Performance Cultures as Epistemic Cultures, Volume I: Regenerating Knowledges in Performance [1] 1032445696, 9781032445694

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PART I

(Re)Generating Cultural and Social Knowledges

1 BUILDING RELATIONS, ENGENDERING KNOWLEDGE Te Rēhia Theatre’s SolOthello in Toronto1 Ric Knowles

For many Indigenous peoples around the world, knowledge is not, as it often is in the West, about “discovery”—a suspect concept given the decimation of world cultures that followed the supposed discoveries by European colonizers of the Americas, “darkest Africa,” the Pacifc Islands and other “unknown” but long-inhabited parts of the world constructed by their European claimants as terra nullius.2 Nor, in my understanding, is Indigenous knowledge extractive, mined and removed from its natural and cultural contexts like gems or pearls and circulated unencumbered within a universalist economy of higher learning. Nor, indeed, is it about the production of “new” knowledges as such, but about coming to new understandings of knowledge that already exists. As Opaskwayak Cree scholar Shawn Wilson says, for Indigenous peoples, “knowledge is seen as belonging to the cosmos of which we are a part and where researchers are only the interpreters of this knowledge.”3 For peoples whose identities derive from their relationships with the entire human and nonhuman universe along a nonlinear temporal continuum—for which they are responsible as “relations”—and most immediately from the land from which they, their languages and their understanding of the world spring, “new knowledge,” insofar as it can be understood as such, comes from new and shifting “relationships” and from the telling, retelling and re-creation of stories passed on by ancestors and elders. As a non-Indigenous scholar of settler ancestry in Canada, I cannot speak for Indigenous peoples, least of all the Māori of Aotearoa (New Zealand). But as an audience member who in October 2016 attended a “M āori-centric”4 production of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello at a theater festival in Toronto—featuring work by the Latinx and Indigenous peoples of the Americas and performed before an intercultural audience of settler, “arrivant”5 and Indigenous DOI: 10.4324/9781003372837-3

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attendees—I can perhaps ask what it might mean for Indigenous people, whose identities are directly tied to their lands, to tour and perform at festivals on land that is not theirs. I can also speak about some of the ways in which I experienced the performance-into-being of new relationships at the event and what meanings these held for me. My case study is a performance of Regan Taylor’s SolOthello directed by Craig Geenty for Te Rēhia, a Māori theater company from Auckland, Aotearoa, at the Panamerican ROUTES/RUTAS Panamericanas Festival in Toronto in October 2016, hosted by the Latinx Aluna Theatre Company in collaboration with Toronto’s Indigenous Native Earth Performing Arts.6

Building relations: Indigenous knowledge production and trans-indigeneity7 For many of the Indigenous peoples of the world, including the M āori, because of their relationship with and responsibility for the land (and, particularly in the case of the Māori, the water), knowledge and identity are both constituted by relationships to the earth, water and all human and nonhuman inhabitants for which one is responsible. In asking what it might mean for Indigenous peoples, whose very identity is tied to their relationship to their land and water, to perform at festivals or other events that take place in territories that are not theirs, I am asking how such performances might function as sites for the production of new relationships, new intercultural understandings and, therefore, new ways of knowing. Most Indigenous peoples around the world share an understanding, not only of epistemology but of ontology, as relational.8 Being is not, for most Indigenous peoples, an essence but a set or “process of relationships”9: “We could not be without being in relationship with everything that surrounds us and is within us. Our reality, our ontology, is the relationships”; and “our epistemology” consists of “thinking of the world around us as a web of connections and relationships.”10 For Wilson, this leads to an axiology, or ethics of knowledge production, that is built on the concept of “relational accountability,” which consists of “respect, reciprocity, and responsibility.”11 The production of new knowledge is a process of “making visible” a new relationship, one that, as Métis scholar Cora Weber-Pillwax says, “has to respect all of the other relationships around it.” Indigenous methodology, as I understand it, “is simply the building of more relations.”12 Among those new relationships are those with others of the world’s Indigenous peoples, relationships that have come to be called “trans-Indigenous,” and these are central to my analysis insofar as my case study involves reciprocal relations at the RUTAS Festival between the M āori and their hosts and fellow guests at Aluna Theatre and Native Earth Performing Arts. In 2012, Chadwick Allen, a US-based scholar of Chickasaw ancestry, published TransIndigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies, and in a 2015 essay,

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he extended his discussion of trans-Indigeneity to theater and performance studies. The methodologies that he proposes are complex and wide-ranging, but centrally he promotes considering Indigenous work from global, in addition to exclusively (Indigenous) nation-specifc, perspectives: “The point,” he says, “is to invite specifc studies into diferent kinds of conversations, and acknowledge the mobility and multiple interactions of Indigenous peoples, cultures, histories, and texts”13 by “creating purposeful Indigenous juxtapositions,”14 employing “multiperspectivism”15 and reading across rather than through texts “‘close together placed’ rather than ‘together equal.’”16 Trans-Indigeneity crosses Indigenous nations rather than settler nation-states—a crucial distinction. Moreover, not only does trans-Indigeneity avoid the crass generalizations and reductivenesses of “pan-Indianism” but, in Allen’s development of the concept in 2015, it also includes a “third mode” of trans-Indigenous juxtapositioning that “centers on Indigenous texts and contexts, but [is] positioned among a range of ‘other’ voices, perspectives, and interpretative frames,” including non-Indigenous ones such as those involved in a festival in Toronto, the focus of which is Latinx and hemispheric.17 I am drawing on Allen’s methodology in this chapter, “close together placing” Māori cultural texts and practices with those from Turtle Island (North America), especially from the lands in and around Toronto, where the performance of Te Rēhia’s SolOthello took place.18 But I will also talk about theater artists from these contemporary Indigenous nations practicing performative, trans-Indigenous modes of juxtapositioning, encounter and exchange, building new relationships and therefore “making visible” new knowledges.

On welcomes, guests and acknowledgments “Hospitality,” as Rustom Bharucha reminded us in 2017, “is the foundation of interculturalism,”19 as it has been for cosmopolitanism from Burke to Derrida, Seyla Benhabib and others. Part of what I am concerned with in this chapter is that element of hospitality that has to do with welcoming, being welcomed and being a good guest—which includes, of course, acknowledging where you are. It is now considered good practice on Turtle Island, particularly in the northern part that is now called Canada, to begin a presentation, performance or event with a land acknowledgment, thanking the traditional, Indigenous caretakers of the lands on which the event is taking place and of the land on which the presenters live and work as either welcome or (often) unwelcome guests. I presented an early version of this chapter in Berlin in November 2017 as a guest and fellow of the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures,” as a third-generation, white, settler scholar who lives and works in what are now Toronto and Guelph, Ontario, Canada, on the traditional territories of the Attawandaron, Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. This area is governed by the Upper Canada Treaties with the British,

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most directly Treaty 13 (1805), and before that by the Dish with One Spoon Covenant, in which historic enemies, the Haudenosaunee and the Anishinaabe, agreed to take joint responsibility for the lands and waters of the Great Lakes Basin in what are now Ontario, Michigan and upper New York State.20 Most Indigenous cultures practice ceremonial protocols of welcome that serve to negotiate encounters between nations, peoples, customs, lands and languages. Māori cultures, even more than other Indigenous cultures around the world, are deeply invested in protocols, and their protocols for reciprocal welcomes to lands and territories are particularly crucial and clearly developed. Before the show came to Toronto, many of the earliest performances of SolOthello had taken place in various marae (meeting grounds) throughout Aotearoa—one early reviewer called the show a “marvellous opportunity to visit your local marae”21—where the company would have been welcomed to the space, to the wharenui (central meeting houses) and to the iwi (nation, people, tribe) through the traditional welcoming ceremony known as a pōwhiri. In Toronto, the performance was nested among several layers of welcome, in several languages. Taken together, these can be understood to be part of a process of building relations, and therefore knowledge, among the various welcoming communities and their guests. The frst, general welcome to the RUTAS Festival, which features and celebrates theater and performance by companies, including Indigenous companies, from across the Americas, was extended in English and Spanish to all festival attendees and participants by the organizers at Aluna Theatre. Secondly, every workshop, panel, performance and screening at the event was precipitated by an acknowledgment, in English and one or more Indigenous languages, of the Huron-Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabe and the Mississaugas of the New Credit as traditional caretakers of the land on which the event was held. Each event also included a welcome to the Aki Studio,22 the home of Native Earth Performing Arts, co-sponsor of the festival, Canada’s largest Indigenous theater company, and participant in an informal, trans-Indigenous network of companies and festivals, particularly play development festivals, in Canada, Australia and Aotearoa. In addition to this, the Māori were invited to the Six Nations (Haudenosaunee Confederacy) reserve, 100 kilometers to the west on the Grand River, where they would have participated in the Edge of the Woods ceremony, in which visitors, having afrmed that they come in peace, are welcomed into the acknowledged territory of the hosts through songs, speeches recognizing the hardships of the visitors’ journey and smudging ceremonies in which, through the smoke of burning sage or sweetgrass, the ears, eyes, throats, minds and hearts are opened to allow all to hear, see and speak “in a good way.” Initiating trans-Indigenous exchange, the visitors are then invited to reciprocate by ofering their own ceremonial songs, speeches and greetings.23 The Māori performer of SolOthello, Tainui Tukiwaho, told me that to be welcomed to Haudenosaunee land and hear there, for the frst time,

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some of the Indigenous languages of Turtle Island was a highlight of his visit; it served as an important basis for trans-Indigenous exchange. For the fnal welcome in this nest of welcomes, as the audience gathered in the lobby area of the Daniels Spectrum outside the theater for the performance of Te Rēhia’s SolOthello, we were welcomed by variations on a traditional pōwhiri. The ceremony, together with a roofng structure outlined in light above the stage that constituted the space as a wharenui, served to constitute the audience as manihuri (guests). In a symbolic sense, the company had brought the hearts of their home territories with them to Toronto, where we engaged in mutual hospitality. The Māori understand the marae of their iwi as tūrangawaewae—a place to stand and belong that is used by the iwi for important tribal events. A pōwhiri is a ceremony by which outsiders are welcomed to the marae. This sometimes begins with a wero, a ritual challenge in which the visitors are identifed, or constituted, as friends. But once so identifed, the manihuri, gathered in the marae ātea (courtyard), do not enter the marae until called to it by a karanga (call to enter) performed in te reo Māori (the Māori language) by the kaikaranga, women of the tangata whenua (host community). Once everyone has entered, there is a round of whaikōrero (speeches), and sometimes haka (ceremonial war dances/challenges), for which the protocol varies, at the end of which there are harirū (handshakes) and hongi—the ceremonial touching of noses that signifes the mingling together of the sacred breath of life—after which the manihuri and tangata whenua become one, and there is a sharing of food.24 For SolOthello, the pōwhiri was performed with some variations. The audience-as-manihuri were called into the space by a karanga performed by the show’s Māori producer, Amber Curreen. As we entered, we were greeted by performer Tainui Tukiwaho, who introduced himself and shook each audience member by the hand in a variation on the harirū. Once everyone—hosts and guests—was assembled in the space-as-wharenui, Tukiwaho, barefoot, wearing cargo pants, a “Maid of the Mist” tourist sweatshirt from nearby Niagara Falls, and a backward baseball cap, addressed us in a lengthy whaikōrero, delivered in te reo, followed by a “support song” in te reo about “remembering where you’re from” by two women. The only language we heard for the frst more than 12 minutes was te reo Māori, which Tukiwaho then genially translated for us, explaining the signifcance of the welcome we had received. He also identifed (as whaikōrero do) the kaupapa (purpose of the occasion), to which I will return. The welcome, the various acknowledgments and explanations, in both te reo Māori and English, took 25 minutes and also served as a kind of charismatic audience warm-up. The show itself, of course, was the feast. Why have I dwelt so long on events that happened, after all, before the presentation of the show that I had gone to see? Why have I introduced so many words in te reo Māori? A key part of what constitutes knowledge for many Indigenous peoples has to do with language and naming. As Plains Cree playwright and

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director Floyd Favel has argued, “when a native language is not spoken, an understanding of the worldview of that nation is purely theoretical.” “English,” he argues, “does not belong on this part of the world [Turtle Island]. It does not know the trees and rocks, brooks and gnomes.” It is “a foreign language which has colonized the soul’s expression.”25 Nishnaabeg 26 scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson demonstrates in her book Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back the ways in which the names of places and things in Nishnaabemowin clarify their social and cultural role, those of humans in relation to them, and how that relationship has to do with the production and circulation of ways of knowing, which include naming. Simpson’s book is in fact largely organized around explications of the derivations, associations and connections to land and cultural practices of specifc words in Nishnaabemowin that are understood to be rich with knowledge and to embody Nishnaabeg epistemologies.27 She breaks down words into the “little words” they are composed of to reveal “deeper conceptual meanings”28 that in turn conjure an entire inaadiziwin, or way of life,29 that is tied to land. A compelling example throughout the book is the multiple uses of ode, which means heart.30 The Nishnaabemowin concept of debwewin, or truth, is directly tied to odebwewein, “the sound the heart makes,”31 which in turn is directly related to the name of the river that runs through Simpson’s territory near Peterborough, Ontario: the Odenabe. Odenabe derives from odemgat (boiling water) and means “the river that beats like a heart,” referring to the boiling waters of the river’s rapids.32 Odeena means city, “the place where hearts gather”; the full moon in June is called Odemin Giizis—the moon when odeminan (heart berries, or strawberries) are ripe—and odeminan, which are radicants (plants whose roots are networked, horizontally and above ground) “serve as a reminder of the importance of working in a good [that is, peaceful, cooperative and truthful] way.”33 The language, then, like the land and everything that lives on it, is a teacher, and Simpson is careful throughout the book to cite not only the names of the elders and language holders who have taught her the fullest meanings of the words she organizes the book around, but also the dates and places where they delivered those teachings (because all teachings are tied to time and place). She carefully “ground check[s]” with language keepers the meanings she derives from scholars and dictionaries. 34 “There is,” as she says, “a set of processes, values, and philosophies embedded in our language and culture,”35 and “meaning,” for the Nishnaabeg, “comes from the performance of our culture.”36 On the other side of the world, the Māori are acutely conscious of this relationship between language, land and worldview; indeed, a key part of the published mandate of Te Rēhia is “to honour, revitalize, and transmit te reo Maori [the Māori language and, therefore, Māori worldviews] through theatre to Aotearoa and the world.”37 My reason for dwelling on the series of welcomes and introducing so many Māori terms, then, is frst and foremost to support the company’s mandate. Ethical Indigenous research, as Māori

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scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith was among the frst to argue, is mandated to serve the interests of the community with which it engages, and researchers are understood to be accountable to that community and their relationships with it. But my use of te reo Māori, which I do not speak, is also an attempt to respect the rich cultural resonances of words that translation into English loses. 38 To translate iwi simply as “tribe,” for example, carries with it in English a suggestion of primitivism rather than the strength and embodiment that is conjured by the Māori word, which also means “bone,” or its association with territory. Ariki, translated as “master,” “lord” or “aristocrat,” again loses its association with land and, more importantly, stewardship (of land and iwi). One of my favorite Māori words, whakapapa, is generally translated as “lineage,” but the English word tends to look forward, to imply (patri)lineal descent, and to conjure specifc kinds of responsibility to property and family name, while the Māori word looks both backward and forward, has more to do with the responsibility to one’s iwi and ancestors, broadly understood, and has a connection to both land and kinship status. The English word, moreover, in its Latinate roots and rarifed overtones, is considerably more anal than the rough and ready whakapapa, which, when spoken, has a very diferent taste in the mouth. The reason that I have dwelt at such length on the nest of welcomes at the performance, however, is the pivotal importance of welcoming, and not simply as courtesy. Stó:lō scholar Dylan Robinson, from the Fraser Valley on the west coast of what is now Canada, has recently made the simple but brilliant point that a welcome is also and always a declaration of sovereignty. I am using “sovereignty” as it is understood by many Indigenous scholars to mean more than Western legal defnitions,39 which have to do with property, legal documents, ownership and power over others, as opposed, for example, to “self-government,” broadly understood to include self-determination, control over one’s own culture, “spheres of autonomy,”40 “a regime of respect”41 and what the Māori call mana, one meaning of which is “one’s standing in one’s own eyes.”42 The Māori term tino rangatiratanga, which resists precise translation, encompasses most of these concepts. The welcoming ceremonies that I have been describing, like most “Indigenous protocols of welcome,” Robinson points out, “remind guests that they are guests.”43 To exchange knowledge about and through the protocols involves, in each new space, knowing how to be a good guest: To welcome presumes the authority and right to determine the proceedings that occur within the space. We welcome people into our homes, onto Indigenous lands, into countries, and to events we have organized. To welcome guests into each of these places is, to varying degrees, to signal sovereign control over the rules of the space and the authority under which such rules are enforced.44

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Welcomes, then, not only serve as entry points to a new territory but to new ways of being and knowing that bring about new awarenesses and new accountabilities. “How,” Robinson asks his settler readers in Canada such as myself, “are you accountable for the welcome you have overstayed.”45

Adapting (to) Shakespeare This question, I believe, underlies the kaupapa, or purpose of the occasion, that Tainui Tukiwaho’s address identifed, genially and humorously, immediately after his opening whaikōrero and before proceeding to his performance of what his settler audiences might have considered to be the “play proper” (but that for the Māori and their Indigenous guests was an essential element). Issuing what might be understood to be a displaced wero (or challenge to the visitors, particularly those for whom Shakespeare has been a sign of high culture), “Shakespeare,” he said bluntly, “was a thief.” Students of Shakespeare with some knowledge of his treatment of his source materials know this. Residents of Canada, particularly Anglophone Canada, also know that “Shakespeare”— as one of the cultural technologies of colonization—has in many ways outstayed his welcome throughout the now English-speaking world, including both Canada and Aotearoa. Playfully juxtaposing diferent knowledge systems (including a diferent understanding of sources and citations), Tukiwaho went on to deliver a very funny travel narrative of exactly how it came about that the Māori stories, that it was apparent to him had provided the plots for Shakespeare’s plays, arrived in early modern Europe (including Shakespeare’s England and Giraldi Cinthio’s Italy—Cinthio’s Hecatommithi being generally understood to be the primary source for Othello). He invited the audience to name any Shakespeare play (except the history plays), and when they mentioned several, he wittily demonstrated their supposed roots in Māori storytelling—or, more often, comically sidestepped the issue. Finally, he introduced the solo production that followed by telling the “actual” (Māori) “source” story for Othello as passed down through his “great-great-great-great-great-great-great … great-grandfather,” demonstrating wittily how Shakespeare derived the names of the characters (which were “clearly” Māori), pointing out the derivations of the plot in traditional Māori storytelling and occasionally commenting, “coincidence? I think not!” The last word of the show at the RUTAS Festival in Toronto, following Othello’s suicide, was “coincidence?” What Tukiwaho comically drew attention to, then, was the essentially and deeply inter-imbricated, interwoven character of diferent cultural systems. Interweaving a multiplicity of divergent discourses, the show that followed was truly carnivalesque, as the solo actor-as-Māori-storyteller embodied, in Mikhail Bakhtin’s words, “a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices.”46 The show employs several diferent spoken “voices”: (1) the original Shakespearean verse and prose; (2) te

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reo Māori; (3) something the company’s website calls “a quintessential colloquial Māori male voice”47 but that one reviewer in Aotearoa refers to as “Kiwi bloke”;48 and (4) the seemingly unmediated, often metatheatrical voice of the performer as performer (at one point in the Toronto performance, he broke out of character and commented, “I probably say a rhyming couplet here and then walk of, because it’s Shakespeare”). Sometimes these voices were relatively discrete, as when passages from Shakespeare were unaltered, and others were spoken in te reo Māori, referencing or invoking Māori customs, protocols and worldviews. Othello’s very frst speech to Desdemona and then to Iago on Othello’s wedding night was entirely in te reo Māori.49 He addressed the Ariki (“powerful people”—in Shakespeare, the Duke and the Senators) in formal te reo: “Most potent, grave, and reverend Ariki, tena koutou katoa, nga mihi mihi nui kia koutou” (Lords, all praise and gratulations to you). Elsewhere Cassio and Desdemona exchanged a hongi (touched noses) when they met in the unnamed port that in Shakespeare is Cyprus, giving credence to Iago’s plots. Iago and Othello performed a haka to psych themselves up before the fnal, tragic night in the same way that Aotearoa’s rugby team, the All Blacks, famously do before a match. Desdemona delivered her karanga to welcome Lodovico, accompanied by Othello’s whaikōrero: “Nga mihi nui kia koe, rangitara Lodovico. Nau mai, Haere mai” (Greetings to you, noble Lodovico. Welcome back), together echoing the opening pōwhiri, but this time as what J. L. Austin might call an “infelicitous performative,”50 since the tangata whenua is in disarray and the feast is one of death and disintegration. Elsewhere there were untranslated, if abridged, canonical passages from Shakespeare, conjuring the values and knowledge systems of early modern England. But most often these diferent “voices,” or discourses, are not confned to individual characters or speeches but constantly disrupt and denaturalize one another, producing much of the play’s humor as well as its disruptive qualities as the epistemologies each participates in are yoked together, often roughly. Iago’s “put money in thy purse”51 became “fll your kete”52 (kit, or basket, a term frequently used in relation to the three baskets of ancestral knowledge), and his “The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as acerb as the coloquintida”53 became, equally evocatively if more concisely, “tastes that are now to him like fresh pupi [a kind of shellfsh] will soon be like roadside puhu [thistles].” Elsewhere Othello told Cassio, “korero ki Iago, he’s honest. Me korero taua apopo ne? Kia ora”54 (tell Iago, he’s honest. We’ll talk tomorrow. ’Bye), a formulation that productively denaturalizes crosscultural understandings of a seemingly untranslatable English “honesty.” In murdering Desdemona, Othello threw away “a taonga richer than all his tribe.”55 Taonga can be translated simply as treasure, property or prized possession, fueling any potential feminist critique—as I discuss below—but it is also used in relation to prized ceremonial practices such as the haka, or to resources such as water. Sometimes crude colloquialisms exploded from Iago’s mouth:

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“your patu [weapon—phallic]’s too small,”56 he insulted Roderigo at one point; “you’ve got some balls now,” he said approvingly at another;57 Roderigo asserted that he would “surely drown in my tears and my mimi [piss]”58 if he lost Desdemona; Othello was referred to, among other things, as “old black balls.”59 Startlingly, Iago warned “Matua Brobontio [sic]” (Father Brobontio) that if his daughter had children by Othello, “your whakapapa will be fucked up!”60 —a line that has its own poetry in the play of its consonants while it also articulates a complex and uniquely Māori threat, as my parsing of the word whakapapa, above, suggests. As disruptive as this discursive polyphony was the show’s time scheme, and its destabilizing deployment of anachronisms. It is not uncommon for storytellers in various Indigenous nations to collapse historical events and periods within a single timeframe, thus refecting Indigenous understandings of time and resisting Western teleologies. According to the program for SolOthello, the story was placed “into the context of a war between tribes in pre-colonial New Zealand,”61 while the Te Rēhia company’s website says that the story “is transposed onto a battle between two far-fung iwi in a timeless Aotearoa.”62 But there was much to complicate this: Roderigo, for example, explained his prohibited presence to Brobontio by claiming “I was just doing the recycling.”63 There were of hand references to the Karate Kid,64 to Iago’s wisdom teeth acting up the night he shared a bed with Cassio65 and to Speedy Gonzales/Travis Porter (“Andale! Andale!”). At one point, Iago described how Cassio arrived drunk and “started making trouble in the neighborhood,” a pop culture reference to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. In Toronto, Iago told Roderigo to go to Tim’s for a double-double—“Tim’s” referring to Tim Hortons, a popular Canadian donut chain, and “double-double” to the questionable habit among some Canadians of lacing their already insipid cofee with double doses of both cream and sugar. There were also more serious references to postcontact colonial relations, as when we heard that Othello’s mother was given the strawberry-spotted handkerchief by a pākehā (New Zealander of European ancestry) or when Iago cited his military credentials as having fought at Taranaki, situating him frmly on the side of the colonizers.66 But if the show moved fuidly across time, from precontact through the colonial period to the present, the setting, as one reviewer noted, “places Othello’s roots frmly in Te Ao Maori [the Māori world].”67 For Western, settler viewers such as myself, the use of what we might think of as anachronism and the disruption of developmental teleologies opened a window onto ways of knowing in which reductive and racist notions of supposed cultural purity and authenticity that confne Indigenous cultures to a premodern past do not exist, and the relationships that constitute knowledge and identity (epistemology and ontology) extend across time as well as space. SolOthello is “poor theatre”68 in Jerzy Grotowski’s sense: it is performed by one actor on a bare stage using only a single rectangular crate, a sheet of cream calico, and three masks—in Aotearoa (but not Toronto, presumably for fnancial

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reasons), to the accompaniment of music performed live by Rob Thorne on traditional Māori instruments. The crate is used for sound efects; for hiding, storing and screening things; and to stand on, while the sheet—slashed with blood on Desdemona’s wedding night and on the occasions of fghts and murders, or spotted with strawberries elsewhere—doubles as a bed sheet, robe, curtain of concealment, screen for a shadow-play battle, handkerchief and, fnally, winding cloth. The masks, to be discussed in more detail below, were crucial. The play’s solo actor—originally its writer/performer Regan Taylor, but in Toronto the charismatic Tainui Tukiwaho—embodies four roles: Othello, Iago, Desdemona and, perhaps surprisingly for a Western audience, Roderigo, a character who does not appear in Shakespeare’s acknowledged source, Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, and one that, as Frank Kermode argues, is “dispensible [sic]; he serves no real purpose except to keep Iago in funds.”69 He was, however, central in SolOthello as an engine of the plot and as a debased representative of the “quintessential colloquial Māori male voice.” Other characters—Cassio, Brobontio, Lodovico and even Bianca—are addressed, though not embodied, but Emilia, again surprisingly for a Western audience because of her key role in the plot, if nothing else, is only briefy referenced as Iago’s wife, but never by name. The action, however, tends to be driven by and seen through the eyes of Iago, arguably a syncretic confation (or interweaving) of the Elizabethan “vice” fgure with the Māori trickster fgure, Maui-tikitiki-a Taranga.70 If the language of the piece was quintessentially dialogic, interweaving te reo Māori with Shakespearean and contemporary English, the presentation of the characters through the use of performance masks was a theatrically syncretic blend of Māori and European traditions. The Māori have no tradition of using masks in performance, but Māori designer Tristan Marler specially invented what the company calls Te Mata Kokako o Rēhia (performance masks based on Māori traditions), combining designs based on three sources: koruru, mask-like wood carvings of the faces of ancestors traditionally situated on the gables at the entrance to the marae; tā moko (traditional face markings); and commedia dell’arte half-masks. Masks are, of course, basic tools of Western actor training, and it was in his own training at the Universal College of Learning on Aotearoa’s North Island that Regan Taylor frst encountered mask work and became fascinated with the use of masks in commedia (to the point that SolOthello’s script, in a stage direction, refers to “lazzi,” 71 stock comic turns used in commedia). Having completed his training, specializing in physical theater and performance masks, and wanting to work in te reo and within Māori forms and traditions, he began to wonder, “what if these masks spoke te reo?” 72 This led him to the koruru, carved wooden faces that traditionally serve as guardians of the marae and, again, combine to both challenge and welcome guests, asserting sovereignty on both counts. Taylor began to wonder, “what if the walls of our wharenui came to life and began to speak to us?” 73 He then commissioned Marler to create for the

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company the masks that shape so much of the aesthetic of SolOthello and that use a Western performance form to give voice to and circulate, through performance, traditional Māori cultural texts. Taylor says, We have done a lot of training in commedia, [… but] it’s trying to get away from that style and trying to fnd a new codifcation for these masks. They can work in commedia but once they are layered with te reo and they are doing kapa haka [traditional Māori performing arts]-style movements then I think they come more alive. I think that is the language these masks speak in. The heart and the knuckle of this work comes [sic] from trying to discover how these masks operate more in a Maori kaupapa.74 For Taylor, then, interweaving of foundational Western performance traditions with Māori cultural forms produced, activated and circulated newly energized ways of knowing. But if the use of the masks was inspired by commedia and their shape by the koruru, their design and much of their signifcance derived from tā moko, permanent face markings that indicate a male’s whakapapa and position him within the iwi. Tā moko, adorning Māori bodies and faces, are similar to tattoos elsewhere, but they are traditionally made by scoring the skin with uhi (bone chisels), and they leave the skin with grooves rather than puncturing it. Moko is not merely decorative; it is considered sacred practice and requires a process of genealogical tracings and community consent before it can be undertaken. Again, what non-Māori audiences in Toronto were being exposed to through the use of these masks were ways of knowing that involved acknowledging sacred relationships and responsibilities that extend over time and space to all creation, from koruru to commedia and (simultaneously) from the ancestors to the imminent. The masks are beautiful and they were used fuidly by the performer, often (unlike in commedia or most mask traditions) holding one in each hand, switching characters, deftly inhabiting new bodies by simply holding one mask after the other before the face, elsewhere looping a strap over the head to free the hands for expressive gestural vocabulary. Iago’s and Roderigo’s were the half-masks inspired by commedia, which leave the mouth area open for clear speech, while representing recognizable stock characters or “types” in largely improvised performances based on set scenarios. And indeed Roderigo was to a considerable extent such a type, a foolish innamorato, while the performance of the trickster/villain, Iago, was the most improvisational in the show and the funniest. The Roderigo and Iago masks were similar to one another in design, perhaps indicating that they were from the same iwi, as Iago assures us, but Roderigo’s was more densely chiseled, suggesting his higher social standing. The Desdemona mask, however, was distinctive: it was a full-face mask, the

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moko only on the chin and lips, as in traditional Māori practice for women. This also meant that Desdemona had no voice, though she communicated through expressive movement and gesture, including wiri (a hand-shaking gesture) and mahi a ringa, which Regan Taylor says is “Maori waiata” (Māori folk music)—a diferent kind of stylization—and was evocatively “voiced” in Aotearoa by musician Rob Thorne on taonga pūoro (traditional Māori musical instruments), particularly the haunting Māori wooden fute, and in Toronto by the performer’s upper register in a distinctive melodic leitmotif that was identifed with the character, as in Wagner. Her not speaking, however, combined with the almost total erasure of Shakespeare’s voluble Emilia, was problematic for many reviewers in Aotearoa and invited feminist critique familiar to students of Shakespeare’s play (of which more below). Othello, together with the performer himself in largely improvised asides and metatheatrical “outtakes,” was not masked and was thereby marked as an outsider. At one point, Othello addressed both Iago and Roderigo speaking simply to their masks, again breaking with commedia practice. In spite of Othello’s speaking more extended passages in formal te reo Māori, and more in unadulterated Shakespearean verse than the other characters, he was also played more naturalistically, with what one reviewer calls “mana and majesty,” 75 and he thereby evoked a more sympathetic, and more serious, response from the audience. SolOthello is virtually unique among contemporary adaptations of Othello in that it mounts no critique of Shakespeare’s play based on its representation of either gender or race. Many recent adaptations, such as Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet, have implicitly or explicitly critiqued their Shakespearean source as racist; others, such as Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) have mounted a similar critique on feminist grounds. But SolOthello was itself subject to feminist critique similar to critiques of the quiescence of Desdemona in Othello itself, critiques that were exacerbated by the erasure of Emilia.76 One reviewer in Aotearoa, however, saw the “tender” portrayal of Othello as commenting on the complexity of contemporary domestic violence;77 another felt that Desdemona’s silence functioned as a commentary on the silencing of women in a male-dominated world;78 and yet another found “wife-beater Othello” to be “a more despicable villain than Iago,” and the play a critique of “a culture which prioritizes bromance and male honour over the rights of women.” 79 In Toronto, perhaps in response to such reviews of performances in Aotearoa, Tukiwaho paused after Iago referred to the “whore named Bianca,” took of his mask and said, in his own voice, to cheers and laughter from the audience, Now, this … is a place where [the story I grew up with] deviates from Shakespeare, because, in my culture, we don’t have “whores.” We have respectable women who can make decisions about sexual activity without being judged.

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Tukiwaho, that is, redirected feminist critique of the show toward the misogyny of the colonizing culture. The show’s representation of race, and racism, was more complicated. Although performed without a mask by Taylor (originally) or Tukiwaho (in Toronto), both legibly Māori, Othello was nevertheless clearly referred to by Roderigo as “that black, black man” with “sooty hands,” and by Iago as “an old black ram,” a “barbary horse” and “old black balls.” By Iago and others, he was called, as in Shakespeare, “the Moor”—which a reviewer of a performance in Aotearoa says “is a transfguration of local legend ‘Te Moa’” 80 —a “dark” fgure, a huge, fightless bird, now extinct, again producing a kind of intercultural syncretism. But given the play’s complex setting simultaneously in precontact, colonial and contemporary Aotearoa, it is unclear what the precise geographical, racial or other signifcation of “the Moor,” or “te Moa,” was, or what exactly the issue is around skin color in the show. Iago was clearly racist—or perhaps “shadist”—and used all of Shakespeare’s animal imagery and more to imagine and describe the sexual relationship and potential ofspring of Othello and Desdemona (who was herself described as “that white lady,” an epithet not necessary in Shakespeare, where all but Othello are presumed to be white). For, unlike in Shakespeare, Desdemona here was the only character in the play referred to as “white,” except perhaps for the pākehā who gave Othello’s mother the strawberry-spotted handkerchief. At the same time, however, she was, like the rest of the cast, clearly Māori, singing “her karanga” to welcome Lodovico, greeting Cassio with a hongi, and wearing the moko of Māori women on her lips and chin. Is this, then, about “shadism” among the Māori, where the “white lady” is described as an “angel” and the black man demonized? Or is it simply about Othello’s being an outsider and Desdemona’s being conventionally “fair” (that is, beautiful) with, as in Shakespeare, “that whiter skin of hers than snow” 81—a line left intact? At the RUTAS Festival, Tukiwaho “explained” that, in the supposed Māori source story, Desdemona was uniquely fair-skinned and Othello from another tribe, while Iago simply hated the idea of mixing blood between iwis. The play’s author says that he initially wanted to reverse the race theme and look at a pākehā Othello in a Māori society but ultimately decided to make Othello a Māori character who has entered another iwi. “This,” Taylor says, “created a very maori-centric show.”82 Unlike almost all later-day adaptations of Othello, race, as such, was not foregrounded or explored in depth in SolOthello. Othello himself did not sound any more or less “exotic” than any other character, and the question of skin color only seemed to matter to Iago as an excuse, and perhaps to Brobontio, though we never hear him speak to confrm that assumption. If the production did not stage a revisionist take on Shakespeare’s Othello from the points of view of race and gender, what then was this adaptation about? What cultural work did it perform? How did it function as an adaptation of

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Shakespeare? I have observed elsewhere that “as a verb, ‘adapt’ can be transitive or intransitive: you can adapt something, or you can adapt to something—or you can engage in adaptation (the process) as a way of both adapting and adapting to.”83 I would argue that the latter is what SolOthello did in Toronto. As the Indigenous hosts of the colonizing Europeans for whom “Shakespeare” has been a cultural and colonizing agent, the Te Rēhia Theatre company, themselves hosted in Toronto by the peoples of the Dish with One Spoon wampum, were adapting to Shakespeare, and to his seeming inevitability: he has perhaps outstayed his welcome in both Aotearoa and Toronto, but he does not appear to be going away anytime soon. Indigenous peoples, and others, might as well fnd ways of using Shakespeare, and appropriating his cultural authority, for their own rather than the colonizers’ purposes. With SolOthello, this Māori theater company is welcoming and using Shakespeare, with considerable grace and humor, to speak to their own culture and to Indigenous cultures around the world (including Toronto) in much the same way that Shakespeare used his own sources to speak to his audiences in early modern England. And throughout the show, within Native Earth Performing Arts’ Aki Studio, the roof-line of the marae into which we had been welcomed at the outset hovered above the performance space, silently declaring sovereignty.

Conclusion What fnally does it mean for Indigenous peoples to perform an adaptation of Shakespeare at a festival in a land that is not theirs? How can contemporary Indigenous theater productively perform trans-Indigeneity? Nishinaabeg scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, citing Gerald Vizenor’s (also Anishinaabe) concept of “transmotion,”84 talks about continuities between traditional and contemporary patterns of circulation, territory, identity and sovereignty through an emphasis on Indigenous patterns of circulation in space. Simpson writes, “[i] n the precolonial daily life of Nishnaabeg people, movement, change and fuidity were a reality”85 —neither, as in many Western theorizations, a metaphor nor a choice. Many Indigenous peoples’ understandings of territory, moreover, are defned not by physical borders but by language, philosophy, way of life and political structure, while territorial “boundaries” constitute relationships and institute negotiations. Indigenous knowledge consists of understanding one’s relationships with the world; new knowledge involves new and evolving relationships. Simpson argues that the circulations of traditional Anishinaabe did not consist of wandering or moving from place to place, but of moving outward from a territorial center, not to a border but to a place of encounter, “where one needs to practice good relations with neighboring nations.”86 To perform at a festival, then—particularly one hosted by other Indigenous peoples—is to travel to a trans-Indigenous place of encounter to institute negotiations through

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reciprocal protocols of welcome that mutually acknowledge and declare sovereignty, and to institute new relationships that constitute new knowledges.

Notes 1 I want to acknowledge the help of Regan Taylor, Amber Curreen, Tainui Tukiwaho and Te Rēhia Theatre in the preparation of this chapter and thank them for their permission to publish it. 2 “Terra nullius,” meaning unoccupied or unowned land, was a basic belief that allowed colonial powers to “claim” those territories and their resources that they deemed to belong to no one because the peoples (and animals) inhabiting them were nomadic, or “unsettled.” All of Australia was declared “terra nullius” by Captain James Cook in 1770 and this was not legally challenged until the late 1970s. The terra nullius doctrine was fnally overturned in 1996. 3 Shawn Wilson, Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods (Halifax: Fernwood, 2008), 38. 4 Regan Taylor, email message to author, 19 January 2017. 5 “Arrivant” is Chickasaw scholar Jodi Byrd’s coinage, referring to non-Indigenous people who live in Indigenous territories but share the experience of racialization and colonization; see Jodi A. Byrd, The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2011). 6 As an urban theater company with a pan-Canadian mandate, Native Earth serves artists and audiences from a wide range of Indigenous nations and cultures. 7 If it were not for the awkwardness involved, every sentence in what follows would be prefaced by “in my understanding.” In this section, as throughout this chapter, I can ofer only my limited interpretation, as a white settler scholar, of what I have learned from Indigenous colleagues, artists and scholars as a way to contextualize my discussion of SolOthello as an attempt at trans-Indigeneity. But what I somewhat reductively summarize applies diferently to each Indigenous nation and, in Aotearoa, to each iwi (tribe), hapū (clan, descent group) or even whānau (extended family). 8 Wilson, Research Is Ceremony, 56; see also Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1999). 9 Wilson, Research Is Ceremony, 73. 10 Métis scholar Cora Weber-Pillwax, quoted in Wilson, Research Is Ceremony, 76–77; italics in the original. 11 Weber-Pillwax, quoted in ibid., 77. 12 Ibid., 79. 13 Chadwick Allen, Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), xiv. 14 Ibid., xviii; italics in the original. 15 Ibid., xxii. 16 Ibid., xxviii; italics in the original. 17 Chadwick Allen, “Performing Serpent Mound: A Trans-Indigenous Meditation,” Theatre Journal 67, no. 3 (October 2015): 411. 18 Guided by Pauline Wakeham’s analysis, I am trying, as a settler scholar, to draw the principles of this juxtapositioning from the Indigenous cultural texts and from the reciprocity of the welcoming practices themselves and to avoid imposing points of contact that may be of my own imagining; see Pauline Wakeham, “Beyond Comparison: Reading Relations between Indigenous Nations,” Canadian Literature 230/231 (Autumn/Winter 2016): 124–42.

