Marvelous Happenings

Its happening fast- moving in quick… this many hued, super lush, fantastic miracle of beautiful people, playful exploration and creative collaboration colliding and careening into existence…
The Beauty Engine Evolution Revolution Traveling Road Show with Peepshowminigolf
-A Rise of The Marvelous, The Wondrous, The Beautiful!

10 positive principles, themes and qualities exhibited this past weekend at The Lightning In A Bottle Festival in Santa Barbara by The Evolutionary Revolutionary Superstars-
1 RADICAL COLLABORATION & RADICAL SELF-EXPRESSION
it was super interesting to watch this balance play out, gauging commitment to the collective vs. personal indulgence and expression…..the weekend showed us BOTH
were a powerful component in its success
2 OPENESS AND TOLERANCE
we had a wide range of folks & sub-cultures present and y’all were pretty cool with it all
3 LOVE OF PLAY, LOVE TO PLAY
play unleashed big time novelty, brought us closer, brought out the kid in us
4 COMMUNITY-HEARTEDNESS
watching people experience the value of being accountable and taking an active interest in the welfare of the group experience…. building trust, being vulnerable and experience the value of being a complete circuit of GIVING AND RECEIVING, witnessed many awesome moments of closeness-connection, shared their gifts
4 TAPPING THE POWER OF POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT
saw the value of working in these genres: improve, theater, bardic/song, puppetry, burlesque, vaudeville, sideshow, carnival- circus arts, street theater, festival/fair celebration, storytelling
5 BEAUTY ENGINE FRAMEWORK-ING
guides did the guide thing, BE provided a common language, vision
6 NON-LINEAR STRUCTURE
‘non-sequiter cue cards’ conjuring a potent surreality, openness to ‘go with the flow’ as the Universe dished out technical challenges, invoking our surrealist orgins
7 SHAMANIC THEMES
the intentional use of ‘Medicine’, the Hero’s Journey, working with Allies/Archetypal energies, themes of Initiation all came into play
8 PLAYFUL SEXUALITY
sexy came to play but didn’t rule the game…sweet!
9 COMMITMENT TO SERVE, PERSONAL/COLLECTIVE EVOLUTION
almost everyone on this trip exhibited a desire to serve both their own and collective evolution, to be a steward of ‘Evolutionary Fire’
10 AN INVITATIONAL SPIRIT
seeing members of our crew reach out to others, explain things, invite others to play and not be exclusionary, the ‘lightning bottle’ gifts were well recieved


A Theater of the Marvelous

21 years ago, I found a personally influential book titled-
‘The Theater of The Marvelous- Surrealism and The Contemporary Stage’ in the UCSC library and this morning, found myself intuitively reaching for it again on my top shelf. As I leafed through key pages and passages, it came back to me in a flash…what I had been striving for all these years, the quest I had been on all these years…..
‘what are the tools, the community, the players and the vision to bring the wildly creative, gorgeous movement we know is coming into existence?’
How do we court Wonder, Awe and Sublimely Ridiculous Beauty- that life and The World may become The Grand Art Project we know it to be?
Can a movement be engineered?
Well, together, we have play tested the tools of Beauty Engine. It works.
We have found each other. The community of players- KS, Beauty Engine and all our colleague networks….
Collectively have honed our parts –our skills-our talents, our ability to improv on any theme.
We took it on the road, without rehearsal, and opened the portal magnificently.
Can a movement be engineered?
Signs point to yes.
Its upon us, and yes, at the The Party At The End of Time we really do get to play mini golf and wear tiny hats.
Video is going up soon on our multiple websites, talk of the touring road show is happening with SF’s most competent showman, adapting the show for corporate hire would be fairly easy, ideas for integrating PSMG with The EVOREVO show are flowing in. More non-linear. more Puppets, more games, more mythical nonsense, deeper journies….
I’m watching healing and major transformations occur quickly now in our community.
Our collective heart is strengthening, opening.
This us us-
We carry a current celebrated throughout history by so many before us….
Priestesses, Dakinis, Artists and Bards, Bacchantes and Dionysian- lovers of the Truth and Beauty way, the beatniks and hippies of the 60’s movement-40 years old this summer…
We are part of a tradition which has always brought new light in through the cracks of the old
The joy we feel when we’re together accelerates our inner fire and ignites those around us.
We are The Players of The Marvelous and a New Game emerges from our play.
The Finite Game of the old world, which is defined by winners and losers, is giving way to the far more attractive and appealing Infinite Game, which is defined by increasing quality of play for all players….
Lets make it so!

Some key quotes from ‘The Theater of The Marvelous’-

‘the Theater of the Marvelous is an art form whose quest is none other than that of understanding the relation of the individual to the universe. It is not a subjective art form in which the personal expression of the particular creator becomes the most important objective. On the contrary, it strives to attain a language or form of expression –whether verbal, visual, corporeal, or symbolic- that opens on to another dimension and permits that dimension to flood our vision in order to expand our consciousness to perceive the vast expanses of an infinitely unfolding reality. Each act of the ‘theater piece’ is an alchemical stage in the psychic evolution of the spectator, preparing him/her for the final transmutation which will only occur when they leave the theater.’

‘…it often embraces baroque excesses, reflecting the commingling of opposites and the paradoxical diversity of elements that yield a multidimensional vision.’

‘…it strives to awaken the dormant psychic powers of the spectator-as-participant so that they may rekindle the spark of intense inner vision within themselves and become open to the experience of a revitalized and more passionate level of existence, where the imagination suffuses reality and produces a magical world view.’

‘a hallmark of The Theater of The Marvelous is its constant striving to cross all frontiers and artificial boundaries, to weave together antinomical worlds in a new union libre, a fusion which defies the arbitrary, conventional categories separating dream from reality, desire from the act, spirit from matter, the temporal from the atemporal, and national linguistic barriers from an international spirit of unity.’

‘…thus from the point of view of the playwright of the Theater of The Marvelous, (Man), as spectator. Performer, or creator, is analogous to the metal that must be transformed by a psychic alchemy; and this may be accomplished by means of language or by means of an event.’

‘…the expression of the ideal of this reintegration of humanity into an expanded and impassioned life on earth is the goal of the new theater of surrealist origin.’

‘Art is the magical vision which helps man to become a seer through the reawakening of his imagination- imagination being like the souls eye; therein forms are outlined and preserved; thereby we behold the reflections of the invisible world; it is the glass of visions and the apparatus of magical life’

‘T.A.R….poetic images of the alchemical citadel/city –a representation of the cabala’s concept of eternity. The concept of eternity means the union of past, present and future. This citadel, this symbol of eternity, can be equated with the meaning of the concept of the archetype according to the Great Arcanum of The Tarot, for it is also a realm of androgyny, simultaneity, omnipresence, and omnipotence…also harmonious, eternally content, possessing ability to manifest any activity and consequently of being in the position to limit those activities.’