So,that's what he said.

That year is like dedicated to me. It is all about Children. There are now moments in my days in Bali where I only cry, laugh or get angry. like something got infused into my body that just all of a sudden collapse and give in to the island much earlier than ususal. I am starting to realize that it is not me who is doing this work, an army of helpers and holy priests from a completely different world guides me around for all eternity. First of all, it is the first time I see a huge newly built baby statue in Buleng on the way to my homestay ARTINI 2. It is not long after my arrival in my room that my travel and winter clothes are packed away and I am ready to soak up the healing rays of the sun and drink a cold beer. My good friend of many years Yan laughs at my overstuffed Christmas body and says that I look like the big baby they just put up. Why did they build it….to honor the inner child and children in general. It is not a sculpture, it is a temple.

When the theatre text arrives few days later, I open it and read the title Evil... It's perhaps not a bad title to use as a farewell gesture to Denmark. But I don’t know? I don't read the manuscript from the beginning, I open the piece randomly and read a little, and then I close the manuscript again, and read another page. Often, I try to figure out if there is a central scene or not. Last year I received a very important mask that forms the entire framework of the mask collection. It is called Durga and is a transformation of Shiva's wife Uma. The mask look like a monster.
It is extremely powerful and has a powerful image implanted by the mask maker. Ida Bagus Anom. It is not my design, and it is a traditional Balinese mask that cannot be used or being in other poisoned hands that will use it for commercial or any "Partylike Events". anything other than being in the collection. And to protect the masks and me. Last year I received a very important mask that forms the entire framework of the mask collection. It is called Durga and is a transformation of Shiva's wife Uma. It is evil. This December there is a ceremony in the village of Padang Tegal for their Durga mask. It is over four evenings, and on the third evening the Durga mask is brought to life by a trained Balinese. There are 15 people in the organization who look after the mask and when there are ceremonies, they are the ones who protect the mask and the man who has the mask on his head. The ceremony is called Nyambleh and is meant as a ceremony that makes both the Durga mask and its counterpart the Barong mask more powerful so that they can protect the village. When using the Durga mask, all lights must be off, but they can't figure out how to turn off a light bulb, so luckily for me the whole visual image is on my retina. Monkey Forest. Suddenly the mask falls off or runs out into the forest and I run after it because I want to see what that mask does during such a ceremony. But I stop 50 meters from the place where the climax of the ceremony is to take place, the sacrifice of a piglet and a chicken. Then they bring the Durga Mask back to the Temple, right in front of me so I get a glimpse of the power that is in the mask again. I have been standing there all alone and before it all starts, there is a friendly Balinese man who leans over towards me and wishes me a happy new year!!! Yeah, it's 12 o'clock! And then the teacher comes up to him. Do you believe the image of Durga?? There it is. It is a powerful image that is placed in the mask. I get home late. It is peaceful for the Balinese this year; they did not celebrate New Year's Eve. They do so after the original 12 months in the calendar are over and it is the end of February. The new year starts with me writing a letter to Thomas Gabrielson that he should have personally. Because 48 hours after my return to Denmark I am going to La Abadia and Jose Gomez's fine theater ensemble in Madrid Spain. At the airport on the way to Madrid he receives my letter about my artistic intentions. And the performance follows that premise. Once it was the music that made its impression on the audience, this time it is an image that constantly lives in my body and that colors the strength and courage of the text of the performance. Thomas Gabrielson is an excellent actor and it will be a blast of a performance that has the TAKSU / CHARISMA concept completely incorporated. THANK YOU THOMAS GABRIELSEN.

I experience the pyramid structure at NYU, and I experience Sanford Meisner's Technique completely in my body. Two beds...and a certain text...Spoon River. What the hell do you do in the classes...make love? And read the same book. It was sacrilege...These studios were the old religious sects that had occupied the country many years ago, they lived on in the New York theater schools and probably many other educational oases...they had built up the palisades. And as I moved in and out of different programs, I was often lost...To my big surprise, Chekhov wasn’t well-liked in many places especially when I had to build my own Studio 5 in Brooklyn. But I had to break the palisades so everyone could reach my work. I am not semireligious about this.

