the paratheatre workings
Jessica Bockler interviews Antero Alli.
June 2, 2006. Berkeley CA.
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Jessica Bockler conducted this interview as part of her Ph.D thesis project with Liverpool John Moore's University, UK. In early March 2006, she travelled to Berkeley to participate in the Spring 2006 Alchemy paratheatre Lab, courtesty of a grant from Arts Council England. She currently faciliates her own labs in Liverpool UK. Jessica met with Antero in person for this interview at his north Berkeley home. Antero Alli is director of ParaTheatrical ReSearch in Berkeley CA.
Jessica: I’d like to explore with you if you have an underlying map for the work you do in ParaTheatrical Research. A metaphor, image, structure.
Antero:
Well, I have developed a rather irreverent positioning and attitude towards the intellect or the map-making mind. I have come to regard its status as a liar. And so I approach my process intuitively, and my intellect has been trained to follow my intuition – not the other way around. So, if there are any maps that come around, it’s always going to be the result of approaching a lab or my own work intuitively … meaning with no preconceptions.
Jessica: So, have you, over this long period of time, found that there are core pathways up the mountain as it were? Or is each path completely new?
Antero:
Well, that’s a very good question. The mountain metaphor that you bring up is one I can relate to. And so I see myself in a way as a sherpa or mountain guide. I am not the mountain itself, but I have been to the top and back many times and so I know some ways up there and a safe way down – and so I can bring people up and down. But you know, they have to take each step by themselves and I encourage that … so people make their own mistakes and fall down and figure out how to get up … so I’m not the kind of teacher who spoon-feeds the students the answers. I’m more the kind of teacher who is looking to shape a question in the hearts of those who work with me. And I find that as the questioning becomes more a core of their own quest, the questions themselves can lead each person to a more vital participation than any answer could. The best questions don’t have answers. But they can fan the flames of the quest or the journey in the heart.
The mountain is a good metaphor I think because the peak of the mountain is sort of where we’re going. And the peak represents how each individual comes to define and experience and know peak experiences. And this differs for everybody, the peak is going to look differently for each person, depending on what angle they’re approaching it from. And so a peak experience for one person can be quite ordinary to another.
Jessica: Do you think there is an ultimate … as you climb up the mountain, do you see other peaks in the further distance?
Antero:
Sometimes … but you know … the process of climbing a mountain is not to live up at the top, but when you get up there you climb back down again. So you live down in the valley somewhere, where conditions are more livable. A genuine peak experience can be quite intense. It can be intense on an emotional level, a physical level, for some people it can be a spiritual revelation or epiphany. Some types of peak experiences can erupt in complete epistemological crises for people, where their very values are uprooted and they have to assess what they’re living for … because they discover what they are living for is a lie … and they don’t want to keep living a lie … so it can be quite troubling. A peak experience is not always blissful and ecstatic. Once you get up there and you come back down … what do you do? You climb back down and you go home. And then what happens? Hopefully you find ways to integrate your peak experiences into your daily life, and this is, I think, one of the more difficult stages of this work. Once we have reached our personal peak, then what ?
Jessica: That’s one of the areas I want to cover with you … the integration of what you work with in the lab … into everyday life. – Does this work have spiritual dimensions for you … or is it more psychological?
Antero:
For me, personally, it’s become more spiritual … but for some others it may be more psychological … it all depends on the person’s make-up and maturity. Some people come into this work with lots of unchecked, un-integrated or underexposed parental or cultural conditioning … and that kind of parental or family business is the first thing these people are grappling with, whether they know it or not. In their minds they may not call it that but if they are starting to confront authority issues, especially the projection of authority … and sometimes I’m on the receiving end of that... then, it's more psychological. As the person guiding people up the mountain, others sometimes look to me as mum or dad! And of course I’m not that. I try to be attentive to that projection and remind them gently that I am not the father or the mother. I’m just the guide … I just work here!
