06/03/2016
BLISS
based on THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD
a play adaptation by Alessio Bordoni
THE FLEA theater, New York
September 8th to 25th
Directed by René Migliaccio
Performed by Alessio Bordoni
Mixed Media Collages by India Evans
Music by Amaury Groc
with live Violin Artist Ève Sévigny
Butoh Dance by Malin Andreasson
Choreographer: Eric Pettigrew
The world premiere of an Off-Broadway multi-disciplinary theatre production, BLISS based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The play depicts the experiences of consciousness after death, during the interval between death and rebirth, and serves as an allegorical guide for the living.
Artistic Director René Migliaccio's staging is a visual and poetic dance/theatre journey within the mind of an individual striving to awaken to a Higher Consciousness. The journey is of a double nature theatrically, the actor living the text of the bardo and a butoh dancer that accompanies him during the journey as symbol of consciousness on the path of liberation. The original music is a fusion of ambient and Tibetan chants and musical accents with a live violin player. The mixed media collages constructed as mandalas follows the journeyer on his path to liberation. The pictoral dimension of the play offers the viewer the experience of a painting in motion. On the plateau are an actor, a butoh dancer, and a violinist – performing within the projection of images. The audience experiences the performance space as the symbolic dimension of dreams.
“I watched my father die of cancer. As days went by and his body was overtaken by morphine to alleviate the pain, my father had no path offered to him to be reconciled with death. He was not prepared. I remember the day when my father realized he would die. He had a panic attack and as I was holding him in my arms, unable to look into his eyes, a voice from inside, my consciousness, was whispering to me: “Look into your father’s eyes, look into your father’s eyes.” And look into his eyes I did. His eyes that were before the color of a clear sky were dark with fear. I realized then that one has to be ready for death, that it is the moment in which consciousness needs be at its clearest. That experience with my father reinforced my belief in Eastern philosophy: The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bhagava Gita, The Upanishads, became the guiding tools that surround my daily life. The denial of death and its spiritual shortcomings have created a world into which materiality is the dominating factor. In this concept, we can see the accumulation of power, the divisive energies of conflicts and war, the obsession with the culture of youth. Materialism is engendering fear of death, and as it experiences the world as finite as the things it creates, materialism becomes the reductive ground of consciousness. For me the play is a meditative experience on the nature of Mind, on the clinging of the Ego to all attachments and on the fear of letting go. And by letting go and entering the void, Bliss becomes the Experience.” Rene Migliaccio, Artistic Director
