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.

Take, for example, the word “emotional”. What are emotions? Are they areas of neurological activity in the brain that light up in MRIs? Is it enough to describe them as feelings? What does it mean to “feel” some-one’s pain or joy? Can we feel some-one’s “reasoning”? Or, for example, what really is our learning, training, practice? Can we describe it without resorting to common rationalizations?

You may think you’ve discerned where this post is going, but hold on! Bear with me , please.

I started my journey in theater 35 years ago, as an actor in regional rep theater in Toronto, Canada. I was headed for a film career except that I woke up sick one day, with the same dumb song running through my head; I realized I was a cheap salesman of “culture”, developed an association with several others who were sick too and started breaking  all conventions by leaping over physical and vocal barriers without a methodology, a school or a text; we went silent, without words. I worked behind my own closed doors…many many hours of sweat, through many nights, and days, with shadows and visions appearing and disappearing, songs, words, memories, walls, echoes, always relentlessly moving, moving. There was no purpose there, no direction, only meanings, rhythms, sounds, and a striking familiarity with something ancient, as well as a striking understanding of knowledge. 

I emerged when I heard about Richard Nieoczym, a graduate from religious studies who pursued theater work in Hamilton, Canada and had sought for and found Jerzy Grotowski, a theater practitioner who had gained world  recognition for his creations with the Polish Theater Lab, based in Wroclaw. Oddly, Grotowski had already ceased to practice theater as performance, and was beginning something new which he called “para-theatrical” (On The Road To Active Culture, Wroclaw, 1978). In other words, he pursued a road which changed theater practice from within the status quo architecture, to a space and time without architecture, without time. Richard and he became friends. I joined the Hamilton, (now Toronto) company, Le Theatre de L’Homme Actor’s Laboratorium (LTHAL), only after having read the literature about Grotowski, and after doing some research withRichard.  I worked full-time (back then you could afford to work at non-paying activities because rents were lower) with LTHAL and became acquainted with Grot and all of the members of his theater as well as some of the people who worked on Grot’snewer projects named Theater of Sources and the Para-Theatrical events . I worked on research in movement and voice, movement and language/text, co-created performances and conducted events and workshops, at times with members of the Polish Lab, for 8 years. The events we conducted lasted days, weeks, unfolded in our studios, in the northern woods, in the streets and parks, in the unbounded internal spaces; we thought we were adventurers, explorers.

But I grew fed up again, and the cheap song in my head became a self-congratulatory one/a self deprecating one. Our work was inspiring, not beautiful, in fact it was brutal to some, and our performances were so uninhibitedly physical they were impossible to follow. We performed Lorca’s “Blood Wedding”, for example, after having dropped text, changed roles, interpreted whole sections in movement without sound, sang text, used the horse as a physical metaphor for the spirit of betrayal and revenge. All of this was done from very harsh physical work called “studies”. We wanted the actor, alone, “in flames”, crying out to the collected onlookers. We believed we knew what we were doing, we felt the heat, the ecstasy, the grace, through our senses- our bodies, our voices- but we came to the cold realization that others didn’t have a clue about what we had discovered about and for ourselves and if they did, it didn’t matter. At the same time I had become painfully aware of the presence of an unconscious prestige hierarchy, the “us and them” mentality that had become the most troubling thing about our thinking: the practice and thinking that some just happened to be more evolved, more in touch with their unconscious than others; an artificial line, a wall, not a literal third or fourth wall, but a wholey, successfully internalized meta-wall that functioned the same as a real wall, censoring, filtering, objectifying,  rationalizing, solipsistic;  I believe this is a substitution rationalization common to oppressed people in a highly structured post-industrial society. To Nieoczym’s credit, he tried to fight this tendency in himself and in his theater, by restructuring to make a more participatory system, but it failed mostly because we didn’t have the tools to leap over a     systemic obstacle- inherent hierarchical cultural training that,  apparently, no amount of good intentions can surmount. Richard’s still working, in Europe, Montreal and Northern Ontario, but his work is much more reliant on, more trusting of the equality (not quality!) of the people he’s working with.

For my part, I have since come to realize the remarkable similarities between theater performances and mating rituals, or displays. In the corrupted traditional practice in the west, repetition as performance in dance/theater is social habit; it’s also a solicitation, an investment which involves a seduction, the desired end result being the same as for any business-increased sales (repetition as reproduction).  For me the common “ethical dilemma” in western artistic practice is a useful fiction: good vs bad, right vs wrong, audience vs actor; emotion vs mind. Ultimately, in my judgment, if you give value to the survival of theater, that value can’t be associated, in any criterion of rational judgment, with the values which bring about its decay and destruction, except as criticism. The source problem with the “good/bad”, “inside/outside”, “performer/witness”, “active/passive” duality is that  there’s no escape from the vortex of this duality- the embodied practice and its meanings have become “natural”, or “the way things are” or “reality”. In order to survive you just need to give a numerical value to what you do, anywhere from 1 to 10 for simplicity. That imaginary duality is like the perfect storm. You might argue that, for example, Eastern disciplines such as  Butoh are repetition par excellence, but you omit the fact that the audience is a participant in an ancient drama and so there is a direct experience for people, literally and figuratively

My experience of Grotowski the man, through limited personal contact, was that he was a shrewd realist who cared little for politics, political realities, or for any individual who didn’t meet with his personal standards. He was a brilliant artist and theorist who once said there was “too much democracy in theater”. He was a shape-shifter, so he may have changed, if he had lived longer.

