Karl Burke ©
RESEARCH ARCHIVE
Myth and the Flesh by Marián Araújo, January 2007
With this project I intend to challenge the role and autonomy of the actor, combining the freedom and instinctive creativity found in other art forms (such as visual performance art) with the possibilities of the pure language of theatre (body, voice and imagination). I have always been interested in our perceptions and understanding of the meanings contained within our own realities and the nature of identity; including culture, religion and sexuality. In order to explore all of these elements I will focus on the figure of Mary Magdalene. I am very interested in the disparate art and literature inspired by her. From the traditional associations such as: the woman; the sinner; the dryer of tears — to the poetry of Rilke, John Donne, and Kahil Gibran. I will take as an impulse for my action score, selections from some of these texts, as well as my response to some of the paintings inspired by this myth, such as works by Georges De La Tour and Caravaggio. Another important source I will explore is The Apocrypha texts: The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene; a collection of secret sayings with many hidden meanings not intended to be interpreted literally.
Composing the seed of a performance: Solo work
With all this material I will commence a three-month process of piecing together a performance montage. I will work building a collage, adding and removing different elements to finally create a piece that will stand on its on. I will also integrate traditional songs from the European cradle and a line of actions inspired by memories and dreams lying deep inside the body. This meticulous process is long, for it needs to penetrate fully into the actor’s body and imagination. The text at this first stage would be used as another element to construct the action, never to be illustrated but more as a stimulus to open up the expression of the actor through texture, repetition, tempo/rhythm and impulse.
As part of my research on traditional songs I will invite different Irish and international musicians resident in Ireland to teach me traditional songs from their respective countries, so that I can wave them later into my work. I believe that there are certain types of songs with a very special vibratory quality that can act as a catalyst to free dormant impulses, expanding the expression of an artist. I have been exploring them for over a year, starting in November 2005 when I worked in Moscow with The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards.
________________
PARK ACTION by Aiden Condron, August 2006
Working within nervousystem’s research domain: Actor as Writer as part of the second phase of Theatre Haiku, actors and nervousystem founder members Marián Araújo and Regan O’ Brien along with a new actor Helen Delaney (selected from a recent open Worksession conducted by the company) commenced work on a new performance structure which was later given the working title ‘Park Action’. Working individually at first, these actors elaborated their own entirely original individual action ‘scores’. These scores were composed via the montage of their personal repertoire of ‘Physical Actions’ and ‘Vocal Actions’. These they integrated with several carefully selected traditional European folk songs along with fragments of text, both established and original, from a variety of sources including T.S. Eliot’s The Game of Chess, and some work written by writer Jeffery Gormly as a response to the actors’ research work.. Many of their actions were born out of their previous ongoing research work, while others were discovered within this focused time period. Inspiration was found within their own autobiographical impulses and associations and also largely influenced by what was provoked in them by the elements within and ambience around the site-specific performance space chosen for this particular project.
As Artistic Director of nervousystem and director on this project I maintained a distance from the performers during this important preliminary stage of the work as it is essential to our evolving working practice that the actor be liberated from and independent of the constraints and biases often imposed by a directorial eye. It is also necessary that the actors take responsibility for developing their own individual dramaturgical craft. This autonomy of the performer and the ability to nurture an objective eye on her personal work is a crucial component in nervousystem’s work within Actor as Writer.
Only when the actors felt confident that their individual propositions were established and rooted did I intervene in the process. They presented their solo work to me and also highlighted some points where they felt the scores might be played in contact with each other. I began by working with them individually, refining details to re-enforce certain elements or eliminate parts of their scores that I felt were vague or superfluous, always encouraging them to move deeper toward total organic action. Through what I would describe as an intimate symbiotic exchange between their actions and my own personal associations a ‘line’ was revealed. At no point in this process were any actions added by me and it was imperative that the actor not deviate from their score although adaptations of actions to given stimuli was permitted and often encouraged. The score must be precise but flexible; a necessary paradox.
