and explored the ways in which this is and isn't like an actor's stepping into a role or mask.This time we started with our customary stretch and went right into a walking exercise where, as we walked around, C asked each of us to walk like a warrior - then an innocent - then a lover - then a prophet - then a magician - then a prostitute - then a magician. We were to notice how our bodies shifted, posture, center of weight, etc., and then to find a single gesture which concretized the archetype and repeat it... then "shake it off, next archetype." Working with these archetypes (which aren't exactly the same as Eliade's but close enough for our purposes) is the centerpiece of a school of actor training associated with Michael Chekhov (above), nephew, incidentally, of the famous playwright.
Then we moved right into an improv: six groups of students were fiven a few minutes to work out a 2-minute performance - in silence - "evoking a sacred space." They did wonderfully, and the quality of the silence was so great that it felt like stillness. We had a long discussion after the performances which brought out very interesting things students had noticed in the skits of others, had planned in their own groups... and in some cases the skit had gone in a different direction than planned (neither uncommon in improv nor undesired). For one group whose members came to the center one by one and did some movements of worship; later ones were supposed - this was their idea - to watch the others as if they weren't sure of themselves, but then develop their own movements. In the event, however, the seven students' movements converged! Other students remarked on how attentive the members of the groups had been to each other's bodies, in each group - one of the gifts of silence.
Another remarked that all the cynicism which had been on display in our first improvs (which I've already described for you) seemed to have disappeared.Then it was my time to give a little lecture, interestingly different when you're sitting on the floor surrounded by a scraggly half-circle of students. I was just planning to do some quick review of Eliade (left) and flesh out his ideas about the centrality to religion of ritual and myth (which, I said, is something quite different from mere community-building and story-telling), and how they address - as mere explanations never could - the precariousness of human life, our powerlessness to control our destinies. These rituals and myths name truths about the human condition which modern secular discourse - but also modern "domesticated" religion - hardly have words for. But I became quite passionate as I made this argument, and ended (as planned, but with more feeling) with a brief account of how I came to religious studies, and to theater: religious studies helps me understand the ways in which human communities face the most terrifying and sad parts of their existence, even while making it possible the more dearly to cherish the love, the beauty, the fellowship which also happen. And theater, I find, I suspect, does some of these same things - every performance of a play consecrates a space and creates a world, new but old and in its way real in all the ways we wish our whole lives were real... Bla bla bla,
I had fun, and I think I was getting through to people.Finally C provided some background on Wole Soyinka (right), the Nigerian playwright whose masterpiece Death and the King's Horseman is our next text, and I showed a 2-minutes clip (thank you, Youtube) of Soyinka reading a poem (at an international poetry festival in Medellin!) and three short clips of Egungun dancing, which features prominently in the play.
Not bad for a single class: some famous actor training, effective improvs, rich discussion, impassioned lecture, video clips, the international community of artists... and it all fit together beautifully!
