We have some sort of video drama happening today. I’m intrigued. What will we be watching? Poem challenge is on. I’m excited. And I have no idea what I will do today – where shall I go? Who shall I watch? I’m so excited for this summer and being able just to concentrate on this kind of work, rather than feeling like I am totally scattered in my brain.

Kris says we are all zombies in the room – it is so true. The end of spring always feels so much more brutal than the end of fall. Perhaps the exhaustion will make the feelings easier to access, however. I would like to think so. So little energy to put towards self-defense and emotional protection means that we are more likely to put our vulnerability in the world, I think. And perhaps this is something about Grotowski’s work in general – or something about feelings in general. Any moment of . . . less protectedness means that there are more feelings in the world. I suppose? I am too tired for the ratiocination, I think. I can only have the feelings.

Every second of time is precious, as you know. Clips to show – videos. Visuals for you to stay liberated about theatre. What you do is already forming yourself and views about theatre. These three projects are already becoming a particular kind of work. You are learning what your work is becoming. You have enough work that this big open question has slowly transformed itself to the more focused work. The path of the fables show how this whole process becomes a form and the work is specific. You now know what you’re doing – or you know something about it. At this point, it’s okay for me to introduce a couple of clips to take you out of what you’re doing and to show ideas of theatre as a larger performing art phenomenon. It doesn’t have to be formed by the boundaries of the traditional theatre art. Broad spectrum of performance art. Dance theatre. Performance art. Music concert. We need to be expanding our ways of thinking about what we are doing.

CLIP ONE: Kodo Drummers

CLIP TWO: Butoh Dance

CLIP THREE: Vollmond by Pina Bausch

[I also adore her Café Muller.]

CLIP FOUR: Barbed Hula by Sigalit Landau

CLIP FIVE: The Constant Prince by Jerzy Grotowski

Potentially also of interest: Marina Abramovic

What’s in common with these short clips? Especially the Barbed Hula – operates on the exclusion of parts of the body, less of a focus on the torso and more of what’s not there. You don’t see her face – it’s not shy of the sexual organs. In theatre everything’s shown. What does everything have in common? There’s repetition – it allows you to have a canvas on which you can notice evolution and change. Elements of repetition in form. Everything is nondiscursive, nonintellectual – very visceral and still clear. You can make up something about what it’s “about,” but it’s about the visceral effect. Not language-based. Not necessarily identity-based, either expressed through emotion or physical movement. Emotion and creation are left for you to understand through. It can relate to everyone – the identification is in the emotion. Clearly choreography and no choreography in everything. Every impulse/gesture comes from sheer necessity. Even in the drumming, no human entity – just parts of a thought that makes sense in my head. A breakdown of human self. It becomes the ethereal elements unattainable to us because of our form. The energy that courses underneath our skin. Almost primal? Pure? Unguarded? We know inside what it is – but we can’t verbalize it. The way language carries information and the way we feel about it are not the same thing. Everything they were doing was true. It was in them. Not worried about aesthetic of what it looks like – all coming from a true place. We’re connecting but we can’t explain it. We identify with truth when we see it. What kind of truth? It’s truth that is…something universal and isolating. What is in the act of the barbed wire? What is in the act? It’s true – what is in that barbed wire that is different from what’s in saying it’s a nice day. Sacrifice? Cruelty? Something unrepeatable – it cannot return. It’s not the same. Truth of here and now shared and then gone. A truth of sharing the moment. The vanishing of that. The fact that everything is so fleeting. The idea of it is the difference between ritual and theatre. Every act it happens, goes, and doesn’t come until the need. It functions and it does something. The life involved in the ritual is of respect. It’s not coming back to you. It’s sacrificed. It’s gone and will never return. We don’t think about Hamlet or whatever in those terms. What you do is happening only once and part of your life, part of you, is never coming back. The next day you won’t have everything you had the day before. That part of you dies and never comes back to life. But at the same time – it’s propelling forward.

