[D-G] theater performance practitioners?

[Julia Barclay]

To add to my own post, for those of you in Brussels, I've just been invited 
to teach my workshop and also show some of my company's work at the below 
festival on Nov 25 in the evening...so, if you are interested, come along 
and with any luck many questions will be answered where they are usually 
best resolved: in the practice...

here's the festival name:
jonctions verbindingen 9
I think they have a website and stuff with program for Nov, 24-27 
festival----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Julia Barclay" <julia at flyingoutofsequence.org>
To: <deleuze-guattari at lists.driftline.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 11:56 AM
Subject: Re: [D-G] theater performance practitioners?


> OK, so I'll try now to answer your questions...
>
> 1
>> (1) What do you mean by "static nature of language, gesture, character,
>> etc"?
>>    Can you give some examples of how your pieces accomplish the uprooting
>> you
>>    mention above?
>
> By "Static nature" I mean fixed...as in I say a word, such as 'car' and by
> that you will assume I mean a literal car, that one drives around in...a
> stereotypical gesture, such as crossing myself, may imply I am a Catholic
> entering a church ...and say I start refering to someone named Mike who 
> you
> may assume by the way I have made that reference is a 'real' person or a
> stable character on stage...just to give a few examples...
> How to uproot these?  Well, a number of techniques I have used include:
> shifting levels of address (meaning to whom statements or gestures are
> addressed) which also can shift levels of meaning, so the words and 
> gestures
> can take on new possible meanings...also cutting them up into each other, 
> so
> by putting certain words with other words, their meaning shifts, as does
> putting different gestures with different words...You can check out an
> article I wrote for Body Space and Technology journal (a Brunel Univ 
> on-line
> journal) called "How I Work" for more details on the techniques and an
> article by Cathy Turner about my work entitled "Cutting It Up" in a
> Performance Research journal March 2002 issue entitled 'On 
> Editing'...which
> also includes samples of the texts I have written...
>
>> (2) What is the postulated psychological mechanism whereby such an
>> uprooting
>>    of the static nature of language, gesture, character, etc., would 
>> bring
>>    about a process of "becoming" in the players/writers/etc?  Are there
>> any
>>    empirical data to support that contention?  And what kind of a 
>> becoming
>>    is being hoped for or accomplished - does it matter?
>
> I don't think in terms of psychological mechanisms, so can't answer the
> question in those terms...the process of becoming however I define as that
> place when a word, gesture, person, the room itself is shifting from one
> 'place' to another...or one 'fixed state' to another if you will... there
> are these liminal places that occur...especially when people are 
> addressing
> what I call the 'grid', meaning the rules of the room itself...the words,
> the gestures, the performer's identity, even the perceived dimensions of 
> the
> room can shift...I don't know what you mean by emprical evidence, but I do
> have audience feedback, my own and others' experience of these things
> happening, responding with both oral,  written and visual feedback...I am
> compiling all this for my PhD and when that's done (in a couple years) and
> if you're still interested, I'll send it to you.  Even better, if you're 
> in
> London, stop by and watch the lab itself or one of our shows in the Spring
> of 2006, when we work with techniques using one of my texts "The Jesus 
> Guy"
> (written, as you will see, without line assignments or characters per se,
> but instead unstable voices, cut-ups, dialogues, rants, raves and
> dreams...to be put together each night by the performers using tools for 
> the
> lab but improvised...)
>
>> (3) Who is your intended audience?  I assume they are not, for example,
>>    militant neofascists, Christian fundamentalists, career military,
>>    or Big Bang fanatics.
>
> I'm happy for anyone to be in the audience...I'm reaching out for our new
> piece, The Jesus Guy, especially to lots of inter-faith groups as I'm
> interested, deeply in our desire to name Nameless experience and our
> seemingly endless thirst, whether owned or not, to have Someone in
> charge...also the conflicts between sacred and secular spaces...I reach 
> out
> as wide as possible, as I don't think this work is inaccessible...it's
> challenging but not meant for 3 'in the know' people...
>> (4) What is the postulated psychological mechanism whereby watching a
>>    theatrical piece that accomplishes the uprooting you mention above
>>    would bring about a process of "becoming" in the audience?  To bring
>> about
>>    a "becoming" in the audience, is it necessary to first accomplish a
>>    "becoming" in the performers/writers/etc, or are these independent
>>    processes?
>>
> Again I don't work with 'psychological mechanisms', but as mentioned above
> working with the players, if those moments of shift are happening for the
> performers, usually it's happening for the audience too, since the 
> audience
> is addressed and deeply implicated in this work...we are all striving to 
> be
> 'witnesses' to the work, not simply asking the audience to do that, but 
> also
> demanding that of ourselves...I, for example, as 'director' attempt to 
> move
> out of the 'teacher' role into the 'witness' role more, etc... but these
> roles are ever-shifting...
>
> Also, the base material we use, either with my texts or found text or what
> we bring in as part of our experience, with words or gestures, taps into
> both the microcosmic world of our own use of language and deeply felt
> gestures, etc...and then into over-heard language, cliches and other
> people's idiosyncratic gestures, etc...in other words a palate which makes
> the connections, I hear when I read D&G, not to 'mommy-daddy-me' but 
> instead
> lines of flight, desiring machines connecting to other desiring machines,
> etc...and also to our own personal fascisms which come up while doing this
> work...finding our own fundamentalisms, etc.  My assumption is we all have
> them whether they are religious or secular...
>
> OK, so there's the beginning of some answers.  Hope it clarifies.
>
> Best, Julia
>
>> -m
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> List address: deleuze-guattari at driftline.org
>> Info:
>> http://lists.driftline.org/listinfo.cgi/deleuze-guattari-driftline.org
>> Archives: www.driftline.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> List address: deleuze-guattari at driftline.org
> Info: 
> http://lists.driftline.org/listinfo.cgi/deleuze-guattari-driftline.org
> Archives: www.driftline.org