If poetry was the means by which Hughes sought to contact the Energies, then myth was frequently the framework within which he sought to control them. In his two essays on ‘Myth and Education’, he not only wrote of imagination as the human faculty which “embraces both outer and inner worlds in a creative spirit” (ME–2.92), but also of the way in which traditional myths and legends work on the imagination through “the brain’s fundamental genius for metaphor”(ME–2.94). His description of this process was speculative but cogent. The brain, he suggested

uses the pattern of one set of images to organise quite a different set. It uses one image, with slight variations, as an image for related and yet different and otherwise image–less meanings.

In this way, the simple tale of a beggar and the princess begins to transmit intuitions of psychological, perhaps spiritual, states and relationships. What began as an idle reading of a fairy tale ends, by simple natural activity of the imagination, as a rich perception of values of feeling, emotion and spirit which would otherwise have remained unconscious and language less. The inner struggle of worlds, which is not necessarily a violent and terrible affair, though at bottom it often is, is suddenly given the perfect formula for the terms of a truce. A simple tale, told at the right moment, transforms a person’s life with the order its pattern brings to incoherent energies.

And while its pattern proliferates in every direction through all levels of consciousness, its images are working too. (ME–2.94).

Myths and legends, then, are powerful tools through which the storytelling poet can influence the consciousness of others: and the commonality of their basic pattern ideally suits the quest for healing mana which Hughes, as poet/shaman, was undertaking in his work ¹.

One further aspect of traditional epic stories which was of importance to Hughes, was their educative value. As in any true healing process, the nature and cause of the sickness have first to be identified, then removed. So, the traditional stories tell of the trials and difficulties which the shaman or hero must undergo before reaching his or her goal, and they describe the methods used to overcome these. The stories are characteristically worldly, making it easy for the reader to identify with the hero or heroine, but there is usually moral purpose in their theme. Hughes cited Plato as an authority on the use of myth and legend in education, but it is more significant that he refers to the Sufi tradition of using simple stories for purposes of spiritual enlightenment, and to the mystical techniques of certain Hermetic magicians who use special stories to develop their magical and mystical abilities (ME–1.62). Whilst Plato’s views clearly influenced Hughes’ thinking, it was the rich imaginative scope of Sufi and Hermetic methods that is most strongly reflected in his work.

In Hughes’ earliest poetry, the epic theme of the shamanic/heroic journey is expressed in its most basic form in the eternal death/rebirth cycles of Nature. There is no suggestion, however, that humanity might benefit from the renewing energies. Instead, the temporal, human world is set alongside that of Nature which, unlike ours, was “there yesterday and the world before yesterday” (‘Mountains’ (THCP.176), and we are seen to be cut–off from its mysteries by our “Braggart–browed complacency”(‘Egg–Head’ (HIR.34)) and pride.

In Lupercal, in his children’s stories, and in individual pieces of work, such as his verse-play, The Difficulties of a Bridegroom² (which resulted from Hughes’ interest in the 15th century alchemical text The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz)³, there is evidence of Hughes’ early use of mythological and traditional stories. His first published sequence of poems to be structured around the mythological theme of the epic journey, however, was Crow, which was published in 1970.

In Crow, for the first time, Hughes wrote a poetic sequence which combined his exploration of suppressed natural energies with the theme of the heroic quest. He described the poems in the published work as being part of a “vast folk epic”⁴, and the folk–tale origins of the sequence are important, because they show the deliberate choice of an epic framework for this poetic adventure in which Hughes intended to concentrate on language, music and style. This epic framework was to have been Hughes’ means of controlling the Energies, but in some ways it apparently failed to do so. As he told Faas:

The story behind Crow brought me to the point where the poems arrived naturally, precipitated themselves naturally. In a way the whole adventure was a machinery I designed gradually to produce the poems until it produced them of its own accord…. There was no planning in the poems themselves. Most of them were revealing to me as I wrote them and they usually wrote themselves quite rapidly. With several of them that now seem ordinary enough I had the sensation of having done something taboo and very horrible after I had written them ⁵.

