Choice/Výběr

I am thinking about possibility and probability and avenues and opportunities. In theatre and in life. So I'm thinking a lot about MONUMENT. And MONUMENT is about choice. Not only choice, of course, but it's a major element of the structure of the piece. Choice is the gift we give the audience. They are privileged, and also burdened with free will. They decide what to see, what to experience, and what to interact with. This might thrill or terrify them. They may freeze or refuse to engage, or they might embrace it.

In Authorial today, I realized how often Alex commented on our ability or inability to recognize and definitively accept or reject the offers made to us by our fellow performers. Like, occasionally, a classmate would enact an impulse during one of our abstract improvs, and the impulse would go ignored. The rest of us were either stuck in a preconception of "performance" (in which we compensate  to keep the "show" going as it "should") or blocked by our own egos. I began to recognize the importance of awareness in the practice. A performer must be alert and open enough to identify the slightest impulse a partner may have, even when starting from a neutral base. If it's within the discipline of Interacting with the Inner Partner, then the performer must be acutely attuned to her own impulses, and ready to acknowledge them--then seize them or reject them. The choice is there, but she absolute absolutely must admit to the impulse and react to it honestly. I caught myself many times holding back or forcing a change because I was preoccupied with what I should do, rather than a genuine relationship to my partners and the situation.

The image that comes to my mind when visualizing the process is of Prague's winding streets, which begin innocently enough, then explode into multiplicity, with no apparent rhyme or reason. They seem counter-intuitive to those of us who expect order (a grid, perhaps--or even Washington DC's annoying radial system), but when in it, when actually walking on the streets, it all feels natural somehow. I don't know how much sense that makes.

I'm continuing my new practice of accepting the choices the city gives me. Never turning around when I can keep going. Never turning my back on a possibility. I haven't yet gotten lost, but I've had some small, surprising adventures, and I'm sure that if I continues to seize the opportunities presented to me, I will unlock doorways to something completely new. Just like performing.

Not forgetting, never forgetting, to occasionally take a moment and stand still.

A view from Svatovaclavske Vinice (St. Wenceslas Vineyard).