It is often said that Rudolf Steiner had an extraordinary capacity for sensing and entering into the soul condition of others. Putting himself aside, he was able to empathically experience other people’s characters and destinies. He is also said to have been highly observant with an eye attentive to details of posture and gesture. In fact, it was by studying people’s signature physical quirks that he was able to discover their previous lives in the Akashic Record.
With such heightened abilities of empathy and observation, it is not surprising that he was also a brilliant actor. He never gave a full, professional performance, though as the director of the Mystery Dramas, he did step on stage to demonstrate the voice and physicality of certain characters. Most famously, he played Ahriman. Tightening into the consonants and summoning a state of inner desolation, he apparently shocked his onlookers with the chilling reality of his portrayal. “It is important to get to know that gentleman,” he later explained, and in quite a direct way, this statement tells us much about the connection between his work as a spiritual researcher and the craft of acting as he practiced it.
The key word is “know”. As an investigator of higher worlds, Steiner often achieved knowledge of things by empathically joining his consciousness to other beings and entities. His discovery of the Fifth Gospel, achieved by attuning his consciousness to the disciple Peter, is one very clear example of this. Similarly, as an actor, he knew and became one with his characters by actually, in an inner, esoteric sense, merging with them. In the Speech and Drama Course, the intellectual foundation of this approach is indicated when it says that—far from being merely figments of a poet’s imagination—the great characters of drama are actual entities on the astral plane, with whom one can connect and commune. Hamlet exists as a real being in spiritual space. Most actors, naturally intuiting this, try in their different ways to contact the higher dimension of their characters, and Steiner certainly practiced this.
He also, of course, cultivated a high spiritual awareness in regard to language and speech formation. For him, words were not mere “units of meaning” but notes in the great symphony of creation, emanating from the Godhead. The sounds of speech were not random vocal expressions but actual, spiritual beings with whom one could learn to commune and be a conduit for.
It is said that Steiner once confessed to wanting to be a farmer. Apparently, he would have liked to put aside his greater task as a spiritual teacher and take up the humble rake and plough. Based on everything we know about his aptitude as an actor and affiliation to the art of theatre, I don’t think it is entirely absurd to imagine that he might also have gladly pursued a life on stage.
This year, we bring you a series of articles titled “Rudolf Steiner as…” to honor the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death—sometimes an essay, sometimes simply a thought or reflection—always, an aspect of his being.
