74.

MYSTERIES & SMALLER PIECES.

Original flyer for The Living Theatre's production of 'Mysteries & Smaller Pieces' at the Roundhouse, north London, June 1969. 26x21cm. Designed and printed by Bill Levy and originally handed out for free at the Roundhouse. Dark red ink printed on both sides on gray-green card. Illustrated with a collage by Marcia Herscovitz [item #71] on one side, and on the other an image of the Buddha superimposed over a diagram showing the acupuncture meridians of a human head.

Prints brief quotes from Julian Beck and Antonin Artaud, whose description of the plague that devastated Marseille in 1720 inspired the half hour-long concluding part of 'Mysteries': "The theatre like the plague is a crisis which is resolved by death or cure. And the plague is a superior disease because it is a total crisis after which nothing remains except death or an extreme purification. Similarly the theatre is a disease because it is the supreme equilibrium which cannot be achieved without destruction. It invites the mind to share a delirium which exalts its energies; and we can see… that from the human point of view, the action of theatre, like that of plague, is beneficial, for, impelling man to see themselves as they are, it causes the mask to fall, reveals the lie, the slackness, baseness, and hypocrisy of our world; it shakes off the asphyxiating inertia of matter which invades even the clearest testimony of the sense; and in revealing to collectivities of men their dark power, their hidden force, it invites them to take, in the face of destiny, a superior and heroic attitude they would never have assumed without it."

Fine.

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