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19 Rustom Bharucha, “Hospitality Is the Foundation of Interculturalism,” Textures, 24 July 2017. http://www.textures-platform.com/?p=4776. 20 For a good interpretation of the Dish with One Spoon Covenant, or Gdoonaaganinaa, and its contemporary relevance, see Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring, 2011), 112–14. 21 Paul Simei-Barton, “Review: Bard Lives in Maori Take on Othello,” New Zealand Herald, 10 July 2016. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm ?c_id=1501119&objectid=11672009. 22 Aki means earth, land or place in Anishinaabemowin (the language of the Anishinaabe peoples). 23 My account of the Edge of the Woods ceremony derives in part from my participation at the opening ceremony of the Living Ritual International Indigenous Performing Arts Festival organized by the Kaha:wi Dance Theatre at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre on 25 July 2017. 24 My account of the pōwhiri derives in part from instructions given to me by Rangimoana Taylor in helping me to prepare a whaikōrero bringing greetings from the international manihuri to the opening pōwhiri of the ADSA (Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies) conference at the Tapu Te Ranga Marae in Wellington, Aotearoa on 26 June 2014. Rangimoana Taylor is a senior Māori theater director. He served as Kaumatua (cultural advisor) for the conference. 25 Floyd Favel, “Theatre of Orphans/Native Languages on Stage.” in Aboriginal Drama and Theatre, ed. Rob Appleford (Toronto: Playwrights Canada, 2005), 32. 26 Simpson identifes as Nishnaabeg, translated as “the people,” which is elsewhere spelled and pronounced diferently—as Nishinaabeg, Anishinaabeg, Anishinaabek and Anishinabek—and refers to peoples elsewhere called Ojibway or Chippewa. She uses the eastern Ontario dialect of Nishnaabemowin (or Anishinaabemowin, the Ojibwe language); see Simpson, Dancing, 25–26. 27 I focus here on individual words, but the grammars of Indigenous languages also difer from European ones. While English and other Western languages tend to rely on a structure of subjects doing things to objects and on the relegation of events to the past, many Indigenous languages, including Nishnaabemowin, use “verbs to a far greater extent than nouns” (ibid., 89) and are “constituted as verbs on the move” (Nishnaabe/Dakota scholar Scott Lyons, quoted in ibid., 92). And this, in turn, is related to the fact that “Nishnaabeg thought comes from the land and therefore, it embodies emergence” (ibid., 91). 28 Ibid., 49, 149. 29 Ibid., 142. 30 Ibid., 59. 31 Ibid., 17, 59. 32 Ibid., 94. 33 Ibid., 95. 34 Ibid., 10. 35 Ibid., 53. 36 James [Sákéj] Youngblood Henderson, quoted in ibid., 42. 37 “Te Rēhia Theatre,” The Big Idea, accessed 23 February 2022. https://www.thebigidea.nz/profle/te-rē hia-theatre. 38 I have no immediate or ongoing access to M āori language holders and rely in this section and elsewhere in this chapter on the very helpful online M āori dictionary; see English-Māori Dictionary and Index. https://maoridictionary.co.nz. 39 Arguing in 2002 that “the challenge for indigenous peoples in building appropriate postcolonial governing systems is to disconnect the notion of sovereignty from its Western, legal roots and to transform it,” Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) scholar

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43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

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Taiaiake Alfred provides a history and critique of “state sovereignty” as applied to the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island; see Taiaiake Alfred, “Sovereignty,” In A Companion to American Indian History, ed. Philip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury (Malden: Blackwell, 2002), 468. For other Indigenous scholars on sovereignty, see S. James Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), concerning the Apache and the Purépecha; Jolene Rickard, “Visualizing Sovereignty in the Time of Biometric Sensors,” South Atlantic Quarterly 110, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 465–86, concerning the Tuscarora. On the “doing,” “reading” (or interpreting) and experiencing of sovereignty as a practice, see Dylan Robinson, “Public Writing, Sovereign Reading: Indigenous Language Art in Public Space,” Art Journal 76, no. 2 (2017): 85–99; “Welcoming Sovereignty,” in Performing Indigeneity, ed. Yvette Nolan and Ric Knowles (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2016), 5–32. Robinson argues that “sovereignty is not held within documents/objects but instead within ‘doing’” (“Welcoming,” 6): “sovereignty is not a thing, but an action” (“Public Writing,” 85). Anaya, Indigenous Peoples, 79. Alfred, “Sovereignty,” 471. I am indebted to Māori Canadian theater artist David Geary for this interpretation of a word and concept that might otherwise be reductively rendered in English as “self-respect.” The online Māori dictionary indicates, among other things, that mana is “a supernatural force in a person, place or object,” and that it includes “an element of stewardship” when it is used in relation to resources such as land or water; see English-Māori Dictionary and Index, s.v. “mana,” accessed 11 June 2021. https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?idiom=&phrase=&proverb=&loan=&histLoanWords=&keywords=mana. Robinson, “Welcoming,” 16. Ibid. Ibid., 30; italics added. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 6; italics in the original. “SolOthello,” Te Rēhia Theatre, accessed 11 June 2021. https://terehiatheatre.com/ solothello. Ewen Coleman, “Theatre Review: solOthello,” Dominion Post, 16 June 2016. https:// www.stuf.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/81124908/theatre-review-solothello. Regan Taylor, “SolOthello” (unpublished playscript), 3. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed., ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 22–24. William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice,” in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1974), 1.3.339–40. References are to act, scene and line. Taylor, “SolOthello,” 5. Shakespeare, Othello, 1.3.347–49. Taylor, “SolOthello,” 8. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 2. “SOLOTHELLO,” Aluna Theatre, 6 October 2016. https://www.alunatheatre.ca/ festival/rutas-2016/solothello. “SolOthello,” Te Rēhia Theatre. Taylor, “SolOthello,” 2. Ibid., 4.

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65 Ibid., 14. 66 Taranaki presumably refers to the 1500 colonial armed constabulary and volunteers crushing the Māori passive resistance to enforced land divisions in Parihaka, Taranaki, on 5 November 1881, led by Te Whiti o Rongomai, the Māori leader who was an inspiration for Gandhi’s passive resistance. “Te Whiti,” New Zealand History, accessed 23 February 2022. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/erueti-te-whiti-o-rongomai-iii. 67 Lori Leigh, “Enjoyable and Enriching,” Theatreview, 16 June 2016. https://www .theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=9319. 68 See Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968). 69 Frank Kermode, “Othello, the Moor of Venice,” in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1974), 1201. 70 See Simei-Barton, “Bard Lives.” 71 Taylor, “SolOthello,” 6. 72 “SolOTHELLO,” Sharu Loves Hats, accessed 23 February 2022. https://sharuloveshats.com/solothello. 73 Ibid. 74 “Shakespeare with a Maori Spin,” Manawatu Standard, 30 July 2015. https://www .stuf.co.nz/manawatu-standard/lifestyle/70667550/shakespeare-with-a-maori -spin. Italics added. 75 Coleman, “Theatre Review: solOthello.” 76 See Leigh, “Enjoyable and Enriching”; Angela Sun, “Review: SOLOTHELLO (RUTAS PANAMERICANAS 2016),” Mooney on Theatre, 8 October 2016. https:// www.mooneyontheatre.com/2016/10/08/review-solothello-rutas-panamericanas -2016. 77 Courtney Rose Brown, “SolOTHELLO,” Art Murmurs, 18 June 2016. http://www .artmurmurs.nz/theatre/solothello. 78 “Shakespeare with a Maori Spin,” Manawatu Standard. 79 Janet McAllister, “Corrosively Cosy,” Metro, 4 January 2016. https://www.metroeats.co.nz/society/society-crime/corrosively-cosy. 80 Lori Leigh, “Enjoyable and Enriching,” Theatreview, 16 June 2016. https://www .theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=9319. 81 Shakespeare, Othello, 5.2.4; Taylor, “SolOthello,” 22. 82 Taylor, email message, 19 January 2017. 83 Ric Knowles, “Adapting to Shakespeare,” in The Shakespeare’s Mine: Adapting Shakespeare in Anglophone Canada, ed. Ric Knowles (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2009), vi; italics in the original. 84 See Gerald Vizenor, Fugitive Poses: Native American Scenes of Absence and Presence (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998). 85 Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back, 89. 86 Ibid.

Bibliography Alfred, Taiaiake. “Sovereignty.” In A Companion to American Indian History, edited by Philip J. Deloria, and Neal Salisbury, 460–74. Malden: Blackwell, 2002. Allen, Chadwick. “Performing Serpent Mound: A Trans-Indigenous Meditation.” Theatre Journal 67, no. 3 (October 2015): 391–411. ———. Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Aluna Theatre. “SOLOTHELLO.” 6 October 2016. https://www.alunatheatre.ca/ festival/rutas-2016/solothello. Anaya, S. James. Indigenous Peoples in International Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

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Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed. Edited by J. O. Urmson, and Marina Sbisà. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Bharucha, Rustom. “Hospitality Is the Foundation of Interculturalism.” Textures, 24 July 2017. http://www.textures-platform.com/?p=4776. Brown, Courtney Rose. “SOLOTHELLO.” Art Murmurs, 18 June 2016. http://www .artmurmurs.nz/theatre/solothello. Byrd, Jodi A. The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2011. Coleman, Ewen. “Theatre Review: solOthello.” Dominion Post, 16 June 2016. https:// www.stuf.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/81124908/theatre-review-solothello. Favel, Floyd. “Theatre of Orphans/Native Languages on Stage.” In Aboriginal Drama and Theatre, edited by Rob Appleford, 32–36. Toronto: Playwrights Canada, 2005. Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968. Kermode, Frank. “Othello, the Moor of Venice.” In The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans, 1198–202. Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1974. Knowles, Ric. “Adapting to Shakespeare.” In The Shakespeare’s Mine: Adapting Shakespeare in Anglophone Canada, edited by Ric Knowles, iii–ix. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2009. Leigh, Lori. “Enjoyable and Enriching.” Theatreview, 16 June 2016. https://www .theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=9319. McAllister, Janet. “Corrosively Cosy.” Metro, 4 January 2016. https://www.metroeats .co.nz/society/society-crime/corrosively-cosy. Manawatu Standard. “Shakespeare with a Maori Spin.” 30 July 2015. https://www .stuf.co.nz/manawatu-standard/lifestyle/70667550/shakespeare-with-a-maori -spin. New Zealand History. “Te Whiti.” Accessed 23 February 2022. https://nzhistory.govt.nz /people/erueti-te-whiti-o-rongomai-iii. Rickard, Jolene. “Visualizing Sovereignty in the Time of Biometric Sensors.” South Atlantic Quarterly 110, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 465–86. Robinson, Dylan. “Public Writing, Sovereign Reading: Indigenous Language Art in Public Space.” Art Journal 76, no. 2 (2017): 85–99. ———. “Welcoming Sovereignty.” In Performing Indigeneity, edited by Yvette Nolan, and Ric Knowles, 5–32. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2016. Shakespeare, William. “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice.” In The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans, 1203–48. Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1974. Simei-Barton, Paul. “Bard Lives in Maori Take on Othello.” New Zealand Herald, 10 July 2016. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id =1501119&objectid=11672009. Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring, 2011. Sun, Angela. “Review: SolOthello Rutas Panammericanas 2016.” Mooney on Theatre, 8 October 2016. https://www.mooneyontheatre.com/2016/10/08/review -solothello-rutas-panamericanas-2016. Taylor, Regan. “SolOthello.” Unpublished playscript. Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1999.

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Vizenor, Gerald. Fugitive Poses: Native American Scenes of Absence and Presence. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Wakeham, Pauline. “Beyond Comparison: Reading Relations between Indigenous Nations.” Canadian Literature 230/231 (Autumn/Winter 2016): 124–42. Wilson, Shawn. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Halifax: Fernwood, 2008.

2 ¯ḌA ¯ AS AN CONTESTING THE POVA EPISTEMOLOGICAL MODE History, form and performance Kedar Arun Kulkarni

Introduction It is 19 February. Every year, the city of Pune witnesses foats paraded through the city bearing the unmistakable statue of King Shivaji (1627/30–1680). It is his birthday today. Except, today is not his only birthday. This year, 2020, his second birthday will be celebrated on 12 March. The discrepancy rests upon the calendar one wishes to use: the Indian National (Lunisolar) Calendar marks his birthday on the latter date, the Gregorian Calendar on the former. Therefore, cities and competing political parties and cultural organizations in the Marathispeaking Indian state of Maharashtra have been commemorating Shivaji twice each year, with pageantry including processions, speeches, temporary installations on various street corners and other festivities including performances and public artwork. If his birthday itself is subject to such controversy, then surely other aspects of this life and its representation throughout history fare no better. This text is not about Shivaji per se, but considers a genre of performance—the povāḍā—in its historical settings and conversations. The povāḍā was, and still is, almost exclusively associated with heroic fgures from the past and their valiant and fearless feats, many of which narrate events from Shivaji’s life and from the exploits of his contemporaries and successors. It is a genre whose performances are acts of commemoration, suggesting modes of pious response and disseminating historical knowledge to their audiences—especially knowledge about caste politics, the Marathi language and regional nationalism. If birthdays are a point of disagreement, then so much more so is his biography within a performance genre: Whose king was he? Who, among the many diferent caste groups in Maharashtra during his time, was his primary constituency? Such questions have remained germane to the genre throughout its history. The povāḍā DOI: 10.4324/9781003372837-4

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Krishna Patil performing povāḍā on 19 February 2020. Source: Kedar Arun Kulkarni.

performed in Shivaji’s remembrance today is about his encounter at the Mughal court in Agra in 1666, in the presence of the last of the “great” Mughals, Aurangzeb (1618–1707). In the povāḍā and popular knowledge, Shivaji bore several political insults, was imprisoned, and engineered a daring escape with his 9-year-old son. Figure 2.1 depicts the typical contemporary performance of a povāḍā on 19 February 2020. The main artist here, Krishna Patil, stands at the center wearing a red pheṭā, a kind of turban that is traditional of the Marāṭhā caste; behind him, two accompanying vocalists wear pink pheṭās and use small brass cymbals called ṭāḷ to keep a rhythm. A musician to Patil’s right plays the harmonium, a kind of pump organ, and the percussionist to his left plays a ḍholaka, a twoended drum that contains base and tenor ends. Naturally, performances even a century ago would have been signifcantly diferent, as I explain with relation to some historical fgures in this chapter. The last generation of traveling, bardic poets known for performing povāḍās died in the 1840s. While there have been several revivalists who have proved infuential, their performances have become one amongst many diferent genres, rather than one dominant genre.1 Figures such as Ram Joshi (1762–1812), Honaji Bala (1754–1848), Parsharam (1754–1844), Sagan

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Bhau (1778–1850) and Anant Phandi (1744–1819), accomplished poet-performers who had many kings and other potentates as their patrons, found a dwindling audience in their latter days; their lives and careers spanned the end of precolonial life and the beginnings of colonialism, witnessing the transformations of symbolic economies and forms of patronage. Known as śāhīrs, or poets, by the 1860s literati, ethnographers and other intellectuals were all singing the swansong of these poet-performers. It seemed as though an essentially public form—recited before an audience—was committed to print and romanticized at the same time. The povāḍā became the basis of an authentic “folk” tradition in western India, following global romantic movements. This chapter examines how various fgures in the 1860s–1870s appropriated or distanced themselves from this tradition of śāhīrs, especially through the genre of the povāḍā, a kind of heroic ballad. The contestations over formal poetics and performance, of caste politics, and representations of Shivaji all speak to the way performed/poetic knowledges were central to public controversy and the way caste and class groups understood historical persons such as Shivaji. The three persons I speak about in this article, Jotirao Phule (1827–1890), Mahadev Moreshwar Kunte (1835–1888) and Vishnushastri Chiplunkar (1850–1882), approach performed poetry, the tradition of the śāhīrs and the genre of the povāḍā from a wide range of intellectual and social positions. In rearticulating the genre of the povāḍā within a colonial milieu, their work fundamentally altered the performance of the genre, modulating and emulating more vernacular sensibilities, while simultaneously participating in a public intellectual conversation. These three were key contrasting fgures whose works defned the outlines of poetic practice during the 1860s–1870s. 2 The genre of the povāḍā was their vehicle, with Shivaji as its subject matter, whom Phule and Kunte both attempted to reframe for their political ends. Chiplunkar was one of the preeminent literary theorists of his day, and his poetic theories provide some context for why Shivaji became important to both Kunte and Phule. That is, if knowledge of Shivaji is to serve a particular purpose, then Chiplunkar, Phule and Kunte each attempted to use the povāḍā genre to create a specifc understanding of Shivaji to serve their larger sociopolitical endeavors.

Prehistories and theoretical conversations The genre of the povāḍā, essentially a kind of heroic ballad, was originally sung by traveling poets in a kind of public poetic practice. “Śāhīr,” as the poets were called, is derived from the Urdu shayar, or “poet.” But such translations blur and disguise the kind of work that śāhīrs actually did. For all practical purposes, the śāhīrs were the public intellectuals of their day. 3 If one examines their oeuvre, one fnds povāḍās on a host of historical

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fgures—presumably fgures who patronized śāhīrs at their courts. But one also fnds povāḍās as well as lyric poetry called lāvaṇī on various topics of social advice.4 Even Krishna Patil, the contemporary performer I spoke about above, was not shy to speak and sing about the efects of social media, youths who drink too much and women who wear ill-ftting (read “too tightly ftting”) clothes. While there is some scholarly work on Ram Joshi, Honaji Bala and Parsharam, the vast majority of these poets have remained in obscurity, save their poetic work—a refrain that even Krishna Patil mentioned when explaining the genre to his audience. Let me clarify: the genre of the povāḍā, especially for urban audiences, is not always a meaningful poetic genre on its own. It may retain, like the idea of the śāhīr himself, a presence in the cultural imaginary of Maharashtra, but perhaps not a very detailed one, at least not for most urban audiences. Patil’s explanations therefore reinforce the genre’s historical signifcance while recreating and ofering a contemporary version of it in his own historical present. In anthologies, one notices how many śāhīrs existed, and comparatively how few left records of their performances, or any kind of archival remains.5 Yet it is nonetheless evident that Patil’s practice speaks to a kind of performance repertoire that is set against and tells a diferent story from the archive.6 As it may be further evident from the way I have described the povāḍā as a poem and a ballad, we encounter some conceptual hurdles in order to fully articulate what a povāḍā is. As with many Marathi and Indian poetic genres, the practice of the śāhīrs blurred the boundaries between private poetry and public performance, and also between public intellectual work and scholarship of a more exclusive nature. In writing about performance historically, I am painfully aware that my materials—archival remains—are the consequences of performance.7 In my approach, therefore, I must engage with the materials as “poetry” in the traditional sense of written verse while remaining alert to its prior and intended public form: performance. In many Indian traditions, even performed ones, the performer often retained a reference notebook for himself, with his notes and various other kinds of marginalia. Such notebooks, however, were never privy to the lay public, who apprehended the poetry only in performance-based contexts.8 More important, and topical here, is the way I use the terms “poetry,” “performance” and “literature.” In almost all cases, it would be difcult to differentiate these for the period in which povāḍās were popular (roughly from the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s), and when people such as Phule, Kunte and Chiplunkar worked within a paradigm in which “literature” had not entirely entered into the domain of the authoritatively written word and the privately read word. Instead, it was predominantly a public, performance-based practice. A general defnition has always highlighted the way the povāḍā recreates and aggrandizes notions of heroism and masculinity while usually steering clear of formalist poetics.9

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Refashioning historical knowledge via performance-poetic forms Jotirao Phule, Jotiba Phule or Mahatma Jotirao Phule—one of the few people in modern history to earn the title “Mahatma”—was, beyond a shadow of doubt, one of the most important intellectuals and social workers of his day. He was the founder of the modern non-Brahman movement in western India and has many “frsts” to his name: as a playwright, the founder of a girl’s school and the founder of a school for students from disadvantaged castes. Moreover, Phule’s evolution as a thinker, especially from the 1850s, when he may have believed in the possibility of Brahman–non-Brahman alliances in politics and society, to the 1870s, by which time he clearly became a radical anti-caste activist, cannot be understood entirely without fgures such as the others I write about here. Chiplunkar, for example, viciously attacked Phule in the 1870s in his journal.10 With a number of groups attempting to create a universalistic “Maharashtra Dharma”—essentially a Maharashtrian nationalism based on Hinduism that saw Shivaji and his spiritual advisor Ramdas (1608–1681) as predecessors— Phule’s own brand of Maharashtra Dharma was more unique. I explore the contours of Phule’s version through his povāḍā about Shivaji, perhaps the frst expression and attempt to write a povāḍā about Shivaji in colonial India.11 Phule’s idealism soured over his lifetime, and his Povāḍā: Chatrapatī Śivājīrāje Bhoṃsale Yāñcā (1869; Povāḍā about the King Shivaji) embodies attempts to claim Shivaji for the low-castes rather than a pan-Maharashtra Dharma. Written in order to be performed before a wider public, Phule’s version was certainly different from those of his interlocutors. Born into a family of maḷis (gardeners), his father, Govindrao, had set up a greengrocer shop in Pune, where he sold produce from some land that he owned. Govindrao was relatively afuent in comparison to others of his caste, and had Jotirao sent frst to a local Marathi school and then a Scottish mission school for education.12 These early beginnings are important, especially in terms of schooling, because it was neither the systematic criticism of traditional Hindu society articulated in missionary propaganda, nor the ideas of European religious radical alone which shaped the intellectual development of Hindu radicals and reformers, but their simultaneous reinforcement and counterbalancing of each other.13 Missionary schools had a reputation for the “combative” style in the face of conservative (read “Brahmanical”) Hinduism, and Phule would have been exposed to missionary critiques while in school.14 Missionary schools in colonial India also often had many unintended efects—students afliated with others who were not necessarily of the same caste, class or background as they themselves were. Often these associations provoked Brahmans, who objected

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to the proximity of lower castes.15 But such afliations also challenged traditional hierarchies of caste, which, arguably, began to slowly erode—and a few of Phule’s closest friends from this early period were Brahmans who were his schoolmates. Importantly, such schools and afliations also enabled access to a wide variety of textual materials. In Phule’s case, these early formative years brought him into contact with a variety of biographies and ideas that he may have found inspiring. Along with his classmates, he read avidly about svadeśī (self-rule) and also vīrav ṛttī (heroism). George Washington (1732–1799), the frst president of the United States, was one of the inspirational fgures he read about—and the other was indeed Shivaji.16 These two—both leaders and the concepts of svadeśī and vīrav ṛttī—were not alone in provoking Phule to immediately begin his career as an activist and social reformer. The other fgure whose works Phule took to heart was Thomas Paine (1737–1809). Whereas Shivaji and Washington ofered Phule a model for how one ought to liberate the motherland, Paine ofered something slightly diferent that, too, found its way into Phule’s thinking. In addition to the former two heroic fgures, Phule found it meaningful to think about Paine’s Rights of Man (1791–1792), a text that unabashedly proclaimed something unique in the rights of a human being, providing Phule with more radical potential.17 Of particular interest is the way all three, in his mind, seem to have contributed to his own version of “Maharashtra Dharma”—the pan-Maharashtrian nationalism to which he initially subscribed. If Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) was one of the earliest to attempt to revive the term “Maharashtra Dharma” in his 1881 book Rise of the Maratha Power, then it was only because the term and its conceptual vagaries were already “out there” in society: a general feeling of pride, Maharashtrian nationalism, that saw Shivaji as foundational. Non-Brahmans, too, tried to relate to the concept—and Phule’s Povāḍā: Chatrapatī Śivājīrāje Bhoṃsale Yāñcā is exemplary in that regard.18 Phule’s is, perhaps, the earliest attempt in colonial India to use Shivaji for anti-caste agitation. Phule’s version of Maharashtra Dharma—if indeed it can be called that— needs to be defned diferently from other models. It is not a “varnashramdharma, wherein the brahmans and Kshatriyas are supposed to observe their own dharmas as well as provide leadership to the other two varnas, thereby defending Hindu culture and the Hindu nation.”19 That is, Phule’s version of Maharashtra Dharma does not idealize the caste system. It is clear Phule is not advocating a return to the caste system’s purportedly ideal confgurations. Rather, his version sees an alliance of all non-Brahman cultivating castes in an attempt to resignify various lineages and meanings via the povāḍā. That is, he utilizes the povāḍā genre in order to generate politically motivated knowledge about the historical past, and thereby intervene in his contemporary situation. It needs mentioning, emphatically, that there have been many such narratives about Shivaji’s life and various episodes from it. Phule’s was hardly the

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frst, though his was a major voice. The earliest account of the genre of the povāḍā, for example, comes in the form of a paean to Shivaji’s deeds in vanquishing Afzal Khan and his army in 1651, Afjal-Khān-Vadha, or The Slaying of Afzal Khan, by a bardic poet named Ajñānadāsa or Agrindāsa.20 The povāḍā portrays Shivaji as the quintessential hero, from comparisons to divine beings, insults to family, daring feats and martial techniques, and not a little bit of wile. Phule, too, shows similar “awe and celebration at the achievements of Shivaji and with a great love for, and identifcation with, the wild and rugged landscape of western Maharashtra,” as O’Hanlon writes.21 Furthermore, to call something a vadha (slaying) has an element of ceremony to it, invariably with some larger mythopoetic value; it is not murder, nor is it death or defeat. Rather, vadha refers to an act more signifcant than may be found in the mundane world of things. Such words speak to an emergent tension between the historical fgure of Shivaji and his fguration as someone larger than quotidian reality. We see it also, for example, exemplifed in a short verse by none other than Jotirao Phule’s wife, Savitribai Phule (1831–1897): Chatrapatī śivājīce/pratḥsmaraṇa karāve […] Nalarājā yudhiṣṭhira/draupadī hī janārdana Puṇyaśloka purāṇāta/itihāsī śivānana Do early matins/in Chatrapati Shivaji’s memory […] Nala Raja, Yudhiṣṭhira/Draupadī also Kṛṣṇa Great men in the Puranas/In history, Shivaji22 Here, Savitribai Phule juxtaposes legendary, religious and epic personages with the historical person Shivaji, powerfully drawing an analogy between Puranas (epic, often religious, Sanskrit sources) and history: whereas the former have the King Nala, Yudhishthira, the Queen Draupadi and the avatar(s) of Vishnu—namely, Krishna—the latter, history, has Shivaji. If there is a prehistory to Jotirao Phule’s povāḍā, then we ought to see it in this short verse by his wife Savitribai Phule, which encapsulates not only the emergent tension between history and the Puranas, especially in the person of Shivaji, who is not only historical. Indeed, he is the object of veneration, and repeated regular veneration, if one takes the verse’s words seriously: meditate upon Shivaji in the morning. This was, presumably, the popular knowledge and practice that Phule attempted to consolidate and project in his own povāḍā. Such accounts of Shivaji continued to proliferate over time well into the nineteenth century, as did the povāḍā genre. In fact, even the British utilized the story of Shivaji and his Brahman ministers to speak about how the Brahmans usurped the throne from Shivaji’s own successors.23 It is therefore no

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surprise, given prevalent attitudes and Savitribai Phule’s writings, that Jotirao Phule decided to use the Shivaji story—history, legend, myth—for his own purposes, and that too in a genre associated with public knowledge. Most of all, he would have also known that in rearticulating the story of Shivaji in the genre of the povāḍā, he would have simultaneously participated in a lengthy historical and generic conversation over Shivaji’s many attributes, attributes that may have placed Phule within a long tradition of poetic, public interpretation—of speaking in a genre that was familiar to the lay public. And while we do not have records or accounts of Phule’s performances of this povāḍā, it would not have circulated only as a printed text, given that the vast majority of its and his audience was illiterate. Within this nexus, Śivājīcā Povāḍā (1869) was a powerful statement, one that may be seen in a dialectical position to the others I write about below, as well as other performance genres during Phule’s time. It contains a strong and overt anti-Brahman polemical thrust that creates a tripartite structure in Indian society: Brahmans, non-Brahmans (Phule’s and the povāḍā’s audience) and Muslims. Its polemic portrays Brahmans duping each of the other segments of society for selfsh, clannish gain. More importantly, Phule casts Shivaji as a protector of the śudras, or the lowest of the four castes in orthodox Hinduism. For example: I’ll tell you a tale of how the people of the soil [kśetra-vāsī] were dispossessed and by whom. They lived in the felds and were therefore warriors [kśatriyas] They lived happily in the felds. Rowdy foreigners from over the Himalayas Were in hiding, Upon the unconfned 24 people of the soil, like locusts [they came] And made everyone rule-bound […] All native types they made their slaves25 Pompously called everyone cheap [kśudra] […] After Brahmā died, Parśurāma the [puṇḍa] became insolent And harassed the remaining kśatriyas […] Because the country was without kśatriyas, muslims [yavanas] conveniently26 Also harassed everyone27 This passage is particularly enlightening in Phule’s povāḍā because it brings together many, if not all, of his major preoccupations in the povāḍā: about origins of various castes, autochthony, Hinduism and Islam, among other things.

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In his preface, too, Phule alludes to discourses of Aryanism, about Aryan outsiders—the “rowdy foreigners” above—and native deśīs. He writes about how these outsiders came and ransacked India and cheated and enslaved the local populations and how, therefore, the outsider Aryan-Brahmans came to dominate.28 The povāḍā restates various aspects of his preface, albeit in versifed form. Palpable to the reader as well as the audience would have been the easy punning, the performative sonic surfaces of the povāḍā, which are a microcosm of the entire story. Because the natives (deśīs) live in the feld (kśetra-vāsī), they are warriors (Kśatriya), but after the outsider Brahmans attack, the natives are condescendingly called cheap (kśudra). Inventively, he derives the etymology of Kśatriya (warrior), from kśetra (feld) as a politically motivated gesture, rather than from its relationship to power and domination (kśatra) and the root “kṣi,” meaning “possess.”29 Such reimagining enables him to describe the incoming Aryans (Brahmans) as locusts feeding in a feld, as pests who destroy the unfettered free life that the original inhabitants lived. Phule also blames Brahmans, especially the legendary fgure of Parshuram, who is said to have annihilated all Kśatriya-s, for the Muslim presence in India. It is because Brahmans destroyed the true warriors (Kśatriya-s, the kśetravāsi) that Muslim foreigners were yet again able to take root. But Phule’s usages here—his repeated use of the word deśī in multiple ways to refer to both persons of a place and the place itself (native, country) as well as his use of the word bephāma (see note 24)—speak to something more than his current sociopolitical condition. It is true, indeed, that his work is deeply invested in the kinds of histories of who the Aryans were, and how they came to India. These are on the surface of his work; they are in his prefaces and evident everywhere in his writings. O’Hanlon also mentions the infuence of ideas about Aryanism on Phule, as do many Phule scholars30 and others writing about intellectual traditions in the nineteenth century.31 He was aware of Max Müller (1823–1900)—the famous German Orientalist and frst professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford University—whose theories and hypotheses about Aryans and Aryanism in India were well known. And at the same time, he rejected these writings in favor of something else—an autochthonous origin of the kśatriyas (warriors) from the kśetra (feld). If indeed Aryan race theory was correct, then Brahmans were the outsiders in Phule’s world, usurpers, just as the Peshwas, originally ministers of Shivaji, had usurped all political power from Shivaji’s heirs for themselves in the eighteenth century. Phule’s use of deśī and bephāma, in these respects, is very important. Calling kśetriyas (warriors) deśī and bephāma, Phule bestows upon them a level of legitimacy from their facticity of having been there. They are, in a phrase, sons of the soil. It establishes a prehistory of relative freedom—bephāma alludes to a state in which the kśetriyas were ungoverned, unfettered and also less self-consciously aware of outsiders just inching toward the fertile pasts of

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the kśetriyas. In other ways not so evident in the text, nor implicit from it but culturally determined, deśī thus registers importantly in contrast with the Sanskritic model of mārga—the cosmopolitan—and deśī is thus about the situated, regional, vernacular, nonclassical, non-Brahman.32 It relates, also, to the way Chiplunkar, a Brahman, unwittingly inverts the relationship between classical and vernacular languages (see below). In performance, I speculate, Phule’s povāḍā would have appeared almost familiar with Krishna Patil’s rendition (see Figure 2.1), with a few noticeable diferences. Obviously, the amplifers and microphones would not have been present, requiring the performer to modulate and even project his voice differently. The musicians would have been standing, with instruments strung or slung over their shoulders and neck, so they may play at hip height, with the same angle one attempts while typing at a keyboard. In the late nineteenthand early twentieth-century performances, one may have seen a harmonium and, surely, a ḍhol, resting against waist and pelvis while playing. Clothing, pheṭā excepted, would have also been diferent—the pajamas, the cotton drawstring pants seen on the performers, would have been dhotars, long rectangular, unstitched cloths about 4 meters in length that would have been wrapped between and around the legs. And if one traveled even further back in time, say 50 years earlier, to Phule’s time, the harmonium would disappear entirely, since it was introduced in the early twentieth century. Performers would have always stood in front of their audiences, whether because performing in public makes seated persons difcult to see, or because while performing in a courtly setting, their social status would have been too low to be seated before aristocracy and courtly personages. Phule’s Śivājīcā Povāḍā, or a Povāḍā about Shivaji, needs to be understood within these epistemological frameworks of insider/outsider, low and high caste, and performance contexts that were in every way hostile toward non“twice-born” castes, and unkind toward non-Brahmans more generally. His povāḍā, unsurprisingly, was not well received in the upper-caste-dominated print media, for which some basic record remains. The Vividh-dñyān-vistāra, a major general interest magazine, was quite critical of it, sarcastically referring to him as a “new” śāhīr. It raises three questions of the povāḍā. Firstly, how is it that Brahmans are outsiders and Kśatriyas are not, given that the entire system of caste was an imposition from the Brahmans, as outsiders (I do not, personally, understand the exact meaning of this frst claim). Secondly, what is the proof that Phule’s derivative etymologies, of kśetra-kśatriya-kśudra, emerge in the ways that he says they do? And fnally, if, in relation to the second point, Phule derives the name of his own caste group, the mahārs, from a corruption of mahā ari, or great enemy, then why is the term only a regional caste marker that is not found in the north or the south?33 What these critiques miss (or know too well) is the essentially public and politically disruptive nature of carrying on in the povāḍā form, a form, along with others, that contested public fgures such

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as Shivaji in historical memory. These responses show indeed that Phule has managed to provoke sensibilities and that his povāḍā was part of a more public forum that reached beyond its immediate intended caste audiences. And true to that spirit, Phule was not only the frst person to write and perform about Shivaji in the colonial era. He was, moreover, the frst person to attempt to start a fund to clear and maintain Shivaji’s samādhi, or fnal resting place, which had been neglected for a long time.34 A few years later, when Phule and Kunte were nominated for an award from the Dak śi ṇā Committee, “it goes without saying” that Kunte received the prize,35 owing to the upper-caste composition of the selection committee, whose views would have been similar to those expressed in the Vividh-dñyān-vistāra.

Beyond the povāḍā and performance The other person to write about Shivaji, and a contemporary of Phule’s, was Mahadev Moreshwar Kunte. His background enabled him to move in ways both parallel to and distinct from both Phule and Chiplunkar. There are some obvious points of convergence and divergence that animate his Rājā Śivājī (1871, King Shivaji) with the other two persons. The moments all speak to the utility, or authenticity, of particular kinds of social communication. In the preface to his poem Rājā Śivājī, Kunte ofers a tripartite schema describing Maharashtrians—Sanskrit pandits (Shastris), newly minted graduates and “educated” men, and of course, illiterate persons. But these are not facile statements targeted at an indiferent audience. Kunte unequivocally mentions, “Next to the Shastris in numerical strength, but far superior to them in intelligence, and such power as intelligence imparts, come our educated countrymen.”36 His approach to the Marathi language and literature is an ofshoot of the way he views the people. As a language, Marathi is in need of improvement, and it is up to an emergent class of intelligentsia to improve Marathi. Unlike Phule, who adopts an accessible idiom, Kunte’s project fundamentally transforms and completely reworks the povāḍā genre, making his work rife with tensions and slippages whose outlines are quite revealing in their own right. Here, I attempt to locate Kunte’s Rājā Śivājī against Phule’s excurses of Shivaji and Aryanism. Kunte signals his major intervention in his preface to Rājā Śivājī, which has become a classic statement on the thematics of nineteenth-century theory and criticism. Speaking about the epic form, he writes, “I have been asked why I have not commenced my poem with the early life of Shivaji, and why I should open it with the description of the Panhalla fortress. The reason is plain. I believe, that the one would have made my poem a Povada and the other might make it an epic.”37 It does not take Kunte long to clarify exactly what he means and thereby isolate the heart of the matter distinguishing his work from Phule’s. Earlier, Kunte had mentioned the relationship between epic and the nation—true to nineteenth-century intellectual form—but after making the

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distinction given above, he shifts rhetorically from speaking of the Marathas as a group, to speaking about the nationality of the Marathas.38 That is, only an epic could possibly do justice to the fgure of Shivaji, whose persona is beftting of a national character. Rather than Phule’s self-conscious use of the povāḍā, a popular form well-known to the people of the time, Kunte instead tries to dispense with popular sentiment. Instead, he attempts to reconfgure Shivaji as a national icon but one infected by a high-caste sensibility that excludes the illiterate masses. Kunte thus tries to appropriate Shivaji not simply for caste radicalism, as Phule’s intervention is painted, but instead for his upper-caste and elite defnition of nationhood. Writing about issues larger than partisanship, however, could not be more partisan than Kunte’s worldview: his “national” politics are hardly the kind of class-erasing unity that Benedict Anderson imagines.39 The relationship between epic, povāḍā, language and nation is eminently class/casteist, and following romantic molds. It only alludes to actual spoken language, fetishizing it without espousing it:40 So when one writes a poem in natural Marathi—such Marathi as is spoken in our towns and villages—the prose Marathi—the Marathi of the populous Vulgus, he should be prepar[e]d to meet opposition and condemnation; for the notion still prevails that because a poetical line composed exclusively of pure Marathi words is extremely unmusical; therefore poetry should not be written in pure Marathi.41 Naturally, one sees a fair share of derision in these comments—who speaks, normative judgements about languages as inherently musical or not, etc. Kunte is a little more circumspect than I have given him credit for, however, and he continues to mention why it is that Marathi appears so “unmusical”: Marathi words are not written as they are pronounced […] So long as this diference between Marathi written and Marathi spoken is not removed, or at least recognized; so long as some innovation founded on the knowledge of this diference is not introduced; the cause of metrical Marathi composition should sufer.42 There are multiple issues at play in Kunte’s writing—the issue of Marathi linguistic standardization, a project that was well underway by the time of his writing;43 a distinction between oral and the written, which partially overlaps with the issue of standardization; issues of class and caste; and also a theory or approach of aesthetics that may enable a better commerce between written and the oral, and vice versa—though for Kunte, the written defnes and is prior to the oral. The way Kunte displaces the unmusicality he speaks about in the earlier passage onto an incomplete relationship between written and spoken language, to

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my mind, is the most interesting and revealing of issues here. His explanation for an aesthetics that is grounded in the strong connection between the oral and the written speaks to the same kinds of issues evinced in studies between texts and performances: where does the authority lie, with a person or in the instability of the performance event? Such epistemological questions animate his own “epic” of Shivaji, wherein the form and content are bent toward national teleologies, licensed through the ambit of English and European epic convention, on the one hand, and Sanskrit metrical and lexical considerations on the other. The opening of the poem, the frst verse, is the most illustrative example of this newfound formalism that has been imported into Marathi, precisely not only to transform the Marathi language, but also to elevate Shivaji into a national icon: manoranjane śārade! devī pave44 dayāḷe! kṛpāḷe! malā dhairya dyāve. caḍhāyā pahāto, jithe vāṭa nāhī; jithe śakti mājhī na cāleci kāhī.45 Muse of delight! Goddess, come! Compassionate! Merciful! Give me support! I wish to climb, where no path exists Where my strength will not support me. Kunte’s verse here imitates epic convention, that is true, but not an epic convention found in Sanskrit, despite references to Kalidas (a major fourth-century CE Sanskrit poet) and Vālmiki, the legendary poet of the Rāmāyaṇa. His poem does not begin with a wandering poet-singer as in the Mahābhārata, nor does it imitate the Rāmāyaṇa, which begins as a conversation between two sages, the composer of the Rāmāyaṇa, Vālmiki and Nārada. He departs, therefore, from Indian epics, which are about stories being told to listeners as frame narratives.46 Instead, associating his verse with Greek epics, he begins by inviting Saraswati (Sharada) to come to his aid, and to give him strength to follow (inter-epistemic) paths that have not yet been laid. And one would be amiss to not hear the echo of Paradise Lost (1674) in which Milton writes “I thence/ Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song/ […] while it pursues/ Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.”47 Here Kunte’s plea for aid to fnd the way along an untrodden, never before attempted direction is reminiscent of Miltonic language and theme. These initial verses do more, though, than replicate Greek epic convention and some Miltonic thematics. Kunte continues in ways signifcantly diferent from Phule. His poem is replete with references to deśa and deśābhimāna and svadeśa and svadeśābhimāna, and also rājya hindusamājī—that is, references to country, pride in country, one’s country and pride of one’s country—all four of

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which are about the rule of the Hindus.48 Such associations, presented as synonymous, rhetorically bind nation, one’s nation, and Hinduism within a single conceptual framework. However, the usage of deśa here does not occupy the same semantic range as Phule’s usage, which, because Phule uses the adjectival “deśī” or “native,” has a diferent quality of belonging than Kunte’s. These distinctions are signifcantly diferent from Phule’s povāḍā. Chiplunkar, however, severely criticized Kunte’s work, as did others, ridiculing its rigid meter, its diction and its hubris.49 Engblom notes that Kunte’s “choice of the bhujangaprayata metre, on grounds that it bore some resemblance to the English iambic line, went directly against the associations that metre had, in the minds of most of his readers,” who were familiar with Ramdas’s (1608–1681) Manāce Śloka, or Verses for Meditation, which contains advice for ethical behavior rather than heroic actions.50 That is, why adapt meter intended for quietist and meditative purposes for his epic about the birth of a nation, via Rājā Shivājī?

