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Urban Research Theater Newsletter - February, 2007 ------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------ ANNOUNCEMENTS 1) this newsletter is one year old 2) "one river" workshops available 3) urban research theater working group 4) collaboration with Stone Soup PROSE 5) synonyms for action 6) "kata & sparring" 7) alchemy and the laboratory ------------------------------------------------------ ANNOUNCEMENTS ------------------------------------------------------ 1) THIS NEWSLETTER IS ONE YEAR OLD New this month: - The main address if the website has moved to www.urbanresearchtheater.com. - "One River: Body & Song" is now the name of the workshop I offer to groups. - The weekly class at Theaterlab is now called the URT Working Group. This newsletter has evolved over the past year to reflect an increase in outreach. The early editions are more like journal entries. I will continue to send these updates on a monthly basis through 2007, including both announcements and musings. The archives are available at http://www.urbanresearchtheater.com/ This newsletter is for anyone who cares about the intersections of craft and politics, animal and urban, performance and ritual, song and theater, movement and action, tradition and innovation, process and product, silence and articulation, practice and power, spirit and form. Please invite others to subscribe: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/urbanresearchtheater/ ------------------------------------------------------ 2) "ONE RIVER" WORKSHOPS AVAILABLE One River: Body and Song workshops and training in experimental performance The One River workshop is a rare opportunity to explore the organic intersection of song and movement. It is a rigorous, playful session that introduces a range of dynamic and meditative structures designed to free the creative and expressive possibilities of the performer. 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. For more information, download the brochure: http://www.urbanresearchtheater.com/site/oneriver.pdf If you would like to be informed about future workshops, please add yourself to the newsletter mailing list below. If you would like to host or help organize a workshop, please contact me: ben@urbanresearchtheater.com ------------------------------------------------------ 3) URBAN RESEARCH THEATER WORKING GROUP The Urban Research Theater working group is developing a process for structuring performances based on wordless, highly evocative songs. The current work centers around the "first song cycle," a collection of unnamed songs developed by Ben Spatz since 2005. The working group also trains physically to increase the presence, awareness, and articulation and each individual and to encounter ourselves inside a discipline. We play and experiment with song and movement, song and association, song and action in a way that is new and evolving. The working group currently meets on Thursday nights from 6-9pm. Members contribute $80/month to sustain the project. There is a minimum three-month commitment to join. For more information, please contact me: ben@urbanresearchtheater.com ------------------------------------------------------ 4) COLLABORATION WITH STONE SOUP _stone_ by Edward Bond featuring Seiko Carter, Caroline Reck, Ben Trawick-Smith and Chris Wild _the maguffin_ by Adam Hunault and Stone Soup featuring Lauren Birriel, David Bryant, DR Hanson, Jacques Laurent, Marsha Martinez, Rachel Rhodes and Maria Schirmer Production Team Director - Nadine Friedman Producer - Leigh Goldenberg Stage Manager - Nat Cauldwell Set Designer - Czerton Lim Lighting Designer - Sean Linehan Costume Designer - Jessica Lustig Puppet Designer - Maria Schirmer Song and Movement Director for Stone - Ben Spatz April 5-28, 2007 Actors Theatre Workshop, 145 W. 28th Street, NYC (save the date) ------------------------------------------------------ PROSE ------------------------------------------------------ 5) SYNONYMS FOR ACTION My Thursday night "class" (which was never really a class) transformed into what it should be, which is a "working group," and I had to come up with a name for what we are developing. "We are working on a _______." Words from the theater industry, such as PERFORMANCE or PIECE or SHOW, seem to imply that a theatrical production is the only defining goal of the work. On the other hand, PRACTICE implies that performing for an audience is irrelevant, while RITUAL is too laden with religious and other baggage. Words derived from the later stages of Grotowski, such as ACTION or OPUS or RENDERING, feel presumptuous. Neither do I want the specific exotic reference that comes with a word like OPUS or KATA. PERFORMANCE STRUCTURE is correct, but too dry. Likewise PROCEDURE and SEQUENCE. OPUS translates as WORK, but I already fight not to overuse that word. KATA translates as FORM or PATTERN, but those terms overemphasize the static aspect of what is actually developing organically. COMPOSITION, on the other hand, seems to emphasize the cerebral act of composing and ignore more integrated paths to form. I like the humility of SKETCH or STUDY but do not want to cut off the possibility that it could become something more. CONCERT is too strongly linked to music. It can't be a METHOD until it's repeatable. It can't be a CONVENTION until it's established. And a GLOSS is more like a footnote than an essay. I like indefinite gerunds, but it sounds bad to say we are making a DOING - and even worse to say we are making a MAKING. The heart of the structuring process is the songs. I considered SONG PIECE, SONG COMPOSITION, SONG STRUCTURE, and SONG STUDY. In the end I have settled on SONG CYCLE, an existing term that refers