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RESPONSIBLE ANARCHY, p. 222ff
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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.
