Theatre of the Soul: an authentic journey through masks, freedom, and essence

Each of us, throughout our lives, has learned to wear masks in order to adapt and fit into different situations. The point is not that we wear masks… that’s human.
The real issue arises when these masks solidify, when they stick to us and create a rigid image of who we think we are.
An image that ends up limiting us, that keeps us from being everything we are and everything we could become.

Because yes, it’s true: each of us has a certain dominant personality, a tendency. But as we learn through tools like the Enneagram, I might be a Type 4, or a Type 1, but within me live all these types. I hold all the tools, all the modes of being that exist in the world. The goal is not to deny who we are, but to reclaim the freedom to access every part of ourselves.

To break the crystallized image we have of ourselves and expand the way we move through life.

In Satyamo and Abbha’s group (the Facilitators of this one week workshop happening at The Transmission School in Autumn), through theatre and personal development practices, what they do is experiment… experiment with moving beyond our inner boundaries, our habits, our familiar ways of expressing emotion, of showing up in the world.

We try on roles… and yes, even masks… with the purpose of expanding our expressive range, our sense of inner freedom.
But also, through a deep process that involves the two “spectators” that exist in theatre: the outer spectator, who sees us from the outside, and the inner spectator, who witnesses us from within, what many traditions call the Witness.

This inner witness, the still, silent awareness at the heart of all meditative and spiritual paths, is where we return to when the masks fall away.
And that’s the core of their work.

Throughout their journey, they’ve also had frequent and meaningful contact with people often referred to as “mad.” And that relationship has taught them a lot. Because those living in madness cannot be inauthentic …not because they don’t want to, but because they simply can’t. They are as they are, without filters, without construction. And the sense of truth and raw presence they embody is incredibly powerful. It’s something Satyamo and Abbha try to bring back into their groups…this quality of living without artifice.

But we must not idealize madness. That authenticity comes at a high cost, because it’s not a choice. And anything that isn’t chosen becomes a constraint, and constraints always carry suffering. A great deal of suffering.

In the same way, anyone who becomes trapped in their self-image, in the idea of who they think they must be for others, also experiences a kind of bondage. A prison of identity.

In both cases, the key issue is freedom.

Their work is to dissolve constraints, to put back into motion what has been frozen, to give life back to the parts of ourselves we’ve hidden or denied. To rediscover who we are beyond the masks. To find that essential part of us that remains, even when all the performances stop.

In Theatre of the Soul, we don’t learn to put on masks. We learn how to take them off. Because only by removing them can we touch the core of our being, our truth, our essence.