I have in the earlier stages of this work sorted through quite a bit of my own psychological baggage, my obsessions and fixations and phobias and so forth. And so now, many years later, I still have issues but they don’t carry the same charge as before. I don’t feel as if they really own me that much as they did when I was younger. And so I’m a little more clear-headed about it now. Thankfully – I’m 53 now – so I should have something figured out by now! (Laughs)
Jessica: In your sources of inspiration you have mentioned your Grotowski roots and I get the sense that you draw inspiration from Carl Jung … is that correct?
Antero:
Certainly the Alchemy Lab pays tribute to Jungian thought around transformative processes but there's no strict adherence to Jungian psychology or any mandatory reading of his books. Overall, I do take to heart his notion of the archetype of The Self as an autonomous archetype "supra ordinate" to the individual Ego, which expresses a much smaller sub-category of the Self, ie., Ego is subordinate to and created by The Self. What we are exploring in this paratheatre work are aspects of The Self -- Masculine, Feminine, the Four Elements and so forth -- and sometimes we have to tunnel through the sediment of personal ego issues and resistances around these aspects to get to the core Self they are deeper expressions of; not as stereotypes but as autonomous archetypes. Jung wrote, "the experience of the Self is always a defeat of the Ego" and anyone who has undergone at least one lab in this paratheatre work knows firsthand what that means.
Most of my reading of books and texts happened in my twenties when I was rabidly searching for the meaning of Life. Since my thirties, I have almost written more than I have read and most of what I have written has been published; I have seven books in print. And so my primary source of information has shifted from books to experiences, from what I have been uncovering in the paratheatre processes to the creative and artistic processes they have inspired. I feel that I am biased heavily towards personal experience … not just my own, but the experiences of others. Experience has become more of a source of authority than anything I have read in books.
Jessica: I want to really go into the practice now. And one area I want to ask you about is, just in terms of clarification, we have been feeling our way into active and passive receptivity. Could you say a little about those two?
Antero:
Passive receptivity is like a double yin in its capacity to fully absorb. You’re sitting down in a school and there is a lecture happening and you’re just absorbing everything … you try to take in all the information, you write notes, you’re recording it, it’s full-on absorption of data … it’s a passive position. I find active receptivity a far more interesting development. That's when you're capable of taking in information while interacting with it. You're having your own thoughts about it and your own feelings. And you start to develop your own point of view about what you're absorbing. And that's where you can get into some processes of creative thought, independent thinking, emotional autonomy. You can develop your own feelings, your own positioning and view... instead of pretending that you are some objective, neutral observer which I think is silly and delusional.
And in the medium of this paratheatre work ... active receptivity happens when you get around to letting your body respond with its impulses to a particular stimulus or source of energy you're absorbing. Whereas if you're just absorbing energy in your body passively ... eventually it will immobilise you. Then there is no impetus to move because the impulses are blocked by the inertia of too much passivity.
Jessica: My next question is around the dynamic of will and surrender. And I’ve put intention in there as well. Somewhere these concepts are all floating about and I’m curious how you see that dynamic.
Antero:
Define for me what you see as the dynamic you’re talking about.
Jessica: OK, to me this process feels like a form of ‘controlled abandonment’. There is some level of control in the work I do, it isn’t all just soup. And I’m still hearing what you say to me – I’m not losing that. On occasions it has dropped away – but I’m trying to maintain that channel to your instructions, for example. And that seems to be an aspect of will. And then at the same time there is surrender, in that my ego has to step aside to let something else enter or rise.
Antero:
OK, I understand now. This issue addresses a central area of work in this paratheatre medium that involves two contrary lines of direction. One is a ‘stream-of-impulses’ direction where we grow receptive to energy sources in the body and completely give ourselves over to those sources to guide movement without any attention to controlling the outcome. The expression of that direction is, by its nature, messy and chaotic. It’s like a soup. And that’s inevitable. To learn how to surrender to sources of energy within the body, to give yourself over to those energies, so you’re not controlling and shaping them … it’s going to look like a mess, meaning, it’s not something I would put in front of an audience and call this Art or communication, because it's not. That is experimenting with self-access and self-expression BUT not yet communication.
So, that’s one line of direction … ‘stream of impulses’ or ‘source relations’, or ‘accessing the internal landscape’. All of these are phrases describing the same direction.
