An Invitation to Conversation May 9th 2021
DuVersity Online
Our trio for this event will be spread across the globe from Costa Rico to the UK and India. They are members of what started as the Beelzebub Quartet engaged in rendering the text of Beelzebub’s Tales into theatrical form. Our key person will be Jesai Jayhmes, actor, director and consultant who has recently triumphed in creating a performance of King Lear in his new theatre with leading actors from Costa Rico. He will be joined by Tabasheer Zutshi an artist living in Bangalore, India who took on the role of Beelzebub’s granddaughter in our production of The New Design under the name of Zeinab, the heroine of Gurdjieff’s never performed ‘ballet’ ‘The Struggle of the Magicians’. The New Design will be presented at the All and Everything Conference this year, when its origin and genesis will be explained.
There has always been a deep connection between theatre and the fourth way. In Beelzebub’s Tales Gurdjieff has his hero enjoying the Saturday improvisations in ancient Babylon devoted to theatre, a word he explained as meaning ‘reflector of reality’. Gurdjieff’s pupil John Bennett took the ideas into cosmology as The Dramatic Universe. Theatre and the dramatic arts afford insights into the nature of what is called ‘the Divided Self’ that features in Bennett’s psychology and for him was evident in the works of Shakespeare.
Our conversation will begin bearing in mind the Bard’s declaration that All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances. Who knows where it will go? In the second half, when we invite participants into the conversation, some of you will be invited into taking part in a spontaneous production for several people. The key to this will be the ‘method’ Gurdjieff wrote about in Beelzebub where the exacting requirement is instant response without any so-called ‘thinking’ or ‘preparation’.
As preparation for the session we recommend you try the experiment of ‘playing a role’ you are NOT accustomed to in some transaction you enter into, such as buying something in a shop, where you encounter other people.
