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Performances:

Sat. May 13, 2023 @ 5:00 pm, reception afterwards
Sun. May 14, 2023 @ 1:00 pm

Location:  The Arts & Letters Club, 14 Elm Street, Toronto, in the Great Hall

 

Synopsis:

The Voice of Jung is a 75-minute one-man show by actor Raymond O’Neill. In it, the sometimes controversial but always fascinating ideas of Carl Jung are interwoven with O’Neill’s own dreams of Jung and stories of his ten-day sojourn to Jung’s hallowed and private retreat, the Bollingen Tower on the shores of the Lake of Zurich, Switzerland.

With material gathered from Jung’s Red Book and his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, plus selected passages of the correspondence between O’Neill and Jung’s eldest living grandchild Brigitte Merk-Niehaus, the timely, alarmingly thought-provoking and sometimes delightfully humorous “The Voice of Jung” is sure to please not only those familiar with Jung’s work. It will also serve as a comprehensive introduction to the life and ideas of Analytical Psychology’s founding father C.G. Jung, one of the 20th century’s most seminar thinkers.   

 

Author's Notes:

“The Voice of Jung” had its beginnings when I was in analysis with Fraser Boa in the late 1980’s and early 90’s. For the Fringe of Toronto Festival in 1994 I presented the first iteration of the play, then called “Jung at Heart." More recently, while I was touring the globe in the Cirque du Soleil show Toruk; The First Flight, I had a number of dreams wherein the idea of bringing Jung to the theatre — and the character of Jung himself — prompted me to once again explore this long-standing urge. By way of some unanticipated ‘twists and turns’, as in "The Voice of Jung" you will hear, I was the recipient of an invitation to visit Jung's Bollingen tower while my Cirque show was playing in Zurich. This led to a most delightful friendship with Jung's granddaughter, Brigitte Merk-Niehus, and a second extended visit to the tower in the summer of 2022. The weaving together of my lifelong fascination with Jung-- a  journey which began in theatre school when I was not yet twenty-- and the friendship with Brigitte and the great pleasure of spending time with her at the remarkable tower of Bollingen, is the the subject matter of the play you're about to see here today. 

I would like to acknowledge that my colleague and friend Ed Thomason, the dramaturge and director, has played no small part in the journey of getting "The Voice of Jung" 'from the page to the stage'. I am deeply grateful to Ed for his generosity of time, his mentoring, and the wise and seasoned guidance he has provided during our collaboration. 

Enjoy! 

 

What people are saying

~What a great show! I came away so impressed and moved by O'Neill's powerful performance, and really interested in Carl Jung. 

~Congratulations on a deeply heartfelt and passionate expression of a complex inter-weaving of your life, history, present day politics and more, with some of Jung's seminal understanding of the human psyche and spirit. I was moved, tickled, and reminded.

~I was really moved by the experience. It left me wanting to know more about Jung.

~The braiding together of dreams, the magical trip to the Bollingen tower and the friendship between Jung's granddaughter and O'Neill, not to mention the passion and rage of Jung 'himself'-- excellent show. Thank you! 

~Marvellous, magical, and moving. Congratulations!

Raymond O'Neill as Carl Jung

Reading List sourced for the play:

C.G. Jung:

Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Answer to Job
Aion
Psychology and Religion
Man and his Symbols 

And 

The Portable Jung edited by Joseph Campbell
C.G. Jung Speaking edited by William McGuire and R.F.C.Hull
Jung by Gerhard Weir
C.G. Jung by Elie Humbert
Tarot and the Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols (especially the Introduction by Laurens van der Post) 
Decoding Jung’s Metaphysics by Bernardo Kastrup
Breaking the Spell of Disenchantment by Roderick Main

I am grateful to the YouTube Channel Academy of Ideas for material on Nietzsche and Jung.

 

Raymond O'Neill, Actor / Creator | Ed Thomason, Director / Dramaturge

 

 

 

See all Lectures, Seminars and Workshops
Event Registration and Membership
Donate to the C. G. Jung Foundation of Ontario
Remembering departed friends