Performance as past A few years after both Phule and Kunte, we get a full-blown theory of poetry that directly references the romantic discourses latent in both—transforming both performance and poetry in its wake. We see this theoretical experimentation in V. S. Chiplunkar’s attempts to formulate a secular, worldly prehistory for Marathi literature, some of which relies on the genre of the povāḍā. His work, starting in the late 1860s and early 1870s, postdates Phule’s own, but Chiplunkar’s work also unwittingly builds upon some of Phule’s themes— especially notions of Aryanism and the autochthony of language and peoples, against their migrancy—even though Chiplunkar would never admit it. And perhaps Phule’s and Kunte’s experimentations even prompted Chiplunkar to formulate his theories. During the late 1860s, Chiplunkar’s father was a faculty member at what is now Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute. His father was an important personality in his day and also one of the pandits that the colonial government relied upon as a teacher of Sanskrit and translator, among other things. In fact, through his father, Chiplunkar was able to move freely amongst and mingle with all the eminent personalities of his day—and indeed, caste played a large role in enabling his mobility. With his father, he began the Śālāpatraka (not ŚāỊāpatraka), or The School Newsletter, which published articles on a host of topics from biographies to literary theory, and relevant school news, of course. It was in this journal that Chiplunkar frst expressed some kind of interest in exploring the possibility of theorizing Marathi literature and poetry at all, and the emphasis was precisely on genres such as the povāḍā. One of Chiplunkar’s tasks, and personal aims, was to recover a tradition of Marathi literature (and poetry and/as performance) and to posit it

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as worthwhile of study. While this may sound rather counterintuitive, Chiplunkar wrote at a time when notions of language, mother tongue and literature were fundamentally diferent from the kinds of linguistic spaces we, contemporary persons in the 2020s, inhabit today—as evident in Kunte’s “unmusical” characterization of Marathi. In his essay “Marāṭhī Kavitā” (1872, “Marathi Poetry”), he suggests, in a manner reminiscent of Kunte’s tripartite schema above, that the study of the Marathi literature and language has suffered from the abuse it received from three principal parties—older Sanskrit pandits, “new” college-educated pandits, and missionaries. Each of these three privileged groups have had vested interests in disparaging various aspects of the Marathi language and literature. Chiplunkar, despite belonging to both coteries of pandits, awkwardly attempts to distance himself from all three groups. The former group, the older Sanskrit pandits, he suggests, are strongly of the opinion that Marathi is the language of the illiterate masses and women. What literary enterprise could it possibly contain? Similarly, he mentions that the second group—itself an ofshoot of the frst—has its head full of European literature. Kunte, for example, is of this cadre. Missionaries, on the other hand, loved to read and teach Marathi devotional poetry, but they disparage it because its afections are focused on the wrong god—that is, not on the Abrahamic one.51 Understanding the impetus of such statements requires an exploration of linguistic and literary communities in late and early modern and nineteenthcentury India. Much like Latin was during an earlier time, Sanskrit was the language of scholarly and poetic composition. In fact, documents from the time often refer to Marathi as prākṛta—common, natural, vulgar, unrefned. Prākṛta was used to speak about languages derived from Sanskrit, which was, of course, the perfected or refned language, one that had not formed by due course of nature. From this point of view, Chiplunkar’s inversion and insistence on Marathi is quite remarkable, as it reconfgures hierarchies of language and its aesthetics: the natural comes to be valued over the artifcial, at least in theory, thus also making the “natural” a project for the upper castes to improve, much like Kunte himself. But we also very faintly glimpse a discreet politics here that develops into a full articulation of the importance of Marathi and its naturalness, its connection to the soil and to its poets, etc. And when Chiplunkar moves into that mode, we come across his nascent romantic nationalism. He writes, koṇtyāhī rāṣṭrāta pāhū gele astān ase āḍhaḷate kī, te rāṣṭra sadñāna daśesa yeū lāgale mhanje tyāce vicāra kavitā rūpāne pahilyāne bāhera nighū lāgatāta. tī kavitā pahilyāne lāvaṇyāsārakhyā vṛttāt asate, kāraṇ taśyā kālacyā uddāma kavitodgārasa taśīca vṛtte atyanta anukūḷa asatāta. Tyāt bahuta karūna vīrancī adbhuta kṛtye, va tyāncī caritre hīca varṇilelī asatāta.

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Having observed any nation, one realizes that once that nation begins to come into knowledge [rāṣṭra sadñāna daśesa yeū lāgale], then it frstly utters its thoughts in the form of poetry. That poetry is frstly with qualities akin to a lāvaṇī [lāvaṇyāsārakhyā vṛttāt], because those qualities are most appropriate [atyanta anukūḷa] for the turbulent poetic utterances of that time. For the most part, it contains marvelous deeds of heroes [vīrancī adbhuta kṛtye] and descriptions of their lives.52 Statements such as this remind one of Kant’s essay Was ist Aufklärung? (1784, What is Enlightenment?), wherein he, too, speaks of coming into knowledge, or out of one’s self-imposed Unmündigkeit (immaturity). But they also resonate with Johann Gottfried Herder’s Die Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (1769, The Treatise on the Origin of Language) and the emergence of poetry in tandem with language. Chiplunkar does not stop there—he continues to speak about how povāḍās are akin to English and Scottish ballads, and their composers are very important for the formation of the Marathi language. His rationale places him frmly within the Kant-Herder romantic mold: sṛṣṭītīla sundara kinvā bhavya padārthāncā, va sansārātīla nānā prakārcyā prasangī hṛdayāsa jyā vikāra hotāta, tyāncā ādhīcyā kavīnvara jitakā ṭhasā uṭhalelā asato titakā puḍhacyā kavīnvara nasato, va tyāmuḷe pahilyāsa tyā goṣṭīnce jase hubehuba varṇana karatā yete tase puḍhalyāsa yeta nāhī … sarva rāṣṭrāta agadī junāta kavica sarvotkṛṣṭa asatāta … pahilyānnī manovikārāce udbhāvana vagaire jase agadī sahaja rītyā kele asate tase puḍhalyāsa … nāhī. In creation’s beautiful or sublime things, and the various occasions of the world, the heart’s arousal; the impression of these things is greater on the earlier poets than the later poets, and because of that the frst [poets] can make colorful descriptions of things in ways that later poets cannot […] in all countries the earliest poets are the best of all […] the way the frst poets manifested/brought forth [udbhāvana] a mental transformation, so efortlessly fashioned [sahaja rītyā kele], not so with later [poets].53 That is, only the earliest poets, the earliest śāhīrs, have unmediated access to an earthy autochthony. How can one refuse to hear the romantic impulses, articulated with such verisimilitude to Kantian (or perhaps Burkean) language?

Conclusion Within three years of each other, these three thinkers approached poetry, performance and literature in ways that demonstrate epistemological contestations

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over a variety of forms and topics: over the genre of the povāḍā, the status of the bardic, wandering poet, over Shivaji as a historical fgure and appropriate ways to represent him; they also broach topics about language, autochthony and nation, each from a dissonant epistemological perspective that not only maps onto the intersections of caste, class and gender but also imagines different futures. Phule, primarily through performance, had been invested in giving his caste group a legendary and historical lineage through the invention of false etymologies and an autochthonous originary past; Chiplunkar’s words above, too, ask us to ponder autochthony, language, poetry and nation, walking a tightrope between Phule’s overt espousal of Marathi and Kunte’s dismissal of it. Chiplunkar acknowledges the importance of past genres of performance, while also heralding a new age of literature. Kunte, meanwhile, is completely dismissive of the povāḍā genre, and attempts to transform performance form and content into a written one, believing that emerging ideas of the nation require nonindigenous forms. The overlapping and intersection of the vocabularies and ideas of these three persons alerts us to the way they all used the povāḍā genre as a central trope in their political and interested analysis of their contemporary situation. I began this chapter writing about the commemorative povāḍās dedicated to Shivaji every February 19, as an optic and avenue through which the past is made present.54 Krishna Patil carefully repeated the phrase “marāṭhī paraṃparā” throughout, technically “marāṭhī lineage” but more properly “marāṭhī tradition.” The 150 years since my historical actors disputed these issues have indeed seen a sea change in the politics of western India: the non-Brahman movement is not limited to Mahārs and Dalits, but also separately includes the Maratha caste group, the largest caste group in contemporary Maharashtra. So I will not comment too much on Krishna Patil’s use of terms such as paraṃparā, nor is this the place to refect on the details or even contours of those past 150 years. But as his use of the povāḍā demonstrates, the povāḍā still remains as a genre that mediates and commemorates and asks us to meditate upon the relationship between past historical fgures, their actions and our present times. In this sense, it continues to be one node of a conversation that bridges the performative, printed and now also electronic worlds of media in generating new, or renewing older, historical epistemologies.

Notes 1 Patthe Bapurao (1868–1941) and Annabhau Sathe (1920–1969) are notable latterday performers. 2 A good place to understand some other writers and intellectuals is Prachi Gurjarpadhye, Bringing Modernity Home: Marathi Literary Theory in the Nineteenth Century (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2014). 3 I suggest they are organic intellectuals in the way Spivak refers to them: as subalterns that can be heard, not necessarily of an ascendant political class. See Gayatri

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9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28

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Chakravorty Spivak, Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 271–73. See, for example, M. V. Dhond, Marāṭhī lāvaṇī (Mumbai: Mauj Prakāśana, 2003). See Yeshwant Narsinha Kelkar, Marathi sahira ani sahiri vanmaya (Pune: Pune University Press, 1974); Aitihāsika povāḍe: Marāṭhyāñcā kāvyamaya itihāsa (repr., Pune: Ḍāyamaṇḍa Pablikeśansa, 2008). See Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). See Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (London: Routledge, 2011). See Christian Lee Novetzke, “Note to Self: What Marathi Kirtankars’ Notebooks Suggest about Literacy, Performance, and the Travelling Performer in Pre-Colonial Maharashtra,” in Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India, ed. Francesca Orsini and Katherine Butler Schofeld (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), 185–209. See the references to povāḍā in Vināyaka Lakshmaṇa Bhāve and Saṃ. Go Tuḷapuḷe, Mahārāṣṭra-Sārasvata, Puravaṇīsaha (Puṇe: Puṇe Sāhitya Vitaraṇa, 1963). Bhāve is keen to emphasize the masculine and heroic aspects of the genre, and he is a point of reference for later generations. Gail Omvedt, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India (New Delhi: Manohar, 2011), 99. Dhananjay Keer, Mahatma Jotirao Phooley: Father of the Indian Social Revolution, 3rd ed. (Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 2013), 128. Omvedt, Cultural Revolt, 67–68. Rosalind O’Hanlon, Caste, Confict, and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India, Cambridge South Asian Studies 30 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 106. Ibid., 108. Ibid., 109; Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 151–52. Keer, Mahatma Jotirao Phooley, 17. Ibid., 18; and O’Hanlon, Caste, Confict, and Ideology, 111. Rajendra Vora, “Maharashtra Dharma and the Nationalist Movement in Maharashtra,” in Writers, Editors and Reformers: Social and Political Transformations of Maharashtra, 1830–1930, ed. N. K. Wagle (New Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 28. Ibid., 24, italics in the original. “Varna” is approximately translated as caste; varnashramdharma is the ethic of living in a way that upholds the rules (dharma) of one’s caste. Kelkar, Aitihāsika povāḍe, 61; and James W. Laine, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2003), 21. O’Hanlon, Caste, Confict, and Ideology, 168–69. Sāvitrībāī Phule, Mā Go Māḷī and Maharashtra State Board for Literature & Culture, Sāvitrībāī Phule, samagra vāṅmaya, 5th ed. (Mumbaī: Mahārāshṭra Rājya Sāhitya āṇi Sãskr ti ̥ Maṇḍaḷa, 2011), 5, my translation, 1854. O’Hanlon, Caste, Confict, and Ideology, 24–26. बे फ ाम/bephāma is an interesting word; the line reads, “Bephāma kśetriya hote ṭoḷa utarle Kaidī sarvāsa kele.” Here, the word ought to be taken in a positive sense, whereas it can often be negative. Its meanings encompass a range from incautious, to unconscious, to unworried, as well as unrestrained, uncontrolled and ungoverned. “Native” here is a translation of deśī. “Country” here is a translation of deśa, thus relating to “native” above. Phule, Sāvitrībāī Phule, 49; 1869. Ibid., 43–44.

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29 Monier Monier-Williams is not entirely sold on this etymology—so it may be something to explore further. See Monier Monier-Williams, An English–Sanskrit Dictionary (repr., New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2009), 325. 30 O’Hanlon, Caste, Confict, and Ideology, 148–51; and Omvedt, Cultural Revolt, 116–18. 31 Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British in India (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2004). 32 See Sheldon Pollock, “The Cosmopolitan Vernacular,” The Journal of Asian Studies 57, no. 1 (1998): 6–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/2659022. 33 “Navīn Śāīr,” Vividh Dyan Vistaar 2, no. 8 ( July 1869): 119–22. 34 Keer, Mahatma Jotirao Phooley, 127. 35 Ibid., 129. 36 Mahadev Moreshwar Kunte, “Preface,” in Uttaranga Samuccaya Arthat Vividh Aakhyan Mala, ed. Kirtankesari Nanabuwa Badodekar, vol. 2 (Mumbai: Induprakash, 1930), 2–3, my italics. 37 Ibid., 17–18, my italics. 38 Ibid., 19. 39 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Refections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London and New York: Verso, 2006); and Partha Chatterjee, “Anderson’s Utopia,” Diacritics 29, no. 4 (December 1999): 128–34. https://doi.org /10.1353/dia.1999.0025. 40 Veena Naregal has written about some of these issues from the point of view of bilingualism. See Veena Naregal, “Colonial Bilingualism and Hierarchies of Language and Power,” Economic and Political Weekly, 5 ( June 2015): 3451. 41 Kunte, “Preface,” 15. 42 Ibid., 16. 43 Prachi Deshpande, “Shuddhalekhan: Orthography, Community and the Marathi Public Sphere,” Economic and Political Weekly 51, no. 6 (6 February 2016): 72–82; Pushkar Sohoni, “Marathi of a Single Type: The Demise of the Modi Script,” Modern Asian Studies 51, no. 3 (May 2017): 662–85. 44 Śāradā is a name for Sarasvati, the patron goddess of the arts, music and eloquence. Manoranjane is a stable compound of mana (mind) and ranjana (enrapturing, delighting, captivating). Both śāradā and manoranjana are in the vocative case. I have translated śaradā as “muse” for reasons that will become clearer. 45 Mahadev Moreshwar Kunte, “Rājā Śivājī,” in Uttaranga Samuccaya Arthat Vividh Aakhyan Mala, ed. Kirtankesari Nanabuwa Badodekar, vol. 2 (Mumbai: Induprakash, 1930), 1. 46 See Kevin McGrath, Jaya: Performance in Epic Mahābhārata (Boston: Ilex Foundation; Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2011). 47 Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. 1, lines 11–16. 48 Kunte, “Rājā Śivājī,” 1. 49 Philip Engblom, “Vishnu Moreshwar Mahajani and Nineteenth-Century Antecedents to Keshavsut,” in Writers, Editors and Reformers: Social and Political Transformations of Maharashtra, 1830–1930, ed. N. K. Wagle (New Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 147; and Deshpande, “Shuddhalekhan,” 77. 50 Ibid., 147. 51 Vishṇu Kr shṇa Cipaḷūṇakara, Vishṇupadī, ed. Shrinivas Narayan Banhatti (Puṇe: ̥ Suvicāra Prakāśana Maṇḍaḷa, 1939), 71–84. 52 Ibid., 5, my translation. Note the use of “rāṣṭra” rather than “deśa” as with Phule and Kunte. If Phule’s deśa is an organic, perhaps unorganized connection, and Kunte’s deśa has notions of governmentality to it, then Chiplunkar’s use of rāṣṭra drives it home further: a rāṣṭra is always an organized and governed entity, from the top down rather than from the ground up. 53 Ibid., 5–6, my translation.

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54 Prachi Deshpande, Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Refections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. London and New York: Verso, 2006. Bhāve, Vināyaka Lakshmaṇa, and Saṃ. Go Tuḷapuḷe. Mahārāṣṭra-Sārasvata, Puravaṇīsaha. Puṇe: Puṇe Sāhitya Vitaraṇa, 1963. Chatterjee, Partha. “Anderson’s Utopia.” Diacritics 29, no. 4 (December 1999): 128–34. https://doi.org/10.1353/dia.1999.0025. Cipaḷūṇakara, Vishṇu Kr ̥shṇa. Vishṇupadī. Edited by Shrinivas Narayan Banhatti. Puṇe: Suvicāra Prakāśana Maṇḍaḷa, 1939. Deshpande, Prachi. Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700– 1960, Cultures of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. ———. “Shuddhalekhan: Orthography, Community and the Marathi Public Sphere.” Economic and Political Weekly 51, no. 6 (6 February 2016): 72–82. Dhond, M. V. Marāṭhī lāvaṇī. Mumbai: Mauj Prakāśana, 2003. Engblom, Philip. “Vishnu Moreshwar Mahajani and Nineteenth-Century Antecedents to Keshavsut.” In Writers, Editors and Reformers: Social and Political Transformations of Maharashtra, 1830–1930, edited by N. K Wagle, 140–155. New Delhi: Manohar, 1999. Gurjarpadhye, Prachi. Bringing Modernity Home: Marathi Literary Theory in the Nineteenth Century. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2014. Keer, Dhananjay. Mahatma Jotirao Phooley: Father of the Indian Social Revolution, 3rd ed. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 2013. Kelkar, Yeshwant Narsinha. Aitihāsika povāḍe: Marāṭhyāñcā kāvyamaya itihāsa. Reprint, Pune: Ḍāyamaṇḍa Pablikeśansa, 2008. ———. Marathi sahira ani sahiri vanmaya. Pune: Pune University Press, 1974. Kunte, Mahadev Moreshwar. “Preface.” In Uttaranga Samuccaya Arthat Vividh Aakhyan Mala, edited by Kirtankesari Nanabuwa Badodekar, vol. 2, 1–19. Mumbai: Induprakash, 1930. ———. “Rājā Śivājī.” In Uttaranga Samuccaya Arthat Vividh Aakhyan Mala, edited by Kirtankesari Nanabuwa Badodekar, vol. 2, 1–112. Mumbai: Induprakash, 1930. Laine, James W. Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2003. McGrath, Kevin. Jaya: Performance in Epic Mahābhārata. Boston: Ilex Foundation; Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2011. Monier-Williams, Monier. An English-Sanskrit Dictionary. Reprint, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2009. Naregal, Veena. “Colonial Bilingualism and Hierarchies of Language and Power.” Economic and Political Weekly, 5 June 2015, 3446–56. “Navīn Śāīr.” Vividh Dyan Vistaar 2, no. 8 ( July 1869): 119–22. Novetzke, Christian Lee. “Note to Self: What Marathi Kirtankars’ Notebooks Suggest about Literacy, Performance, and the Travelling Performer in Pre-Colonial Maharashtra.” In Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and Performance in North India, edited by Francesca Orsini, and Katherine Butler Schofeld, 185–209. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015.

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O’Hanlon, Rosalind. Caste, Confict, and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India. Cambridge South Asian Studies 30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Omvedt, Gail. Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India. New Delhi: Manohar, 2011. Phule, S āvitr ībāī, M ā Go M āḷī and Maharashtra State Board for Literature & Culture. Sāvitrībāī Phule, samagra vāṅmaya, 5th ed. Mumbaī: Mahārāshṭra Rājya Sāhitya āṇi Sãskr ̥ti Maṇḍaḷa, 2011. Pollock, Sheldon. “The Cosmopolitan Vernacular.” The Journal of Asian Studies 57, no. 1 (1998): 6–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/2659022. Schneider, Rebecca. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. London: Routledge, 2011. Sohoni, Pushkar. “Marathi of a Single Type: The Demise of the Modi Script.” Modern Asian Studies 51, no. 3 (May 2017): 662–85. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, Donna Landry, and Gerald MacLean. The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. New York and London: Routledge, 1996. Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Trautmann, Thomas R. Aryans and British in India. New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2004. Viswanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Vora, Rajendra. “Maharashtra Dharma and the Nationalist Movement in Maharashtra.” In Writers, Editors and Reformers: Social and Political Transformations of Maharashtra, 1830–1930, edited by N. K. Wagle, 23–30. New Delhi: Manohar, 1999.

3 KAṬṬAIKKŪTTU AS PRACTICE-BASED KNOWLEDGE Hanne M. de Bruin

You ask me what Kūttu is all about? Let me tell you! Kuttu speaks through songs, kantārttams Viruttams and vaca ṉams. Embracing a state of bodily and mental alert Immersing yourself in the story You become the character To be seen and heard. You ask me what Kuttu is all about … P. Rajagopal, Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu1 In 2002, P. Rajagopal and I founded the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam, a residential theater school for children and young people in South India. Rajagopal is a seasoned Kaṭṭaikkūttu2 actor from a family of traditional performers. When he was 10, he joined his father’s theater company and dropped out of school. Under his stewardship, the Gurukulam ofers rural students a dual curriculum of Kattaikkuttu training and formal school education. This challenging initiative has required Rajagopal to consciously explore the intricacies of his profession as a unique body of pragmatic knowledge and an experiential, sensorial and cognitive form of “doing” and “knowing” that, in his opinion, is education. Kattaikkuttu is a physical and vocal form of rural, open-air ensemble theater widely prevalent in the northern and central parts of rural Tamil Nadu.3 It uses diferent kinds of songs—such as pāṭṭu, kantarttam and viruttam mentioned in the composition above—music, articulated prose, acting, movement, makeup DOI: 10.4324/9781003372837-5

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and elaborate costumes to produce all-night narrative events, most of which are based on the pan-Indian epic the Mahābhārata. Besides the impressive visual appearance of its characters, what is striking in these performances is their high energy and heroic nature, their characteristic sound—exuberant, loud, pervasive, upfront—and their irrepressible comedy. Sound here encompasses music, which has its roots in the South Indian Karnatic system of music with adaptations for the rural stage, as well as sung and spoken language. Kattaikkuttu performances use Tamil, an ancient language with a large oral residue. Traditional grammarians and poets have defned Tamil as “three-fold” (muttamiḻ), manifesting itself as an interweaving of “natural” (literary) speech, music and visual–kinetic imagery.4 The validation of Tamil as a language lies in the actual manifestation of its three-fold nature—that is, in its actual “performance.” Within the cultural ecology in which Kattaikkuttu operates, no additional value is to be gained from separating the theater’s implied, intrinsic, ontic knowledge from its practice, nor from the human carriers of this practice. The need for such externalization and abstraction arises, to some extent, in more formal teaching contexts—such as the Gurukulam—where authorities insist on a “syllabus,” in contexts where the theater’s knowledge needs to be made accessible (and potentially commodifable) for the purpose of, for instance, an intercultural performance or a corporate workshop, and in academic contexts when we wish to know “what Kuttu is all about.” In the absence of unambiguous externalization, it is not so easy to get access to Kattaikkuttu’s oral and embodied corpus of knowledge. Kattaikkuttu performers usually do not talk about how they mastered, and are able to perform, a great number of roles within a running repertory of about 25 all-night plays, at least not in explicit terms. Nor do they normally verbalize and interpret their individual, private experiences and emotions when they perform such roles. This makes it difcult to get an “inside” perspective into the epistemic and experiential processes of their acting.5 Having exchanged my academic role for a more practical one to help run the Gurukulam, I had the opportunity to observe Rajagopal groom his young students and collaborate with him on new productions, in addition to attending numerous all-night performances. This is my attempt to unravel parts of Kattaikkuttu’s multilayered and multifaceted knowledge. Given the fact that Kattaikkuttu is by no means a homogeneous tradition, other approaches are possible in which diferent practices and forms of knowledge prevalent in other styles come to the fore. The frst part of this chapter examines the nature of Kattaikkuttu’s practice-based knowledge, which has been shaped by the rural, cultural and social context within which it originated and operates. The second part focuses on the experimental production of a traditional, all-night play. The production used the inherent fexibility of Kattaikkuttu’s embodied knowledge to explore and renegotiate meaning and produce new, often nondiscursive knowledge,

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in particular with regard to the performance of gender and gendered violence, at diferent visual–corporeal, aural–verbal and experiential levels of the performance.

Part I: The nature of Kattaikkuttu’s knowledge In my earlier work, I have tried to understand what allowed trained performers to produce repeatable, eight-hour performances in the absence of a written script. In its most basic format, a performance consists of a relatively stable framework that prompts the fexible or prescribed use of a great variety of multimedia “building blocks” to fll in this basic structure. In order to explain the location and circulation of Kattaikkuttu’s multimedia substance when it is not performed, I have coined the term “oral reservoir.”6 The oral reservoir is a hypothetical construct, a latent, communal knowledge base that I have assumed to be ingrained in the bodies and minds of the people who own the theater. These are foremost the professional performers who have imbibed the knowledge and practices that defne what they do as Kattaikkuttu, and not another form of theater, from earlier lineages of performers through imitation and memorization: ofstage through listening (kēḷvi ñāṉam, or heard/received knowledge) and informal ways of teaching that use minimal verbal explanation and stimulate learning by imitation or copying; and onstage through extensive practice and interaction with senior actors before critical village audiences. The second line of stakeholders are patrons and rural connoisseur-spectators. While usually unable to actively perform themselves, these stakeholders have sufcient knowledge to critically evaluate Kattaikkuttu performances and commission future ones. My other and more complex aim here is to bracket the complexity of Kattaikkuttu’s contextualized and intertwined knowledge layers. The interconnected resonances that these layers evoke are facilitated by the oral reservoir when it is accessed and actualized in multiple, sensorial and embodied ways. I argue that such epistemic and experiential resonances have the power to “afect” its principal stakeholders as well as have an “efect” on the world as they perceive it.7 The porosity of the oral reservoir allows infuences from other, adjacent performance forms and literary traditions to enter its storage and potentially be used in live performances. In Kattaikkuttu’s performance economy, intertextuality and interperformativity—that is, referencing and interweaving narrative and performative elements and visual imagery that belong to other narrative and religious traditions—occur frequently. When intentionally evoked, they are appreciated as a form of erudition, in addition to having the ability to create novel interpretations and knowledge.8 Kattaikkuttu performers have a workmanship-like approach to their profession; they “know” what to do and how to do it. Knowledge here is as much about memorizing an incredible volume of performance texts, music, narrative

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plots, additional background information, makeup patterns, choreographies, etc. as it is about knowing how to retrieve and employ this material efectively in and through the process of performing. Clearly, such knowledge is inseparable from its application or practice. Rajagopal referred to such highly specifc, purposeoriented knowledge as prayoga (Tamil pirayōkam).9 He visualized the concept of prayoga for the young students of the Gurukulam by explaining that it is akin to (the Mahabharata hero) Arjuna’s practice-based knowledge of how to join an arrow to the bowstring in such a precise way that the arrow will never miss its target. Abstracted from its oral context and use, such practice-based knowledge has little value or validity and, if not retrieved and used regularly, will not be retained.

Historical background: Flexibility Traditionally, Kattaikkuttu’s practice was transmitted to a small circle of initiates. These were usually male members of the same family who were groomed to become performers and who tended to guard their artistic knowledge, as it was pivotal to their economic survival. In a feudal society, the vocation (toḻil) of the Kattaikkuttu performer was a right as well as an obligation and, because of the hardships of all-night performances, it was considered a form of physical labor (uḻaippu). Traditional performers had to work under conditions of economic and social precariousness, and this shaped the form, use and validation of Kattaikkuttu’s knowledge. The pliability of the theater’s multimedia building blocks and their fexible use enabled performers to adjust each and every performance to the “wishes of the village.”10 This was a necessity.11 As members of the lower castes, performers could not aford to antagonize their higher-status patrons. The memory of this feudal situation still lingers and is one of the reasons why the profession of the Kattaikkuttu actor is looked upon with disdain, particularly by the urban elite.12 The sharp edges of this inequality have diminished over the last century. Newcomers of diferent caste backgrounds have entered the theater. Traditional performance rights-cum-obligations have been replaced by performances the rate and conditions of which are subject to negotiation.13 However, performers and patrons have remained tied to each other over time and across a network of villages. This network represents an informal performance economy that has yet to become fully commodifed and commercialized.

Sacral context Moreover, Kattaikkuttu performances are considered an ofering to the deity. Often the deity is a local form of the goddess, who is the central focus of the non-elite Hindu religion in rural Tamil Nadu. On the occasion of festivals for the goddess, performers are hired not only for their artistic expertise but

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also for their ritual competence. Their professional knowledge and embodied low-caste status make them experts par excellence in evoking and handling ambivalent “sacral power”—that is, to contain the dangerous and polluting aspects of this power and channel its benefcial and life-giving forces for the material and spiritual welfare of the village community. Sacral power’s dark side becomes visible at moments when performers and members of the audience fall prey to possession-like states. Such states are predictable and connected to acts of demonic violence, slaughter and injustice that are pivotal to the way Kattaikkuttu performers (re)create, interpret and embody the Mahabharata in the here and now. Many consider the occurrence of possession as a visible sign of the success or ritual efcacy of a performance.

Ve¯s. am The foundational unit of a Kattaikkuttu performance is the vēṣam (character). Performers and spectators are familiar with the principal characters and the epic story. The contours of a particular character are already available, possibly in multiple shades, in the oral reservoir and, therefore, in an opaque, perhaps not yet penetrable, form of knowledge, in the memory or deeper layers of an actor’s “self ” or “consciousness.”14 The character’s coming into being depends on actualization through embodied practice. I cannot think of a Tamil term that would be the equivalent of the idea of “embodiment” as used nowadays within performance studies. Perhaps embodiment could be best understood as the practice of “entering or staying or residing in (a) character.”15 The idea that an actor penetrates, hides in or merges with the character, or vesam (also pāttiram, or vessel)—which could be bidirectional from the outside in or vice versa—fts the local cultural context in which the boundaries of the human body appear to be more permeable than in the Western perception.16 Furthermore, it fts the idea that acting, ideally, is not representation but “becoming” and “being” a character. When a character emerges within the reality of the performance, this raises the question of how much of an actor’s self is involved in the creation of the vesam and to what degree the “self,” if such a concept exists, and the vesam are allowed to merge—an artistic and existential issue on which actors’ opinions difer and which I have addressed elsewhere.17 What kind of shared, implicit knowledge goes into the creation of a vesam? Given Kattaikkuttu’s grounding in Tamil, a language that, as we have seen above, defnes itself as verbal, musical and visual, voice and voicing play a crucial role.18 Naming the character—“Here I have come, King Karna”—as an actor conventionally does after s/he has entered the performance area, is to afrm his/her existence or “being.”19 Coming from within the body and fueled by breathing that supports singing, speaking and physical movement, voice is one of the most intimate sensorial experiences for Kattaikkuttu actors and the main faculty many of them worry about. As the carrier of music, songs and

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prose, an actor’s voice, in addition to being distinctively interior and individual, is pivotal for inhabiting a character, taking the narrative forward and creating, through the experiential, physical and visual impact of sound on its environment, epic reality.20 An actor’s gradual transition into character is a process that starts with putting on the makeup in the green room. It continues when s/he moves from the green room into the performance area behind the curtain held across the front of the performance area by two helpers. The process ends the moment the curtain is whisked away and the actor accomplishes her/his full transition into the role. For a heroic male character, this is signaled by a brief choreography set to a staccato rhythm, during which the actor approaches the bench that is placed upstage center. Jumping up and down and striking the bench several times fast and hard with a wooden sword, the actor turns to face the audience and seats her/himself on the bench, just before the curtain is removed. For Rajagopal, this brief musical-choreographic interlude provides the fnal stimulus that propels him into character; he now is the vesam. Regulating his breathing, seated, one leg crossed over the other, eyes wide open and all his faculties alert, he momentarily presents an iconic image radiating power and aliveness to the audience. His expanded sensorial perceptions open up a fuidity between him, his musicians and the spectators who sense that “something is about to happen”—that, in this moment, reality is being created. In the song reproduced at the beginning of this chapter, Rajagopal described this state of heightened awareness as one “of bodily and mental alert.”21 It is brought about by the specifc architecture of the curtain entrance, where an intense interweaving of textual-musical and kinetic-visual actions results in an acoustic and visual environment that is typical for Kattaikkuttu—an environment that prompts being the vesam as a mature, named and alive, manifestation arising from the oral reservoir. For Rajagopal the amplifcation of his sensorial awareness involves, at an intuitive, enactive level, the motor/muscle/breathing actions and stillness (or the absence of voicing) that this heightened moment in the performance requires. The sensorial amplifcation bounces of the dramatic environment, composing it as well as constituting Rajagopal’s perception of this environment. For the spectators, the heightened dramatic sense translates into something we could call “presence” and which in Tamil is referred to as kavarcci (captivation, attraction),22 indicating the interactive relationship between the vesam and those who perceive him/her.23 An efective management of an actor’s mental-physical energy and of his/her self in relation to the character is pivotal for maintaining all-night performance events in which a master-actor might be onstage for 3–4 hours. It is virtually impossible to maintain the high level of performance energy displayed during the heroic kaṭṭai vesam’s entrance, for example, throughout an 8-hour-long performance. As a result, most performances are undulatory, wavelike events in

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which heroism, aggression, violent killings, desire and tragedy alternate with entertaining, localized comedy, which at times is as excessive as the principal characters’ infated bravery and may not be related to the main narrative at all. The level of energy and dramatic suspense rises again when subsequent characters enter the performance arena or a character is overcome by āvēśam—a possessionlike state—at predictable moments in the performance. Such a state should not be confused with the heightened states of awareness that occur during the curtain entrances described above. I have interpreted avesam as the result of sacral violence, killing and acts of injustice (adharma) stipulated by Kattaikkuttu’s narratives and, in my view, not as the result of a particular, named entity that takes hold of a character.24 Possession is often triggered by repetitive, high-pitched, monotonous sung verse in which two combatants may exchange verbal accusations, in combination with heavy percussion and movements including fast spins (kirikki). Rural audiences generally see the occurrence of avesam in a character or a member of the audience as a visible sign of the success of the performance and its ritual efcacy: a specifc performance segment or character has run its course, neutralizing or dispersing the demonic, which is inherent in all of us and in society, until the next festival and the next performance.25 When an all-night performance nears its end toward six or seven o’clock in the morning, people start getting up and leaving to begin their workday. There is no applause. After the singing of a maṅkaḷam—a song set to an auspicious tune that concludes a performance—an actor returns to the green room. While her/ his colleagues start packing up, s/he erases the characteristics of her/his facial makeup (vesam kalaikka or aḻikka) by wiping her/his face with her/his hand and a little coconut oil. Within seconds, the actor dissolves the facial mask, which took more than an hour to apply, into a dense black color before removing it and cleaning up her/his face in a more leisurely fashion. Having been enacted, seen, heard, felt and perhaps transformed and enriched by that experience, the vesam returns to a latent existence in the oral reservoir encoded in its human carriers until his/her next actualization. Kattaikkuttu’s practice-based, multilayered knowledge distinguishes itself through its fexible, transformative, open-ended and specifc nature. It is applied pragmatically by performers to ensure that a performance is aligned to a performer’s bodily condition, the specifcities of place/space/ context (iṭam) and its subject matter (poru ḷ) so as to produce an appropriate a/efect or result ( ēval). No performer possesses all of Kattaikkuttu’s knowledge and know-how, nor does the oral reservoir, which is in a state of fux, function as an ideal grammar (in a formalist linguistic way). Already during the performance event itself, dramatic material, once used, is restored to the oral reservoir with additional experiences, rearrangements and actorspectator feedback added to it. This organic, cyclical fow of Kattaikkuttu’s dramatic substance, comprising structure, multimedia building blocks and conventions for their retrieval and use—that is, the theater’s practice-based

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knowledge—allows the tradition to reinvigorate itself constantly while being used and tested in contextualized performances. Professional performers use and reproduce artistic knowledge pragmatically and without giving it much further thought when they actualize and recycle it in performance. In the following part, I will look at an artistic intervention that intentionally engaged with some of Kattaikkuttu’s implicit knowledge practices and that, in doing so, produced new forms of knowledge for spectators and performers, particularly with regard to the performance of gender and violence.

