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Urban Research Theater Newsletter - October, 2006 1) free workshops anywhere 2) thursday night training sessions 3) letter to my partner (may 2006) ------------------------------------------------------ 1) free workshops anywhere -- OPEN INVITATION -- I am a teacher and practitioner of experimental performance as research. I would like to meet you and your community through song and movement. Your community could be a group of friends; it could be a theater ensemble or a poker club; it could be a small choir, a therapeutic population, or a prayer circle. You could be the leader of this community, or you could just be a member. I will visit you anywhere in the five boroughs and lead three to six hours of playful, intensive exploration as a way of meeting your community. If you want to learn technique, I will teach you technique. If you want to learn songs, I will teach you songs. We can also work without speaking. All you have to do is find a clean, open room and five to ten willing participants. If you are interested, please email urt@junkriver.org with some background information about yourself and your community. For more information, please visit www.urbanresearchtheater.com ------------------------------------------------------ 2) thursday night training sessions -- ONE RIVER: BODY & SONG -- weekly training session led by Ben Spatz Thursdays 6pm-9pm at Theaterlab, 137 West 14th Street, NYC $80/month for a minimum of three months This intensive weekly workshop is a special opportunity to explore the organic intersection of song and movement. It is designed for participants who want to continue developing their performance skills without committing to a production schedule. The instructor will verbally and physically lead rigorous three-hour classes, using a range of dynamic and meditative structures to help free the creative and expressive possibilities of the body and voice. Participants should come prepared to walk, run, sing, roll, leap, hum, and listen; to lead as well as to follow; and to work with a group, in pairs, and individually. Mr. Spatz will draw on his experiences with the Gardzienice Theater Association and with artists from different phases of Jerzy Grotowski's research, as well as on his own work as a director and performer of experimental theater. This course is part of the Urban Research Theater project. To enroll please call Theaterlab at 212-929-2545 or email urt@junkriver.org. For more information, please visit www.urbanresearchtheater.com ------------------------------------------------------ 3) letter to my partner (may 2006) Colleague: I am waiting for you here in the studio. All you have to give up is everything else. Aren't there enough people making films and writing books? Isn't enough energy spent applying for grants and trying to get published? Won't it be a relief to have faith in what is simple? Very little is enough. More is quickly forced. Do you remember that out of a breath of song everything is possible? Or that a tiny question mark of a movement, before the dance begins, is at the birth of everything? I don't always remember myself, but I always come back. Will you come back with me? To sing and move at the same time is not so difficult. There is no need to be frozen. Of course it will take years to remember who we are in that place. Your most beautiful voice is the simplest one, and your most perfect action is the one you have already done a hundred times. You do not have to be beautiful or skinny. You do not even have to be young, if you are willing to sacrifice everything. I am already here every morning, waiting for you, and no, it doesn't make "sense." But don't you want more than that? Don't you realize that the mountain can come into the city, because the mountain is inside of you? Your deepest things, they do not always have to remain cut off from your work. They are only buried. It will take some time. The common ones are like bunnies, staring with wide eyes, yearning for the reflection of authority. As long as I give commands, they follow me. They like for me to pretend that I know where we are going before we get there. I could sit and watch them for hours and they would just keep playing, content in being watched, like a child before its mother. Especially if I caressed them and said that I care. But the moment I stand, look away, turn inwards, question myself, release authority, drop the mask... they leave. It was only that hierarchical voltage that kept them magnetized. It's not just that they are afraid of themselves. I was also and am still afraid. But they still think there is an alternative, another authority to find. This is the meaning of youth. And so they go. The rare ones are masterful tyrants. They are valuable and they know it: You have to seek them out if you want to learn. If you pay they will train you without caring, but if you please and obey them they will eventually reveal themselves and step out of the shadow of authority. If you give yourself to them you can become a saint, but you'll have to tease it out of them, trusting their domination, letting them relax over years until the they can actually see you. In the meantime, it will hurt. The experience is remarkably similar in both cases. It seems that everyone is so fragile that only the right illusions can help wake us up. It can takes years of artifice before trust is born, years and years of me obeying you or bossing you around (whichever turns you on) before we can meet as equals. That's how complicated every snowflake is. I am more comfortable taking turns. That way we acknowledge constantly both the need for hierarchical energy and the absurdity of institutionalizing power. I see within myself both master and slave, and I see the same in you. Can you remember that mastery is not an achieved state but an action, a temporary agreement between partners? Not that I "have" something you don't but that "I am leading now." Not that you "lack" anything but that "you are now following." Then we can call the voltage of hierarchy at will. I don't know how we will take turns. I don't know anything about what we will do until I meet you. I only propose two strict guidelines to define the field in which we will meet. First, you must give up recorded music, bought costumes, and every piece of infrastructure that comprises the fourth wall. You must accept this as a stripping to essentials. Second, you must never be satisfied except by the conquering of rigor. All your desire for technology and friendship must be replaced by an almost spiritual longing for precision in action. The accumulation of things must be replaced by love of work; collection must be replaced by labor; argument by sweat; imagination by intimacy. These are my illusions and my challenges. It is a question of solitude. If you can be alone with yourself, then you will not demand too much from me. If we can be alone with ourselves together, then we may have the capacity to meet. This is like an advertisement in the personals, but I am not looking for any kind of social or romantic engagement. I want to work. I want a singing partner. I have tried to tell you what that means to me, so that if you want to work in a way that is compatible, then you will know where to find me. You can join me in the space I am growing: An "island of freedom." Be honest. What is it you want? Do you want to sing? Do you want to taste the life that you wake up inside of every day? You are a thousand times greater than you know. Do you want to climb the mountain of the empty room? I am waiting here in the studio. Ben Spatz New York City