This article was first published in Findhorn News Sept 1972.

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On the 20th of March, after a year of writing whatever message came to me, either in the form of free verse or daily guidance, I received the following:

“Events have now led you up to the threshold where meaning and purpose are revealed. Your daily morning messages are now to be transformed into usable dramatic and narrative material. Do not proceed with any limiting set purpose in mind; the direction will be made clear in the moment. Much of the material may be unusable, but out of this will emerge seeds from which great and beautiful things will grow. Proceed in peace, with My blessing, knowing that all is very, very well.”

The dramatic material which developed followed a pattern, the pieces ranging from five to twenty minutes in length, none involving more than three actors, and each being designed for presentation with a minimum of props and costumes. In time it became clear why the material had come through in this way. A number of people wished to experience creativity through acting, but means were not available for mounting a full-scale production as we had done over the winter months. The prevailing rhythm in all of the performing arts at this time was toward working together in small units, all of which could later be blended together into a united whole for performance. Thus it became evident that the “playlets” I had received over the preceding month and a half were ideally suited to our purpose.

Much of the material was unusable, but five pieces were selected for presentation, each involving a separate unit of actors and leaving me free to integrate the various units with the assistance of Michelle Newell, a visiting actress from London. The title Images seemed appropriate for the presentation, since each vignette, evolved from the imagination, was brought to life through the imagination of the actors and each evoked the required participation of the audience’s imagination in a different way.

In addition to Images, there were two other dramatic presentations for the Midsummer Festival. To celebrate the Gala Opening of the new dining room, we performed a forty-minute adaptation of the Off-Broadway musical, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, re-titled Peanuts before Dinner with original music by Milenko.

David Beardsley’s adaptation of Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, already presented at the Easter Festival, was re-cast and re-staged by Grizelda Paterson, and presented in June to the students of Forres Academy where it met with an extremely enthusiastic response, and later as a part of the Midsummer Festival. The Forres Academy performance of Saint Joan was the first of many bridges which drama will be building between Findhorn and the surrounding area. The second bridge was a tape recording of various regional dialect poems which we produced for the English Department of the Moray County schools. Many of the poems were read in the authentic dialect of the area from which our community member actors derive (e.g., Scotland, London, Northern Ireland, Wales, Northern England, and America). Once again, the response from the English Department of the local schools was extremely enthusiastic.

At the time of writing, The Park Theatre Club has been open for only one week. The drama material for the opening week was drawn largely from Images, but new material is being introduced gradually into the show as the summer progresses. We shall not attempt to create a fresh show each week, but the presentations will be constantly growing and changing, new elements being added to replace those which are outgrown, in keeping with the organic movement of Nature.