The other direction has to do with applying a sustaining care and attention to precision that develops its own kind of choreography, form and structure enabling the communication of whatever is emerging from the internal landscape. What's really difficult is building and maintaining a dynamic tension between the two. When work is totally driven by the ‘stream of impulses’ …it ends up like soup. When the work is completely driven by precision, well, that ends up dead. Or lacking spontaneity. So, the real work involves entwniing both sides of this polarity of precision and source work, of form and force, and developing the unique stamina for maintaining that intensity for greater durations of time.
The purpose of the source work is to unleash spontaneity and convulsive eruption of raw energy that just bursts through the body, almost like a spasm, like an involuntary reflex. It’s almost like an orgasm … the body in its own orgasmic reflexes are very primal and this is tied to the erotic impulse. That side of things. Whereas precision is more tied to the intellect. And how the intellect is working to shape and define the outcome, because it has something to say and also wants to look good and have a certain effect. This direction expresses the desire to control the outcome completely.
To reach this level of synthesis or tension between spontaneity and precision is very difficult. I have seen this happen only in groups in which everybody has been working with me for at least three years and then, for only minutes at a time, as it can be quite exhausting. Maybe fifteen minutes maximum before you need a break but usually it lasts only five or ten minutes.
Jessica: What is the overall purpose of this work?
Antero:
The purpose of this work is two-fold. At the central point it’s about restoring capacity for direct experience. And that deepening of that capacity which also allows for direct expression … can have multiple applications. We live in a culture and time period in which people are rapidly losing their capacity for direct experience. Much of our experience is significantly mediated now.
Jessica: Can the work be regressive, instead of progressive?
Antero:
Well, it’s both. Sometimes you have to … especially people who have become too smart for their own good … who have become a little too clever – I think maybe you can relate to this – in order to move forward a certain amount of undoing or back-peddling has to happen. In that regard there is a certain place for regression. If it allows for the temporary dismantling of defenses and ego structures that inhibit spontaneity, convulsive and orgasmic reflexes of the body. So, sometimes you have to step back one to go two steps forward.
Jessica: When you do this work, can it trigger people to reverse their development, rather than move forward?
Antero:
Yes, it can. This is why this work is not for everybody and why it will never be taught at university level or to anyone who has the money to do it. This is why I hand pick the people I work with. This work is not for everybody.
Jessica: Do you feel you might want to make it more accessible? Is that something that would be valuable to the world? I’m curious when the personal becomes the political …
Antero:
I find that this work acts as a solace or sanctuary for those individuals who are ready for it … or who are thinking for themselves … and are asking questions and are looking to undo or dismantle certain defenses, inhibitions that are frankly frustrating their creative or spiritual expression. So, going back to the core purpose of the work … it’s … all of the exercises are geared towards developing, at the very beginning, a personal encounter with the void. Because there is not a whole lot of substance or value that anyone can experience in this work until they come to a personal intimacy with void … or what we refer to as No-Form.
So, right away we have narrowed the number of people that do this work because we live in a void-ignorant society. We live in a culture that places significant social taboos around ‘being a nobody’. Many people are terrified by the prospect of an all-encompassing, enveloping void. But these fears are unfounded and childish. Thanks to the experiments and discoveries in quantum physics, we now know that 99% of the known universe is made of this void, not the "things" in it. This includes us; we are expressions of this Void. And this void is not empty. There is no such thing as empty space in nature. What appears like empty space is actually teeming with potential energy, or what we call No-Form.
Jessica: Could you say more on the difference between this work and therapy?
Antero:
Paratheatre work can have great therapeutic value. Though it’s not the goal. The two things that are the most tested and challenged are a person’s integrity and their autonomy, meaning their capacity for telling the truth to themselves, and their capacity to follow through, their capacity for playing and finding their own answers – rather than looking outside their firsthand experience. So, right away, this is going to eliminate a lot of people who don’t share these core values of individual integrity and autonomy.
Often in psychotherapy the advancement of insight involves some kind of transference phenomena between the psychotherapist and the patient. So, that’s a transference of internal psychic material onto another person so you can work it out. In this paratheatre work that transference phenomenon is utilised but it’s not onto me or any person … I’m not the psychotherapist. But instead of a person, our internal material is projected onto a specific area out in the space itself, usually demarcated by a boundary or a circle. And then we step into that circle and subjects ourselves to our own projections. The transference phenomena becomes a ritual skill when it's done on purpose.
