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Urban Research Theater Newsletter - May, 2008 ------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------ ANNOUNCEMENTS 1) Body & Song Workshop (May 24) 2) Another City (August 22-24) 3) Membership Community PROSE 4) Ronald Grimes: How Ritualizing Theater Can Fail ------------------------------------------------------ ANNOUNCEMENTS ------------------------------------------------------ 1) Body & Song Workshop Urban Research Theater presents BODY & SONG WORKSHOPS in NYC - Date: Saturday, May 24, 2008 - Time: 2:00pm to 5:00pm - Location: Baryshnikov Arts Center - Fee: $20 This workshop is a rare opportunity to explore the organic intersection of song, movement and action. Each session begins with the discovery of active silence, as the group follows its leader through elementary movement explorations in search of the playful, the rigorous, the dynamic, and the subtle. We then move into singing, using fragments of traditional and original vibratory songs to unlock the freedom and vitality of the body-and-song, the body-in-song, the body-of-song... This workshop touches on all aspects of performance and is designed to serve the inner and outer lives of dancers, actors, singers, martial artists, yoga practitioners, and anyone with an interest in embodied practice. Every participant receives personal attention and guidance, and is invited to encounter the present moment in a safe and open space. Beginners and advanced participants are welcome. This is our last open Body & Song workshop of the season! The next one will be in September. Details and participant testimony: www.urbanresearchtheater.com Questions and registration: ben@urbanresearchtheater.com ------------------------------------------------------ 2) ANOTHER CITY Urban Research Theater presents - ANOTHER CITY - In the heat of the New York City summer, experience another way, another city, another self. August 22-24, 2008 New York City "Another City" is a unique chance to rediscover your world through the techniques of the Urban Research Theater. You will never experience your city or yourself the same way again. Each full day begins at sunrise in the serene half-wilderness of Central Park's North Woods. Here you will be able to slow down, breathe deeply, and step out of the busy rhythms of urban life. The group will walk, sing, and engage in simple physical exercises among the trees and waterfalls. It is a unique experience in itself, as well as preparation for concentrated artistic work. Afternoon and evening sessions will be held at the Chez Bushwick studio, where participants will learn to work on traditional and original songs as a basis for developing short performance fragments. We also spend time waking our bodies through extended periods of playful and demanding physical work. Participation Fee: $200 early registration $250 after June 15 The group will be limited to 8 people. Details and participant testimony: www.urbanresearchtheater.com Questions and registration: ben@urbanresearchtheater.com ------------------------------------------------------ 3) MEMBERSHIP COMMUNITY Urban Research Theater intends to eventually support itself through community-based interactions rather than through ticket sales. In order to do this, we need to build a supportive membership community. If you support the work of Urban Research Theater; if you have participated in one of our workshops or events; if you believe in our philosophy of art and practice; if you enjoy receiving our monthly newsletter... Please become a member of our community! Supporting members donate at least $5 per month / $60 per year to support our continuing work. Five dollars is not very much - the price of a single cheap lunch or an expensive coffee. But we consider it a serious gesture of support. And with a big enough community, this small amount can add up to a lot: - If our community had 10 members, we would receive enough income to rent a space for one Body + Song workshop each month. - If our community had 100 members, we would have enough money to cover all our work expenses for the year and run several week-long or even month-long events. - If our community had 1000 members, we would be able to dedicate ourselves full-time to Urban Research Theater! Our goal now is to build a community of 100 members. All donations to Urban Research Theater are fully tax deductible. You can also donate to us directly, if you do not require the tax deduction. Please follow the link on our website to become a supporting member of the Urban Research Theater community! ------------------------------------------------------ PROSE ------------------------------------------------------ 4) RONALD GRIMES: HOW RITUALIZING THEATER CAN FAIL The following is excerpted from _Beginnings in Ritual Studies_ by Ronald Grimes. Grimes is a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, and this important, out-of-print book is available for free download from his faculty webpage there (see citation below). Grimes worked from 1976-1977 with the Actor's Lab in Hamilton, Canada. His in-depth analysis of their work is worth reading in its entirety, but particularly challenging and useful for our purposes are his final comments: his "attempt to say how this kind of theater (ritualizing theater) can fail." What follows is a list of some of the most common problems that small ensembles face when they attempt to move away from commercialism and recover a more sincere ethics of performance. These comments are very much of their time, and in the present era it seems that the pendulum has swung strongly in the other direction. Nevertheless, many of these points remain in some way relevant today. I post them here as a reminder and a challenge. --- 1. Ritualizing theater can view itself as beyond criticism. The Lab existed in a vacuum in Canada. With perhaps one exception, it was the only theater of its kind; so it could too easily claim to be the best of its kind. Comparisons with conventional stage theater were inappropriate, but comparisons with Grotowski's Lab were, in my judgment, pretentious. Whatever its aspirations, the Canadian Lab's achievements were not those of the Polish Lab. And comparisons with religious groups are only partially apt. In the absence of good criticism, that is, criticism that is relevant and sympathetic but also pointed, ritual theater sometimes becomes cynical or inflated about critical evaluation. 