Part II: Changing the paradigm Between 2013 and 2016, Rajagopal adapted Dice and Disrobing, a traditional allnight play, for the Kattaikkuttu Young Professionals Company (KYPC).26 The KYPC consists of male and female students and graduates of the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam. During the time of the performances of Dice and Disrobing, the 27 KYPC members were between 14 and 22 years old. All of them were training with Rajagopal at the Gurukulam and, therefore, shared a common artistic basis and vocabulary that facilitated new, collaborative work. The production created an opportunity for one of Kattaikkuttu’s frst professional female actors, S. Tamilarasi, to embody the female lead character of Draupadi. It thereby changed the embodiment and possible interpretations of a theater that traditionally has been a male prerogative. At the center of the play was the “almost rape” of Draupadi, the polyandrous wife of the fve Pandava brothers. The violence meted out to Draupadi included verbal revilement, being pulled by the hair into an assembly of kings, a failed attempt to publicly disrobe her and, fnally, the ambivalent order to place her on the “lap” of her principal aggressor. Dice and Disrobing is not a radical production, but rather an exploration of the traditional play’s scope to create new afective content and push it into new artistic and political directions. This involved the renegotiation of transmitted knowledge to adjust it to a novel context that included female performers, female bodies and female voices. Adherence to the all-night format of the play was a crucial precondition to ensure that Dice and Disrobing in its new avatar would be commissioned by regular patrons in all-night performance contexts. Through this adaptation we wanted to stimulate rural spectators— women, men and children—to engage with issues of gender, gender relationships, gender violence and injustice at an experiential-afective level, rather than taking the theater’s conventional acting format and gender stereotyping for granted. Representations of gender and violence in mass media, shifting ideas of male and female propriety, respectability and religious normativity, in combination with spectators’ selective memories of earlier Kattaikkuttu performances featuring male performers in all roles, set the horizon of expectations

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with regard to the materialization of gender and violence in future performances of Dice and Disrobing. It was these inbuilt stereotypes that Rajagopal sought to connect with and, where possible, interrogate and unsettle. He did so through a series of interventions—in his casting, the narrative and the dramaturgy. The entry of young women onto the Kattaikkuttu stage is relatively recent and socially still problematic, in particular for the families of the female actors. However, their onstage presence in both female and male roles also draws a huge, mostly positive, audience response and is one of the reasons why the KYPC’s performances are so sought after. Until their appearance on the Kattaikkuttu stage, people generally thought that women would not be able to perform physically demanding roles (or would be forbidden from doing so for ritual reasons). These roles include the impressive heroic male kattai characters, but also the part of Draupadi in Dice and Disrobing. This role requires a close collaboration with the male actor playing Du ḥśāsana, in addition to great physical agility on the part of the performer playing Draupadi, in particular during the hair-pulling scene, in which he swirls her around at great speed. Rural spectators, curious and sometimes ambivalent about the future of this new development, want to witness with their own eyes young women perform on the Kattaikkuttu stage in order to be convinced of their ability and talent. Given the limited scope of this chapter, I will highlight some aspects of the performance that are relevant to my contention that Kattaikkuttu’s allnight performances are a source of knowledge for local spectators.27 The dense, experiential discourse such performances evoke replaces bourgeois, “critical,” “public” debates framed in discursive, analytical/abstract and/or rational, persuasive political terms from which many rural spectators feel, and indeed often are, excluded.28 The notorious hair-pulling scene is usually enacted matter-of-factly in a conventional performance, with an emphasis on the realistic representation of violence. Draupadi—played by a man—appears onstage behind a handheld curtain symbolizing the boundary between the royal women’s apartments and the outside world. The antagonist, Duhsasana, cuts away the curtain with his sword and barges into this private, feminine space. He grabs Draupadi’s long, unbound hair—in actual practice, a black cord that substitutes for it. Pulling her head toward him, he forces her to bend forward, facedown, restraining her in a stranglehold that creates a visual image of subjection and sufering. Duhsasana swirls her around and then throws her to the ground, rolling her over and over in the dust. In contrast to conventional performances, in Rajagopal’s dramaturgy, Draupadi is momentarily free after the curtain has been removed. She ducks and runs to escape Duhsasana’s attempts to get hold of her. The distance this creates between the two opponents and their circular movements and eye contact augment the sense of imminent violence. Staying frmly within the traditional idiom, Rajagopal’s dramaturgy crafts an emotionally complex

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relationship between Draupadi and Duhsasana. He refrains from having Draupadi roll on the foor, not only because this provides an image of extreme violence but also because the physical exposure of the actress’s body to the public gaze would almost certainly cause her embarrassment and, possibly, lead to criticism. For him, the subtlety of the dramatic relationship between Draupadi and Duhsasana lies in conveying the powerful emotions of anger, humiliation, surprise, fear and desire that the characters experience through visual, stylized acting. Here, steps, body movement, the use of space and, consequently, the performers’ emotional states are regulated by the rhythm and by musical interludes that allow the invoked violence to subside (and the actors to regain their breath). The aestheticization of violence he insists on is built into Kattaikkuttu’s implicit artistic and ritual knowledge that the full potential of embodiment should be preempted at this climatic moment in the performance. It is aimed at containing the actors’ and the spectators’ heightened sensorial emotions and preventing them from erupting into real anger and uncontrolled violence— with potentially disastrous efects for themselves and the community. The actual disrobing scene happens toward the end of an all-night performance, before dawn breaks. Draupadi stands on a platform holding a plate with burning camphor in front of her. She is partly hidden by the raised curtain folded in half. Duhsasana reaches under the screen and starts to tug at the lower end of her sari. At this moment when her nakedness is about to be revealed, she surrenders to Krishna, who supplies her with an infnite succession of saris. The song text states that Draupadi “forgets (her)self ” and, possibly, that she enters a diferent realm of consciousness wherein she is oblivious to shame and other norms conditioning female propriety. Within the local, sacral performance context, it signals her transformation into the village goddess, Draupadi Amman. The violation of Draupadi’s physical and mental integrity unshackles a menacing, sacral power and results in an alarming condition of female “un-containment.” This theme occurs in other (pan-)Indian cultural traditions too.29 It often elicits strong, afective responses among Kattaikkuttu’s rural audiences, including instances of possession or spectators wanting to intervene in the dramatic action onstage. Regular all-night Kattaikkuttu performances of Dice and Disrobing end here. Rajagopal has composed an innovative last scene based on a combination of oral and written literary sources circulating in the oral reservoir,30 in which Draupadi plays a fnal game of dice directly opposing Duryodhana. Staking the only thing she still owns, her chastity, she wins this decisive game that allows the Pandavas to go into their 13 years of exile as free people. For me, two aspects of Rajagopal’s adaptation of Dice and Disrobing stand out: frstly, the transmission of the theater’s specifc performance know-how to young, professional women performers, such as Tamilarasi and her female KYPC colleagues; and secondly, the reorientation and recontextualization of this knowledge to reshape Draupadi’s role, not only with regard to the female body and voice but also in providing individual, rural spectators with

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novel, afective “spaces” that allow them to access and evaluate new information about gender, gendered violence and power at diferent experiential and cognitive levels. S. Tamilarasi, the young actress playing Draupadi, deeply identifed with the character’s strength and courage.31 This is one of her favorite roles and an inspiration in real life. Rajagopal’s adaptation of Dice and Disrobing enabled her to bring her own interpretation to the performance of Draupadi and of what she understood by “being a woman,” being “a Kattaikkuttu actress” and “being strong” in the context of a rural society that has not yet fully acknowledged women’s equality—or their presence on the public Kattaikkuttu stage. The adaptation focused on replacing the conventionally one-sided masculine violence of the relationship with a more equal yet mutually antagonistic and oscillating one that traversed a greater range of emotions. It foregrounded Draupadi’s pride, agency and sense of autonomy and steered the narrative toward a very diferent ending. While the violence meted out to Draupadi remains deeply problematic, the adaptation makes her resistance and agency palpable. A diferent and more fully embodied portrayal transforms Draupadi’s relationship with her main aggressors from one of passive submission to a fearless manipulator and, eventually, within the local religious context, a fearful goddess.

Conclusion I have argued that Kattaikkuttu’s knowledge is grounded in the theater’s embodied performance practice and the capacity of this practice to renegotiate, refgure and generate new, critical and often nondiscursive knowledge. Such embodied, practice-based knowledge cannot be extracted from its local context or from its human stakeholders without losing or transforming its “added value”—that is, the interperformativity, afective resonances and sacral efcacy that I have described. Instead of trying to scientifcally extrapolate, abstract, homogenize and thus un-power Kattaikkuttu’s knowledge or prayoga, we need to look at its em-powering fexibility and open-endedness. Kattaikkuttu’s pragmatic fexibility is enabled by the oral reservoir. This communal knowledge base underlies individual performers’ mastery of Kattaikkuttu’s prayoga. The depth of their access to the theater’s practice-based knowledge allows performers to create a character (vesam) and contribute to the assemblage of all-night, live events through the process of performance. The oral reservoir allows spectators to recognize such events as good (or bad) and efective (or inefective) Kattaikkuttu. In the case of Dice and Disrobing, the oral reservoir fed into Rajagopal’s imagination and desire to subvert the narrative—within and through the confnes of Kattaikkuttu’s traditional idiom and format—by foregrounding the character of Draupadi in a way that showed her power and agency as a woman. I see interweaving and knowledge creation as the outcomes of Kattaikkuttu’s inherent fexible nature and the tacit knowledge management that accompanies

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it. Interweaving occurs at the interstices of performance when narrative, performative and contextual layers of knowledge interconnect and interact at multiple, sensorial and cognitive levels, in the process reshaping each other and generating new knowledge. Furthermore, “as a strategy for survival,” interweaving has been an integral part of Kattaikkuttu’s history. When traditional patronage started waning, Kattaikkuttu performers needed to compete with performers of other theater forms, in particular the local “Drama”—a vernacular ofspring of the commercial Parsi theater—and the Tamil “talkies.”32 Therefore, they began adopting successful performance elements and strategies from their competitors and even added performances in Drama style to their own Kattaikkuttu repertory. Such interweaving of performance cultures went hand in hand with an opposite process of diferentiation. Performers began demarcating Kattaikkuttu as a separate genre by emphasizing its heroic and ritual nature in order to safeguard their niche in the emerging local performance market. In Dice and Disrobing, Rajagopal sought to link up the production’s novel imagery, movements and interpretation of the relationship between Draupadi and her adversaries with other narrative and religious layers that permeate the porous oral reservoir. In doing so, the performance evoked a dense, sensorial and emotional discourse that—or so we hoped—allowed spectators to evaluate new, experiential knowledge about gender and gendered violence.33 No data is available on the reception of this experimental production. However, its popularity is attested by the fact that Dice and Disrobing was commissioned and paid for by rural audiences more than 25 times and has been incorporated in its new avatar into the running repertory of the KYPC. The dense discourse that Dice and Disrobing and other Kattaikkuttu performances evoke is extremely localized. It rests on an intimate engagement with the specifc cultural, rural Tamil world in order to experience and “know” it. Valentine Daniel has defned such ontological, embodied knowledge practices as an act of being in the world. He diferentiates them from the act of seeing the world, which is a theoretical, cerebral, analytical and discursive practice that places issues in a wider context.34 According to him, both practices are not mutually exclusive. However, they are hierarchical, with analytical, explicit knowledge often being validated over opaque, non-abstract knowledge residing in lived, embodied experience. Rajagopal once described all-night Kattaikkuttu performances as a source of experiential knowledge or, in his words, “a university for people who cannot read and write.” Putting this in context, I believe that Kattaikkuttu performances ofer an alternative to what we call the “public debate.” Subaltern, rural people feel, and in actual practice often are, excluded not only from the bourgeois, public debate but also from academic discourses. 35 In addition to foregrounding “modern” concepts and values that do not necessarily align with how rural people perceive the world, such discourses are framed in

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unfamiliar, explicit or abstract, rational and often generalizing or persuasive terms. My inability to fnd a proper Tamil translation of the idea of “embodiment” is an example of the incongruity between Kattaikkuttu’s dense discourse and the academic debate. The problems involved here are various and interlinked. They concern the translation and representation of embodied, afective and efective knowledge rooted in the Tamil language into the abstract, precise and “autonomous” English language of academia.36 Furthermore, they point toward the fact that diferent cultures defne the idea of language diferently and that language infuences thinking (and therefore “knowledge making”) and vice versa, even though we do not know to what extent.37 In other words, my attempt to describe Kattaikkuttu’s practice-based, multimedia and multilayered knowledge within an academic format brings to the fore the frictions between diferent ways of being and seeing, between hearing and writing and between knowing how to act and how to write knowledge. More often than not, such frictions are immanent to cultural exchange and translation processes that are asymmetrical and often hierarchical because they are grounded in an unequal access to material and symbolic power. According to Michel Foucault, the mechanisms that underlie power, in addition to conditioning bodies and minds, shape, reproduce and control knowledge.38 This implies that we still have a long way to go before dominant Western, academic knowledge paradigms and ways of thinking can be truly “decolonized” so as to allow the other, the unfamiliar, to become familiar and worthy of equal and respectful consideration and validation.39

Notes 1 P. Rajagopal’s take on “What is Kattaikkuttu?” from the collaborative production Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu (2017), in which he and Karnatic vocalist T. M. Krishna discuss the nature, social status and intricacies of both their art forms during an interlude. 2 When I use a Tamil or Sanskrit word for the frst time, I reproduce it with diacritics. In subsequent instances, I will omit the diacritics in order to facilitate readability. 3 The name Kaṭṭaikkūttu refers to the kaṭṭai ornamentation or wooden ornaments (crown, shoulder and breast ornaments) that symbolize the royalty and heroism of the theater’s principal (male) characters. The theater is also known as Terukkūttu (street theater) or simply Kūttu (theater). Naming the theater has been a subject of debate. See Hanne M. De Bruin, “Naming a Theatre in Tamil Nadu,” Asian Theatre Journal 17, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 98–122. 4 See David Shulman, Tamil: A Biography (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016), 1–2; Saskia Kersenboom, Word, Sound, Image: The Life of the Tamil Text (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1995), xvi. 5 For further reading on the Indian experience and lived experience as the source of theory, see Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarukkai, The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 29–40; Joan W. Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 773–797.

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6 See Hanne M. De Bruin, Kaṭṭaikkūttu: The Flexibility of a South Indian Theatre Tradition, Gonda Indological Studies 7 (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1999), 164. For the following discussion of Kattaikkuttu’s knowledge and the idea of the vēṣam, I am drawing on Hanne M. de Bruin, Kattaikkuttu: A Rural Theatre Tradition in South India (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming). 7 While I will argue that Kattaikkuttu performances have the power to afect their audiences, the validity of the experiential domain as a source of theory has been questioned (e.g., Scott, “The Evidence of Experience”). 8 An example of such intertextual and interperformative interweaving is found in the play Kar ṇa Mōk ṣam. At the end of this all-night Mahabharata play, Krishna promises the hero, Kar ṇa, that he will be reborn as Ci ṟuttoṇṭar Nāya ṉar. Ciruttontar (Little Devotee) is a saint from the Tamil Saivite bhakti repertoire. One day Siva appears in the guise of a beggar and demands to be fed. As there is no food left, Ciruttontar is forced to sacrifce his own son and prepare him as food for the god in order to uphold his vow to always feed others. During his lifetime, Karna was denied the opportunity to fulfl a similar vow because nobody wanted to accept food from his hands, believing that he was a person of low/no caste. The ultimate sacrifce of ofering his own son as food to Siva allows Karna, in his next life as Ciruttontar, to attain liberation from the cycle of rebirth (mōk ṣam). The interweaving of a narrative strand from a devotional, literary Saivite tradition and an epic performance tradition gives rise to new, meaningful interpretations of the character and actions of Karna and Krishna. In this way, interweaving produces new knowledge that allows local audiences to make sense of Krishna’s seemingly arbitrary behavior and Karna’s tragic life—a sense that the classical, written versions of the epic often lack. See De Bruin, Kaṭṭaikkūttu, 268–316, and my English translation of the allnight play Kar ṇa Mōk ṣam in Hanne M. De Bruin, Kar ṇa Mōk ṣam—Kar ṇa’s Death: A Play by Pukalentippulavar, trans. Hanne M. de Bruin (Pondicherry: Institut Français de Pondichéry/École Française d’Extrême-Orient/International Institute of Asian Studies, 1998). The fact that Kar ṇa Mōk ṣam often is performed as part of the mourning rituals in the hope that the deceased will attain moksam, as Karna does in the play, renders such “sense making” through interweaving even more topical and real. 9 Prayoga (from the Sanskrit verb pra-yuj, to yoke or join or harness) means “joining together, connection, application, employment, practice, experiment.” Monier Monier-Williams, A Sansk ṛit-English Dictionary (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1872), 640. 10 De Bruin, Kaṭṭaikkūttu, 56–57. 11 Phillip Zarrilli has pointed out that fexibility plays a role in Western contemporary acting praxis too, and it is found in all forms of acting and artistic performance to some degree. However, the emphasis on acting as a rule-based “system” appears to have discouraged discussions about the presence and scope of such fexibility. See Phillip B. Zarrilli, “Introduction: Acting as Psychophysical Phenomenon and Process,” in Acting: Psychophysical Phenomenon and Process, ed. Phillip B. Zarrilli, Jerri Daboo and Rebecca Loukes (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 6. 12 The Tamil term kūttāṭi is a term of abuse. In addition to “actor” or “dancer,” it also denotes a “reckless, self-willed, unprincipled person” (Tamil Lexicon, s.v. “k ūtt āṭi,” accessed 8 May 2021. https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/tamil-lex_query.py ?page=1071). Similarly, the word terukkuttu (street theater) carries the negative connotation of “that which is a public disgrace” (Tamil Lexicon, s.v. “terukk ūttu,” accessed 8 May 2021. https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/tamil-lex_query.py ?page=2037). Terukkuttu was a mobile, dramatic, processional practice that was part of the feudal system of performance rights-cum-obligations. The association of the name “terukkuttu” with physical, caste-based labor was an important reason for

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13 14

15 16

17

18

19 20

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the Kattaikkuttu Sangam to adopt the name Kattaikkuttu. See De Bruin, “Naming a Theatre.” De Bruin, Kaṭṭaikkūttu, 143–154. Indian philosophy has provided diferent interpretations of the ontological concept of self and its connection to the body, consciousness, and knowledge or knowing (e.g., see Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Self in Indian Philosophy,” 15 April 2021. http://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/self-indian-philosophy). For a discussion of the concept of self in relation to (un)masking, see David Shulman, “Introduction,” in Masked Ritual and Performance in South India: Dance, Healing, and Possession, ed. David Shulman and Deborah Thiagarajan (Ann Arbor: Centers for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan, 2006), 1–16; for a (Western) phenomenological discussion of the depth of self and its diferent layers or appearances, see Mark Rowlands, Memory and the Self: Phenomenology, Science and Autobiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 79–84. V ēṣattil nuḻaiya or vēṣattil niṟka/taṅka. Most Asian traditions do not assume a sharp distinction between body and mind, and the boundaries of the body-mind may extend beyond what in Western practice is understood as the empirical body. See Thomas P. Kasulis, “Introduction,” in Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice, ed. Thomas P. Kasulis, Roger T. Ames and Wimal Dissanayake (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), xv, xxi. See Hanne M. De Bruin, “Donning the Vēṣam in Kaṭṭaikk ūttu,” in Masked Ritual and Performance in South India: Dance, Healing, and Possession, ed. David Shulman and Deborah Thiagarajan (Ann Arbor: Centers for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan, 2006), 107–134. For a description of the specifc nature of the Tamil language and its literature, see Shulman, Tamil: A Biography; for Tamil’s multimedia nature in relation to drama, see Karthigesu Sivathamby, Drama in Ancient Tamil Society (Madras: New Century Book House, 1981), 406–407. In order to become manifest and exert its power to “act on” the world, Tamil depends on performance in the broadest sense of the word; see, e.g., Kersenboom, Word, Sound, Image; Sumathi Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); and Bernard Bate, Tamil Oratory and the Dravidian Aesthetic: Democratic Practice in South India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). Walter Ong has pointed out the strong connection between sound/word and (purposeful) action in oral cultures in his Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982). The idea that sounded or performed language has the power to “act” is not strange to Western scholarship either: regarding language, see John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962); regarding gender, see Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990; London and New York: Routledge, 2006); and regarding artistic performance, see Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (London and New York: Routledge, 2008). De Bruin, “Donning the Vēṣam,” 121. On the interiority of sound versus the exteriority of vision, see Ong, Orality and Literacy, 71–77. On the individuality of the voice as the creator of (human) presence and a manifestation of self, see Jean Penny, “Flutes, Vices and Maskenfreiheit: Traversing Performative Layers,” Organised Sound 16, no. 2 (2011): 184–185. https:// doi.org/10.1017/S1355771811000136. In contrast to Kattaikkuttu, where the actor is also the vocalist, Kutiyattam, Kathakali and Yakshagana have delegated the character’s voice, partly or in full, to a professional background singer. The separation of voice and acting appears to have contributed to a greater stylization or “classicization” of these other South Indian theater forms.

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21 Rajagopal described this as : “integrating and concentrating everything together, as in a knot.” 22 Tamil Lexicon, s.v. “kavarcci,” accessed 8 May 2021. https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi -bin/app/tamil-lex_query.py?page=789. 23 In this respect, performers emphasized the power of the eyes, which are foregrounded and contained through Kattaikkuttu’s masklike makeup. According to them, the eyes are the instruments par excellence to captivate the gaze and the minds of the spectators. Conversely, an actor’s eyes are also a vulnerable “opening” into his/her body because it is through the eyes that a spectator’s gaze penetrates her/his body—with possible negative efects. Furthermore, some actors, including Rajagopal, felt that the extreme emotions of anger and (sexual) desire that occur, for instance, in the character of Duhsasana during the disrobing scene, radiated from their bodies outwards, particularly via the eyes (De Bruin, “Donning the Vēṣam,” esp. 127–128). 24 Possession in actors and its management is an integral aspect of Kattaikkuttu’s practice-based knowledge. In contrast to the professional possession in actors, spontaneous possession occurs in members of the audience in response to the dramatic action onstage. For an anthropological overview of possession, see Elisabeth Schömbucher, Wo Götter durch Menschen sprechen: Besessenheit in Indien (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2006). 25 De Bruin, Kaṭṭaikkūttu, 124–142. A Kattaikkuttu vesam’s susceptibility to possession is indicative of a demonic disposition. Such a disposition pervades almost all of the Mahabharata’s principal characters, irrespective of whether they fght on the “good” or the “evil” side. However, changing perceptions of these characters within contemporary society appear to make it more difcult for Kattaikkuttu performers to allow avesam to emerge, in particular when it concerns characters such as Draupadi and Arjuna, whom (part of ) society wants to elevate to a more classical, Sanskritized ideal. The ambiguity of these characters’ disposition, which Kattaikkuttu leaves intact, does not fnd favor with such a one-sided model of Hindu religion and an urban-elite modernity that looks down upon possession as a form of superstition. Contemporary Kattaikkuttu performers, therefore, will adjust their know-how to accommodate audiences’ changing perceptions with regard to what they perceive as a more desirable representation of these characters. 26 Richard Frasca has provided an English translation of a “telescoped but complete performance” of Dice and Disrobing by the Perungattur Ponnuswami troupe in the village of Perungattur in 1981. In this performance, P. Rajagopal played the role of Duhsasana, and the late Melma Ponnusami took on the role of Draupadi. See Richard A. Frasca, “The Dice Game and the Disrobing (Pakaṭai Tuyil): A Terukkūttu Performance,” Asian Theatre Journal 15, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 1–44. The play is also known under the alternative title Turōpatai Vastirāpaharaṇam or The Disrobing of Draupadi. 27 One important aspect of the production, which I do not consider here, is Draupadi’s famous question that she asks the assembly of kings and statesmen, and through which she tries to mitigate her impossible situation: “Did he [i.e., her husband, Yudhi ṣṭhira] lose me prior to or after losing himself in the game of dice?” Her question is met with silence, except for the youngest of the Kauravas, Vikar ṇa, who speaks up and questions the honor of the kings that they allow a woman to be humiliated thus. In the production, Rajagopal has fully dramatized this scene, in contrast to many conventional performances in which the question is mentioned only as part of the narrative, with Vikarna played by a person who might not be in full costume. 28 Guru and Sarukkai, Cracked Mirror; Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text, no. 25/26 (1990): 56–80. https://doi.org/10.2307/466240. 29 I am thinking here, for instance, of the sixth-century female Tamil saint-poet K āraikk āl Ammaiyār, who roamed the earth naked after her husband, fearing her power, left her. See Elaine Craddock, Śiva’s Demon Devotee: K āraikkāl Ammaiyār

hts reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

PART II

(Re)Generating Aesthetic Knowledges

4 AESTHETIC KNOWLEDGE AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE Erika Fischer-Lichte

What kinds of knowledge does the actor embody? In 1985, the Greek Minister for Culture, Melina Mercouri, launched the Greek Drama International Meetings in Delphi in order to provide an ofcial forum for the global discussion on ancient Greek drama and its current productions. She appointed Theodoros Terzopoulos as its artistic director. At the second meeting in 1986, he presented his production of The Bacchae, the result of a nine-month rehearsal period with his newly founded Attis Theatre. In it, he, for the frst time, brought to fruition his ideas on a new acting style displayed in a very particular space: a round platform that was fastened to the ground by strips of rags attached centrifugally, producing an efect of lightness and circular motion through the gentle movements of the stage. The most important aesthetic device was the performers’ particular use of their bodies and voices. Firstly, their movements were rooted in the specifc space, i.e., the circle, delineating its boundaries and preventing transgression. Secondly, they had to defne the relationship between the fgures within the circle. Thirdly, and most importantly, the actions on stage were performed in order to generate energy and let it circulate in the whole space so that it would be transferred to the spectators and become contagious—infecting them so that they might be able to tap into it themselves. Terzopoulos metaphorically called this new art of acting the “return of Dionysus.”1 It was a completely novel aesthetic knowledge embodied and displayed by the actors. In antiquity, Dionysus was regarded as the god of liberation and communality. He freed his followers from all sorts of pressures and initiated them into a community. He transgressed or even dissolved the boundaries between male and female, man and god, man and beast, life and death. Encountering DOI: 10.4324/9781003372837-7

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this foreign god could lead to a new form of being for his followers or turn into an unavoidable clash with his opponents, causing widespread death and destruction.2 In some ways, these characteristics apply not only to Terzopoulos’s production, but also to the criticism it attracted. The response of many Greek critics was devastating. This is particularly striking since critics are by profession required to possess wide-ranging aesthetic knowledge and sensibility, but, in this case, they were not at all open to a novel aesthetic approach. They felt appalled, in particular by certain movements of the actors, such as their walking with bent knees or squatting, which they dismissed as “un-Greek” and regarded as “Japanese” or “Asian.”3 One of them complained, “I am afraid that Mr. Suzuki will have a strong infuence on the easily impressionable Greek stage directors and that in the future, we shall see more Japanizing performances.”4 The reference to Suzuki Tadashi does not come as a surprise. At the frst festival in Delphi, he had presented his internationally acclaimed production of The Trojan Women (1974). Another critic expressed her concern that such “disastrous experimental tendencies go together with the newest fashion trend of bringing together European and Asian cultures.”5 According to their understanding of staging Greek tragedies, exclusively “Greek” or at least “European” body techniques were acceptable. Walking with bent knees and squatting were clearly not deemed sufciently “European,” let alone “Greek.” While in the opening scene of Terzopoulos’s production Dionysus dances an undeniably Japanese dance—namely, the bugaku military dance of bu-no-mei, which was also identifed as Japanese in the Greek reviews6 —the director emphasizes that the bent knees and squatting are as much Greek as they are Japanese. Terzopoulos refers to a book from the seventeenth century, in which he read that in Attica, where there is the hospital of Asclepius, the patients had to follow a certain ritual. When the sun was setting, they had to walk naked in a circle on wet sand, on wet earth, one around the other. In the second hour, they had to quicken their steps, in the third more. In the fourth, they had to bend their knees just as in Kabuki. […] Little by little, these people, for eight hours, did this same thing and they began to have so much energy. This is like what happens in Kabuki. The Kabuki actor can walk with bent knees for ten hours, and plays with the same secret.7 Terzopoulos here foregrounds the overlap between the “Greek” and the “Japanese” method, which should therefore neither be received as an appropriation of Japanese culture nor as a “contamination” of the Greek one.8 That he did so by taking recourse to an old book is quite remarkable because, in other cases, he defended the use of a particular body technique in his Bacchae by referring to other genres of cultural performance, such as the anastenaria ritual performed annually on 21 May in Northeastern Thrace in honor of Saints

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Constantine and Helen. The book appears as an important source of ritualistic, therapeutic knowledge, which Terzopoulos turned into a form of aesthetic knowledge of great relevance to contemporary performance by connecting it to kabuki—a Japanese performance genre that came into being approximately at the same time as the book. The battle between the Greekness or Japaneseness of bent knees and squatting raises several questions. Firstly, does it make sense to judge a new acting style based on the purported “origin” of any body techniques it makes use of? Secondly, why did the application of such body techniques seem justifed for non-Greek productions of Greek tragedies, as was the case with Suzuki’s Trojan Women (1974), which was shown at the frst Delphi festival without inviting similar criticism? In his review, the Japanese critic Senda Akihiko had in fact highlighted squatting as a typical Japanese body technique and stated that it “represents a basic bodily stance not only for the Japanese but for Asians.”9 In other words, what kind of knowledge do actors embody when they walk with bent knees or squat? Both body techniques are, of course, enabled by human anatomy. However, this is not to say that the same body movements are prominent or even common in each and every culture, as Marcel Mauss (1872–1950) argues in his seminal essay “Techniques of the Body.”10 This essay was frst published in 1935 after being delivered as a lecture at a meeting of the Société de Psychologie the previous year. As the author explains, cultural variations in body techniques such as walking, squatting, swimming, dancing, climbing, etc., are not due to anatomical diferences but due to divergent forms of education. While human anatomy is, generally speaking, universal, as is the ability to walk, swim, squat, dance, etc., the ways in which these movements are carried out are particular: they have to be learned in a process determined by each culture. They result from knowledge conveyed by a family’s elders; by following their example, children learn to imitate and/or are guided by physical or verbal critique if they do not meet the generally expected norm. Usually, by the end of childhood, this kind of knowledge, acquired through the process of learning, becomes embodied knowledge. Consequently, since body techniques are not innate or inherited but result from various forms of training, new forms of movement can be acquired. Mauss cites examples such as the changes in the gait of French women after the arrival of American flms in France, while pointing out that decisive changes in body techniques might not be possible for everyone at any age. As Mauss explains, the older we grow, the greater a challenge it becomes to acquire new body techniques. What applies to daily practices in principle applies particularly to “extradaily” body techniques as developed in the performing arts all over the world. Yet, the transfer of body techniques from one performance culture to another is—as the example of Terzopoulos’s production demonstrates—not always unproblematic. It might be perceived as an attempt to force body techniques

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developed in and characteristic of one particular culture as its “ideal” onto another one. Or it can be received as an act of ruthless appropriation by members of the performance culture from which the technique was transferred— two cases characteristic of colonial and postcolonial times. Or, as it happened in this case, the transfer might be regarded as an act of “illegal contamination” by members of the receiving culture, “polluting” the “purity” of their own culture. We can assume that this was the reason why Terzopoulos hastened to “prove” that squatting was originally as much Greek as it is now Japanese. The squatting performed in his production of The Bacchae embodied the knowledge of an ancient Greek healing practice in order to conjure up energy—a capacity which Suzuki quite generally attributes to this body technique when stating perhaps it is not the upper half but the lower half of our body through which the physical sensibility common to all races is most consciously expressed; to be more specifc, the feet. The feet are the last remaining part of the human body which has kept, literally, in touch with the earth, the very supporting base of all human activities.11 While Terzopoulos was keen to highlight the “Greekness” of squatting, Suzuki aimed to stress its “universality.” That is to say that in both cases, the knowledge of a particular body technique forms part of an overarching cultural knowledge which endows it with a unique context of its own. It is this very context from which its particular signifcance can be deduced. The actors’ embodied knowledge is thus never merely technical knowledge but always highly specifc cultural knowledge. A body technique, transferred from one performance culture into another and even executed in exactly the same way, must therefore inevitably change into another kind of embodied knowledge. Furthermore, it becomes part of its aesthetic knowledge. The concept of the “aesthetic knowledge” of the actor here refers to the in each case particular ways in which they use their body and voice in accordance with the overarching aesthetic principles of the acting style—such as beauty, mimesis, abstraction, alienation, etc.—that they have incorporated during their training. While in “traditional” performance genres, such as Japanese nō, Chinese kunqu or the Thai dance lakhon, this knowledge changes very slowly, almost unnoticeably, in the process of being handed down from one generation to the next, in the remaining cases, it is transformed whenever the underlying aesthetic principles change. A sudden or indeed radical change usually at frst arouses mixed responses by the audience, ranging from furious, violent protests to standing ovations, as happened with the works of avant-garde actors and directors in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century or since the 1960s. Thus, when this newly embodied aesthetic knowledge is displayed in a performance, the spectators might in turn feel inspired to generate new

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knowledge. Or they might reject it altogether as an unreasonable demand on them to check or even transform their own stable body of aesthetic knowledge. As stated above, actors and performers usually acquire their aesthetic knowledge during their training. With the exception of those in traditional performances, they are supposed to widen or adapt their aesthetic knowledge in the course of their career whenever new ideas spring up for a performance. Spectators are assumed to acquire aesthetic knowledge in performance through frequent participation. Whenever styles and approaches change, they are summoned to adjust their own body of aesthetic knowledge. They may also take recourse to books dealing with the particular aesthetic knowledge underlying certain performances. This is what Terzopoulos did to expand his knowledge of how to generate energy by walking with bent knees. Besides visual documentation, books are the only sources we have when dealing with the question of what kind of aesthetic knowledge actors were meant to embody and to convey to the spectators in the past. If we assume that acting and performing can be understood or even defned as displaying diferent kinds of embodied knowledge—such as spatial, kinaesthetic or vocal knowledge—in order to convey a particular aesthetic knowledge to the spectators, this raises several questions. One of them refers to the respective felds of knowledge to which the embodiments relate, such as history, mythology, religion, politics, aesthetics, psychology, physiology, etc. Another one refers to possibilities of transferring methods and ways of embodying knowledge from one performance culture to another or of combining such methods and ways developed in diferent performance cultures. This brings up the problem of how and to what extent the particular aesthetics constitutive of a performance culture will be changed by such a transfer of knowledge. Answering these two questions in detail would require a book-length study at least. In this chapter, I shall restrict my examinations regarding the frst question to the chapters on emotions and their representation that are central in two treatises on the art of acting pertaining to two very diferent performance cultures: (1) the Indian Nāṭyaśāstra, written in Sanskrit sometime between the second century BCE and the second century CE, attributed to the sage Bharata; and (2) Ideen zu einer Mimik (1785; Ideas on Mimic Art), a German treatise from the eighteenth century CE by the philosopher Johann Jakob Engel, who later took over the directorship of the Berlin Royal Theatre. My examination of these two texts will be guided by the following three questions: (1) What kinds of knowledge on emotions are presupposed by or developed in the treatises? (2) What kinds of aesthetic knowledge, in terms of the representation of emotions, are actors supposed to embody? (3) What kinds of aesthetic knowledge do the spectators refer to? Are they preexisting or generated through participation? With regard to the larger question of how to transfer methods and ways of embodying knowledge between performance cultures, I shall examine two

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performances: the frst one will be a Sino-Japanese kunqu production of The Peony Pavilion (Shanghai International Art Festival, 2009), in which Bandō Tamasaburō, one of the most celebrated onnagata (traditional female impersonator of kabuki), played the role of Du Liniang, the 16-year-old daughter of a senior government ofcial, who falls in love with a young scholar after the latter appears to her in her dreams. Besides Bandō Tamasaburō’s casting, all other elements of the performance adhered to the kunqu original. The second production I will discuss is Lear (1997) by the Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen, which was frst presented in Japan and then in Singapore and subsequently in many other places around the world, including Berlin. Each part was played by an actor or actress from a diferent Asian performance tradition. In both cases, my focus lies on the particular aesthetic knowledge generated in this process of actors performing diferent traditional performance genres side by side, as well as on the possibilities and/or difculties on the part of the spectators to generate new aesthetic knowledge under these conditions, given the possibility that they would have been completely at a loss regarding some, or indeed all, of the styles presented on stage.

