On Tuesday June 13th at 7:30 pm the Ainsworth Chapter of Rose Croix No. 1 will be hosting a class on the Theater of the Fraternity.
Schedule
6:00 pm Social
7:30 pm Class
The Theater of the Fraternity Class will be presented by some of our Valley’s most educated and knowledgeable members including Illustrious Brother Stan Schmidt, 33°, who has taught both acting and drama classes professionally and who has been instrumental in maintaining a professional air to the performance and conferral of the degrees in the Portland Valley for many years.
This Class will be both enriching for seasoned ritualists of the Scottish Rite and also for anyone looking to improve their conferral and participation in the Blue Lodge Craft degrees.
The Masonic movement flourished in the United States from 1896 to 1929. What was the attraction? Why did so many American men of diverse cultures and backgrounds join? What was so important about the theatrical productions that became part of the elaborate initiation rituals, particularly in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry? Was the theater significant in the increasing popularity of Scottish Rite?
The Scottish Rite is oriented around a system of incremental progressive moral education in the form of a series of ritual initiations into increasingly higher degrees. Beginning in the 1880s Scottish Rite Lodges began to replace the old-style ritual with far more spectacular theatrical performances. These dramatically staged events transformed the nature of the experience for both the initiates and the audience of members. What had once taken place in the midst of the Brethren was now elevated to a stage, thus converting initiates and members into performers and audience, respectively. A ceremony that once simply integrated the initiate with the membership now conformed to the etiquette, expectations, and visual standards of commercial theater. And what had once been largely cerebral and mystical now became a more multisensory and, above all, more visually oriented experience.
This introduction of the theatrical element into the Masonic lodge heightened the organization’s appeal and with our initiation rituals repackaged the Scottish Rite membership surged through the first thirty years of the century. At the same time the Fraternity experienced a frenzy of lodge building(1), this resulted in the Portland Valley Scottish Rite Cathedral being built in 1902 as one of the first purpose-built Scottish Rite facilities in the United States. It was later changed to a Temple and then to the Scottish Rite Center but it has maintained both the vaudeville era theater in magnificent condition and also the same spiritual inspiration in the content of the degrees from the turn of the century.
(1)Theatre of Fraternity, Ed. Susan C. Jones, University Press of Mississippi, 1996
As with all our events this is not open to the public. This is the first of the Rite Night Light events for this summer so there will not be a meal but we will have snacks and the attire for the evening will be business casual. Please contact officemanager@portlandsr.com with any questions.
