Mystic

“So where are the public mystics when you need them most? I see them in the peaceful resistance of another generation of freedom fighters. They are with us in the stories told in retold of lives well lived. They are in our prophetic imaginations as we welcome Harriet into our present reality. Her counterintuitive leadership powered by dreams and trances confronts the delusions of empires that they have ultimate control. […] if we are willing to follow unlikely leaders, public mystics, and a crucified Messiah from the Hood (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46), if we are willing to forsake “the managed reality of empire,” than anything is possible.” (ix-x)
Reverend Barbara Holmes, in ‘Preface’ to Therese Taylor-Stinson’s
Walking the Way of Harriet Tubman: Public Mystic and Freedom Fighter

What is the role of mysticism, ritual, of dreams, of imagination and connection with ancestry in our performance work? How to approach theatre and its connections to ritual in a way that enact these potencies?

How to do this in a way that honours each of the lineages on which we draw? How to do this in a way that doesn’t just enact Lulu Lemon ersatz spirituality that simply whitens histories and lactifies landscapes littered with histories of colonial violence?

Therese Taylor-Stinson reminds us that “The desert mothers and fathers were black and brown mystics who led a communal protest by leaving their cities and towns and moving to the desert because of the corrupting influence of the Roman empire on both Judaism and Christianity.”

And yet, she notes, drawing on Reverend Holmes, public mystics don’t just leave the community, they come back. They are found “in the seemingly commonplace of life and community” while the same time “being transcendent in the midst of pragmatic justice seeking acts.” (37)

Who are the mystics in our histories and future? How do we inspire ourselves? How can our performance work enact mystical potentials?

“I grew up like a neglected weed – ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.
Then I was not happy or contented.”
Harriet Tubman to Benjamin Drew, St Catharines Ontario, Canada, 1855
Harriet Tubman Historical Society