Notes of Today 2010

Antonio Attisani Notes of Today About The Living Room and I Am America Translated from Italian by Lisa Wolford Wylam (2010) The logical contradiction according to which writings about theatre outlive the artworks to which they bear witness, giving them meanings different from the original work, is particularly problematic in the case of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, because here we have something that is theatre in the full sense, yet simultaneously something very different from theatre as it is commonly understood. Since in this case the fundamental link is constituted by the essence of theatre and not its current norms, the reader cannot fall back on his or her own ordinary experience to fully understand, nor can one use other experiences of essential theatre as a key. If one thinks of a well-known theatre of this type, for example that of Peter Brook, adherence to the same ontological principles manifests in extremely dissimilar types of work, and it is difficult to recognize what belongs to the same species. Moreover, few indeed are the critics and scholars who know how to awaken the necessary sensitivity in younger, less experienced spectators. The non-narrative dramaturgy of the Workcenter is influenced by the fact that each of the two branches from which it is comprised continues to develop Grotowski’s research on the distinctiveness of theatre in a contemporary world hegemonized by mass media. Of course, Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini are by no means the only proponents of a theatre conceived not as a collection and exchange of ideas, but rather as an encounter and intense exchange among human beings. Since June 2009, after many years of sowing and tending seeds, the Workcenter has experienced a bountiful spring that includes the blossoming of several new works. This means, among other things, that the true summer harvest is yet to come. The work currently led by Richards and Biagini offers continuous surprises to those who accept the invitation to witness it. Professional observers can only report their own impressions and (if they are able) those of other passersby met on the field, yet nothing prevents one from hoping that the sense (significance and direction) of these events can be delineated through the interweaving of different descriptions and reflections. In this case, therefore, the absurd proposition of recording by means of writing an artistic phenomenon still in its birth phase could be useful in directing someone’s attention to the Workcenter’s new-yet-ancient way of broadening and deepening the craft and the art of theatre. Someone has said that in a theatre not devoted exclusively to representation, what matters is to “be oneself.”1 However, philosophy and other disciplines have demonstrated that to be oneself is impossible, since being is an activity, as already explained by Aristotle, the first theorist of Western theatre.2 So the true question is to become oneself, and one can do this only while carrying out an activity to the best of one’s ability. There are different definitions of the final objective: for Leo de Berardinis at the end, it was a matter of conquering the true Silence,3 while Carmelo Bene always maintained the need not to be artists who make works, but rather to make the artist himself the work (he, a masterpiece). 1 Philip Auslander, “’Just be your self’. Logocentrism and difference in performance theory,” in Philip Zarrilli, ed., Acting (Re)considered, Routledge, New York 1995, pgs. 59-67. 2 Aristotle, Poetics, trans. and ed. Stephen Halliwell, University of Chicago Press, 1998. 3 See Leo de Berardinis, “Teatro e sperimentazione [Theatre and experimentation]” idem. “Pronti al silenzio [Ready for silence],” in A. Attisani, Actoris Studium. Album # 1. Processo e composizione nella recitazione da Stanislavskij a Grotowski e oltre [Process and composition in acting from Stanislavsky to Grotowski and Beyond], Edizioni dell’Orso, Alessandria 2009, pp. 253-254: “The attempt to achieve this tension could not be other than through sacrifice and martyrdom; where sacrifice is understood as the sanctification of life through the From Stanislavski to Grotowski and beyond, theatre has been defined as an important laboratory in which one can realize this self-making without end. Grotowski insisted on the idea that knowledge is a matter of doing and that an action carried out fully and grounded in respect for organicity reaches or aims toward an end that takes the form of perfect peace and stillness. To demonstrate what this “presence” could be, he would show some pictures of Ramana Maharshi and of Gurdjieff: Here an “other” self is reached. The same concept is reiterated in several talks by Richards. In this trans-immanence, personal life becomes simply life. The Workcenter, Grotowski’s final and most extreme work, is the means chosen by some actors to traverse the ocean of becoming themselves. The two guides, Richards and Biagini, each use the potential of natural energies differently to travel in the same direction in search of a landing place. Currently, as their respective performance works suggest, Richards seems more oriented toward looking for serenity, or fullness, through a rigorous