At this point, I can hear your mumblings and groans, reader. Why is it necessary to “know” anything beyond the practice or the technique since nothing can be known using reason? Only experience gives knowledge. Only that which is experienced through some arcane magical direct connection can be learned. The questions of structural efficacy, utility or  ethics and the effect of social processes on thinking…ie. the structure we are engaged by, never arise.  I hear your conclusions, but differ. Please read on dear reader.

 Briefly, I next chose to pursue Decroux technique, a physical technique also called corporeal mime which was embodied by the practitioner, Jean Louis Barrault, and seen epitomized magnificently by him in the film, Les Enfants Du Paradis. I pursued the training in order to discipline my physical work. I worked with Margolis/Brown company (Adaptors) in NYC and Minneapolis for 8 years as actor, researcher, technician, and admin during which time we produced inventive physical and visual performance work, movement and sound collages using prevalent technology, as well as inventive marketing and fundraising. We were successful as an ensemble up to a point…we won many awards (NYC Bessie ‘87 for “The Bed: Experiment l”). 

 However, I encountered an obstacle with the assumptions I had madeabout the nature of our collaboration and the meaning of that collaboration in the context of the business of survival. The conflict arose because I didn’t see myself as a “volunteer” artist, yet it was generally assumed that I was no more than a (sic) volunteer. Even withyears of training and experience as a performer, I had to have a secondary job as a bike messenger, which allowed me free time to do the performing and the administrative/technical work. During the time I was in rehearsal for a new performance, I was “doored” by a car at work, separated a shoulder, and had to perform anyway withno medical insurance or rehab, an extremely physical piece that I had created and which would easily have been replaced withanother vignette if I couldn’t have done it. The experience with Margolis/Brown ended when I woke up to see that the operant principle of survival in the practice of art is separated by a vast chasm from the idealism, the love, the commitment to an artistic life, indeed even the relationships with co-workers, all of which which it gainfully exploits if we let it. The standards of practice of American theater Non-Profits are grounded in privilege and prevailing neo-liberal corporate thinking.  Aside from the fact that the absurd assumptions that some are more worthy of authorship than others (that some arbitrary numerical value defines creativity),  that a natural hierarchy exists,  or that creativity is of less value than the profit of the structure within which it’s practiced,  fail in any sustainable model based on human principles, the actual day-to-day work of survival is, generally, shared in smaller and medium-sized artistic enterprises and their survival depends on that sharing of the burden. But co-operation is denied in principle when prestige and survival are at stake. For my part, I had chosen to be unconscious, to bow to the fetish of “art-without-reason”.

That was my political comeuppance; i.e. I realized that theater or any eponymous artistic practice, is no longer a “reserve”, to use Grotowski’s term, a protected zone. No, the arts are moved, touched, infiltrated and secretly governed by the rules and the mindset that governs all societies. The dominant culture (using Gilles Deleuze’s”culture-as-training” reference) or practice, ubiquitously, is universal individualism, hierarchy and competition. We’re inculcated with it from birth, through games, ritual, art, media/technology, education and practice. It lurks behind the scenes in every effort. But, sadly, it’s the most ignored voice, the invisible but the most powerful actor. It’s the orthodoxy that keeps the imaginary line between the “audience”  and the “performer”.  Think of the power that a concept like co-operation has on the public face, and the inability to bring it into practice except as a way to establish a structure of power and control.

At some moment, having achieved training in any discipline, from blowing glass to court reporting to teaching theater, the desire to excel becomes subject to realities outside experience…or, practice for pay. In its general and ubiquitous use, there’s no such a thing as “artists”. The functional mechanics of belief and choice in our “artistic”  practice are based in the intrinsic structure of belief in the primacy of the individual and it’s individual experience, an ideology that functions well, that keeps us fragmented, keeps us struggling against others or against the environment, and this meta-conflict  objectifies emotions and pays big money. The analysis of greater happiness or well-being for all humanity is minimized.

There’s no room in the present structures and resultant relationships for democracy in the common practice of art, not in it’s original interpretation as participation and ownership by all members, nor in its popular use as rule by majority decision. Interesting conflict….everyone loves a good democracy as long as we don’t have to practice it.

 As artists of a different kind however, time is now to collaborate; to think through together and to make choices:  about how to proceed into the future, about the models we create and practice and the ones we reject, and about what’s important to do now. We need to break the spell of the dissonance. Can we agree in principle? My experience has brought me to the conclusion that nothing we do can be more important than love for all humanity- no technique, no practice is more important. Skill and virtuosity need to be in service to that. We need to talk about it.  What kind of art will future generations look back to us for? Will it be “my work, my company, my artistic vision, my artistic process, I, I, Me Me Mine”?

I have no reason to feel resentment. I am embarking on a new idealism, a new journey wherein the art and the practice of theater is to struggle with historical conditioning as well as personal obstacles with a commitment to equality, commonality, many voices and many visions. For me, there are no hard and fast rules of behavior, no techniques practiced that shouldn’t enhance collective as well as individual questioning and critical reasoning; this, for me,  is more important to “share” than individual (or national) identity experience.

As Miles Horton, founder of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee said:

This is the art of practice, and the practice of art for me at this stage.