It is recommended that the reader review the key terms listed below for the context
in which they are being (re)defined before moving onto the rest of this manifesto. -- AA
culture
We tend to think of “culture” as a thing and also a very big thing; hence, the smaller subcultures, microcultures, macrocultures. Culture expresses a dynamic process, not a thing, that manifests itself in similar ways regardless of size. Individuals can participate in a culture, as can couples, groups, "subcultures" and entire sectors of any given society. The phenomena of culture is also romanticized, mythologized and stratified into hierarchical spectrums of high and low culture. Culture has inherited an exalted status amongst its people
The impersonal (and unsentimental) basis of all human culture expresses no more and no less than genes interacting with geography. This mutual feeding process -- the earth feeds us, we feed the earth -- bonds human DNA with its immediate womb environment. We settle somewhere, figure out how to survive and develop relationships inside the power fields of the bioregion sustaining us. Culture is not something we "create" as much as participate in, augment, diminish, corrupt, subvert, develop with and otherwise act on and be acted upon by. Over time -- decades and centuries -- this genes/geography interaction slowly crystallizes into symbols, languages, and artifacts that encode, encrypt and transmit its unique characteristics as a cultural identity. Any human culture achieves longevity by the success of its sustaining rituals and theatre is one of these rituals.
theatre
As with any sustaining ritual, the nature and purpose of theatre must evolve and change over time to meet the emergent needs of its originating culture. Like a snake shedding old skin, a culture grows by outgrowing itself. Any theatre that does not strive to grow with the pulse of its originating culture ceases to function as a vital sustaining ritual. Dead theatre results. For theatre to remain vital, a kind of “paratheatre” must be utilized to explore, nurture and challenge the performer’s most primordial interactions between his/her own internal source connections (via the DNA/Central Nervous System/Body feedback loop) and the immediate womb social environment and its existing cultural zeitgesit.
This paratheatre must be structured to train performers in a format beyond the values and ideals of traditional theatrical training agendas; hence, "para-theatre", in the theatre but not of it. The purpose of paratheatre training is to develop and refine the inner and outer senses to enable direct access to "vertical sources" and their direct expression to the horizontal realm of the world around us. Verticality refers to sources of energy, information and orientation originating from above, within and below us: the stars above, the internal landscape and the powers of the living earth. Paratheatre trains the performer to act as a kind of local antennae for receiving and relaying non-local signals, energies traversing between vertical sources and the horizontally-positioned social needs of the emergent cultural zeitgeist. Such a paratheatre moves the performer closer to embodying the earliest oracular functions and shamanic ritual origins of theatre itself.
paratheatre
Where theatre depends on an audience to validate itself, to develop and blossom, paratheatre requires a kind of social poverty to regenerate the performer's internal resources well beyond the interdependence of the audience/performer dynamic. Traditionally this process has been instigated and maintained by various methods of sense-deprivation (disidentification with external stimuli) and the realignment of awareness with the internal landscape of more vertical sources and those invisible archetypes of immeasureable and immaterial presence. Over the ages monastic orders and spiritual disciplines have accomplished this but rarely for the purpose of regenerating the sustaining ritual of theatre, its originating culture and/or the culture of the society at large.
One strident exception is the work of the late Polish director of paratheatre, Jerzy Grotowski (Aug. 11, 1933 - Jan. 14, 1999), who coined the term paratheatre to address a stage of work his group was doing between 1970 and 1978 in Poland. Generally speaking, paratheatre refers to private, non-performance oriented processes of group dynamics usually involving rigorous physical and vocal techniques for accessing, embodying and and expressing the internal landscape. Without an audience, the focus shifts away from the external "pressures to perform" and onto the self-created pressures of performing actions with enough commitment to transform the instrument of the actor.
Grotowski himself claimed no actual 'legacy of paratheatre' due, in part, to the many transmutations his own work underwent over three decades, and beyond his death, at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Pontedera, Italy. The term "paratheatre" will be used hereafter in this manifesto with respect to Grotowski's past work and the current work of his protoges in Pontedera, while expanding its definitions and contexts to reflect my own ongoing research here in Berkeley California USA with the ParaTheatrical ReSearch group (since 1977).