Two treatises on the art of acting: How to generate aesthetic knowledge by representing emotions To begin with, the use of the English term “emotion” is not entirely unproblematic. It did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century, when it was used in David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740).12 Before that, the terms “sentiment,” “afection” and “passion” were commonly used, which carried specifcally Christian associations and values. The new concept of emotion was popularized as a “secular psychological category” and was used to mean “all those feelings that were neither sensations nor intellectual states.”13 Considering this history, it would seem ridiculous to assume that the term bhāva used in the Nāṭyaśāstra means exactly the same as the English term “emotion” or the German phrase that Engel used—“states of the human soul” (Empfndungen der Seele),14 from which he derived certain “afects” or Empfndungen (emotions). Engel’s “states of the human soul” are comparable to the Nāṭyaśāstra’s sthāyibhāva insofar as both refer to emotional states—that is, something more stable. Besides these stable emotions, both the Nāṭyaśāstra and Engel consider a number of other kinds of emotions, such as transitory or combined ones. In the following, I shall restrict my refections to the stable emotions and the ways in which the actor should express or represent them. In the Nāṭyaśāstra, eight such sthāyibhāva are listed (the bracketed numbers refer to the emotions Engel lists): (1) rati (sexual love, desire) (2) hāsa (laughter, merriment, amusement)

(3)/(8) (1)/(2)

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(3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

śoka (sorrow, grief ) krodha (anger, rage) utsāha (enthusiasm, courage, determination, energy) bhaya (fear, terror) jugupsā (disgust, horror, hatred, revulsion) vismaya (astonishment, amazement, wonder)

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(7) (9) / (9) (5)/(6) /

Engel distinguishes between “activities of the mind” and “activities of the heart” and, within each category, between “afects of observation” and “desire.” Regarding the “afects of observation,” he introduces the two categories of “pleasant” and “unpleasant” and, regarding “desire,” he lists two types: “approximative” and “rejecting.” This leads to the following list of “states of the human soul” (the bracketed numbers refer to the emotions in the Nāṭyaśāstra listed above): (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Lachen/Bewunderung (laughter, admiration) Freude/Stolz (joy, pride) Liebe/Verehrung (love, awe) Scham/Reue (shame, penance) Verachtung (contempt) Verdruß/Haß (annoyance, hatred) Trauer/Leiden (mourning, sufering) Sehnsucht/Genuß (yearning, pleasure) Ekel/Furcht/Zorn (disgust, fear, anger, rage)

(2) (2) (1) / / (7) (3) (1) (7)/(4)/(6)

The two lists are obviously not identical. However, they overlap to a rather stunning degree, even if the “correct” meaning of the terms on one list is never exactly the same as that of the corresponding one on the other. This goes together with a diferent systematization or classifcation of emotions in both treatises. It seems that Engel’s (4) “shame/penance” and (5) “contempt” are the only emotions that do not have an equivalent on the list from the Nāṭyaśāstra.15 On the other hand, there is no emotion on Engel’s list that corresponds to vismaya (astonishment, amazement, wonder), and regarding the sthāyibhāva (5) utsāha, translated as “enthusiasm,” “courage,” “determination” and “energy,” it is difcult to fnd any state of the soul that would come close to it on Engel’s list. Yet some convergences remain. In any case, the actor has to know the characteristics of the emotion s/he is going to represent or express as well as the circumstances and means for doing so. As an example, let us compare what the two sources have to say on the sthāyibhāva (4) krodha and the state of the soul (9) Zorn (anger, rage). In the Nāṭyaśāstra, this section begins with the possible causes for anger to emerge: it (krodha) is “caused by Determinants such as insolence, abusive language, opposing and the like.” Next, its representation is described: “It is to be

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represented by Consequents such as a dilated nose, upturned eyes, bitten lips, throbbing cheeks and the like.” This is followed by fve kinds of display rules: “anger is of fve kinds as caused by an enemy, a teacher, a lover, a servant and simulated.” Each of these requires a diferent form of display, i.e., fve unique expressions: 1. When angry with an enemy, arched brows are knitted, lips are bitten, hands are rubbed; an angry man looks at his own arms and at the enemy with the idea of freeing himself. 2. Anger with the teacher must be controlled by humility, with a tearful face, looking down and wiping the perspiration; the angry person should indulge in plenty of sly gestures. 3. Anger against a lover or beloved should be expressed by shedding tears through the corners of the eyes, by knitting eyebrows, by pouting (slightly) the lips. This should be done (as if ) unthinkingly. 4. When angry with servants, one should, without showing cruelty, look at him intensely, with eyes widened, and threaten and abuse. 5. Anger that is simulated is expressed by being tired, trying to invent a reason, feigned anger and should be acted as subordinated to the vīrarasa (sentiment of heroism).16 The expression of anger is diferent depending on the person who causes the anger—that is, depending on the social situation. If I did not know the source of this classifcation, I would assume that the guidelines for the expression of this emotion were derived from an aesthetics adhering to the principles of mimesis. For, on the one hand, they consider facial expressions relating to anger which can be observed in many cultures17 and, on the other, diferent social situations. Now let us turn to Engel and his thoughts on anger. In his discussion of emotions, he generally proceeds from the so-called law of analogy, according to which perceivable bodily changes correspond to inner emotional changes. He describes anger as “the desire to remove, to destroy an ill,” a desire which is “one with the desire to punish and take revenge”: “All Nature’s energies stream outwards in order to transform the joy of what is Evil into Fear by the terrifying sight of it, into Panic by its destructive efect and, by contrast, to turn our own bitter Annoyance into a pleasant feeling of our Strength, the Terror we instill in others.”18 The corresponding physical expression follows analogously from this “state of the soul”: Anger equips […] all the external limbs with strength; preeminently arming those who are destined to destroy. If the external parts, overflled with blood and juices, brim over and tremble, and the bloodshot, rolling eyes shoot glances like fery daggers, then a certain indignation, a

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certain disquiet is also expressed by the hands and teeth: the former are clenched, the latter are bared and gnashed […] all movements are jerky and of extreme violence; the gait is heavy, forced, shattering.19 Even if this was the so-called natural expression of anger, members of the nobility and the bourgeoisie would usually not display this openly, since their education taught them to restrain and hide this emotion. While in the Nāṭyaśāstra the diferent social situations in which anger might be displayed are considered, Engel’s focus lies on the rediscovery and restoration of the “natural” expression of an emotion as determined by the law of analogy. Despite these diferences, we can fnd some similarities when we place Engel’s description side by side with the frst case described in the Nāṭyaśāstra. Both describe similar, if not the same, physical expressions. However, while Engel claims to have rediscovered the “natural” expression—to be moderated only slightly in the representation of noble or bourgeois characters—the Nāṭyaśāstra provides diferent expressions depending on the relationship between the angry character and his interlocutor, which still share certain features. In their own way, both treatises appear to follow the aesthetic principles of mimesis. In both cases, embodied knowledge cannot be reduced exclusively to the knowledge of how to perform a certain body technique in order to express a particular emotion—here, anger. It also includes knowledge of certain social (in the case of the Nāṭyaśāstra) or physiological (in the case of Engel) rules. The knowledge to be embodied by the actors and their acting is rather all-encompassing, including layers of knowledge that are characteristic and essential for each culture in which the performance is taking place, even beyond the specifc context of the theatrical performance—such as emotional, social, economic, communal, behavioral, scientifc, religious and other forms of knowledge. In and through the process of embodiment, this knowledge turns into an aesthetic knowledge—a knowledge of the means and ways via which to represent the processes in question according to the specifed rules in a “perfect” but still surprising manner. As such, it can be perceived by the spectators who might generate knowledge of their own. Whether or not this knowledge would initially be aesthetic in nature and would later blend with other kinds of knowledge or vice versa will depend on the performance and on the particular spectator. Despite the seeming similarity in the aesthetic principle of mimesis in the Nāṭyaśāstra and in Engel’s treatise, it is striking that the intended impact of the display of emotions on spectators is very diferent in the two texts. In the Nāṭyaśāstra, the focus is on the bhāva-rasa relationship—that is, the rasa is produced by the bhāva: “Just as connoisseurs eat and savor their fare when prepared with many condiments and substances, so the learned fully savor in their heart the stable emotions when conjoined with factors, transitory emotions, and reactions. That is why they are called dramatic rasa, or ‘tastes.’”20

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Eight rasa correspond to the eight bhāva brought forth by the expression of these emotions: the erotic, comic, tragic, violent, heroic, fearful, macabre and fantastic.21 The rasa are “savored,” thus making the spectators aware of these emotions and allowing them to enjoy their awareness as well as their artful expression on the basis of their preexisting aesthetic knowledge. The expression rasa or “taste” points to a very particular experience which spectators will undergo in case they are “connoisseurs,” i.e., have knowledge on the underlying aesthetics. They undergo an aesthetic experience. To do so, their bodily presence at the performance is mandatory. It needs their sensuous perception. To be able to “savor” the rasa is the most important aim of rasa aesthetics. For Engel, the desirable response from the spectators also entails involvement as well as aesthetic distance, albeit of another kind. On the one hand, the expression of an emotion is meant to induce in the spectator a sense of identifcation, either with the character displaying the emotion or with the one who causes it. On the other, since the representation of an emotion was derived from the physiological knowledge about it, it expressed a psychological “truth”—that is, it conveyed to the spectator a previously hidden and undiscovered scientifc knowledge about emotions. The embodied knowledge of the actor thus translates into the spectator’s emotional, psychological and intellectual knowledge. The way in which s/he displays it speaks to the aesthetic knowledge of the spectators, or even contributes to it. This will be explained at greater length in the conclusion of the chapter. While it seems that the representation and expression of the respective emotion—anger—is in some respects comparable, the response of the spectator is conceived and described diferently. Thus we can assume that the kinds of knowledge the spectators are referring to or generating are not conceived of as one and the same. Aesthetic knowledge in particular difers remarkably. While in the case of the Nāṭyaśāstra it is a preexisting knowledge, in Engel’s case, this knowledge can at least partially be acquired only via the process of spectating. Before going on with the discussion of this phenomenon and before drawing any conclusions from it, let me point to a strange “coincidence.” Modern psychology agrees on a classifcation of six “universal” emotions. Paul Ekman lists them as follows: “anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, surprise.”22 Antonio Damasio echoes this list, even if in another order: “happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust.”23 All of them are listed in the Nāṭyaśāstra and—except for “surprise”—by Engel too. In his explanation of anger, Ekman mentions as the main trigger a “frustration resulting from interference with your activity,” a “physical threat,” “someone’s action which causes you to feel psychologically, rather than physically, hurt. An insult, a rejection”; he also mentions that “anger is occasioned by observing someone do something which violates your dearly

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held moral values.” 24 The following facial expressions are listed as manifestations of anger: • • • • •

•

The brows are lowered and drawn together. Vertical lines appear between the brows. The lower lid is tense and may or may not be raised. The eyes have a hard stare and may have a bulging appearance. The lips are in either of two basic positions: pressed frmly together, with the corners straight or down; or open, tensed in a squarish shape as if shouting. The nostrils may be dilated.25

The facial expressions enumerated here undeniably echo the—albeit much shorter—list provided in the Nāṭyaśāstra. This seems to suggest that the knowledge the Nāṭyaśāstra expects the actor to embody directly corresponds to the scientifc knowledge of contemporary psychologists on human emotions and their facial expression. However, as the display rules in the Nāṭyaśāstra indicate, the knowledge of how anger is expressed by an Indian actor at the time of the Nāṭyaśāstra would hardly be identical to how an American at the end of the twentieth century supposedly “naturally” expressed it. Even if we assume that there is such a thing as the “natural” expression of an emotion such as anger, common to all human beings, this does not imply that it is displayed as such in all social situations, let alone by an actor who represents this emotion following the particular rules constitutive of this particular art of acting and forming the basis of his knowledge. The two treatises on acting, originating in two diferent historical eras and cultures, may provide important insights with regard to the knowledge of emotions to be embodied by the actors, and partly even of the ways they are to be embodied or represented. We can also deduce from the texts what kinds of knowledge the spectators were supposed to neglect or generate. Yet, even in the best case, this will mostly amount to an intelligent guess. This is especially true with regard to the aesthetic knowledge of the actor. When we juxtapose our reading of the Nāṭyaśāstra with the subtle and succinct description of actors training in Kerala’s kathakaḷi dance drama and the kind of knowledge the actors-in-training are in the process of embodying (see Phillip Zarrilli’s contribution to this volume), the limits of historical texts become blatantly evident. Yet these historical sources are immensely useful in determining what kinds of knowledge an actor is supposed to embody and what kinds of aesthetic experiences the spectators are expected to undergo. Besides, we must not forget that the actors did not acquire the knowledge they are going to embody by reading the Nāṭyaśāstra. Rather, it has been conveyed to them by a guru, a master who teaches them each and every movement, as is also the case in the examples Zarrilli discusses. Keeping this in mind, the historical texts, for today’s readers, convey an important knowledge regarding the emotions the actors of that time had to

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embody, partly even the ways and means of their expression—i.e., an aesthetic knowledge—as well as the knowledge of the aesthetic experience the spectators were supposed to undergo. In fact, regarding contemporary psychologists’ knowledge on emotions and their expression, it is fascinating to see that 200 years ago, Engel claimed that his classifcation of emotions followed scientifc principles and his description of their expression complied with the scientifcally legitimated “law of analogy,” but indeed approximately 2,000 years earlier, the author of the Nāṭyaśāstra had come to similar conclusions on the emotions and their expression that an actor has to know. Yet, despite the impressive convergences, the diferences stand out clearly. Even the embodied knowledge on emotions and their expression cannot be postulated as “universal” knowledge but as a very particular cultural one, according to the Nāṭyaśāstra as well as to Engel. For, even if it is “universally” human to have emotions, their identifcation and classifcation as well as the rules and conditions via which they are expressed are culturally specifc. Even if there is such a thing as a “natural expression” of an emotion, we are taught from childhood what kind of display is appropriate to and socially acceptable in what situation or—as is also often the case— when not to display this emotion at all. Such rules apply to social life, while in performance usually diferent ones are valid that are part of or constitute the aesthetic knowledge related to that genre. In both cases—i.e., in social life as in performance—they are culturally defned and form part of a very specifc body of cultural knowledge. In this regard, there is in fact no diference between the knowledge of certain body techniques referring to walking or to expressing anger in social life and the respective knowledge, constitutive of a particular performance genre—even if both difer in many other respects. While in the frst case, a certain gait and a particular expression of the face form part of a body of knowledge on what is regarded as an appropriate behavior in diverse social situations, in the second, they belong to a body of aesthetic knowledge. What exactly happens to this particular performance-related body of aesthetic knowledge when a performance includes an actor who embodies and displays a diferent aesthetic knowledge? How will this afect the overall aesthetics of the performance? Or, to make matters more complicated, is there no such thing as a common body of aesthetic knowledge and instead the actors all adhere to diverse aesthetic principles, each referring to their “own” body of aesthetic knowledge? These are the questions to be discussed in the next section.

Generating new aesthetic knowledge: Interweaving kunqu aesthetics with kabuki The 2009 Shanghai International Arts Festival featured a performance of the traditional kunqu play Mudanting (The Peony Pavilion), written by Tang Xianzu

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in 1598 and, since then, a highlight of any kunqu company. It was directed by and starred the Japanese kabuki onnagata Bandō Tamasaburō in the part of the 16-year-old Du Liniang. The performance followed the kunqu style, with the exception of Bandō, the most famous onnagata of his time. In 2012, he was ofcially named a Living National Treasure in Japan. In 1990, I saw him for the frst time in several kabuki pieces as well as in a shingeki performance of Mishima Yukio’s Madame de Sade. His mastery of a completely diferent acting style— a realistic-psychological one—was extraordinary. He outshone all the other actresses in the mise-en-scène, who were all trained in the shingeki style. Since then, he has been involved in diverse experiments in diferent styles and media. The Chinese kunqu dramaturgy, performance aesthetics and acting styles are quite diferent from those of kabuki (not to mention, of course, the language. I leave aside here that Bandō had to learn Chinese as well as the lyrics and tunes of the opera—which he did initially by mimicking the movements of the kunqu performers’ tongues and lips26). If the main role here was played by a kabuki onnagata following the aesthetic principles of kabuki—whilst adapting in certain ways to kunqu—with all the other performers adhering to kunqu aesthetics, this raises several questions: How did the actor integrate his acting into the aesthetics of kunqu or did he stand out as “other?” Did his performance leave an imprint on the aesthetic characteristics of kunqu, and if so, in what respects and to what extent? What kind of aesthetic knowledge did this experiment generate in the spectators? The actress who played Du Liniang’s maid noticed that Bandō in fact followed the aesthetics of kabuki, which “is very quiet,” by being “purer, neater, quieter, and more introspective and not catering to the audience,”27 unlike the performers of kunqu. This was also true for his dance style. The diference to the kunqu style stood out clearly, as the actress recalls: “As a little huadan [role for a young, unmarried woman], I have many typical movements to highlight my vivacity. When I performed with Tamasaburo, he did not have many gestures and focused on the movements of his eyes, which made it very difcult for me to interact with him.”28 This statement seems to imply that—at least for the co-performers— Bandō’s play was not easily brought into sync with theirs. The diferences between the acting of the kunqu performers and that displayed by Bandō were presumably also noticeable to the spectators. Still, it seems that the aesthetic principles his acting followed at least did not contradict those underlying kunqu, for Chinese kunqu scholars even emphasized a certain “Chineseness” in his performance: Chinese opera performance is particularly impressionistic and shares with Chinese painting the historical tradition of “cherishing spiritual resemblance rather than visual similarity” … Tamasaburo’s performance fully embodies the philosophical idea of “vigorousness and verve” and the impressionism that traditional Chinese aesthetics propounds.29

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This statement implies that Bandō’s acting embodied and displayed knowledge that does not just refer to particular body techniques characteristic of kabuki—and/or kunqu—but encompasses certain aesthetic principles to which both performance traditions may subscribe. This is the knowledge of a possibility of how to create a new aesthetics out of their coupling without violating the general principles underlying each one. It has the ability to speak to spectators familiar with either of the two performance traditions—challenging them to go beyond one form and to acknowledge that an aesthetics emerges out of this interweaving which is neither that of kabuki nor kunqu but takes recourse to both. This kind of interweaving generates new aesthetic knowledge, which could only come into being through the knowledge embodied and displayed by the co-acting of Bandō and his Chinese colleagues. The fact that this was neither criticized as an illegitimate appropriation of kabuki by a kunqu opera performance nor as a “contamination” of kunqu through the use of kabuki devices makes this case particularly interesting. Moreover, here the actor was not interweaving so-called “traditional” and “modern” devices to produce new forms. Rather, Bandō combined two traditional forms of approximately the same era. The more dominant form in this production was kunqu, no doubt. Still, Bandō was able to incorporate kabuki principles and devices in a way that, on the one hand, its “otherness” with regard to kunqu was not erased, while on the other, an aesthetics emerged the principles of which were valid for both. And since he did so in agreement with his Chinese colleagues, who had to respond to that—in turn leaving an imprint on his acting—collectively the whole stage ensemble brought forth new aesthetic knowledge. The question arises as to what kind of an aesthetic knowledge this was, and whether it has the potential to give rise to a more encompassing aesthetics of interweaving to be developed in the future. Of course, this presupposes a certain compatibility between the diferent performance traditions involved, as was the case here. This implies that theoreticians and philosophers have to take an embodied aesthetic knowledge as a starting point for the development of a corresponding philosophical aesthetics. This embodied aesthetic knowledge comes into being and circulates between and among the actors rather than emerging from one individual actor. This is, in fact, a constellation that poses a challenge to aesthetics as a philosophical discipline.

Generating aesthetic knowledge by interweaving various Asian performance traditions In Ong Keng Sen’s production of Lear (1997), each performer embodied an aesthetic knowledge that was fundamental to a particular performance tradition. Lear’s part was played by the nō actor Umewaka Naohiko, member of a famous nō family. Instead of Shakespeare’s Goneril and Regan, there was the Older Daughter, played by Jiang Qihu, a leading actor of Jingju (or so-called “Beijing

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opera”), who had never before acted as dan, the traditional female impersonator of Chinese xiqu. The part of the Younger Daughter was played by the Thai dancer Peeramon Chomdhavat, who used the traditional dance styles of khon and lakhon. The Fool was played by the Japanese flm actress Katagiri Hairi; the Older Daughter’s Retainer, by the Malay-Singaporean Gani Abdul Karim; and the Loyal Attendant, by the English-speaking Singaporean Lim Yu-Beng, who had to speak Indonesian Malay for the role. Except for the Fool, they all employed their traditional acting or dancing styles. The warriors spoke Bahasa Indonesia and used elements from the martial dance pencak silat. The Fool spoke Japanese and performed in a “realistic” acting style. The text used was a radical rewriting of Shakespeare’s tragedy by the Japanese writer Kishida Rio. Regarding the spectators, it cannot be assumed that any spectator in any of the performances—including those taking place in Singapore—knew all the acting/dance styles or all the diferent languages involved. Since the production was conceived for a festival and this entailed an international tour, it is likely that the production intended to irritate the spectators—even those who were familiar with one or several of these performance traditions and languages. For not every gesture or movement, not each and every detail—for example, in the shade of colors, the ornaments or the materials—belonged to just one tradition. It was particularly striking that the music accompanying each actor’s performance was mostly taken from a performance culture diferent from their own. Umewaka Naohiko’s—Lear’s—acting was accompanied by the Chinese yueqin, contemporary synthesizer music, and the Indonesian gamelan; Jiang Qihu—the Older Daughter—performed to the tunes of the Japanese lute biwa. This raises the question of how this juxtaposition of an acting style deriving from one performance tradition and an instrument/music from another one afected the embodied knowledge of the performers and the generation of knowledge by the spectators at the diferent places where the production was presented. Music not only seduces the listener to tune into its rhythm, but certain sounds even resonate within the listener’s body. Exposing the nō actor to different kinds of music that had nothing to do with nō—such as the Chinese yueqin or the Indonesian gamelan—certainly must have posed a challenge. It not only required a very conscious and focused performance of movements according to nō principles (of jo-ha-kyū, for example, slowly building up momentum, increasing the tempo and suddenly freezing at the highest point of intensity and tension). The movements also had to be related to a music taken from another tradition that adhered to unfamiliar rhythms and produced diferent sounds. The question then arises whether Umewaka Naohiko attempted to harmonize movement and sound or whether he allowed them to clash—making the spectators realize that they do not go together. In the frst case, the actor would have to adapt his movements and transform his acting style. His adaptation would elicit a response in the spectators that senses harmony between elements from two diferent Asian performance traditions.

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This might result in a refection on the possible relationships and compatibility between the aesthetics of the diferent Asian performance cultures. Yet, if the nō actor stuck to his own rhythmic patterns and disregarded the music accompanying his movements, the clash would also be sensed by the spectators. This might lead them to perceive a fundamental incompatibility of the two aesthetics concerned and possibly trigger further conclusive thoughts based on this. At least to me, it seemed that this did not apply and that the production aimed at harmony rather than outright clash. As is the case when movements and music from diferent traditions meet, the nature of the encounter becomes even more crucial. Who was made to adapt his/her style to another’s? Was this a reciprocal or a one-sided process? Or did everyone categorically stick to their own traditions? Were there any changes that might have left an imprint on the actor’s embodied aesthetic knowledge? These questions are difcult to answer for anyone who is not an expert on the traditions involved. And this, no doubt, applied to the majority of the spectators outside of East and Southeast Asia. Their prior knowledge could therefore not be as crucial as their individual aesthetic sensitivity in determining whether they received the encounter of diferent acting styles as a harmonious blend generating a new aesthetics, or as a clash of traditions which, although performed in beauty, results in death and destruction, just like the narrative of Lear itself. All spectators could follow this narrative, even without knowing any of the languages spoken or recognizing any of the acting or musical styles employed. And even if spectators registered a clash of traditions, we can postulate a new aesthetics emerging from this that considers the difculties of interweaving performance cultures, arising out of the necessity to acknowledge diferences while attempting to reconcile them without erasing or homogenizing them. Since each performer, in one way or another, had to adapt to the music of another performance tradition and respond to the diferent acting styles of their co-performers, this generated new aesthetic knowledge, which was embodied by them collectively and displayed between each other and before the spectators, who, in turn, might have felt inspired to also generate new aesthetic knowledge. This might have changed the ways in which the spectators participated in the performance. This new aesthetics enabled the spectators to still recognize the diferences between the acting styles displayed while acknowledging that the performers were in some way or another able to relate their acting to that of the other(s), so that a new aesthetics could emerge in/through their collaboration. Even if the narrative of the story told ended in death and destruction, the aesthetic means displayed by the performers in order “to tell” it allowed a kind of “harmonious relationality” to appear. As a matter of fact, this particular kind of a “relational aesthetics” can also be interpreted as a political statement. If the involvement of all these diferent

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performance cultures resulted in a harmonious adaptation, this could be read as a kind of Blochian utopian Vorschein (pre-appearance or aesthetic anticipation of a better future state), which does not, however, result in the denial or glorifcation of the disastrous end of the performance. In case the ending of the plot suggested the incompatibility of the performance traditions involved, this might be seen as a political allegory—not only of Singapore, as one critic remarked, but of the relationship between the East and Southeast Asian countries involved. Thus, the kind of knowledge embodied by the processes of interweaving performance traditions in a production such as Ong Keng Sen’s Lear does not provide clear guidelines for what to make of or how to deal with it. It is up to the individual spectator to fnd their own way. This raises the question of the relationship between aesthetic knowledge and aesthetic experience, which will be discussed in the conclusion. It is small wonder that the production triggered a heated debate, comparable to that provoked by Peter Brook’s Mahabharata in the 1980s. Some critics regarded it as a “consumption of the Other” and a “form of atomized alienation”30 and criticized it for being funded by the Japan Foundation Asia Centre.31 Others saw a problem in the distribution of the roles: the Japanese and Chinese leading parts versus the Southeast Asian minor parts was seen as “undemocratic”32 and as a perpetuation of stereotypes. Its “identity politics” was generally condemned for having “become an objectifed cultural product,” which “echoes Singapore’s ofcial CMIO [Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, and Others] multiculturalism.”33 However, another critic received it completely diferently, praising it as a “Singaporean political allegory” and a “sincere attempt to work through the political complexities of identity-formation in a ‘state without a nation.’”34 In any case, the production provoked the spectators, in whichever cultural context it was performed, to refect on the kind of aesthetic knowledge embodied by the performers as well as on the relationship between these diferent performance traditions and even cultures. The path from knowledge coming into being in and displayed via the performance as a “whole,” and from there to the knowledge individual spectators may generate as a result is a rather long one, though it is as enjoyable as it is troublesome. The “globalization” of embodied aesthetic knowledge in this context does not mean spreading the same knowledge all over the world. Rather, in the process of travelling, this knowledge changes—for those embodying it as well as for the spectators who were challenged by it to generate new aesthetic knowledge on their part. And this process leaves its imprint on everyone involved—the actors, the spectators and the performance traditions concerned. How far-reaching their transformation will be is unpredictable and very diferent for each individual. In any case, at some point, embodied aesthetic knowledge will infuence intellectual, refexive and academic knowledge, which in turn will feed into and propel related research processes.

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Conclusion: Aesthetic knowledge and/or aesthetic experience? So far, I have used the term “aesthetic knowledge” with regard to both performers and spectators alike. Yet this does not imply that it means the same in both cases. The embodied aesthetic knowledge of the performers displayed before spectators can be understood as a particular “capacity for action,”35 as knowledge quite generally is defned in the introduction to this volume. As a matter of fact, the performers know how to act—how to move in and through the space, what kind of gestures to execute, what expressions of the face to adopt or how to modulate their voice when representing or expressing an emotion, an action or a relationship, etc. But what about the spectators? Do they have access to or acquire aesthetic knowledge while participating in a performance? And if so, what kind of knowledge does this term imply? In the Nāṭyaśāstra, this problem is in fact addressed. The paragraph preceding the quotation above36 reads as follows: What does “rasa” actually mean? Our answer is that rasa is so called because it is something savored. And how can rasa be said to be “savored”? Just as discerning people relish tastes when eating food prepared with various condiments and in doing so fnd pleasure, so discerning viewers relish the stable emotions when they are manifested by the acting out of various transitory emotions and reactions and accompanied by the other acting registers (the verbal, physical, and psychophysical), and they fnd pleasure in doing so.37 To my understanding of this paragraph, a certain aesthetic knowledge must be a prerequisite for the spectator to undergo an aesthetic experience. The spectators are supposed to be “discerning” and “connoisseurs,” i.e., people who have some kind of knowledge about the process they are perceiving. This is the conditio sine qua non for undergoing any aesthetic experience. Just as perceiving is a sensuous activity, so the “savoring” of the performance is a sensuous pleasure. However, this experience can only arise if the bhāva is represented or expressed in a way that is congruent with the aesthetic knowledge of the spectators, or even surpasses it. Aesthetic knowledge here appears as a prerequisite for an aesthetic experience to emerge. However, it is to be emphasized that knowledge and experiences proceed from sensuous processes. Aesthetic knowledge relating to performances can best be gained through repeated participation in performances—but also, to a certain extent, by reading books such as the Nāṭyaśāstra, while aesthetic experience can only emerge on the condition of the bodily co-presence of actors and spectators. It arises while perceiving, not before nor after. Without the actor’s bodily appearance before the spectators and his bodily enactment of the bhāva, rasa cannot emerge in the spectators. It

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is perceived by the spectators as “taste”—that is, as a particular physical transformation. This transformation does indeed rely on the aesthetic knowledge of the spectators. However, the rasa as “taste” is a particular sensuous experience of its own. And it is this experience that unfolds a transformative potential. In the Nāṭyaśāstra, aesthetic experience is thus described as a particular transformative process that proceeds from perception, which is infuenced or at least tinged by the aesthetic knowledge of the spectator but is still realized as a physical process. This is how the relationship between aesthetic knowledge and aesthetic experience is described in the historical text. The question arises, whether and if so, to what extent, does this also apply to the three performances discussed above? Let us start with The Peony Pavilion, for the conditions of its coming into being, in some respects, resemble those addressed in the Nāṭyaśāstra. The kunqu opera is a traditional genre whose rules and aesthetic principles are known by the “discerning viewers” and “connoisseurs,” which used to be called piaoyou in Chinese.38 The aesthetic experience that a “discerning viewer” will therefore undergo will, to a large extent, depend on their preexisting aesthetic knowledge about the performance genre. The pleasure they will take in the performance will largely depend on the skills and virtuosity of the performers through which they display their admirable faculty to ingeniously realize the underlying rules and principles. In The Peony Pavilion, even if Bandō Tamasaburō in some respects adapted his aesthetic knowledge of kabuki to the underlying kunqu, its otherness could not be overlooked and still infuenced the aesthetic perception and experience of the spectators, who would have mostly been connoisseurs of kunqu. Yet the Chinese kunqu scholar cited above emphasized that his acting “fully embodies the philosophical ideas of ‘vigorousness and verve,’” and that it elicited or conveyed an impression to the Chinese spectators that “traditional Chinese aesthetics propounds.”39 However, his statement also confrms that the experience of watching Bandō acting in a kunqu opera was not limited to an aesthetic pleasure. In fact, it occurred as an interruption of the aesthetic experience, demanding a later refection that would explain or justify it after the performance and thus contribute to the spectator’s aesthetic knowledge. The Chinese critic quoted above was able to enjoy and appreciate the performance on the basis of a certain aesthetic knowledge referring to kunqu. At the same time, he later took recourse to another body of aesthetic knowledge— Chinese aesthetics of painting—in order to explain to himself the impression and impact Bandō’s acting exerted on him. By relating his aesthetic experience, triggered by the actor’s performance, to his own knowledge of Chinese philosophy, this spectator was able to develop new aesthetic knowledge. The performance of Lear was very diferent. While some of its audiences would have been familiar with the underlying aesthetics of one or more of the traditional performance genres to which it took recourse, others may not have

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had any prior exposure to them. The possibility for such spectators to refer to their own aesthetic knowledge in order to deal with the performance was therefore limited or even nonexistent. How can we then describe their aesthetic experience of participating in the performance when only very little or indeed perhaps none of their aesthetic knowledge applied? In the best case, the spectators would be immersed in the abundance of sensuous appearances that they perceive without attempting to immediately relate them to any particular body of knowledge. We can call this state a liminal state—the spectator is suspended on the threshold of perception without knowing how to continue. Aesthetic experience can thus be described as a liminal experience.40 The spectator is spellbound by what is perceived by their senses without there being any clear or predictable priority set for what to focus on.41 This can happen in all kinds of performances. However, if a performance relies on aesthetic knowledge that is basic to its genre and familiar to the spectator, this provides a guideline for how to deal with what is happening on stage. In the case of Lear, it was difcult, if not impossible, to identify such guidelines, so the spectators had to cope with the liminal situation they found themselves in. I would like to argue, however, that the experience of this liminality can be understood as an aesthetic experience. It does not proceed from a particular aesthetic knowledge, nor can it be identifed with one. Rather, this liminal state—a state of betwixt and between—allows the spectators to play with their perceptions, to experiment with diferent kinds of relationships between them and with the experiences the spectators made in other situations. It is an open play that does not dictate a particular result. However, since it is play, it allows those spectators who are engaged in it to undergo certain transformations themselves. As a liminal experience, the aesthetic experience allows and opens up the possibility for processes of transformation, which might result in the generation of new aesthetic knowledge. The relationship between aesthetic knowledge and aesthetic experience is very diferent in the cases discussed so far. Aesthetic experience here only seems possible if the spectators do not insist on taking recourse to a particular body of aesthetic knowledge. Instead, it enables them to generate new aesthetic knowledge springing from their perceptions during the performance. For spectators who were familiar with at least one of the performance traditions, the “deviations” from it were noticeable and had to somehow be related to the experience of not knowing how to deal with the actors following other traditions. This, of course, also created a liminal situation, challenging those spectators to go beyond the limits of their knowledge, to venture into the realm of unknown performance aesthetics. They, too, found themselves in a liminal situation— aesthetic experience happens as the experience of liminality in and by which new aesthetic knowledge may emerge. The question arises as to what kind of transformation takes place out of such a liminal situation. This is unpredictable. Ideally, spectators will develop a

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new kind of aesthetic knowledge. While in the frst case, aesthetic knowledge formed the basis for an aesthetic experience to emerge, here, it is the aesthetic experience that works as the source and point of departure for the generation of new aesthetic knowledge. This is to say that the aesthetic knowledge of the spectators can also be defned as a capacity to act. They may act playfully in this state of liminality, realizing the capacity to act as the capacity to play with the undetermined, the undefnable, the in-between. This was also the case with Terzopoulos’s The Bacchae. The production created a completely novel performance aesthetics. When we procced from the assumption that, until the end of the military dictatorship (1967–1974), “the prevailing Modern Greek tradition of staging Greek drama […] demanded high stylization, screams and yells,”42 it is evident that Terzopoulos’s Bacchae had nothing to do with that tradition. This was not the frst production of a Greek tragedy that did not follow it.43 Yet before Terzopoulos’s The Bacchae no one else had established a completely new acting style.44 The movements of the actors were hardly ever fowing or even graceful but extremely powerful and controlled, featuring a high degree of dynamism, which continuously brought the limbs together in angled positions. They often began and ended abruptly. They forged and forced energy out of the body like an eruption, so that the other actors as well as spectators were afected by it. Movement, breath, speech, sound and music followed a certain rhythm. However, these rhythms were rarely fully synchronized but often conficted with each other. Because of the particular usage the performers made of their bodies, the latter attracted the spectators’ keen attention. This, once again, speaks to the idea that aesthetic knowledge does not primarily reside in one body but emerges between the bodies of actors and spectators, comes into being and articulates itself in the space. Yet the spectators’ and, in particular, the critics’ aesthetic knowledge regarding performances of Greek tragedies did not enable them to receive the performance in a habitual and expected way. They found themselves in a liminal state—probably even more so than the spectators approximately 20 years later in Ong Keng Sen’s Lear. To respond to it by focusing on what simply appeared to their senses seemed to be a challenge to the spectators, which most of the critics at least were not willing to accept. Proceeding from the assumption that a performance of a Greek tragedy must afrm its underlying “Greekness,” they refused to engage with what they perceived, blocking any possibility for an aesthetic experience to occur—the prerequisite, in this case, for generating new aesthetic knowledge. Spectators who were willing to take up the challenge to remain in a liminal state for the duration of the performance, and thus undergo an aesthetic experience, were transformed in some way—witnessing the “return of Dionysus.” After the end of the performance, they were able to generate new aesthetic knowledge by taking recourse to new kinds of aesthetic experiences. Also, in this case, undergoing an aesthetic experience was the

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conditio sine qua non for new aesthetic knowledge to emerge, which, later on, could even be put into words and conveyed to others. The aesthetic knowledge and aesthetic experiences of spectators are inextricably intertwined with each other, one being the source and prerequisite for the other to emerge. When discussing aesthetic knowledge with regard to the spectators, this only makes sense when we consider the particular kind of aesthetic experience each performance allows for. The transformative power of a performance with regard to the spectators will unfold in diferent ways and to diferent ends depending on the particular relationship between aesthetic experience and aesthetic knowledge.

Notes 1 See Theodoros Terzopoulos, The Return of Dionysus, with a Preface by Erika Fischer-Lichte, trans. Savvas Stroumpos (Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2020). 2 See Renate Schlesier, ed., A Diferent God? Dionysos and Ancient Polytheism (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011); Richard Seaford, Dionysos (New York: Routledge, 2006). 3 See Tasos Lignadis, “Θεατρική Συνάντηση στους Δελφούς” [Theatrical Encounter in Delphi], I Kathimerini, 22 June 1986, translated by Natascha Siouzouli; Anna Synodinou, “The Victim—Bacchae: An Experiment of Mr. Terzopoulos,” Politika Thema ( July 1986): 18–24. 4 Lignadis, “Theatrical Encounter in Delphi.” 5 Synodinou, “The Victim.” 6 Georgios Sampatakakis, “Bakkhai-Model: The Re-Usage of Euripides’ Bakkhai in Text and Performance,” (PhD diss., University of London, 2005), 198. 7 Theodoros Terzopoulos, quoted in Marianne McDonald, “Theodoros Terzopoulos’ Talk,” in Ancient Sun, Modern Light: Greek Drama on the Modern Stage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 164. 8 See Erika Fischer-Lichte, Dionysus Resurrected: Performances of Euripides’ The Bacchae in a Globalizing World (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 116–135. 9 Senda Akihiko, The Voyage of Contemporary Japanese Theatre, trans. J. Thomas Rimer (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997), 50. 10 Marcel Mauss, “Techniques of the Body,” Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973): 70–88. 11 Suzuki Tadashi, “Culture Is the Body,” in Acting (Re)Considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide, ed. Phillip B. Zarrilli (London: Routledge, 1995), 167. 12 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (1739–1740; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 13 Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 23. 14 Johann Jakob Engel, Ideen zu einer Mimik, vols. 7 and 8 of Schriften (1785–1786; Berlin: Mylius, 1804), 61. 15 This could be a matter of translation. Since I do not know Sanskrit myself, I have to rely on the translations in diferent editions of the Nāṭyaśāstra. None of those I consulted provided a translation of the eight stable emotions that would come close to Engel’s “shame/penance” or “contempt.” 16 Adya Rangacharya, trans., The Nāṭyaśāstra (India: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1996), 66–67. 17 Compare my remarks on Ekman in this text, p. 110f. 18 Engel, Ideen, 236–237. My translation.

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19 Ibid., 238–239. My translation. 20 Bharata, quoted in Sheldon Pollock, trans. and ed., A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 51. 21 Ibid., 50. 22 Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Halls, 1975), ix–x. 23 Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 67. 24 Ekman and Friesen, Unmasking the Face, 78–79. 25 Ibid., 96–97. 26 See Chengzhou He, “An East Asian Paradigm of Interculturalism,” European Review 24, no. 3 (2016): 210–220. 27 Shen Guofang, quoted in ibid., 217. 28 Ibid. 29 Y. Feng, quoted in ibid., 218. 30 Rustom Bharucha, “Consumed in Singapore: The Intercultural Spectacle of Lear,” Theatre 31, no. 1 (2001): 122, 124. 31 See Rustom Bharucha, “Interculturalism and Its Discriminations: Shifting the Agendas of the National, the Multicultural, and the Global,” Third Text 13, no. 46 (1999): 3–23. 32 See Anril Pineda Tiatco, “Review of Lear Dreaming,” Asian Theatre Journal 30, no. 2 (2013): 532–538. 33 C. J. W.-L. Wee, “Imagining ‘New Asia’ in the Theatre: Cosmopolitan East Asia and the Global West,” in Rogue Flows: Trans-Asian Cultural Traffic, ed. Koichi Iwabuchi, Stephen Muecke and Nabdt Thomas (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004), 137. 34 Chua Beng Huat, “Multiculturalism in Singapore: An Instrument of Social Control,” Race & Class 44 (2003): 66, quoted in James Rhys Edwards, “Impossible Properties: Language and Legitimacy in Ong Keng Sen’s Lear,” IJAPS 10, no. 2 (2014): 26. 35 Nico Stehr and Reiner Grundmann, “General Introduction,” in The Foundation of Knowledge, vol. 1 of Knowledge: Critical Concepts, ed. Nico Stehr and Reiner Grundmann (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 3. 36 See p. 109. 37 Bharata, quoted in Pollock, A Rasa Reader, 51. 38 See Erika Fischer-Lichte, Torsten Jost and Astrid Schenka, eds., The Routledge Companion on Performance-Related Concepts in Non-European Languages (London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2023). 39 Feng, quoted in He, “An East Asian Paradigm of Interculturalism,” 218. 40 See Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 174–80, 190–200. 41 See Martin Seel, Ästhetik des Erscheinens (Munich and Vienna: Hanser, 2000), 76ff. 42 Sampatakakis, “Bakkhai-Model,” 153. 43 This holds true, in particular, for the productions of Greek tragedies directed by Karolos Koun, among them that of The Bacchae in 1977. Still, the changes he brought about connected Dionysus to Christ, then drawing on folk traditions in which Dionysiac and Christian elements seemed to have merged. For instance, trance was presented as a religious practice. See ibid. 44 See Terzopoulos, Return of Dionysus.

Bibliography Bharucha, Rustom. “Consumed in Singapore: The Intercultural Spectacle of Lear.” Theatre 31, no. 1 (2001): 107–27.