On this particular project I was determined to achieve a deeper level of contact and a more concrete montage. I began to ask difficult questions of the actors. Difficult only because, as is necessary in this work, I was asking them to make the unconsious consious. Who is this woman you’ve created or discovered? What’s really at stake here? Why are you taking this action in this moment? What do you want to achieve here? What are you doing to her now? What for? To what end? For whom or for what? I never wanted an answer but only to know that the actors were asking themselves these questions. If they were not then despite all their efforts we would create nothing but a sort of plasma built on generalities and mood that however well executed would lack definition and ultimately alienate the spectator.
The next stage was to carefully weave the scores together within the context of a dramaturgically viable mise en scene. This is an extremely challenging, delicate and painstaking process and an aspect of the work that the actors and I have struggled with in the past. This procedure is immensely challenging from a technical standpoint requiring detail, precision and steely concentration. Moreover it is here that all involved require the deepest sensitivity and openness to each other as the individual creative process, which is an act of the most profound personal solitude, must be exposed and placed in contact or conflict with another human being. This requires immense courage and humility. This is total selfless human contact where one is completely naked in the presence of another. Here there are no masks. This is the most difficult thing to achieve on stage as it is in life and it is only the fictive montage that makes it possible in the theatre. If, in this moment, all are working from the correct place, that is a place of integrity, then the individual can reach a state of grace where the doer transcends her individual self or personality and reveals a collective self, a humanity. What is born is greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps something eternal, sacred and pure will be evoked. This is the dance of illusion and actuality that is at the heart of my work in the theatre. It is at this stage of the work that my mettle as a director is always truly tested.
In previous projects with nervousystem I often stumbled at this stage of the process because the challenge seemed enormous and the terrain of the performative practice we were exploring was so new. The results were often abstract scenes where individual scores were played simultaneously or across each other, often to good effect but less than what I believed was possible. With Park Action I feel that many of these obstacles were overcome revealing a new confidence. This performance structure demonstrates the drawing together of many strands of practical research over several years, showing tangible continuity, consistency and progress.
I believe that Park Action represents a significant milestone in nervousystem’s journey as a performance ensemble. It has certainly transformed my work as a theatre practitioner and re-enforced my belief in our ever-evolving working practice. It should be noted that this work is the culmination of almost five years of extensive daily training and practical research by the company, without which it would be impossible to achieve this uniquely concentrated form of collaboration. It is a testament to the unfaltering commitment and diligence of these actors that such an endeavor has been sustained. The results of this effort were clearly evident in the quality, clarity and cohesiveness; and the aesthetic and contemporary relevance of the first performance at the Visitors Centre in Phoenix Park and in later performances presented at SUPA in Valetta, Malta recently. Park Action is yet another catalyst opening a clear path and artistic drive toward the future always deepening and developing nervousystem's creative exploration.
_____________
AVERSION and The I-Eye – Work in Progress. By Aiden Condron May 2005
On foot of the artistic and critical success of Fire Face - The Cuchullian Plays by W.B. Yeats in March 2004, nervousystem commenced preliminary plans for it’s next project, which was to become known as AVERSION. The results, of what we now consider to be the first phase of this ongoing project, were presented at the Dublin Fringe Festival in October 2004.
This new project was immensely experimental and ambitious in it’s ideology and design and after the comparatively traditional aesthetic of Fire Face represented for nervousystem a more forthright investigation into an alternative, impulse-based theatre language. AVERSION was largely influenced by the beginnings of a new phase of practical research being conducted by the ensemble in the area of Physical Actions which had been touched on during Fire Face rehearsals.
Because of the exploratory nature of this endeavor, a laboratory environment was created which comprised an eleven-week period of fulltime practical research/rehearsal. This time frame was very short for this kind of work (although long by normal standards in Ireland) but was all that was feasible within our budgetary constraints.
