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Urban Research Theater Newsletter - May, 2007
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
1) OPEN WORKSHOP: May 5
PROSE
3) QUOTATIONS from Crooked Cucumber
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1) OPEN WORKSHOP: MAY 5
One River: Body & Song
Saturday May 5th, 2pm-5pm
Limited spaces!
www.urbanresearchtheater.com
Too often in our culture, song and movement and action are separated and specialized.
This workshop offers a rare opportunity to explore the organic intersection of the voice, body, and spirit. I will lead a rigorous, playful session of physical and vocal work ranging from the meditative to the dynamic. Clear guidance and structure will make room for safe and open exploration.
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.
"A great success." - Ben Trawick-Smith, Stone Soup Theatre Arts
"A solid introduction to the work associated with the Grotowski tradition." - Carlo Altomare, Theaterlab
Location:
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2) CALL FOR PERFORMERS: SONG CYCLE
Urban Research Theater seeks actors / singers / dancers
/// song cycle ///
april - july 2007
Theaterlab Actors Training Studio
This process-oriented project is based on a cycle of eleven songs that are sung in unison, harmony, and rhythmic call-and-response. Over the next three months we will develop these songs into a complete performance piece, weaving together movement and narrative elements within the frame of the songs.
Participants will receive extensive physical and vocal training, including extended vocal techniques, and will contribute significantly to the development of the work. Strong candidates will have singing, acting and movement abilities, but formal training is not required. Rehearsals will take place primarily on Thursdays and Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons. Participants will be asked to help pay for space rental.
If interested, please contact the director immediately at the following address:
ben@urbanresearchtheater.com
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3) QUOTATIONS FROM CROOKED CUCUMBER
"Up to seven hours of the day would have been spent in the zendo. Four-and-nine days were almost days off; then there were only two zazen periods, one in the morning and one in the evening... This was the Tassajara schedule, the heart of Tassajara life. It was formidable, and no one could do it without earnest intent. Some men who had been in the army likened it to boot camp, without the harshness. But a slight person could practice this discipline as well as a strong one. Suzuki did it all, morning to night, day after day, setting the tone and the pace, unhurried, at home, just being himself." [...]
"While we were working, I asked [Suzuki] a question about Zen. He didn't say a thing, just kept on working. Later, when the bell rang to end work and begin bath time, he offered me some tea. While we were drinking it outside his cabin he said, 'You know, I don't want to teach anything so much. I'd rather not even give lectures. I'd just like to sit zazen with everyone, take a bath, eat simple food, and work. That should be enough.'" [...]
"[Suzuki] agreed people shouldn't be too hard on themselves, but that Zen is hard and ignorance is deep. The bundled-up fellow kept questioning Suzuki's responses until he fumed. Then he exploded--at everyone. 'Spineless! You are spineless! All of you are spineless! You only want a sweet pill! You never want the bitter pill! Spineless! [...] You say you want the truth. None of you want the truth! If I told you the truth I'd be left sitting here alone listening to the sounds of your cars driving up the road!'"
- Crooked Cucumber, The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, pp 286, 301, 303.
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4) MUSING ON ARTICULATION
There are two options for articulating a spiritual practice to those who ask how and why it is done.
The hard way is to answer with mysteries and secrets. Say you can't explain to the newcomer why it is done in exactly this way. Say it was determined by the fathers and mothers of old, it comes from the distant past, and it has always been done this way. Refer to established authorities and perhaps even the laws of the universe. Or simply smile, as if words cannot express your very good reasons for doing it in precisely this way.
The good thing about the hard way is that it prevents people from trivializing and dismissing the practice. Since you are not telling them all the reasons, they cannot be secure in rejecting your reasoning. Where you refer to secrets and mysteries, people will project their own feelings of inadequacy and curiosity. They will wonder if you have something they need. They may then esteem your practice highly and even try to become your disciple. Also, if what they need is an authority figure, you indicate in this way that you are able and willing to fill this role.
The drawback of the hard way is that your words can be easily misunderstood or twisted, and used to disempower other practices. Your disciples may think that obeying the rules of your practice confers a kind of authority on them, and they may scorn other searchers and students. Even more unavoidably, those who asked you to articulate your practice in the first place may feel it is their own fault that they do not fully grasp what you say. They may beat themselves internally with your projected authority, using it as a symbol of their own inadequacy.
Newcomer: What a splendid practice! How can I achieve this?
There is also a soft way. This way is to refuse and disavow all articulations of authority. So, you continue your practice, whether it is sitting or dancing, every day, of course, but when asked why you do it, you say that there is really no reason. You say the practice comes from no authority, has no objective value, and might as well be random. You say that it makes no difference whether you stand or sit, sing or dance. You admit that one could bow differently, use different candles, chant other words, and it would make no difference.
The strength of the soft way is that it cannot be misinterpreted as a claim to power. Since there are no commandments, no sacred gestures, and no rules, your practice cannot be turned into a church. Of course, your disciples may watch what you do and derive rules from your actions, which they can then try to enforce in a hard way. But if you see this happening, you can remind them that there are no rules or reasons for what you do. If they think they have discovered such things, it is their own illusion.