In other respects, Hughes use of traditional material was rather more successful. Hughes’ Crow comes complete with all the mythological and folkloric accretions which crows have gathered through their long existence and, of course, all the natural characteristics of the crow species. He is the first of the Everyman figures to appear in Hughes’ poetic sequences, and the first to undertake the questing journey. Hughes calls him “the shadow of man. He’s a man to correct man, but of course he’s not a man, he’s a crow”⁶, and his relationship to Man is that of Trickster, or Fool, about whom Alan Garner wrote:

If we take the elements from which our emotions are built and give them separate names such as Mother, Hero, Father, King, Child, Queen, the element that I think marks most of us is that of the Fool. It is where our humanity lies. For the Fool is the advocate of uncertainty: he is at once creator and destroyer, bringer of help and harm. He draws a boundary for chaos. So that we can make sense of the rest. He is the shadow that shapes the light …. He is comical, grotesque, stupid, cunning, ambiguous. He is sometimes part animal, and always part something else. The something else is what is so special. He is the dawning godhead in Man ⁷.

The Fool has a long history in folk–tale and literature. He is the trickster of Native American folk–tales, and the “vulgar person” of Greek tragedy who was used by poets, according to Milton, to mix “Comic stuff with Tragic sadness and gravity … which by all judicious hath bin counted absurd”⁸. He is the ordinary human, summoned by a higher authority to learn the error of his ways, as in the medieval morality plays and in Everyman. And he is the pilgrim, searching for enlightenment, as in Bunyas’ Pilgrim’s Progress.

The embryonic spiritual element in the character of the Fool was as important to Hughes’ purposes in Crow as are Crow’s human characteristics, for his aim was spiritual enlightenment and healing. But, although Crow shares the mythological totemic attributes of his species, he has too atavistic and primitive a nature for much spiritual progress to be made. Despite this, within the folk–tale ‘machinery’ of the sequence Hughes developed a simple and powerful style which communicated with the subconscious energies so well that many readers found the Crow poems unacceptably disturbing.

Hughes himself seemed to feel that the Crow sequence had taken him too far, too fast. He seemed to have little control over the poems, and he described the experience as like “putting [himself] through a process”. When asked by Faas if he felt the process had come to completion, he said: “In a way I think I projected too far into the future. I’d like to get the rest of it. But maybe it will take a different form”⁹.

Consequently, he returned to the attempt to handle the natural energies in poetic, mythological, death/rebirth sequences such as Cave Bird, Gaudete, Remains of Elmet and River, which are as different from each other as they are from Crow.

Three years were to elapse between the publication of Crow (1970) and the writing of the first Cave Birds poems which, according to Sagar, date from 1973 (see Appendix I). During this time Hughes had the opportunity to experience, at first hand, the powerful way in which mythology could be combined with sound and with light to create a pathway for the subconscious energies in Man. This experience, which came through his involvement with Orghast, expanded, strengthened and confirmed many of the strongly held beliefs which were fundamental to the purpose of Hughes’ writing. It is interesting, therefore, to look more closely at this phase of Hughes’ life and work.

In 1971, Hughes joined Peter Brook’s newly established ‘Centre for Theatre Research’ in an expedition to Persia where they had been invited to perform at the Shiraz–Persepolis Festival of Arts. Hughes was to write the language for an experimental drama which Brook intended to perform in Persia, and through which he was hoping to discover a mode of theatrical communication which was independent of any particular language.

As the basic theme for the performance, Brook was drawn towards the myth of Prometheus. Prometheus was a Titan whose gift of fire to the human race has been symbolically equated with the gift of language, but his story also provided a connection with the Manichean myths of opposing forces of Darkness and Light, God and Man, which preoccupied Brook at that time. These myths were central to the exercises which Brook’s company had been doing for several months using Calderon’s Spanish masterpiece, La Vida Es Sueno, and a modern play by Peter Handke, Kaspar, as source material.

Brook’s views on the modern relevance of Manichean themes in which light is opposed and imprisoned by darkness, and where good and evil, love and hate, are in constant conflict, were ones which chimed with Hughes’ own beliefs in the artificiality of such dualism. Also, Hughes had worked before with several of Brook’s actors in experiments on the use of sound for expression and communication. From his early interest in the musical components of poetry, which he had once described for children as dance and song in words which “engage the deepest roots of our minds, and carry poet’s words down into our depths”¹⁰, Hughes had become “interested in the possibilities of a language of tones and sounds, without specific conceptual or perceptual meaning”¹¹.