2. The Actor's Lab sometimes unwittingly fostered contempt for performance, characterization, and narrative, as well as other aesthetic forms, and yet it continued to use them. In other words, ritualizing theater is not always justified in rejecting criticism based on conventional theatrical standards. Sloppy diction, for instance, is inexcusable by either set of standards. However much Actor's Lab may have hoped its spewing of words functioned like chant, it did not always do so. 3. The Lab had a disdain for the work of playwrights and an underlying disrespect for language. Lab members would not have said this, but it was implied, I think, in their performances. The Lab replaced scripts with lesser quality verbal collages that sometimes did not work either as communication or chant. Not every moan is an articulate outcry. Voice, it was said, is essential, but language perhaps is not. My objection is not to this claim but to the assumption that the Lab's use of language put it beyond criticism on this account. 4. The claim that ritualizing performances appeal directly to the unconscious and bypass rational defenses may be true. But how would we know if Lab performances failed to touch the unconscious? And even if they did affect an audience below the threshold of consciousness, are there not standards that should apply? Breaking down defenses, for instance, can be destructive to personality. There is no virtue in blasting open the unconscious unless we have the wisdom and structures to cope with the results. The work, if abused, can become an endless wallowing in one's own psyche. Catharsis during crisis is one thing; catharsis as a way of life is another. 5. During the work, participants regularly bonded with the director, regarding him first as father or messiah and later as the devil. The work was supposed to dissolve role-playing in theater, but it reinforced religio-social roles in order to achieve the goal. In any nascent state the "newborn" fixates on whoever provides an attentive gaze. A director can willfully or unwittingly exploit this bond and too easily become a self-acclaimed master. All of the Lab members with whom I worked have now left the Lab. Many of them, especially the women, have since said how deeply they regretted handing over power to the director, whom they felt had taken advantage of them or abused them. I had no way of assessing the truth of their claims, but I had no reason to doubt them either. Neophytes sometimes develop grandiose expectations of their initiating elders, in this case the director. He was intuitive. "He could see through you," one ex-member exclaimed. He was sometimes perceived as almost messianic, but when he failed, he then became diabolical. One could see this bonding, yet double-binding dynamic operating even as people tried to leave the Lab. Frequently, they returned again, feeling mysteriously drawn back. 6. Audiences witnessing one of Actor's Lab's ritualized performance sometimes desired to join it. On the other hand, they just as often felt the performance was contemptuous of them, since it seemed to make little effort to communicate. If performers discover something for the first time, they may come to feel they were the first ones to discover it. Consequently, they can become condescending toward the uninitiated. 7. If we claim to be revealing ourselves, not just acting, we often overlook the subtle shift into performing honesty and passion: one can act like one is not acting. Risk, stripping away, and self-exposure have their own ways of becoming means of hiding. And even the Lab, which aspired to peel away masks and push through every barrier, was not immune. Except during very rare moments, thinking one is free of performance is an illusion. 8. Ritualizing work can lead to the cultivation of false or extreme emotions. Writhing and wailing are not the only, or even the most effective, ways of tapping "it." Reality is no more real at the depths or on the outer limits than it is in the middle of ordinary life. Rhetorically, the Lab valued ordinariness, but in actuality it often valued the extraordinary more. 9. The Lab's continuing preoccupation in performances with darkness, violence, sexuality, and insanity threatened to undermine its own emphasis on process. The process often became circular, repetitive, and stuck. The Lab's gestural style remained surprisingly uniform. In my view the thematic and gestural qualities of its plays evolved little since its inception. The Lab's emphasis on flow may have produced its opposite: thematic and gestural fixation. And its stress on unlearning techniques may have become a technique. An atmosphere that fosters the synchronizing of bodily rhythms can just as well engender collective, kinesic contamination. 10. In my estimation the Lab was torn between understanding itself as a group of like-minded professionals and being a religious community. This position in society was one of the reasons for its creativity. However, the resulting ambivalence was also a crack in its foundation. It left individual Lab members fundamentally isolated in privatized society and yet elicited from them moments of intense communion. The shift back and forth between the two kinds of social life trapped them psychologically and vocationally. Despite this, the Lab rode with considerable commitment between the horns of the dilemma. --- BEGINNINGS IN RITUAL STUDIES, 3rd edition, pp. 238-241 By Ronald L. Grimes: www.wlu.ca/homepage.php?grp_id=410 ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------ As always, comments and feedback are welcome. Ben Spatz & Michele Farbman Urban Research Theater New York City ben@urbanresearchtheater.com michele@urbanresearchtheater.com