The first blog : The first blog

"Everyday I Love you Less and Less"

2008-11-26T17:57:37Z

Friday, 15th February, 2008

[youtube]xPGZNWz0XAY[/youtube]

Everyday I love you less and less

It's clear to see that you've become obsessed

I've got to get this message to the press

That everyday I love you less and less

And everyday I love you less and less

I've got to get this feeling off my chest

The Doctor says all I needs pills and rest

Since everyday I love you less and less

Unless, unless

I know, I feel it in my bones

I'm sick, I'm tired of staying in control

Oh yes, I feel a rat upon a wheel

i've got to know what's not and what's real

Oh yes I'm stressed, I'm sorry I digressed

Impressed you're dressed to SOS

Oh, and my parents love me

Oh, and my girlfriend loves me

Everyday I love you less and less

I can't believe once you and me did sex

It makes me sick to think of you undressed

Since everyday I love you less and less

And everyday I love you less and less

You're turning into something I detest

And everybody says that your a mess

Since everyday I love you less and less

Unless, unless

I know, I feel it in my bones

I'm sick, I'm tired of staying in control

Oh yes, I feel a rat upon a wheel

I've got to know what's not and what is real

Oh yes I'm stressed, I'm sorry I digressed

Impressed you're dressed to SOS

Oh, and my parents love me

Oh, and my girlfriend loves me

Oh, they keep photos of me

Oh, thats enough love for me

Oh, and my parents love me

Oh, and my girlfriend loves me

Oh, they keep photos of me

Oh, thats enough love for me

It just happens that this music was played during the workshop we had on Greek Theatre, more precisely, Medea. A Theatre company, I'm afraid I'm not quite sure from where, visited our school in order to give us a Master class with exercises, theories, body language, as well as basic concepts on Greek playwriting.

I was startled from the beginning to the end of it; startled and out of breath. I've finally� realized it is true that we tend to work better when we're exhausted. The first thing we had to do, with Kaiser Chief's, 'Everyday I love you Less and Less', playing in the background, was to follow exactly was Jade and Jorge were doing (the main actors from the company): we ran around the hall desperately, avoiding every lunatic that was doing the same, then in a circle we jumped madly, shook our arms and legs as if trying to get some diabolic force possessing us out of our bodies. It was insane! Then more running and jumping and running and jumping, until, basically, the song was over. I could see everyone's faces: excited, uncomfortable (?), surprised, thrilled, intrigued, what the hell was going on and how was this all related to theatre? Well, it definitely was.

We had a series of exercises, for instance, the one I like to call, 'The I-am-stupid exercise'. It's all about deconstructing our body. We drop, bend our knees a bit and drag our bodies. Our back remains arched, our neck as if pulled to the front and we just relax all the muscles in our face. Our mouth opens and we get this 'I-am-stupid' expression. We then have to make low, grunting noises, but without forcing our throats, but as if to warm-up our vocal chords. Then we laugh, we laugh at each other, but stilll in character, still with that low, grunting voice. You see, the minute we laughed at how ridiculous we looked and how embarassing that exercise was, we just lost it completely, and that was when we really looked stupid, not when we were concenntrated, focussed, on what we were doing. Then we suddenly changed into the witch, the complete opposite. We took our brooms and laughed, histerically with that squeeky annoying, high-pitched voice. After that it was the baritone, opera singer. We sung like an opera singer would, projecting our voices along with our arms and trying to articulate our mouths as much as possible.

This was all warming up.

Exercises:

The Seven Stages. We were given a word, let's say: decay, and we had to be it in exactly seven stages, represented by seven steps. With every step we had to alter our body in order to gradually turn it into decay in it's worst form. It didn't mean we had to look rotten, but be rotten, be what it represents. Like the word lovely: we were not supposed to form a still image of a lovely person but one of lovely itself, as if it were a person. It is extremely hard to explain, even hard to perform. For the word terror, we didn't need to open our arms as much as we could as if trying to scare someone: they wanted subtle movements; almost imperceptible difference: a hand, a roughness in the eyes, a turning of the neck. At first I was completely over-acting, I could tell, but when I watched one of the company's members doing it along with a group of students, I could see that for decay she wasn't decaying at all: she wasn't all crimpled on the floor like most students, trying to mke weird shapes with her body; she was actually being decay, with a stiff mouth and rotten eyes, as if she inhaled and exhaled decay...It was all over her. She was it.

This reminds me of another exercise, in fact, the first exercise. In two groups which took turns, whilst the other watched as an audience, we were given words: cloud, dust, fog, apple, key, love, touch...Every possible word one can imagine, and with the sound of the clap we had to turn into that word. At first he would say, "Key" and we would all try to become a key, as in the object, but not as in what it represents. What does a key do? It unlocks doors...How can we be something that unlocks? It's funny because the actors would just raise their eyebrows and lift an arm for orange, or kneel for fog....

Jorge then gave us a script, that of Medea and asked us to learn around three lines for the next lesson. As simple as that. In addtion to that he taught us how to learn words. You see, a script is just made of wrods, directions, staging effects, but not emotions We, actors, have the tendency of reading scripts for the forst time and already putting feelings into it, adding volume, entonation. It shouldn't be like this. Words are simply words, and they should firstly be carefully read, so that they can later on be experimented and interpreted. When the word 'Today' is said. How does it sound? Try it for yourselves. To day. TOday. ToDAY. Change the volume of the syllabus. Doesn't the 'To' sound like a bomb dropping, and explosion, and the' day' the cloud, the foam, the dust that rises once this bomb has dropped? Well, this is what he explained to us, with fascinating passion for the theatre. It was inspiring.

This is Jorge!!!

"That which burns the skin is called water..."

2008-11-26T19:30:14Z

Wednesday, 20th February, 2008

These were the lines I chose. I was extremely nervous.

They are underlined here.

We all arrived with our lines learnt by heart and were first simply told to deliver them. Then we spent almost one hour walking back and forth across the hall in an awkward and uncomfortable body position (knees bent, back straight, pelvis pointing forward and neck pulled to the front) first of all just whispering our lines then increasing in volume, but not by saying them louder (???)....We then had to picture this horizon in front of us, this deep blue sea and proceed with the exercise...No emotions. Just delivering the line. Increasing in volume, but from the inside....Not by making it louder...."That which burns" "That which", "The gums..."

After a while, I could concentrate no longer, so just started to make words up because I kept forgetting my own and with everybody whispering or saying theirs out loud I couldn't deliver mine properly. It was somewhat frustrating.

Well, we then got in a circle and had to turn around whilst making these simple, rhythmical, but which required a lot of coordination, steps and at the same time had to hum a lullaby, or just a song we could think of. Nobody had thought of a song when he asked us to sing ours out loud. It was impossible to concentrate on the steps and have to sing at the same time but not on the rhythm of the steps, but on the rhythm of the actual song!!!! I remember my song though:

"Boi, boi, boi,

Boi da cara preta,

Leva essa menina

Que tem medo de careta"

Then one person had to go in the middle, without stopping with the funny steps and had to deliver the first sentence of their lines. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 4!!! It was absurdly difficult; everyone tried but no one was managing.....

I decided to try once more; it was all going fine, I had finally learnt the steps, but then he kept on telling me to deliver my line louder:

"That which burns the skin is called water"

Then to change the entonation of the 'That" - MAKE IT STRONGER, SOFTER, NO NO, DON'T SOUND LIKE A TEACHER, THIS IS NOT YOUR SPEECH AS PRESIDENT, AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN, "THAT WHICH", "THAT WHICH, "THAT WHICH", "BURNS", "BURNS", "BURNS", "THAT WHICH BURNS", "THAT WHICH BURNS", "THAT WHICH BURNS", "THE SKIN", "THE SKIN", "THAT WHICH", "THAT WHICH BURNS THE SKIN", "SKIN", "SKIN", "SKIN" and it went on and on and on and on and on......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

The other exercise I wasn't very fond of. You see, with this first line we had chose we had to give an image to each separate word: for instance - That: rain, which: a tiger, burns: me patting the tiger, the skin: me feeling the raindrops on my skin, is called: the tiger running away, water: me calling for it to come back.

It didn't have to have anything whatsoever to do with our lines, but it was just to start putting some emotion whilst we said them. When I said 'That', I would look up to the sky I notice it had begun raining, with the 'which' I would notice the tiger and point to it, 'burns' represented me patting it, going through its fur with my hand, and so on, depending on the representations given to each word, or group of words.

I thought I was doing it completely wrong but he said it was okay. He didn't say much, though. However, I couldn't find out what was the reason behind putting irrelevant images into every single word and acting them out if they had nothing to do with what the words meant. We did this over and over again....I started to feel bored. And hungry.

I found this brochure Jorge and Jade's company members gave to us in the workshop! It talk a bit about them as a theatre group, their performances....very interesting....Click on the following link to have a look!

Hotel Medea [front and back cover]

Pages 1 & 2

Pages 3 & 4

Pages 5 & 6

Pages 7 & 8

Pages 9 & 10

Reflections on the Workshop

2008-11-26T19:39:47Z

[youtube]0soIo4-OJLM[/youtube]

What is it
all about....

What was it all about?

By the way, the film is a production of Hotel Medea by Jade and Jorge's
company...very eccentric...a rather peculiar taste....I heard they have a six
hours long performance that, basically, takes place in many different rooms:
the auditorium, inside a lift, on the stairs, in a pool onstage, and the
spectators can watch, sleep, eat, watch again, eat, sleep a little more, have a
walk, for six hours....during the performance. A totally different concept of
theatre. Innovative.

Ok. Best moments: Pulse exercise, which I forgot to mention in the above posts.
After the first exercise, of the still-images created with our bodies according
to the words given, a sequence of words was said aloud and we had to produce a
corresponding sequence of body tableaus. Let's suppose the order was: hate,
love, blue, wind and fire. For each word we had to design a position and we had
to quickly change it with the sound of a clap. After repeating the sequence numerous
times it became mechanical and we had finally learnt the sequence by heart, so
we clustered together in a small group and had to maintain this pulse. It was a
heavy breathing, a noisy exhalation of the air through the mouth along with a
bouncy movement of the body, with the bending and straightening of the knees. It
was tense. Tension all over the hall. Everyone was serious, but we had to keep
on going, we couldn't stop, the energy couldn�t lack. It had to be strong. Then
the sequence of poses, one followed by the other, everyone together, getting
closer together, more pulse, breathing, changing the poses. We couldn't hit one
another, though, so besides everything we were already doing, we had to be
aware of each and every actor beside us. I even drooled at one point. You get
so into the exercise that you can't care less about the excess of saliva in
your mouth. So you just keep going, pose after pose, breathing heavily,
bouncing with your body, that you end up drooling and you couldn't care less
about cleaning up the mess you�ve made. You can't care about the audience. You
need to be focused at all times and you can't slow down, or miss the clap, or
stop breathing or lose the pulse. It's all a rhythm and the whole group needs
to be together. If one person slows down the whole image collapses, because
it's a performance for the audience, a bouncy image they observe, and it ruins
the entire production if one person lacks energy, so it can't happen. You have
to keep on going even with the increasing excess of saliva in your mouth.

Points of the exercise? Many. The key points are deconstruction, energy and
awareness and they're all connected. Deconstruction of the body, soul, spirit, previous
productions you've taken part in, previous characters, speeches, monologues and
dialogues. Deconstruct everything. The actor become a doll which has just been
fabricated and needs to be programmed. At the moment it's blank, no memory,
nothing, just the body.� In the body of the actor, you forget everything
and then you start to experiment. Firstly with the 'I-am-stupid exercise' in
which you experiment different forms of body, then the witch: squeaky, high-pitched
voice, followed by the opera singer: loud and projected and last but not least,
the devil: low and grunting. You use your vocal chords to aid you and you
experiment new things other than the stereotyped voices we are used to, the
almost sore for an old lady, grandmother, and the annoying one for a young
child.

