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Sri Chinmoy's creative and athletic output has been so prolific that it is very easy to overlook gems from years gone past. One such gem is his oeuvre of spiritual plays which he wrote in the early seventies, which have since been performed at theatres all over the world.

Sri Chinmoy began writing plays when he was still in India. His first (and longest) play, The Descent of the Blue, is a reverent and inspiring look at the life of Sri Aurobindo and his transformation from Indian independence leader to great spiritual Master. Many of Sri Chinmoy's plays are short one-act plays based on traditional Indian stories. In 1973, he wrote many of these short plays describing incidents in the lives of the great spiritual teachers, which then became collated into the longer plays My Rama is My All, Siddartha becomes the Buddha and Drink, Drink My Mother's Nectar (about the life of Sri Ramakrishna). In contrast, his play about the life of Jesus Christ, The Son was specifically written as a longer play in five acts. The Son and Siddartha becomes the Buddha are Sri Chinmoy's two most popular and widely performed plays.

Sri Chinmoy's theatrical writing, just like his poetry and prose, stands out for its simplicity and directness. In a recent performance of his play Siddartha becomes the Buddha at London's Union Theatre, the magazine Time Out commented on the unfettered simplicity and clarity of the writing. In an age where many writers clamour to push their own interpretation on things, Sri Chinmoy is content to merely be an instrument for a larger Truth to express itself. The style of the writing bypasses the critical mind and speaks directly to the aspiring heart. For the performers too, there is very little room in the plays to engage in emotional overacting, and the writing invites them, too, to enter into the soul of the characters and identify with them.

The plays are clearly written from the standpoint of inner reality rather than outer reality. In the play The Son and also in Sri Chinmoy's 1975 play about the founding fathers of America, The Sacred Fire, the play opens not on Earth, but in Heaven, and we come to see that what happens in the outer physical plane is but a consequence of deeper inner realities. Sri Chinmoy is not so much concerned with sketching the outer mannerisms and foibles of a character as capturing the voice of his soul, and much of the dialogue in his this play carries this lofty feeling, as if describing a conversation between souls rather than the jarring clash of personalities. Sometimes Sri Chinmoy will use a uniquely spiritual variant on the ancient Shakesperean motif of foreshadowing, by letting a character make a prediction based on their soul's inner vision. At other times, characters will sing one of Sri Chinmoy's soulful mantric songs, music often doing a better job of conveying the inner realms of man than prose ever would.

Photo: a still from a performance of Suddartha becomes the Buddha

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