The disadvantage of the soft way is that it allows people more easily to dismiss the practice as trivial. For those who cannot perceive the practice directly, it will seem as though nothing at all is being done. If the teacher does not demand authority, how will a temple be established? If no temple is established, how can the teacher be supported? Who will give money for room and board, if the teacher calls the practice nonsense? These are practical risks. On the other hand, the soft way disempowers no one. A newcomer may be intimidated by the practice, but when the teacher is asked about it, all pretension is kicked out.
Newcomer: What a splendid practice! How can I achieve this?
Neither way is right or wrong. The choice exists in every moment: which way to go, which path to try. It arises in every practice, in every life: cooking, cleaning, working a day job, making art, caring for sick people, watching a movie, reading about politics. Hard or soft depends on what we want for the person who is asking, and what we need for ourselves.
Zen proverb: "There is hard in the soft, soft in the hard."
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5) MUSING ON DISCIPLINE
It is easy to confuse discipline with doing a lot. In a culture where too much is done and said all the time, we have to remember that discipline is not about doing as much as possible. It is about doing the proper thing for the proper length of time.
So, if you find yourself trying to think up what to do, pushing to do or create more, and yelling at yourself inwardly for not doing "enough"... this is not the voice of discipline. This is the voice of do-to-much, of hyperactivity and hysteria in order to assert oneself in a world gone insane.
With discipline, it is never a question of what to do. You already know what to do. Answer: It is just what you have done before. Now is the moment to do it again, and not more or less. So, if you were working on one small piece or possibility, the voice of discipline is to keep working on it in a simple way. Not to fall asleep, but also not to start something different. To do the same as what you did yesterday. Really to do it. Again. This is discipline.
Discipline is a pleasure once you get started and are into the groove. Precisely because you already know what to do, discipline is a moment of deep vacation from the need to figure things out. In discipline there is no student or teacher, no leader or follower, because the path is already laid out. It is there and visible in the dirt. It's the path you followed yesterday.
What hurts is the fear that it won't be enough. This again is the voice of hyperactivity. That's where the pain comes from. That voice says: what you did yesterday, it can't possibly be good enough today. That voice compels you to add something, to do something extra, to forcibly articulate your next step and so violently prove your progress. But there is no progress in this sense.
The world takes care of all the newness that is necessary. When you do what you did yesterday, it will of course be different this time, because you are different. That difference is progress. Not what you decide to change but what is changed already from the moment you begin. Same action, same practice, different moment, different person. Life self-organizes itself inside a discipline. This becomes visible when we let ourselves have the pleasure of doing the proper thing.
Discipline is a quiet voice, almost like a secret pleasure. Not a guilty pleasure, which saturates your senses and leaves you feeling empty, but a secret pleasure: the kind that seems to have no effect at all. Why secret? Because, what would the neighbors think? To chant the same phrase over and over again... to dance simply, to study cooking, to sing a few songs over many years, to develop a simple but sturdy craft... It can't possibly be enough...
But in the end, there can be nothing more, and it is enough.
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6) MUSING ON ROOTS
We are rooted. Or rather, we are roots. I am a root. You are a root. Each person is a root, rooted in the ground. The tip top of the root is in the sky, waving. This is what we call our individuality. It moves quickly in the breeze. But it is connected. It is not floating. It is supported by the length of the root, down to the base. The base is in the earth, of the earth. Actually, the base is part of the earth. There is no division. And the base has openings. Food and water and air come in and out. You cannot draw a line to separate the universe from the individual root. Even so, we can point to the tip and say: this is an individual.
The image of a root is good because it avoids dichotomizing individual/community, mind/body, language/animal, rationality/instinct, creativity/tradition, separateness/unity. Instead we can see that in every case, the two sides of the dichotomy represent the tip and the base of a single organism. The tip is very different than the base. It has different qualities, lives in a different world, moves at a different speed. Looking at the tip, up there in the wind, you might think that it really is separate from everything else. Looking at all the tips sticking up in a field, you might call them individuals. But when you look underground, the root systems are intertwined. They are one.
Because of this, we can realize that it is not a question of choosing to submit or intuit, or of arguing for the value of submission or intuition. It is not that hyper-rational people "ought to be more" connected with their bodies" or, in the reverse, that emotional types "ought to control themselves better." It is rather just to realize that we are all connected in this way. Yes, everyone has a submissive side, a conservative side, an animal aspect, a child aspect. Every mind has a body already. It's more a question of the relationship between the tip and the base, as in the story about a man who could not control the horse he was riding. He fought and fought and fought to dominate the beast, but he was never successful, until one day at least he realized that he was a centaur.
This relationship, between your body and your mind, your base and your tip, you and yourself... Is it a bitter relationship, a marriage dry of passion, or the cruel interlock of master and slave? Or is it a good, loving marriage, an old, friendly companionship? Like two who know that neither can exist without the other. Look to make this relationship work and function like a healthy marriage. Then the whole root will be healthy.
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Ben Spatz
CONTENTS
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2) CALL FOR PERFORMERS: Song Cycle
4) MUSING on Articulation
5) MUSING on Discipline
6) MUSING on Roots
ANNOUNCEMENTS
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$20 for three hours
Email ben@urbanresearchtheater.com to register.
Theaterlab Actors Studio
137 West 14th Street, New York City
for a unique performance project:
137 W 14th St. NYC
PROSE
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Teacher: You must do exactly as I say for at least five years.
Teacher: There is nothing to achieve. (If you feel like it, you can follow me.)
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ben@urbanresearchtheater.com
New York City