Then the lines are introduced. You deconstruct the script. It's just made of
words, nothing but words, which have no meaning, no life, and this is what you
have to give them. Once this is done it's almost as if the lines were the chip
that has to be inserted into the doll so that it can start functioning. So you
separate, word by word, and begin to give meaning to them, like 'TOday', the
dropping bomb falling and exploding, followed by the dust, foam and smoke
flying over the air and spreading all around. Then you deliver the lines,
mechanically, without emotions, increasing in volume, but from the inside, you
repeat so many times that it becomes involuntary and once you have played
around with the order of the words, the sequence, the intonation and volume, it
becomes a part of you, as if the chip had been inserted.

Awareness is also a key issue because in a performance you have to be aware of
all the actors surrounding you, even though you have a million other things to
think about, like in the pulse exercise. We had to breathe, bounce, think of
our poses, concentrate but at the same time be careful not to hit anyone. Besides,
we need to be aware of what's going on. We can�t never lose track, because if
we do, if for a moment we forget what we have to do, if we lose our concentration,
it all falls apart: the same way that the image collapses, a performance may collapse.
You see, you need to be aware of your character, conscious of the things you
have to do but you can never outshine the other actors, for it's not a
monologue, it�s not only about you, you're not alone onstage. In the pulse
exercise we had to work with one another, be together but we could never hit or
touch the other actors, like in a performance in which you have to act along
with the others but never 'cover� them. �The whole has to be greater than the
sum of its parts�. Although there are different individual actors, they form
one production, one group that functions together. If one person fails, then
everything falls down, so everyone needs to be conscious of what he or she is
doing, even if it�s just standing at the corner of the stage.

Regarding energy, this is where the dolls is charged so that it doesn't run out
of battery. During the exercise we could never lose the rhythm, the breathing
heavily, the pulse, the bouncing, the energy, energy, energy. We had to keep on
going even if we drooled. We could never stop. Just like in a performance, despite
everything that happens you have to keep on going, for �the show must go
on" and you can't let your cast down. You form a group, and everyone works
together, you can't even for one minute forget the character you�re playing. The
energy has to be visible even if you're sweeping the floor (I�m not saying that
you should jump around the stage and breathe heavily, because the energy isn't
always perceptible to the eye, but it's there).

But what about the exhaustion, you ask me? Well, have you ever noticed that
when you're tired you tend to be more spontaneous, authentic, more of yourself?
You don't worry about what others might think of you so you let go of that
collar that stops you from being ridiculous or stupid and this is when
creativity and imagination flows more naturally.

It's all too fascinating. I want to be part of their company.

Warming up for Greek Theatre

2008-11-27T00:02:22Z

I can't remember all the games we had for warming up. The one I loved the most was to walk around the hall with classical music playing on the background then to dance as much as we liked to it, but using the entire space.

We had ones for voice projection that were exceptionally useful. We had to say a line and cross the hall saying it, but when we got to the middle we had to change the volume, either increase or deacrease. The we had to repeat but running, whispering, walking very very slowly and shouting....

We worked a lot on big gestures: melodrama. We had this 'Dramatic Death Game'. Have you ever played detective? Well, one person is assigned as the detective, by a person that's not playing, and another is assigned as the murderer, but only these two people know their roles but are unaware of each other's roles,do you get the point? Everyone sits in a circle and has to keep conscious of all that's going on. The murderer will blink to every individual, one by one, but in this game, when a person is blinked at they have to simulate an overwhelming dramatic death. While the deaths are occurring, the detective has to be attentive at who's blinking and when the murderer is discoeverd, or the detective's killed, the game's over.

We worked a lot will plastic balls. We stood in a circle with two balls, a pink one and a blue one. When we threw the blue one we had to say blue, but when we threw the pink one we had to say the name of the person we were throwing it to. We had similar ones like having to say your name when you received the pink one or your name when throwing the blue one. All of them had the basic objective of improving coordination and voice projection.

To work with dialogues we held a long rubber stick, each person holding opposite ends and we had to say our lines, whilst one person conducted the stick and the other followed holding the other end. It's all quite hard to explain. A simpler one would be to basically run in circles saying the lines out loud in order to get the energy pumping through our bloodstream!

We also worked our concentration and perception. A person had to mak a noise, predetermined by the pair, and walk around the hall making this noise. The other person, already dizzy from being spun around and with his or her eyes closed had to listen to that noise, detect it and follow it around wherever it went.

To work our self-confidence we were made dizzy once again and with our eyes closed we had to walk in what we thought was the direction of the circle we had previously arranged ourselves in.

You see, all of them, whether similar or different, had purposes in common: to make us get used with the idea of Greek acting, which is rather different from ordinary theatre. We need loud voices, overacting, big gestures, coordination, and a good idea of the common roles, such as the chorus. One of our exercises to work on being part of the Greek chorus was to read aloud one of the lines we were given from Medea, as if reciting a poem and interacting with the audience at all times, with many gestures and clear articulation.

Medea Visual Impressions

2008-11-27T00:06:12Z

Our first exercise on Greek theatre was a very basic one: with the sound of an opera by Maria Callas, we had to, in two groups, design a still-image of what it reminded us of, of what it meant for us. My group, unexpectedly, thought of the story of Icarus.

Icarus' father, Daedalus, a talented craftsman, attempted to escape from his exile in Crete, where he and his son were imprisoned at the hands of King Minos, the king for whom he had built the Labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur. Daedalus, the master craftsman, was exiled because he gave Minos' daughter, Ariadne, a clew of string in order to help Theseus survive the Labyrinth.

Daedalus designed a pair of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Before they took off from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea in the area which bears his name, the Icarian Sea near Icaria, an island southwest of Samos.

Well, my group thought the song resembled Icarus' death, therefore we decided to portray it in a tableu. One person stood up whilst the other two stayed behind this one person conveying the wings. When, later on, we were told to show movement, the wings flapped, but slowly desintegrated, like the feather once the wax had melted. In rder to do so, the two student who stood as wings gradually fell until the one person standing up, repreenting Icarus, fell to her knees, signalling his death.

It's hard for me to remember the other group's image: I'm almost sure it was that of a boat, like the one that takes the dead to hell. Remember that scene in Hercules, where two characters are going to see a devilish god and they have to travel on this boat through unclean waters in which there were people inside: souls stuck to that water....Remember? Well, I'm sure this boat has a name but I have no idea what it is. I just know the song resembled a barcarolle, which maybe reminded this other group of this boat that take people to their deaths. The point is, their bodies produced the image of a boat, and the movement was that of the sail. It was interesting because they produced this harmony, all of them together, to complement the image of the boat travelling to hell.

However, I'm not quite sure what this exercise had to do with Greek Theatre...maybe because we had to our body, a device of extreme importance in Greek plays.

This website is exceptionally good for a brief history of Greek Theatre:

http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/110tech/Theater.html

Another discussion we had was regarding tragedies and comedies, greatly explained here.

You see, we then started reading Medea, a woman in Greek mythology

The Medea tells the story of the jealousy and revenge of a woman betrayed by her husband. She has left home and father for Jason's sake, and he, after she has borne him children, forsakes her, and betroths himself to Glauce, the daughter of Creon, ruler of Corinth. Creon orders her into banishment that her jealousy may not lead her to do her child some injury. In vain she begs not to be cast forth, and finally asks for but one day's delay. This Creon grants, to the undoing of him and his. Jason arrives and reproaches Medea with having provoked her sentence by her own violent temper. Had she had the sense to submit to sovereign power she would never have been thrust away by him. In reply she reminds her husband of what she had once done for him; how for him she had betrayed her father and her people; for his sake had caused Pelias, whom he feared, to be killed by his own daughters.

"I am the mother of your children. Whither can I fly, since all Greece hates the barbarian?"

"It is not you," answers Jason, "who once saved me, but love, and you have had from me more than you gave. I have brought you from a barbarous land to Greece, and in Greece you are esteemed for your wisdom. And without fame of what avail is treasure or even the gifts of the Muses? Moreover, it is not for love that I have promised to marry the princess, but to win wealth and power for myself and for my sons. Neither do I wish to send you away in need; take as ample a provision as you like, and I will recommend you to the care of my friends."

She refuses with scorn his base gifts, "Marry the maid if thou wilt; perchance full soon thou mayst rue thy nuptials."

Meantime, Aegeus, the ruler of Athens, arrives at Corinth from Delphi, Medea laments her fate to him and asks his aid; he swears that in Athens she shall find refuge. Now, reassured, she turns to vengeance. She has Jason summoned, and when he comes she begs for his forgiveness.

"Forgive what I said in anger! I will yield to the decree, and only beg one favor, that my children may stay. They shall take to the princess a costly robe and a golden crown, and pray for her protection."

The prayer is granted and the gifts accepted. But soon a messenger appears, announcing the result:

"Alas! The bride had died in horrible agony; for no sooner had she put on Medea's gifts than a devouring poison consumed her limbs as with fire, and in his endeavor to save his daughter the old father died too."

Nor is her vengeance by any means complete. She leads her two children to the house, and that no other may slay them in revenge, murders them herself. Very effective is this scene in which, after a soliloquy of agonizing doubt and hesitation, she resolves on this awful deed:

In vain, my children, have I brought you up,

Borne all the cares and pangs of motherhood,

And the sharp pains of childbirth undergone.

In you, alas, was treasured many a hope

Of loving sustentation in my age,

Of tender laying out when I was dead,

Such as all men might envy.

Those sweet thoughts are mine no more, for now bereft of you

I must wear out a drear and joyless life,

And you will nevermore your mother see,

Nor live as ye have done beneath her eye.

Alas, my sons, why do you gaze on me,

Why smile upon your mother that last smile?

Ah me! What shall I do? My purpose melts

Beneath the bright looks of my little ones.

I cannot do it. Farewell, my resolve,

I will bear off my children from this land.

Why should I seek to wring their father's heart,

When that same act will doubly wring my own?

I will not do it. Farewell, my resolve.

What has come o'er me? Shall I let my foes

Triumph, that I may let my friends go free?

I'll brace me to the deed. Base that I was

To let a thought of wickedness cross my soul.

Children, go home. Whoso accounts it wrong

To be attendant at my sacrifice,

Let him stand off; my purpose is unchanged.

Forego my resolutions, O my soul,

Force not the parent's hand to slay the child.

Their presence where we will go will gladden thee.

By the avengers that in Hades reign,

It never shall be said that I have left

My children for my foes to trample on.

It is decreed.

Jason, who has come to punish the murderess of his bride, hears that his children have perished too, and Medea herself appears to him in the chariot of the sun, bestowed by Helios, the sun-god, upon his descendants. She revels in the anguish of her faithless husband.

"I do not leave my children's bodies with thee; I take them with me that I may bury them in Hera's precinct. And for thee, who didst me all that evil, I prophesy an evil doom."

She flies to Aegeus at Athens, and the tragedy closes with the chorus:

Manifold are thy shapings, Providence!

Many a hopeless matter gods arrange.

What we expected never came to pass,

What we did not expect the gods brought to bear;

So have things gone, this whole experience through!"

This drama is a masterly presentment of passion in its secret folds and recesses. The suffering and sensitiveness of injured love are strongly drawn, and with the utmost nicety of observation, passing from one stage to another, until they culminate in the awful deed of vengeance. The mighty enchantress who is yet a weak woman is powerfully delineated. The touches of motherly tenderness are in the highest degree pathetic. The strife of emotions which passion engenders is admirably shown; and amid all the stress of their conflict, and amid all this sophistical and illusive commonplaces which work upon the soul, hate and vengeance win the day. Medea is criminal, but not without cause, and not without strength and dignity. Such an inner world of emotion is alien from the genius of the religious and soldier-like Aeschylus; Sophocles creates characters to act on one another, and endows them with qualities accordingly; Euripides opens a new world to art and gives us a nearer view of passionate emotion, both in its purest forms and in the wildest aberrations by which men are controlled, or troubled, or destroyed.

Well, we had to choose a scene from the play, and my group, made up of three girls, chose the one in which she kills her children. We decided to work only with her monologue, however, there were three of us. What we did was the following: we divided her speech into three parts: her good side, her bad side, and her side that found itself in doubt; this way we would have three parts: the good and bad conscious and Medea herself, torn apart. Once this was done, we had to play around with the entonations and body positions.. A good exercise was the one of the body levels: none of us could be at the same level whilst delivering our speeches, which meant that we had to, at all times, be aware of every single actor onstage, because if someone changed level (by the way, there were only three) we had to change too, for no two actors could be in the same level. It was very helpful in order to make the scene more interesting, otherwise it was just three girls delivering there lines.

