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Monthly Update - January, 2006 1) Call for Participants The Urban Research Theater is an ongoing laboratory for practical research in physical and vocal craft. Elements of work such as movement structures and song fragments are used as tools toward the development of quality in awareness and precision with spontaneity. There is an ongoing call for participants to join the work in 2006. The group is open to dancers, actors, singers, performance artists and practitioners of traditional forms such as yoga, meditiation, and the martial arts. A commitment of between one and six months will be negotiated on an individual basis. The schedule is Sunday through Thursday evenings, twenty hours per week. There is a space rental contribution of $125 per month. To apply, send a letter of interest and CV to urt@junkriver.org or visit www.urbanresearchtheater.com. 2) Work Update This month I began working five days per week with a small group of people. My goal is to find a way of working that separates talking from doing, and to lead the group towards rigor and precision without immediate reference to putting on a show. Through all of this, I am looking for ways to activate myself and my colleagues--to let us express our full ranges of being. At present we work for three hours in the studio space. During that time we do not speak, analyze or give verbal directions. When the three hours are over, we sit around a small table in the kitchen area and discuss what we have done. The three hours of "practical" work contain very little explicit structure: We start and end each day's work session with a simplified version of Grotowski's Motions exercise; and for three twenty-minute periods at the end, each of us must choose either to work or to watch. That is all the structure we have agreed upon in words. There is also an implicit structure made up of elements which have become familiar through repetition but have not been formalized. In addition, each person brings their own implicit structure of past experiences and current desires. After the simplified Motions exercise we run and do physical work for about an hour. This is not an explicit rule but something which I often propose and which is usually accepted. There are many different things that can be worked on in running: Silence; awareness of the others and the space; lightness; directional control at high speeds; balance; sweat; rhythm. Some of these elements have been mentioned during the discussions afterwards, but many others have not yet been mentioned, and some may be specific to individuals. The running does not end but opens up to include jumps, rolls and movements of the entire body. Stretches and isolations come into play. Patterns develop through repetition. Later we sing. The singing is very important to me and opens me in different ways from the physical work. I am avoiding pop songs and the folk and musicals from my childhood and trying working on song fragments that have no authorship. These have evolved with me over the last year or two, each in a different way. Some of them are still imitations, while others have begun in some way to exist on their own. It is easy for me to come up with melodies now. The hard part is to give them meaning, or to discover meaning within them. At first all the songs were asleep. I am trying to wake them up. Most valuable for me are the moments when song and action come together, and when the group is working in communicative harmony. Body and voice as well as partner and partner sometimes reach the point where they are reacting to one another in a highly detailed way that does not involve doing the same thing. There is a following of intention rather than of shape. These moments can be playful or serious. The important thing is that they are genuine interactions in which we manifest parts of ourselves that are hidden in everyday life. Later on we will face the question of how to capture formal elements out of these moments and structure them so that they can be repeated. The rules that define the boundaries of this work are simple and clear: We use only the human body and its capabilities. Beyond that premise, my own work in the space is only a proposal. Others are welcome to follow me, but I also expect them to make their own proposals. Eventually I am looking for an embodied leadership: A way of leading through doing and participating rather than from the external position of a director. I have witnessed this kind of leadership on two or three occasions and was always very moved, but I have never seen it developed over the long term. This is new territory. Right now the hardest thing for the others is to work for such an extended period without so little explicit structure. Regarding unstructured work, it is one thing to jump into a five or twenty-minute pool and quite another to face an open ocean of three hours, with no talking until the end. Each of us is sometimes frustrated not to be assigned the role of leader or follower more explicitly. A person who is less experienced feels hungry for a teacher and a teaching. They want to be told what to do. Someone who has more experience is bothered that the others aren't following them more closely. I encourage everyone to try to resolve these issues through the work itself. Whatever is lacking for you in the work--do it. Make it happen in the space without waiting for permission. Initiate the solution to your own desire. Create the space you need to do your work. I am trying to take this approach as well. Rather than talking about how we should work, I am trying to provide my personal example. If someone wants to be led then that may be enough; otherwise we are each responsible for our own work. At the same time, I do not want anyone to feel as if they are drowning in the lack of words--therefore we make sure to reserve time for talking as well. I want us to learn how to give each other technical challenges through action rather than verbal instruction. It should not be that someone tells me how to run and then I try to do it. Rather it should start when I perceive that one of my partners runs like an angel. I go and ask them to explain what they are doing, and then every word they say is like a pearl dropping on the ground and I am scrambling to pick them up. Their words are convincing because of what I have seen them do. In this way we push ourselves to rely on direct experience. Sometimes we worry that we do not know what to work on, but I think this is an illusion. Each of us already knows what we have to work on. We have been knowing it all our lives. What I am trying to provide is simply a space in which others are working alongside you, giving companionship and grounding you in the reality of the present moment. The work does not require us to come up with new ideas, or even to share ideas with each other. It is more like a question of faith, and I can be most helpful not by explaining my ideas but just by showing up every day and working. Really, there is no secret knowledge that we need in order to begin. There are no shortcuts. It is a matter of doing it. I want to approach theater as a Way, just as the martial arts and also calligraphy, flower arrangement and the preparation of tea have been used as Ways to practice the embodiment of Zen. In this tradition, it is understood that "the training of ki [or 'qi' or 'chi'] alone, however intensive, without training the heart is ultimately self-defeating" (_Zen and the Ways_, Trevor Leggett). Technique is a tool that we use to call ourselves to effort and to presence. This is not easy! If anything, practicing a craft as a Way should be more difficult than practicing it to a specific material end. But it should be hard in a way that energizes rather than in a way that defeats. It is always possible to move towards greater quality in what we are already doing. Even in stillness there can be quality or lack of quality. Once we realize this, we understand that we are capable of working indefinitely out of the knowledge and desires we already have. I am grateful for the companionship of my colleagues. Ben Spatz January, 2006 New York City