How to talk about this?

Presentación de proyecto curacional para la clase 'Key Theories of International Performance Research'. No se de que hablar. Mi inspiración: por los suelos. Pensé en hablar sobre la bicicleta como medio; es decir, la experiencia de montar una bicicleta y como afecta la disposición de nuestro cuerpo y por ello la percepción. Pero dejó de interesarme rápido. Despues Swasti me pidió colaborar con ella en su presentación sobre la World Dance Competition: un show de la TV gringa -pero la única pregunta que me parecía interesante ya la tenía ella. Diez días antes, la ansiedad empezó a hacerse presente.
Un día en una fiesta, hablando con Carol, me quedó claro que debía evitar complicarme. Keep it simple. Así que decidí hablar de El Infierno o el Nacimiento de la Clínica, donde participé como asistente de dirección -y de donde saco mucho de lo que se sobre teatro, así como una serie de preocupaciones sobre CÓMO SEGUIR HACIENDO ESTO. Además tenía mucho material.

*

Pensé que sería más fácil. Pero encontré que me costaba mucho hablar de ello. Me pasé días enteros procrastinating. Simplemente no sabía como abordar este barco. En blanco y a la deriva. Finalmente, encontré que el problema residía en no tener claro de que estaba hablando. Así que me pregunté que podía ser interesante para 'miguelito' -y para la clase- preguntar. La llave era la pregunta: ¿cómo seguir haciendo esto? Así, fue claro que había que hablar del "Infierno..." para hablar de otra cosa.

*

Me leí toooooooodo lo que había en el blog, así como todo lo que tenía en mi compu - incluyendo comentarios y conferencias de Rubén Ortiz. Y al final, tenía la confrontación entre la labor de un teatro de búsqueda (mejor: 'específico', como me dijo Joost Smiers) y la crítica. ¿Cuál es nuestra labor? Lo que falaba entonces era la teoría. Y yo en blanco. ¿Con qué abordarlo? Afortunadamente, en chats a deshoras mi hermanita MAIPR desde Warwick, María 'ColCol' Estrada salió a mi rescate. Metió al cuadrilatero a Susan Sontag y a Jacques Ranciere. Agreguemos a  Josette Féral y ya tenemos un coctel teórico decente. Sumo la voz de Ortiz explicando sus razones, las voces de los críticos y mis propias reflexiones y las meto en formato de cartas. Cartas de ningún lado y hacia ninguna parte. Cartas porque como dice alguien muy querido son parte de mi arqueología personal. Cartas por inspiración de alguién que escribió cientos de ellas, todas de amor. Y cartas porque escribiendo es la única forma que últimamente tengo para comunicarme. Lo demás son naranjas.

*

Martes 24 de noviembre de 2009.

3a presentación.

1. Power Point hablando en corto sobre "El Infierno"

2. El asistente de dirección teorizando: toma 1.

3. El asistente (aún tratando) tras 11 tomas.

4. Teorizando (ya en personaje), lográndolo... y afirmando que no funciona!

5. With a little bit from my friends: Joe Cocker (Woodstock '69), Cartas en sobres blancos dirigidas a mis compañeros, la multiplicación de las opiniones de los sobres por sus voces. Cada lectura, una naranja en la mano del que comparte. Yo sentado en el piso, en medio de la herardura de mesas, viendome comer con gran gesto naranja en la pantalla. Yo repartiendo cartas y naranjas. Yo conmovido por las presencias de mis compañer@s. Funciona, en verdad funciona....

*

De presentación termina en performance. Performance partido por la mitad. Todos debían leer. Sólo 4 lo lograron. Sruti, máxima autoridad del salón, me pide concluir. Yo perplejo, casi en shock. Primero triste por no ver concluido este pequeño rito de hermanamiento. Sintiendo pena por no poder ver a todos y cada uno en mi presentación. Luego enojado. enojado por la situación... y porque en el pánico de no ver terminado, explique los mecanismos y con ello privé de sus interpretaciones al grupo, como bien señaló Nat. Y después.... con una leve perplejidad acompañándome hasta en los sueños de la noche. ¿Cómo hubiera sido? ¿Importa? Servido a l'orange.

*

Pd. Correo al día siguiente:

"Dear Diego,
Yours was a very fine-tuned, multi-faceted and theoretically sophisticated presentation. I appreciate the efforts you put in to addressing several aspects, the creation/collaboration process, the participation of audiences, the issues it dealt with, the question of mode of reflection...
I can see how it is difficult to pack everything into 20 minutes and was sorry to have to cut you off. Perhaps the first part could have been timed better, though.
See in the attachment comments from others in the group.
Thanks for your efforts and enthusiasm!"