Whilst making a translation of Seneca’s Oedipus for Brook’s company in 1968, Hughes had introduced the actors to the sound of primitive song, and to anthropological recordings of Tibetan Buddhist monks who used parts of their bodies as the source of different resonant sounds¹². Brook’s production of Oedipus, using Hughes’ translation, had been enormously successful. Writing of it in his book about Peter Brook, J.C Trewin noted that its impact had been achieved to a great extent by focusing attention “on the spoken words, their tones and rhythms”. He described the vocal devices, humming, chanting and drumming, which, combined with innovative staging in which lighting, intensified the atmosphere so that the audience “were aware only of the strong assault upon the nerves and senses”. Orghast, he wrote,

was to be an extension of the work undertaken in Oedipus in stretching conventional theatre to the limits, in accordance with Brook’s principle that if the need for a true contact with a sacred invisibility through theatre still exists,then all possible vehicles must be re–examined¹³.

Hughes’ task, in Orghast, was to find sounds which would embody the myth and would express the actors’ thoughts, feelings and intentions in a vocal form which was universally intelligible. Describing this process to Ossia Trilling, Hughes said:

The main point was to create a language which would be precise in itself and yet act as an invitation to this other hidden, or lost world, which is the world which we said we wanted to explore: a language that would deal with precision, and in a completely intelligible way, with a world that is, in a way, closed to direct, rational analysis ¹⁴.

Paraphrasing Hughes’ words from an interview conducted at Persepolis, Peter Wilson wrote:

The purpose of Orghast, play and language, is an inner transformation, an opening to a lost world which is the chosen realm of the I.C.T.R. [Brook’s International Centre for Theatre Research]. Music is already such a language, precise and mysterious. Like music, Orghast is at no point meant to engage the cerebration which cuts us off from this deeper world. Music is more sophisticated and evolved, however; imagine music buried for 5000 years, decayed back to its sources, then unearthed: this is the ideal of Orghast ⁴⁴.

In essence, the task which Hughes was undertaking was an attempt to use music and language to link the inner and outer worlds of a group of people. It was an attempt to create a shared experience of dramatic intensity (perhaps ecstasy) through the natural energies; an “attempt to find the primal impulse in the sound of a word”¹⁵ . At the same time, it was an attempt to use his own poetic, ‘Apollonian’ energies, in the form of language, to shape and control the ‘Dionysian’ elements and to reconcile the energies into a creative unity.

The language which Hughes invented was called ’Orghast‘ (as was the play), and it consisted of rhythmic sounds which had specific meanings but which were flexible in pronunciation. Hughes described it as “creating the sensation of a half-barbaric world”¹⁶, an atmosphere which particularly suited the mythical themes for which it was used and the surroundings in which it would be heard. It had its own limited grammatical structure and the invented words were fished “out of the air”¹⁷ by Hughes in an intuitive search for a sound which exactly fitted what he wanted to express. Yet, it remained an essentially empirical language in which the actors experimented with the sound and mode of utterance of each word before it attained its final form.

The language of Orghast, the group found, “worked best in rhythmic exchanges”¹⁸, and, like poetry, Hughes envisaged it as being closely related to music in its communicative powers. Asked if there would eventually be a dictionary for Orghast, he replied: “Where is the dictionary of music? There is one – in your body”¹⁹.

In explication of his views, he told Anthony Smith (the group’s official chronicler) how he saw the musical elements of language as functioning in this effort to establish a common basis for communication between people of disparate cultures:

The deeper into language one goes, the less visual/conceptual its imagery, and the more audial/visceral/muscular its system of tensions…. the deeper into language one goes, the more dominated it becomes by purely musical modes, and the more dramatic it becomes – the more unified with total states of being and with the expressiveness of physical action²⁰.

In performance, the connection with music was so close that Smith described Peter Brook as ‘conducting’ the Chorus during rehearsal: “punching the air to get a rhythm, beckoning in new voices or sections, calming, invigorating”, asking for “patterns of sound”, and demanding “vocal experiment” and a “flowing tempo”, as for an opera or a musical performance ²¹. Ultimately, however, Orghast alone could not convey all that Brook and Hughes wanted in the dramatic performance, so Latin, Greek, and an ancient Zoroastrian language called ‘Avesta’, were also used. The final combination was described by Brook as “a conscious attempt to marry myth and poetry [in a] musical language which communicated over and above intellectual understanding”²².