By subjecting yourself to your own projections over and over and over again you can learn a couple of things. “These are my projections!” and “This is what it feels like … and here’s what I can learn about myself!” – So, it’s the same process but it involves a higher degree of self-discovery and autonomy and the autonomy is tested and encouraged as a … people discover that the contents of their subconscious and the archetypes express an autonomous nature, meaning these psychic and psychological dynamics have a life of their own and cannot be controlled by the ego.
They are autonomous. Complexes have lives of their own. They govern us, for crying out loud. We don’t control them. And so as you’re interacting with autonomous complexes, dynamics and archetypes that are truly autonomous with their own agendas. We engage these autonomous complexes and dynamics by learning to serve them. Serve them through movement, finding ways of moving and sounding the best serve their expression through us. And that is a fairly advanced stage of the work because it's done consciously.
Usually, in the beginning people are clueless about this notion of serving – they just immerse themselves and identify with whatever subconscious contents arise. They just become it and regurgitate it on the floor flailing about, kicking and screaming and crying – and there is no service, it’s all just immersion, absorption. Now this is a very important stage, that first immersion stage as it correlates to the alchemical conjunctio… the merging of opposites. Conscious and subconscious merging together. And that is the beginning of the work, where it all starts.
And then there is a falling apart and separating … so instead of merging with the energy you extract yourself from it and begin to interact with it, relate to it. And so you get to know these complexes and autonomous dynamics a little better by serving their expression through you in movement, sound and gesture. And this process of serving autonomous energies and dynamics encourages the growth of autonomy in the personality.
Jessica: Could you say a little more on ‘cellular choreographies’? That seems to relate to that.
Antero:
This relates back to maintaining the dynamic tension between source work and precision. Where you have access to what I would call the body’s own impulses, convulsions and involuntary reflexes … we’re talking about the body’s own organic responses … and how to pay attention to the innate patterns of motion oozing through the body’s own rhythms and cycles and how to serve those patterns of motions that you then gradually and gently, without killing them, distill and hone. This createsmore precise versions of this pattern, a clarity of form emerges, and a kind of choreography informed by the cellular experience. This also marks a more advanced stage of this work … the birth of a ritual action.
Jessica: Would it be right to relate this to … ritual postures? Where you enter a certain posture and by doing that you seem to access something.
Antero:
If the posture develops from a vulnerability to a particular energy source in the body – so it’s not just taking on an externally imposed posture but a form that erupts from a source of energy - that’s where it would begin. So, again the intuition or direct connection with the source comes first; otherwise you’re just imposing like a Yoga posture. You take this Yoga posture that was created by somebody hundreds or thousands of years ago and you try and fit into it and have a certain experience from holding that posture. Traditional yogas offer a wealth of a postures that never emerged organically from your own experience; you have to put it on and fit into it.
Jessica: You don’t like to conform!
Antero:
Oh, I love conforming … to my own will! Yes, I’m very obedient and conforming – but I have made some choices in my life about what to conform to and to obey. I find obedience and conformity to be virtues … but context is everything. The question is obeying what? The actual ability to obey is a virtue. When I say conformity and obedience are virtues, this can be quite misunderstood! I find them as virtues in and of themselves but it’s the context that’s important. And the context in which I find them to be virtuous is when a person finds a way to conform to his or her own sources of energy, intelligence, their own intuition and instincts. These are all worthy sources for applying the virtue of obedience.
Jessica: It’s a conformity that fosters autonomy.
Antero:
Yes, and expresses and allows autonomy.
Jessica: Now, the integration part. How do you personally find you integrate this work into your everyday life?
Antero:
By exposing a need to do it. Integration to me has to do with application. And I find that if you find a particular need that is met in this paratheatre process, let’s say the need to increase receptivity, you have discovered that you have a need to be more receptive. Then perhaps you discover that through no-form practice you can meet that need. You integrate that by becoming accountable for your need -- not just in the lab but in your daily life, whenever your need for receptivity surfaces.
