CD#04 The empty space of a rehearsal room

Sep 29, 2020

October 2020

This month Ronn Smith sets out the experience of being in a rehearsal room, Brad Parks looks at what it means to be a body, and Stephen Batchelor responds to a question about whether being a work in progress means our lives are a creative process. ⁂

A PERSONAL REFLECTION

The empty space of a rehearsal room

by Ronn Smith

The stage of a theater is a space of infinite, often unfathomable possibilities. On any given night it can contain an unidentified African country in the waning days of colonial control (as in Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs) or a tattered apartment in New Orleans (Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire) or the country estate, soon to be lost, belonging to a Russian family (Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard).

A friend who teaches playwriting often asks her students to write ‘a scene that can’t be staged’. After the completed scenes are read in class, she then explains exactly how they could be staged. It often comes as a surprise to her students. In the theater, on an empty stage, nothing is unstageable, everything is possible.

But the stage space isn’t what I’m thinking about now, at the far end of our pandemic summer. Nor am I thinking about when the theaters will reopen for fully directed, fully acted, fully designed and teched productions. What I’m thinking about is the rehearsal room and the process that takes place within that room … and how working on a production with a group of actors is very much like the sustained effort I use when I meditate.

Although I try to approach sitting with an open or ‘know-nothing’ mind, the empirical process itself is highly focused. The focus can be on my breath, an idea or feeling, or an object, such as a candle flame, a small sculpture, or a koan. To the extent that I can keep open, stay curious, and not get infatuated by what shows up in my mind, the easier it is to settle into a place charged with creative, imaginative, intuitive energy. As Martine Batchelor writes in What is this? Ancient questions for modern minds (Tuwhiri, 2018):

When we sit and walk in meditation, we’re not trying to stop thinking. Instead, we’re trying to open up some space within it, so that over time the selfing disappears and we’re left with the creative functioning. We exist; we don’t have to think about existing.

Unlike the meditative process, which is a singular, interiorly focused endeavor, rehearsing a play involves a group of people. Granted, individuals are working to discover the essence of their characters, which is an interior activity, but they’re working within a larger, collaborative process guided by a director. Whether actors are being directed for a simple ‘table reading’ (where we sit around a table and read the script, often hearing it for the first time), a staged reading (with scripts in hand, in front of a small audience), a workshop (with minimal production values), or a full production, my method of working with the cast mirrors the process I use in meditation.

In the rehearsal room, for example, I try to let go of any preconceived ideas or opinions I have of the play and work more openly, collaboratively with the cast. Not unlike working with mental proliferations when I meditate, I hold lightly what the actors show me. I acknowledge without judgment what arises – what we’re seeing or feeling – and respect it as raw data worth investigating, worth working with.

As a text-based director, I’m constantly evaluating everything we’re doing in reference to the script. When it’s going well, when we’re ‘in the moment’, we’re working collectively in a concentrated process of exploration and discovery. It’s hard work, but it’s wrapped in a great deal of joy.

Rehearsals, like meditation, can resemble something like a never-ending parade of questions. But ask (sit with?) these questions long enough and an answer presents itself. Somewhere in the body it feels right, and the actor and I agree to use it – whatever ‘it’ is: a line reading, a gesture, a specific interpretation of a scene – in the performance. It requires a sustained effort of attention and what Stephen Batchelor calls ‘nonreactive awareness’, but when working with a cast that is genuinely engaged by the process, it allows for creative, imaginative, and intuitive work. And in my experience – when I’m in that zone of directing, not thinking about directing – this process produces more interesting theater, theater that illuminates rather than just illustrates a text.

⬆︎ Photo by Hans Eiskonen on Unsplash

All of this, of course, involves a level of trust. I need to trust the actors. The actors need to trust me. And we need to trust both the script, which can be thought of as a road map, and the process. It’s similar to the trust I put in the dharma and my meditation practice. (Might a sutta be thought of as a road map?) I may not always know where the practice or rehearsal process is taking me, but I know it’s taking me somewhere. I’ll know where I am when I get there.

The Buddha’s four great tasks provide another helpful way of looking at what happens in the rehearsal room. Through a process that is open, inquisitive, and hopefully non-reactive (thus keeping the ‘selfing’ at bay), the actors and I work together to understand, abandon, realize, and develop the story the playwright is trying to tell in her/his script. Again, this process involves a series of questions embedded in a physical and mental exploration of the text:

Do we understand the scene we are working on? Does what we are doing with the scene or character at this moment support the intention of the playwright? How does it feel in the body?

If it does not exemplify our understanding of the script or character, can we let it go, i.e., abandon it?

And when it does illuminate or realize something about the script or character, how can we keep and develop it into something bigger, something meaningful, something more closely aligned to the needs of the script and a production?

These specific questions are seldom voiced in the rehearsal room, but they continually underlie and animate our work together. It’s a process that, for me, reflects what happens in my meditation practice.