Peter Brook

2008-12-01T03:41:51Z

Yes! We read it!

Well, I'm not quite sure whther I understood all of his concepts, but I read what other people had to say about him, and I never knew I could become such a theatre lover...

Check this out:

Candid Camera !

By
James Moore

Perhaps when Peter Brook celebrates his hundredth birthday we may
anticipate a retrospect with some revelatory twist, stylistic shimmer, or
special insight into this bafflingly complex character. Meantime we have
Michael Kustov�s Peter Brook: A Biography, a well-meant journalistic
reprise with all the poetry of �the time sponsored by Accurist�. We are
reminded that Brook�s �white box� production of �A Midsummer Night�s Dream� was
a succ�s fou; that his book The Empty Space re-energised theatre;
and that he discreetly resonates to the spiritual teaching of George Ivanovitch
Gurdjieff.

During his long life Brook has met many people with interests similar to his
own: and certainly many with magnetic readership pull - Castro, Grotowski,
Hitchcock, Capote, Aleister Crowley, and Jean Genet (whom he alarmingly wanted
to be Godfather to his daughter). Yet significantly A.W.O.L from Kustov�s text
and ten-page index is William Segal, hero of A Voice at the Borders of
Silence.

If Kustov�s is a dutiful exhumation, the Segal item (fulsomely prefaced by
Brook) is an unindexed and undisciplined scrapbook, thrown together like a rich
plum pudding by its subject�s widow Marielle Bancou-Segal. So blatantly does it
sacrifice critical vigilance on the altar of conjugal love that it bids to give
hagiography a bad name. Everyone gets swept away in a Tsunami of mutual
admiration: Segal thinks gods to Brook, while Brook recklessly asserts that
Segal�s �innermost core was an opening to eternity�.

Thirty evocative photographs redeem Kustov�s biography (not least David
Farrell�s trapeze-lofted Oberon and Puck in the fairy realm above Bottom and
Titania) and Brook himself is modestly presented...Segal was anything but
camera-shy, blatantly viewing his entire existence as a serial
photo-opportunity. When young he was photogenic in All-American mode: in old
age, following a drastic car accident, he deployed a monocle and piratical
black eye patch. He was an artist too. �William Segal the painter�, explains
Brook, �looks at the outside world and leads us into William Segal the man.� He
certainly does. Most of his paintings are self-portraits; his motive being
analytical � and apropos he nods kindly to Rembrandt.

Brook has powered forward from Doctor Faustus in 1943 to Tierno Bokar
in 2004, like a self-fulfilling prophecy - �a man who has guided his own
profusion to a rich simplicity� claims Kustov, in his best sentence. By
contrast, the young New York
sophomore William Segal, heralded as the speediest left halfback of a decade
and sentenced to �a brilliant gridiron future�, quickly swerved vocationally.
Of Romanian Jewish ancestry and entrepreneurial flair, he somehow broke into
fashion publishing and became emancipatingly rich. Looking down from his elegant
office in Empire State Building,
he would sometimes ruminate on profit margins, sometimes on difficulties facing
�the average person�, and sometimes on Meister Eckhart.

Aptly enough, in the early 1940s, aged about thirty-eight, Segal chanced to
fall in with the author of Tertium Organum Piotr Demian Ouspensky (�a
regular fellow in many ways�); in 1947, the year Ouspensky died, Segal met the
prolix Zen theoretician Daisetzu Teitaro Suzuki - cultivating him and even
taking him to meet Madame Ouspensky and watch sacred dances at Mendham, New
Jersey; in 1948 and 1949 Segal won sporadic contact with Gurdjieff himself,
teacher both of Ouspensky and of the avant-garde lesbian Jane Heap. By
1951 Brook, aged twenty-six, had become a pupil of Heap in London, and Segal had launched the bon ton
journal Gentry (�It truly had a superior audience�)...Curious lines were
now converging.

It is Brook�s endorsement of Kustov�s biography which dignifies it; here then
is the memorial or C.V. favoured by a first-rank cultural icon...Arguably more
oblique is the American book�s significance. The wearisome extolling and
self-extolling of Segal ranks for nothing historically compared with the en
passant disclosure of how traditional Gurdjieffian praxis was radically
modulated by a hitherto unsuspected coterie; those photographs alone are as
revealing as a C.C.T.V. camera.

Gurdjieff, who died in 1949, never went to Japan but Segal did � and became
entranced. Arriving in a B-24 bomber carrying introductory letters from D.T.S.
(�I could see I was on the beam with Suzuki right from the start�) he hit the
Zen Buddhist trail. As year followed year, Segal captured the interest of
Madame Jeanne de Salzmann, Gurdjieff�s de facto successor, and her son
Michel the heir apparent. Respectively at Kita Kamakura and Ryutaku-ji
monasteries Segal introduced the de Salzmanns to Suzuki and Soen Nakagawa Roshi
(superb calligraphist, haiku composer, and innovatory celebrant of the
tea ceremony using instant coffee and polystyrene cups).

The striking Sacred Dances which climax Peter Brook�s film Meetings with
Remarkable Men are supremely ranked in the portfolio of Gurdjieffian
praxis, and no-one has prospered them more than Jeanne de Salzmann. In Japan she
nevertheless allowed herself to be persuaded by an insistent Segal and Nakagawa
that they needed buttressing by Zen-like meditation �sits�. Difficult to guess
the critical moment when Madame de Salzmann acceded. Perhaps it was in cherry
blossom time in 1966 when Suzuki, crying �Here, Mr Segal!�, threw a startled
cat at him. Certainly the grand policy shift delighted Segal: �Because you can
sit for 100 years and still say, oh yeah, I feel good.�

Segal died in 2000, aged ninety-six. And had he actually met Brook? Oh indeed,
time after time (and sports ten photos to clinch it). As for his
�enlightenment�, one only wishes it were susceptible of forensic proof. Yet if
this self-fixated pilgrim inspired just one �average person�, let alone Peter
Brook, that must suffice.

James Moore is author of Gurdjieff: the Anatomy of a Myth
(1991) and of the Gurdjieff module in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western
Esotericism (2005).� http://www.experimentaltheatre.org/peter_brook_candid_camera_!.htm
04/08/08

This one's quite long, but pretty fantastic!

Peter Brook
and Traditional Thought

by Basarab Nicolescu

Translated by
David Williams

�

�Tradition
itself, in times of dogmatism and dogmatic revolution, is a revolutionary force
which must be safeguarded.�

Peter Brook

�

Theatre and
Tradition

The continuous investigation of the meaning of theatre, which underpins
all of Peter Brook�s work, has inevitably led him to an investigation of
Tradition. If
theatre springs from life, then life itself must be questioned. Understanding
theatrical reality also entails understanding the agents of that reality, the
participants in any theatrical event: actors, director, spectators. For a man
who rejects all dogma and closed systems of thought, Tradition offers the ideal
characteristic of unity in contradiction. Although it asserts its immutable
nature, nevertheless it appears in forms of an immense heterogeneity: while
devoting itself to the understanding of unity, it does so by focusing its
concerns on the infinite diversity of reality. Finally, Tradition conceives of
understanding as being something originally engendered by experience, beyond
all explanation and theoretical generalisation. Isn�t the theatrical event
itself �experience,� above all else?

Even on the most superficial of levels, Brook�s interest in Tradition is
self-evident: one thinks of his theatre adaptation of one of the jewels of Sufi
art, Attar�s Conference of the Birds, of his film taken from Gurdjieff�s book Meetings with Remarkable Men,
and of the subsequent work on The Mahabharata. Clearly an investigation of the points of
convergence between Brook�s theatre work and traditional thought is not devoid
of purpose.

An important point needs to be made at the very outset: the word
�tradition� (from the Latin �tradere,� meaning �to restore,� �to transmit�)
carries within it a contradiction charged with repercussions. In its primary familiar
usage, the word �tradition� signifies �a way of thinking or acting inherited
from the past�1: it is therefore linked with the words �custom� and �habit.� In
this sense, one might refer to �academic tradition,� to a �Com�die Fran�aise
tradition� or to �Shakespearean tradition.� In theatre, tradition represents an
attempt at mummification, the preservation of external forms at all
costs�inevitably concealing a corpse within, for any vital correspondence with
the present moment is entirely absent. Therefore, according to this first use
of �tradition,� Brook�s theatre work seems to be anti-traditional, or, to be
more precise, a-traditional. Brook himself has said:

�Even if it�s
ancient, by its very nature theatre is always an art of modernity. A phoenix that has to be constantly brought back
to life. Because the image that communicates in the world in which we live, the
right effect which creates a direct link between performance and audience, dies
very quickly. In five years a production is out of date. So we must
entirely abandon any notion of theatrical tradition��

A second, less familiar meaning of �Tradition��and one that will be used
throughout this essay�is �a set of doctrines and religious or moral practices,
transmitted from century to century, originally by word of mouth or by example�
or �a body of more or less legendary information, related to the past,
primarily transmitted orally from generation to generation.�According to this
definition, �Tradition� encapsulates different �traditions��Christian, Jewish,
Islamic, Buddhist, Sufi etc. (To avoid any confusion between these two accepted uses of the
same word, a capital letter will be employed throughout when referring to this
latter use).

So in essence Tradition is concerned with the transmission of a body of
knowledge on the spiritual evolution of man, his position in different
�worlds,� his relationship with different �cosmoses.� This body of knowledge is
therefore unvarying, stable, permanent, despite the multiplicity of forms
assumed in its transmission, and despite those distortions brought about by
history and the passage of time. Although its transmission is usually oral,
Tradition can also be conveyed by means of the science of symbols, by various
writings and works of art, as well as by myths and rituals.

Traditional knowledge was established in ancient times, but it would be
futile to look for a �source� of Tradition. As far as its deepest roots are concerned,
Tradition could be conceived to be outside both space (geographical) and time
(historical). It is eternally present, here and now, in every human being, a
constant and vital wellspring. The �source� of Tradition can only be
metaphysical. By addressing itself to what is essential in mankind, Tradition
remains very much alive in our times. The work of Ren� Gu�non or Mircea Eliade
have shown the extent to which traditional thought can be of burning interest for
our own era. In addition, increasingly detailed studies demonstrate the points
of convergence in structural terms between contemporary science and Tradition.

One can find a precise point of contact between Tradition and theatre in
Tradition�s quality of vital immediacy�a quality reflected in its oral
transmission, in its constant reference to the present moment and to experience
in the present moment. Brook
himself refers to just this, more or less directly, when he writes:

�Theatre
exists in the here and now. It is what
happens at that precise moment when you perform, that moment at which the world
of the actors and the world of the audience meet. A society in miniature, a
microcosm brought together every evening within a space. Theatre�s
role is to give this microcosm a burning and fleeting taste of another world,
and thereby interest it, transform it, integrate it.�

Evidently, according to Brook�s vision, although the theatre is on the
one hand by its very nature �a-traditional,� it could be conceived to be a
field of study in which to confront and explore Tradition. The reasons for Brook�s
interest in the thought of Gurdjieff are also apparent: as we know, Brook
devoted several years of work to realising a film version of one of his books.
We believe that significant correspondences exist between Brook�s work in
theatre and the teachings of Gurdjieff: and for that reason Gurdjieff�s name
will recur throughout this essay.

While resolutely remaining a man of Tradition, Gurdjieff (1877�1949)
managed to express his teachings in contemporary language. He also succeeded in
locating and formulating, in a scientific manner, laws common to all levels of
reality. These laws assure a �unity in diversity,� a unity
beyond the infinite variety of forms associated with the different levels. These laws explain why
mankind need not be a fragmented state in a thousand realities, but in one
multi-faceted reality only.

Aesthetic reality, spiritual reality, scientific reality: don�t they all
converge on one and the same centre, while remaining utterly distinct and
different in themselves? Hasn�t contemporary scientific thought itself (both
quantum and sub-quantum) uncovered paradoxical and surprising aspects in
nature, formerly entirely unsuspected�aspects which bring it significantly
closer to Tradition?