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———. “Interculturalism and Its Discriminations: Shifting the Agendas of the National, the Multicultural, and the Global.” Third Text 13, no. 46 (1999): 3–23. Damasio, Antonio. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999. Dixon, Thomas. From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Edwards, James Rhys. “Impossible Properties: Language and Legitimacy in Ong Keng Sen’s Lear.” IJAPS 10, no. 2 (2014): 13–34. Ekman, Paul, and Wallace V. Friesen. Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues. Englewood Clifs: Prentice-Halls, 1975. Engel, Johann Jakob. Ideen zu einer Mimik [Ideas on Mimic Art]. 1785–1786. Vols. 7 and 8 of Schriften. Berlin: Mylius, 1804. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. Dionysus Resurrected: Performances of Euripides’ the Bacchae in a Globalizing World. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. ———. The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. ———, Torsten Jost, and Astrid Schenka, eds. The Routledge Companion on PerformanceRelated Concepts in Non-European Languages. London and New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2023. He, Chengzhou. “An East Asian Paradigm of Interculturalism.” European Review 24, no. 3 (2016): 210–20. Huat, Chua Beng. “Multiculturalism in Singapore: An Instrument of Social Control.” Race & Class 44 (2003): 58–77. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. 1739–1740. Edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Lignadis, Tasos. “Θεατρική Συνάντηση στους Δελφούς” [Theatrical Encounter in Delphi]. I Kathimerini, 22 June 1986. Mauss, Marcel. “Techniques of the Body.” Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973): 70–88. McDonald, Marianne. “Theodoros Terzopoulos’ Talk.” In Ancient Sun, Modern Light: Greek Drama on the Modern Stage, 159–69. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Pollock, Sheldon, trans. and ed. A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Rangacharya, Adya, trans. The Nāṭyaśāstra. India: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1996. Sampatakakis, Georgios. “Bakkhai-Model: The Re-Usage of Euripides’ Bakkhai in Text and Performance.” PhD diss., University of London, 2005. Schlesier, Renate, ed. A Diferent God? Dionysos and Ancient Polytheism. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011. Seaford, Richard. Dionysos. New York: Routledge, 2006. Seel, Martin. Ästhetik des Erscheinens [Aesthetics of Appearing]. Munich and Vienna: Hanser, 2000. Senda, Akihiko. The Voyage of Contemporary Japanese Theatre. Translated by J. Thomas Rimer. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997. Stehr, Nico, and Reiner Grundmann. “General Introduction.” In The Foundation of Knowledge, vol. 1 of Knowledge: Critical Concepts, edited by Nico Stehr, and Reiner Grundmann, 1–21. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Suzuki, Tadashi. “Culture Is the Body.” In Acting (Re)Considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide, edited by Phillip B. Zarrilli, 163–67. London: Routledge, 1995.

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Synodinou, Anna. “The Victim—Bacchae: An Experiment of Mr. Terzopoulos.” Politika Thema ( July 1986): 18–24. Terzopoulos, Theodoros. The Return of Dionysus. With a Preface by Erika FischerLichte. Translated by Savvas Stroumpos. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2020. Tiatco, Anril Pineda. “Review of Lear Dreaming.” Asian Theatre Journal 30, no. 2 (2013): 532–38. Wee, C. J. W.-L. “Imagining ‘New Asia’ in the Theatre: Cosmopolitan East Asia and the Global West.” In Rogue Flows: Trans-Asian Cultural Trafc, edited by Koichi Iwabuchi, Stephen Muecke, and Nabdt Thomas, 119–150. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004.

5 WHAT KNOWLEDGES DO DANCE VIEWERS GENERATE? Susan Leigh Foster

One of the most marvelous moments in my 60-plus years of viewing dance occurred at the Tanz im August Festival on 23 August 2019, when I saw a performance of Deborah Hay’s Ten (1968). The score for the piece asks ten dancers to work over the course of the hour-long performance in groups of two, three or fve. Always in their own time, one dancer from each group strikes a pose, positioning their body either in relation to a horizontal bar running the length of the stage about two feet of the ground, or in relation to a vertical pole downstage from the bar, about one-third of the way across the expanse from stage left. Again in their own time, a second dancer from each group walks over to the frst posing dancer and replicates, as perfectly as possible, all the details of the dancer’s shape, including the facial expression. The other dancers, not yet committed to a pose, are asked to assist the second dancer in perfecting the replica by giving them verbal instructions and also gesturing corrections. This process continues within each group until all dancers from the group are in the pose. Then the formation breaks up and the dancers mill around the space, assisting those in other groups until one of their members forms a new pose. Throughout, a rock band is playing energetically at full volume. What viewers see is a contrast between two kinds of actions: dancers facing the audience in idiosyncratic poses held in stillness and dancers with their backs to the audience coaching the dancers through verbal or gestured corrections, although never touching them. Since the groups are of diferent sizes, each takes a diferent amount of time to complete the process of all dancers adopting the pose. As a result, there is also usually some number of dancers walking about in between coaching and posing. When, as frequently happens, almost all the dancers are in one of the three poses being articulated, a strong set of resonances between the poses can also be seen where the dancers seem almost DOI: 10.4324/9781003372837-8

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to form a distinctive part of a single group portrait. It is also possible to notice and savor the fact that individual dancers, whose background and training are quite dissimilar, have varying degrees of skill at copying a pose and correcting a copy. Talking to a signifcant number of viewers after the performance and on subsequent days, there seemed to be a general consensus that the piece ofered an opportunity to delight in the creativity of the dancers’ choices of poses and the intricate detail that each presented as a challenge to those whose responsibility it was to copy them. The piece also presented a wonderful contrast between types of activities that could occur within the general rubric of a pedestrian style of moving. Everyone I spoke with also saw the piece as presenting a strong commentary on and critique of the tendency in dance, regardless of genre or tradition, to seek unison between and among dancers. The piece seemed to pose two questions: Why on earth do so many dancers learn how to copy poses in order to look alike, and why on earth does choreography value unison so strongly? In a subsequent conversation with Hay, she responded to my interpretation by remarking, “That’s interesting, but it’s not what I was thinking about when I made the piece.”1 And it hit me like a ton of bricks: of course, she would not have been thinking about deconstructing dance’s preference for unison in 1968. She would instead, as she explained, have been trying to refect on the making and dissolution of form itself. At that moment in her career, Hay was taking part in a new wave of dance, building up over the 1950s and 1960s, in which artists began to focus on inventing new and more diverse vocabularies and on the act of making with movement rather than expressing through movement—two diferent strategies for generating knowledge through dance. Along with her colleagues, she was eager to comment not on other dance genres or on aesthetic tendencies within dance but instead on how dance could be expanded so as to encompass new ways of moving that would present new opportunities for seeing movement. That is when I cracked a smile so big, my face almost broke into pieces. “I’ve lived long enough,” I thought, “to see the codes shift.” The whole apparatus of representation through which a dance constructs meaning had changed in over 50 years plus since the piece was made. And I got to witness that change. In this chapter, I will delve into what I mean by the apparatus of representation and into the roles of choreographer and viewer in relation to that apparatus. Then I hope to consider some of its implications for those artists working in intercultural and transnational modes of collaboration and for the audience members who witness those collaborations. As part of this analysis, I will endeavor to address the issue of how knowledge is acquired and transmitted in dance. All I will ofer are hypotheses about how dance makes and communicates meaning. As hypotheses, they are open to being tested, modifed and abandoned in favor of other more workable explanatory systems. In this sense,

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art making and scholarship making are very similar: they both ofer proposals about the world. I have long subscribed to the theory of the text set forth by Roland Barthes in a series of essays and books, including “The Death of the Author,” “From Work to Text,” S/Z and, more indirectly, A Lover’s Discourse, which assumes a culturally specifc world shared by authors and readers. In my interpretation of Barthes’s argument, readers, in the act of reading, rewrite the text, thereby becoming its authors. They may apprehend some of the author’s intended arguments, or not, and they certainly may and will create interpretations that diverge wildly from what the author had in mind. However, what both author and readers are working with as they go about the process of writing and rewriting the text is a more or less shared system of codes and conventions that they have gradually learned and through which meaning is made. Authors deploy these codes and conventions in writing, and readers, sharing in the world governed by these same conventions, likewise utilize them in interpreting the text. Still, there are always diferences in emphasis, resulting from individuals’ psychological and social situations that create diferent valuations and dynamics of meaning. As a result, there is no single correct interpretation of a text, and it is futile to argue over what the author intended by it. There are, however, some interpretations that account more fully for the text’s use of codes and conventions. These codes and conventions, as an aggregate of meaning-making devices, are what I referred to above as the apparatus of representation, and this apparatus changes over time. Some elements of it change rather quickly and others far more slowly, all in conjunction with larger social signs, codes and protocols as they likewise change. Some elements concern the formal or structural qualities of the genre of text being produced—for example, the rich set of guidelines governing what a novel is as opposed to a short story. Other elements involve meaning production that concerns the content of the narrative and, for example, its depiction of gender in relation to character. Still others focus on the authorial voice or form of address through which the reader is summoned into the text. Barthes’s theory is simply that: a general proposal or “what if?” about how a text functions and how authors and readers generally share more and less a process of communicating with one another in a world they more and less share. As a hypothesis, it invites transposition onto other domains or realms of human production, and so, why not dance? What if a dance, like a text, invokes an apparatus of representation to communicate with viewers? Choreographers thereby construct a vision or an argument through their choice of and crafting of movement about the nature of the body and its relations with others. They invent or select movement that signifes an identity, a character, a quest, a desire, a relationship, a mode of being, a way of moving—and this list could go on and on. And, as in the conventions involved in the production of a literary text, these codes change over time. This was what I realized had happened when I

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was talking to Hay about Ten. The apparatus of representation had changed since she had made the piece. It also changes depending on the cultural context in which it is developed. I could similarly argue that Barthes’s texts, written in the same moment as Hay’s dance was conceived, were more concerned with the formal processes through which meaning is made rather than with the potential for readers from diverse cultural backgrounds to read and interpret the codes diferently. Barthes’s work, like Hay’s, can be historicized in ways that reveal the epistemological foundations of their time.2 However, before discussing the cultural specifcity of meaning-making in dance, let us consider in more detail how meaning in general is generated in dance. How do dancers and choreographers acquire the knowledge necessary to generate meaning in dance? And how do viewers share in this process? Again, this is merely a hypothesis for how knowledge in danced form is generated, transmitted and reinterpreted. I agree with Nico Stehr and Reiner Grundmann, who argue that knowledge “constitutes a capacity for action” which is situated, relational and not immediately transferable.3 In the obvious case of learning to dance, the knowledge that students acquire creates the very foundation for the capacity to act, one that can only be acquired slowly and through interaction and engagement with others. Learning to dance instills knowledge in the body about how to move and how to refect on one’s capacity to move. This knowledge blends with already established predispositions and proclivities for moving in certain ways. A dancer might learn a particular vocabulary consisting of positions and steps, and also ways of transitioning from one to another. A dancer might equally learn ways to discover a next way of moving. A dancer also assimilates standards and criteria refecting ideal ways of moving. Throughout this learning process, the body is remade as a knowledge base, literally, as a capacity to act in specifc ways. Choreographers similarly learn how to make dances, both in terms of how to craft movement and how to implement the codes and conventions governing signifcation so as to construct their arguments in danced form. They learn through courses, apprenticeships and trial and error, and also from working with dancers and watching other dances, so as to construct arguments that may propose new worlds of dance while simultaneously contradicting, transgressing, satirizing or escaping from other danced arguments. Part of what choreographers and dancers learn as they pursue knowledge in dance is the ability to look at and interpret how people are moving in daily life. They learn to notice the codes for how men and women move diferently, or which kinds of touch are acceptable and which are inappropriate. They learn how tasks are accomplished and how protocols for polite behavior function. In short, they learn to pay attention to the range of bodily actions that Marcel Mauss referred to as “techniques of the body” and that Pierre Bourdieu described as forming the “habitus.”4 And these daily forms of signifying, in turn, inform the codes and conventions from which dances are composed.

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Because of this, viewers of a dance also have access to at least part of the system of representation with which dancers and choreographers are working. Without knowing much about a dance genre or style, they can still decipher gender and relationship codes, representations of feelings and of dominance and control; they can typically follow a narrative through-line, if there is one; and they can tell something about the status of the dancers in relation to their surroundings. They can also enjoy the knowledge they share with choreographers and dancers about what is graceful, beautiful, transgressive, innovative, hip, powerful, sexy—and, again, the list could go on and on. As viewers attend more and more dance events, they learn more about a variety of knowledges that dance also transmits. They may come to understand more about the central and defning tenets of a given form of dance. These could include the aesthetic criteria that govern dancing and virtuosity; the extent to which the dance values process and exploration over a carefully constructed product; the communal or spiritual values that the dance reenacts; or the kinds of humor, excess, craziness or sincerity that the dance should purvey. Viewers who follow a particular genre over time will become familiar with the history of certain choreographers’ projects and specifc dancers’ growth and achievements. These features of dancing, in turn, elucidate fundamental beliefs about dance upon which a given form develops. Each of the facets of dancing that I have mentioned thus far, ones that both choreographers and viewers work with as they create meaning in and for dance, forms part of a larger hypothesis that governs what a given dance form is and the particular knowledge that it potentially generates. Any dance launches a series of “what ifs?” What if dance is a vehicle for connecting bodily rhythm to the rhythm of life? What if dance is an exploration of possible articulations that the skeleton and musculature can make? What if dance reanimates deeply held beliefs about the creation of the world? What if dance expresses what is beautiful and harmonious about bodily motion? What if dance cannot be distinctly separated from music and theater? These knowledges are partial and sometimes there is barely a consensus, if any, about what and how movement means. Very often, however, I have found that the viewer seeing dance for the frst time often comprehends a remarkable number of arguments made in the dancing, and I have attributed this to the fact that we all share having a body and learning how to move within our given cultural and historical moment. What happens to this thesis about how knowledge in dance is transmitted when we begin to look at intercultural and transnational collaborations among choreographers working in highly distinctive dance traditions and genres? Although the United States witnessed sustained and rich exposure to distinctive forms of dance from around the world throughout the twentieth century, and choreographers from Ruth St. Denis to Katherine Dunham traveled abroad to learn more about the aesthetics of diferent genres and forms, dialog around

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the possible ways to view dance from beyond Europe and Russia only achieved national prominence in the 1980s, when critics began to question their role in reviewing dances touring to the United States from Africa, Indonesia and China. Collected in the volume Looking Out: Perspectives on Dance and Criticism in a Multicultural World, essays debated the extent to which critics would need to become ethnographers in order to responsibly review dances from these nonfamiliar places.5 The essays make evident the crisis that critics felt around their lack of knowledge about the everyday bodily protocols as well as the aesthetic tenets governing distinct dance traditions. The questions remain critical, unresolved and ongoing. Since the publication of that volume, the global stage has emerged as a ubiquitous institution, indicative of the increased circulation of dances from diverse locations touring the world. Even more infuential, the Internet has given rise to instantaneous access to dances performed almost anywhere in the world. (Perhaps this burgeoning awareness of dance traditions from diferent locales around the world infuenced, in part, the change in the apparatus of representation that gave so many of us who viewed Hay’s Ten the sense that it was a critique of unison in multiple dance traditions.) The extraordinary amount of dance on the Internet has resulted in new globally shared understandings of dance, wherein dancers trade moves, teach each other their own dance forms and forge new common understandings of what and how dance means. At the same time, dances originating in specifc localities continue to assert their unique, marked diferences in aesthetic and signifying practices. Simultaneous with the increase in the global circulation of dance and dancing, there have arisen the possibility and desire for artists from diferent traditions to collaborate or interweave their dance forms with one another, most often sponsored by some form of the global stage. The motivations behind these collaborations are various, but for the purposes of this chapter, I think we could say that their intended goal is the production of new knowledge in the form of new kinds of cultural exchange that produce new insights into what the body is and what dance can be. Viewers presented with the challenge to decipher this knowledge, however, are facing a daunting two-part task. First, they must determine the nature of the interweaving that took place during the process of creating the dance, if they can; and second, they must analyze what kinds of transformations in the artists’ “home” dance traditions have taken place resulting in what kinds of new information and arguments about dance. In order to clarify the two parts of the viewing process further, let me begin with a few descriptions of imagined dances involving two dancers as a kind of thought experiment designed to test out the limits of the hypothesis about how viewers make meaning in dance. None of these descriptions reference a specifc collaboration; they are all fctional. Rather than detail the actual working processes of particular artists, along with their backgrounds, training and aesthetic afliations, I am presenting these scenarios as a way to schematize various types

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or models of collaboration. Any actual collaboration is far more messy, intricate and complicated than these sketches, and it involves many layers and dimensions of decision-making. What I am ofering here, in contrast, simply contours the outlines of some basic structural choreographic decisions that might be evident in a given performance and that viewers might easily apprehend. I will look at them in terms of two kinds of information they might provide: the new dance knowledge resulting from the interweaving process, and a second more tacit kind of knowledge about the nature of the collaboration itself. In the frst version of this imagined performance, one of the dancers is trained in urban street dance forms and the other in Bharatanatyam. As very visible and well-known forms of dance, perhaps many viewers would be familiar with some of the basic tenets of these forms—their distinctive vocabularies, investments in rhythm and bodily shape, even the history of each form and its relationship to spiritual and ethnic identities. Or perhaps not. Either way, this imagined dance begins with the duo, one in street clothes and the other in a sari, performing a unison phrase consisting of clearly defned hand and arm gestures articulating an intricate rhythmic pattern. Those viewers familiar with the dance traditions could see that the gestures combine elements from each, fnding the kinds of rhythm and sequencing that both can share, even if they do not originate directly from either. For those unfamiliar, this approach to interweaving might become clear once they see the sequence that follows this one: the Bharatanatyam dancer carves out a large half circle, moving from upstage center to downstage, while performing a phrase composed entirely of traditional vocabulary; this is followed by the street dancer, who faithfully executes the same rhythmic phrase but using street dance movements while traveling along a half circle so as to meet the Bharatanatyam dancer downstage. The street dancer then retraces the curve, but this time performing a traditional street dance sequence, and the Bharatanatyam dancer follows, copying the same rhythm but using traditional vocabulary. Those who know the two traditions see in this exchange each dancer’s willingness to adapt their form to the other’s. Those who do not would at least see that the dancers were both adapting movement to the same rhythmic phrases, and perhaps they would think back to the earlier phrase and realize that a diferent kind of sharing had taken place there, one in which the two artists searched for and established a new common ground, focusing on principles they shared and thereby extending but not violating their individual practices. This frst phrase of the collaboration communicates the results of the artists’ experimentation with discovering new movement from the fusion of distinct movement traditions. The second section in which the dancers perform individually communicates their willingness to adapt their practice to new rhythmic demands made on it. The dance continues by developing further these two forms of sharing, thereby transmitting knowledge about what the two forms might hold in common. However, it also communicates important information about the artists’ willingness to partner

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with one another in pursuit of this knowledge. By trading moves and then always meeting in the center, the dancers, exuding genuine goodwill, tacitly tell viewers as much about their generous openness to one another as they do about their dance traditions. What if, instead, the two dancers interwove their practices by juxtaposing them alongside one another, simply placing them next to each other as events that are discrete and distinct but occurring at the same time and place. Each would dance to a diferent music (maybe using headphones), probably with a diferent meter and tempo, and each would take up approximately half the stage space. Here, viewers would be presented with strong contrasts as well as similarities between the two forms, and they would be invited to choose what to focus on and for how long. The dance would give viewers far more responsibility in terms of assessing the two forms’ connections with one another. Through their spatial positioning and dedication to their own solos, the dancers would communicate their equal status and also their insistence on the boundaries of each tradition. As separate but equal, each dance would communicate, through its juxtaposition with the other, its vitality, aesthetics and demands for technical expertise, and viewers would be left to determine what, if any, interconnections might exist. In yet a third approach to interweaving, the two artists could focus on revealing and addressing the diferences and disagreements between their practices. They might explore verbally as well as through movement what they could and could not share and why. Yes, they share some investment in rhythm, but do they agree on how stories can be acted out in movement? Probably not. And does it matter that the two forms have historically served very diferent functions for very diferent viewerships and yet, here, they are each being brought together under the auspices of a third and entirely diferent artistic context? Maybe. Thus, in this scenario, viewers, brought into the process of the collaboration, would again learn two types of knowledge: they would gain a deeper understanding of each tradition, and of what within it is sacred, inviolable or fexible. They would equally learn about the dancers’ trust or mistrust in the interweaving process. Further, viewers would necessarily confront their own investments in the idea of interweaving and what that signaled, for example, as a practice of diplomacy and goodwill, or as a neoliberal celebration of the global stage. There is even more in terms of what each diferent approach to collaboration communicates to viewers and also what it might fail to communicate. Returning to the frst scenario, in which the dancers fuse their practices, interweaving would yield new vocabularies and ways of moving, but possibly without any reference to what has been given up or sacrifced in order to share dancing. As a result, the dance potentially puts forward the claim that easy and natural communication is possible, regardless of the specifcities and disparities between the histories of the two dances. It assures viewers that any

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two people might cheerfully engage in exchange across all manner of cultural diferences. The second scenario, in contrast, creates vibrant opportunities for viewers to see new aspects of dances and also to forge unanticipated connections between them, but it also sends the message that all dances are equal and equally available, regardless of their histories, whether illustrious and venerated or dismissed and denigrated. Where the frst form of collaboration occludes the ways that traditions were compromised in the process of interweaving, this second approach obfuscates each dance tradition’s history, its struggle to survive and the investment made in it by all those who have practiced it and insisted on its validity. The approach also forecloses the possibility of discovering whether and how the dance forms might share histories of oppression or serve common social functions, since only their vitality in the present seems to matter. Finally, the third scenario, valuing the distinctiveness of each dance form and making evident the process undertaken during the collaboration, could communicate a variety of diferent responses to the question of who is allowed to share which dance with whom. This scenario focuses on what kinds of prior knowledge and experience are necessary in order to gain access to a diferent way of dancing as a precursor to whatever the actual process of interweaving might be. It thereby informs viewers about a process preparatory to interweaving, and that becomes the interweaving itself. There are, of course, many other approaches to interweaving, each resulting in the transmission of diferent kinds of knowledges to viewers. My point in experimenting with these scenarios has been to foreground the two kinds of knowledge that are communicated: the new knowledge—about dance and the new knowledge about the nature of the collaboration itself—or what we might call the content and the content of the form. In the argument I have made, viewers would deduce the content of an interweaving project based on their varied access to and familiarity with certain codes and conventions governing how the dance represents the world and itself. It is impossible to delineate specifcally what kinds of knowledge might be gained from this project because the choreography of any given project would be unique, as would viewers’ capacities for responding to and interpreting it. Similarly, the content of the form is transmitted through a second set of choreographic conventions, intertwined with the frst, that convey how the interweaving process took place, making evident what kinds of decisions the artists made concerning how to work together. In embarking on any given collaboration, artists might try to anticipate certain outcomes and work to direct their interaction so as to achieve or avoid them. What they would probably be doing in their eforts to proceed toward the kind of result that would communicate their intent, satisfy their aesthetic sense of what a good dance is or otherwise be worthy of sharing with viewers is experimenting. They would be trying/testing/pausing/refecting, deliberately deliberating, meditating on mediating, sweating out and sweating over,

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pondering and musing, kicking and kicking around, fguring and refguring, thinking about and thinking through, speculating and reckoning—and the list could, yet again, go on. How do we conduct an experiment? We set up a framework, some propositions and some rules for testing or probing the proposition. In other words, we pose a question that begins with “what if?” Then we play it out, explore as many of its parameters as we can, uncover, discover, explore further, until we have gone as far as we can go for the moment. And then we cogitate on our fndings, which often leads to new experimentation with slightly altered or entirely new sets of rules. Scholars, scientists and artists all work within these sets of rules while at the same time trying to become aware of their infuences and efects. We try to detect the efects of our epistemological underpinnings on the kinds of questions we pose as well as the kinds of fndings we expect. Following this, I would ask the following question: what does the theory of viewing that I proposed, following Barthes, fail to account for, ignore or otherwise repress for the experiment which is this chapter? A lot, I am sure. For the moment, however, I will simply be content that my interpretation of Hay’s dance was so wrong, insofar as it utterly failed to take account of the historical moment in which she produced it. At the same time, I will feel entitled to assert my interpretation of the dance, and even to argue that it takes into account as many features of the dance as Hay’s memory of what she intended. And that will put yet another smile on my face.

Notes 1 Deborah Hay. Personal communication, August 2019. 2 I am indebted to Holger Hartung of the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” for this perspective on Barthes. 3 Nico Stehr and Reiner Grundmann, “General Introduction,” in Knowledge: Critical Concepts, ed. Nico Stehr and Reiner Grundmann (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), Volume 1, 6–8. 4 See Marcel Mauss, “Techniques of the Body,” Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973): 70–88, and Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 72–95. 5 David Gere, ed., Looking Out: Perspectives on Dance and Criticism in a Multicultural World (New York: Schirmer Books, 1995).

Bibliography Gere, David, ed. Looking Out: Perspectives on Dance and Criticism in a Multicultural World. New York: Schirmer Books, 1995. Mauss, Marcel. “Techniques of the Body.” Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973): 70–88. Stehr, Nico, and Reiner Grundmann. “General Introduction.” In Knowledge: Critical Concepts, edited by Nico Stehr, and Reiner Grundmann, vol. 1, 1–22. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.

6 LEARNING “TO BE AFFECTED” Attaining “relational knowledge” through interweaving in acting Phillip Zarrilli

Short introduction This chapter is a specifc account of one process of attaining what can be described as “relational or positional knowledge” through an interweaving of refection and in-depth embodied practices. The phenomenologist Les Todres argues that relational knowledge “tells one something positional about both oneself and another—the connections between self and other. The immediacy of this understanding is not formulated and already packaged as a clear verbal pattern. […] It is implicit rather than explicit—‘given’ in the ‘feel’—a kind of knowing that may not start out as being logical but which carries holistic, not yet patterned, aesthetic qualities.”1 The chapter begins with a frst-person account of immersive training in Kerala’s kathakali dance-drama and kalari­ ppayattu (martial art). I note how so-called “traditional” modes and lineages of embodied knowledge in Kerala, India, have always undergone processes of generation and degeneration and are constantly being reframed and/or repositioned within Kerala, intraculturally within India and interculturally in the present. I provide an account of how I have reframed and repositioned these modes of practice in the development of an intercultural process of training actors to be refective and “to be afected” in/through in-depth immersion in preparatory psychophysical training through Asian martial arts and yoga.

Searching for knowledge For a 12-month period in 1976–1977, as a young theater director and scholar, I was inspired to travel to Kerala, by the infuence that the rigorous kathakali dance-drama training had on Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski’s vision of the contemporary actor/performer.2 DOI: 10.4324/9781003372837-9

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Once I arrived at the Kerala Kalamandalam (Kerala State School of the Arts), for the frst 5 months of this initial training-research trip, I immersed myself in 8 hours of intensive daily training with a small group of young boys aged 10–12 in kathakali dance-drama’s training under the careful guidance of M. P. Sankaran Namboodiri in what is known as a kalari—literally, a place for training. During my further 7 months in Kerala in 1977, under the guidance of Gurukkal Govindankutty Nair at the C. V. N. Kalari in Thiruvananthapuram, I immersed myself in 4–6 hours daily of rigorous training in kalarippayattu—the Kerala martial art dating from approximately the tenth century, which was the source of kathakali’s preliminary psychophysical training and massage that had made such an impression on Grotowski.3 Before beginning both my kathakali and kalarippayattu training, I explained to M. P. Sankaran Namboodiri and Gurukkal Govindankutty Nair that I had come to Kerala as a theater director and actor-trainer intending to immerse myself in their trainings in order to potentially utilize the training with and for contemporary actors. Unlike some Westerners such as French actress/dancer/ choreographer Annette Leday, who trained in kathakali for years in order to become a kathakali performer and creator of an important body of intercultural work in/around kathakali,4 I was only interested in the preliminary “body preparation” exercises of the kathakali performer’s training. When I learned that the kathakali preliminary body control exercises were adapted from kalarippayattu’s much earlier “body control exercises” (meyyarapp­ atavu), kicks and full-body massage,5 and after observing and beginning training with Gurukkal Govindankutty Nair’s way of teaching, I chose to focus my practical/embodied training on kalarippayattu rather than kathakali.6 When I frst witnessed Gurukkal Govindankutty Nair and his advanced students such as Rajasekharan Nair practicing advanced body-exercises and weapons techniques in 1976–1977, I sensed that attaining the type of inner focus and concentration and outer fuidity of bodymind they exhibited in a seemingly efortless manner might be an ideal form of preliminary bodymind preparation for actors/performers. By focusing my own practice on kalarippayattu, I wanted to advance as far as possible with the hope that I might somehow, at some distant point in the dim future, become as virtuosic and efortless as they were. But at the time of my frst encounter with kalarippayattu, I could not have articulated what I explained above, nor could I have explained why I sensed this specifc lineage of kalarippayattu training as taught by Govindankutty Nair might be utilized as a foundational, pre-performative way of attuning and preparing actors’ bodyminds for performance. My ability to articulate, explain and communicate with actors about how to proftably engage this type of subtle, in-depth pre-performative training and its principles so that the training might be immediately useful to their professional work—not as martial artists but as actors—emerged gradually over a period of 12–15 years.

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Knowledge in embodied practices What kinds and types of knowledge are being passed on in kathakali, kalarippayattu and other types of embodied practice such as taiqiquan? Each can be understood as a way of coming to be/do/feel that optimally leads to certain specifc forms of virtuosic agency: the ability or capacity to do, to act or to be present perceptually, sensorially and afectively in very specifc ways within a specifc environment, context or situation. These forms of embodied knowledge are not absolute. They are progressive modes of incorporation and, thus, also progressive modes of gaining knowledge through which one may— with assiduous practice and astute guidance—come to “know” and thereby have the agency/ability to attune oneself toward and deploy what one has come to know. Long-term training in kathakali optimally renders an individual a master performer of one or more specifc role types. Kalamandalam Gopi Asan, for example, is noted for his performances of heroic paccha roles such as King Rugmamgada with the role’s remarkable “histrionic” psychophysical requirements in performance.7 At a microlevel of embodied technique, this involves a master performer such as Gopi Asan attending to and embodying the subtlest nuances of each of the three successive psychophysical states of being/doing (bhava) as he moves in quick succession between anger, pathos and fury in the context of performing Mandavappalli Ittiraricha Menon’s play Rugmangada Caritam (King Rugmamgada’s Law).8 Historically, long-term training in kalarippayattu rendered a neophyte into a virtuosic master martial artist able to defend himself or attack and kill one or more opponents with one or more weapons in a duel or combat situation. Secondarily, kalarippayattu master-teachers also achieve a second form of agency as master physical therapists, whose hands and feet are gradually sensitized for specifc modes of massage. In both instances, the subtler/fuller/ deeper the kalarippayattu master has been able to attune his attention and open his awareness to the subtlest details of his lineage of practice, the more likely he is to survive and provide efective treatments for those seeking his expertise as a physical therapist or bone-setter.9

Coming to know by training in kathakali and kalarippayattu Whether one is gradually “learning to listen” in the practice of auscultation for the would-be doctor,10 training the perfumer’s “nose,” learning to fully embody the awesome power and concentrated energy of Raudra Bhima (the “furious” form of the epic hero, Bhima) on the kathakali stage, attuning “touch” with one’s hands or feet when learning kalarippayattu’s hand or foot massages or attaining the fuid ability to attack/defend the body’s vital spots

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with an otta—the curved wooden weapon integral to very advanced kalarippayattu training—modes of embodied practice engage the neophyte in processes that take place over time as one embodies and gradually comes to know. With astute and careful guidance, how and what one comes to know undergoes potentially transformative processes of attunement, sedimentation or deepening of awareness as one experiences and comes to know subtler nuances of a specifc practice. As they are attuned, embodied/sensory modes of coming to know are dynamic, processual and emergent. But what one comes to know is not absolute. One’s relationship to learning and what there is to learn shifts and changes with assiduous repetition and experience. One knows, but optimally one comes to know more fully, deeply or even profoundly what might be known in and through that process, even as the process itself shifts and changes. When I began to learn kathakali and then kalarippayattu in 1976–1977, both master-teachers primarily taught through mimesis. Beginning students observe the master-teacher and/or advanced students, then attempt to do each exercise or form taught, followed by repetition. Additional exercises, forms or patterns are taught as a student progresses. Occasionally there might be a specifc technical instruction or hands-on corrections. One repeats the exercises and forms over and over and over again, day after day. However ineptly at frst, I gradually began to learn “how” to perform specifc exercises—a gradual process of embodiment and bodymind development that takes years if an individual is to progress toward mastery or virtuosity. During my initial kathakali training, I began by learning •

• •

•

how to perform each of the 16 preliminary “body control exercises” (meyy­ arappatavu) as well as circling of the body (cuzhippu) that had been adapted for use in training actor-dancers from the much earlier kalarippayattu body-exercises; how to confgure my hands and fngers in order to shape each mudra in the repertory of 24 hand-gestures; how to hold open my eyelashes with my index fnger and keep my external focus on my teacher’s fnger as he led us through the series of eye exercises in nine diferent directions and three diferent tempo-rhythms; how to exercise and control my cheeks, lips and eyebrows in order to begin to render the face a pliant vehicle for displaying the constantly shifting manifestations of a character’s nine primary inner states of being/doing (sthayibhava), etc.11

In kalarippayattu, the training began by learning •

how to perform a basic set of kicks (straight-leg, angle-leg, circling-leg, etc.), steps and jumps;

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how to shape my body into each of the basic animal forms (vativu: elephant, horse, lion, etc.); how to join the kicks and animal forms with steps (cuvat) and arm movements into body-exercise sequences (meippayattu) performed back and forth across the earthen foor of the kalari; and how to begin to wield a weapon—at frst, a long solid cane stick, and later, more advanced weapons such as the otta—by learning form sequences.12

As a neophyte undergoing each of these intensive “traditional” Kerala training regimes, I was the naïve, often inept and somewhat awkward “older” Westerner desperately trying my best to physically mimic what I was shown and get what I was being shown into my recalcitrant body. Until very recently, both kalarippayattu and kathakali training were taught to children, not to adults. Compared to my 29-year-old body, the younger bodies in the training space were of course much more malleable than my already aging body. For the young boys, this was the frst of 5 or 6 years of full-time kathakali training they would undergo—followed by playing small roles and eventually working their way toward maturity and the performance of larger/main roles. In 1976, I was an

FIGURE 6.1

Phillip Zarrilli and Rajasekharan Nair in advanced practice of otta at the CVN Kalari, Thiruvananthapuram. Photo by permission of James Heston, 1993.