exercise of what has been labeled “Art as vehicle,” while Biagini has charted his course and that of his companions around a poetic festivity in which Allen Ginsberg’s voice constitutes the fundamental ingredient. The “Crazy Wisdom School,” the increasingly nomadic Workcenter, is composed in short of two unities that are at the same time highly specialized and capable of multifaceted achievements. As noted, for the majority of theatre professionals and spectators, theatre today is something akin to “reading,” that is a predominantly discursive activity, also emotional, but characteristically rational and intellectual. This attitude implies that a certain distance between the theatrical work and the spectator is necessary for mutual freedom and interpretation. Here, instead, we are dealing with something different: In the path traced by Grotowski, the theatrical event is the place of a shared experience concerned with modifying states of consciousness. In a normal body-mind, consciousness is a highly emergent function,4 a process and not a substance (as clarified by William James more than a century ago), inseparable from the body and from physical laws, a complex of transformations involving thought, perception and emotion, and of course the neuronal level -- although it is still difficult to determine to what extent as cause and as affect, a simultaneously psychophysical and cultural event.5 Only through full awareness can the human being pursue the need to go beyond oneself. While the ordinary mind merely interprets, what is at stake here is a comprehension that goes far beyond understanding. Technique is nothing but a switch. This, if I am not mistaken, was the meaning of mimesis and catharsis according to Grotowski. The Polish director chose theatre as a collective activity capable of suggesting and realizing a non-superficial transformation of actor and spectator. The same thing occurs in various traditions, as he himself demonstrated, drawing from them without prejudice. The need to support this practice with an adequate theory has thus far found few responses in today’s theatrical culture. I have sometimes engaged, even if with scarce objective resources, in observing the synchronicities and contradictions between new thought and new theatre.6 I have already elimination of the superfluous and of ego, and martyrdom as witnessing. The endeavor is to carry to completion all one’s own potentialities, to be ready for Silence. 4 Here the author references the concepts of Franco Varela. See i.e. Varela with Humberto Maturana, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston: Reidel (1980), and Varela with J. Petitot, B. Pachoud, and J-M. Roy, eds., Naturalizing Phenomenology: Contemporary Issues in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford University Press, 1999. 5 See the preface by Gilberto Camilla to Georges Lapassade, Dallo sciamano al raver. Saggio sulla transe [From Shamans to Ravers: Essays on Trance], ed. Gianni De Martino, Urra, Milan 2008 6 See for example A. Attisani, Theatrum philosophicum e filosofia del teatro [Theatrum philisophicum and philosophy of theatre], «Venezia Arti», 11, 1997, pp. 99-110. written about the early stages of the work developed by the Open Program.7 In recent months, the growing public circulation of the Living Room, as the work created by the Focused Research Team in Art as vehicle is called, allows me to share initial impressions of the other component of the Workcenter’s praxis and to contrast it with the performances evolving toward fullness that the Open Program has presented in Italy and other countries. Perhaps a new phase is beginning. You could happen to find yourself in the house of Thomas Richards in the foothills encircling Pontedera, or spending an afternoon in the apartment assigned to the director of Villa Romana in Firenze -- thus in any space not strictly theatrical, but capable of holding the dozen or so persons the doers have invited. After greetings and informal chat with coffee and tea, trays of fruit and small pastries, the six team members are seated among the guests and begin to sing; later, they fill the entire space with their actions. The performance lasts about an hour. One can recognize at the beginning certain African (Yoruba) or Haitian songs, again presented according to a logic that is not syncretic but rather takes a comparative approach toward the sources. As those familiar with the Workcenter already know, in Art as vehicle these songs are used as “instruments of travel.” Through these the members of the Research Team confront themselves with the issue of doing substantive contemporary theatre, or rather with the necessity of continuing certain traditions and at the same time committing themselves to a perennial new beginning. What they are called to learn is that the performer is like a sailboat: He needs to “understand” the wind, and his technique consists of using it to follow the proper course, or to discover it. These ancient vibratory songs and the development of the “method of physical actions” from the Stanislavskian matrix constituted the protocols of work during Grotowski’s years in Pontedera; they were the axis of a research involving the sources of techniques of organic work, the exploration