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Urban Research Theater Newsletter - January, 2008
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
1) Another City: Heart of Winter - Final Call!
NOTES FROM THE STUDIO
5) Ben: Selected Fragments
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1) ANOTHER CITY: HEART OF WINTER - FINAL CALL!
This is the last call for participants in Another City: Heart of Winter.
Please note that the session has been shortened to just two days. The new schedule is Saturday-Sunday, January 5-6, and the new participation fee is just $150. There are still a few spots open, and we would love to see you there!
Imagine: Two sweet, rich, wintery days of traditional and improvised singing and movement exploration - two days of diving into your body/animal - two days spent in a city hidden inside the one you think you know...
Urban Research Theater
- ANOTHER CITY -
Four big days of work and wonder
group singing - theater craft -
January 5-6, 2008
Participation Fee: $150
This January, when the days are short and cold and the year is new, we will kindle our internal fires through spontaneous vibratory singing, urban pilgrimage, and joyfully physical performance explorations. We will spend part of each day in the beautiful North Woods of Central Park, and then move into a white-box theater studio for rest of the morning and afternoon.
"Another City: Heart of Winter" 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.
To register, email:
For details and to read comments from previous participants, please visit:
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2) TWO YEARS AND A WELCOME
Happy New Year!!
This newsletter is now two years old. In January 2006, I began working five days a week with a small group of people. We would work for about three hours each day, during which I provided almost no structure and very little practical leadership. I needed them to be there in order to do my work, but I was not ready at that time to help them discover their own.
In the past, I believed that I would need a group or ensemble in order to do my work. Thanks to the commitment, wisdom, and generosity of my working partner Michele Farbman, it has now become clear that this work can also be accomplished in the context of a partnership. In fact, there are many possibilities immediately available to a two-person team that I suspect would take several years to arrive within a larger group, if they arrived at all.
I would like to take this opportunity to officially welcome Michele Farbman as a core member of Urban Research Theater, soon to be an amazing performer and teacher of our work. Her progression along the ladder of technique during the past six months has been astonishing for me to watch. I look forward to introducing her to each of you in person as soon as possible.
Our partnership has already deepened and begun to transform what we do in the studio. In 2008 we hope to make these transformations visible to a modest number of people through workshops, showings, practitioner exchanges, and urban expeditions. The website is currently being redesigned, and will reflect these initiatives when it is launched at the end of the month.
- Ben
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3) A SET OF PHOTOGRAPHS
It is relatively rare to find a good set of photographs depicting the kind of song, movement, and action-based performance that Urban Research Theater takes as its primary working model. Even more rare is when these photographs capture something about the essence of what is being done.
For this reason, we would like to forward your attention to a set of images from a performance group called the Centro Indipendente Ricerca Teatrale, located in Milan, Italy.
http://fotoalbum.teacirt.it/
The page loads slowly, but the images are worth it.
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4) THANK YOU DOUBLE EDGE
We would like to offer our sincerest gratitude to Matthew Glassman and the Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, Massachusetts. By allowing us to use one of their beautiful spaces for three full days last week, they gave us the opportunity to take our work to the next level.
http://doubleedgetheatre.org/
Double Edge is an important example for us and one of the only U.S. branches of a theater family that stretches from Staniewski Gardzienice in Poland to the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Italy to the Milon Mela group in India. This is the family of which Urban Research Theater would humbly like to consider itself a part.
The success of Double Edge in creating a space for their work in the United States is unique and nothing short of inspiring. We hope to collaborate with them again in the near future.
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5) BEN: SELECTED FRAGMENTS
...
"Specific" and "vague" do not apply to the world, they apply to language. Performance is real - truthful - or it is not. Truthful action cannot be described as "vague". It is always specific, in the way that an object is always specific.
Language is the possibility of lying. Because you make a sign for something, you can then substitute the sign for the signified. "Body language," if it is a system of signs, can lie. This is why we do not say that we want to "describe" our inner experiences with our bodies. What we want to do is embody or *live* our inner stories truthfully, in the presence of others - and that means, of course, with and through our bodies.
This kind of movement - what Grotowski called "action" - is not a language because it cannot lie. It is simply a question of the level of embodiment of a genuine impulse. "Physicality," yes, but not "physical theater".
...
My performance structure is still vague now, just beginning to take shape... It could be interesting to watch for the melodies and effort, but not to see a person actually DO it. And even though I got "into" it, there were only two moments of real specificity. What has to happen in order for me to really DO what I have sketched out?
Like what we did in the loft last summer - and like so much of what is done on stage - it remains a kind of composition. Pointing to the real thing, referring to it, but not actually going there.
...