Orghast, in performance, was to be a combination of a language which ‘metaphorically’ magnified the relationship between sounds and feelings²³, and dramatic action which incorporated movement, setting and lighting. For all this, it was necessary to Brook and Hughes that they should start work from some common basis out of which universally understood patterns, independent of specific cultural contexts, might be derived. In a BBC interview Brook commented:

We naturally start with what we know. So Ted and I started work, not from a void, in which we tried to invent pure pattern[sic]. The starting–point for both of us was a concrete reference, and that was the image and the myth of Prometheus²⁴.

For Hughes, another important reason for incorporating myth in Orghast was his belief in the need for controls in any evocation of the Universal Energies. He was aware that mythology had been a valued part of the ritual and dogma traditionally employed to control spiritual energies. As he explained to Faas:

In the old world God and divine power were invoked at any cost – life seemed worthless without them. In the present world we dare not invoke them – we wouldn’t know how to use them or stop them destroying us. We have settled for the minimum practical energy and illumination – anything bigger introduces problems, the demons get hold of it. This is the psychological stupidity, the ineptitude, of the rigid rationalist outlook – it‘s a form of hubris, and we’re paying the traditional price. If you refuse the energy, you are living a kind of death. If you accept the energy it destroys you. What is the alternative? To accept the energy, and find methods of turning it to good, of keeping it under control – rituals, the machinery of religion. The old method is the only one²⁵.

In addition, there was Hughes’ belief that mythology presents us with an analogy for our inner conflicts, and that it can provide a vehicle for the resolution of those conflicts.

Greek mythology, in particular, Hughes described as presenting “a working anatomy of our physical life in a very complete and profound way“²⁶, but he believed that all mythology allows us to make an imaginative identification with its heroes and, thereby, to participate in their attempts at reconciliation of the subconscious and conscious elements of the human personality. Through the imagination, we can vicariously share the heroic deeds, struggles and torments of the mythological hero, whose actions objectify the inner turmoils of the human psyche: in so doing, we gain valuable insight into our own condition. Discussing the relevance of mythology in education, Hughes wrote:

the real problem comes from the fact that [our] outer world and inner world are interdependent at every moment. We are simply the locus of their collision. Two worlds, with mutually contradictory laws, or laws that seem to us to be so, colliding afresh every second, struggling for peaceful coexistence. And whether we like it or not our life is what we are able to make of that collision and struggle.

So what we need, evidently, is a faculty that embraces both worlds simultaneously. A large flexible grasp, an inner vision which holds wide open, like a great theatre, the arena of contention, and which pays equal respects to both sides. Which keeps faith, as Goethe says, with the world of things and the world of spirits equally (ME–2.91).

This faculty is the imagination, and Hughes goes on to say that the work of great artists is an imaginative restatement of those universal laws which reconcile the inner and outer worlds:

The myths and legends which Plato proposed as the ideal educational material for his young citizens, can be seen as large–scale accounts of negotiations between the powers of the inner world and the stubborn conditions of the outer world, under which ordinary men and women live. They are immense and at the same time highly detailed sketches of the possibilities of understanding and reconciling the two … they were originally the genuine projection of genuine understanding. They were tribal dreams of the highest order of inspiration and truth, at their best (ME-2.92).

So, the choice of the Prometheus myth as a starting point for Orghast might be expected to have two important results. Firstly, the tribal dream incorporated in the story would strike chords of recognition in the audience which would harmonise with the thoughts and feelings communicated through the new language; secondly, it would provide a ritual by means of which the energies released in the audience would be guided and controlled.

As a tribal myth, the Prometheus story with its theme of defiance and punishment²⁷ was particularly pertinent to the early Greek people, since they lived in a society which was beginning to put the interest of the State above that of individuals. Moral responsibility, in this society, was based on notions of perfectibility through the use of Man’s rational powers. This was epitomised by Plato’s concept of the Ideal State ruled by philosopher–guardians, and it expressed itself in the refinements of the Classical arts. Along with the increased emphasis on rational powers, came a need to suppress the instinctive, individual, ‘animal’ side of human nature, (which Prometheus’ cunning and trickery exemplified). So began a duality and conflict within human beings which exists to the present day. “The Platonic system of ideas”, Hughes wrote, “has in one way or another dominated the mental life of the Western world ever since” (ME–2.77). With the increased emphasis on rational objectivity, the inner life has come to be regarded as a suspect source of information:

In the end, since all our attention from birth has been narrowed into that outward beam, we come to regard our body as no more than a somewhat stupid vehicle … The body, with its spirits, is the antennae of all perceptions, the receiving aerial for all wavelengths. But we are disconnected. The exclusiveness of our objective eye, the very strength and brilliance of our objective intelligence, suddenly turns into stupidity – of the most rigid and suicidal kind (ME–2.87).