Theatre work, traditional thought, scientific thought: such a meeting is
perhaps unusual, but certainly not fortuitous. By Peter Brook�s own admission, what
attracted him to theatrical form as well as to the study of Tradition was
precisely this apparent contradiction between art and science. So it is not at
all surprising that a book such as Matila Ghyka�s Le Nombre d�Or (a discussion
of the relationship between numbers, proportions and emotions) should have made
such a strong impression on him.

The possible dialogues between science and
Tradition, art and Tradition, science and art, are rich and fruitful,
potentially offering a means of understanding a world borne down by and
submerged beneath increasingly alienating complexities.

�

The Theatre as Field of Study � of Energy, Movement
and Interrelations

We believe that Brook�s theatre research is structured around three
polar elements: energy, movement and interrelations. �We know that the world of
appearance,� writes Brook, �is a crust�under the crust is the boiling matter we
see if we peer into a volcano. How can we tap this
energy?� Theatrical reality will be determined by the movement of energy, a
movement itself only perceivable by means of certain relationships: the
interrelations of actors, and that between text, actors and audience. Movement cannot be the
result of an actor�s action: the actor does not �do� a movement, it moves
through him/her. Brook takes Merce Cunningham as an example: �he has trained
his body to obey, his technique is his servant, so that instead of being
wrapped up in the making of a movement, he can let the movement unfold in
intimate company with the unfolding of the music.�

The simultaneous presence of energy, movement and certain interrelations
brings the theatrical event to life. With reference to Orghast, Brook spoke of �the fire
of the event,� which is �that marvelous thing of performance in the theatre.
Through it, all the things that we�d been working on suddenly fell into
place.�9 This �falling into place� indicates the sudden discovery of a
structure hidden beneath the multiplicity of forms, apparently extending in all
directions. That is why Brook believes the essence of theatre work to be in
�freeing the dynamic process.�10 It is a question of �freeing� and not of
�fixing� or �capturing� this process which explains the suddenness of the
event. A linear unfolding would signify a mechanistic determinism, whereas here
the event is linked to a structure which is clearly not linear at all�but
rather one of lateral interrelationships and interconnections.

Event is another key word, frequently recurring in Brook�s work. Surely it is not simply
coincidence that the same word covers a central notion in modern scientific
theory, since Einstein and Minkowski? Beyond the infinite multiplicity of
appearances, isn�t reality perhaps based on one single foundation?

In 1900, Max Planck introduced the concept of the �elementary quantum of
action,� a theory in physics based on the notion of continuity: energy has a discreet,
discontinuous structure. In
1905, Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity, revealing a new
relationship between space and time: it would contribute to a radical
reevaluation of the object/energy hierarchy. Gradually, the notion of an object
would be replaced by that of an �event,� a �relationship� and an
�interconnection��real movement being that of energy. Quantum mechanics as a
theory was elaborated much later, around 1930: it shattered the concept of
identity in a classical particle. For the first time, the possibility of a
space/time discontinuum was recognised as logically valid. And finally the
theory of elementary particles�a continuation of both quantum mechanics and the
theory of relativity, as well as an attempt to go beyond both of these physical
theories�is still in the process of elaboration today.

Like both contemporary scientists and Gurdjieff,
Brook is convinced of the materiality of energy. Describing the characteristics
of �rough theatre,� he writes:

�The Holy
Theatre has one energy, the Rough has others. Lightheartedness
and gaiety feed it, but so does the same energy that produces rebellion and
opposition. This is a militant energy: it is the energy of anger, sometimes the
energy of hate.�

Wasn�t it Gurdjieff himself who said that: �Everything in the universe
is material, and for that very reason Ultimate Understanding is more
materialist than materialism�? Of course he distinguishes �matter,� which �is
always the same: but materiality is different. And the different degrees of
materiality directly depend on the qualities and properties of the energy
manifested at a given point.� So �objects� would be localised configurations of energy.

But where does this energy come from? What are the
laws governing the transformation of non-differentiated energy into a specific
form of energy? Is this non-differentiated energy the fundamental substratum of
all forms? To what extent can actors and audience at a theatrical performance
become implicated and integrated with the formidable struggle of energies that
takes place at every moment in nature?

In the first place, we believe that it is important to recognise that,
in Peter Brook�s theatre research, the grouping text-actor-audience reflects
the characteristics of a natural system: when a true theatrical �event� takes
place, it is greater than the sum of its parts. The interactions between text and actors,
text and audience and actors and audience constitute the new, irreducible
element. At the same time, text, actors and audience are true sub-systems,
opening themselves up to each other. In this sense, one can talk of the life of
a text. As Brook has said many times, a play does not have a form which is
fixed forever. It evolves (or involves) because of actors and audiences. The
death of a text is connected to a process of closure, to an absence of
exchange. In The Empty Space, we read that: �A doctor can tell at once between
the trace of life and the useless bag of bones that life has left. But we are
less practised in observing how an idea, an attitude or a form can pass from
the lively to the moribund.�

Might one not further suggest that the text-actor-audience system
possesses another of the important characteristics of natural systems, that of
being �modules of coordination in the hierarchy of nature?� Certainly, in that
instance when the spectator emerges from a theatre event enriched with new
information in the sphere of energy: �I have also looked for movement and
energy. Bodily energy as much as that of emotions, in such a way that the
energy released onstage can unleash within the spectator a feeling of vitality
that he would not find in everyday life.� As the bearer of this �feeling of
vitality,� the spectator could participate in other openings and other
exchanges, in life.

But what is essential is elsewhere�in the recognition, on its own level,
of the action of those laws common to all levels. One can conceive of the
universe (as in Gurdjieff�s cosmology, or scientific systems theory) as a great
Whole, a vast cosmic matrix within which all is in perpetual motion in a
continuous restructuring of energies. Such a unity is not static, it implies
differentiation and diversity in the existence not of a substance, but of a
common organisation: the determining laws of the Whole. These laws are only
fully operational when systems are mutually open to each other, in an incessant
and universal exchange of energy.

It is precisely this exchange that confirms what Gurdjieff called �the
general harmonic movement of systems,� or �the harmony of reciprocal
maintenance in all cosmic concentrations.� The opening of a system prevents its
degeneration, and ultimate death. In-separability is the safeguard of life. It is
well known that all closed physical systems are subjected to Clausius-Carnot�s
principle, which implies an inevitable degeneration of energy, a growing
disorder. For there to be order and stability, there must be
opening and exchange. Such an exchange can take place between syntheses on one
single level, or between systems belonging to different levels.

Almost all of the actors� �exercises� and �improvisations� in Brook�s
Centre seem to aim at engendering opening and exchange. First-hand testimonies
to this effect are numerous: one thinks of those published accounts of the
preparatory processes for Conference of the Birds, Orghast and Carmen. Brook
has explicitly said himself that, by means of these exercises and
improvisations, the actors are trying to �get to what�s essential: in other
words to that point at which the impulses of one conjoin with the impulses of
another to resonate together.� Michel Rostain describes how, during the
preparation for Carmen, one singer would turn his/her back on another, in order
to try to recreate the gesture accompanying the other person�s singing without
ever having seen it. Actors sitting in a circle attempted to �transmit�
gestures or words: and in the end the force and clarity of internal images
enabled them to be made �visible.� This is genuinely precise and rigorous
research work.

In one exercise during the preparation for Orghast, each actor
represented a part of a single person�including, for example, �the voice of the
subconscious.� In another, actors took part in the recitation of a monologue
from a Shakespearean text, delivering it as a round for three voices: �suddenly
the actor bursts a barrier and experiences how much freedom there can be within
the tightest discipline.� And that is what it is essentially about�the
discovery of freedom by submitting oneself to laws which permit an opening towards
the �unknown,� towards a relationship. �To be means to be related �� was the
startling formula of the founder of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski.
Exercises and improvisations offer the possibility of �interrelating the most
ordinary and the most hidden levels of experience,� of discovering potentially
powerful equivalences between gestures, words and sounds. In this way, words,
the usual vehicle of signification, can be replaced by gestures or sounds.
�Going into the unknown is always frightening. Each letter is the cause of the
letter that follows. Hours of work can come out of ten letters, in a search to
free the word, the sound. We are not trying to create a method, we want to make
discoveries.�

So exercises and improvisations have little particular value in
themselves, but they facilitate a tuning of the theatrical �instrument� that is
the actor�s being, and a circulation of �living dramatic flow� in the actors as
a group. The theatrical �miracle� is produced afterwards, in the active
presence of the audience, when an opening towards the �unknown� can be
mobilised more fully. But what is the nature of this �unknown?� Is it another
name for the unity of indefinite links in �systems of systems,� as Stephane
Lupasco would say, in a paradoxical coexistence of determinate and
indeterminate, of discipline and spontaneity, of homogeneity and heterogeneity?
How can we best understand the words of �Attar when he wrote in the
�Invocation� to Conference of the Birds:

�To each atom
there is a different door, and for each atom there is a different way which
leads to the mysterious Being of whom I speak� In this vast oceans, the world
is an atom and the atom a world�?��

Traditional thought has always affirmed that Reality is not linked to
space-time: it simply is. When Gurdjieff talked of the �trogoautoegocratic
process� which assures the �reciprocal nutrition� of everything that exists, he
was proposing it as �our infallible saviour from the action, in conformity with
the laws, of merciless Heropass�� Once one knows that for him �Heropass� meant
�Time,� one can understand the sense of his statement: the unity of indefinite
links between systems evades the action of time�it is, outside space-time.
Time, that �unique ideally subjective phenomenon,� does not exist per se. So
the space-time continuum, when it is considered in isolation, is a sort of
approximation, a subjective phenomenon, linked to a sub-system. Each
sub-system, corresponding to a certain �degree of materiality,� possesses its
own space-time.

Finally, in certain recent scientific theories, descriptions of physical
reality have necessitated the introduction of dimensions other than those of
space-time. The physical �event� takes place in all dimensions at the same
time. Consequently, one can no longer talk at that level of linear, continuous
time. There is a law of causality, but the event occurs in a sudden way. There
is neither �before� nor �after� in the usual sense of the terms: there is
something like a discontinuity in the notion of time itself.

Would it be possible to discuss a theatre �event� without immersing
oneself in an experience of time? One might argue that the essence of a Peter
Brook theatre event is in its suddenness, in its unforeseeable nature (in the
sense of the impossibility of precise reproduction at will). Brook says that:
�The special moments no longer happen by luck. Yet they can�t be repeated. It�s
why spontaneous events are so terrifying and marvelous. They can only be
rediscovered.� Meaning �never belongs to the past�31: it appears in the mystery
of the present moment, the instant of opening towards a relationship. This
�meaning� is infinitely richer than that to which classical �rational� thought
has access, based as it is (perhaps without it ever being aware) on linear
causality, on mechanistic determinism. At fleeting moments, great actors touch
upon this new kind of �meaning.� In Paul Scofield, for example,

�� instrument
and player are one�an instrument of flesh and blood that opens itself to the
unknown�It was as though the act of speaking a word sent through him vibrations
that echoed back meanings far more complex than his rational thinking could
find.�

There is something primitive, direct and immediate in the idea of
�present moment��a sort of absolute liberty in relation to performance, a
revivifying sentient spontaneity. �The idea of present moment,� writes Pierce,
�within which, whether it exists or not, one naturally thinks of a point in
time when no thought can take place, when no detail can be differentiated, is
an idea of Primacy��Primacy being �the mode of being of whatever is such as it
is, in a positive way, with no reference to anything else at all.�

The �miracle� of Peter Brook�s theatre work seems to me to reside in
precisely this sense of the moment, in the liberation of energies circulating
in harmonic flux, incorporating the spectator as active participant in the
theatrical event. Paradoxically we find all of the �points of convergence� that
have been discussed throughout this study embodied not so much in his film
Meetings with Remarkable Men, but rather in a play like The Cherry Orchard. A
result perhaps of the difference between cinema and theatre, which Brook has
underlined: �There is only one interesting difference between the cinema and
the theatre. The cinema flashes on to a screen images from the past. As this is
what the mind does to itself all through life, the cinema seems intimately
real. Of course, it is nothing of the sort�it is a satisfying and enjoyable
extension of the unreality of everyday perception. The theatre, on the other
hand, always asserts itself in the present. This is what can make it more real
than the normal stream of consciousness. This is also what can make it so
disturbing.� Texts by Chekhov, �the dramatist of life�s movement,� or by
Shakespeare, enable every dimension of Brook�s theatre work to be revealed. In
The Cherry Orchard, there are specific moments when apparently banal words and
gestures fall apart, suddenly opened to another reality that one somehow feels
to be the only one that counts. A flow of a new quality of energy starts to
circulate, and the spectator is carried off to new heights, in a sudden
confrontation with him/herself. The marks etched into our memories in this way
last a very long time: although theatre is �a self-destructive art,� it is
nonetheless capable of attaining a certain permanence.

