As on the smooth expanse of crystal lakes
The sinking stone at first a circle makes;
The trembling surface by the motion stirr’d,
Spreads in a second circle, then a third;
Wide, and more wide, the floating rings advance,
Fill all the watery plain, and to the margin dance.
Alexander Pope. Temple of Fame
There’s something that happens when people form a circle. Something primal. Something we’ve been doing since we figured out fire wasn’t just for warmth but for gathering around. The circle says: we’re in this together. No hierarchy. No front or back. Just us, acknowledging the shared madness of being human.
And rituals? Rituals are the things we do when words fail us. When the universe is too big and too indifferent and we need something, anything, to make sense of the chaos. We create patterns. We repeat them. We convince ourselves that if we do this thing, in this way, at this time, maybe we’ll touch something real. Something that matters.
Fort Point sits under that massive orange bridge like a secret. Like a bunker where history got trapped and forgot to leave. The walls are thick brick and cold stone, built to repel enemies that never came. Now it’s just there, bearing witness to the fog rolling in, the tourists above taking selfies, the water churning below with currents that don’t give a damn about your Instagram feed.
When you bring ritual and circle together in a place like that, under that iconic bridge, something shifts. The actors form their circle in the shadows. They breathe together. They ground themselves before becoming witches and kings and ghosts and murderers. Before embodying a 400-year-old Scottish play about ambition and blood and how power corrupts everything it touches.
The circle becomes a membrane between worlds. Between the person you were walking in and the character you’re about to inhabit. Between the audience’s reality and the fiction you’re about to make real. The ritual, whatever words they speak, whatever gestures they make, is the permission slip. The crossing over point.
And maybe that’s what we’ve always needed rituals for. Not to control the universe, but to mark the moments when we willingly step into the unknown. When we say: yes, I’m ready. Let’s do this terrible, beautiful thing together.