num_pages: 72
description: Based on the classic Buddhist text, the play deals with the transmigration of the soul and the choices to be made as the spirit hovers in suspended animation. Brilliantly theatrical in concept and execution, the piece blends music, mime, dance movement and spoken dialogue to create the perpetual stream of colors, sensations and illusions that assail the transient soul and seek to distract it from its proper course. Envisioned as taking place within a human skull, the play depicts the soul re-experiencing the life cycle as, momentarily, it floats free from the trials of earthly existence while striving to overcome the ambitions, wants, jealousies and fears that can obscure the crucial turning point at which it can rejoin the living "like a king" head held high and with the errors of previous existence both comprehended and surmounted.
language: English
title: The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or How Not to Do it Again
titlecomplete: The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or How Not to Do it Again
ratings_count: 10
publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.