PREMIERED JUNE 2009 IN THE BRICK THEATER'S ANTIDEPRESSANT FESTIVAL

PRESS:
"...a rich and rewarding exploration of the vicious extremities of faith...an unforgettable and chilling experience of religious fervency that should not be missed." —OffOffOnline.com (full review)

"...offers a surprising amount of insight... Director Yvan Greenberg has put together a show I can't properly explain, [but] I know that I enjoyed it..." —NYTheatre.com (full review)

LE MIRAGE is an imagined lecture and demonstration of mystical dance by members of the real-life 1980’s French-Canadian cult, The Order of the Solar Temple. Three members of an alleged Las Vegas chapter of the Solar Temple offer true peace and happiness through a commingling of dance, original new age music, inspirational texts, and ritual. Featuring Rosicrucianism, ecological philosophy, the Holy Grail, and Transit to the planet Jupiter.

Laboratory Theater’s newest piece is drawn from actual lecture transcripts and ritual texts by The Order of the Solar Temple. The Order was a millenarian cult active in the 1980s and early ‘90s in Quebec, Canada and Geneva, Switzerland. They believed in the continuing existence of the Knights Templar, performed elaborate secret rituals, ran an organic farm, and professed that their members would be reunited one day with an ancient brotherhood of Ascended Masters on the planet Jupiter. In 1994, 53 members were found dead amidst fiery blazes, a combination of mass-suicide and ritual murder, their bodies arranged in star patterns.

“At this Supreme Moment, the ruby power of the Work should rejoin the Levels of the Future. Our transit will be as a passage across a mirror. Our Terrestrial Journey is coming to an end.”

Directed by Yvan Greenberg; performed by Corey Dargel, Sheila Donovan, and Oleg Dubson, with original music by François B. Nouvel-Âge.

Photos from Work-in-Progress showing at CUNY's Prelude Festival, September 2007.
Photos by Julien Jourdes/www.jourdes.com