In introducing the evening’s program, Mr. Lin noted Tan Dun’s frequent mention of shamanism when discussing his work. Theater historian David Goodman has written about the ancient roots of theater art in ritual performances at shrines. During such sacred performances, the audience witnessed a transformation of one or more of the characters on stage. Goodman argues that this element – the witnessing of a transformation – remains at the core of many theater traditions. When the audience watches as the performer changes, the people experience a kind of sacred catharsis. An audience member cannot transform into a ghostly spirit, or become the essence of unbridled rage or grotesque regret – but the actor can. In this sense the shaman and the actor are one in the same. Both have the ability to journey to painful and dangerous spiritual places, and to return to the ordinary human world we recognize as “reality.” Though Goodman writes specifically about Japanese theater, last night’s performance with Chinese cultural references brought his ideas to mind. Ghost Opera is a daring expression of the composer’s understanding of the shamanistic function of the performing art.

And then there was the sound! An exquisitely sad violin solo interrupted by a rude, unexpected squeak. Hisses, whispers, the clack of stones, a shifty sound of paper rubbed or crumpled. As the Ghost Opera unfolded, I began to think that I – and perhaps all humans – continually listen for the sound that signals a crack in the veneer of ordinary reality. On some deep level, perhaps our ear is always cocked for it, vigilant even though not consciously aware of the anticipation. Has a small sound, significant only because it does not make sense, ever caused you to startle? To snap to conscious presence in the instant? Are such sensations harbingers of mental illness? Or are they a neurological symptom? I guess either of these is possible; but last night such eerie sounds came from musicians who transformed, before our very eyes, into shamans who could speak to the spirit world.

One more feature of the evening was notable for me. As I sat in the balcony savoring the visual beauty of the stage design and Tan Dun’s astonishingly post-cultural soundscape, I sensed a strange collapsing of history and time. “Neo-cultural” isn’t a term I’ve heard, but I’ll improvise here and try using it to describe a sense of something human in a primal, ancient sense, but at the same time, something of a future that is just beginning to enter our consciousness. On the one hand “Neo” evokes the term Neolithic, the period when humans moved from hunting/gathering into the life of village farmers. Not that humans didn’t have culture as they wandered for Paleolithic millennia. However, that way of living lightly on the earth has been almost completely erased from the memory of modern humans. We are today the cultural descendants of our Neolithic ancestors. On the other hand, “Neo,” as I’m using it, also represents the sense of glimpsing something new, beyond the multi-cultural phase of human societies today. Tan Dun’s work somehow manages to touch something very ancient in the audience, while at the same time opening a new possibility for being connected with fire, water, stones, and air – with the earth itself.

I am grateful to Glen Kwok, executive director of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, for helping the IMA bring such an extraordinary performance – an performers – to the new theater! May this be the first of many provocative and beautiful artistic events in The Toby!