of oneself in contact with others. Here bodies became the basis through which “something third” came to be evoked (as explained in various texts).8 The songs gave rise to individual and choral actions, and were presented differently than on previous occasions, not just because the doers were different but also because I understand this new phase as a festive initiation for the four young doers recruited two years ago (Benoît Chevelle and Jessica Losilla Hébrail from France, Teresa Salas from Chile, and Philip Salata from the United States). The performance is presented in a friendly and intimate context, unusual, at any rate very different from the atmosphere of the “monastery” of Vallicelle. The situation changes further on when they begin songs and recitation in English, because here we are dealing with material whose literal content is as important as its meaning. One can recognize, if I am not mistaken, some poetic compositions of Rāmprāsad on Kālī and the songs of the Bauls of Bengal. It is a humorous yet serious celebration of the manifold aspects of life, even the most incredible and incomprehensible. Certain passages are particularly touching, above all for those who know the history of the Workcenter, which is a link in a lineage uniting the living and the dead. I am thinking for example of a moment when Thomas Richards puts on a pair of old Timberland boots from the 80s, in which he made his first steps toward and with his teacher Grotowski. The sign thus created is also a line separating different stories and generations. Recognizing this background detail helps one to apprehend the different magnitudes of the endeavor, as well as to distinguish between past and present which dance together before our eyes, but at the same time allows us to catch a glimpse of a future unforeseen yet possible. In all of this, it is necessary to add, Berthe acts discreetly as a type of assistant director, while Chevelle, Losilla, Salas and Salata are disciples who already manifest diverse individualities. If 7 See Chapter X, originally published in A. Attisani, Smisurato cantabile. Note sul lavoro del teatro dopo Jerzy Grotowski [Smisurato cantabile: Notes on the work of theatre after Jerzy Grotowski], Edizioni di Pagina, Bari 2009. 8 See Thomas Richards, “The Territory of Something Third,” in Heart of Practice. Within the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, Routledge, London and New York 2008, pp. 123-178. everything continues to work as it should, each of these doers will write his or her own next chapter of this same story. Living Room, the sojourn, the space in which all the members of the household and the guests meet. Richards’ lexical precision is rich and meaningful. In this instance, the theatrical process that springs forth from the context of Art as vehicle offers itself to fruition in a domestic frame. Nothing to do with “apartment theatre” or a naturalistic aesthetic, just a warm, simple and laic shared celebration. The relation of the doers with the space has no sense of conquest or occupation. Those gathered are enwrapped, included in the aura of the work, which unfolds in a myriad interactions and movements (in the physical but more importantly in the musical sense): solos, duets, trios, men and women juxtaposed, etc. Behind the apparent simplicity is an immense work of creation that strips away the needless fripperies normally considered theatre. Those in attendance can see characters, are able to receive contents and perhaps a story, all this foreseen by the author, but the point of arrival is an interior theatre, or rather a myriad of “theatres” each time without equal, in those who do and in those who attend. Everything is full of light. The verticality of this performance plunges its own roots and projects its own branches in apparently elementary questions, as suggested by the allegorical title, questions that are in reality profound and complex. The driving motive here is constituted by the meeting, the contact among individuals (more profound than that among persons), in the context of a listening offered to the goddess Kālī, to her terrible dark humor, in appeal for an answer to her enigmas in the “game of the world,” a reply possible only through exploration of oneself. When one says that the theatre of the 21st century will probably be very different from that of the 20th, I believe that one is referring to something of this type. Since many of the functions once fulfilled by theatre have been taken over by other media, present-day theatre cannot redefine its singularity as an artistic event in being co-participatory and not exclusively logocentric, nor as the illustration or critique of a text, but rather precisely in the creation of a relationship among dissimilar human beings, a space in which the two extremes of an “egoism” that aims to annihilate itself (on the part of those who work on themselves) and of a need for “fellowship” meet, or to be more precise, allow voyagers who travel different paths to pause and confront one another. I say “extremes” also in the sense of Grotowski, since here Art as vehicle and art as presentation meet one another anew: for Richards’ team in a domestic sojourn, and for that of Biagini in a type of crowded bar (one can