The overall purpose of group facilitation in this paratheatre medium is to introduce suggestions, ritual designs, and floor plans that amplify the existing conditions and dynamics innate to the group entity as a whole.

The skills necessary to facilitate these rituals can only emerge from doing the work itself and gaining familiarity with its structures, techniques, and transformative processes from the inside out. In my view, this amounts to the completion of at least four ritual labs (one lab runs 8-12 weeks, twice a week, three hours a session). The role of facilitator is not the same as a director, or teacher, or guru, and/or therapist. The facilitator is more like the group's "third eye” gathering enough pertinent information to challenge and support the expression of the innate dynamics of that group during each and every session.

 

TAKING NOTE OF EXISTING CONDITIONS
Only by dispassionate observation can we learn to detect the patterns, symptoms, and tendencies evolving in each person and in the group as a whole. Pay attention to present-time moods, needs, resistances, and the overall spirit embodied by the group in each session. These sources of information start revealing themselves the moment participants enter the space. Also observe more obvious properties such as gender balance, age, energy levels, skill, and talent. By staying receptive to these innate dynamics, it may be easier to allow them to unfold as they will, rather than impose the outcomes you want.

TWO TYPES OF ATTENTION
Two types of attention are required for effective ritual facilitation in this medium. The first attention is that awareness linked to language, thinking and the automatic assignment of meaning. The second attention is that awarenness linked to presence, energy, and phenomena. The second attention allows for the perception of the existing energetic dynamics of the group. The first attention, when trained to follow the second attention, can offer accurate interpretations of the second attention perception of energy dynamics to best determine which directions to follow and suggest.

The second attention supports a perception for seeing things as they are, not as they should be or could be to serve one’s own agendas but as they truly are. Consistent practice in No-Form can proffer this kind of receptivity to the existing conditions of oneself and others, as well as, to minimize the tendency to impose one's own projections, fantasies and expectations on the organic group process (also see "The First and Second Attentions").

THE PHYSICAL WARM-UP
The five-phase physical warm-up cycle provides an excellent time to observe the levels of commitment and energy, or lack thereof, which bear heavily upon the work to follow. Typically, the more commitment demonstrated in the Warm-Up, the less resistant participants will be to more challenging and charged rituals. If the group commitment level is low, it may be best to focus on movement vocabulary and technique work after the warm-up before introducing more charged rituals.

OBSERVE BEFORE SPEAKING
It is useless and distracting to speak before observing. What you are looking for are signs and symptoms of present-time group dynamics unfolding moment-to-moment before your eyes. Stay alert. There are changes occurring out there on the floor. You may need to continually adjust your suggestions to coincide with the influx of new information from the group energy itself. Stay flexible. When in doubt: relax and then, look to see. Do not speak without observing first.

ON TALKING: LESS IS MORE
During the rituals themselves, participants experience the facilitator as a disembodied voice. Certain vocal and tonal adjustments serve ritual facilitation better than others. Since the participants are not "in their heads" and are not attempting to be, avoid suggestions that spell things out or define things too much or require thought to understand them. Keep it simple and open-ended. Participants are there to discover forces and realities, not have them explained beforehand. Choose your words carefully; the less you say, the better.

SPEAK TO THE BODY
Single words can often act with the power of mantras; sometimes, one word can be enough. Speak to the body. Body wisdom resists over-definition. Allow your directions to remain somewhat incomplete. Invite participants to discover and evolve their own responses and processes. Give them ample time to explore and exhaust your suggestions. The body needs more time to discover and experience a direction than the mind needs to think or talk or visualize it.

RELAX YOUR VOICE
If you're tense, participants will hear it in your tone; resistance begets resistance. When you experience unnecessary tension before a session, express this vocally before arriving or find some other way to get it out of your system. Participants have enough resistance to deal with already without also having to deal with yours.

ON PERMITTING MORE UNCERTAINTY
The energetic dynamics percolating beneath the threshold of the group and individual consciousness are often unpredictable. To remain more receptive to these currents, adapt an outlook that permits more uncertainty. The facilitator is responsible for initiating an atmosphere, a kind of creative climate of openness that supports the autonomy and integrity of each person in the ritual setting. One internal adjustment for setting up this kind of climate involves a certain "lack of self-investment". If you become too personally excited, invested or ego-involved, participants will pick up on it and resist your suggestions. You are here to support their involvement in the ritual process, not yours. Create space for the participant's emotional involvement by removing your own. Don't take your position too seriously. A catalyst never undergoes the same changes as the catalyzed. The facilitator is a ritual catalyst.

THE FINAL RITUAL OF EACH SESSION
It is wiser to end cool than to end hot. Due to the attention given to energy itself in this medium, this work tends to activate and excite the energetic body; the Central Nervous System is stimulated, sparked and "lit." Design a final ritual that can also serve as a cooling off process, rather than one that leaves everyone hopped up and wired. Restoring balance and equillibrium is a good rule of thumb here. When these rituals end late at night, the activated energetic body can sometimes keep participants up into the wee hours. Insomnia can result. This is why No-Form practice is so critical and why after especially charged rituals, it is important to stand in No-Form longer than you think is necessary to discharge the excess energy. I have also found epsom salt baths to be effective for neutralizing excess electromagnetic charge in the body (mix 1 cup per 100 pounds body in a full bath of hot water and then, soak for no more than thirty minutes; often times, 15 minutes can be enough).

ON ENDINGS AND GROUP CIRCLES
Typically, there is one group circle at the end of a 3 hour lab session. Group circles provide an opportunity for participants to voice their experience. Sometimes, nobody will say anything; when this happens, do nothing. Wait it out. After a particularly charged ritual, people may be silenced by what happened. Look around; look to see. On the other hand, if participants start searching for or espousing meaning or philosophical contexts to their experiences, refer them back to their actual experience, i.e., "What happened to you ?" "How did you relate to what happened ?" Though philosophical discourse and psychoanalysis have their place, the group circle has another purpose: to simply report what happened.

Distilled and abridged from material excerpted from
"Towards an Archeology of the Soul" by Antero Alli
(VERTICAL POOL PUBLISHING, 2003)

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