Tag: Shakespeare

The Dresser by Ronald Harwood, opens December 18th 2024 at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Florida

There are parallels between the practice of theatre and the practice of astrology.

“Oh yeah?” I hear you cry. “How does a planet or the stars in the sky correspond to the life of some out of work actor?”

Image courtesy of Unsplash

This is a valid question.

Consider: an actor gets a role. The parameters of the role are defined by the script. The expression of the role is guided, sometimes obstructed, but certainly shaped by a director. Within those limits the actor is free to make choices, to interpret.

My Lear will be different from your Lear. (well, one hopes).

AI generated image courtesy of Pixabay

Consider: We come into incarnation – a fancy way of saying we get born. And the mystery begins. Because: where have we come from?

Plato has it that the natural habitat of each human soul is one of the stars above and that we pass through each of the planetary spheres acquiring the qualities of that particular planet and its placement in the zodiac at that moment. We take on the costume for this incarnation and the script as written in the interplanetary potentials.

And in the play of life, with its exits and entrances, we can choose how we play the part. We don’t have ham it up.

And according to Robert Frost, Wordsworth, and particularly Shakespeare, we have all signed up for a round trip. The mighty seven ages speech from As You Like It exactly describes the progress of a life and the return. But return to what?

J B Priestly’s character Henry Ormonroyd put all of the above a lot more succinctly when he said (in When We Are Married)

“We all come here and we don’t know why. We all go in our turn and we don’t know where…”

Your blogger as Henry Ormonroyd, Guthrie Theatre 2008

My friend and sometime fellow student Maggie once said to me, “When I heard you’d become an astrologer I thought – Oh he’s lost it. … But then later I thought, oh no, he’s fond an angle.”

I have indeed lost it in the pre-Enlightenment mystery of the endless study that is astrology.

As for the angle, yes that too, Maggie was right. Though not in the sense she meant. The angle or rather the angles plural, are the horizons over which the stars rise and fall on a daily basis and which contain the clues to the weird and whacky interplay of pre-destiny and free will.

Still with me?

As part of my research into how to establish an astrological practice, I joined a networking group of holistic practitioners I’m here to tell you there is more woo-woo per square inch in Westchester, N.Y. than is commonly. suspected.

I have met some lovely people. Unsurprisingly perhaps in such a group every member is an empath – it’s almost like being with a bunch of actors.

But the point is I have been exchanging services with these people. I give them an astro reading and they give me – whatever it is they do. For brief accounts and testimonials go here.

And talking of Lear …

I have an up coming gig in West Palm Beach, Florida. I will go there in November to rehearse and then play ‘Sir’ in The Dresser. For those who don’t know the play, ‘Sir’ is a bombastic, self-obsessed old ham of an actor … and for some extraordinary reason they’ve come to me …???

In the manner of the late great Barry Humphries who proclaimed his “first farewell tour”, I’m intending this to be my last one for various reasons.

So if the stars should align, come to West Palm Beach. We open December 18th. Palmbeachdramaworks.org for details.