think for example of “The Planetary Bar,” a text by Grotowski that Biagini placed at the opening of the recent Italian anthology of the master’s writings,9 but also of the penetrating short text by Riccardo Facco included in the handbills of the Open Program). For Richards and his team, the songs are, as already said, a way of working on the bios by means of vocal forms and forms of action, while for the Open Programs most songs are poetic compositions that become the axis of the performance not only for the carousel of energies they put in play, but also for their content and meaning. The first approach of the team led by Biagini is that of musical composition. No one has yet remarked on the capacity of this collective modality of composition, which has conquered untold sonorities as well as a way of singing that has nothing to do with what is common to typical microphoned singers or musicians, or even with the musical; here something occurs that is similar to a rock or rap party, but nourished by archaic repertoires of oral tradition, to all unknown and yet recognizable by all. In both cases, their singing is different from that of the folk-singer and from professionals adapted to the registers of the modern society of the spectacle. 9 See Jerzy Grotowski, “Il bar planetario è davvero un luogo interessante [The planetary bar is truly an interesting place]”, in Opere e sentieri [Works and traces], Vol. I: Il Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, edited by A. Attisani and M. Biagini, Bulzoni, Rome 2007, pp. 15-16. Everyone here performs within a very detailed structure. Even when not everything works at its best, a performance of the Open Program could seem like “just” a magnificent musical. This could occur if the choreography, song and acting -- that is to say, the relationship between structure and organic flow – did not function as it should, and if the impulses were substituted with a “method.” In such a case, the supremacy of the technical factor would reveal a paradoxical deficiency of technical precision. The horizon of this efficacy lies beyond performance, even while including it. Assuming that definitions can be useful, one could say that in the case of Open Program what is realized is a sort of contact-poetry, while the Focused Research Team proposes an autopoiesis in public. Richards is simultaneously a conservative and a revolutionary in the sense that in continuing the work he began with Grotowski, he is always going deeper and further. While introducing his company to knowledge of performance craft, the leader of the Workcenter – faithful to the Grotowskian principle that “the technique is in the accomplishment” – elaborates exciting liturgies that are ever more distant from the point of departure. His teaching is also based on imitation, understood as mimesis in its proper sense, as knowledge through action (to do, exactly), where the often misunderstood “imitation of nature” has nothing to do with what can be seen in realistic storytelling, being instead a rediscovery and awareness of organic protocols. We are therefore at the beginning of a new phase and no one, not even the doers themselves, is able to foresee exactly what will happen in the future (The Living Room changes constantly; for example an earlier version included some fragments by Gertrude Stein, and Philip Salata was the protagonist of an exhilarating sequence). There are six people on this journey, three women and three men. Their personal stories are interwoven to create one story; such seems for now the scope of the Focused Research Program. And this, it seems to me, is why this adventure pertains to the development of 21st century theatre. Increasingly diverse actors and actresses are distancing themselves from the reassuring shore of representation and moving toward encounter with the other, naturally each in their own way. Consider, for example, the recent developments of Hungarian Árpàd Schilling, Belgian Jacques Delcuvellerie, or the French Théâtre du Radeau (three names that return us to cosmopolitan groups), and I believe that every lover of the theatre can give other examples. The difference with respect to the great experiments of past decades, for example those Mnouchkine or Brook, consists in the fact that here theatrical forms are invested with a desire, or more, with a need for a face-to-face meeting with a public not habitually asleep – more a dreaming together than making someone dream. It is worth noting that the relation proposed by this type of performance restores a decisive function to the so-called spectators. Some ideas are presented to them, surely, and the texts are chosen with great accuracy, but what is decisive is an “ascension” that accompanies the “sacrifice” of all the people gathered. Here the spectator is first of all the air needed by the flame: Without a co-celebration the fire would go out, but when in this little temporary fellowship everyone accepts being where they are, here something arises that becomes truly a collective “blaze” (not a “burning”), not in a conceptual sense but as an integral and nonsuperficial proximity among human beings. (I am aware that these words can seem vague to someone who has not frequented similar events, but I believe those who