L’Atelier 210 Bruxelles 13-18 aprile 2010
Contact: L’Atelier 210
Workshop with The Living Theatre:
Ameliorative Theater/Green Theater
(a preparation to assist in the spectacle Green Terror)
Directed by Gary Brackett, with the artists of The Living Theatre/New York and Living Theatre Europa
Ameliorative theater: to do something useful. Judith Malina
This workshop is a Master class in Living Theatre technique with the goal of applying the experimental methods of the company in the creation of a new work, Green Terror. Workshop participants will work on the same themes presented in this new work by Living Theatre director Gary Brackett and will assist in the realization of the environment and actions of the show.
Action undoes the lie that spectators are dead by proving them active. The spectator becomes the performer, the theatre becomes life, the emergency is the truth. Julian Beck
The workshop
The work proposed is to be developed by utilizing the material, scenes, forms and expressive language that constitutes the alphabet of the Living Theatre. These techniques introduced are those developed from the company's sixty year history of activity: non-fictional acting, collective creation, rituals, expressionism of Artaud, biomechanics, Yoga and meditation, political theater of Piscator and Brecht, full-body acting, etc. Together with these techniques there will be introduced scene work from historic plays from the Living Theatre repertory including Mysteries and Smaller Pieces, Antigone, Paradise Now, Six Public Acts, The Money Tower, The Legacy of Cain, Not In My Name. Discussions and scene work from more recent Living productions and their relevant research will also be presented as well as the more recent research and experimentation of Gary Brackett and Living Theatre Europa.
Moving from an analysis of the political, social, poetical and artistic needs of the of The Living and of society in general there will be actualized a discussion of themes that the workshop group and artist(s) of The Living feel are important, consequently to be confronted and developed during the workshop. Through utilizing the techniques of research of The Living, this phase of the workshop promotes the possibility of respecting and responding to the individual and group needs through the process of collective creation. The workshop will experiment with new rituals that validate our daily life experiences and its ever changing needs and the new social, political and artistic conflicts present in the contemporary world.
Alongside this work there is to be an historical study to achieve a more profound understanding of the historical phenomenon that the work of The Living represents. Films, videos, exhibits and readings constitute the elements of this phase of the workshop
Suggested readings of some inspirational texts for Green Terror
The Life of the Theatre, Julian Beck
Collective Works of Rudolf Stein
TAZ, Hakim Bey
The Coming Insurrection, The Invisible Committee
The Theatre and Its Double, Antonin Artaud
Collective Works of Paul Virilio
Quando sentiamo, sentiremo l'emergenza: quando sentiamo l'emergenza, agiremo: quando agiamo, cambieremo il mondo.
Un teatro di azione.
La mia vocazione è il teatro, la mia vita è nel mondo, dunque un teatro di azione mondiale. L'arte non è una professione, ma un cammino verso la verità sia per il creatore che per lo spettatore. Ajit Mooker jee, Tantra Art.
Non puoi continuare a produrre separazioni. Quel sistema è finito. La peste della separazione. Non puoi parlare di cambiamento e restare immutato. Dunque ciò che mostri sulla scena devi viverlo. Altrimenti è completamente privo di valore. La peste della menzogna. Arte come anti-menzogna.
Green Terror
Where will we go when the water runs out?
Every narrative begins with a question. In "Green Terror" The Living will confront not only the present and ever worsening ecological disaster whereby the earth itself and all that lives upon it are at risk, but we will approach also the failure of rationalism (science) to confront the most basic dilemmas of existence and purpose here: our desperation for fulfillment and our inability and the thus ensuing apathy and complacency to understand the world we live in.
Mending the gap between human nature and human mind. Stein
If our ancients had an actual and active communion with a living and ever present sense of Earth (Gaia), and we propose that they did, at what point in human history did we loose this capacity? How has human society and its systems taken us further from Nature and ever closer to destruction? If humanity can rediscover its lost connectedness to Earth and Cosmos and to each other, to our own bodies and processes, will catastrophe be avoided? Is technology the problem or the solution?
Will the Earth strike back (Green Terror)?
Will ecological activists and artists (Green Terrorists) rally to incite direct poetic acts of green terrorism against the whores of science and their pimps (capital)?
Through the use of a new magic and new mysteries we can and must realize a new paradigm of life. We want to feel ourselves, and thus the Earth, as divine and not merely instruments and material for the seemingly inexorable march of industry (slavery). Our hearts of darkness will wake to the possibilities of new communities- not in a mere conception of future revolution, but here and now we will begin to create them.
Through the use of new participatory rituals, through story-telling and myth exploration, through actual and theatrical Magic and Alchemy "Green Terror" proposes real discoveries by its participants within the theater event and then moving into the world (the street) with new actions that will bridge the distinctions between art and civil responsibility.
The theatre of change. Of emergency. Of feeling.