�

The Ternary Structure of Brook�s Theatre Space

Another remarkable meeting point between Peter Brook�s theatre work,
traditional thought and quantum theory, is in their shared recognition of
contradiction as the �motor� of every process in reality.

The role of contradiction is apparent in the changes of direction Brook
himself has chosen throughout his career, through Shakespeare, commercial
comedy, television, cinema and opera: �I�ve really spent all my working life in
looking for opposites,� Brook suggested in an interview with The Times. �This
is a dialectical principle of finding a reality through opposites.� He
emphasises the role of contradiction as a means of awakening understanding,
taking Elizabethan drama as an example: �Elizabethan drama was exposure, it was
confrontation, it was contradiction and it led to analysis, involvement,
recognition and, eventually, to an awakening of understanding.� Contradiction
is not destructive, but a balancing force. It has its role to play in the
genesis of all processes. The absence of contradiction would lead to general
homogenisation, a dwindling of energy and eventual death. �Whatever contains
contradiction � contains the world,� claims Lupasco, whose conclusions are
based on quantum physics. Brook points out the constructive role of negation in
the theatre of Beckett: �Beckett does not say �no� with satisfaction: he forges
his merciless �no� out of a longing for �yes,� and so his despair is the
negative from which the contour of its opposite can be drawn.�

Contradiction also plays a central role in the works of Shakespeare
which �pass through many stages of consciousness:� �What enabled him
technically to do so, the essence, in fact, of his style, is a roughness of
texture and a conscious mingling of opposites�� Shakespeare remains the great
ideal, the summit, an indelible point of reference for a possible evolution in
theatre:

�It is
through the unreconciled opposition of Rough and Holy, through an atonal
screech of absolutely unsympathetic keys that we get the disturbing and the
unforgettable impressions of his plays. It is because the contradictions are so
strong that they burn on us so deeply.�

Brook sees King Lear as a �vast, complex, coherent poem� attaining
cosmic dimensions in its revelation of �the power and the emptiness of
nothing�the positive and negative aspects latent in the zero.�

Contradiction is the sine qua non of successful theatrical performance.
Zeami (1363�1444), one of the first great masters of the Noh�his treatise is
known as �the secret tradition of the Noh��observed five centuries ago:

�Let it be
known that in everything, it is at the critical point of harmonic balance
between yin and yang that perfection is located � if one was to interpret yang
in a yang way, or yin in a yin way, there could be no harmonising balance, and
perfection would be impossible. Without perfection, how could one ever be
interesting?�

For certain traditional thinkers like Zeami, Jakob B�hme or Gurdjieff,
as well as for certain philosophers whose thinking is based on scientific
knowledge, like Pierce and Lupasco, contradiction is quite simply the dynamic
interrelationship of three independent forces, simultaneously present in every process
in reality�an affirmative force, a negative force and a conciliatory force.
Therefore reality has a ternary dynamic structure, a �trialectical� structure.

For example, Zeami elaborated a law called johakyu, to which Peter Brook
often refers. �Jo� means �beginning� or �opening�: �ha� means �middle� or
�development� (as well as �to break,� �crumble,� �spread out�): �kyu� means
�end� or �finale� (as well as �speed,� �climax,� �paroxysm�). According to
Zeami it is not only theatre performance itself which can be broken down into
jo, ha and kyu, but also every vocal or instrumental phrase, every movement,
every step, every word.46

Zeami�s
comments are still vitally relevant to us today. One can easily imagine, for
example, the boredom provoked by the performance of a tragic play, which begins
in climactic paroxysm, then develops through interminable expositions of the
causes of the drama. At the same time it would be possible to undertake a
detailed analysis of the unique atmosphere created in the plays staged by Peter
Brook, as the result of conformity with the law of johakyu�in the structural
progression of these plays as well as in the actors� performances. But the most
personal aspect of Brook�s theatre work seems to lie in his elaboration and
presentation of a new ternary structuring.

Brook�s theatre space could be represented by a triangle, with the base
line for the audience�s consciousness, and the two other sides for the inner
life of the actors and their relations with their partners. This ternary configuration
is constantly present in both Brook�s practice and his writings. In everyday
life, our contacts are often limited to a confrontation between our inner life
and our relationships with our partners: the triangle is mutilated, for its
base is absent. In the theatre, actors are obliged to confront �their ultimate
and absolute responsibility, the relationship with an audience, which is what
in effect gives theatre its fundamental meaning.�47 We will return to the
central role of the audience in Brook�s theatre space in the next section.

Another ternary structure which is active in theatre space can be
located if one accepts the notion of �centres� proposed by Gurdjieff. He
believed that what distinguishes mankind from other organic entities in nature is
the fact of being �tricentric� or �tricerebral��a being with three �centres� or
�brains.� Indeed a human being could be represented by a triangle�the base
representing the emotional centre (locus of Reconciliation), the two other
sides the intellectual centre (locus of Affirmation) and the instinctive motor
centre (locus of Negation). Harmony stems from a state of balance between these
three centres.

It
is very clear that the conditions of modern life only favour the functioning of
the intellectual centre, particularly of the �automated� part of that centre,
what one could call �cerebral� activity. This ideational element, which is of
course a powerful means in man�s adaptation to his environment, has changed
from a �means� into an �end,� adopting the role of omnipotent tyrant. Therefore
the triangle representing mankind threatens to break apart, on account of the
disproportionate lengthening of one of its sides. Theatrical space, in turn,
cannot fail to feel the consequences of this process.

John Heilpern, who has described the C.I.R.T. actors� �expedition� to Africa, recalled his astonishment when he heard Peter
Brook talking about the role of cerebral activity: �He pointed to the imbalance
within us where the golden calf of the intellect is worshipped at the cost of
true feelings and experience. Like Jung, he believes that the intellectual�the
intellect alone�protects us from true feeling, stifles and camouflages the
spirit in a blind collection of facts and concepts. Yet as Brook talked to me
of this I was struck forcibly by the fact that he, a supreme intellectual
figure, should express himself this way.�48 As someone who had branded 20th
Century man as �emotionally constipated,�49 Brook sheds no tears for the
�deadly theatre,� which he considers to be the perfect expression of the
cerebral element in its attempt to appropriate real feelings and experiences:

�To make
matters worse, there is always a deadly spectator, who for special reasons
enjoys a lack of intensity and even a lack of entertainment, such as the
scholar who emerges from routine performances of the classics smiling because
nothing has distracted him from trying over and confirming his pet theories to
himself, whist reciting his favourite lines under his breath. In his heart he
sincerely wants a theatre that is nobler-than-life, and he confuses a sort of
intellectual satisfaction with the true experience for which he craves.�

Harmony between the centres facilitates the development of a new quality
of perception, a �direct� and immediate perception which does not pass through
the deforming filter of cerebral activity. So a new intelligence can appear:
�along with emotion, there is always a role for a special intelligence that is
not there at the start, but which has to be developed as a selecting
instrument.�

A lot of the exercises elaborated by Peter Brook have as their precise
aim the development of this state of unity between thought, body and feelings
by liberating the actor from an over-cerebral approach. In this way, the actor
can be organically linked with him/herself and act as a unified �whole� being,
rather than as a fragmented one. Through such research work, one gradually
discovers an important aspect of the functioning of the centres�the great
difference in their �speeds.� According to Gurdjieff, the intellectual centre
is the slowest, whereas the emotional centre is the quickest�its impressions
are immediately made apparent to us.

So it is clear in what way the demands of an exercise can enable a
discovery of the common rule by mobilising the intervention of the quicker
centres. During the Carmen rehearsals, actors were asked to walk while at the
same time emitting a sound, then to pass from piano to fortissimo without
altering the dynamic and bearing of the walk. The difficulty of this exercise
revealed the disharmony between centres, a blocking of the quicker centres by
the intellectual one. Compare this with another exercise where actors would be
required to mark out rhythms in four/four time with their feet, while their
hands kept three/three time. Certain exercises allow something akin to a
�photograph� of the functioning of the centres at a given moment to be taken.
Fixed in a certain attitude, the actor can discover the contradictory
functioning of these different centres, and thereby find, through experiment,
the way towards a more integrated, harmonious functioning.

One might want to establish revelatory points of correspondence between
the two triangles�that of Brook�s theatre space and that of Gurdjieff�s
centres. In particular, this �isomorphism� between the two triangles could well
enlighten us as to the role of the audience, in its capacity as catalyst for
the emotional centre�s impressions. But that would lead us far from our
immediate concerns here: and anyway no theoretical analysis could ever
substitute for the richness of a first-hand experience of immersion in Brook�s
theatre space.

The most spectacular illustration of the crucial, primary role of
experience in Brook�s work is perhaps in the preparation for Conference of the
Birds. Instead of plunging his actors into a study of �Attar�s poem, or
committing them to an erudite analysis of Sufi texts, Brook led them off on an
extraordinary expedition to Africa. Confronted
with the difficulties inherent in a crossing of the Sahara
desert, obliged to improvise in front of the inhabitants of African villages,
the actors went inexorably towards a meeting with themselves: �Everything we do
on this journey is an exercise � in heightening perception on every conceivable
level. You might call the performance of a show �the grand exercise.� But
everything feeds the work, and everything surrounding it is part of a bigger
test of awareness. Call it �the super-grand exercise. Indeed self-confrontation
after a long and arduous process of self-initiation is the very keystone to
�Attar�s poem. This kind of experimental, organic approach to a text has an
infinitely greater value than any theoretical, methodical or systematic study.
Its value becomes apparent in the stimulation of a very particular �quality�:
it constitutes the most tangible characteristic of Brook�s work.

His comments on Orghast are as significant and valid for Conference of
the Birds, as indeed for all of the other performances: �The result that we are
working towards is not a form, not an image, but a set of conditions in which a
certain quality of performance can arise.� This quality is directly connected
to the free circulation of energies, through precise and detailed (one could
even call it �scientific�) work on perception. Discipline is inextricably
associated with spontaneity, precision with freedom.

�

Theatre, Determinism and Spontaneity

How can discipline and spontaneity be made to coexist and interact?
Where does spontaneity come from? How can one distinguish true spontaneity from
a simple automatic response, associated with a set of pre-existing (if
unconscious) clich�s? In other words, how can one differentiate between an
association�perhaps unexpected, but nonetheless mechanical�with its source in
what has been seen already, and the emergence of something really new?

Spontaneity introduces an indeterminate element into an evolutionary
process. Heisenberg�s celebrated �uncertainty relation,� or �uncertainty
principle� indicates that spontaneity is effectively active in nature. This
principle tells us that the product of an increase in quantity of a quantum
event�s momentum through its spatial extension, or the product of an increase
in energy through its temporal extension must be superior to a certain constant
representing the elementary quantum of action. So if one were to ask, for
example, for a precisely pinpointed spatial localization of the quantum event,
the result would be an infinite increase on the level of uncertainty of
momentum: just as if one were to ask for a precisely pinpointed temporal
localisation, the result would be an infinite increase in the level of energy.
There is no need for a high degree of sophistication in mathematics or physics
to understand that this signifies the impossibility of a precise localisation
in space-time of any quantum event. The concept of identity in a classical
particle (identity defined in relation to the particle itself, as a part
separate from the Whole) is therefore necessarily smashed apart.