Incidentally, if you have lost receptivity you will find yourself filling your time withall manner activities that disperse your energy. Lack of receptivity can also manifest socially when you’re pushing too much, where you’re trying to force things to happen. Trying too hard. All that just expresses a lack of receptivity, that you’re not listening, that you’re not paying attention, that you’re not receptive to the situation. This may be a frustrated need … and if you recognise it as such, then you meet the need. And this is the thing with many people who override their needs. It’s very easy to do because in this culture we've been more conditioned towards desire…almost everybody knows what they want … but nobody knows what they really need.
Very rarely do people tend to these kinds of spiritual needs. And so they live frustrated lives and they try to compensate by satisfying their desires. Needs and wants are different animals, different urges. So, to answer your question … this work can be integrated once you recognise what needs were met in the work. And you take those needs seriously enough to meet them outside of the work … and that's how the work continues beyond the lab sessions.
Jessica: There is a whole area here of dangers, pitfalls, pathologies … as people do this. You mentioned that people can get stuck at the very beginning if they’re caught up in their egos … and I remember that outside of here we have spoken about the ‘strong ego’, the ‘weak ego’ and the ‘big ego’ and those dynamics. I’m wondering, as you further engage with this work, what are the dangers?
Antero:
Though there are very common dangers, they will tend to manifest slightly differently in each individual, depending on their history and personality and disposition and so forth. But because this work is not merely physical, we have a strong physical component, we have a physical warm-up, we have to sweat, we have to move, it’s physical … but it also acts on the nervous system. There is a more subtle effect than physical and because of that one of the dangers is becoming overly stimulated at the level of the nervous system. And this can produce irritation. Or irritability. And if it is not monitored or dealt with or released … the irritation can move into numbness. And at that point you can begin to court with more pathological inclinations.
So, one way in which we work to minimise the tendencies for … whether it’s ego inflation, or irritation of the nervous system, or this kind of numbness … is again through no-form. After every ritual we return to no-form. So, the no-form position or stance has this dual purpose. In the beginning of each immersion it allows us to become receptive – so that our minds are not dictating the directions but we’re developing a receptive mind to these energies sources so we can engage them a little more directly with our intuition. However, afterwards, if you don’t get back into no-form, those energies are still hot, they’re still lit. Your nervous system is still reactive. So by returning to no-form after each and every ritual you provide an opportunity to discharge and dissipate the energy and dis-identify from the energy.
Jessica: I can see how important that is.
Antero:
Very important. And it’s, to me, one of the critical points absent from most ritual technologies that I have come across, this absence of any kind of return or dis-identifying process which I find quite critical to restoring balance and equilibrium and it’s a way of returning to the standard level of your personality – so you’re not walking out of the room as some kind of god or goddess. (also see "Paratheatre and self-delusion")
Jessica: It’s hard sometimes – because you encounter such nice states… and you just want to stay there.
Antero:
It’s very seductive. But then the self-discipline of this medium requires that we adhere to a higher principle than the ecstatic alone, which by itself is about seduction. The thing is … once you can access a particular state and you can let it go … there is a greater chance of recall. It’s actually when you remain attached that the recall is more difficult. What happens when you dis-identify from the state, no matter how wonderful it is, is that you create some space between you and that condition. And that space is what the memory requires. If you’re too glued to it … I think it inhibits the memory function. You start getting confused … thinking this is who I am, I am a tree with bees! It becomes a delusion. In the context of the moment it’s very real. But in the context of … when the ritual is over … it’s a delusion. The ritual is over and there you are, just standing in a big dance studio or wherever you are.
Jessica: I want to ask you as the guide of that process … as a guide what valuable lessons have you learnt?
Antero:
The thing I have learned … what’s most important about being a guide … along this journey is that the real source of guidance is in people’s first hand experience. And so my role as a guide is to keep nudging them back towards their own experience until they gain enough confidence and trust in their first hand experience to guide them. Unless people were raised by very intelligent parents, people usually do not trust their first hand experience to guide them, they don’t look to their own experience as a source of spiritual authority.