Gajitos de naranja. Happy ending?

I'm talking about this to talk about something else...

A l'orange

View more presentations from Diego Alejandro de la Vega Wood.

Assistant Director's Comments. Take 1: action!

Assistant Director's Comments. Take 12: action!

Theorizing a l'orange

Theorizing a l'orange from Diego de la Vega on Vimeo.

With a little help from my friends # 01

My Dear,

“Something important concerning objects in conventional theatre is that they have to work as symbols of something, you see a dove and it is peace. Here objects have to work for what they are, by the way they are inserted in the body, by the way they cause actions and reactions from the body and as you said it, because they already have a history, that’s why we don’t have to over-illustrate, we don’t have to symbolize anything (...) We de-symbolize and let the body show its own reactions; it’s something fine artists know because they work on materiality.”[1]

Love,

Diego

[1] “El Nacimiento del Infierno”. Interview to Rubén Ortiz. Uno Más Uno, Sunday supplement. February 9th, 2008.

With a little help from my friends # 02

My Dear,

“It’s about making the bodies and the spectator go through an experience even if there is a physical distance. It’s about abolishing the distance without dramatizing, because when you do it, common places arise. No one knows what sadness is, it is composed of a bunch of things; but when you name it sadness you’ve already broke with that, it’s a common place. It is all about showing it in all its complexity, pain and joys -because it will also have some of those-... if the spectator has the experience of sadness, it is very different of having the concept of sadness.”[2]

Love,

Diego

[2] “El Nacimiento del Infierno”. Interview to Rubén Ortiz. Uno Más Uno, Sunday supplement. February 9th, 2008.

With a little help from my friends # 03

My Dear,

“- I have really enjoyed watching people viscerally reacting running to the toilet, or a lady shouting outside on the lobby: ‘This is so grouse, so grouse, how do they allow it?’
-Was that the purpose?
-I like it, but it wasn’t the purpose. The purpose is to make them feel. When you achieve it, the next step is reflection. It is not a melodrama where you supposedly feel but it all rests in peace; feeling is needed and reflection –because we are westerners-, comes after, we already do it, it’s pointless to look for it. Besides, the public has to take the right to leave whenever they want, I don’t have the slightest problem with that. If they leave, that’s good, the audience is no hostage. I want the audience to opt, to choose.”[3]

Love,

Diego

[3] “El Nacimiento del Infierno”. Interview to Rubén Ortiz. Uno Más Uno, Sunday supplement. February 9th, 2008.

With a little help from my friends # 04

My Dear,

“It’s like going back to the seventies when the great experimenters of theatre were doing their crazy stuff, but which in the play ‘El Infierno o el nacimiento de la clínica’ (...) there are no great surprises, only imitations overlapped one on top of each other; mental ideas without dramatic concretion; discourses and descriptions; performances sowed together without producing a trama (and not in the anecdotic sense, but in the one used by Eugenio Barba), because it’s not enough to talk about the body and about illness to create a play.”[4]

Love,

Diego

[4] “Vanguardia Trasnochada.” Critique by Estela Leñero. Proceso, February 24th 2008.

With a little help from my friends # 05

My Dear,

“Agressive images, the despersonalization of the bodies, the elimination of every erotic content whatsoever and a tendency to the disgusting dominate the play. (...) The actors see, to work under a self-destructive frenesi and a naïve command that tends to eliminate their essential function, that is their capacity of metaphorizing reality through their acts, creating an expressive poetic, a meta-theatrical reality.”[5]

Love,

Diego

[5] “Tendencia a lo desagradable.” Critique by Bruno Bert. Tiempo Libre. December 6th-12th, 2007.

With a little help from my friends # 06

My Dear,

“The nonsense of performance shows up. (...) I am not addicted to performances, I ignore if performance artists think that realism should be taken to those extremes and suffered on each and every performance, but El Infierno o el nacimiento de la clínica is presenting itself as theatre and then it’s another story. In theatre actors –and I believe these youngsters are preparing to be so- should be respected precisely on their bodily being which is their sole instrument, and stage-reality is achieved by other means; and one of them is precisely, well directed acting as another reality, which at a certain point, one of the actresses achieves, as in the story-telling of her surgery will she cooks, and that is full of intentionality and good acting. I hope that the members of the group understand it and, from now on, they reject submitting to the practices of which they were objects in the failed proposal of Rubén Ortiz.”[6]

Love,

Diego

[6] “El Infierno o el Nacimiento de la Clínica.” Critique by Olga Harmony. La Jornada, February 14th, 2008.