have experienced it could confirm.) Again: Concepts are important, but they are only the contents of a dramaturgy that consists of an exchange of energies, of something not attributable to the confrontation of individual opinions or beliefs, something that can transcend them and at the same time create space for an always new collective experience. All this happens while participating in play – at times authentically infantile, simultaneously happy and very serious -- and this game is a type of training for an assault on heaven that must be done both individually and by many. The aura of the work of art, which Walter Benjamin considered lost in the world of representation and reproducibility, is here recovered in the form of an essential light produced by this fire, a flame that endures long but is not (romantically, or religiously) inextinguishable, since it reaches toward the supreme aim of consuming the illusory barriers between the internal and external emptiness of the human condition. The two teams of the Workcenter are in a certain sense similar. The common framework is a type of grotesque (a body in which multiple opposed extremes coexist), a montage in perennial evolution, with recourse to sophisticated techniques such as synthesis, cross-fades, juxtapositions, etc. Yet they are also very different, because Biagini, always maintaining a strong “comic tone,” deepens the tragic implications, while Richards, exploring the tragic in an intimate dimension, seeks and conquers ever greater serenity. In neither case is there any self-comforting research based on purely ideological conclusions. A phenomenon of induction can appear between actors and spectators, and the same thing occurs among the actors. One could offer many examples. In I Am America, one could refer to the dialogue between Davide Curzio and Alejandro Tomàs Rodriguez, a dialogue made up of impulses, contacts and reactions that demonstrates how the very same actions can be accomplished by different individualities; in Living Room, this process is particularly evident in the interactions between the soloists and the “chorus.” The center of gravity of this theatre is constituted by two phenomena as apparently distant as death and birth, two “mysteries” that we encounter in their essentiality in the Actions which present themselves through revitalized ancient poetic forms. In Living Room – ever more similar to a mythic tale of a long journey towards another age -- there is also a sort of interior delicacy in regard to the past, while I Am America is a shared meditation on what “America” means today. In this sense each of us could call ourselves “american,” projected on a political and personal horizon. Death and birth declined – and interrogated – in two dimensions. The efficacy of the two sites is manifestly related. The group directed by Biagini proceeds from pre-existing forms that cross through a personal re-elaboration by which they are recreated, while that of Richards proceeds from singular processes toward forms. The interaction between the two leaders and the two teams is not preplanned but rather natural, intense even if unspoken, as occurs in a brotherhood. They distinguish themselves from Grotowskian teachings by overcoming the separation previously needed between Art as vehicle and art as presentation. Each of the two proceeds with accuracy, step by step. Richards and his companions in action were clearly two distinct entities in Downstairs Action (from 1987 to 1990). Then, as was seen in the following Action (from 1995 to 2006) documented in the film Action in Aya Irini (2003), the tandem Richards-Biagini emerged, alongside their relationship with feminine alterity and the chorality of the others. Then came The Letter (from 2004 to 2008), a space of transmission and thus of differentiation between Richards and the subsequent generation. Today, with Cécile Berthe and those who have arrived in the following years, the two teams start again from the fundamentals, the ancient vibratory songs, but these seeds from the origin grow in new soil and the results are surprisingly different from what one might expect. Richards in particular is always going forward while simultaneously disseminating his knowledge in a teaching that is light and ironic in tone. One could say that there has been only one Action for him, in the sense that from the 1980s until today, his line of work has had no breeches of continuity and includes a constant performative verification with Biagini. It is possible that a number of the current guests are unfamiliar with the Workcenter. In this sense certain songs as well as the walk called yanvalou, which has always been part of the daily practice in Pontedera, can constitute a discovery for some even if – I insist – in Living Room there is a substantial difference from previous Actions: Here everything has a particular lightness, nothing is ever repeated for a long duration, and the songs are interwoven with elaborate physical scores. It is also worth noting that in the case of the Open Program, Mario Biagini does not appear on stage but rather invests all of himself in “launching” his young company. Moreover, in this period the two elective brothers continue to develop their contact through acting