Convener:
Leviathen
Participants:
Andy Saich, Nicholas McInerny, Ned Lunn, Lucy Avery, Chris Grady, Cindy Osein,
Kath Burlinson, Sam Pallis, Alan Lyddiard, Ellis Kerkhoven, Valentine Zagerie,
Sarah Sansone, Paschale Straiton
Summary of
discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:
Session started with much talk about circles and their
ancient potency and essentialness to living a fulfilling life. Safety and
comfort of circles of people. The non-hierarchal and fostering nature of
sitting in them.
Breaking of that tradition by organized religions in
to a physical focus on an authority figure by shifting people’s position to
forward facing toward an altar/authority figure.
Richard Giles is/was an architect who restructured a
church in Philadelphia into a circle.
The power and superiority of theatre in the round was
discussed.
Spirituality in theatre – when the audience comes out
feeling strongly connected to each other, that’s a spiritual experience.
However, as evidenced by the number of people who left
or quickly chose not to join our discussion, the word ‘spirit’ seems to scare
people. This could be due to the liberal, societal-norm and hence
religion-shunning nature of many people drawn to the theatre arts. What more
benign words can we use in lieu of ‘spirit’? Heart, passion, and soul were suggested.
How do we keep the Spirit alive in our drama schools
and diminish fear of the concept of spirituality?
There’s a spiritual experience in the collective
creation process of mounting a production from idea to script to casting to
staging, and then performance and viewing experience.
A negative critique of productions often uses phrases
like ‘lacks soul’ or ‘has no heart’ to describe that lack of a spiritual or
transformative or transcendental element to a production.
Quotes of the session: ‘Say yes to availability and
yes to vulnerability’
‘The only reason angels can fly is because they take
themselves lightly’
‘I
wouldn’t be a very good explorer if I didn’t get lost.’
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