What exactly is the component of a propelling forward? The idea of not relying on your words – not living in your mouth – the idea that we understood the story or what I understood – very personal – we all felt something while watching it, but they weren’t telling us what to feel. I didn’t understand what but how they were saying. It wasn’t what but the manner of delivering it. Responding to music. Every performance is a death. Lives, dies, and is gone – and all of it is here. Done again instead of repeated. Repetition is not just a mechanical repetition – but act of doing something again. We’re identifying a sense of liveness. By liveness I mean the sense of something that is fleeting and only there for a brief time and it’s not something there for words. They all showed some excellent command of the body in order to channel some expression or life or an internal process. Not restricted to a specific identity – it’s an energy. Everything in every single one – no one is ever stationary – everyone has an active body. Even in the slow motion. Something about that. Moments of stillness, but it’s active stillness. Still and active at the same time. The process is just registered on a smaller level. Difference is being in the moment and completely focused. Focus on being still is on being in the moment. All of this is coming together in terms of meaning what sacrifice means.

Use their whole bodies to communicate – with the entirety of the body. Voice is the body – drum is an extension of the body. Goes back to what Smyra was saying. Not an act of the mind – an embodied mind, but not something that there are words for it. Everything that we see is a type of text, but not the language of spoken text. Symbolic system in which it signifies itself – you receive it through your eyes and through your entire body. Hurts when you see the hula. Every single piece had specific movements – nothing thrown out there. Complete control of the body. Because of that – and because it was so slow – went to me as beyond human. Terrified watching that stuff. Watching what hell looks like because of the way butoh woman – it’s like there’s not anything there. It’s pain on top of beauty on top of pleasure. It’s so much it’s overwhelming. Getting the primary emotion and so much more just because of the specific movements. In control. Yes, the woman doing slow-motion butoh is in absolute control, but you can also see the set of impulses on her face. There’s something that’s happening here and now that she has no control over and that sharing is happening as part of sacrifice. What I have is everything is front of me. I am literally here and I am literally performing and the muscle moves without me being in control of it. Sometimes part of the process – the body being in the process and being part of the process. That’s happening here and now again, but happening in a literal way. It’s not just the character’s imaginary suffering but it’s also the suffering of the actual actor in the room. Something actual, literal, real, truthful happening. Dancer tired and falls out of form – unable to live up to the music. He fails to dance in real time.

The pieces (esp. butoh and upside down) and performers allowed themselves to do one or two simple, single things and that was okay. It was okay not to have a bunch of stuff going on. The idea of something being enough. No fear, shame, worry – trusting that I just want to move my hands and that is enough. I will perform this and it is all I need to do. All of them are the idea of a total act. So simple and minimal, but then also expressing everything a human being can do. Sense of humanity. Everything and nothing at the same time. It is not mine what I do – it’s a gift shared and it’s everybody’s body. But to me it’s so disconnected from what we’re used to seeing and how I’m used to moving – seeing people move like that looks a little inhuman because of that. Neglected bodies full of suffering. It’s sacrificed to be everybody’s body. The movements and gestures and sounds are what’s underneath the layers of normalcy that we put on. What we understand as human is actually hidden. Moments are passing before we comprehend that they’re gone – we’re behind and we try and back-step, it’s like the ebb and flow of the tide. So I saw the stream of consciousness – it’s not primal. Anything that seems de-human is not human. It’s the most human – starting to access what humanity is. We use the word humanity as kindness, but that’s not what humans are. Perhaps in some elements – humanity is what we are when we are not censored. Pieces tapping into stream of consciousness. Role of artist in contemporary world is to remind people what it means to be human.

What if we cannot really live in the moment? We can’t. But what can be done as a gesture towards that opening into humanity? What is the role of performance work? In what way are you moved? What is it doing to your life? It’s not entertaining you – it’s bringing you back to life. We know we cannot live in the moment – living in the past and future make no sense – without being able to live in the moment, what is left? What does the performance achieve if these are all impossible things? That’s a tricky one to capture in language. Some of it is that we are sitting here in the room and are moved by it. In that way, something is happening in between us – some act of meeting is happening. One way in which the material works.

Anybody wants to share a poem? It’s too much for one day. One week to write your response – due next week. Final response paper informed by article on Genesis and is a response to your process. What do you want to share? I would like to get clips out and share them during our last in-class session. Criticism session and talking about our processes. What took place? Looking at ourselves honestly. We shared some work in the way. Shown honestly – what did we learn from the working process? What do we want to share? How do we capture it? How does it inform? What’s the next step?

Posters and promotions? There’s a whole machine behind this. That we don’t see. We’re creating them – each group. There’ll be something. Liz is going to write a program note. Work shown in a particular context. Doesn’t fly from Mars. Blood and sweat.

Let’s break into groups and have a good working day.