The Conway Corner

Hey! Everyone notice the staged readings "11 Celebrates 10" that we're doing to for the 10th anniversary of the "Play and Playwrights" anthology series? The dates are posted on the main page of the website. We really hope you can make it some of them. They're all free!

But we also want your feedback. What more information could we provide for you on the site that would make you more interested on our readings and our other endeavors? Please comment on the posting with your suggestions!

The new piece No. 11 is creating has a lot to do with shadows. My last semester at Skidmore I was in Carolyn Anderson's Advanced Directing class, and most of my first projects with that class revolved around shadows. So I'm going back to my resources for inspiration. I've been taking "Jung on Evil" and "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" on the subway. Carl Jung has a lot of great quotes about his conception of the shadow as a component of the psyche. Here are some good ones:

"The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real."

"...it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil."

Also, Jung references a good quote from Faust, after he has confront Mephistopheles:

"That was my other side, my alter ego, my all too palpable shadow which can no longer be denied."

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is lengthy, and will require a great deal further study before it becomes truly useful. As of now, I see a lot about the shadow of ignorance. A huge part of ignorance is fear of death, which one should not have. Death and life are one. Learning how to die is a major mission of life which is often ignored in favor of the enjoyments of life. In the West, we usually think of shadow as associated with death. But their shadow is an attitude towards life. To see a difference between life and death, means to forever remain in the cycle of life. The life-death cycle, which are one, is negative, and the goal is to be liberated from it. Light is the pure reality beyond this shadow reality of life and death. I guess as Macbeth would put it, "life's but a walking shadow."

Some people on blogs do this music playlist thing, so here's what I've been listening to: "Shadowplay" by Joy Division, "Hidden Shadows" by Herbie Hancock, "Pictures At An Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky, "Blue in Green" by Miles Davis.

I know I am all over the place. Sometimes it feels like I'm grabbing at everything with the word shadow. But I'm really trying to think about what shadows mean to people. Beyond exploring about they mean to me, and asking others, I feel the need to build up these references to the idea. Jung's shadow is quite specific (or quite vague considering it is a supposed component of the quite indefinite psyche), and the Tibetan’s shadow is very different, but there are many shadows to look at. I should probably look at my own on the wall for a while longer.

Written by Mitchell Conway