Almost every day I ask myself if there is anything I could do that would more directly and more radically put me on the side of justice and humanity. Having a good heart is not enough. For one person to make a difference in the big world, they have to acquire some kind of social power, whether through radical resistance like Gandhi or though elected office like Vaclav Havel.
I feel that what I am doing now is part of a preparation for some kind of power. If I live long enough, I will eventually touch upon the explicitly political. But if I try to do that too early - it's just impossible. I cannot give up what I find in the studio. I cannot compromise.
I no longer think that my work has to be unknown or secret in order for it to be genuine. Power does not by itself compromise the work. The work is only compromised when the desire for power leads to corruption. It is a long and slow process to develop forms of power that suit and do not corrupt the work. But everything will come together, if and when it can.
...
The "following" (as in follow-the-leader) is not really following. That is just its most basic mode, its minimum. What it is really about is keeping the line of extroverted attention without tensing up. Staying relaxed without becoming introverted. In a simple, technical sense, this *is* vulnerability. This is the radiant body.
...
Today in the singing, Michele put on a red dress and it changed everything. The atmosphere of the work was changed and I recognized it concretely as something shared by Grotowski's work in Objective Drama and Art as Vehicle. Something having to do with the 19th century, with evening dress and a kind of formal elegance.
We stopped and talked, and then tried again with her in the plain, loose black pants she uses for physical work. Much better. Something strong, still, but without that particular atmosphere, which we did not choose and which for me was unwelcome.
We were surprised at what a concrete and pervasive change was caused by the element of dress.
...
With "ki ki wo" I found a certain organicity in the song just now. To make sure that each note resonates at the appropriate place, up and down the scale of my body. I then tried to take part of this into the scene, where it seemed to give a kind of life - an organicity - even though the acting score still has many gaps.
Now I think that I had previously misunderstood. It's not that you use the singing to help act out the scene. It's that you use the acting score as a channel for the organicity of the song.
...
Maybe it's not fair to say that most singers are "masked," as opposed to a few who are "really" showing themselves. Maybe it could be articulated better as an issue of topping and bottoming, or "parenting" and "childing." Almost all singers - almost all performers of any kind - use their moments of performance to gain power. It seems as if they want to "top" the audience. There is a little bit of pride, vanity, defensiveness, that I see even in some "great" performers, and it turns me off right away. But there are a few performers, or a few moments, in which that defensiveness is not there. Where the act of performance is used as an opportunity for a kind of submission. Then there can also be immense relaxation and passivity within the rigor of the technical form.
The idea that that is why one would want to perform. It is easy to say - "don't show off" - but in practice it takes a very long time. Why? Because as the form is mastered, at every step of the way, a little bit of tension appears. A little bit of pride, of resistance, and it has to be released. Every step of the way...
...
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6) MICHELE: THE NOODLE MINIMUM
Christmas in Lenox was truly a pilgrimage into three days of deeper work. In one special moment, the physical work became an energetic panthers' play, with two practitioners waking and waking each other into new physical responses. The joy was demanding and continued giving and I became newly alert to the possibility of relaxing into the rigorous demands of the work. I wanted the opposite of the athletic body poised to conquer: that one unit of muscle. I wanted the light, dancing, tai chi body--the flicker of subtle responses across the space. I wanted us to jump, dip and wiggle like noodles.
We had spoken about minimums a few weeks earlier. Ben proposed the "Jogging Minimum" as one technical task. It worked like this: When preparing for our physical work, for a period of time we would, at the very least, jog through the space. Of course we could do more, but nothing less. What I experienced was a spectrum from "Can I keep up the jog through this dry spell where I'm physically unavailable?" to a state which I privately called the "joy run," during which I spontaneously leaped, jumped, dove and planed forward, searching for new ways to express flying.
So, what about the "Noodle Minimum"? What could a long stretch of wiggly relaxation mobilize in us? Which parts of us awoke and gathered to keep us upright as we tipped, swayed, spilled around, almost falling and sometimes actually falling, our necks and spines saying, "You handle it. We're going soft for awhile." A silly joy took over. A Dionysian relaxation. The same as with the joy run. Noodling as a way to access a new level of energy by collapsing around the space rather than mobilizing for conquer!
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As always, comments and feedback are welcome.
Ben Spatz & Michele Farbman
ben@urbanresearchtheater.com
CONTENTS
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2) Two Years and a Welcome
3) A Set of Photographs
4) Thank You Double Edge
6) Michele: The Noodle Minimum
ANNOUNCEMENTS
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presents
- HEART OF WINTER -
in the beating heart of winter.
personal discovery - urban pilgrimage
New York City
Limited to 8 people.
ben@urbanresearchtheater.com
www.UrbanResearchTheater.com
NOTES FROM THE STUDIO
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Urban Research Theater
New York City
michele@urbanresearchtheater.com