Asocial Intent, Verticality and Self-commitment
In social events it can be healthy and natural for any group to meet, develop rapport and do things together to form bonds as a community-building social event. However, if these same social bonds inhibit and frustrate the creative processes necessary for accessing the internal landscape -- of our true feelings and spontaneous responses -- no true paratheatre can result. When a group becomes preoccupied with the masks and games played to meet our social needs -- for friendship, courtship, belonging, approval, security, status and so forth -- we are diverted away from verticality.Paratheatre acts as a visceral and spiritual self-discipline for challenging and nurturing the performer’s ongoing commitment to this verticality. To implement this shift from external to internal dependence, a certain asocial intent must be applied within the actual working climate where paratheatre occurs . Without this asocial shift, the "default" conditioning of our culture's socialization process tends to dominate the tone and atmosphere of interpersonal interaction, resulting in work biased more by social considerations, obligations and expectations and less on our true feelings and authentic spontaneous response.
An asocial intent can be established in several ways. One way occurs by each participant taking a silent vow to become responsible for their own safety and creative states. This vow establishes self-accountibility and a non-responsibility to others in the common social sense. The purpose of paratheatre is not to build social friendships and a community life -- though this may happen as a result -- but to build and maintain a kind of bridge between the internal landscape of verticality and its authentic expression to the horizontal realms of the world. This vow of self-responsibility opens the door to exploring and embracing the wild spectrum of humanity within us as aspects of, what Carl Jung refers to as, the archetype of The Self.
Asocial intent can also be discovered and established by positing high value on the space of the setting itself. Spatial awareness can be increased by the act of directing one's attention off of oneself and onto the space around, below and above oneself. For example, imagine an open floor dance studio with ten people moving about with no one relating or looking at each other but rather, being moved by directing the attention on the spaces between each other. By keeping the attention on the space itself -- rather than the things and people in the space -- certain pathways can avail themselves towards a more fluid motion; picture a hive-like swarm of self-governing bodies. This practice of directing attention off oneself can increase trust between movers by virtue of the respect shown for each other's personal space, a respect that can initiate an asocial climate of interaction.
Any action proceeding from an asocial intent can naturally frustrate the more social agendas for seeking approval, status, courting and flirting, belonging, and emotional support. It can, however, also help performers disconnect from these external motivations by replacing them with a deepening internal dependence on vertical sources of energy through the spinal column and entire body itself. Rather than depend on the audience for energy, we learn the art of sourcing ourselves. The reason for becoming as “sources unto ourselves ” is not for any deadend narcissism but rather, to return to our audiences inside a greater force of presence and generosity, as in a performance of offering...an offering of the Self.
More on paratheatre at:
Paratheatre F.A.Q.
the emotional plague
A term initially proposed by Wilhelm Reich for the psychological syndrome marked by irrational insistence on beliefs and ideas that depend on dissociation of mind from body. Reich also refered to it as "the neurotic character in destructive action on the social scene". Though this dissociation has plagued humanity for many centuries, it wasn’t until the “The Age of Reason” that the abstract intellect was exalted to god-like status with Newton’s theories and Descartes’ “Meditations”.
The current era of emotional plague has accelerated via the massive collective projection of physical, emotional and sexual energy into mental, or virtual, mediums such as the internet, VR technology, video games, mass media advertising, and television. If emotional plague is caused by disassociating mind from body, its confusion can be easily maintained by mistaking the virtual for the real, by taking an image or an idea of a reality for the reality itself; eating the menu instead of the meal, etc.
What is real and what is an illusion ? Do you know ? Do you care ? If you don’t know and can say so, you are probably waking up. If you already know what’s real, dare to live by it; your example acts as a signal to kindred souls in the struggle. If you don't care, don't bother; you are probably fast asleep. The emotional plague doesn’t care either and you will soon be assimilated, if you have not already been consumed.
Part Two: Integrity Loss and Recovery
the force of commitment, what feeds the being, the good fight
Part Three: The Performer/Audience Romance
the need for love, the total act, the No-Form technique
Part Four: Self-Observation and Ego
figuring out ego, from being to playing, flexibility
Part Five: Transmission
the first and second attentions, the bridge between worlds