The quantum event is not made up of wave or particle, it is
simultaneously wave and particle. The impossibility of precisely locating a
quantum event in space-time can be understood as a consequence of the
in-separability of events. Their �aleatory� or �probabilist� character does not
reflect the action of �chance.� The aleatory quantum is constructive, it has a
direction�that of the self-organization of natural systems. At the same time,
the observer ceases to be an �observer��s/he becomes, as Wheeler has said, �a
participant.� Quantum theory has its place in the �Valley of Astonishment�
(one of the seven valleys in Conference of the Birds) where contradiction and
indeterminacy lie in wait for the traveller.

One
could postulate the existence of a general principle of uncertainty, active in
any process in reality. It is also necessarily active in theatrical space,
above all in the relationship between audience and play. In the �formula� for
theatre suggested by Brook (�Theatre = Rra�: �R�p�tition,� �repr�sentation,�
�assistance�), the presence��assistance��of an audience plays an essential
role:

�The only
thing that all forms of theatre have in common is the need for an audience.
This is more than a truism: in the theatre the audience completes the steps of
creation.�

The audience is part of a much greater unity, subject to the principle
of uncertainty: �It is hard to understand the true function of spectator, there
and not there, ignored and yet needed. The actor�s work is never for an
audience, yet it always is for one.� The audience makes itself open to the
actors, in its desire to �see more clearly into itself,� and so the performance
begins to act more fully on the audience. By opening itself up, the audience in
turn begins to influence the actors, if the quality of their perception allows
interaction. That explains why the global vision of a director can be dissolved
by an audience�s presence: the audience exposes the non-conformity of this
vision with the structure of the theatrical event. The theatrical event is

Peter Brook continued...

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(...) indeterminate, instantaneous, unpredictable, even if it necessitates the reunion of a set of clearly determined conditions. The director�s role consists of working at great length and in detail to prepare the actors, thus enabling the emergence of the theatrical event. All attempts to anticipate or predetermine the theatrical event are doomed to failure: the director cannot substitute him/herself for the audience. The triangle comprising �inner life of the actors�their relations with their partners�the audience�s consciousness� can only be engendered at the actual moment of performance. The collective entity that is the audience makes the conciliatory element indispensable to the birth of the theatrical event: �(An audience�s) true activity can be invisible, but also indivisible.�

However invisible it is, this active participation by the audience is nonetheless material and potent: �When the Royal Shakespeare Company�s production of King Lear toured through Europe, the production was steadily improving� The quality of attention that this audience brought expressed itself in silence and concentration: a feeling in the house that affected the actors as though a brilliant light were turned on their work.� So it is evident why Brook�s research work tends towards �� a necessary theatre, one in which there is only a practical difference between actor and audience, not a fundamental one.� The space in which the interaction between audience and actors takes place is infinitely more subtle than that of ideas, concepts, prejudices or preconditioning. The quality of the attention of both audience and actors enables the event to occur as a full manifestation of spontaneity. Ideally this interaction can transcend linguistic and cultural barriers. The C.I.R.T. actors can communicate just as well with African villagers, Australian aborigines or the inhabitants of Brooklyn; �Theatre isn�t about narrative. Narrative isn�t necessary. Events will make the whole.�

Many of the confusions concerning the problem of �spontaneity� appear to have their source in a linear, mono-dimensional conception of the theatrical event. One can easily believe in the existence of laws such as Zeami�s johakyu, but that is insufficient in understanding how a theatrical event can take place through the transition between the different elements of johakyu. If one limits oneself to a strictly horizontal view of the action of johakyu (jo, the beginning: ha, the development: kyu, the ending), it is impossible to understand how one might arrive, for example, at the ultimate refinement of the ha part of ha, or to a paroxystic peak in the kyu part of kyu. What can produce the dynamic �shocks� necessary for the movement not to stop, not to become blocked? How can the necessary continuity of a theatrical performance be reconciled with the discontinuity inherent in its different components? How can one harmonise the progression of the play, the actors� work and the perception liberated in the audience?

In other words, horizontal movement is meaningless by itself. It remains on the same level forever, no information is forthcoming. This movement only acquires a significance if it is combined with an evolutionary dynamic. It is s if each phenomenon in reality were subject, at every moment, to two contradictory movements, in two opposing directions: one ascending, the other descending. As if there were two parallel rivers, flowing with considerable force in two opposing directions: in order to pass from one river to the other, an external intervention�a �shock��is absolutely essential. This is where the full richness of the significance of the notion of �discontinuity� is revealed.

But in order for this �shock� to be effective, a certain concordance or overlap must exist between the �shock� (which in itself is subject to the law of johakyu) and the system upon which it is acting. Therefore it becomes clear why each element of johakyu must be composed in turn of the three other elements�in other words, why there has to be a jo-ha-kyu sequence within the jo, the ha and the kyu. These different components enable interaction between the different systems to take place.

Therefore, in order for a harmonious movement to appear, a new dimension must be present: johakyu is not only active horizontally, but also vertically. If each element (jo, ha and kyu) is composed in turn of three other elements, therefore we obtain nine elements, two of which represent a sort of �interval.� One of these is filled by the �shock� enabling the horizontal transition to take place, the other by the �shock� enabling the vertical transition to take place. In this way, one ends up with a vision of the action of Zeami�s johakyu which is very close to the precise mathematical formulation Gurdjieff elaborated for his �law of Seven� or �octave law.�

When one considers this two-dimensional vision of the action of johakyu, Peter Brook�s insistence on the audience�s central role in a theatrical event becomes clearer. The audience can follow the suggestions proposed to it by the playtext, the actors and the director. The first interval�between jo and ha�can be traversed by means of a more or less automatic exchange, the play can continue its horizontal movement. But the audience also has its own irreducible presence: its culture, its sensitivity, its experience of life, its quality of attention, the intensity of its perception. A �resonance� between the actors� work and the audience�s inner life can occur. Therefore the theatrical event can appear fully spontaneous, by means of vertical exchange�which implies a certain degree of will and of awareness�thereby leading to something truly new, not pre-existent in theatrical performance. The ascent of the action of johakyu towards the play�s summit�the kyu of kyu�can therefore take place. The second interval is filled by a true �shock,� allowing the paradoxical coexistence of continuity and discontinuity.

We have described what could be considered to be a first level of perception in a theatre event. This analysis could be further refined by taking into account the tree-like structure (it is never ending) of johakyu. Different levels of perception, structured hierarchically in a qualitative �ladder,� could be discovered in this way. There are degrees of spontaneity, just as there are degrees of perception. The �quality� of a theatrical performance is determined by the effective presence of these degrees.

We have also referred to a vertical dimension in the action of johakyu. This dimension is associated with two possible impulses: one ascending (evolution), the other descending (entropic involution). The ascending curve corresponds to a densification of energy, reflecting the tendency towards unity in diversity and an augmentation of awareness. It is in this sense that we have described the action of johakyu until this point.

But one might well conceive of a johakyu in reverse, such as appears, for example, in the subject of Peter Brook�s film Lord of the Flies, where one witnessed the progressive degradation of a paradise towards a hell. An ideal, innocent space exists nowhere. Left to themselves, without the intervention of �conscience� and �awareness,� the �laws of creation� lead inexorably towards fragmentation, mechanicity, and, in the final instance, to violence and destruction. In this way spontaneity is metamorphosed into mechanicity.

It should be noted that �spontaneity� and �sincerity� are closely linked. The usual moral connotation of �sincerity� signifies its reduction to an automatic functioning based on a set of ideas and beliefs implanted into the collective psyche in an accidental way through the passage of time. In this sense, �sincerity� comes close to a lie, in relation to itself. By ridding ourselves of the ballast of what does not belong to us, we can eventually become �sincere�: recognising laws, seeing oneself, opening oneself to relationships with others. Such a process demands work, a significant degree of effort: �sincerity must be learnt.� In relation to our usual conception of it, this kind of �sincerity� resembles �insincerity�: �with its moral overtones, the word (sincerity) causes great confusion. In a way, the most powerful feature of the Brecht actors is the degree of their insincerity. It is only through detachment that an actor will see his own cliches.� The actor inhabits a double space of false and true sincerity, the most fruitful movement being an oscillation between the two: �The actor is called upon to be completely involved while distanced�detached without detachment. He must be sincere, he must be insincere: he must practice how to be insincere with sincerity and how to lie truthfully. This is almost impossible, but it is essential��

The actor�s predicament is reminiscent of Arjuna�s perplexity when confronted with the advice that Krishna gives him, in the Bhagavad Gita, to reconcile action and non-action: paradoxically, action undertaken with understanding becomes intertwined with inaction.

At every moment, the actor is confronted with a choice between acting and not-acting, between an action visible to the audience and an invisible action, linked to his/her inner life. Zeami drew our attention to the importance of intervals of non-interpretation or �non-action,� separating a pair of gestures, actions or movements:

�It is a spiritual concentration which will allow you to remain on your guard, retaining all of your attention, at that moment when you stop dancing or chanting, or in any other circumstances during an interval in the text or in the mimic art. The emotion created by this inner spiritual concentration�which manifests itself externally�is what produces interest and enjoyment� It is in relation to the degree of non-consciousness and selflessness, through a mental attitude in which one�s spiritual reality is hidden even from oneself, that one must forge the link between what precedes and what follows the intervals of non-action. This is what constitutes the inner strength which can serve to reunite all ten thousand means of expression in the oneness of the spirit.�

It is only by mastering the attitudes and associations produced in this way that the actor can truly �play parts,� putting him/herself in others� places. �At every moment,� wrote Gurdjieff, �associations change automatically, one evoking another, and so on. If I am in the process of playing a part, I must be in control all the time. It is impossible to start again with the given impulse.�68 In a sense a free man is one who can truly �play parts.�

In the light of all that has been said so far in this essay, would it not now be possible to state that there is a very strong relationship between theatrical and spiritual work? Whether one agrees or not, a clear and important distinction between theatre research and traditional research must be made in order to avoid the source of an indefinite chain of harmful confusions, which in any case have already coloured certain endeavours in the modern theatre.

Traditional research addresses itself to man as a whole, calling into play a wide range of aspects, infinitely richer than that of theatre research: after all, the latter�s end is aesthetic. Traditional research is closely linked with an oral teaching, untranslatable into ordinary language. Isn�t it significant that no traditional writings ever describe the process of self-initiation? In his �Third Series,� faced with the impossibility of the task, Gurdjieff preferred to destroy his manuscript�what was eventually

published as Life is real only then, when �I am� is only a collection of fragments from that manuscript. On several occasions, Saint John of the Cross announced a treatise on the �mystical union,� but no trace has ever been found of such a work.

Finally, �Attar devoted the major part of his poem Conference of the Birds to the story of the discussions between the birds and a description of the preparation for their journey: the journey itself and the meeting with the Simorgh only take up a few lines.

Theatre research clearly has another end in mind: art, theatre. Peter Brook himself has strongly emphasised the need for such a distinction: �theatre work is not a substitute for a spiritual search.�69 In itself the theatrical experience is insufficient to transform the life of an actor. Nevertheless, like a savant, for example, or indeed any human being, the actor can experience

fleetingly what could be �a higher level of evolution.� Theatre is an imitation of life, but an imitation based upon the concentration of energies released in the creation of a theatre event. So one can become aware, on an experiential level, of the full richness of the present moment. If theatre is not really the decisive meeting with oneself and with others, it nonetheless allows for a certain degree of exploration to take place.