together, albeit in a work not open to observers. The name of the unity directed by Richards clarifies that in this instance all begins from the nucleus of Art as vehicle. One consequence is that the observer cannot say what really happens among the actors, or rather cannot determine the grammar of the montage and what effect it has on them. Carlo Sini has explained that images do not exist. They are – like the psyche, the soul – a conceptual invention of the Greeks. But if images don’t exist, then what are images? What do we see in the case of the Workcenter? In effect, contact is above all a sonic phenomenon among vibrating individuals and bodies, and each of the onlookers, in order to understand, is brought to question himself, touched and led to different degrees of subjective vibration. Preexisting songs and texts are used as a medium by these men and women to look at the face of the past and the future. Here artwork and research are deeply joined, and this implies continual change, even more evident insofar as the work is realized within a very detailed structure. Some call this “experimental theatre,” an ambiguous definition often used maliciously to indicate a marginal or self-referential designation. In a certain sense, however, the definition is correct, because a theatre that wants to inhabit the contemporary cannot be other than experimental insofar as it acts as incarnation of the here and now. Thus one could say that a non-experimental theatre cannot be a living theatre. And one should recognize that performing is always the activity of an “infant,” of a human being who “does not yet speak” and is trying to become an adult or “king” (as in fables and myths), because this is the only way to do something worthy and to have something to transmit to others before one withdraws. Aside from Richards, the others in his team are less than 30 years old. The emotions aroused by these individuals on their journey – their “success” in communication – does not reinforce their egotism, but instead gives life to a gift to be shared with all. The enthusiasm is the impulse and content of the work. Even when confronted with terrible themes and incomprehensible questions, the observer is aided by their rigor and evident individual sincerity, and it matters little if their interior dramaturgy is not entirely legible (as always happens, I believe, even in traditional theatre of high quality). This Action is a ceremony of the Theatre, god without religion, like its predecessors, but this time as never before the guests feel that they are necessary and perhaps decisive for the work to function. The performance is thus a sacrifice celebrated by many. The onlookers are the oxygen that feeds the flame. The performance, as a bidirectional creative event, has its own logical conclusion (or rather dramaturgy) with catharsis, but this does not mean that the fire is extinguished. Actors and spectators separate, and each preserves their own ardor. The end and the consumption are essential elements of a performative protocol that began long before and concludes later, even if not for everyone. One could say that the ultimate objective of sacrifice is an emptiness, a wind in which the ashes of the “human, too human” come to be scattered. Let us not forget, however, that an image like the one being used or a metaphor referring to a living process is something highly approximate. In Western and Christian traditions one tends to think of this flame in relation to the Burning Bush, but it is possible to give many examples from other traditions. What it is important to emphasize is that the work teaches how to arouse and govern this process, even though it does not teach how to put it in relation to the axis of one’s own life; for that, each must find their own solution, in other times, places and ways. Normal theatres are like fake houses, scenery, ornately decorated, at first glance they seem rich and complete, but there is no real life in this. Here, instead, after years of hard work some new buildings can be seen, solid, designed to be inhabited by human beings, comfortable before being made beautiful. The initial spectators recognize the structure, but only through ongoing performance will the construction become ever more beautiful even when seen from outside. In perception, the structure will gradually be replaced by the sense. The beauty and luminosity thus created are external projections of the process. There is a happiness (obviously temporary, exactly like the flame) that moves the spectator and leaves a trace in the smile of the performer -- in the liquid brilliance of their gaze; in their gestures, never stereotypical, always surprising and simultaneously true; in their way of wearing costumes and using objects; even in their skin, which becomes luminous in its turn and is no longer as it was before. One enters into contact with a “well-being” in the making (the “superior biology” that Alberto Savinio recognized in true actors) that then becomes the aura of the actor, a special type of aura created by this temporary intensification, and by the many colors whose pigments are generated by the techniques and dramaturgical materials thrown into the fire of the artwork. That’s why if someone weeps, he weeps for joy.