New play about Aleister Crowley by John Burns

John Burns has written Aleister Crowley: A Passion for Evil, a new one-man, one-act play which will be showing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2010.

The 55 minute play is set in the 1930s, with Crowley trying to make his living as a performer. He relives the important stages of his life in a “very human way”.¹

A short extract of the play is available on PodOmatic, along with several other related podcasts.

In Disinformation: the Podcast, Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall interview Burns, discussing Crowley’s biography and Burns’ sources of inspiration for the play.

Burns  first became interested in Crowley via mountain climbing, and living near Boleskine and as such, his portrayal of Crowley is largely informed by him as a man, rather than the mythic figure so often seen.

After the interview Wiley and McFall discuss In Search of the Great Beast 666: Aleister Crowley, a film put out by Disinfo in 2007, and the refreshing take on Crowley – something other than an occultist and cult figure.

Alexander Smith’s review in Hi-Arts.co.uk of the July preview is largely favourable. Smith writes:

With such a wealth of material on Crowley and his works, most of what Burns deals with will already be familiar to anyone with an interest. Burns’s portrayal of ‘The Beast’, however, is peppered with intriguing ambiguities and subtle allusion which works against the arrogance of many of the statements.

Burns seems to be tackling Crowley from a variety of angles with exceptional depth and complexity, which sounds like an incredibly intriguing.

For more information see TheBestReturns.com, to purchase tickets visit the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

If anyone makes it to the show, please let me know your thoughts on it. I’d love a review for ahrfoundation.org.

Thanks to @khephir for sharing the link to the Disinformation podcast on Twitter.

Footnotes:

1. As stated by John Burns in the interview linked to below. [back]

Psyche is the editor of ahrfoundation.org and the curator for the occult resource SpiralNature.com, Psyche also operates a tarot consultation business, Psyche Tarot. She has been published in The Cauldron, Konton, Tarot World Magazine, among other magazines, and her essay “Strategic Magick” appeared in Manifesting Prosperity (Megalithica, 2008).

Psyche's website is http://www.ahrfoundation.org.