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For the next 14 years after her return from India, the focus of Bis. Portman’s work was bridging the gap between Eastern and Western theatre and fostering understanding in the U.S. of the power possible in traditional and integrated theatre. Finally, though, she felt it was time to let go, to move away from her East/West experience in order to look more clearly at what she had learned and at how she could further use it.
Her formation of the Golden Key Performance Group two years ago has provided a place for this learning to bear fruit, although Bis. Portman says that the members of the company are largely unaware of her studies in India and the work that followed. True to her original goals, she has assembled a diverse group of actors, dancers and musicians. Their shared belief is that, as a group, they are more than any one individual could be. They seek to create something new together that no one orientation alone — whether a dancer’s or an actor’s or a musician’s — could have come up with, while still “honoring the expertise of each person.”
“The process is very time-consuming, and very hard,” she stated frankly. “Each person must sacrifice something of his own particular way of seeing” in order for the process to happen, but the result is organic, rich and rewarding for both actors and audience.
They have chosen the traditional versions of Grimm’s Fairy Tales because of their timeless quality and universal themes. “Stories are great repositories of wisdom. We bring to the stories of wisdom of our own time, but no ‘modernizing’ is necessary. All we have to do is just be true to our own time, and the meaning will be there.”
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