On the art of practice and the practice of art

“The Moreno story seems to depict the fault line between the privacy of practice and the public domain of art. Do others also read it this way? In a class on political theatre, I found myself defending Moreno’s attempt against the idea that only qualified professional therapists should ever attempt to work with people’s real emotions. For me it is impossible to imagine a profound theatrical work that does not on some level touch the emotional life of the artists as well as that of the audience. How then should the line be drawn? What is the ethics of traversing the border between private and public?”   Ben Spatz on the Moreno suicides, September 17th, 2009.

Ben Spatz raises some profoundly complicated questions,  if not too literal. In my opinion,  these questions beg  qualifying criteria which can’t be applied when practicing or “doing” anything, whether in the realm of culture work or in the throes of life altering decisions in private, or in the day to day practices of survival.

The artificial line drawn between people for the sake of art, between public and private, is one of the accepted, the necessary criteria, or rationalizations, I suggest,  which are the result of dissonance caused by cultural forces beyond each one of us.

The world of  thoughts, of rational decisions, of ethical struggles, is different from the world of action. Or better stated, a different world of action. There, words like “real emotions”, can lead to misunderstandings.

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“Good training will show in your work
People who know will recognize it.
Those who don’t – will see something too.”
Grotowski

At best I could only hope to not be imitating Grotowski, but at worst I feel I have scratched the surface towards his aesthetic without the sacrifice of daily work- perhaps no sacrifice is enough while I am still caught in my own daily performance. Peter Brook once remarked that “the temptation to be an armchair Grotowski will always be hard to resist,” but it has never been my intention to create his work; it’s too small a placement on too narrow a stage. How do we hold a daily practice while reaching past the rarifed form into something new?

New work has always had a savior complex: persecuted first and exalted later. There is also the risk of a survival essentialism- the new way often gets self-touted as the best way or the only way in its hope to survive. Bertolt Brecht once responded to this accusation, “Is this new style of production the new style? …The answer is no. It is one way, the way in which we have gone. Experiments must continue. The same problem exists for all art, and it is a gigantic one.” Often new work hails to remove itself from institutions and tradition, to be more accessible, more diverse and more affordable, but ends up co-opted by the only ones who can afford the novelty of newness. Read more

For a little over a year now I’ve been working as an assistant in the studio of a master metal sculptor named Robert Cole.  Mr. Cole has been working as a sculptor since the early sixties, for a long time in plastics (a material which he describes as too caustic to continue with), then in wood (among other things he has manufactured over 100 handmade instruments) and ultimately in bronze and stainless steel.  For over twenty years Cole has been crafting handmade metal sculpture of varying sizes, from the miniature (4 inches or so) to the monumental (up to 16’ tall and weighing upwards of a ton and a half).  All but a few of Cole’s works have been assembled from individual pieces of sheet metal cut, hammered and welded into place.  Blending the figurative with the abstract, his works continue to strike me as impressive, evocative and mysterious even after seeing them for over a year.  What is more, working in Mr. Cole’s studio draws upon many of the skills I’ve developed in the course of training as a physical performer.  In my work as his assistant, stance, balance, fine muscle control and breath coordination all find daily exercise. Read more

When we pursuit work in the studio and call it Practice, we almost never achieve Play.

When we pursuit Play in the studio we rarely achieve anything practical.

Play occurs most spontaneously outside of the structure of “knowing” and the pursuit of “Technique.”

And yet, it is through Play that we explore, discover and perhaps even develop practical technique.

Useful practical research into Play, its usefulness as a tool and modality for performance, must take into consideration the space and overall environmental context of the space.

Play which is more fully realized through embodied associations and reflexes gives rise to natural, intuitive, and purposeful participation.

I have found it useful in practice to account for “Fields of Play”  within the architecture of the specific environment we are using.

All of the mechanical actions of daily life are subdivided and guided by field boundaries, many of which are literally drawn into the landscapes of our daily environments.

Consider a performance studio or theatrical “space” is drawn to be just that, a special place for “rehearsing” or “performing.”  Rehearsal is strained practice which leads to presentation under pressure of maintaining what was practiced.  These kinds of environments elicit both excitement and fear.  After a great deal of time, familiarity with the environment relieves this tension, but it is always renewed when new members come into the space of the practicing company.

(translated with assistance from Francesca Netto and Ben Spatz)

NOTES FROM THE YARD OF NON-THEATER (Part 1)

“In the beginning was the word.” So begins the Book, and with the Book begins the era of writing. For long centuries, the Book has been the Truth. Today the word – the books – are mainly lies, ways of cheating and of making people silent. Cheap culture.

We look for Truth. We go back before the beginning, to the sound. The sound, the vibration, cannot lie. We do not listen to the word but to the way it is pronounced, its color and vibration, how it resonates within us. Then, like animals, we react.

Before the beginning, there was a vibration, a sound and an ear to hear it. The ear of an animal or a child. A bundle of nerves behind a subtle skin, ready to react. This is the origin: vibration, sound, and action.

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