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oddity because I was both so “old” and the only non-Malayali in the training space. In kalarippayattu training at the C. V. N. Kalari, I was not quite so odd. Although at that time the only non-Malayali in training, I was not the only older beginning student. The majority of the beginners were between 10 and 13, but a few others were “older,” inhabiting bodies like mine that already had long(er) physical histories with traces of past injuries, and perhaps with “bad” habits—smoking and the stereotypically male proclivity to “push” when trying to kick a leg up as high as possible. A muscular/mental/intentional efortful “push” could, and too often did, result in a pulled muscle or tendon and therefore required consultation and/or three-day treatment with the gurukkal in his second and equally important type of knowledge—a special branch of Ayurvedic “hands-on” massage/manipulation therapies for injuries to the physical body such as broken bones, bruises, pulled muscles and/or counter-applications when one of the vital spots of the body had been injured or attacked. While in the kalari during training, I learned to try to keep my inquisitive, refexive, constantly moving squirrel-like mind quiet. It was inappropriate to ask questions. Gradually, over a considerable length of time, I began to learn the necessity of patience. I also began to learn the art of observation, especially in kalarippayattu training, since beginners and advanced students were in the kalari at the same time. I paid careful attention to the dynamic fuidity of the teacher and the most advanced students as they performed in a seemingly efortless manner the basic exercises and forms that were still a mystery to me. I observed how some of the younger, less experienced practitioners were gradually becoming attuned to a specifc form or sequence over time—that is, how they were coming to embody and “know.” Learning to observe carefully and learning to quieten my overly active “mind” gradually allowed me to become more focused and attentive from within my bodymind—that is, to be attentive and aware from within an exercise or form “unthinkingly.” And this in turn opened up subtler dimensions of what it is like to “attend to.” Opening my awareness led to an opening of my senses, especially “listening” and an open peripheral awareness of the space I am inhabiting. As soon as we stepped outside either training space, I would try to annotate what I was learning, refect on the training and note question after question to be asked later. I hoped to have time with my teacher(s), performers and/or advanced students to ask questions about what I was learning, how they had learned and how they thought about and refected on their practice. I wanted to understand how what I was experiencing and assimilating in Kerala was so very diferent from anything I had experienced before as a male of my generation whose primary understanding and experience of my body was based on American sports as practiced in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. I also wanted to understand as much as I could from my “outsider” position as an ethnographic researcher about the sociocultural/linguistic history of both

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embodied practices, i.e., how Malayalis understood their experience of training as well as how kathakali actors thought about their process of acting the roles they played. I was fortunate because both my teachers—M. P. Sankaran Namboodiri and Gurukkal Govindankutty Nair—agreed to spend considerable time outside the kalari having in-depth discussions, responding to my detailed questions. I also had the good fortune of being mentored by Killimangalam Vasudevan Namboodiripad, the superintendent at the Kalamandalam in 1976–1977, an individual whose entire lifetime was devoted to in-depth refection on and understanding of the traditional arts of Kerala, especially kathakali and kuti­ yattam (Kerala’s temple-based mode of performing specifc acts of Sanskrit dramas as a visual sacrifce to the primary deity of specifc temples). Many of our Sundays of from training at the Kalamandalam were spent sitting on the openair porch at Killimangalam Mana, where Vasudevan Namboodiripad and M. P. Sankaran Namboodiri would respond to my questions and we would engage in lengthy discussions. The questions addressed with Vasudevan Namboodiripad and M. P. Sankaran Namboodiri were about the historical sources of the exercises and how they had been (re)shaped for kathakali, as well as the specifc Malayalam technical terms assumed and used by master-teachers as they guide and correct students. The questions addressed with Govindankutty Nair were both historical with regard to his process of learning as well as technical and linguistic, as I sought clarifcation about specifc aspects of the training—such as why “verbal commands” (vayttari) are used to guide students and what efect the repetition of the vayttari has on students as they practice. Over many years of research, ethnographic interviews with performers and practitioners, and practical immersion in training, the process of questioning and clarifcation eventually allowed me to begin to understand and articulate some of the key cultural/ linguistic/psychophysical assumptions that inform the subtle inner processes of embodiment shared by practitioners of both kathakali and kalarippayattu. One of these underlying assumptions drawn from both the yogic paradigm of the body as well as Ayurveda is that the breath/wind (prana­vayu) “is spread all over the body. It is how to control that is [an implicit] part of the training.”13

Training in kathakali: Two modes of coming to know Similar in some ways to the older kutiyattam tradition, kathakali is both an embodied practice as well as a learned tradition, with three types of texts central to the ongoing processes of training, transmission and refection: 1. the preliminary pre-performative shaping, training and rendering of the young actor’s body to be malleable, strong enough to sustain the performer through all-night performances and the rigors of 8 hours of intensive training;

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2. original, individually authored, often highly poetic play-texts (attakatha, literally a “story” to be “played” or “enacted”) evaluated by connoisseurs on the quality, beauty and originality of the highly Sanskritized Malayalam; 3. the epic and puranic source stories from which plays in the traditional repertory were created;14 4. and attam (or ilakiyattam), the hand-copied interpolations or additions to the original literary play-texts created by specifc actors (usually) in the past, and which have become part of the performance score young actors must learn in order to perform specifc plays, such as Baka Vadham (The Killing of Baka).15 There is a general recognition that as actor/dancers mature and grow into the complex major and most important roles in the repertory at about the age of 40 and beyond, their reading and rereading of both the plays themselves as well as the epic and puranic sources that inform the plays are a crucial part of a good actor’s process. Refection is clearly part of the mature kathakali actor’s life­ long process. Like all forms of embodied knowledge, learning how to become a kathakali performer has a temporal dimension: “to know” means to come to embody and inhabit as a performer over time, as well as to come to a fuller, more com­ plete understanding of one’s artistic practice—that is, coming to know by sensing and embodying the subtler nuances of what one is learning, and allowing these nuances to enrich what one already “knows.” This is manifest in the specifc roles one plays during a lifetime of performing and the richness and complexity of how repetition and further refection can inform each role one plays. Kalarippayattu master-teachers possess what are best described as manuals of practice—either palm-leaf manuscripts handed down within a specifc teaching lineage or hand-copied versions. These manuals record verbal commands (vayttari) for the body-exercise sequences, practice with one or more specifc weapons in the repertory, recipes for medical preparations and/or identifcation of the vital spots (marmmam) of the body to be attacked and defended.16 But in contrast to kathakali performers/teachers who aspire toward virtuosity as performing artists playing specifc roles for a public, it is not a necessity for kalarippayattu practitioners to be refexive about their practice. Their texts are primarily technical/practical manuals that can be referenced as/when necessary if/as a “doubt” arises in a master’s mind or when consulting a recipe for a particular treatment that may not have been given for a long while. Although the kalarippayattu gurukkal’s texts inscribe the “knowledge” he optimally possesses as martial artist and therapist, it is in the gurukkal’s lived/living body (as in the German Leib) of practice that this “knowledge” has optimally been inscribed, exemplifying what he has come to know. It is essential to remember that as a martial art, until the invention of the modern army in Kerala in the late eighteenth century,17 the kalarippayattu practitioner’s life literally depended on

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how well he was able to embody and assimilate what he was taught and how well he could tactically utilize his expertise. In duels or in combat, the reality would have been to kill or be killed. The “reality” of kalarippayattu as a potentially deadly fghting art was most evident in discussions with masters who were aging, and therefore inclined toward being more refexive about what they had come to know and experience through a lifetime of in-depth embodied practice, teaching and delivery of hands-on therapies.18 Since 1976, as I too have gradually come to know how through longterm training and daily practice,19 I have also come to know through refection, discussion, questioning, analysis and writing. For me, these modes of coming to know have always existed in a dialectically creative interwoven relationship. This dialectical relationship between embodying/doing one’s practice and refecting on that practice is shared by many of the senior kathakali performers and some of the kalarippayattu master-teachers with whom I have interacted over many years in Kerala. Our modes of refection and the conceptual/linguistic tools that shape our refections may be diferent, but there is often a shared interest in understanding each practice. These pathways for coming to know are not absolute nor do they sit still; rather, they are “alive” and responsive to each other as well as to the changing and shifting environments, encounters and contexts to which/within which any individual practices or teaches. In my case at least, there is another crucial strand or thread of coming to know and learn through doing and refection that must be interwoven into this specifc account: my interdisciplinary and intercultural adaptation, transposition, integration, interweaving, reframing, repositioning and reimagining of kalarippayattu and other embodied practices (taiqiquan and hatha yoga) into a completely diferent type of practice—utilizing martial arts and yoga as a form of pre-performative psychophysical preparation/training for contemporary actors and for directing.20

Coming to know through interweaving I turn my attention to an example of one process of coming to know through interweaving which self-consciously incorporates modes of refection with embodied practices such as kalarippayattu. I focus on the alternative preperformative psychophysical training process for actors I have developed over many years, through which actors learn to attune their attention and specifc modes of sensory awareness for performing.21 When an embodied practice such as kalarippayattu transits from one specifc context to another, the mode or type of agency developed in the new context may be reframed, repositioned and/or reimagined to emphasize either a specifc dimension of agency within that embodied practice or a diferent type of agency altogether. As I have discussed at length in previous publications, within

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the Kerala sociohistorical context, kalarippayattu has been constantly repositioned and reimagined in many ways: 1. its specifc training practices of body-exercises and full-body massage have been incorporated into “traditional” kathakali training;22 2. its patterns of combat have been subtly woven into kathakali choreography;23 3. the kalarippayattu fghter/warrior has been confgured as part of Kerala’s heroic-warrior complex in many “traditional” cultural performances including cavittu natakam, hero teyyam (such as Tacholi Othenan), oachira­ kali, velakali, parisakali, kolkali and yatrakali;24 4. Indian dancers, perhaps most notably Chandralekha, have brought together in their choreography highly skilled bharatanatyam dancers and advanced/ virtuosic kalarippayattu practitioners, often literally utilizing and/or transforming and modifying kalarippayattu’s body-exercises as dynamic choreography for an ensemble of male/female movers/dancers;25 and 5. now highly popular “stage shows,” some especially focused on tourist audiences and often featured in promotional YouTube videos which incorporate an ever-faster-paced and action-packed choreography, an increasing use of dives and throws as part of the choreography, the mixing of styles of kalarippayattu practice with an increasing emphasis on empty-hand combat or disarming opponents with a weapon, smarter-looking costumes, dramatic musical accompaniment and highly edited, professionally produced videos.26 In each instance of repositioning kalarippayattu from the martial arts/fghting context to a form of cultural performance, the type of agency and knowledge required of and acquired by the performer shifts from becoming a honed/ skilled warrior toward perfecting oneself to embody the heroic-warrior fgure as he is confgured within the aesthetic and style of each performance tradition. When kalarippayattu practice today is repositioned for fast-paced, polished stage performance demonstrations intended to impress tourist audiences, the agency of those highly skilled in kalarippayattu’s overt physical forms shifts from what is essential for a fghting art—attention to the subtler inner dynamic processes available within kalarippayattu in order to potentially face death—to an emphasis on the surface forms which might impress a popular audience at a “kalari show.” The processes of interweaving I have undertaken over a period of 30-plus years of developing the specifc approach to training actors through a psychophysical process using kalarippayattu have involved both the forms/exercises which I have been taught by master-teachers as well as processes of refection on those practices, their cultures of origin and how best to organize, transpose and teach those techniques so that they will immediately beneft the contemporary actors throughout the world in specifc professional contexts—whether

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at my private studio and in various university/drama school contexts in the United Kingdom or throughout the world, such as at the Intercultural Theatre Institute in Singapore, the Norwegian Theatre Academy and at the Calicut School of Drama in Thrissur, Kerala, India. In these contemporary acting contexts within which I teach and direct worldwide, the transformations I have introduced include articulating, contextualizing and explaining: • • • •

how and why I have integrated and utilize not only kalarippayattu but also taiqiquan and yoga for training and working with actors; the underlying principles which inform each practice; how and why I teach the exercises very slowly so that they are accessible for all; how heightened attention and embodied sensory awareness attuned in the process of training are utilized in performing.

When working with actors, our ultimate “goal” is neither to become a virtuosic martial artist nor to give an entertaining, fast-paced “show” of kalarippayattu’s exercises or advanced weapons practice; rather, it is to gradually open the contemporary actor’s embodied attention and sensory awareness when acting—that is to say, the forms of the training through which attention and awareness are gradually opened and attuned are nowhere to be found on stage. This process of translation/transposition has prompted me to discuss three questions which have been addressed through an interweaving of practical/ embodied trial and error in the studio and during refection, as well as in writing: (1) who precisely are my own “teachers”; (2) what are the “lineages” of practice—both refexive and embodied—that optimally inform the way that I teach and direct contemporary actors; and (3) how do I translate and/or transpose teaching/training processes and the psychophysical assumptions about embodied practice from other cultures into the contemporary sociocultural/ historical/professional contexts in which I am teaching or directing? Answering these questions has engaged me in a constant process of adjusting how I incorporate, reframe, reimagine, narrate and teach each training I have learned. Each mode of training is constantly adjusted so that what each ofers is integrated and interwoven into a way of working in the studio that allows actors to make discoveries about how they engage their attention, open their sensory awareness and afectively engage what they are embodying in that specifc studio context. This has meant that I try to clarify and articulate how and why I teach as I do. Four lineages of teaching, learning and refection have shaped what I teach and how I teach and direct actors. Lineage 1: the master-teachers/practitioners who have taught me specifc in-depth modes of embodied practice, especially C. V. Govindankutty Nair and C. Mohammed Sherif (kalarippayattu), taiqiquan (A. C.

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Scott), yoga (Chandran Gurukkal) and Japanese noh (Akira Matsui, Kita Noh School). Lineage 2: those who have taught me to engage refectively with sociocultural/ political issues and discourses which have shaped how I view the world, and how to practice within the world(s) I inhabit, especially my high school Civics teacher (Mr. Schoner), who taught me to question authority in/ around issues of Civil Rights in the United States and the injustices/lies of the American government with their engagement in the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s; my philosophy teachers at Ohio University (Professor Troy Organ; Dr. Machado), who helped me to refect on a vast array of issues; and my theology teachers at McCormick Theological Seminary, where I not only refected on social and ethical issues of inequality and warfare but also how to engage in sociopolitical struggles and inequalities in Chicago between 1969–1971. This lineage has had an impact on ensuring that what I teach is accessible to all in the studio and has led to a de-emphasis on overt physical virtuosity. Lineage 3: those who have directly or indirectly guided me toward refective enquiry through reading/study/refection and therefore have shaped my process, especially philosophers from the phenomenological tradition including Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas and, more recently, Evan Thompson and others developing dynamic systems theory or enactment theory in relation to phenomenology. Lineage 4: those within the theater/performance world(s) whom I have met and engaged with in the studio—when training and/or when in rehearsals, including both students and a wide range of professional actors/performers and collaborators—individuals willing to open themselves to my (still somewhat unusual) intercultural approach to training actors/ performers.27 Although the frst set of lineages is the most obvious because these are the embodied practices that I utilize in training actors, the other three lineages are equally important, in that they have shaped how I contextualize the training as well as the discourses/narratives I use when teaching and directing. One very clear example of a major change in how I teach kalarippayattu is the simple recognition and articulation of the fact that I am teaching adults and not children. In addition, as wonderful as it is to be able to kick a leg up to one’s shoulder to demonstrate how one can literally become “as fexible as a rubber band,” it is not necessary for everyone going through the training to reach that level of fexibility and virtuosity in order to gain the type of agency I think most important in the training, especially for those who wish to be performers. My teaching has gradually come to focus not on how fexible a body one can be, nor how “deep” or low one can get when performing an animal pose, but rather on the subtler “inner” dimensions ofered by an embodied process over

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time: how/where to open, engage and direct one’s embodied attention and sensory awareness. These subtler dimensions of learning include exploring how kalarippayattu (along with taiqiquan and yoga) can attune an individual to more nuanced dimensions of what it is like to attend to when inhabiting and moving through a sequence of forms, or what it is like to open one’s sensory awareness (aural, tactile, visual, etc.) in movement, and what it is like to come toward an embodied understanding of how to be grounded and be centered in performance. Attentive “knowledge” might be defned as the embodied capacity to open one’s sensory awareness as appropriate to the context. This means helping those I am working with absorb the fact that learning, understanding and embodiment are all processes that take time. The bodymind is always changing and is never a fxed entity. This means that rather than speeding up the embodied practice (especially of kalarippayattu), I have slowed down the process so that those learning can be more attentive to engaging and coming to “know” the subtler, more nuanced dimensions of a movement. Working not just with “ft” young bodies but rather with actors of many ages and body types—especially with the kalarippayattu training—is a self-conscious shift of emphasis from the “ideal” fexible/virtuosic body toward how attention and awareness are opened in and through the training, even when one is not in the deepest or lowest position physically. My intention is to adjust the training so that it is as accessible as possible to all types of bodies and not just the “ideal” kalarippayattu body. This choice refects not only the purpose of the training as I teach it but also my politics. The pre-performative training of the actor I have developed is best described as a practice of “attunement,” where the actor might gradually discover a heightened and subtle deployment of one’s attention and sensory awareness in order to enhance the type of perceptual/sensory awareness necessary for acting.28 Enhancing perceptual awareness is part of our Lebenswelt—“lifeworld”— the world of our immediate, lived experience as it is given to us and felt in the moment of experience. The actor’s process may be understood as an enactive process of constantly attempting to attune oneself toward and “make sense” of what is there in the world in the moment of encounter and interaction with that world. Therefore, the intercultural training I have developed can be described as an open-ended form of perceptual/sensory apprenticeship where one is constantly exploring how to deploy one’s attention and awareness in relation to the (theatrical) lifeworld one inhabits as fully as possible, as shaped by the constraints and afordances of a production’s aesthetic and dramaturgy. Most crucially, the process in which I engage actors is an attempt not to arrive at answers or to have a formula or “method” through which one approaches acting; rather, it is intended as an open-ended process of exploring “the edge of the breath,” not knowing what is next until it happens—an existential/ embodied location where acting, like the practice of a martial art, is always

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shaped as question or possibility. One never “knows” what will happen until “it” is encountered. This process is exemplifed in the training I have developed when actors begin to apply the underlying principles of the training to structured improvisations—a set of very simple psychophysical tasks organized into increasingly complex rule-based structures enacted in a workshop setting.29 An individual opens toward the subtleties of a specifc mode of attention/sensory awareness such as deep listening, tactile awareness or the engagement of an active/embodied imagination. Previously unnoticed subtleties of sensory/felt/ perceptual relationships may gradually “open” to the individual practitioner. Training, cultivating, awakening, opening and sensitizing the surgeon’s touch, the perfumer’s “nose,” the kalarippayattu practitioner’s feet when giving massage or the full set of sensory possibilities the actor ideally accesses in performance exemplify what Bruno Latour describes as processes of “learning to be afected.”30 When being trained toward their specifc virtuosic practices, the perfumer, wine-taster, surgeon, masseur, martial artist or actor/performer acquires an afective sensibility which allows her access to fne-grained modes of recognizing and discriminating gradations of diference.31 Citing the example of the perfumer, Latour explains how the training of one’s “nose” is a process of “learn[ing] to be afected through the conjoining of the body with artefacts, techniques and technologies which defne the particular social practice.”32 These processes of learning to be afected might be described as processes of

FIGURE 6.2

During an intensive 2-week workshop at the Shanghai Theatre Academy in 2017, Phillip Zarrilli works with participants on applying principles of the training to various structured improvisations. Here emphasis is on sensory awareness of the palms while carrying a “heavy load.” Photo courtesy of Phillip Zarrilli. Source: https://phillipzarrilli.com/blog.

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FIGURE 6.3

Bernadette Cronin and Yi Song carrying the weight of a “heavy load” in a continuation of work on this structured improvisation. Photo courtesy of Phillip Zarrilli. Source: https://phillipzarrilli.com/blog.

sensitization or attunement: over time, the practitioner is opening one’s awareness to ever subtler nuances of “what it is like” to be engaging that specifc embodied process as it is shaped by the specifc performance scores the actor encounters.

Affective “knowledge”: Learning to be affected by listening and by “touching” words I want to conclude with a brief discussion of two closely related subtler modes of embodied sensory awareness I emphasize when training and directing actors: how the actor learns to open their auditory awareness toward a mode of deep listening, and then begins to “touch” words as they are voiced in performance. As I have explained elsewhere at length, the process of preparatory actor training I have developed for actors begins with a series of simple kalarippayattu breath-control exercises.33 In the process of transposing these apparently simple breathing exercises and interweaving them when teaching or directing contemporary actors, I began to invite those working with me to keep their external focus with their physical eyes directly ahead while following their inbreath and out-breath with the “inner eye” as it travels through the nose and

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down inside their body to a location just below the navel, and then to follow the breath on the exhalation back up and out into the space ahead and beyond their body.34 Eventually I began to invite actors to not only follow the breath with their “inner eye” but also to simultaneously open their auditory awareness to the sound of the breath on its journey. This begins a process I describe as a form of “attentive” or “deep” listening—an opening of one’s “ears” or auditory awareness to the sonority of the immediate environment both “within” oneself via the breath as well as an outward opening into the environment. By attentively following the breath with the inner eye and simultaneously opening auditory awareness, there is eventually created an inner felt sense of tracing the movement inside—a process of inscribing deep listening.35 Similarly, as one follows the breath outward into the environment, there is gradually an extension of one’s relationship into/through space that has its own sense of being in touch if not of actual “touching.” From 1994 to 1995, when I frst began to work on the later plays of Samuel Beckett such as Ohio Impromptu and Footfalls, I made another step in this process of transposition and interweaving of the principles and exercises of kalarippayattu, such as the breathing exercises, from the context of practicing a martial art into the context and process of training and directing actors. I invite those with whom I am working to open their auditory awareness not only in the breath but to the words of an acting text as they take shape in the mouth, are articulated and are voiced. Too often actors may be speaking the words of a text without fully “listening” to what they are saying in the act of voicing those words. Nor are actors necessarily as attentive as they might be to the texture and sonorous quality of the words as they take shape in the mouth while being voiced.36 By attuning the actor to the feeling/sound/shape/meaning of words in the mouth, actors begin to engage in a process and mode of “self-listening” and inner touching. In Chapter 5 (“The Voicing Body and Sonorous Speech”) of (Toward) a Phenomenology of Acting, I have documented at length this process of teasing out, making more explicit, and articulating some of the subtler sensory/ afective dimensions implicit in the preparatory training, applied to rehearsing/performing a production of Footfalls co-produced by Compañía Nacional de Teatro Costa Rica (The National Theatre Company of Costa Rica) and Colectivo Escénico Dragón (The Dragon Theatre Collective) at Teatro Alberto Cañas (San José).37 In his book Listening, philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy asks the question, “What does it mean for a being to be immersed entirely in listening, formed by listening or in listening, listening with all his being?”38 Over time and with repetition, as one begins to open auditory awareness, one begins a process of “letting go” or abandoning oneself to a state of deep, profound “listening” where all that exists is a question—that is, a possibility of … what might be present, and what might present itself. As philosopher Adriana Cavarero argues,

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In the uniqueness that makes itself heard as voice, there is an embodied existent, or rather, a “being-there” [esserci] in its radical fnitude, here and now […]. The elementary phenomenology of the acoustic sphere always implies a relation between mouth and ear. [… T]he voice is for the ear.39 By introducing “attentive listening” in the actor’s preparatory process, the actor is gradually introduced to the “being there” of the breath/voice: a process of incorporating and embodying language as a vibrant/dynamic/animated vocal act in the moment of performance between “mouth and ear,” where one listens in on the sonority of one’s own process of voicing. Nancy asks, “What secret is at stake when one truly listens” and thereby encounters “sonority rather than the message?”40 We are listening, but what is “there” remains a “secret”—unknown to each of us. There is no “message.” No “thing” and no “one” emerges as an answer to the psychophysical questions posed. As Nancy explains, “To be listening is always to be on the edge of meaning, or in an edgy meaning of extremity, and as if the sound were precisely nothing else than this edge.”41 When actors with whom I have worked begin to attune their auditory awareness, they begin to learn how to “touch” the words they speak in their mouths, and therefore often experience and sensorially discover and come to “know” something “new” in their afective work as actors. In a lengthy interview after our work in 2017 on Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls, Milena Picado, who was playing May, described how she came to experience the “texture” of Beckett’s words as “like creatures alive in my mouth and therefore in my whole body … I had never experienced this before with words in a text.”42 The process of “listening” and attending to that I have described here is not an isolated or passive act of the ears hearing; rather, it is an act of absorption so complete and full that one’s embodied consciousness is woven into the moment. The specifcity and intensity of the actor’s engagement with specifc psychophysical tasks such as deep listening and attending to the texture of the words in the mouth allow the actor to be animated and energized from the “inside”—not in a psychological or motivational sense but rather as one “tunes” in to what is present at that moment in both the “inner” embodied environment and in the environment one is inhabiting. The result of this intense internal psychophysical engagement is subtle, slight adjustments within a feld of possibilities. When an actor’s text is attended to and experienced in her mouth for its texture—as “creatures” “alive” in the mouth—the very “strangeness” of the words as they too are being touched and simultaneously touching/afecting the actor intensifes an actor’s afective/sensorial relationship to what is being said. Martin Heidegger’s concept of Befndlichkeit calls our attention to the actor’s optimal location—a time and place out of time where one comes to fnd or locate oneself.43 But this is not a location that is absolute; rather, for the actor as well as the martial artist, this must always be an open-ended location as a

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“question” of where one is. This becomes a process of inhabiting a state of notknowing, where attunement and openness allow one to be responsive to what is present where there is something to be done, “said,” heard or written, but one does not “know” what it is until it is being done, said, listened to or written. By attending to the “feeling” of a movement, a form or what we are listening to, we fnd that our feelings are full of information not just about what is inside our skin, but about the world around us as well. Feeling is not just “inward”—there is an understanding “in it” about one’s situation. What kind of knowledge is this? It seems that it is not merely “objective” knowledge—nor is it merely subjective knowledge—it is relational in that it tells one something positional about both oneself and another—the connections between self and other. The immediacy of this understanding is not formulated and already packaged as a clear verbal pattern. […] It is implicit rather than explicit—“given” in the “feel”—a kind of knowing that may not start out as being logical but which carries holistic, not yet patterned, aesthetic qualities.44 This feeling-full relation to the world/environment is often experienced as pre-articulate, as on the verge of but not yet formed into words—there is an implicit “understanding,” but that understanding may not as yet have been fully articulated. We are encountering the world in an intimate, subtle manner—responding in that moment in a way that may not as yet be conceptually or thematically clear but that nevertheless is full of the complex set of pregnant possibilities available in that instant. When an individual reaches a level of virtuosity in an embodied practice— whether kathakali, kalarippayattu or the process of psychophysical actor training I have developed—one mark of this process of coming to know may be described as possessing a form of “tacit” knowledge. Tacit forms of “knowledge” are enactive and therefore emergent. They are a “creative” way of engaging what one has come to know that is always open to possible ways of doing, inhabiting and/or “showing” what may be (tacitly) “known.” Tacit knowledge can take a variety of forms, such as a form of tactical improvisation in martial arts practice or the ability to sensorially open one’s awareness and orient oneself in the moment of performance to the nuances of what is taking place in the context of each specifc performance. Tacit knowledge is derived as much from long-term experience as from training. In embodied practices, it is perhaps the most important type of “knowledge” one might discover. Tacit knowledge points to the open-ended, temporal nature of life-long learning and processes of coming to know—always with the shadow of an un-knowing present and yet-to-be-known future.

Notes 1 Les Todres, Embodied Enquiry: Phenomenological Touchstones for Research, Psychotherapy, and Spirituality (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 177.

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2 I frst traveled to Kerala in 1976–1977 on a Fulbright Fellowship as a theater director/PhD scholar intending to use ethnographic frst-person immersion in kathakali training in order to understand kathakali in the Kerala context but equally to explore its potential in the training of contemporary actors. Five additional periods of between 3 and 12 months each allowed further intensive research and training in kalarippayattu and/or about kathakali between 1976 and 1993. These research trips were funded by AIIS, SSRC, Wenner-Gren, NEH and Guggenheim grants. 3 For specifc accounts of kathakali, see Phillip B. Zarrilli, Kathakali Dance­Drama: Where Gods and Demons Come to Play (London: Routledge, 2000); “A Tradition of Change: The Role of Patrons and Patronage in the Kathakali Dance-Drama,” in Arts Patronage in India: Methods, Motives, and Markets, ed. Joan L. Erdman (New Delhi: Manohar, 1992), 91–142; The Kathakali Complex: Actor, Performance, Structure (New Delhi: Abhinav, 1984); for kalarippayattu, see Phillip B. Zarrilli, When the Body Becomes All Eyes: Paradigms, Discourses, and Practices of Power in Kalarippayattu, a South Indian Martial Art (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); and D. H. Luijendijk, Kalarippayat: The Structure and Essence of an Indian Martial Art (Den Haag: CIP-Gegevens Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 2008). See also Roman Sieler, Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in South India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) on Varma ati or adi murai. Kalarippayattu probably emerged as a distinctive regional martial art sometime in the formative period of Kerala’s history in the tenth and eleventh centuries (Zarrilli, When the Body, 29–35). Kathakali and its early precursors began to emerge as distinctive performing arts in the late seventeenth century (Zarrilli, Kathakali Dance­Drama, 18–22). 4 Leday frst trained in kathakali and bharatanatyam at Kalakshetra in Chennai before undergoing further training with Keezhpadam Kumaran Nair, Kalamandalam Padmanabhan Nair, Gandhi Seva Sadanam and Kumaran Nair. With her Parisbased company, Keli, she has created and toured numerous intercultural performances such as Kathakali­King Lear (1989), in which she played Cordelia opposite Kalamandalam Padmanabhan Nair’s Lear; La Sensitive (1992), based on Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “The Sensitive Plant”; and, most recently, Mithuna (2015). 5 Zarrilli, Kathakali Complex, 74–75, 104–6. 6 Although I chose not to pursue kathakali training further, my deep and abiding interest in, enjoyment of and research about kathakali performance continued. On several occasions, I invited my kathakali teacher to collaborate with me on productions in the United States which would make use of selected kathakali techniques, such as Tales from South Asia: The Story of the World’s First Play in 1992. See Sharon A. Grady and Phillip B. Zarrilli, “‘… It Was Like a Play in a Play in a Play!’ Tales from South Asia in an Intercultural Production,” TDR 38, no. 3 (1994): 168–84. 7 Zarrilli, Kathakali Dance­Drama, 159–74. 8 Ibid. 9 On the sociocultural context and history of kalarippayattu, see Zarrilli, When the Body, 24–60. On kalarippayattu as both martial arts and its physical therapies, see ibid., 84–200. 10 Tom Rice, “Learning to Listen: Auscultation and the Transmission of Auditory Knowledge,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16 (2010): 41–61. 11 For a detailed account of kathakali training, see Zarrilli, Kathakali Complex, 68–143, with a list and description of each preliminary exercise, 107–17. 12 For a detailed and illustrated documentation of specifc kalarippayattu techniques of training, see Pi Balakrishnan, Kalarippayattu: The Ancient Martial Art of Kerala (Trivandrum: C. V. N. Kalari, 1995); Chirakkal T. Sreedharan Nair, Kalarippayattu: The Complete Guide to Kerala’s Ancient Martial Art (Channai: Westland Books, 2007); Luijendijk, Kalarippayat; Patrick Denaud, Kalaripayat: The Martial Arts Tradition of India (Rochester: Destiny Books, 2009); and Zarrilli, When the Body, 84–122.

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13 I am quoting my kathakali teacher, M. P. Sankaran Namboodiri (see Zarrilli, Kathakali Dance­Drama, 93f ). On the “inner secrets” of kalarippayattu training, see Zarrilli, When the Body, 123–53. 14 The two main epics are the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The puranas are encyclopedic collections of stories, lore and wisdom, and the source for plays about Lord Krishna. 15 Zarrilli, Kathakali Complex, 138–40; Kathakali Dance­Drama, 39–44. 16 See Phillip Zarrilli, “Between Text and Embodied Practice: Writing and Reading in a South Indian Martial Tradition,” in Shastric Tradition in Indian Arts, ed. Anna L. Dallapiccola (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989), 415–24. Some master-teachers have handwritten copies of manuals of practice rather than much older palm-leaf manuscripts. Under British rule, as extended families and matrilineal descent shifted to the nuclear family and patrilineal descent, manuscripts usually passed from father to son. If/when a gurukkal endows an advanced student with the status of gurukkali who is not from his own family, that individual will only have been able to access the manuals by copying original palm-leaf manuscripts (if available within that lineage). 17 Zarrilli, When the Body, 50. 18 Ibid., 152–53. 19 Between 1976 and 1993, I lived and trained in Kerala for a total of 7 years, primarily with Gurukkal Govindankutty Nair of the C. V. N. Kalari, but also with C. Mohammed Sherif at the Kerala Kalarippayattu Academy (Kannur), and briefy with Raju Asan in varma ati. 20 For full accounts of how I have carefully interwoven these three modes of embodied practice into what could be described as a psychophysical approach to preparing actors to perform and utilize the principles of the training when directing actors, see Phillip Zarrilli, Psychophysical Acting: An Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski (London: Routledge, 2009); and (Toward) a Phenomenology of Acting (London: Routledge, 2020). Although my focus in this chapter is on kathakali and kalarippayattu, in my work with actors, taiqiquan and yoga are as important as kalarippayattu per se. 21 Zarrilli, Psychophysical Acting; “The Actor’s Work on Attention, Awareness, and Active Imagination: Between Phenomenology, Cognitive Science, and Practices of Acting,” in Performance and Phenomenology: Traditions and Transformations, ed. Maaike Bleeker, Jon Foley Sherman and Eirini Nedelkopoulou (London: Routledge, 2015), 75–96; “‘Inner Movement’ between Practices of Meditation, Martial Arts, and Acting: A Focused Examination of Afect, Feeling, Sensing, and Sensory Attunement,” in Ritual, Performance, and the Senses, ed. Michael Bull and Jon P. Mitchell (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 121–36; (Toward) a Phenomenology. 22 Phillip Zarrilli, “From Martial Art to Performance: Kalarippayattu and Performance in Kerala, Part 2,” Sangeet Natak 83 (1987): 35–38. 23 Ibid., 38–41. 24 Ibid., 14–45; see also Phillip Zarrilli, “From Martial Art to Performance: Kalarippayattu and Performance in Kerala, Part 1,” Sangeet Natak 81–82 (1986): 5–22. 25 See Rustom Bharucha’s detailed study of Chandralekha’s body of work, and especially his account of her integration of “martial sequences” into her new choreography. Chandralekha: Woman, Dance, Resistance (New Delhi: Indus, 1995), 150f. 26 For example, the YouTube video “South Indian Martial Arts Demonstration” advertises a kalarippayattu show on a small stage for a tourist audience at Fort Kochi. It provides glimpses of staf swinging, sword manipulation around the body and knife/empty-hand fght. Since its posting, this YouTube video has been viewed more than 900,000 times as of October 2021. The New Travel, “South Indian Martial Arts Demonstration—Fort Kochi, India,” 26 March 2017, YouTube video, 2:32. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6bt4SvMDb4.

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27 Especially important have been my early work with Richard Schechner on Richard’s Lear (1981) and Putu Wijaya on Geez! (1986) and my more recent collaborations with Kaite O’Reilly and Jo Shapland on Told by the Wind (2010); on playing ‘the maids’ (2015) with co-creators Kaite O’Reilly, Gaitkrash (Bernadette Cronin, Regina Crowley, Mick O’Shea), Theatre P’yut ( Jeungsook Yoo and Sunhee Kim) and independent artists Jing Hong Okorn-Kuo and Adrian Curtain; work on The Water Station (2015) at Nordland Teater with an international cast of ten; and my work on Footfalls with Milena Picado and Erika Rojas in Costa Rica (2017). 28 See Zarrilli, “The Actor’s Work.” 29 See Zarrilli, Psychophysical Acting, 81–112. 30 Bruno Latour, “How to Talk about the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies,” Body and Society 10, no. 2–3 (2004): 206. 31 Tibetan Buddhist priests who engage in the practice of creating three-dimensional mandalas through sand painting take days or weeks to create a specifc mandala. The focused, precise bodymind production of a mandala is undertaken as a form of meditation on impermanence since upon the conclusion of the ritual process, which animates the mandala’s power, the sand is simply brushed together into a pile and poured into a body of running water in nature—a process which spreads the blessings of the mandala. See Lobsang Wangdu and Yolanda O’Bannon, “Sand Mandalas: Creating a Perfectly Harmonious World,” YoWangdu: Experience Tibet, last modifed 5 August 2020. https://www.yowangdu.com/tibetan-buddhism/sand -mandalas.html or “Online Exhibitions,” National Museum of Asian Art, accessed 10 October 2021. https://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/mandala/mandala.htm. 32 Lisa Blackman, The Body: The Key Concepts (New York and Oxford: Berg, 2008), 97, italics in the original. 33 Zarrilli, Psychophysical Acting, 25–26; (Toward) a Phenomenology, 25–26. 34 These exercises were taught to me by Mohamedunni Gurukkal. When teaching me, he did not explicitly instruct me to follow my in-breath and out-breath with my “inner eye” or “mind’s eye.” The area below the navel is known as nabhi mula in Malayalam and dantian in the practice of taiji and all Chinese martial arts. 35 See Jean-Marc de Grave’s discussion of the inner dimensions of perceptual awakening in Javanese martial arts in “The Training of Perception in Javanese Martial Arts,” in Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World, ed. D. S. Farrer and John Whalen-Bridge (Albany: SUNY Press, 2011), 135–40. 36 For a complete discussion of this early work on Beckett’s texts, see Zarrilli, Psychophysical Acting, 115–43. 37 Along with Play, Footfalls was part of an evening of shorter/later Beckett plays entitled … semblanza … secuela … espectro …. See Zarrilli, (Toward) a Phenomenology, 176–214. 38 Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening, trans. Charlotte Mandell (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 4. 39 Adriana Cavarero, For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, trans. and intro. Paul A. Kottman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 173, 178, italics in the original. 40 Nancy, Listening, 5. 41 Ibid., 7. 42 Milena Picado, in discussion with the author, 21 April 2017. 43 Zarrilli, (Toward) a Phenomenology, 101–3. 44 Todres, Embodied Enquiry, 177.

Bibliography Balakrishnan, Pi. Kalarippayattu: The Ancient Martial Art of Kerala. Trivandrum: C. V. N. Kalari, 1995.

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Bharucha, Rustom. Chandralekha: Woman, Dance, Resistance. New Delhi: Indus, 1995. Blackman, Lisa. The Body: The Key Concepts. New York and Oxford: Berg, 2008. Cavarero, Adriana. For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression. Translated and with an introduction by Paul A. Kottman. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. de Grave, Jean-Marc. “The Training of Perception in Javanese Martial Arts.” In Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World, edited by D. S. Farrer, and John Whalen-Bridge, 123–44. Albany: SUNY Press, 2011. Denaud, Patrick. Kalaripayat: The Martial Arts Tradition of India. Rochester: Destiny Books, 2009. Grady, Sharon A., and Phillip Zarrilli. “‘…It Was Like a Play in a Play in a Play!’ Tales from South Asia in an Intercultural Production.” TDR 38, no. 3 (1994): 168–84. Latour, Bruno. “How to Talk about the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies.” Body and Society 10, no. 2–3 (2004): 205–29. Luijendijk, D. H. Kalarippayat: The Structure and Essence of an Indian Martial Art. Den Haag: CIP-Gegevens Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 2008. Nair, Chirakkal T. Sreedharan. Kalarippayattu: The Complete Guide to Kerala’s Ancient Martial Art. Channai: Westland Books, 2007. Nancy, Jean-Luc. Listening. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. National Museum of Asian Art. “Online Exhibitions.” Accessed 10 October 2021. https:// www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/mandala/mandala.htm. Rice, Tom. “Learning to Listen: Auscultation and the Transmission of Auditory Knowledge.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16 (2010): 41–61. Sieler, Roman. Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in South India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. The New Travel. “South Indian Martial Arts Demonstration – Fort Kochi, India.” 26 March 2017. YouTube video. 2:32. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v =T6bt4SvMDb4. Todres, Les. Embodied Enquiry: Phenomenological Touchstones for Research, Psychotherapy, and Spirituality. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Wangdu, Lobsang, and Yolanda O’Bannon. “Sand Mandalas: Creating a Perfectly Harmonious World.” YoWangdu: Experience Tibet. Last modifed 5 August 2020. https://www.yowangdu.com/tibetan-buddhism/sand-mandalas.html. Zarrilli, Phillip B. “The Actor’s Work on Attention, Awareness, and Active Imagination: Between Phenomenology, Cognitive Science, and Practices of Acting.” In Performance and Phenomenology: Traditions and Transformations, edited by Maaike Bleeker, Jon Foley Sherman, and Eirini Nedelkopoulou, 75–96. London: Routledge, 2015. ———. “Between Text and Embodied Practice: Writing and Reading in a South Indian Martial Tradition.” In Shastric Tradition in Indian Arts, edited by Anna L. Dallapiccola, 415–24. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989. ———. “From Martial Art to Performance: Kalarippayattu and Performance in Kerala, Part 1.” Sangeet Natak 81–82 (1986): 5–41. ———. “From Martial Art to Performance: Kalarippayattu and Performance in Kerala, Part 2.” Sangeet Natak 83 (1987): 14–45. ———. “‘Inner Movement’ between Practices of Meditation, Martial Arts, and Acting: A Focused Examination of Afect, Feeling, Sensing, and Sensory Attunement.” In Ritual, Performance, and the Senses, edited by Michael Bull, and Jon P. Mitchell, 121– 36. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.

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———. The Kathakali Complex: Actor, Performance, Structure. New Delhi: Abhinav, 1984. ———. Kathakali Dance­Drama: Where Gods and Demons Come to Play. London: Routledge, 2000. ———. Psychophysical Acting: An Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski. London: Routledge, 2009. ———. (Toward) a Phenomenology of Acting. London: Routledge, 2020. ———. “A Tradition of Change: The Role of Patrons and Patronage in the Kathakali Dance-Drama.” In Arts Patronage in India: Methods, Motives, and Markets, edited by Joan L. Erdman, 91–142. New Delhi: Manohar, 1992. ———. When the Body Becomes All Eyes: Paradigms, Discourses, and Practices of Power in Kalarippayattu, a South Indian Martial Art. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

hts reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

PART III

(Re)Generating Spiritual Knowledges

7 ON BEING AND UNKNOWING Moving with an “other” in capoeira, contact improvisation and queer tango Ann Cooper Albright

Corporeality exceeds the visible. Dancers know this. Our willingness to work at the edge of what Marcia Siegel called “the vanishing point” gives us an interesting perspective on the mysteries of existence. Although we base our work on the materiality of the body, we are not limited by the empirical. Expressivity requires an engagement beyond the pedestrian to the ephemeral. This is why dancing calls forth a special willingness to engage with the unknown, including that open exchange of possibilities between one’s self and an “other.” Together and in motion, we confront both our diferences and realize our shared humanity. From skin to soul. I begin this chapter by invoking the elusive quality of movement because I want to afrm that dancing can generate a kind of spiritual experience situated at the intersection of ontology and epistemology—of being and (un)knowing. While we may not be able to defne it or even always see it, dancers know how to feel those moments when reality opens up to another dimension in which one is “being moved” by a force greater than one’s self. Over the course of the following pages, I hope to demonstrate that this ability to touch a spiritual dimension is implicated in an embodied experience based on the exchanges in between moments, movements and people. Looking at the dynamics of improvisational partnering in capoeira, contact improvisation and queer tango, I will tease out the spiritual undersides of those interactions and argue that each form fgures an unknowing that allows for a diferent kind of becoming—together. In each of these very diferent styles of movement, the moment of connecting to an “other” person opens up the possibility of transcending the physical dimensions of partnering in order to embrace a metaphysical exchange of feeling something greater than the sum of two parts.

