So things have been interesting working with the CSA students.
We all clicked immediately, I think, when we met, and there's been no shady politics, which is refreshing. Everyone I've met at this college, from the moment that Swati and Vendana picked me up from the airport, has been so incredibly friendly and so wholeheartedly welcoming, that I have a strange desire to wear salwar khameez's more often and sneak into their Dexter's science labs, and take 3 majors and commit my life to idlies and honda scooters.
Aside from experiencing theatre and human rights under a whole new tubelight, I've also been learning to play the desk, how to remark at large livestock in local Kannada dialect, and memorized the seven sacred rivers of India. Pretty groovy. The Canadians, in turn, have shared a folksong about Nova Scotia and I, at least, have sufficiently bitched about Montreal winters. So there's some great weaving going on (but not in the dirty way).
Thankfully, all is not Brady Bunch; I sense a ripple (that, by the way, is one of the only times I have confidently used a semi-colon), without which I might have just chucked up from all the saccharinne and gone back home. Turns out that the CSA gangsters have previously experienced a non-TJ approach to theatre (yeah, I know, they try to write a play without touching each other and pretending they are drawing an invisible drawing on the ceiling with a very long paintbrush attached to their head- What's Up with THAT?) So Mr. Ashok, our first guru, requested us to explore emotions and scenarios using our entire bodies, without emphasising facial expression or words. I'm thinking dance, Noh theatre, human puppetry- stuff that gets me pretty juicy, basically. But for sure, the organic process is a weird one and I completely understand their reservations (also we all get kinda stinky running around so maybe that's why they are uncomfortable touching us).
Anyway, a long story long, there are moments that I find myself jumping up, and defending this process and the product it manifests: theatre that uses the whole body, theatre that works with movement and gestures and sort of artsy-fartsy tableaux. Theatre that, I believe, can communicate beyond language (mainly because it doesn't use words). Theatre that challenges the notion that gestures are culture specific. Theatre that, I believe, taps into a collectively human unconscious to reveal innate expressions.
I think my older reservations with the abstract was always that: you can look at an abstract form and see so much. You can interpret it anyway you want. So then what defines what is art, I thought, if you could literally see meaning in a toilet seat? What creates response is sometimes lack of response ie, if we were moved and touched by everything and anything around us, then really, we would never be touched at all. If something communicates everything, then really it communicates nothing.
It took me a long time to appreciate that a successful abstract expression does not express infinitely. As a receiver in the process of any communication, you are free to interpret the given message in any way you choose. However, there are existing limits within the content of the message, and if you are an open receiver, you will clue into these limits and thus be guided to the intended meaning. People often look at an abstract form and become intimidated by its apparent lack of guidance. Its scary to rely on your own senses- what if you don't 'get' it? This fear is what impedes the communication, I think, for it blinds us. In searching for the "correct answer", we miss the point. The point is that the exchange between the object and viewer is indeed individual. You get exactly what you take when you surrender your senses. But the successful expression will not give anything and everything, unless as a viewer you impose that.
So going back to this endless debate between theatre that focuses on the spoken word, on facial expression and naturalistic movement and theatre that uses voice and words in their sonic form, and the body as a moving sculpture. Truly, neither wins. Ideally, they co-exist in the actor. But personally, I am in love with the latter. I am intellectually stimulated by the former and viscerally by the latter. It fascinates me how movement-based or sensory theatre as I am now going to call it, really crosses cultural boundaries. I am moved by BharthaNatyam as I am by some weird freakshow hippie thing going on in some hole-in-wall black box in the plateau. To look at an object, any physical thing, and notice for the first time its silhouette and the way its inherent space interacts with its surrounding space, to notice the light on it instead of its colour, to appreciate the 4-dimensionality of it- to experience words as sounds and feel sounds as rhythm- I suddenly take nothing for granted and am freakin' astounded by the material world and feel sudden transcendance. Whoa, Man. Seriously, something in my gut somersaults and sends a rush of happy juice to my silenced brain and then my eyes leak. Now, that's engaging.
I was talking to (and probably by some point, talking at) Carolyn the other night till way too late, and props to her for staying awake, about my whole cosmic belief system. This summer I spent way too much geek-time studying String theory and Jung's ideas about Synchronicity... and I'm all about the idea that there exists a pattern in the cosmos. *Nerd voice* Jusht shthinking aboutsh fractals makesh me quiver witsh glee. I swear this is connected to what I've been bumbling about. See, I think that an idea that works with what we immediately intellectually understand and can logically analyse communicates. But our consciousness is a fairly restricted playing field. We work with what we know and we know what are working with. At some point, however, we start to repeat ourselves. Ideas that remain in the consciousness get stale. And art that stays in the consious realm, from a creative standpoint, follows this same bleakness. As humans, I believe that we are unconsciously active constantly- and indeed the consciousness is affected beyond our control. But its still like trying to get a high off coca-cola when you are sitting in a Columbian drug lord's basement. You're already down there, so you might as well tap into the good stuff.
This is a lot of what Concordia has taught me. If anything, its taught me the virtue of trusting your instinct, to trust the intuitive impulse. I believe that much of the touchy-feely- pretending-to-pick-cotton-candy-and-it-eat-it-off-your-body technique thats practised, works to release and open the body and mind- to prepare the body and mind for the intuitive impulse. This intuition, fueled by what we cannot immediately intellectualize, has the potential to create forms and make connections that lie beyond the boundaries of the consciousness. And as humans, I believe we are all equipped with the same ocean of possibility in our selves. Thus, (the 'thus' that's gone around the mulberry bush a few times) by working with this bizarre-seeming technique that we are practising with Ashok, I believe we are tapping into a source that can communicate to others by bypassing the head and heading straight for the gut, the solar plexus, and the place of the body that physically, scientifically, spiritually and mythically is the center of our being.
So I wish I could articulate this on the spot when indulging in a hearty debate with one of the CSA street theatre students (the CSASTS cats I guess) but I'm usually too doped up by all the sugar from the copious coffees we're fed, so instead my voice goes shrill and I say something like "mneh mneh mneh mneh." Instead, I lay awake at night thinking, "damn, why didn't I say thattheunconsciousnesscontainsabsoluteknowledgeandbyactinglikemonkeyswegetclosertogodand
jungsaidsomethingaboutagroupbeingdefinedastheexcitedpointsinafieldandwecouldtapintotheideas
thatarethoseveryexcitedpoints,archetypes,archetypes... and I realise it's better that I'm not so quick-witted: I'd certainly have no friends if they realised what a huge geek I am.
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