Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Devotional Rehearsals

Toronto, Ontario

So much green vegetation sprouts out of the soil at this time of year. When the saffron sun of the morning peeks, the energy explosion of green becomes obvious. Black squirrels scurry everywhere. This morning a baby raccoon clung to his tree, holding on for dear life, not sure what to make of us strange creatures. It has nothing to do with our robes. It has to do with the fact that we are homosapiens. We are nothing to be feared.

For the evening, our acting cast for “The Eighth Boy” partook in an intense seven hour rehearsal. Being volunteers, it can be a real trying time getting everyone together but, our crew understood the urgency in preparing for the “Festival of Inspiration”. It ended up being a super tight team experience. At times like these, you can say that magic is real. When co-operation reaches optimum levels like this, it is practically not the material world anymore.

When attempting anything in this existence there is prone to be problems. During our practice, there were two intense moments where things were rolling on very well when suddenly, in the dark, someone accidentally tripped over the cable that ran our sound and lights. It was an occurrence that could have engendered cursing. But “No!” The level of synergy, harmony was such that we were determined to start again.

I admire the group that I worked with. They came at some level of inconvenience. They came without signing a contract. They came without receiving a salary or stipend. The fact is all members of the acting cast and technical crew have a heart. They have something special called bhakti, devotion.

It just so happened that a professional actor walked in to see me right at the moment that we started our first rehearsal run through of the play. It was a bit rough, as the group was “rusty”. From his perspective, everyone was doing just fine. Frankly he said, “You’ve got a good thing going here.”

“If that’s so, then it’s because of the intense desire to ‘give’. “I’ve got all these devotional people to work with,” I said.

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