Ania's
memories from two weeks in New Mexico, USA:
I left
Massachusetts and Roy in early august to go to New Mexico, and the town Santa
Fe for a two week Action Theatre workshop, taught by the founder of this
theatre form Ruth Zaporah. She is now 72 years old and I was so excited to be
able to learn the form from her.
I have been
very interested in Action Theatre for the last 5 years or so, I wrote my final
essay on this subject in collage in England about a year ago. But writing about
it is very different from engaging in it practically. Action theatre is an
experience based practice.
The workshop
was held on a ranch (farm) about 30 minutes outside of Santa Fe, located in the
middle of the high desert and surrounded by hills with funny little round bushes
on them, and farther away there where mountains and over it all a vast sky .
The days were very hot (up to 35 degrees Celsius) and our 3 hour siesta was
well needed, the only thing we could to in the heat was to take a nap or sit
indoors talking. In the night the sky would be crowded with stars and the
coyotes (wild dog-like animals) would howl and scream, sounding like children
playing. We soon got use to them but they never stopped to amuse me.
We where
warned about the rattle snakes (in Swedish: skaller ormar) and poisonous black
widow spiders and that kept me from taking walks in the wild desert landscape
near the ranch and it took me a few days to relax in the safe environment of the ranch. None in the group actually saw
a snake or a poisonous spider, but we did see some lizards and some other
unusual large insects...
There was 14
of us doing the workshop and apart from myself and two Swiss ladies all the
participants where American. I was amazed by how the group came together
quickly and how we all seem to like each other so much. It was really a
blessing to be a part of this constellation of people who came from all walks
of life and where there for so many different reasons.
5 hours per
day we would be in the studio working with Ruth, the first 3 hours where
physically active and later in the afternoon, after the siesta, we would focus
on more still work, like narrative (something like story telling). Action
Theatre could best be described as a training in improvisational physical
theatre, focusing on developing skills appropriate both for public performances
as well as for the lives we "perform" as human beings.
The
exercises we would engage in would isolate particular aspects of movement and
performance (time, shape, space, energy etc.) and i was fascinated how my
habits of movement, behaviour and problem solving became visible to me (quite often not so
flattering).
Over the course of the two weeks we practiced exercising and opening our
imagination, learn to communicate with our eyes, get used to shifts between
different theatrical "worlds" so quickly that the intellect and
thought could not keep up, and sense the difference between embodied creativity
and imagination verses concept of ideas being "executed" by the body.
For me personally the most beautiful lesson of the whole workshop was to get
numerous glimpses of the embodied creativity and the way that if i really let
go in letting my body have an influence in the story that was emerging, rather
than only being a container for an idea that came from the head, i would be
continuously surprised by the material that was formed in me, though me. In
these moments i had a very clear connection to how this practice can be liked
to spiritual practices like Buddhism. Through non attachment there is an
opening to a realm much larger than i could ever experience otherwise.
In one of
her books Ruth puts it like this: "Acting with a sense of playful
exploration, students are encouraged to venture into transpersonal realms,
accessing intelligence more encompassing and boundless that known in their
personal experience."
The Action
Theatre practice was for me more difficult than i had anticipated. It was a
great challenge for me to experience that and realise that to get anywhere
within this form i would have to practice for oh, so many years. I found it
quite daunting and noticed how the "quitter" in me was quietly
suggesting to give it up all together. I had the opportunity to see that
pattern (that keeps reoccurring) in my life, served on a silver plate, and
after a few days i could also see that i have a choice whether to listen to the
"quitter" and run away, or to stay with the difficulty, allow myself
to be a struggling beginner and humbly learn from this situation. I chose to
stay.
In summary,
the two weeks where a great experience and important step on my path of
exploring personal devotement and creativity and, i was also so grateful by the
opportunity to be in the landscape of New Mexico, so wild, naked beautiful and
direct. Embracing life and death in a way that i had never experienced before.
Next: Buenos
Aires, Argentina.
