Part Three: The Performer/Audience Romance
talent & skill, the need for love, resonance, the total act, No-Form
(updated 12/23/11)
TALENT AND SKILL
The serious performer strives to strike a dynamic balance between talent and skill. Talent expresses the degree of fluid and flexible access we have to the internal landscape, the immaterial sources of our humanity. Skill refers to the capacity and dexterity for articulating and symbolizing the internal landscape through externally recognizable forms, images, and structures. Through talent we experience the presence, fluidity, and force of an artist; in skill, we experience their virtuosity, technique, and form. More often than not, performers demonstrate an imbalance between talent and skill; too much talent can overwhelm skill, just as too much skill can crimp spontaneity and talent. The more exceptional the performer, the higher the integration of talent and skill.
Talent and skill each require their own distinct sustaining actions. Though talent cannot really be taught, it can be nurtured by any climate allowing total freedom of expression and any approach supporting a spirit of discovery and an openess to chance. Talent thrives in a heightened state of creativity. Skills can be taught and then developed over time with repetition of whatever techniques clarify the form, precision, and style of whatever creative state our talent has accessed. When talent and skill harmonize, spontaneity marries high form to create Art.
The W.N.S. (Wayne Newton Syndrome)
The audience/performer dynamic expresses an inherent imbalance. As performers, we're onstage because we exhibit, or should exhibit, more talent and skill than the audience paying to see us. To ignore this simple fact, in the name of some populist theatrical ideal of equality or of destroying audience/performer barriers, is to court delusion. The audience pays to be entertained and enlightened to some aspect of their humanity - they come to be informed, stimulated, and amused. Performers are paid to control the communication in whatever medium they're working in; performers call the shots, must call the shots. When the actors take charge and do their job, theatre happens. There is a difference, however, between theatre that just gets the job done and theatre that changes lives.
Performers of the theatre that changes lives must continually work their craft in very specific and precise ways. Though these ways differ for each performance medium, their common challenge starts with finding whatever stretches and expands their skills and talents. Without consistently challenging ourselves, we can easily slip into the redundant rut of repeating the familiar -- what we know and what we do best. Without consistently challenging ourselves, performers can easily stagnate in a quagmire of inertia and even become the last ones to know about it. Unless we consistently take on roles, skills, and subjects that stretch our capacities, our existing talents can easily wither, corrupt or fritter away into a blitz of glitz. We become more tourist than artist, more mimic than creator, more spectacle than substance. The Universal Patron Saint of Show Biz Glitz, Wayne "Mr. Las Vegas" Newton, is a living example to performers everywhere of the fate awaiting those who only perform what they know and do best.
“I’m still doing the kind of shows I’ve always done
and I can tell you one thing: people may leave one of my shows disliking Wayne
Newton, but they’ve never walked out saying, ‘He didn’t work hard for us’ or
‘He didn’t give us our money’s worth.’ " -- Wayne Newton
THE PERFORMER/AUDIENCE DYNAMIC
The audience/performer dynamic is a romance fraught with mystery, anticipation, and great insecurity. Stage fright does not come from any promise of a long-term relationship but from the tremulous one-night stand called Opening Night. Theatrical conventions of distance (the fourth wall), talent, and skill naturally separate actors and the audience, a separation affirmed and sealed by post-performance audience applause. An audience does not applaud themselves. The audience/performer power dynamic tips and sways with kinetic charge and fickle electricity; one night we're up and on, the next night we can be down and out. As with any one-night stand, the audience/performer romance remains unpredictable and I think most performers would not want it any other way.
Can any real connection be forged between actor and audience in such inherently imbalanced dynamics ? Yes and no. Real connection between audience and performer may not be possible through any direct theatrical attack. If the performer is to discover any real connection with their audience, a more indirect approach may be necessary. "Direct attack" refers to any presentational confrontation where the performer directly manipulates and/or emotionally assaults the audience. Whether it's via the seduction of the performers' charisma or the performers' insecure "need to please and be liked or to impress others" -- or the more aggressive "in your face" assaults of Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty or Julian Beck's Living Theatre -- direct attack theatre often fails to achieve any real connecton with an audience beyond its sledgehammer dents. Though this direct attack approach can sometimes be effective as political theatre, historically it has consistently failed to achieve its core aims of "awakening the sleeping masses" or "saving or changing the world". Such great passion for saving the world may be better suited to saving ourselves from ourselves.
THE NEED FOR LOVE
No matter how great a given performance, an audience can only love the performance and not the person performing it. Expecting any satisfying "real" connection with an audience is a little like believing our need for love can be fulfilled by their applause. Everyone needs and deserves love but that's not what the audience offers or can offer. With very few exceptions the audience has been conditioned by centuries of tradition to act as passive, receptive vessels for the influx of their own impressions, emotions, ideas, beliefs, and reactions to the stimulus presented onstage. The audience applauds a performance for arousing their own passions, thoughts, views, and sense of identification -- in short, for arousing their own humanity.
When a performance succeeds, the audience responds with adoring applause, praise, admiration, and respect. But not love. Oh, we can hear them say, "I absolutely love your show" and "what an amazing performance" and "I LOVE you in your show" and so on, but these affects quickly fade. The audience is fickle by nature; they love the show one night and then you never hear from them again. Those who fall for the so-called love of an audience are shadowed by a gnawing emptiness on the dark nights between shows, fueled by a hungry ghost high of leapfrogging from production to production without breaking to breathe, to live, and to truly love. And anyone foolish enough to believe in their own hype and P.R. become as hungry ghosts themselves.
