alt + F4 for normal screen




      RESPONSIBLE ANARCHY, p. 222ff

page 222


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Forward This chapter describes a vision for human relationships coming from Release concerns.  It begins with documentation of early group work that contains the seeds for the following growth of this vision, and it continues through documentation to reveal the complex development of the concept.  This is a vision for humanity.  It is idealistic, and complex.   It demands very mature people who are able to take full responsibility for their actions, and at the same time, who are able to be fully independent in their artistic freedom of action. It is a vision developed through years of contemplation regarding the process of creation within artists.  It attempts to treat each person involved, as a soloist, while giving each of them the opportunity to yield that position to others.   It is like a shared space of soloists.  Of course this looks different from other work when seen on the stage.  There are multiple centers of attention developing all the time, and audience members may only see part of what happens.  The audience is part of the experiment, not the recipient of a finished point of view.   As audience members scan over the stage they lose sight of development, and they see a mass of material looking as though unformed.  If they select and follow one part and then another they construct for themselves the piece and then they become involved at a primary level of creation.  The desire in making such work is to include the audience as mature artists, participating in the exploration.  It is easy to imagine how many times this is mistaken, because it runs so strongly against the predominant tide of theatrical experience created for audience consumption.  Usually the audience is given the map, the road, and the signposts.  In the “Responsible Anarchy” work there is no map—it is being redrawn in the real time of the performance. The road is just being built, and sign-posts will be put up casually along the way. I have chosen to describe this one vision in detail, because it is indicative of the sort of hard pursuit it takes to finally achieve an alternative attitude in the theatre.  Of course, my aim was never to achieve alternatives, but to continue, with the concepts of Release as a supportive framework, to explore and discover what is there for me to discover.  It is sometimes a relentless task, as the following documentation will show. In this chapter, the development of the concept “Responsible Anarchy” is documented.  The concept emerged gradually from the perceptions of a soloist.  The desire to apply the freedoms and excitements of solo work to a shared and co-dependent form for choreographic group work is documented here.  It was a long and complex process.  Often I did not know exactly where I was going.  I worked in a sea of possibilities, with heavy fog often tempting me off course.  People seem to have thought that I always seemed to know where I was going, but when you really enter new territory there is no way to know this.  I only knew to continue, to believe, to struggle, to keep going.  Gradually the fog lifted, and my ability to describe my interests in choreography, as intimately connected with social process improved.