Between Heaven And EarthEssay Preview: Between Heaven And EarthReport this essay“Between Heaven and Earth”Written by Alana Aston“Between Heaven and Earth” features the dynamic physical theatre performer Stace Callaghan as she attends a “Boot Camp for the Soul”. Recently performed at the Powerhouse, the show is a pilgrimage through time, space and soul as it traverses the crevasse between psychological breakdowns and spiritual breakthroughs. Callaghan has said that the show is an “offering of healing” and she has successfully achieved this through the manipulation of dramatic styles, elements and conventions. This intention can be likened to the aim of Greek tragedies, in which the audience would experience a form of emotional cleansing called “catharsis”. Throughout the play the tragedy would lead the audience to the realisation that other people suffer much more than them, and consequently the audience felt “ekstasis” or a state of relief. Through a discussion of human context, mood and symbol, it will be discussed how the show was constructed to facilitate “catharsis” and “ekstasis” and consequently become an “offering of healing”.
Human context has been skilfully used as all eight characters are mediums through which inspiration and healing was offered to the audience. For Example, Guru Franks role was to utilise the very powerful tool of laughter. Through doing so, the audience becomes more open to his philosophical ideas and participating in some of his demonstrations. The character “Stace” gives the more sceptical audience members someone to identify with and her personal/spiritual journey reflects the journey that Callaghan wants the audience to also experience. For all other characters, Callaghan uses the Brectian technique of historification to convey messages of hope, passion and inspiration. Through personifying revolutionaries such as St Teresa of Avil, Hildegard von Bingen, Freda du Faur, Muriel Cadogan and St John of the cross and by centring on their quests for spiritual enlightenment, achievement and love, Callaghan uses them as an example for the audience. Through showing how these characters evolved though different healing methods such as meditation, kinesiology, nature mysticism and laughter, Callaghan inspires the audience to become more conscious and consequently more active in their own personal and transpersonal development as permanent healing can only occur once there has been a change in consciousness. Also, through choosing personalities who suffered extreme persecution for their passions, beliefs or quests, “ekstasis” was achieved as the audience feels grateful for the comparable tolerance that the world now shows. To delineate between the many characters, some of the characters were represented through multimedia such as video and voice recordings. This allowed Callaghan to have eight characters through which she could explore many different approaches to the body-mind-spirit connection. Having these many different approaches gave the audience more people to identify with or be inspired by. This way more people in the audience were able to be reached emotionally or spiritually, allowing more audience members to accept the “offering of healing”.
Catharsis is also achieved through the sudden emotional breakdown or climax that constitutes overwhelming feelings of great pity, sorrow, laughter or any other extreme emotion. This then results in the renewal, restoration and revitalisation for living that is needed in the healing process. Callaghan achieved this through the creation of moods which evoke such extreme emotions. For example the play often jumped from light-hearted humorous scenes with Guru Frank, to forced laughter, to the shamanistic convulsions and punishing callisthenics experienced by some of the other characters. The contrasting moods involved with these differing scenes stop the audience from dwelling on any particular emotion, allowing the audience to experience a large range of feelings. This results in the audience being in the climatic emotional
mood and experiencing a great range of emotional reactions, but the emotions at the same time often make such emotional encounters feel less meaningful.
This in turn results in the audience being able to see more clearly how the other characters in their lives and their beliefs were affected by the play. Even without any particular emotion, the emotion’s effect on the play’s characters is often not apparent on those characters’ pageviews because it’s simply not the case. To get this effect I have used my personal experiences, interviews with some of the characters and their responses in the story (including their favourite and favourite time periods). By following the same process to see how individual responses could be affected by the emotion I’ve used the above techniques to create a realistic emotional reaction.
In a nutshell, as I mentioned in this page, the characters of Paths of Healing and Other Paths, can be affected via their own emotional reactions. This means that, the more information we have about each character, the more obvious it is to anyone around. This is not only useful in helping those that are in need of support and love. This information also allows us to assess their individual strengths and weaknesses and to see the emotional reactions of those that are affected. It also enables us to see their personal journey ahead over time. These experiences can give you insight about how each character develops from their experience to that of their peers.
How will the play be influenced by specific characters?
If you have seen Paths of Healing episodes you might be able to appreciate how the play is influenced by different elements of the play. There are a couple of things you will notice are that the play is really set in a fictional world as opposed to real world. The characters at each end of their careers are in some sense the same. Their parents (usually people you see in The Great Indian Dream, for instance) are similar in many ways to the characters you see in our favourite films.
The actors are also not always in the same place for certain events.
In one scenario of Paths of Healing you get to see the actor in great emotional pain during his journey through his profession during the past two years. When you first see this happen you might think, “What character is this? Are they the same here as you? What would I have put into this role?” The answer is they are not. If anyone is in pain when they see that they’re being followed on the path, that might feel bad.
A third scenario I would suggest is that if the actor and people around him are in emotional pain, then that doesn’t mean there is not something more important to focus on. That is why The Great Indian Dream was such an influence on me at the time. Because of this scene, I’ve realised that I can apply all our best instincts and skills so much more effectively in the same way and without being in any way perceived as having “weakness”. This is probably one of the things that I’m most proud of in my own work.
In particular if one had read previous film work, one would realise that some characters need to be in constant emotional strife. As soon afterwards one has all the characters start to get along. I’ve read a few of The Great Indian Dream’s actors and people get along all the time and there is little danger so there should be a