The primary source and focal point for this project was the antagonistic relationship between the characters of Phaedra and Onoene in Phaedra by Jean Racine. Additional dramaturgical sources included the paintings of Vincent Van Gough, David Lynch’s Mullholland Drive and Angela Carter’s Flesh and the Mirror. AVERSION comprised a cyclical and overlapping physical and vocal language rather than a liniar narrative structure. As a response to this source material nervousystem endeavored to create a montage/mise en scene in which the drama would emerge out of the interplay of three precisely structured original independent ‘scores’ performed in real time.
1) PHYSICAL SCORE: Under a directorial eye, actors Regan O’ Brien and Marian Araujo, in response to the primary sources, undertook a meticulous process of gleaning from them a series of psychophysical impulses and from there evolved an original physical and vocal action template or sub score.
2) TEXTUAL/VERBAL SCORE: Once this was accomplished the original text was discarded and this new score became the framework on which writer and dramaturg Jeffery Gormly composed a new original textual/verbal score on the floor in collaboration with the actors and director.
3) MUSICAL SCORE: The actors’ action structure also provided the primary stimulus for the creation of a full independent musical score developed by composer Denis Cloghessey and was performed live.
Thematically AVERSION was complex and challenging. As a response to the original source material we began to examine within a contemporary context a division and struggle with the self, leading to loss of identity, brought about by an obsessive and destructive love. In the face of this conflict the only option appears to be death. nervousystem endeavored to explore in a dramatically viable way the possibility of resolving this division and setting the way for a more promising future that could perhaps eventually bring into being the will to life.
“Phaedra, in her original Greek incarnation, was a tragic aside to the story of Hippolytus, the object of her doomed passion. In the 17th Century, the French playwright Racine gave her centre-stage: her faithful maid Oenone struggled through plots and schemes to find a reason for Phaedra to live in the face of an overpowering fixation on Hyppolytus which could find no revolution. The consequences were fatal for all concerned.
Now nervousystem look for a way for “Fader” (Phaedra) to overcome her objectification of “Him” (Hippolytus), and “Onanon” becomes the mirror she must endure and abjure, exorcise, silence and ultimately accept…so that she can live.” (Excerpt from program note)
OUTCOME
The process of creating AVERSION proved to be a revelation for all involved. It presented enormous and often unexpected challenges, far greater than we had anticipated. As well as exposing themes that resonated strongly with us, themes we felt were under explored in contemporary theatre, it also opened up new and exciting avenues of practical research and development for the company. It revolutionized our way of working as an ensemble, and has put us firmly on a path to evolving an innovative language for performance and composition, within a new area of research in the domain of what we now call Actor as Writer.
ACTOR AS WRITER
Actor as Writer is the research domain in which nervousystem is now focusing it’s energies. It comprises two strands:
A) PERFORMATIVE PRACTICE: methodical training and development of organicity in the craft of acting facilitating and promoting the evolution of the actor, not as interpreter, but as autonomous creator.
B) DRAMATURGICAL DEVELOPMENT: Systematic investigation into the formulation of innovative structures and frameworks for composition appropriate to the activities of the autonomous actor.
All research within this domain will be documented and archived along with all our other research to date.
nervousystem is now revisiting the AVERSION project. We have commenced the next developmental phase of this exciting and challenging work, enabling the creation and refinement of an entirely original performance opus.
Our primary objectives within this Project phase are:
nervousystem feels very passionate about the need to advance this project and give it the time and attention it needs, to develop the potential it revealed during it’s difficult birth and to give it the life it deserves.
__________
THEATRE HAIKU By Regan O' Brien - May 2005
Background
Nervousystems’ interest in the Theatre Haiku began when we launched an extensive research project into “Physical Actions” during our eleven-week rehearsal process leading up to our performance of Aversion for Fringe Festival 2004.