While for me there are many similarities between working with the mind in meditation and working with actors in the rehearsal room, there are notable differences as well. The differences, however, are negligible since both practices – my meditation practice, my theater ‘practice’ – are informed by my understanding of the dharma. ⁂

Ronn Smith lives in Cambridge, MA, USA. He can be reached by email here.

When emptiness is possible
Everything is possible;
Were emptiness impossible,
Nothing would be possible.
– Nagarjuna (from Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime by Stephen Batchelor (Riverhead, 2000)

ONLINE COURSE

Dharma and art – a whole life path

From 7 February through 17 April 2021, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies is offering the online course Dharma and art – a whole life path. Led by Gregory Kramer, Sherre DeLys and Rosalyn Driscoll, participants will explore the relationship between dharma practice and creative practice through the framework of the eightfold path.

‘I’d be really excited if we could attract artists and practitioners from around the world to this course,’ Sherre DeLys told Creative Dharma from her home in Sydney, Australia.

Aimed at people who practice the dharma in any tradition and who also engage in art making or other forms of creative practice in any discipline, participants will be offered a framework, resources and a community in which to explore their art practice in light of Gotama’s practical teachings. The intention is to help people understand these teachings in the context of their art practice.

The course will draw on the eightfold path – the fourth great task taught by Gotama, the historical Buddha, in his first discourse – as a whole life path in which every moment and experience is an opportunity for practice. The eight aspects of the path will be seen as lenses through which to explore, in an integrated way, a liberating life as well as the challenges and opportunities for transformation within creative practice.

Each week, participants will investigate one of the eight aspects of the path, initially through a video conversation between the three teachers and then in small, facilitated group gatherings with 8 to 12 participants in dharma contemplations, readings, writing, and creative production.

Participants will also get together three times during the course to learn and practice ‘Insight dialogue’, an interpersonal meditation practice that brings together meditative awareness, Gotama’s wisdom teachings and natural relatedness.

The course fee is USD $450 and applications close 1 December 2020. As this amount doesn’t include financial support for the teachers, there will be an opportunity to offer dana to the teachers at the end of the programme. ⁂

For more information and to register go to:

buddhistinquiry.org/online-programs/dharmaart

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EMBODIMENT

We begin and end in the body

By Brad Parks • Santa Barbara, California, USA • satisangha.org

At birth, we’re thrust into a world of experience which is by turns confusing, fascinating, overwhelming, and comforting. Our eyes learn to focus, examining the faces that matter so much. Our hands grasp in a spontaneous response to contact, and we observe the delight which others take in these small accomplishments. The body moves to its own demands and rhythms, and is tended to by others. Words are not yet available.

We grow and develop before we are able to recognize that we are doing so. And though we are a small individual human body with a life of its own, we are deeply and inseparably immersed in a sensory world with other beings, whose behaviour can evoke emotional responses such as fear, pleasure, anger, sadness. Sensations assail us – sights, sounds, movement – and we react without thinking.

We learn, gradually and suddenly, what to expect from the world, despite the fact that it exceeds our understanding, and is largely beyond our control. Our inner world is indelibly permeated by the outer world; we learn to play and find solace and joy in creating imaginary spaces. Such is early childhood.

The body is our centre and remains so for as long as we live. It is a persisting point of reference, the place from which we orient ourselves toward whatever is at hand. This body is always located somewhere, and at some time, even when we are remembering, dreaming or planning. Until our final conscious moments, we are confronted with the challenge of understanding and interpreting the situations in which we find ourselves, and every interpretation is a creative act.

In that task, we are guided by the language of our senses. In English, we speak of understanding as ‘seeing clearly’ or ‘grasping the meaning’ of what is before us. We are ‘touched’ when someone is kind to us. We ‘put our ear to the ground’ when we want to know what’s coming. Our thoughts, opinions and views are infused with a lifetime of sensory experience. Our inner world has its roots in human embodiment and the body speaks its mind.

From the start, we are embedded in history, in culture, in relationships, in language, in worlds within worlds. As we grow through and beyond childhood, we develop capacities for speech, reflection and action that open up new possibilities as we utilise the resources available to our particular time and place. We come to understand more fully the extent to which our thinking and behaviours are deeply embedded in gender, race and class.

As social animals, we are expressive, communicative beings to our core. We have evolved as a species in families, groups, tribes and communities whose language and values we embrace, reject, or question. While we may turn our back on our upbringing, we carry those environments in our gestures, assumptions, and unconscious reactions and judgements. And, through deep reflection, we learn to stretch beyond these fluid boundaries.

We explore the practice of meditation where an open space awaits us. What does being embodied have to do with sitting quietly and bringing awareness to the process of our ongoing experience? When I sit (or stand or walk or recline) to meditate, what are my intentions? What do I hope to accomplish, if anything? What creative choices do I make during that period of meditative presence?

For many, the goal is to achieve a state of tranquillity, spacious and somehow detached from the turbulence and ambiguity of daily life, empty of thought. Considerable effort may be applied to focusing on a single object – the breath, sensation – while choosing to let go of thoughts, which are understood as unnecessary obstacles to ‘true’ meditation.