to a group of songs, usually with a common origin, that are sung in a particular order. This is an accurate description of what we are developing. Plus, the word has an archaic feel and is uncommon enough that its meaning can be expanded to include the physical and other work that goes along with the songs in this case. SONG CYCLE does not seem to over-emphasize the practice or the show, the composition or the discovery, the development or the result. It is musical, but in an unfamiliar way. So, we are working on the "first song cycle." ------------------------------------------------------ 6) "KATA VS. SPARRING" 'The debate of "kata vs. sparring" is not a new one and is unlikely to be resolved soon. Nevertheless, the two methods may not be as far from each other as they may seem. Advanced students in traditional arts may diverge from the form and introduce variation, while a modern martial artist might train a combination of punches in a kata-like fashion. It is also important to bear in mind that in most arts, kata is just one aspect of the style's overall training regimen.' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kata This paragraph is relevant to any consideration of the intersection between the performing and the martial arts. In the theater I am familiar with it is common to use improvisation as preparation for structured work; much less so to use precise performative structures as preparation for improvisation. Katas as a genre also seem to bridge the gap between simple "training" structures and complex "performative" structures. There is a world of different between the simple karate katas that I learned as a "white belt" student and the long-form of tai chi practiced by a master. But they are both forms which can be witnessed but which are not done only for the sake of witnesses. Contemporary actors often train in various techniques only to find that there is no way to "use" them onstage except as a kind of quotation. Simple katas lead to more complex ones and to more flexible improvisation. But the issue of "quotation" never goes away: It merely changes from a personal matter to a question about the interaction of cultures that transcends the work of an individual. The martial arts are not really defined by the goal of winning fights any more than the performing arts are really defined by the goal of entertaining audiences. Nevertheless, these goals cannot be ignored. For me the apparent contradiction between these two very different "reasons for doing" is a kind of koan. What is the reason for doing that is neither practical nor aesthetic? What is the martial artist who does not fight, the actor who does not perform? What is it that such a person teaches? ------------------------------------------------------ 7) ALCHEMY AND THE LABORATORY 'While searching for gold the alchemist was looking for his spiritual essence. This is why Jung interpreted the opus magnum as an individuation process and saw the finding of the elixir vitae as reaching the Self. But this transformation did not proceed according to a natural rhythm. In alchemy, transmutatio, the transformation of matter and the transformation of an adept, were triggered off artificially in the laboratory. Hence the laboratory was needed and alchemy deserved the title of an art, of artistry, and craftsmanship. Jung distinguished between natural individuation, which happens voluntarily in the course of man's life, who in his second half turns as though it is natural to his inner life, and an individuation triggered artificially, for instance by means of initiatory techniques of mysteries and alchemy. Gurdjieff also spoke about the two ways of reaching the essence: about the way of a 'citizen,' who goes through the vicissitudes of life in his conscience, and about the way of a 'sly man,' who by all accessible means - by initiation, or by theft - accelerates his transformation. This in fact is an art - an alchemical ars magna, a great art - and a laboratory is needed for this. [...] 'This research was not of a scientific nature, but rather resembled an alchemical art. In alchemists' practice, the laboratory, the place for experiments, was at the same time an oratory, a space for prayer. In the picture by Hans Vredemann de Vries, published as a print in Heinrich Conrad Khunrath's Amphiteatrum sapientiae aeternae, we can see an alchemist's room divided symmetrically into two parts: a chapel and a workspace, where these two operations - prayer and work - are carried out in parallel, both equally necessary for the completion of an opus.' - Leszek Kolankiewicz, "Grotowski and Flaszen: Why a Theatre Laboratory?" The question is: Do you accept the world? Of course it is not a yes or no question. Those who claim to accept the world always enter into it according to their own agenda. And hermeticism, in the opposite direction, is equally incomplete. Those who reject the world are still in it. So a better question would be: How and on what terms do you accept the world? This is what can be meant by an artistic laboratory: A place in which that can be created which is somehow in opposition to the rest of the world. This 'something' may be a vaccine, a vacuum, a weapon, a battery, an information container - any kind of contrary essence, which necessarily exerts a force on the world through a kind of tension (biological, pressured, violent, energetic, entropic). An artistic laboratory is alchemical in this way: It aims to create a kind of 'substance' which differs in an essential way from what is outside. In Grotowski's terms, the "island of freedom." ------------------------------------------------------ As always, feedback and comments are welcome. Ben Spatz ben@urbanresearchtheater.com New York City