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Urban Research Theater Newsletter - November, 2006 ------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------ ANNOUNCEMENTS 1) workshop at lotus arts 2) workshop with stone soup 3) open invitation (ongoing) 4) thursday night class (ongoing) PROSE 5) letter to an empty room ------------------------------------------------------ ANNOUNCEMENTS ------------------------------------------------------ 1) workshop at lotus arts I will teach a workshop at Lotus Music & Dance on Saturday, January 20th, 2007. Details will follow in next month's newsletter. Please consider attending if you are available and would like to get a taste of what I have been doing. http://lotusmusicanddance.org/main.html ------------------------------------------------------ 2) workshop with stone soup I led a workshop for Stone Soup on November 12 as part of their "Souped Up Sundays" series. It went very well and possible further collaboration is in the works. http://www.stonesoupkitchen.org/news/sundays/ ------------------------------------------------------ 3) open invitation (ongoing) 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 ------------------------------------------------------ 4) thursday night class (ongoing) 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. To enroll please call Theaterlab at 212-929-2545 or email urt@junkriver.org. ------------------------------------------------------ PROSE ------------------------------------------------------ 5) letter to an empty room Dear Empty Room, You are a cave. You are a mountain. I have said that one does not need a teacher if one is willing to work alone, and that one does not need students if one is willing to work alone. This is not a theoretical statement, it is a burning need. We can imagine (or it may exist) a place where people work all day on songs and acting. They build performances. They are paid very little for their work, but it is enough. They have food and a building to work in. There are no distractions. Telephone calls are expensive. Friends are uncommon. A monastery of art. Purity is not a mystery. It is very evident. If you work on a certain group of songs or movements or actions for many years, many hours a day, and you do not work with anything else, then your work will be a great purity. If, on the other hand, you work a few hours a day and also attend conferences, write articles, read books, teach classes, watch television, go to the cinema, frequent parties, and keep a day-job, then your work will be impure. Pure; that is, just one thing. Impure; that is, fragmented, assembled, patched together, composite. This city is impure. It may be the most impure thing that has ever existed. Every religion, every machine, every language, every craft, every history, every notion, every science, every patterned fabric, every artificial substance, every moral system is represented here. Murderers, tailors, queens, businessmen, gas station attendants, taxi drivers, retailers, poets, prisoners, homeless wanderers, anarchists, journalists, carpenters, martyrs, stockbrokers, mystics and academics live here. Only one thing is difficult to find here: Purity. There is ice here, but there are no glaciers. There is grass, but there are no vast plains. There are religious folks, but there is no holy land. There are prayers, but no community here avoids idolatry. There are martial arts, but they are used for entertainment. There is medicine, but it is funded by pharmaceuticals. There is high culture and low culture, but they are not separate. There are political activists, but they live off the blood of third world nations. There are moral crusaders, but they contribute to global warming. There is talk of sustainability, but the entire project of this city is profoundly unsustainable. There are gardens on rooftops, but they do not feed very many people. In this city, purity cannot be born out of any substance. No religion or scientific argument can conquer this diverse population. No architectural plan or program of urban design can realize its vision in purity here. No art can be made without commercial investment here. No advertising campaign, however ambitious, can plaster every wall in this metropolis. No rule of law, however hegemonic, can protect these citizens from themselves. Any assertion of purity in this city will be instantly negated, defiled, contaminated, polluted, fractured, interrogated and parodied. If purity can exist in this city, it can only do so through absence. Where there is nothing, perhaps that nothing can be temporarily pure. And so I return to you: The empty room. If there could be one room in which emptiness were accepted, one moment in which silence were unquestioned, one group for whom approaching quality were not part of a quest for domination... My intention is not to reduce the city in any way. As if I could! But only to make a clearing, a small open space, which keeps a separateness from its wild impure surroundings. A place of absence, fruitful absence, unthinking celebration. A place with meaning and without purpose. What does such absence look like? Empty room, you are a cave because I am terrified to fall in. How difficult can it be to do nothing for one hour? Three hours? Six hours? Why can I not spend a day in this room without grasping at books, the telephone, the computer, as if I am desperate... Is there someone in this city who lives simply? What do they eat? Where do they sleep? Empty room, you are a mountain because I know that every moment spent with you is a moment of ascent. That one hour: It is an hour in which life's crust begins to fall away. How deep am I buried inside? How long will it take to reach the top? I want to breathe that kind of air and see that kind of light. Someone said: I wish to lead a life without purpose. Someone replied: A life without purpose is a life without meaning. Said: No, there is another kind of meaning that arrives. Replied: If you do not have purpose, you might as well do nothing. Said: I will do nothing. Replied: Then you will simply lie there. Said: No, I will not lie there. I will do nothing. Replied: So you will sit and starve. Said: No, that is something, a negation, an assertion of negativity. I will do nothing. It means I will do something. Replied: What will you do? Said: I do not know. We cannot know what we will do when we reach the top. Only allow yourself to lay everything down and discover what you will do. This is what it means to meet oneself. It requires great safety and protection. The safety of the cave and of the mountaintop. Only give me time and space to find this safety in the empty room. "You have it, time and space. You always have it." I have nothing. "Yes." ------------------------------------------------------ Ben Spatz New York City