⬆︎ Photo Anne Schmitt | earthdharma.net

From this perspective meditation is conceived as a purification of our experience so that phenomena can appear as they ‘really are’, shorn of views, ideas, hopes and fears, all of the clutter of the human condition. Meditators may aim for that perfect moment – or a series of perfect moments – of ‘now’, uncorrupted by the weight of the past or the promise of the future. This ‘now’ is supposed to offer release from suffering, the end of struggle. One hopes for a timeless, permanent respite from life’s complexities.

There is, however, another approach to meditation, a creative one which doesn’t rely on carving out and disposing so much of our embodied and embedded human experience, an approach whose direction is not purification but understanding. An open, receptive, reflective approach that includes the full range of human experience – thoughts, conflicts, confusions, emotions, habits – so that these universal elements can be acknowledged, explored and deeply known. This direct, honest recognition of who we are, and of the conditions present at any given moment, open us – paradoxically – to growing beyond our limited self-identifications.

The expectation is not that our vulnerability to suffering will be overcome and replaced with a stainless present awareness, but that we can discern between those of our inclinations and habits that are harmful or unskilful, and those that may lead to a vital, creative engagement with the world we share with other beings.

While we carry our past with us, inevitably, we can hold it in a more flexible and dynamic way by touching it with curiosity and compassion. As we move towards the future, we can improve our ability to evaluate our options in any given situation so that our speech and actions are sensitive to the complex circumstances we encounter.

There are tragic aspects of human life which we cannot transcend or escape. One of our tasks is to bring an awakened heart and mind to each encounter, cultivating an openness toward whatever presents itself. Paradoxically, by attending to our most personal human vulnerabilities with care and commitment, we can discover the resources we need to live fully, creatively and ethically. ⁂

If we understand our physical boundaries as selectively porous in ways that allow us to receive what is helpful and release what is not, the space through which we understand ourselves to move is expanded. It becomes easier to sense that groundedness of the earth and openness of the sky are qualities that move through us, not objects ‘out there’. This suggests an energetic ability to locate ourselves deep in the seat of our own physical experience, and at the same time be open to the grounding capacity of the earth beneath us.
– Anne Klein, ‘Grounding and Opening’, in Being Bodies, ed. L. Friedman and S. Moon (Second Story Press, 1998)

A THREAD

Sharing our personal narratives

As artists or dharma practitioners, or both, we grow and deepen in the dharma when we tell our stories in our own way, sharing the experiences of meditation or art-making which shape us. What role has a creative approach to the dharma played in your ongoing narrative? We invite you to draw from your experience and share your perspective on your evolving relationship with the dharma. ⁂

Post your personal narrative here:

https://creativedharma.substack.com/p/sharing-our-personal-narratives/comments

EXTRACT FROM A CONVERSATION

Is each of us a creative work in progress?

On 6 September 2020, Stephen Batchelor gave a talk to Community Meditation Center in New York City on Imagination, creativity and magic. This is one of the questions that were put to him, with his response.

◼ Question
We say we are works in progress all the time, but I don’t make the conceptual shift to seeing that as creative work. What are your views on this?

◼ Stephen Batchelor
Part of the problem here is that we tend to think of creative work as being the domain of that privileged subset of human beings called artists and writers, and so on. I remember Ananda Coomaraswami in the ’60s writing a book about the imagination. One of the things he said was that we must get out of the habit of thinking that the artist is a special kind of person, and turn that round and think of every person as being a special kind of artist.

If we think of creativity as the domain of the privileged, gifted person, then of course we’ve automatically somehow denied that we can have much of a role in it. We’re just amateurs, we just do things for fun. It also tends to suggest that creativity is about producing works of some kind that can be displayed, or listened to. But I feel that if we take to heart the Buddha’s examples of craftspeople, of animal trainers, of doctors, as the exemplars of the practitioner, then we need to think of our own practice as an art work, a creative process.

In other words, the raw materials for our art practice are our bodily sensations, our feelings, our emotions, our mind states, our thoughts, our ideas. That is the clay of our practice. That’s what we work with, that’s what we form, that’s what we mould, that’s what we create.

The process of practice is basically a creative process. Quite literally. It creates, it brings into being something new. It might take time. But the process is one which gives much greater sense to the idea of your life being a work in progress. That you can begin to think of your practice, your meditation, all of these activities that are part of the path, as a process of bringing something into being that previously wasn’t there. Bringing into being a more mindful attention to a situation, rather than a distracted one.

Each time we realise one of these values, we are as it were creating it, and if we think of the word practice itself – particularly if we use that as a translation of bhāvana – the Buddha encouraged us in the fourth of the four tasks to cultivate the path. Cultivate, bhāvana, means to bring it into being, and bring it into being is a rather clumsy way of saying ‘create’.

In other words, it’s there in the injunction of Gotama himself that each person becomes on the one hand autonomous, independent of others, and on the other goes about creating their path in life – not just copying and following what others have done over the centuries.

All of those point, I feel, to a much more explicit understanding of how our practice is a creative process. ⁂

You can listen to the complete talk plus Q&A session here:

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