Prometheus is a being torn between his sympathy for Earth’s human creatures and his loyalty to the ruling gods. In him are combined both human and god–like qualities, and his attempt to reconcile their conflicting interests leads him to a state of perpetual torment. From the point of view of the tribal dream, Prometheus not only embodies Man’s rational/instinctive dilemma, he is a super–human figure who is able to challenge the power of the gods and who acts as a scapegoat on whom they take their revenge. Prometheus is, in fact, the archetype hero who willingly takes personal risks and challenges established limits in the fight for individual freedom. His punishment, as Nietzsche pointed out, is seen as a necessary and just consequence of his challenge to the gods: a parallel to the suffering Man must undergo in any attempts to alter and control his own destiny²⁸.

Nietzsche’s analysis of the Prometheus myth in terms of a conflict between the subconscious Dionysian energies and the rational, self–controlling, Apollonian energies, emphasised the need to reconcile these two elements of the human personality. Too much reliance on Apollonian energies, Nietzsche saw as leading to rigidity and coldness; too much freedom for the Dionysian impulse to a “witches brew” of sensuality and cruelty. “The conjoint Dionysian and Apollonian nature might”, wrote Nietzsche, “be thus expressed in an abstract formula: ‘Whatever exists is alike just and unjust, and in both cases equally justified’”²⁹. The similarity between Nictzsche’s views on myth and Hughes’ description of it as “the realm of management between our ordinary mind and our deepest life”³⁰, is readily apparent. And the necessity, attested to by both, of interaction between subconscious and conscious energies is summed up by William Blake’s parable: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom” (MHH.Pl.1:3).

Hughes’ adaptation of the Prometheus myth in Orghast, then, was a further attempt to utilise universally recognisable patterns as a means of communication at a sub–conscious level. It is interesting, in the light of Hughes’ stated intentions about Orghast, to note that the anthropologist, Levi–Strauss, whose work Hughes knew, described “how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of it”, and wrote of “the characteristic that myth and music share of both being languages which in their different ways transcend articulate expression, while at the same time – like articulate speech, but unlike painting – require a temporal dimension in which to unfold ”³¹.

During rehearsals for Orghast, the basic Prometheus myth underwent many changes. New characters and actions were invented, and ideas from Calderon, Handle’s Kaspar, Manichean beliefs, folklore and many other sources were incorporated. In the end, however, there was a “withering away of the forms themselves, of the details. of the narrative, of the anecdotal side of these myths, [which] led just as naturally to the attempt to look at what lay beneath”³².

Finally, Orghast expressed some of Hughes’ most basic beliefs about the conflict between Man and Nature, and about the healing power of the natural energies, as can be seen from this summary which he made of Part I:

In abstract, it is the story of the crime against material nature, the Creatress, source of life and light, by the Violator, the mental tyrant, Holdfast, and her revenge. The first plan of her revenge is on the animal level, and it fails, because on the animal level the situation is unalterable, or rather inevitably reproduces itself; the second plan is on the truly human level, and it succeeds, transcending the conflict by creating a being which, like Prometheus … includes the elemental opposites, and in whom the collision and pain become illumination, because it is the true account ³³.

One further crucial component of the dramatic experiment at Persepolis was Peter Brook’s sensitivity to the effect of the setting in which the drama was to take place. As an experienced theatrical director, Brook was well aware that a close relationship exists between a performance and its setting. Smith reports that it was one of Brook’s cardinal principles for the Centre that it should “redefine the notion of a touring company, wherever it travels, by opening its work to the influences of the place it works in”³⁴.

It was only after visiting Persepolis that Brook was convinced that his ICTR company could do some work there.

The city of Persepolis was built by the Persian king, Darius I, between 512 and 494 BC, and burned to the ground by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. The ruins of its palaces lie close beneath the steep north face of Mount Kuh–i–Rehmat into which have been excavated the tombs of two Persian kings, worshippers of Ahura Mazda the sun god. Six miles from Persepolis, at Naqsh–i–Rustam, are three more royal tombs, again carved into a towering cliff and decorated with carved figures and symbols of sun and fire worship. After an initial reconnaissance of all three sites, Brook and his company, impressed by the awesome atmosphere and the magnificent natural acoustics of the mountain tombs, chose two of these as settings for their performance. It was decided that the first part of Orghast would be performed on a stage–like platform half–way up the cliff–face in front of the tomb of Artaxerxes II, overlooking the ruins of Persepolis. Part II would take place at Naqsh–i–Rustam, using the whole of the open piece of ground in front of the royal tombs together with the tombs and the cliff–face itself. The audience would need to move around to follow the action which would be a sort of “walking show for cast and mass audience, unfolding the tombs and rock shelves as a series of epic backdrops”³⁵.