Before anything else, I got invited to create a performance there in the holy shrine named The Actors Studio, but I also got invited into one of their famous Sessions and got the taste of something.

Arthur Penn was the famous film director to carry out the execution. I didn't know that was done there. We are colleagues, we are humanists and democratically raised, so why have a theater that is a slaughterhouse?

Since I didn't know that, I walked on stage like I was blind folded and happy, alone with my masks, and when it was all over and I was still alive on stage and started to pack up, I was surrounded by many members of the Actors Studio who praised me for not letting myself be confused by the sword that was swung over my head over and over again. They said they had never experienced anything like it and praised me for my strength and calm response to everything that was thrown at me. I thought back to my years as a stage manager...now it all started to fall into place.

Another brick to the experience…If I can make it there I can make it everywhere…….

I have worked at the formidable Purchase College in White Plains with Israel Hicks and Dean Irby as the best caretaker of all in all the programs. Actors Centre in midtown Manhattan 8 glorious years with great honest artists as Lloyd Richard, Earl Gister, Grace Zandarski, Felix Ivanov Jed Diamond and Jane Nichols. I started Studio 5 in West Village Manhattan and ended up at Classon Avenue in Brooklyn. From there we educated actors healed actors created performances for off off Broadway;.

Many students preferred to meet with me and work privately through some of the masks that had given them personal surprises. That is quite understandable. And I got into WHAT THE BUTLER SAW. I had I already in my blood. NO surprises no moral hick ups…just tell it as it is. So Studio 5 became another Michael Chekhov Studio in New York.

In 2012, when the disaster struck, my heart valve had almost become so useless that I would die if I didn’t have surgery…they promised me that my iconic walk across the Brooklyn Bridge would be intact so I could do it again…I did. But by the time the surgeries were over and I was able to walk and function again, I had acquired a disability—I had become extremely sensitive to cold weather, and New York can be cold in the winter. So in 2014, I moved to Bali. I left something amazing behind. But I had no choice. Unfortunately. It feels more like a heart attack coming on, and it’s not something you can do anything about. I arrived in Bali on June 1, 2014,

However, I have a little ballast in my backpack: I am facing an event that I would otherwise have been spared all these years in NYC…a breakdown in my washing machine frustrates me, and I seek refuge in my nearest café at 10:00. 10:30 P.M

..I go in and get a free glass of white wine! at exactly 11pm, which is the cafe's closing time, the door opens with a bang and three masked boys jump into the cafe...which they've been keeping a close eye on for a few days or weeks, but had never seen. me there at 11pm...so I wasn't part of their calculations. And here I am, unwilling or unable to join this team and foil their plans. I think it's some of my students playing a joke on me, but when they push my white wine glass to the floor, I know it's definitely not my students. They would never dare!! I then have one of the stolen police guns pointed right at my face POINT BLANK. I stand there fixated on this black hole and its rifle barrel...and say to God, it's so damn bad that I've had such a good life and had so much fun that the last thing I'm taking with me from this life is a black hole and a rifle barrel.
Whereupon the receiver on the other end says that I should look for handles....such a police pistol is big and here stands a skinny boy with his worn sweatshirt pulled over his hand and the handle....which is not there.... then my gaze begins to wander up his arm until I look him in the eye with a friendly smile...whereupon he gives me a steady push so that I end up standing with my back to the two other boys and that is probably the most traumatic thing, as long as I can see the pistol, I'm sure. It's a philosophy from the nuclear physicist Niels Bohr. The one who acts first becomes the victim. He had equipped all his employees with water pistols and unprepared they had to pull the pistol in the middle of the work and the one who pulled first was sprayed with water.
Continues many weeks from now

OM SWASTIASTU…if you got that far.

To be continue