With a little help from my friends # 07

My Dear,

“Once upon a time (say, for Dante), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to design works of art so that they might be experienced on several levels. Now it is not. It reinforces the principle of redundancy that is the principal affliction of modern life.
Once upon a time (a time when high art was scarce), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to interpret works of art. Now it is not. What we decidedly do not need now is further to assimilate Art into Thought, or (worse yet) Art into Culture.”[7]

Love,

Diego

[7] “Against Interpretation”. Susan Sontag, 1964.

With a little help from my friends # 08

My Dear,

“Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. (...) Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties.
(...)
What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.
(...)
In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.”[8]

Love,

Diego

[8] “Against Interpretation”. Susan Sontag, 1964

With a little help from my friends # 09

My Dear,
 

“Since the advent of German Romanticism, the concept of theatre has been associated with the idea of the living community. Theatre appeared as a form of the aesthetic constitution--meaning the sensory constitution--of the community: the community as a way of occupying time and space, as a set of living gestures and attitudes that stands before any kind of political form and institution; community as a performing body instead of an apparatus of forms and rules. In this way theatre was associated with the Romantic notion of the aesthetic revolution: the idea of a revolution that would change not only laws and institutions but transform the sensory forms of human experience.”[9]

Love,

Diego

[9] “The emancipated spectator.” Jacques Ranciere. Opening of the Fifth International Summer Academy of Arts in Frankfurt, August 20th, 2004.

With a little help from my friends # 10

My Dear,
 

“Theatricality does not manifest itself in any obligatory fashion. It does not have any qualitative properties that would permit our identifying it beyond any shadow of doubt. It is not an empirical given. Theatricality is authorized by the placing of the subject with respect to both quotidian and imaginary dimensions, the latter being founded upon the presence of the other’s space. To see theatricality in these terms poses the question of its own transcendent nature.”[10]

Love,

Diego

[10] “Theatricality. The Specificity of Theatrical Language.” Josette Fèral. Sub-Stance 2002, # 98/99, Vol. 31, nos. 2 & 3, pp. 94-107.

With a little help from my friends # 11

My Dear,

“Artists, like researchers, build the stage where the manifestation and the effect of their competences become dubious as they frame the story of a new adventure in a new idiom. The effect of the idiom cannot be anticipated. It calls for spectators who are active interpreters, who render their own translation, who appropriate the story for themselves, and who ultimately make their own story out of it. An emancipated community is in fact a community of storytellers and translators.”[11]

Love,

Diego

[11] “The emancipated spectator.” Jacques Ranciere. Opening of the Fifth International Summer Academy of Arts in Frankfurt, August 20th, 2004.

With a little help from my friends # 12

My Dear,

“I have no answers. I’m full of questions. Questions that concern very much the aesthetics of the show, but that go further beyond it. I wonder...
I wonder what is the place of theatre. Where should it be performed? What should it aim at? What is the nature of the quest? It seems a powerful drive for many. But, why?
Theatre (arts, the qualitative in human in general) is under pressure. It must find where it stands. As Alan Read suggests, it well maybe an ethical stance what defines theatre in our times.
I guess my question could be summed up as follows:
How to keep doing this? And, what for?”[12]

Love,

Diego

[12] Diego Alejandro de la Vega Wood, everyday questions. 2009.

With a little help from my friends # 13

My Dear,

“I think we failed miserably at framing ‘El Infierno...’. I think most of the time it was not really clear for the spectators what they were facing, what was expected. Maybe we should have grabbed them by the shoulders and told them what the nature of the game was. Though, it was in front of their eyes, perhaps they thought it was ‘just’ representation.
However, as harsh as the criticism was, I can’t but stop and wonder. We took a space meant for ‘experimental theatre’ at the national university, and we used it. We posed the questions and tried to get the questions out of the bodies: both ours and the spectators, that is. What was the purpose of all it? Why do it? Is it a lost battle?
For 10 weeks (unusual for so-called ‘experimental theatre’), we had a full house. The cabaret next door was not even near our numbers (but our theatre was much smaller, that is true). Why did people want to see such an ugly and –at times- brutal play?
The University did exit polls (or were they entry polls?) at the plays. Surprise, surprise. Our public was different. “The most weird people come to see your play”-they said. “You have engineers, doctors, all of those who normally don’t come here”.
These all leaves me a bit perplex still. What was the force drawing all these people together?

What is the nature of our work?”[13]

Love,

Diego

[13] Diego Alejandro de la Vega Wood, trying to theorise on “El Infierno...”. 2009

Theory & Criticism a l'orange