INTRODUCTION TO THE APPARITIONS
The Apparitions are an organic whole, the individual parts of which are my verse-dramas. It is divided into five books:
1. History plays
- Myths
- The Word-Realm
- Masques
- The Vault of Shards
The Histories are a series of autobiographical dramas (there are 13 at the time of this writing), where colorful friends take on mythic proportions, and the various events of life are expressed both literally and in symbols.
The Myths are dramas which recreate the central myths of humanity in a new expression.
The Word-Realm plays will be the Tragic elaboration of myths from the Apocryphon, (See my epic poem) much as Greek Tragedy elaborated the stories from Homer.
The Masques are a dark reinvention of the renaissance Masque tradition.
The Vault of Shards is a collection of fragments. It’s actually the nursery that the finished dramas come out from. At any given time, there may be ten or so ‘root plays’, fragments with a beginning, and a core- that is, an ending and key scenes leading up to the ending. If these are developed into finished dramas, they move into the three upper books. If they stay as they are, as root plays, they have their own suggestive structure.
As the Apocryphon generally moves from the primal to the historical, The Apparitions reverses this process. The History plays, begin with the most earthly and historical, and move to the Masques, which are in the primal
History plays
As of now, there are thirteen of these . The first is the series Verfallen, of five shorter tragedies. These are
The Beads
The Ancient Word
Thanatei
The Bridal Bed
Twenty-four Lamentations
After these, the plays which follow are full length five act plays. The first Trilogy is called Syrinx:
Queen Syrinx
The Revels
Usia
There is the ‘Forbidden Trilogy”
Love’s Linguist
The Violence of Consciousness
Todstribe
Also, Demona in five acts.
and The Anagram.
Added to these is Elutheria, a drama of philosophy.
Two parts of the theory of these Histories are ‘The Word Realm’ and ‘The Dionysian Portal’.
The Word Realm is the primeval world of the Apocryphon and its myths.
The Dionysian Portal hovers just barely above the historical world. It’s populated by extremely literate modern Romantics who have a penchant for crisis. It consists of several groups of characters, including:
- The Dionysian Rite. A community of artists poets and philosophers who build modern art from roots of Romanticism and Symbolism.
- Anarchists.
- The Bijou Community. Christian pacifists who serve the homeless
- Freemasons.
- The Order of the Eastern Star.
- the Gothic/Industrial community. The Goths have a fair amount of cross over with the Dionysians. They dress in flowing black, and gather at the various Goth clubs, especially Nocturne.
- The Catholics.
The incidental Music of the plays is original, is drawn from the influences of ancient
Greek music, Purcell , and darker aspects of 19th symphonic music. In the plays the main proponent of this music is Ianthe Evolialsi.