Theatre Haiku: A project exploring the creation of small pieces of theatre based on the structure and aesthetic of the traditional Japanese form of the Haiku poem.
Exploring the Haiku is a way to teach ourselves how to refine and distill our work to maximize its potency. The Haiku, which is light, free and spontaneous, is built on discipline of, not only, form but also content.
We would like to draw on the devices of the Haiku and transfer the technique into a new form of language for theatre, inspired by our observations of the world. Finding the essence of the human connection with her environment and revealing it through action. Beginning with real nothingness; an open vessel and an open mind. A quietness, which allows us to hear and feel our responses and to create real action in real time.
Haiku are written in the present tense yet they resonate beyond their timeframe: moments in space, which span past, present and future. They present imagery, which reveals a “snapshot” of the universe, setting aside logic and thought for a flash of intuitive insight. That split second when we first experience something but before we begin to think about it. The poet describes her subject in a compact way without making explicit commentary or moral judgment. In haiku simplicity is more valued than “cleverness”, this simplicity is a quality rapidly diminishing in today’s world. Theatre included!
We believe theatre would benefit from the spirit of the Haiku; encapsulate a perfect moment and let the action be led by it allowing the simple connection to evolve without the constraints of textual narrative. There are actions, which are often overlooked in the context of a “play” that mean just as much as the story they combine to relate. We will use these moments for inspiration. Finding a form which enables us to create a perfect resonant moment which connects and communicates with humanity, human frailty and basic being through the re enactment of it’s very nature—the shape of the community that produces us inspires the shape which emerges in our work, the noise we make is a reaction to the noise around us.
For nervousystem this idea allows us to research our function as actors in the community and attempt to create a greater space for the audience’s imaginative and sensory participation which would unite and complete the process.
Wake butterfly
It’s late. We’ve miles to go
together.
Basho
Myth and the Flesh by Marián Araújo, January 2007
With this project I intend to challenge the role and autonomy of the actor, combining the freedom and instinctive creativity found in other art forms (such as visual performance art) with the possibilities of the pure language of theatre (body, voice and imagination). I have always been interested in our perceptions and understanding of the meanings contained within our own realities and the nature of identity; including culture, religion and sexuality. In order to explore all of these elements I will focus on the figure of Mary Magdalene. I am very interested in the disparate art and literature inspired by her. From the traditional associations such as: the woman; the sinner; the dryer of tears — to the poetry of Rilke, John Donne, and Kahil Gibran. I will take as an impulse for my action score, selections from some of these texts, as well as my response to some of the paintings inspired by this myth, such as works by Georges De La Tour and Caravaggio. Another important source I will explore is The Apocrypha texts: The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene; a collection of secret sayings with many hidden meanings not intended to be interpreted literally.
Composing the seed of a performance: Solo work
With all this material I will commence a three-month process of piecing together a performance montage. I will work building a collage, adding and removing different elements to finally create a piece that will stand on its on. I will also integrate traditional songs from the European cradle and a line of actions inspired by memories and dreams lying deep inside the body. This meticulous process is long, for it needs to penetrate fully into the actor’s body and imagination. The text at this first stage would be used as another element to construct the action, never to be illustrated but more as a stimulus to open up the expression of the actor through texture, repetition, tempo/rhythm and impulse.
As part of my research on traditional songs I will invite different Irish and international musicians resident in Ireland to teach me traditional songs from their respective countries, so that I can wave them later into my work. I believe that there are certain types of songs with a very special vibratory quality that can act as a catalyst to free dormant impulses, expanding the expression of an artist. I have been exploring them for over a year, starting in November 2005 when I worked in Moscow with The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards.
