A Quote by Arthur Penn

One has a sort of spiritual obligation to go back to the source material of the literature, to make contact with one of the seminal plays of the modern theater. — © Arthur Penn
One has a sort of spiritual obligation to go back to the source material of the literature, to make contact with one of the seminal plays of the modern theater.
I always did plays, and when I went to NYU - and I didn't go to Tisch, the theater school, because I was like, 'Well, acting's not realistic. You can't make a career out of it.' So I just studied general studies and humanities at NYU, but I was doing plays while I was there. So I was sort of cheating.
I always go back to the original material. I want a good connection as the composer and writer of the score to the director and to the source material. It's really important.
I'm kind of an old theater guy, so I'm sort of attuned to it. Like, when I go to New York, I go to plays.
People have had to make up for their spiritual impoverishment by accumulating material things. When spiritual blessings come, material blessings seem unimportant. As long as we desire material things this is all we receive, and we remain spiritually impoverished.
ALL THINGS, material and spiritual, originate from one source and are related as if they were one family. The past, present, and future are all contained in the life force. The universe emerged and developed from one source, and we evolved through the optimal process of unification and harmonization.
I have a great belief in spiritual force, but I think we have to realize that spiritual force alone has to have material force with it so long as we live in a material world. The two together make a strong combination.
I went to university in the north of England at University of Birmingham to do an English literature degree, and I knew I could do extracurricular stuff with theater and drama. I started a theater company, called Article 19, and I did it with a bunch of friends. I wrote and directed plays. I had a radio show.
I went to college and studied theater; I went to a theater conservatory. I live in New York because I wanted to do plays and still do plays.
The source of your mind is love and whatever you do to go to that source, is spiritual practice.
Half of the modern world goes back as far as Pearl Jam. The real historians go back to U2. But they need to go back further. They have to go back to the '50s and '60s, where things started. That's how you get to be your own personality, by studying the masters. Rock and roll was white kids trying to make black music and failing, gloriously!
I am trying to make some kind of connection to what is going on in the world, to make some sort of contact. And I use the instruments that our modern world offers, these extraordinary instruments of photography and film and computers.
We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. Our obligation is to make money.
'Saturday Night Live' is a whole different arena. It's great fun and I love it and that's what we do in the Practical theater. I believe in it wholeheartedly and will do it the rest of my life. But there's also legitimate theater, be it comedy, drama, classics or modern plays which I think is important and something I want to be involved in too.
Why do people think the spiritual life demands withdrawal from the ordinary? Because they've been taught, at least by implication, that the physical is a block to the spiritual. When we assume that the spiritual, unlike the physical, is impervious to corrosion, then we assume that all things material are not to be honored. But the fact of the matter is, the material is the vehicle of the spiritual.
We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.
Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake. If material poverty is to be avoided, spiritual poverty is to be abhorred. For it is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering.
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