The quiet introverts who were accustomed to dropping into their own space
The word ‘feminine,’ as I understand it, has very little to do with gender, nor is woman the custodian of femininity.
Both men and women are searching for their pregnant virgin.
She is the part of us who is outcast, the part who comes to consciousness through going into darkness, mining our leaden darkness, until we bring her silver out.
Anyone who tries to work creatively understands this.
I remember, for example, when I was directing creative theater with high school students.
We worked without a script for months before the show.
Students who were trained to “give a good performance” found the process intolerable.
Their rigidity, their fear of being “the hole in the program” blocked their creativity.
They waited to be told what their lines were, what their moves had to be, what their attitudes should be.
The quiet introverts who were accustomed to dropping into their own space had no difficulty concentrating until the images that sprang from their own bodies came alive.
They loved being free. They loved to play.
They loved to be challenged to go deeper into the darkness, to allow whatever wanted to happen to happen.
And things did happen.
The whole theater came alive with roars, tears, laughter, movements of poignant beauty and hilarious irony.
The curious visitors who ventured through the theater door shook their heads and fled from the chaos.
But for those of us inside, it was contained chaos.
We were used to the intensity.
Two months before the show, the students, the dance director, the music director and I decided what movements we wanted to explore further, what poems, what music.
This basic skeleton was added to and subtracted from until the very last performance. — Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin, Page 10