________________
PARK ACTION by Aiden Condron, August 2006
Working within nervousystem’s research domain: Actor as Writer as part of the second phase of Theatre Haiku, actors and nervousystem founder members Marián Araújo and Regan O’ Brien along with a new actor Helen Delaney (selected from a recent open Worksession conducted by the company) commenced work on a new performance structure which was later given the working title ‘Park Action’. Working individually at first, these actors elaborated their own entirely original individual action ‘scores’. These scores were composed via the montage of their personal repertoire of ‘Physical Actions’ and ‘Vocal Actions’. These they integrated with several carefully selected traditional European folk songs along with fragments of text, both established and original, from a variety of sources including T.S. Eliot’s The Game of Chess, and some work written by writer Jeffery Gormly as a response to the actors’ research work.. Many of their actions were born out of their previous ongoing research work, while others were discovered within this focused time period. Inspiration was found within their own autobiographical impulses and associations and also largely influenced by what was provoked in them by the elements within and ambience around the site-specific performance space chosen for this particular project.
As Artistic Director of nervousystem and director on this project I maintained a distance from the performers during this important preliminary stage of the work as it is essential to our evolving working practice that the actor be liberated from and independent of the constraints and biases often imposed by a directorial eye. It is also necessary that the actors take responsibility for developing their own individual dramaturgical craft. This autonomy of the performer and the ability to nurture an objective eye on her personal work is a crucial component in nervousystem’s work within Actor as Writer.
Only when the actors felt confident that their individual propositions were established and rooted did I intervene in the process. They presented their solo work to me and also highlighted some points where they felt the scores might be played in contact with each other. I began by working with them individually, refining details to re-enforce certain elements or eliminate parts of their scores that I felt were vague or superfluous, always encouraging them to move deeper toward total organic action. Through what I would describe as an intimate symbiotic exchange between their actions and my own personal associations a ‘line’ was revealed. At no point in this process were any actions added by me and it was imperative that the actor not deviate from their score although adaptations of actions to given stimuli was permitted and often encouraged. The score must be precise but flexible; a necessary paradox.
On this particular project I was determined to achieve a deeper level of contact and a more concrete montage. I began to ask difficult questions of the actors. Difficult only because, as is necessary in this work, I was asking them to make the unconsious consious. Who is this woman you’ve created or discovered? What’s really at stake here? Why are you taking this action in this moment? What do you want to achieve here? What are you doing to her now? What for? To what end? For whom or for what? I never wanted an answer but only to know that the actors were asking themselves these questions. If they were not then despite all their efforts we would create nothing but a sort of plasma built on generalities and mood that however well executed would lack definition and ultimately alienate the spectator.
The next stage was to carefully weave the scores together within the context of a dramaturgically viable mise en scene. This is an extremely challenging, delicate and painstaking process and an aspect of the work that the actors and I have struggled with in the past. This procedure is immensely challenging from a technical standpoint requiring detail, precision and steely concentration. Moreover it is here that all involved require the deepest sensitivity and openness to each other as the individual creative process, which is an act of the most profound personal solitude, must be exposed and placed in contact or conflict with another human being. This requires immense courage and humility. This is total selfless human contact where one is completely naked in the presence of another. Here there are no masks. This is the most difficult thing to achieve on stage as it is in life and it is only the fictive montage that makes it possible in the theatre. If, in this moment, all are working from the correct place, that is a place of integrity, then the individual can reach a state of grace where the doer transcends her individual self or personality and reveals a collective self, a humanity. What is born is greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps something eternal, sacred and pure will be evoked. This is the dance of illusion and actuality that is at the heart of my work in the theatre. It is at this stage of the work that my mettle as a director is always truly tested.
In previous projects with nervousystem I often stumbled at this stage of the process because the challenge seemed enormous and the terrain of the performative practice we were exploring was so new. The results were often abstract scenes where individual scores were played simultaneously or across each other, often to good effect but less than what I believed was possible. With Park Action I feel that many of these obstacles were overcome revealing a new confidence. This performance structure demonstrates the drawing together of many strands of practical research over several years, showing tangible continuity, consistency and progress.
