4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

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selective inattention
of these artists converge at the point where the loop’s intersecting
energies meet – “between the eyes” of the loop. This Shiva-like meditative
yet burning third eye is where the hidden and the visible cross
each other. Paradoxically, the intensity of this third eye cannot be
experienced unless one’s focus is open – relaxed, inattentive – to the
whole dynamic process.
In today’s (mid-1970s) performances I see two divergent tendencies.
One is the short, intense, you-must-pay-attention kind of work
characteristic of Richard Foreman’s Sophia-Wisdom series; also the kind
of work Grotowski did from 1959 through 1968 (his poor theater
phase). These intense pieces need a silent, attentive, hard-working
audience. But another kind of theater has emerged – longer, episodic,
loosely constructed. These pieces might appear to be like Piscator’s and
Brecht’s epic theater but actually they are more like the ceremonies and
celebrations of non-western theater, or like performances in the west
that attract integral audiences. Spectators come and go, pay attention or
don’t, select what parts of the performance to follow. These habits may
be further trained by television – because the ubiquitous sets are always
turned on but often not looked at; or by the radio and phonograph
which also encourage selective inattention. In work such as Dunn’s 101
the action is minimal, the piece being essentially meditative rather than
dramatic. The use of selective inattention encourages a kind of alpharhythm
performance that evokes deep relaxation rather than tension
(see chapter 8). Or, as in the episodic pearls-on-a-string pageants of
Wilson, a long-wave rhythm stimulates dropping in, dropping out: a
different kind of meditation. The experiment I made with performer
inattention in Mother Courage only partially succeeded. We in the west
still have neither an educated audience nor performers and directors
confident enough of their work – that is, well-enough trained in both
doing and not doing – to drop in and out of a performance with ease
and skill. Perhaps someday we will learn that the full scope of performing,
like living, involves not only the push of doing but the release of
undoing, the meditation of non-doing.