Selection of Writings - Books

See also: Scripts • Adaptations • Essays • Papers • Other

Directing Poiesis. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1993. • Contents • Preface • Origins • Poiesis & etc. • Epilogue EPILOGUE OR THE EVER SHIFTING FUTURE OF DIRECTING

What is the future of directing? To be a prophet and predict the future of such an ephemeral and controversial art as directing is difficult for anyone. After Brook's experience, the question of the future of directing only breeds more questions: after Brook, what, where? The serious director in today's theatre is searching for a new vision, for an idea of a theatre that will correspond to the complexity and turbulence of the world in which we all live at the end of this millennium. What he or she will discover one cannot know. Observing these dynamic processes in the contemporary theatre, one can say that the fruits for the new theatre can be discovered in the primal theatrical forms examined and discussed at the beginning of this study. In fact, it seems that the theatrical pendulum is swinging away today from the extreme point of separation and fragmentation, back to the point of renewed unification in theatre. In that process of renewed unification and transition, theatre directors in recent years usually have gone back to the roots of the theatre in a search for a new idea and vision of theatre. Paradoxically, this search represents both the artist's fragmented existence and the need to unite and harmonize his or her self in a homogeneous whole. It also represents his or her need to incorporate all the creative elements in the theatre within one person, the director/creator, and to express himself or herself as a total human being in an authentic artistic form. This form now appears in a specific form of solo performance, a form which has come to be known as the Theatre of One or Autoperformance. With this unique form, the contemporary theatre actually moves full circle, and in a transformed genre returns to the point where it once began as an art form: it returns to the form of a shamanistic event. Thus, the Theatre of One or Autoperformance can also be called a Neo-Shamanistic Theatre. I believe that this form can lead to one possible new vision of theatre, and to one possible new mode of directing. The Theatre of One is a form which already exists in some relevant appearances today, and it emphasizes the renewed unification of many creative elements in a single artist in the theatre. As Michael Kirby declares, “Autoperformance can be seen as one of the dominant theatrical tendencies of our time.” This form of Neo-Shamanistic Theatre appears both as a unique form of Autoperformance and as a personal behavior. In both cases, Neo-Shamanistic Theatre belongs to “lonely riders,” neo-shamans, culture- bringers, or as Ronald L.Grimes calls them, para-shamans. In the work of Fred Curchack, Spalding Gray, Richard Schechner, Meredith Monk, Andre Gregory or Winston Tong one can see remarkable achievements and the best examples of this kind of theatre. Autoperformance as a theatre form and neo-shamanistic practice is a mixture and fusion of many theatrical and non-theatrical elements. It is absolutely individualistic theatre, created as a whole by only one person. That one person, the autoperformer, is the sole creator of the theatrical event. The autoperformer is the author of the narrative structure for his or her performances; he or she is the director of that performance, and finally he or she is the performer of that creative act. But the autoperfomer or neo-shaman is also very often a spectator in his or her own performances. He or she shifts his or her position from one side of the performing field to the other and shares with the audience its perception and point of view. In this sense, to rephrase Grimes, neo-shamans may be directors, performers, and spectators who even when participating or performing are meta-spectators. In order to create his or her autoperformance the neo-shaman uses freely developed fragments and open structures. Through these structures the neo-shaman brings together a mixture of diverse devices and confronted quotations from various sources: visual, acoustic, dynamic, metaphysical. But, above all, the neo-shaman brings to and explores in his or her autoperformances personal myths, private truths, and autobiographical images. That is, autoperformance is a self-centered form; it is a symbolic self-interpretation of one's way of being in the world. It is also an elitist, hermetic, eclectic and barely communicative narcissistic form which communicates only with and within very small and closed circles, and has meaning only for those who are part of that "holy" theatrical order. In so doing, it tends to communicate almost on the margins of the culture and society. The artist in the neo-shamanistic theatre tries not only to explore and reevaluate in his or her auto-performances those vibrant personal experiences as themes, but to recycle them also as a segmented structure for the performance. In Rumstick Road, for example, Spalding Gray recycles his family. “The piece is not only a document of family history, but it is also about the process of documenting family history.” The neo-shamanistic's works also are very often short works-in-progress in which the devices of communication are associative, subliminal, or even absent. That is, they do not exist at all. In order to emphasize his or her individual and private importance as well as his or her “sacred” mission, the neo-shaman explores in his or her performances many personal properties which eventually may become theatrically important subjects or even “sacred” objects. These objects frequently are employed and played with in the performances. “They are junk before they become treasure.” James Blerman writes about it in this way: Objects play an important role in Three Places in Rhode Island. In all three of the works (particularly the first and the last), there is a virtual proliferation of things that have a vital function. Often these things have the same junky quality as the transitional music blended into the soundtrack. They include plastic bottles, toys, records, masks, wigs, and bits of costuming that were collected from previous pieces and then selected for use in the plays. Neo-shamanism as it appears today cannot exist as an entirely independent art form, for the neo-shaman, in constructing his or her universe, assumes that the audience shares his or her intellectual and cultural background. Working outside of a living theatrical tradition, he creates a theatrical form which is mediated through literature and knowledge, and in most cases is a living theatrical and anthropological case study. In that way, to paraphrase Grimes, the neo-shamanism's irony is that its practitioners more often teach, create, or perform, in order to gain knowledge, instead to display knowledge. Exploring his or her personal field of experience in the autoperformance the neo-shaman is also his or her own director. As Winston Tong says: "The only director I have is me occasionally viewing thing on video-tape, which is a mercilessly functional way to look at things. The neo-shaman as a director also tries to bring about a specific world, familiar above all to him or her as a creator, and out of it to create a new culture. In so doing, the neo-shaman acts usually as a culture-bringer: as a person who is on a permanent quest for knowledge and meanings. The neo-shaman brings his or her experience and shares his or her knowledge with the others. In his or her performances he or she actually attempts to bring, create, and share his or her vision of culture by creating rituals, symbolic charts, and even by inventing new myths. Simultaneously, in order to create his or her own personal culture the neo-shaman borrows many forms from various sources. As Grimes declares, “Their para-culture which is singular in its vision of the world, depends on cultures always plural in activity.” Autoperformance as a theatrical form brings together and unites in the personality of the autoperformer all the artists of the theatre, reunites all the modes of directing in one person, and renews the theatre in its primordial form - shamanistic theatre. In this way, the director and his or her art paradoxically swing a full circle to the point where theatre once began. As a result of this ambivalent process the director completely disappears and in his absence the future of the theatre may be found. As for now, there are no relevant answers. It seems that the theatre of today is at the threshold of many possibilities. But what stages shall it take? As we can all see around us, at the end of this turbulent millennium, the director needs to move from the desperate past to a hopeful future because the world needs a new harmony. So too does the theatre. But how? What to do? Like Gogo and Didi in Beckett's Waiting for Godot we would like to go on, we would like to know what is ahead of us, but we cannot move. We are just waiting!