I believe that Park Action represents a significant milestone in nervousystem’s journey as a performance ensemble. It has certainly transformed my work as a theatre practitioner and re-enforced my belief in our ever-evolving working practice. It should be noted that this work is the culmination of almost five years of extensive daily training and practical research by the company, without which it would be impossible to achieve this uniquely concentrated form of collaboration. It is a testament to the unfaltering commitment and diligence of these actors that such an endeavor has been sustained. The results of this effort were clearly evident in the quality, clarity and cohesiveness; and the aesthetic and contemporary relevance of the first performance at the Visitors Centre in Phoenix Park and in later performances presented at SUPA in Valetta, Malta recently. Park Action is yet another catalyst opening a clear path and artistic drive toward the future always deepening and developing nervousystem's creative exploration.
_____________
AVERSION and The I-Eye – Work in Progress. By Aiden Condron May 2005
On foot of the artistic and critical success of Fire Face - The Cuchullian Plays by W.B. Yeats in March 2004, nervousystem commenced preliminary plans for it’s next project, which was to become known as AVERSION. The results, of what we now consider to be the first phase of this ongoing project, were presented at the Dublin Fringe Festival in October 2004.
This new project was immensely experimental and ambitious in it’s ideology and design and after the comparatively traditional aesthetic of Fire Face represented for nervousystem a more forthright investigation into an alternative, impulse-based theatre language. AVERSION was largely influenced by the beginnings of a new phase of practical research being conducted by the ensemble in the area of Physical Actions which had been touched on during Fire Face rehearsals.
Because of the exploratory nature of this endeavor, a laboratory environment was created which comprised an eleven-week period of fulltime practical research/rehearsal. This time frame was very short for this kind of work (although long by normal standards in Ireland) but was all that was feasible within our budgetary constraints.
The primary source and focal point for this project was the antagonistic relationship between the characters of Phaedra and Onoene in Phaedra by Jean Racine. Additional dramaturgical sources included the paintings of Vincent Van Gough, David Lynch’s Mullholland Drive and Angela Carter’s Flesh and the Mirror. AVERSION comprised a cyclical and overlapping physical and vocal language rather than a liniar narrative structure. As a response to this source material nervousystem endeavored to create a montage/mise en scene in which the drama would emerge out of the interplay of three precisely structured original independent ‘scores’ performed in real time.
1) PHYSICAL SCORE: Under a directorial eye, actors Regan O’ Brien and Marian Araujo, in response to the primary sources, undertook a meticulous process of gleaning from them a series of psychophysical impulses and from there evolved an original physical and vocal action template or sub score.
2) TEXTUAL/VERBAL SCORE: Once this was accomplished the original text was discarded and this new score became the framework on which writer and dramaturg Jeffery Gormly composed a new original textual/verbal score on the floor in collaboration with the actors and director.
3) MUSICAL SCORE: The actors’ action structure also provided the primary stimulus for the creation of a full independent musical score developed by composer Denis Cloghessey and was performed live.
Thematically AVERSION was complex and challenging. As a response to the original source material we began to examine within a contemporary context a division and struggle with the self, leading to loss of identity, brought about by an obsessive and destructive love. In the face of this conflict the only option appears to be death. nervousystem endeavored to explore in a dramatically viable way the possibility of resolving this division and setting the way for a more promising future that could perhaps eventually bring into being the will to life.
“Phaedra, in her original Greek incarnation, was a tragic aside to the story of Hippolytus, the object of her doomed passion. In the 17th Century, the French playwright Racine gave her centre-stage: her faithful maid Oenone struggled through plots and schemes to find a reason for Phaedra to live in the face of an overpowering fixation on Hyppolytus which could find no revolution. The consequences were fatal for all concerned.