Enthusiasm for the setting was high, and Brook spoke in glowing terms of the powerful atmosphere of the ruins, describing them as a place where “the past is no longer something that once was, but a present experience”. Elaborating on this, he continued:

Persepolis has a quality that you can taste on the tongue. It’s not just a collection of stones. One can sense that the men who built Persepolis chose with care and accuracy the spot where they were building and understood why they were making certain proportions, what the relation of brilliant sun and dark shadow was: and although Persepolis has fallen into ruin, the ruin is not so complete, that the central form is lost, so that in Persepolis there is still a life … a mysterious, impalpable life, which one can only talk about in a rather abstract manner ³⁶.

In these sites, which had been skilfully chosen by Persian kings for qualities of natural illumination suited to their sun–worshipping religious rituals, Brook chose to rely almost entirely on the use of sun, fire, and naturally created areas of light and darkness for the performances of Orghast. Part I was played at dusk and just after sunset: Part II at dawn. The whole became a ritual combination of light and music as Hughes’ version of the theft of fire from the gods unfolded in the natural grandeur of the setting. Performers were silhouetted against the skyline, emerged from the darkness of tomb–mouths and rock crevices, and carried burning torches to illuminate the scene or to perform symbolic acts. Bowls of fire lit the pathways from the tombs down to Persepolis and, at Naqsh–i–Rustam, great blazes edged the cliff–tops, and the Chorus carried flambeaux from place to place until the fires were extinguished and the sun rose behind the tomb of Xerxes.

Using every means at their disposal, Hughes and Brook set out to break down the rational barriers erected by the ‘mental tyrant, Holdfast’, first, in each member of Brook’s company through constant exercises and experiment, then, through the performance of Orghast, in each member of the audience. Their aim was to re–establish contact, however tenuous, with the imaginative, creative faculties: to open the mind and to extend the vision. The symbolism of illumination through fire, inherent in the Prometheus myth and in the historical atmosphere of Persepolis, was a suitable metaphor for their efforts, just as the whole performance resembled a ritual purification.

Neither Hughes, nor Brook, expected the task to be easy. Orghast, for Brook, was one more experiment in his years of research into the ‘holy’ nature of theatre, his search for “the springs of drama itself”³⁷, and his attempts to recreate the power which early magico–relligious drama seems to have contained. For Hughes, Orghast was one more route by which the natural energies could be channelled into the sterility of the modern world, where “the story of the mind exiled from nature is the story of western man”³⁸.

Predictably, reactions to the performances at Persepolis varied. Critics, locked into lifelong habits of rigid rational analysis, complained that Brook and Hughes had “erected a verbal blockade” ³⁹; that there was no “intelligible plan”⁴⁰; and that the whole thing was “a striking example of a movement in the theatre towards mystification” ⁴¹. Yet, as Irving Wardle of The Sunday Times pointed out in a slightly different context, “such arguments, for or against, miss the point by erecting an intellectual barricade against a work intended to awaken the pre–logical faculties and conjure buried music out of the earth” ⁴². More frequently, Orghast was described as a beautiful, impressive and breathtaking spectacle.“Man came as close as he possibly can… to creating sacred ritual without actual instruction from heaven”, wrote one observer, and the critic of the Financial Times declared that “the playgoer who has entered deeply into Orghast has passed through fire, and can never be the same again” ⁴³.

If this was true for the audience, then it was also true for those involved in the production. Orghast provided Hughes with valuable insights into the summoning and control of the Universal Energies, as well as practical experience of the difficulties which would inevitably confront him in his attempts to break down rational and intellectual barriers. Such insights and experience confirmed his faith in myth, ritual, music and poetry as effective tools in his task of reintegrating our inner and outer worlds, and the dramatic experience he had undergone began to shape his work, giving it a broader scale and greater impact than anything he had attempted before.

© Ann Skea 2021