Attempting to meet the human need for real and personal love may be perhaps the worst reason to enter the life of theatre or as a performer in any audience-defined medium. Find someone to love (and to love you) and then, decide why you want to perform. And if you can't find someone to love, love yourself like there's no tomorrow. Or if you are so graced, turn to God and find the unconditional love that no human can be expected to provide and then, share this spiritual presence with the world as your personal mission. Become the love that you seek.
THE TOTAL ACT AND CAPACITY FOR RESONANCE
It is crucial to expose our underlying motives for performing onstage and onscreen. Why do we perform ? If we are to make real connection with the audience, our will to perform must be first liberated from all externally-driven considerations and motivations such as seeking acceptance, pleasing others, trying to impress the director, getting attention, love or approval, or seeking external acceptance for our talents, skills, and abilities. Only when the will to perform is emancipated from external social approval mechanisms can it become unified behind a commitment to perform what Jerzy Grotowski often called "the total act".
Performance of the total act first requires the development of an internal faculty of resonance, i.e., the intuitive capacity for knowing truth. Resonance requires no understanding, forethought, or plan. We either resonatre with a given direction or we do not. When we fully commit to following visceral and spiritual resonances within us, a ripple effect occurs. Like a stone dropped in a calm pool of water, our resonances indirectly stir similar resonances in the audience. As our own intuitive experience rings true, then ring true to others. How can we cultivate a deeper capacity for resonance?
A violin produces its beautifully resonate tones due to the space within its wooden chamber; stuff the violin with cotton and the instrument becomes mute. To increase our resonating capacity, we must learn to cultivate more space within the instrument of the self. If we are stuffed with ideas, beliefs, techniques, and knowledge, our capacity for internal resonance quickly diminishes. The creation of internal space requires a kind of "undoing" to restore our internal capacity for resonance. There are many approaches to this emptying process of undoing. The most direct and simple approach I have discovered and use in paratheatre is borrowed from Zazen; I refer to this adaptation as "No-Form". This technique is learned in a standing posture, rather than traditional Zazen sitting, towards cultivating enough internal receptivity to be impressed and moved by vital currents of energy in the body itself. In this way, No-Form acts as a tool in paratheatre, rather than a meditation discipline for achieving spiritual enlightenment.
THE UNDOING TECHNIQUE OF NO-FORM
The inner action of No-Form cannot be taught; it is tricky enough to even write or talk about it. Though No-Form represents a very direct and simple approach, it can also be a very difficult and frustrating endeavor for anyone burdened by over-thinking, intellectual identification, and compulsive analyzing. Other impediments to the receptivity offered by the No-Form technique include: identification with self-images, preconceptions, ideals, beliefs, over-confidence and excessive certitude. The No-Form experience can be addressed as a kind of intimacy with Void, as a kind of comfort around being nothing or being nobody.
This No-Form technique can be approached in any standing posture of balance resulting in a position of vertical rest -- of standing with minimal effort -- and supporting a state of emptying or internal receptivity. This inner emptying-out process is not done for its own sake -- no samadhi enlightenment is sought here. The objective is to cultivate enough internal receptivity to sources of energy in the body itself. The breath is focussed on the exhale, allowing the inhale to occur by reflex. Mentally, we relax the desire to control and the desire to control the outcome or any appearance of our expression. The intention here is to relax identifcation with any image or idea towards simply being nothing.
No-Form and the On-Off Switch to Creation
No-Form acts to charge a ritual to engage the body's vital forces and then, to discharge these forces after each ritual or performance. No-Form serves as a conscious transition between any charged state and a return to everyday self. We've all seen performers who need to be "on" all the time, the ones who have not found their "off" switch yet. The application of No-Form turns the creative engines off and on. No-Form practice grants us the freedom to use our talent as a tool -- when we're done with it, we can put the tool down. No-Form practice gives us access to the "on/off " switch of our creative engines. We no longer need to fear the loss of any access to our creative sources and our talent when we know how to turn this switch on and off.
By developing more internal resonance via No-Form, the performer can also create space for the audience to experience their own impulses, sensations, thoughts, and emotions without the pressure of being confronted or manipulated. Real connection between performer and audience can develop indirectly by resonances beginning in the performer and expanding to the audience, not unlike the sound waves vibrating across space from a bell to theear drums of everyone present. This mutual interaction of resonances relies on the performer's total commitment to their own visceral and spiritual sources which, in turn, act as a catalyst for triggering audience resonance.
In this way, the audience experiences an amplification of their own presence and not just the impact of a performer's force of will or charisma. After such a performance, the audience leaves the theatre exalted and amplified rather than being dented, assaulted, or seduced. To cultivate this capacity for resonance, the performer must first resuscitate the capacity for direct experience towards a more open state of being. The consistent practice of No-Form and other "undoing" techniques can effectively achieve this end.
MANIFESTO LINKS
Part One: Orientation
culture, paratheatre, the emotional plague
Part Two: Integrity Loss and Recovery
sacrifice and increasing the force of commitment
Part Four: Self-Observation and Ego
on playing contraries, 3 stages of paratheatre
Part Five: Double Vision
the first and second attentions
Part Six: Self-initiation
the bridge between worlds, what drains the power of dreaming
Part Seven: A Cultural Overview
the war in heaven and a society gone mad