Now nervousystem look for a way for “Fader” (Phaedra) to overcome her objectification of “Him” (Hippolytus), and “Onanon” becomes the mirror she must endure and abjure, exorcise, silence and ultimately accept…so that she can live.” (Excerpt from program note)
OUTCOME
The process of creating AVERSION proved to be a revelation for all involved. It presented enormous and often unexpected challenges, far greater than we had anticipated. As well as exposing themes that resonated strongly with us, themes we felt were under explored in contemporary theatre, it also opened up new and exciting avenues of practical research and development for the company. It revolutionized our way of working as an ensemble, and has put us firmly on a path to evolving an innovative language for performance and composition, within a new area of research in the domain of what we now call Actor as Writer.
ACTOR AS WRITER
Actor as Writer is the research domain in which nervousystem is now focusing it’s energies. It comprises two strands:
A) PERFORMATIVE PRACTICE: methodical training and development of organicity in the craft of acting facilitating and promoting the evolution of the actor, not as interpreter, but as autonomous creator.
B) DRAMATURGICAL DEVELOPMENT: Systematic investigation into the formulation of innovative structures and frameworks for composition appropriate to the activities of the autonomous actor.
All research within this domain will be documented and archived along with all our other research to date.
nervousystem is now revisiting the AVERSION project. We have commenced the next developmental phase of this exciting and challenging work, enabling the creation and refinement of an entirely original performance opus.
Our primary objectives within this Project phase are:
- To further revise and evolve the performative practice that emerged in AVERSION's original inception.
- To focus strongly on AVERSION’s dramaturgy, allowing us to radically re-work the mise en scene with a view to future re-staging.
- To fully record our research process in written form and to create a film document in collaboration with Award Winning Filmmaker and Screenwriter, Tom Cosgrove.
nervousystem feels very passionate about the need to advance this project and give it the time and attention it needs, to develop the potential it revealed during it’s difficult birth and to give it the life it deserves.
__________
THEATRE HAIKU By Regan O' Brien - May 2005
Background
Nervousystems’ interest in the Theatre Haiku began when we launched an extensive research project into “Physical Actions” during our eleven-week rehearsal process leading up to our performance of Aversion for Fringe Festival 2004.
Theatre Haiku: A project exploring the creation of small pieces of theatre based on the structure and aesthetic of the traditional Japanese form of the Haiku poem.
Exploring the Haiku is a way to teach ourselves how to refine and distill our work to maximize its potency. The Haiku, which is light, free and spontaneous, is built on discipline of, not only, form but also content.
We would like to draw on the devices of the Haiku and transfer the technique into a new form of language for theatre, inspired by our observations of the world. Finding the essence of the human connection with her environment and revealing it through action. Beginning with real nothingness; an open vessel and an open mind. A quietness, which allows us to hear and feel our responses and to create real action in real time.
Haiku are written in the present tense yet they resonate beyond their timeframe: moments in space, which span past, present and future. They present imagery, which reveals a “snapshot” of the universe, setting aside logic and thought for a flash of intuitive insight. That split second when we first experience something but before we begin to think about it. The poet describes her subject in a compact way without making explicit commentary or moral judgment. In haiku simplicity is more valued than “cleverness”, this simplicity is a quality rapidly diminishing in today’s world. Theatre included!
We believe theatre would benefit from the spirit of the Haiku; encapsulate a perfect moment and let the action be led by it allowing the simple connection to evolve without the constraints of textual narrative. There are actions, which are often overlooked in the context of a “play” that mean just as much as the story they combine to relate. We will use these moments for inspiration. Finding a form which enables us to create a perfect resonant moment which connects and communicates with humanity, human frailty and basic being through the re enactment of it’s very nature—the shape of the community that produces us inspires the shape which emerges in our work, the noise we make is a reaction to the noise around us.
For nervousystem this idea allows us to research our function as actors in the community and attempt to create a greater space for the audience’s imaginative and sensory participation which would unite and complete the process.
Wake butterfly
It’s late. We’ve miles to go
together.
Basho
THEATRE LABORATORY
