[D-G] theater performance practitioners?

Julia Barclay julia at flyingoutofsequence.org
Sun Oct 16 07:03:17 PDT 2005


Hello.
To attempt to answer some of your questions, I'm going to cut and past my 
theatre company's (and my) 'mission statement' into this email...hopefully 
will specify some goals anyway...also if you have access to a journal called 
'Performance Research' (a Brit publication) I can direct you to an article 
about my work...or you can go to Brunel's "Body Space and Technology" 
on-line journal, where there's an article I've written called "How I 
Work"... it's hard, always, to translate 4 dimensions to 2, but here's some 
attempts...
Also, as to other responses to my query on the list: thanks.  I do 
appreciate them and am slow to absorb this stuff...attempting to find a 
language to discuss the work I do and also the possible larger frames it can 
imply...

Here's the vision...hope it clarifies...any responses are welcome...

Apocryphal Theatre's artistic vision/desire/hope is to:



Undermine the reality-grid of right now: meaning that which we say "that's 
the way it is" about - either publicly or privately.



Regarding: class/money, race/ethnicity, gender/sex, religion/God, 
realpolitik/politics, nationalism/patriotism, war/peace, 
sacred/secular...etc.



Through: the creation of theatrical work that challenges these assumptions 
by, first, owning them as our own (not pawning it off on an "other" which 
somehow creates a world in which we live as victims), exploring the depths 
of our own assumptions/investments and investigating our own "desiring 
machines" (concept from Gilles Deleuze/ Felix Guattari).  The 
Deleuze/Guattari theory is that we all, to some extent carry within us 
fascistic investments (meaning investments in a state of "being") and 
revolutionary investments (meaning investments in the process of 
 "becoming").  Their desire was to enact a kind of radical psychology 
wherein our fascistic investments could be examined, owned and somehow 
uprooted to bring about a social investment in something other than 
"being" - i.e., a static, repressive environment which rewards conformity 
and a certain kind of subservience to an other-centered order of things as 
they are.  Their vision has to do with a more revolutionary social body - 
one in which the process of becoming itself is integral to living, and there 
is no need to impose a hegemonic force onto other living creatures (examples 
of this now and in the past: capital, Christianity and other 
Evangelical/missionary religions, slavery, women as property, man's dominion 
over/destruction of nature, psychology, "the Big Bang", etc.)  This is an 
incredible reduction of everything they said, but serves as a useful 
starting point for the goals of our theatrical experiments.



How: by creating theatrical pieces that uproot the static nature of 
language, gesture, character, etc. in such a way as to bring about this 
process of becoming: first in our own bodies/souls/minds as 
players/writers/designers/choreographers/directors and thence into the 
bodies/minds/souls of the audience.



Why:  to make visible the construction of the language with which we create 
the world we perceive; to allow us a moment in the gap between the 
understood and the unknown, to listen for the voices which have not yet 
formed, not yet been heard but still call to us in an undefined language 
which is perhaps no less real or pressing for being as yet unwritten.





- written by Julia Lee Barclay (1999; revised for Apocryphal in 2005)



for further info, email: julialeebarclay at yahoo.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Liza Kozner" <liza_kozner at yahoo.co.uk>
To: <deleuze-guattari at lists.driftline.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 4:56 PM
Subject: Re: [D-G] theater performance practitioners?


>I am following a track around Performance, like: the destratification of 
>the organism (cfr ATP)
> On nummerous occasions, i saw statements on this list people saying: "but 
> it is important to be careful in the destratification process", as DG 
> quoting Artaud and Michaux, etc. "
> I think Performance could be confronted to this idea. Then the question: 
> what is this process of destratification of the organism, what does it 
> imply, technically speaking, pragmatically, how could we elaborate the 
> process. More generally, why should we destratify the organism, but more 
> precisely: with what tools, what are the operations. I don't know the 
> context of your research or the quality of your artistry, but the question 
> seems to me full of possibilities, an interesting question what.
>
>
>
> Julia Barclay <julia at flyingoutofsequence.org> wrote:
>
> Have not answered yet because all the questions are big and I have been
> incredibly busy and not able to give them time...be patient and I will 
> try.
> thanks for caring about it.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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