This fundamental ambiguity recurs in Grotowski�s approach, at least such as it is described by Brook: �The theatre, he believes, cannot be an end in itself: like dancing or music in certain dervish orders, the theatre is a vehicle, a means for self-study, self-exploration�� According to Brook�s conception of the theatre, it cannot lay claim to unity, in terms of its end. Of course one can arrive at certain privileged moments; �At certain moments, this fragmented world comes together, and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life. The marvel of being one.� But theatre work is ephemeral, subject to the influences (both evoluted and involuted) of the environment. This impermanence prevents it from leading to �points of dynamic concentration.� In answer to a question about Orghast, Brook replied that theatre work is:

�� self destructive within waves� You go through lines and points. The line that has gone through Orghast should come to a point, and the point should be a work �obviously there is a necessary crystallising of the work into a concentrated form. It�s always about that�coming to points of concentration.�

On the Possibility of a Universal Language

When A.C.H. Smith asked him about the possibility of a �universal language,� Peter Brook dismissed the question as being meaningless. His response reflects a fear of the stifling of a vital question by endless theoretical considerations, by deforming and maiming abstractions. How many prejudices and cliches are unleashed automatically simply by pronouncing the two words �universal language�? And yet Brook�s entire work testifies to his search for a new language which endeavours to unite sound, gesture and word, and in this way to free meanings which could not be expressed in any other way. But above all this research is experimental: something living emerges into the theatre space, and it matters little what name one gives to it. �What happens,� Brook asks, �when gesture and sound turn into word? What is the exact place of the word in theatrical expression? As vibration? Concept? Music? Is any evidence buried in the structure of certain ancient languages?�

The fact that, by themselves, words cannot provide total access to reality has been well known for a long time. In the final analysis, any definition of words by words is based on indefinite terms. Where does linguistic determinism begin, and where does it end? Can it be characterised by a single value, by a finite number of values or by an infinite number? And if, according to Korzybski�s famous phrase, �the map is not the territory,� it nevertheless has the considerable advantage of a structure similar to that of the territory. How can this similarity become operative? The word is a small visible portion of a gigantic unseen formation,� writes Brook.76 Starting with this �small visible portion,� how can one gain access to the �gigantic formation� of the universe as a whole? A theatrical event, as has already been suggested, determines the appearance of a laddered structure of different levels of perception. How can any single word encapsulate the sum of these levels?

The relativisation of perception has enabled us to specify a phenomenon�s place in reality, as well as how it is linked to the rest. A word, a gesture, an action are all linked to a certain level of perception, but, in the true theatrical event, they are also linked to other levels present in the event. Relativity allows us to uncover the invariance concealed behind the multiplicity of forms of phenomena in different systems of reference. This vision of things is close to that implied by the �principle of relativity� formulated by Gurdjieff.

Relativity conditions vision: without relativity there can be no vision. The playwright who takes his/her own reality for reality as a whole presents an image of a desiccated and dead world, in spite of any �originality� that he/she might have shown. �Unfortunately the playwright rarely searches to relate their detail to any larger structure�it is as though they accept without question their intuition as complete, their reality as all of reality.� Death itself can be relativised in an acceptance of contradiction. Brook cites the example of Chekhov: �In Chekhov�s work, death is omnipresent� But he learnt how to balance compassion with distance� This awareness of death, and of the precious moments that could be lived, endow his work with a sense of the relative: in other words, a viewpoint from which the tragic is always a bit absurd.� Non-identification is another word for vision.

Theatre work can be the constant search for a simultaneous perception, by both actors and audience, of every level present in an event. Brook describes his own research in this concise formulation:

�� the simple relationship of movement and sound that passes directly, and the single element which has the ambiguity and density that permits it to be read simultaneously on a multitude of levels�those are the two points that the research is all about.�

The principle of relativity clarifies what an eventual �universal language� could be. For Gurdjieff, this new, precise, mathematical language had to be centered around the idea of evolution: �The fundamental property of this new language is that all ideas are concentrated around one single idea: in other words, they are all considered, in terms of their mutual relationships, from� the point of view of a single idea. And this idea is that of evolution. Not at all in the sense of a mechanical evolution, naturally, because that does not exist, but in the sense of a conscious and voluntary evolution. It is the

only possible kind� The language which permits understanding is based on the knowledge of its place in the evolutionary ladder.� So the sacred itself could be understood to be anything that is linked to an evolutionary process.

This new language involves the participation of body and emotions. Human beings in their totality, as an image of reality, could therefore forge a new language. We do not only live in the world of action and reaction, but also in that of spontaneity and of self-conscious thought.

Traditional symbolic language prefigures this new language. When talking about different systems which convey the idea of unity, Gurdjieff said:

�A symbol can never be taken in a definitive and exclusive sense. In so far as it express the laws of unity in indefinite diversity, a symbol itself possesses an indefinite number of aspects from which it can be considered, and it demands from whoever

approaches it the capacity to see it from different points of view. Symbols that are transposed into the words of ordinary language harden, become less clear: they can quite easily become their own opposites, imprisoning meaning within dogmatic and narrow frame-works, without even permitting the relative freedom of a logical examination of the subject. Reason merely provides a

literal understanding of symbols, only ever attributing to them a single meaning.��

The fact that a symbol possesses an indefinite number of aspects does not mean that it is imprecise at all. Indeed it is its reading on an indefinite number of levels which confers on it its extreme precision. Commenting on the theatre of Samuel Beckett, Brook writes:

�Beckett�s plays are symbols in an exact sense of the word. A false symbol is soft and

vague: a true symbol is hard and clear. When we say �symbolic� we often mean something drearily obscure: a true symbol is specific, it is the only form a certain truth can take� We get nowhere if we expect to be told what they mean, yet each one has a relation with us we can�t deny. If we accept this, the symbol opens in us a great wondering O.�

It is clear therefore why Brook believes Chekhov�s essential quality to be �precision,� and why he states that today �� fidelity is the central concern, an approach which necessitates weighing every single word and bringing it into sharp focus.�84 Only then can words have an influence: they can become active, bearers of real significance, if the actor behaves as a �medium,�

allowing words to act through and �colour� him/her, rather than him/her trying to manipulate them.

By forgetting relativity, language has become in time inevitably narrower, diminished in its emotional and even intellectual capacities. It has been necessarily �bastardised�: one word is taken for another, one meaning for another. The Orghast experiment showed in a startling way that a return to an organic language, detached from the dread bonding of abstraction to abstraction, is possible. Words invented by the poet Ted Hughes and fragments performed in different ancient languages acted as catalysts to the reciprocal transformation between movement and sound, as an expression of an inner state, meaning no longer needing to be filtered solely through cerebral activity. In an interview with American Theatre, Brook emphasised that �actors, whatever their origin, can play intuitively a work in its original language. This simple principle is the most unusual thing that exists in the theatre��

Evidently the relativisation of perception demands hard work, a considerable effort, an inner silence that is a sort of penitence. Silence plays an integral part in Brook�s work, beginning with the research into the inter-relationship of silence and duration with his Theatre of Cruelty group in 1964, and culminating in the rhythm punctuated with silences that is indefinitely present at the core of his film Meetings with Remarkable Men: �In silence there are many potentialities: chaos or order, muddle or pattern, all lie fallow�the invisible-made-visible is of sacred nature�� Silence is all-embracing, and it contains countless �layers.�

One could suggest that events and silence constitute the fabric of any theatre performance. Silence comes at the end of action, as in Conference of the Birds: �A beautiful symbolic opposition is drawn between the black of the mourning material and the hues of the puppets. Colour disappears, all sparkle is suppressed, silence is established,� observes Georges Banu.89 The richness of silence confuses, embarrasses and disturbs, and yet it is joy that is hidden within it, that �strange irrational joy� that Brook detected in the plays of Samuel Beckett.

It is no coincidence that the words �empty space� form the title of one of the two books on theatre Brook has ever published. One must create an emptiness, a silence within oneself, in order to permit the growth of reality�s full potentiality. This is what Tradition has always taught us.

Is silence the premonitory sign of a true �universal language�? In a passage in The Empty Space, Brook writes �� everything is a language for something and nothing is a language for everything.� Is this �nothing��formless,� �bottomless,� as Jacob B�hme called it�the basis of all form, process and event? And how can one reconcile this infinitely rich, formless silence with aesthetic form, other than through incessant search, continual investigation and pitiless questioning, relentlessly pursued along a

cutting edge? Perhaps it is above all �tightropes� that are missing from contemporary artistic research:

�We can try to capture the invisible, but we must not lose touch with common sense� The model as always is Shakespeare. His aim continually is holy, metaphysical, yethe never makes the mistake of staying too long on the highest plane. He knew how hard it is for us to keep company with the absolute�so he continually bumps us down to earth� We have to accept that we can never see all of the invisible. So after straining towards it, we have to face defeat, drop down to earth, then start up again.�

Peter Brook is the only one to follow the path he has chosen. On such a path, there can be neither �sources� nor absolute �models.�

If one accepts Korzybski�s suggestion, the history of human thought can be roughly divided into three periods, adopting as the basis for classification the relationship between the observer and what is observed. In the first period (�pre-scientific�), the observer is everything, while what is being observed has little or no importance. In the second period (�classical� or �semi-scientific�), what is observed comprises the only important aspect: this �classical� materialist tendency continues to dominate most areas of concern today. Finally, in the third period (�scientific��still embryonic at the present time), a period in which Peter Brook seems to us to be one of the boldest explorers, gradually it becomes clear that knowledge results from a unity between the observer and what is observed. An encounter with Tradition can only enrich and ennoble this conception of unity. For the theatre, such a meeting is not abstract or intellectual, but experimental. One could even suggest that theatre is a privileged field of study of Tradition.

At the end of this essay, perhaps one must confess that it seems impossible to approach Brook�s theatre work from a theoretical point of view. All that we can offer is a �reading,� one of a multitude of other possibilities. In The Empty Space, Brook writes:

�Most of what is called theatre anywhere in the world is a travesty of a word once full of

sense. War or peace, the colossal bandwagon of culture trundles on, carrying each artist�s traces to the evermounting garbage heap� We are too busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure: why theatre at all? What for?� Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve?�

The question is still being asked.

http://www.experimentaltheatre.org/peter_brook.htm

04/08/08

More on Peter!

2008-12-01T03:49:37Z

More reviews and commentaries...

Peter Brook At Eighty

� by
Charles Marowitz

�

� (Swans - June 6, 2005) �
When I first met Peter Brook in the early sixties, he was just making that
fateful transition from West End Wunderkind to avatar of the avant garde. For
those who know him only in his latter guise, it may seem bizarre to imagine
that he was a director who worked with performers like Clare Bloom, Pearl
Bailey, Vivien Leigh, and Rex Harrison and staged commercial musicals such as
"House of Flowers," "Irma la Douce" and the ill-fated Bond parody,
"The Perils of Scobie Prilt," which may have been the only
out-of-town production by Brook that never made it into London.

Always
the conscious artist and painfully aware of the fact that there was a trendy
public and a staid one, Peter was zealous about being associated with the
former. It was that impulse that first drew him to Encore Magazine, a small circulation bi-monthly
which had an influence out of all proportion to its minuscule readership. A
magazine which, in the inchoate 1950s, was already championing Brecht, Artaud,
Pinter and the dazzling new French ensembles like those of Jean Vilar and Roger
Planchon.

I
was one of its triumvirate of editors beavering away without pay for the
greater glory of the New Wave, and it was there that I first came into contact
with Peter. Both of us were, as he put it, "looking in the same direction,
if not always seeing eye to eye." We corresponded about issues which
appeared in various editions, found we shared an admiration for Antonin Artaud
and eventually met up in person. He would often pump me about what members of
the staff felt about this or that new production, the tacit assumption being
that there was a hip way of viewing current events in the theatre and one that
was more practiced and bourgeois. Rather than disillusion him, I refrained from
explaining that some of the "hipper" members of Encore's inner circle were too
doctrinal and dogmatic in their socialist beliefs to be able to deliver
enlightened opinions about anything which wasn't heavily steeped in Marxism.

Out
of these talks came an invitation to collaborate on the Jan Kott-inspired, Paul
Scofield production of "King Lear" which Peter was readying for the
Royal Shakespeare Company. I was duly taken on as Assistant Director and
unofficial dramaturgist for a walloping twelve pounds a week and immediately
entered the charmed circle which was then dominated by Brook, Peter Hall,
Michel St. Denis, and John Barton. My main function in this venture was
discussing with Peter the intellectual nuances of Shakespeare's play; why
Edgar, brutally cobbled by his nefarious brother Edmund, decides to pretend to
be a half-naked, maniac roaming the countryside; why Gloucester doesn't
recognize his errant son when they meet in the hovel; how to prevent Regan and
Goneril from becoming the twin "wicked sisters" of British pantomime,
etc. etc. I delivered my copious notes on the production's progress, made two
or three specific suggestions about interpretation but essentially was there as
a kind of intellectual mascot to help Peter clarify his ideas about the most
opaque classic in the Shakespearean canon. The other members of the company
kept darting suspicious glances towards the young, bearded American who seemed
to be a troubling, usually silent, presence during rehearsals; could he be a
kind of company mole planted there to report esthetic transgressions to the
Master?

What
struck me most forcibly about Peter's work with the actors was that they were
passionate about pleasing him. There was an enormous respect for this -- even
then -- legendary theatre director, and all their offerings came out of a
psychological context in which they would sooner impale themselves on naked
spears than offer routine or sub-standard results to so demanding a director. I
discovered that one of a director's most effective tools is the allegiance of a
devoted company; but of course, to reap the artistic benefits of that
allegiance, the director himself must first have accumulated a track record as
impressive as Peter's.

Two
incidents stand out from that rehearsal period. At one, the costume designer
balked at Peter's requirement that the costumes for Lear's daughters be made
out of real leather. Protesting the excessive cost of such an extravagance, he
vociferously opted for "leatherette," a plasticized version of
leather which would "read" as leather from the front, but Peter
wasn't buying it. Real leather had a texture and swish to it which could not be
duplicated by any cheaper substitute. The designer refused to approve the excessive
cost and blurted out many of the stupid things irate designers say at
rehearsals when their suggestions are repulsed. Peter, in a very low, balanced,
and barely audible voice replied: "I am very angry about this,"
although nothing in his tone or manner betrayed any anger. He might just as
well have been saying: "I see then we will have to agree to disagree"
but what was pulsating beneath that placid, utterly calm fa�ade was the
swirling "anger" he was quietly declaring. He got his genuine
leather.

At
one rehearsal, there was a set of drums in the studio and Peter sat down behind
them and started beating out different tattoos and cymbal clashes.
"Wouldn't it be marvelous," he said, "if we could use rhythms
like this as directions to actors, instead of words." It was a period when
"the word" had fallen into disrepute and rooting out subterranean
"sub-text" had an appeal that no linguistic construction, no matter
how eloquent, could possibly equal. That was the way Peter's mind worked. It
was constantly searching for alternative means of expressing ideas. It was that
instinct which probably led him to Antonin Artaud's "Theatre and Its
Double" and to our next collaboration which was the creation of a
"Theatre of Cruelty Season" in a small theatrical adjunct to the
Royal Shakespeare Company off Sloane
Square where many of Artaud's more tantalizing
ideas could be researched and tested.

Artaud
had been one of my own early mentors and I, like many directors of that period,
were intellectually bewitched by the ideas of the mad Frenchman who, in his
early 40s, after a life willed with tragic failures, wound up in a mental
institution at Rodez. I had produced one of the first documentaries on Artaud
for the BBC and had written an article for The
Evergreen Review about his malevolent incarceration under the
oppressive domination of the psychiatrist Dr. Gaston Ferdiere. It was while
preparing the Theatre of Cruelty Season (a term created by Artaud himself) that
Peter and I delved deeply into the poet's writing to see how ideas he himself
never managed to realize could be fleshed out using a hand-picked group of
actors under the aegis of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC).

I
was instructed to cull from several hundred applicants an underpaid squad of
twelve actors and actresses that would be given three months of rigorous
training based on Artaudian precepts, without any actual production being
slated. (The running joke was that the definition of "Theatre of
Cruelty" was "twelve actors earning twelve pounds a week.")
Among the new recruits was a sorely unemployed actress named Glenda Jackson and
about a dozen other talented and adventurous performers ready to join and Peter
and me in leaping into the deep end. Here, the collaboration changed radically.
The improvisations, exercises, tests and tactics I devised for the actors,
derived from work I had been doing with my own company, was alien territory to
Peter and he was eager to sop it up. I could feel myself being excavated for
tests, tactics, and techniques which were as novel to Peter as they were to the
actors, but always with staunch encouragement and rabid curiosity.
Improvisation was then something of a dirty word in the British theatre. The
more stolid members of the RSC rejected it out of hand and when in 1963 William
Gaskill tried to introduce it to members of The National Theatre Company in his
production of Farquhar's "The Recruiting officer," one could feel the
resistance, like a volt of electricity, shudder through the rehearsal room.
Olivier, to his credit, broke the ice by saying: "Why not have a go?"
and so a crude but self-conscious form of improv actually took place, although
long after the event Olivier admitted it served no useful purpose in a context
with traditionally trained, established West End actors. At the RSC
Experimental Group, it was spoon-fed to twelve actors on a regular basis for
three months and, because it was underwritten and encouraged by Peter, became a
vital force in subsequent productions such as the opening surrealist revue which
was labeled "Theatre of Cruelty Season," Genet's "The
Screens" and later, the "Marat/Sade."

Throughout
this period Peter was open to every innovation that emerged; expressing
dramatic impulses using only paint on canvas, inventing sounds, cries and
alternating rhythms, giving nonsense texts subtextual meaning which, though
sometimes in gibberish, could still be communicated to an audience. It was an
adventurous, startling, endlessly stimulating experience for all the members of
this Dangerous Dozen and no one was more conducive to the bizarre, the
exceptional, the outrageous and the "off the wall" than the man who,
heretofore, had established a reputation as a talented and commercially
respectable member of England's
theatrical Establishment.

Peter
was always the epitome of good sense, intellectual curiosity, and unpredictable
innovation, but highly susceptible to betrayal. He had come up through the
theatrical ranks easily but warily: "Easily" because he was already a
theatrical luminary as a precocious undergraduate at Oxford, the breeding
ground from which leaders of the British theatre were regularly cultivated; and
"warily" because early in his career he had been exposed to the
treacherous in-fighting that besets all theatre practitioners and had seen ambitious
people use guile and trickery to further their own causes and try to outfox the
competition. Peter felt, and probably still feels, that allegiance once offered
and accepted forges an insoluble bond which should never be broken. In our
case, that bond was frayed, if not actually broken, when as a critic in the
late 1960s, I expressed a dim view of his anti-Vietnam farrago "US."
One of the tenets of loyalty, it seemed, was restraint, and restraint meant not
voicing negative criticism against those with whom one had previously been
professionally involved. Now that he has escalated from "outstanding
British director" to International Icon, I would imagine he has discarded
much of that vulnerability. "Enemies" no longer exist that can
possibly threaten either his status or his achievement. Peter has reached the
point where even poor reviews cannot diminish the glitter of the work he deems
to be worth undertaking.

Every
artist is, consciously or unconsciously, eclectic. They alchemize ideas and
inferences from other people's work into their own. Peter took many of Artaud's
ideas and gave them a form they never had before; he worked closely with Jerzy
Grotowsky and that minimalist approach to theatre unquestionably influenced his
own scaled-down work on the classics. Several of his French productions most
notably the "Mahabharata" have been filtered through his immersion in
the ideas of Gurdjieff -- just as many of his earlier productions bear the
circus-like influences of Meyerhold, a director we all know only by legendary
report, although I know of no one who has actually beheld a Meyerhold
production with his own eyes. But in the process of theatrical alchemy, once
base metal has been transformed into gold, its former constituents no longer
exist; it has been enriched by the metamorphosis into richer material, and that
is the real point about Peter's achievements. He is the catalyst who, after
effecting the changes that take place through catalysis, remains unchanged at
the end. It is Peter's style and sensibility that emerges with pristine
clarity, even when, on reflection, we detect trace-elements of other artists.

As
he has entered his 80th year (he turned 80 on March 21, 2005), Peter reveals
none of the creaky signs of the octogenarian. His latest work, "Tierno
Bokar," is yet another excursion into what Michael Billington described as
"timeless questions about the subversiveness of faith, the meaning of
existence and the conflict of free will and destiny;" intellectual
preoccupations he has been dealing with since "Caspar" and "Les
Iks." The mind is bristlingly alive and the instinct to create is as
ravenous as it ever was. The great advantage of being genuinely "avant
garde" is that everyone else has to double-time in order to catch up with
you. In theatres in both the East and the West, directors are still playing
catch-up while Peter himself, surging forward, disappears behind a cloud of
dust.

http://www.swans.com/library/art11/cmarow19.html

Just one more....I promise

The Empty Space by Peter Brook

I approached this book with certain misgivings,
partly because to read a book about "The Theatre" in general, a
subject so huge and ephemeral, promised to be as rewarding as "Sherlock on
Death" or De Mille's promised "simple and undramatic film about the
end of the world"; and partly because Peter Brook himself produces in me
the mixed emotions of adulation and sheer fright. It would be interesting to
read the book without knowing Brook, for knowing him, he breathed over my shoulder
the whole way through and it was impossible to separate the book from the man -
not, I hasten to say, that this was a drawback - but from a purely academic
point of view it would have been interesting to read the book without the
Presence.

Once
embarked, however, the first fear was removed. The book is, first, foremost and
thankfully, extremely readable. It speaks a language equally intelligible to
the theatrical initiate and that old friend, "the Man in the Street"
(and there's a subject for Brook). It is precise, clear,
witty and all terms are well defined before use.

"The Empty Space"
of the title is, of course, the stage, and in this book, Brook examines and
analyses what we do, and what we could do, to fill it. Mercilessly, every type
of theatre, the deadly, the holy, the rough (Brook's headings), is scrutinised
and found wanting. He is scrupulously fair. The obvious butt for criticism in
this field, the much lambasted commercial theatre, has its good points remarked
as well as its bad, and the experimental and avant garde - as at present
practised - are not spared a damning swipe or two.

After these examinations he
moves on to the "immediate theatre," in which he formulates some
ideals for filling his empty space, but carefully not lapsing into dogma at any
moment: "As I continue to work, each experience will make these
conclusions inconclusive again. It is impossible to assess the function of a
book - but I hope this one my be of use somewhere . . . But if anyone were to
try and use it as a handbook, then I can definitely warn him - there are no
formulas" - and again: "As you read this book, it is already moving
out of date. It is for me an exercise, now frozen on the page." What will,
however, never be out of date is the lesson that breathes through every page,
of the endless care, pain, time, devotion and sheer hard work that all
concerned in the theatre should and must bring to it if it is to mean anything
at all.

The overall impression -
apart from fascination and a sense of privilege at getting a glimpse of this
extraordinary man's mind - is of a rare objectivity. Not merely the theatre,
but its inhabitants and those of its purlieus, actors, directors, designers and
- God save the mark - critics, are skilfully and compassionately dissected, and
the results arranged with clarity for us to form our own conclusions.

A handbook - in deference
to the author's wish - no; but required reading for anyone who professes to
care about the theatre.

Incidentally, I picked up
the book at eleven o'clock in the evening, and laid it down, finished, at three
thirty in the morning, and I could not have put it down before.

http://members.aol.com/xtralinks/pb/space.htm 04/08/08

�

Mask Work

2008-12-01T04:09:40Z

Notes.

I have to write about:

Gesture lines/centre of weight (stomach, pelvis, top of head, etc.) - Exercise at party setting, where people with different centre of mass interacted.

States of tension (blob, cool/american, manager/neutral, aware, optimistic, pessimistic/paranoid, stasis)

Exercise with paper bag on head using only body to show emotions.

CLOCKING THE AUDIENCE & COUNTER MASKS: Exercise - "you find a millions dollars on the street (show different emotions but with the same facial expression)

Trying masks on whilst audience asked you questions about your character (we had one only prop)

MASK PERFORMANCE (discussing target audience, setting, characters, different plots) - OWN EXPERIENCES...

Greek Theatre, Mask Work and Peter Brook Synthesis

2008-12-01T04:17:16Z

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GN[youtube][/youtube]GH4BhNiY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GNGH4BhNiYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzJDuqGUQyA&NR=1[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlNfaYRTzAY&NR=1[/youtube]

Kiss Me Kate - October 2008

2008-12-01T04:22:40Z

My own experiences + photos

Bertolt Brecht

2008-12-01T04:23:53Z

still to be done...

Commedia Del'Arte

2008-12-01T04:25:00Z

[under construction]

Stanislavski

2008-12-01T04:27:28Z

"Where's my ring?"

Neighbour's exercise (house drawn on floor) - magic 'IF'

Harold Pinter's play + exercises

Super objectives and objectives

Saying super objective whilst carrying on other actions

A Streetcar Named Desire

2008-12-01T04:29:49Z

Notes on play + movie.

Marlon Brandooooooooooooooo