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“Spirituality” is necessarily a slippery term, and I want to invoke the “spiritual” in this chapter in the sense of an expansive energy that is not trapped by the moorings of any one religion or dance style. This multidimensional sensibility stretches beyond movement techniques or spiritual ideologies. It is not a question of knowing more but rather of thinking less. Indeed, I will go one step further and argue that bringing attention to the spiritual within the act of moving together insists on a deconstruction of knowledge as we have come to defne it in the West—“knowing” translated as information or a set of discernible facts. Put more bluntly, “spiritual knowing” is a process one undergoes, not a product one acquires. Rather than thinking of knowledge as a possession, I want to fip the object of study into a subject that can take possession of the mover. In this becoming of spirit, there is a commitment to unknowing. This suspension of our usual perspectives (our hunger for “solid facts”) allows for a kind of improvisation that foregrounds the spaces in between the binaries that shape our lives—be they forward and backward, right and left, fghting and loving, or you and me. Having begun this chapter with a discussion of dancing as an approach to spirituality that partners with the inefable, I will now introduce a multifaceted analysis of the contemporary movement practices of queer tango, capoeira Angola and contact improvisation for those readers unfamiliar with these forms. These are all forms of partnering—of dancing with another person—that I have personally trained in, although to varying degrees of skill and understanding. I have been practicing and teaching contact for the past 30 years. Contact improvisation has supported my dancing through many life transitions, including severe back injuries, two pregnancies, and more family deaths than I care to mention. During my forties, I began to train in capoeira, eventually focusing exclusively on capoeira Angola. In my ffties, I started dancing tango, mostly in queer settings. Despite various classes and several intensive workshops over the past 7 years, tango still makes me feel as if I have two left feet. This is to say that I approach these forms as an academic, an observer and a practitioner— never as an expert. What follows, then, is an admittedly partial discussion that travels from material practices via their communal contexts to their spiritual underpinnings. Yet even the move from the physical to the metaphysical is fully anchored in moving bodies—sweaty, sticky, feshy bodies—those of others as well as my own. In this sense, my methodology echoes Ruth Behar’s call in her book The Vulnerable Observer for new forms of criticism that are “rigorous yet not disinterested; forms of criticism which are not immune to catharsis; forms of criticism which can respond vulnerably, in ways we must begin to try to imagine.”1 It is by being vulnerable and open to an “other” in these practices that one can experience a moment of magical transcendence and ride the undercurrent of a spiritual interconnectedness. Although they emerge from distinctive historical and cultural contexts, contact improvisation, capoeira Angola and queer tango now circulate

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internationally, infuencing how they are taught, performed and received. They are all global forms, but not in the normative, neoliberal sense of the word. Rather, they are closer to what Homi Bhabha terms a “vernacular cosmopolitanism”2 in that they circulate through nomadic structures of homegrown connections across national borders and various languages. I argue that each partnering form pushes the boundaries of conventional ways of knowing one another, insisting on the importance of intercorporeal realities. Despite the radical diferences in their geopolitical origins, these forms of movement literacy share many aspects within their training and performance cultures. For instance, capoeira, contact and tango all take place in casual social situations (the contact jam or round-robin, the capoeira roda and the queer tango milonga) in which there is a circle of witnesses (what ethnographers would call “participant/observer”) that provides a focused energy and an open space that individuals enter to move with an “other.” In addition, these forms all incorporate a context in which disorientation, vulnerability and intimacy are embraced as part of the challenging, but nonetheless pleasurable, exchange between partners. Although they each teach a diferent set of movement skills, these forms are more concerned with the improvisational dialogue between two people than the exact iteration of steps per se. This is especially true the more one becomes steeped in each form, where a mark of maturity and skill is the display of a stunning simplicity. In order to fully understand the subtle negotiations of power and play between partners, it is critical not only to use intellectual analysis and visual observation but also to feel what is happening inside that exchange. Capoeira, contact and tango share an interest in the magical possibility of the space in between conscious decision-making and the responsiveness of the body—an acknowledgement that the skin is faster than the mind and that such an exchange can lead us past the limits of our own egos and expectations. In her book Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy, Erin Manning invokes the tango as a delicate intertwining of self and other, movement and stillness. Her interests are in the moments before and after the actual steps, those intervals of “incipient action”3 that are assumed but never specifed as choreography. For Manning, this sense of becoming—a reaching toward that which never arrives—gives movement its philosophical potential for thinking past the binaries of our world to the spaces of ambiguity in between them. She notes, “It’s not that movement directly undermines these dialectical concepts. It’s that movement allows us to approach them from another perspective: a shifting one.”4 Here we have the opportunity to feel how embodied expression arises out of a moment before muscular enactment. This is the same moment that somatic teachers call the “pre-movement,” the moments of bodily orientation that prepare the deep muscles to stabilize before we displace a limb. It is the subtle motion that we feel when we imagine moving but inhibit any actual action. Even in the role of leader in a tango duet (a highly socialized

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construct, to be sure), Manning resists the notion that she is directing the dancing, preferring to highlight the sensibility that both partners are led by an outside force—what contact improvisers call a “third mind”—“Leading is more like initiating an opening, entering the gap, and then following her response.”5 Connecting the interval with an opening or a gap, Manning fgures this moment as a meeting of habit and possibility. I am also interested in thinking about this “elasticity of the almost.”6 Grounded in the experiences of the body, this pause between beats creates a gap, an opening of expectations. In his fascinating paper linking the thinking of Levinas to the practice of contact improvisation, aptly entitled “Working (in) the In-Between,” David Williams explains this meeting as an “in-between or go-between … another space in which the ‘I’ is both implicated and (re)conceived; it is the articulation of meeting-in-diference.” 7 Williams continues to stake out the existential possibilities of contact when he claims that for each of the partners, con()tact constitutes the possible coexistence of form and spontaneity, rules-of-the-game and dance, cause and efect, centre and margin, proximity and distance. It is the “play” with-in the obdurate “fxity” of corporeal identities, its “give,” its supple-ment, its diférance; the unstable borderlands where an ethics of alterity occurs.8 Behind this tall existential order lies a physical practice based on disorientation, curiosity and a willingness to confront the “other” both internally and externally. Williams’s words describe the efects of a somatic experience in which the usual boundaries between bodies, that sense of fxed identities, are suspended. In contact improvisation, one of the frst exercises one introduces to beginning students concerns following a point of physical contact. Facing one’s partner, one presses one’s forefnger against that of one’s partner. Attending to how the energy of one’s partner’s whole body can move through their spine, out their arm and into their fnger, one waits and listens to that point of mutual contact, which will eventually begin to move. The two partners endeavor to follow its spatial and rhythmic journey. At frst, it may seem clear who is leading and who is following, but eventually, with time and practice, the shifting back and forth evolves into such a rapid and subtle exchange that those categories of “leader” and “follower” begin to lose their meaning. The binary is subverted as the attention shifts onto the play of space and touch between the two movers. Williams cites David George, who describes this intellectual idea in terms that easily translate into the dynamic of this partnership in contact improvisation: “The crucial factor here is not how many ways two diferent units can relate to each other, but recognition that this ‘third element’ is not a unit but an axis, not an entity but a state of being, less a relationship than an act of relating.”9

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Capoeira is also a form that plays with the spaces in between, often in a very literal way. Unlike contact and tango, capoeiristas do not maintain physical contact, but their exchanges are just as subtle. In her compelling discussion of capoeira in “Headspin: Capoeira’s Ironic Inversions,” Barbara Browning refers to these contradictions as a kind of irony: “the no in the yes, the big in the little, the earth in the sky, the fght in the dance.”10 And, we might add, the fuidity inside the strength. Training for an awareness of this fuidity gives practitioners of contact and capoeira insight into the exchanges of energy possible without sacrifcing one’s own experience of groundedness. This kind of fuid strength is strategic, connected to realizing the patterns of resistance and fow between the two fgures in motion. In this form of a danced/martial contest, strength is used to create a dialogic in which one move evokes a fuid response, thus opening the space for further engagement. I want to take a moment here to think about how all these forms engage a practice of space and time that encourages a leap into the unforeseen—one that also invites the ambiguity of the unknown. The etymology of “improvisation” is usually defned as “unforeseen.” But what I would like to highlight in the Latin root form, improvere, is the attention to what is not actually seen—an awareness of states of being that often go unmarked even while they are deeply felt. I have taught improvisation, specifcally contact improvisation, for over three decades, and during that time, I have also written extensively about the life practices embedded in this form and the many somatic practices that support its explorations into the unforeseen. For me, the potency of improvisational practice lies in our willingness to enter the open space (of life as well as the dance studio) and move in the face of uncertainty. This exchange with another person is predicated on the ability to be at once external and internal—both available to what is happening in the world around you and intensely grounded in the sensation of one’s ongoing experience. Every time I try to articulate what is important to me about improvisation, I return to a short editorial written by Nancy Stark Smith, longtime improviser and coeditor of Contact Quarterly. In an editor’s note refecting on her eforts to quit smoking, she writes, Where you are when you don’t know where you are is one of the most precious spots ofered by improvisation. It is a place from which more directions are possible than anywhere else. I call this place the Gap. […] Every time I want a cigarette and don’t have one I’m creating a gap. Moments that once were easily and automatically flled have become uneasily and consciously unflled. By leaving them unflled, I’m not only breaking a “momentum of being,” a pattern of behavior, but I’m bringing attention and charge to a moment that would have passed without remark. […] Being in a gap is like being in a fall before you touch bottom. You’re suspended—in time as well as space—and you don’t really know how long it’ll take to get “back.”11

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It is this suspension of our usual orientations, the moment when you stay with the awkward and uncomfortable rather than automatically reaching for the usual distractions or habits (be they cigarettes, social media or the latest ftness craze), that makes improvisation both fascinating and occasionally frightening. This is why quitting a habit or traveling to another country can be so enlightening. Improvisation is not simply a naïve turn away from structure (compositional or cultural), nor is it a (re)turn to an innocent, childlike state of wonder. Rather, it is a rigorous practice that prepares one to tolerate ambiguity, to cross over into uncomfortable territory and to journey between states of knowing and unknowing. It is the improvisational aspects of these forms of partnering that lead to the spiritual possibilities implicit in the melding of self and other. For many people, Tango Argentino is associated with the spectacular dance revue of the same name that premiered in Paris on 10 November 1983 and toured extensively for over a decade. 1983 also marked the end of the Dirty War (1976–1983). Argentinians began to gather once again in public spaces in ways that had been prohibited during the military dictatorship. Argentinian scholar Ana Cara (who, by the way, is my main dance partner) distinguishes between “export tango” and “home tango” by describing the former as “exoteric tango— exotic, external, outsider, fanciful” and the later as “esoteric tango—familiar, inner, insider, secretive, initiated.”12 Yet even these more local traditions can be locked into social conventions and formalized rituals that are undeniably sexist, ageist and heteronormative. For tango afcionados, it is considered a mark of “authenticity” to understand the implicit codes such as the cabeceo—that everso-subtle tilt of the head indicating an invitation onto the dance foor. Exploding many of these patriarchal social rituals, queer tango (or tango queer, depending on locale and translation) began in the late 1990s as dancers and teachers in Argentina, Europe and the United States rebelled against the highly rigid gendered norms of (male) leader and (female) follower endemic to traditional forms of tango. The increasing popularity of Buenos Aires as a gay tourist mecca helped various small queer milongas stay viable, even through the periodic ups and downs of the national currency. The frst International Queer Tango Festival took place in Germany in 2000. Held every 2 years, this event is organized by Astrid Weiske. The festival website describes queer tango as both a symbol of and a medium for being respectful and attentive with each other. It is a dancing dialogue between two people based on an equally balanced exchange—regardless of national boundaries and categories such as origin or social gender. For the term “queer” not only refers to the origin based in gay subculture, but also to the “queer,” strange, rarely questioned gender roles of tango. The changing roles deepen the understanding of tango and enable an intensive experience of the dance. For advanced dancers, the art of giving up and taking the leading role ofers a creative challenge and a source of inspiration.13

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Freed from the traditional heteronormative imperative in tango, this “queer” approach to dancing allows partners to exchange the roles of leader and follower regardless of gender or sexual identity. In this context, a new measure of dancing skill is the ability to seamlessly transition between the roles of leader and follower in the middle of a dance, regardless of who is wearing heels. Interestingly, this ability is based on a corporeal intimacy in which one’s own movement provides the opening for another’s motion. In this loop between self and other, the leading becomes a following as the following leads the way. In the anthology Touching and Being Touched, Sabine Zubarik describes this shifting of positions in existential terms that refect our essential interconnectedness— what I would consider a spiritual engagement: “the desire to become yourself while becoming someone else who becomes herself or himself in becoming you, so that both at the same time become none and the two together.”14 This last phrase is precisely what contact improvisers would call a “third mind,” the situation in dancing where the positions of moving and being moved become so fuid that both partners are following an improvisation as it is happening, as if being led by an outside force. Contact improvisation is a dance form that was developed in the early 1970s by a group of people who were interested in exploring the dancing produced by the exchange of weight between two or more people. The movement in contact is structured by the shared responsibility for one another’s weight and the changing dynamics of force and momentum. At its inception, contact embodied many of the issues about self, interdependence, community and change that were emblematic of the 1960s. Beginning with a state of mutual weight dependency, the dancers follow that common point as it revolves around their bodies and travels through space. The movement training in contact, which is infuenced by Asian martial arts such as Tai chi and Aikido as well as contemporary release techniques, develops the skills for rolling on the foor, learning when and when not to give weight and how to fall safely. For me, one of the most enlightening aspects of training in contact improvisation is the cultivation of an openness and curiosity in the midst of moving with momentum and disorientation, including the inevitable experiences of falling to the ground. To be disoriented is to be undone, thrown of balance. But it also hints at a deeper knowledge. We rarely think about where we are until we have been lost. In order to understand what orients us, we need to experience disorientation. In the conclusion to her meditation on shifting orientations in Queer Phenomenology, Sara Ahmed claims that moments of disorientation are vital. They are bodily experiences that throw the world up, or throw the body from its ground. Disorientation as a bodily feeling can be unsettling, and it can shatter one’s sense of confdence in the ground or one’s belief that the ground on which we reside can support the actions that make a life feel livable. Such a feeling

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of shattering, or of being shattered, might persist and become a crisis. Or the feeling itself might pass as the ground returns or as we return to the ground.15 Thrown of balance, the body skews our sense of direction in ways that may reframe the cultural organization of space, including the hegemony of the vertical (up is good, down is bad). Disorientation insists that we learn a diferent perspective. In order to experience this, however, it is important not to shut of sensation, including the sensation of losing one’s ground. Embracing disorientation is not the same as feeling totally comfortable with it, of course. But it is intriguing to me that both contact and capoeira focus intensely on training the body to be available to all kinds of inverted positions and to use the hands as equal supports to the feet. Both forms encourage their practitioners not to stop when they become disoriented, but rather to continue with the momentum of the movement, knowing that gravity is a stabilizing force, even when the body is upside down. The history of capoeira Angola is longer and more contested than that of contact improvisation, and which (his)story you get depends a lot on whom you ask or read. Still, most people agree that capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial dance form that started in the colonial days when European landowners in South America had all but depleted the indigenous supply of manual labor and began importing slaves from Africa, particularly the Congo-Angola regions. Under these conditions, the traditional warrior training evolved into a combat form based on a rhythmic exchange of attacks and defenses. This martial pas de deux was done in a protective circle (the roda) whose rhythms would change to signal the danger of surveillance. Quickly, the dynamics of the combat could shift into a simple (and nonthreatening) dance. At once fghting and dancing (what one practitioner calls “strategic ambivalence”), capoeira has been used throughout its history as a form of improvised resistance, not only against the colonial institution of slavery but also in protesting other, more local, dynamics of racialized and economic power. This “resistance” is not simply a question of how capoeira was deployed within Brazilian history, but is actually embedded (and embodied) within the form itself. One of the primary diferences between the development of capoeira regional and capoeira Angola has to do with the infuence of martial arts in the movement vocabulary, with regional capoeira adopting many more direct kicks and martial moves straight from karate. Capoeira Angola is less about “winning” or scoring a direct hit than it is about slyly showing my partner that I could have connected to their body but chose instead to just skim close to the skin. Barbara Browning describes how, “in a tight, ‘inside’ game ( jogo de dentro), when the players are interweaving spinning kicks, the agility and precision of one opens a precise space for the elegant partnering of the other.”16 My experience in Brazil and also working in France with Franco-African teachers

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of capoeira is that people outside of the United States tend to be more open to the infuence of diferent kinds of movement vocabularies, particularly the mix of capoeira and hip-hop, or even capoeira and contact. The training of capoeira (and its street dance variations) is often mobilized in minority urban communities as a way to instill a sense of physical discipline and respect for others in adolescent boys. In the African-American diaspora, capoeiristas can become very precious about capoeira’s roots as an expression of black identity, resisting certain changes to the form, even if they come from Brazilian or African practitioners. Although they look diferent from one another, these forms of movement exchange feel similar to me: (1) they can be thought of as “folk” movement forms that encourage anybody to participate (including welcoming mature practitioners and valuing their rich, but potentially less famboyant, skills); at any given event, there is a continuum of amateur and professional dancers/movers present; (2) although they circulate globally, they still maintain grassroots networks of teachers and participants that continue to resist or subvert institutional and corporate fnancial structures (it is not unusual to walk into a contact jam or tango milonga or a capoeira roda and see a handwritten note next to a glass jar asking for two or three dollars/euros—from those who can—to help pay for the space rental); and (3) they all train for what I call a “responsive body,” one that seeks to accommodate another person’s movement personality as a way to engage my own. Capoeira Angola, contact improvisation and queer tango teach cooperation across individual diferences, not as a theoretical possibility but as part and parcel of their corporeal training. My interest in these forms was inspired by the realization that they all involve an improvisational exchange in which one’s identity is at once fuid and fully embodied. Each encourages a subtle ability to feel how communication between people requires a certain porousness of self, one that is also part of any kind of spiritual transcendence. This willingness to suspend expectations in favor of the unknown is a critical skill in each exchange because it opens up the possibility of connecting to something beyond the strictly corporeal. As models of collaboration, these forms can help us navigate the contemporary landscape of intercultural exchange in ways that I believe are both aesthetically interesting and politically viable. Moving from physical skills into their metaphysical implications, I want to propose that contact, queer tango and capoeira demonstrate that there are ways of being-in-the-world that are primarily tactile rather than visual, based on feeling rather than seeing. Given the increasingly scopic economy of our interactions with one another (epitomized by the two-second glance at a face on a two-inch screen before swiping left or swiping right), perceiving this afective exchange across our connective tissue requires an unlearning. One of the mantras that I use in teaching advanced contact students is “replace ambition with curiosity.” Being curious suggests a willingness to attend to new ways of

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knowing, destabilizing the Western ideology that tells us that seeing is believing, and feeling is suspect. Let me try to explain. While issues of diversity—always implicated in social contexts and representational structures—are never confned to the physical body, they are made present through our bodies. As a feminist, I realize that bodies are deeply constructed by cultural attitudes and economic conditions. As a dancer, I am aware that bodies can also be physically re-trained and consciously re-theorized. I also believe that nonverbal behavior plays a signifcant role in negotiating identity politics. How we approach, walk, talk and dance with one another means a lot. Indeed, as I have become alternately confused, elated, depressed or just plain bogged down by contestations over ownership and appropriation, authenticity and interpretation in academic circles as well as artistic communities, I have found myself seeking refuge in the body-to-body interactions of the studios and spaces where I move. This is not to suggest, of course, that these physical relations are necessarily easier, less complex or unproblematic. I recognize that the bodily categories of diference—racial diference, class diference and ethnic diference as well as diferences in physical ability and sexuality—are still matters of life and death in many places. Cultural diferences are written onto the physical body in ways that are then read in terms of social identities and power. Race, gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, age, ability and politics can be crucial markers of our uncommonalities. Yet it is important to understand that this politics of diference rests almost entirely on an epistemology of the visual. I am deeply committed to the liberatory possibilities, both individual and communal, of feminist, queer and postcolonial analyses, but I also want to draw on other, sometimes less readily perceptible, knowledge to extend our ways of thinking and being together in the world. The problem that I have found with an encyclopedic detailing of diference based on the litany of categories is that we run the risk of reifying these “facts,” reducing diference to the sum of static, monolithic distinctions. Rather than seeing diference as a set position, I am arguing for a positioning (and, by extension, a re-positioning) that is always in motion. I ofer capoeira Angola, queer tango and contact improvisation as examples of a physical confrontation with the “other” in which diference is acknowledged as part of the terms of engagement but not the entire story. These forms all train for physical exchanges in which social, cultural and somatic diferences are both celebrated and mobilized, allowing for a space in which magical connections can take place. Before I continue, let me make one thing perfectly clear: in focusing on the similarities between these forms, I am not dismissing their very real diferences of context or community, nor am I advocating any kind of utopian movement or some naïve return to a universal humanism. I believe that the hesitancy we all feel, that crucial moment of awareness of diference that makes us stop and think when we talk or write, is critical for a reorganization of the dynamics of

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privilege and power. I am deeply aware that all these struggles must continue, that they are, in fact, more important than ever. But I am also sensible of how a hyperawareness of diference can instill in people a self-consciousness that can be debilitating, especially on a bodily level. The result is that everyone retreats to their respective corners, so nervous about ofending or being ofended that the gulf between us all widens. What I am indicating here is the direction of the next step. For there must certainly be a next step. How, then, do I move with an “other”? How do I extend myself to forge a palpable connection to, with, for, across and among other people? The space between us creates the pleasure of connection and yet complicates this impulse to relate. Reaching out mobilizes one’s center and risks knocking one of balance. This process of crossing-over requires a willingness to feel vulnerable and, perhaps most importantly, to meet a sense of alterity within oneself, including the physical and psychic confrontation with the limits of one’s own body. In the midst of this vibration between self and other arises the imperative to move past what we know of ourselves. Failure is to be expected, even as the urgency of the proposal calls on us to continue to try and extend ourselves. I believe that we must risk the embarrassments and the awkwardness, risk feeling uncomfortable and having our toes stepped on, in order to launch ourselves across that metaphysical slash between self/other. The frst moves of any new partnership are rarely smooth, but we must take that chance and ask for a dance. In his short essay “Social Kinaesthesia,” Shaun Gallagher parses through the neurological and philosophical research on physical enactment and interpersonal relationships. He is interested in the ways in which kinesthetic experiences (what he terms “proprioception in action”17) constitute a crucial aspect of social perception and intersubjective communication. Doing something with my body engages me in the world in a particular manner. Gallagher notes, This kinaesthetic sense, however, is never something that is merely confned to the body—a purely interior experience. Rather, as a form of intentionality, it has a reference to the world—to the Umwelt, to the surrounding environment that is full of afordances and things that can be practically manipulated and instrumentally employed. The protentional/anticipatory kinaesthetic sense of what I will do or how I will move forms part of my know-how about the world (what Husserl calls the “I can”).18 When I do something in the world with others, this “I can” know-how becomes “co-constituted” with others. Gallagher refers to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “intercorporeity” and develops the concept of our tactile, embodied experience of being together as a kind of “kinesthetic intercorporeity,” which he defnes as “a basic, embodied resonance with others.”19 Gallagher challenges interpretations of neurological research on mirror neurons that focus almost

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exclusively on automatic and unconscious refexes of simulation, and suggests the possibility of a more active kinesthetic sensibility that leads me to complement, rather than passively mirror, the action of another: “For example, in certain circumstances, if I see someone falling, my own automatic action is not to mimic the fall; it is to reach out to catch or stop the fall of the other.”20 It is this interplay of self and other—this space in between—that motivates the physical dialogues in contact, capoeira and queer tango and allows for the expansive intimacy and loss of self that signals a spiritual transcendence. The mutual connection formed by moving together invites willingness to embrace the unknown. In this improvisatory dancing, both partners follow a point of connection as it travels through space and communicates across our bodies. Sometimes there is a magical sensation of both partners being led by an outside force. At other times, it is clear who is leading and who is following. Often, we lose one another completely, and our partner feels the psychic absence in the midst of our physical presence. Learning to dance or “play” with another person occupies a continuum from wonderfully graceful to unbelievably awkward. With practice, we begin to rely on a tactile sensibility that registers more than just the other person’s movement. This engagement with another subjectivity is the true beginning of the mysterious ties that bind; it strikes me as remarkably similar to what Deidre Sklar describes as “empathic kinesthetic perception.”21 Whereas visual perception implies an “object” to be perceived from a distance with the eyes alone, empathic kinesthetic perception implies a bridging between subjectivities. This kind of “connected knowing” produces a very intimate kind of knowledge, a taste of those inefable movement experiences that can’t be easily put into words. Paradoxically, as feminist psychologist Judith Jordan points out, the kind of temporary joining that occurs in empathy produces not a blurry merger, but an articulated perception of diferences.22 It is this “articulated perception of diference” that carries the physical commitment to maintain a connection even in the midst of cultural and political diferences. In tango, capoeira or contact improvisation, I do not need to look like you, think like you or even know you to be able to move with you. Indeed, one of the central ideological tenets of all these forms is to consistently release expectations about what kind of person you are dancing with or what kind of dance you will have together—this is the basis for many of the intersections between contact and dancing communities that include people with visual or mobility impairments. It is particularly hard to release expectations with people with whom you have danced regularly, but it is the only way to continue the improvisational project: to engage with curiosity and not habit. Of course, as Sara Ahmed so perceptively highlights, “even when we feel we have the same feeling, we don’t necessarily have the same relationship to the feeling,”23 and this diference in perception can make all the

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diference in the world. Nonetheless, by keeping our attention on the kinesthetic dynamic of those feelings rather than letting them sink into the interior world of personal emotions, we can stay engaged in the dancing, even when we fall out of synch with one another. Jean-Luc Nancy has also written extensively about a tactile, corporeal being together in his essay “Of Being Singular Plural” (1995). “Beings touch,” he writes, “they are in con-tact with one another.”24 Yet he cautions us that “feeling together” is not the same as “being-one.” “Togetherness and beingtogether are not equivalent.”25 “Being-together” implies a process, a working process, maybe even a work-in-process. Working with, feeling with, being with—these actions require a willingness to experience proximity, if not intimacy. But there are no guarantees that we will succeed in this meeting. In the middle of listing the civil wars raging in the world in the mid-1990s, Nancy declares, “What I am talking about here is compassion, but not compassion as a pity that feels sorry for itself and feeds on itself. Com-passion is the contagion, the contact of being with one another in this turmoil. Compassion is not altruism, nor is it identifcation; it is the disturbance of violent relatedness.”26 This “disturbance of violent relatedness” is the recognition that we always carry the “other” in ourselves. As Ann V. Murphy so eloquently suggests, “Our bodies remain haunted by the rhythms that mark our lives with others. To be with another, in the world and in language, is to acknowledge another’s presence within oneself; one’s haunting by another.”27 What would it mean, then, to invert the order of Nancy’s comments, such that we begin with “the disturbance of violent relatedness” and move it forward into “com-passion”? How might we link our responsiveness at the level of our connective tissue with our responsibility to account for the political economy of skin at the level of our souls? In her book Corporeal Generosity (2002), Rosalyn Diprose also discusses MerleauPonty’s notion of “intercorporeity,” arguing that his later work articulates the possibility of a bodily interconnection (fesh) that embraces, rather than erases, difference. She points to his essay “Dialogue and the Perception of the Other,” in which he acknowledges the “mysterious slippage” between self and other. MerleauPonty describes this afect at one point as a kind of “decentering,” at another point as a “trespass.” For him, the other is “not I” but also not not I.28 We must therefore try and meet across the vibration between these liminal states of being, a situation in which neither person can remain on solid ground. Diprose, in turn, coins the phrase “the trespass of intersubjectivity”29 to indicate the risks (both personal and legal) of this crossing-over. In its common usage, trespass vibrates with a frisson of danger; the word indicates boundaries disregarded and a certain anxiety about securing private property. “Do Not Trespass” signs are ubiquitous in the American countryside, less so in countries where the notion of public property carries more valence. In old French, trespass meant simply to pass across or to pass through, whereas today its usage carries the threat of legal action. For Merleau-Ponty, this “trespass” is a necessary part of our being-in-the-world—but that does not make

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it easy. He writes, “If the other person is really another, at a certain stage I must be surprised, disorientated. If we are to meet not just through what we have in common but in what is diferent between us, [this] presupposes a transformation of myself and of the other as well.”30 In this discussion, Merleau-Ponty links trespass to transformation, resulting in a crossing-over and a being-together that afects both entities—producing what one might call a new ontology of alterity. If bodily connection is important to our being-in-the-world, the question becomes, How do we access this foundation of intercorporeity? How do we draw upon this interconnectedness of self and other to build a just society? How can we cultivate our responsiveness at the level of our bodies in order to generate a responsibility—literally an ability to respond—to other people and other ideas as well as other ways of moving in the world? I believe that opening ourselves to the possibility of feeling another is a physical practice that leads toward a spiritual path in which one transcends the limits of one’s own self/desire/ego to witness our essential interconnectedness. As we become more attentive to the possibilities of that exchange, the boundaries of our selves become more porous, such that we can invite another’s trespass, revel in their proximity and witness their experience as well as our own. Bodies entangled together in contact, tango and capoeira conjure a new meeting of being and unknowing, providing a fresh and feshy perspective that supports our experience of being-together-in-the-world. This co-partnering necessarily moves us in ways that feel disorienting, that risk making us lose our bearings or, at the very least, our expectations of who we are. But it is precisely in those moments of exchange that we understand the importance of moving beyond our own fears and limits to connect not only to an “other” but also to the greater awareness of our mutual coexistence. Feeling this interconnectedness is, I am suggesting, a spiritual practice, one that transcends the physical actions of dancing to open up into a metaphysical realm of living. In the present moment in which local and global politics have retrenched into deeply divided partisan, separatist and nationalist camps, this exchange of corporeal generosity can bring us a sense of relief from our own isolation—both cultural and technological. Moving together can teach us how to live in the world with others— a lesson we would do well to learn again, and again, and again.

Notes 1 Ruth Behar, The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 175. 2 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), xviii. 3 See Erin Manning, “Incipient Action: The Dance of the Not-Yet,” in Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), 13–28. 4 Ibid., 14–15. 5 Ibid., 30.

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6 See ibid., “The Elasticity of the Almost,” 29–42. 7 David Williams, “Working (in) the In-Between: Contact Improvisation as an Ethical Practice,” Writings on Dance 15 (1996): 26. 8 Ibid. 9 David George, cited in ibid., 25. Emphasis added. 10 Barbara Browning, “Headspin: Capoeira’s Ironic Inversions,” in Samba: Resistance in Motion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 108. 11 Nancy Stark Smith, “Taking No for an Answer,” Contact Quarterly 12, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1987): 3. 12 Ana C. Cara, “Entangled Tangos: Passionate Displays, Intimate Dialogues,” The Journal of American Folklore 122, no. 486, Latin American Dance in Transnational Contexts (Fall 2009): 439. 13 International QueerTango Festival Berlin. http://www.queertangofestival-berlin.de/ en, last accessed 6 September 2021. 14 Sabine Zubarik, “‘Touch Me If You Can’: The Practice of Close Embrace as a Facilitator of Kinesthetic Empathy in Argentine Tango,” in Touching and Being Touched: Kinesthesia and Empathy in Dance and Movement, ed. Gabriele Brandstetter, Gerko Egert and Sabine Zubarik (Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 291. 15 Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 157. 16 Browning, “Headspin,” 90. 17 Shaun Gallagher, “Social Kinaesthesia,” in Zwischenleiblichkeit und bewegtes Verstehen: Intercorporeity, Movement and Tacit Knowledge, ed. Undine Eberlein (Bielefeld: transcript, 2016), 21. 18 Ibid., 23. 19 Ibid., 28. 20 Ibid., 26. 21 Deidre Sklar, “Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive Approach to Dance,” in Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, ed. Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), 32. 22 Ibid. Emphasis added. 23 Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004), 10. 24 Jean-Luc Nancy, “Of Being Singular Plural,” in Being Singular Plural, trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 96. 25 Ibid., 60. 26 Ibid., xiii. Emphasis added. 27 Ann V. Murphy, “Language in the Flesh: The Politics of Discourse in MerleauPonty, Levinas, and Irigaray,” in Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ed. Dorothea Olkowski and Gail Weiss (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 260. 28 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, quoted in Rosalyn Diprose, “Generosity, Community, and Politics,” in Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002), 182. 29 Diprose, “Generosity, Community, and Politics,” 176. 30 Merleau-Ponty, quoted in ibid., 182.

Bibliography Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. ———. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Behar, Ruth. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

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Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Browning, Barbara. “Headspin: Capoeira’s Ironic Inversions.” In Samba: Resistance in Motion, 86–126. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Cara, Ana C. “Entangled Tangos: Passionate Displays, Intimate Dialogues.” In The Journal of American Folklore 122, no. 486, Latin American Dance in Transnational Contexts (Fall 2009): 438–65. Diprose, Rosalyn. “Generosity, Community, and Politics.” In Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, 167–88. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002. Gallagher, Shaun. “Social Kinaesthesia.” In Zwischenleiblichkeit und bewegtes Verstehen: Intercorporeity, Movement and Tacit Knowledge, edited by Undine Eberlein, 21–32. Bielefeld: transcript, 2016. Manning, Erin. Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009. Murphy, Ann V. “Language in the Flesh: The Politics of Discourse in Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Irigaray.” In Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, edited by Dorothea Olkowski, and Gail Weiss, 257–72. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Nancy, Jean-Luc. “Of Being Singular Plural.” In Being Singular Plural, translated by Robert D. Richardson, and Anne E. O’Byrne, 1–101. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Sklar, Deidre. “Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive Approach to Dance.” In Moving History/Dancing Cultures, edited by Ann Dils, and Ann Cooper Albright, 30–32. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001. Stark Smith, Nancy. “Taking No for an Answer.” Contact Quarterly 12, no. 2 (Spring/ Summer 1987): 3. Williams, David. “Working (in) the In-Between: Contact Improvisation as an Ethical Practice.” Writings on Dance 15 (1996): 22–37. Zubarik, Sabine. “‘Touch Me If You Can’: The Practice of Close Embrace as a Facilitator of Kinesthetic Empathy in Argentine Tango.” In Touching and Being Touched: Kinesthesia and Empathy in Dance and Movement, edited by Gabriele Brandstetter, Gerko Egert, and Sabine Zubarik, 275–92. Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013.

8 APPROACHING PRACTICES OF ACTING THROUGH DAOIST PHILOSOPHY Lynette Hunter

There are many ways of writing about acting, some with an emphasis on social impact, some that focus on performance, others that consider production or document rehearsal and those that study the practices of audiences and performers. This chapter is concerned with the way that an actor trains in and develops a practice with their primary material—their corporeality. During the time that my research has coalesced around practice, I have worked, studied and talked with actors and performers from many parts of the world and found some commonalities in elements of acting. However, I am not seeking universals. Rather, these conversations have pushed toward a particular sentience that enables the performer. That sentience is complex, and I am interested in fnding ways to talk about the distinctions that are made and fnd a vocabulary that is helpful in broadening the discussion about what happens when an actor acts. As life and logic would have it, I also have a practice—not in acting but in a movement tradition framed by embodied Daoist philosophy. For many years, I had no need to articulate this practice and focused on working with Daoist practitioners in China, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States. More recently, as I have become more interested in performance practices in a broad sense, I have found myself turning to Daoist texts, in either written or oral translation, in an attempt to understand some elements of what other performers are saying about their practice. This is in no way to claim that a Daoist perspective answers all the questions raised by practice but suggests that its conceptual vocabulary ofers the opportunity to think through the complexity of some elements of practice that have emerged in conversation with theater performers. The chapter is intended as part of an ongoing conversation about practice and will undoubtedly both resonate and jar with other approaches to the feld. DOI: 10.4324/9781003372837-12

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Whether it is based in performance or in the everyday, a Daoist practice is founded on the way that a person trains to work with the materials of their medium. It also considers how that Daoist work moves into engaging with other people, which is an important topic but not the focus of this chapter. A simple way of restating this complex research is to say that the underlying questions of this chapter are the following: How might a theater performer train in the practices of changing their self during processes of rehearsal and performance? Can an approach from Daoist philosophy ofer a diferent way of speaking about, and hence engaging with, those changes? In this chapter, the word “practice” refers to the craft that emerges when an art-maker has trained or is training in a tradition that guides a person to work with particular materials. The current study of some acting practices defnes an actor as a person who has a practice with the material of their corporeality in diferent kinds of theater ecologies—the stage or the street, for example. Their physical body is present in-person before an audience—usually through visual, aural and oral senses, and occasionally through related senses including touch, smell and taste. I am specifcally using the phrase “in-person” (rather than “live”) because for an actor the material of engagement is their own personal corporeality. This corporeality is distinct from their sociocultural individuality, which is largely shaped by political discourses. An actor’s corporeality emerges from the traditional training they take up, infected by those larger discourses but not primarily in reaction to them. Each one of us has a corporeality that is not fully determined or even recognized by discourse, and other critics have used the problematic word “singularity”1 rather than “individual” to talk about this element of a person’s life. I use the word “self ”—fully comprehending that this is also problematic—because it is more inclusive of diversity. The lack of vocabulary in contemporary English-language aesthetics for an actor’s self and how it changes has led me to Daoist concepts of diferentiation and undiferentiation that underlie Daoism’s founding virtues of frugality, kindness and humility.2 My own learning of Daoist philosophy, while informed by oral guidance from Daoist teachers3 and from English-language translations of Daoist texts,4 is also rooted in working alongside Daoist practitioners with a variety of materials—not only the media conventionally associated with artmaking, such as calligraphy, music, dance, words and so on but also wood, rocks, foods, rivers, trees, birds and people—any thing or material in the phenomenal world.5 One of the most well-known Daoist practices is that of the carpenter. Foregoing the detail of “how to make a boat,” Chuang Tzu6 (ca. 369–298 BCE) speaks of the carpenter who goes into the forest and when they look at a tree from which they can make a boat, their ability to “see” the boat in the tree is the making of it—although Chuang Tzu has the carpenter dream later on that the tree has qualities that are not known to them.7 Lao Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching (ca. 400 BCE with some parts dating to 476 BCE),8 which is usually

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considered a founding text of Daoist practice, goes further. The text suggests that the “seeing” is a process of the carpenter morphing or “undiferentiating” into the tree by not knowing what it can do, the morphing process being the boat-and-carpenter-and-tree in a particular ecology that afects each element that diferentiates back into the everyday self.9 That diferentiation leads to the self presencing in ways that it has not presenced before, and will also become present, however slightly, in the behavior of an individual in sociocultural discourse. My experience of this philosophical approach and my attempts at documenting its afects10 have led me to think about acting with a set of insights that can broaden ways of approaching how an in-person performer works with materials and changes. I am keenly interested in how this ofers insights into diferent modes of sociopolitical change, but that is not the topic of this chapter. One of the well-known features of Daoist philosophy is that it is processual: it is about changing. Therefore its practices are rich in possibilities that can lead to insights into performance, which itself depends on the processual change called “performativity.”11 The double take is that although Daoism is profoundly rooted in traditional practices such as writing, movement or instrument playing—as well as a wide variety of other materials—and has frm guidelines for performativity, its idea of performance is radically alterior12 to concepts of production in most current Anglo-American commercial theater. For example, because its roots are in processual philosophy, it has no concept of a one-of presentation—everything is always presencing. This training in processual presencing in Daoist practices with artwork materials resonates for me more with the learning of a practice, the constant ongoing learning that is key to the performer’s ability to generate work that carries energy. That is, it seems to have a lot to contribute to how we might think about training in particular practices, how to embed a practice in one’s corporeality, how to encourage it and play it out, and how to sustain it. In this, it also has much to contribute both to collaborative art making and to ways of daily living. Daoism is not defnable, but viewed from the a priori foundations of twentyfrst-century Euro-American liberal philosophy on Enlightenment discourses of individual autonomy, rational logic and isolated territory,13 Daoism plays out a particular set of assumptions: frst, a person is not autonomous;14 second, a person lives in a world not known to them;15 and third, there are appropriate ecologies for encouraging the engagement of the nonautonomous self with the things around it.16 First: in traditional Daoist practices, which include those of daily life,17 a person’s individuality—here defned as the subjectivity relevant to discourse— is distinct from their corporeality18 or somatic tangle.19 Both these latter terms are attempts to avoid the inherent problem of the implicit binary in EuroAmerican philosophy of “body-mind” or “enminded body” and so on. The terms attempt to consider the fesh of a person as a holistic becoming, valuing and knowing site. In the vocabulary of recent critical discussions, a Daoist

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“self ” could be said to have more in common with the somatic complexity of fesh 20 than the concept of singularity or even intersectionality.21 In Daoist philosophy, self as a somatic tangle is continually morphing with materials into an undiferentiated state of being and diferentiating out of it. As it morphs into the undiferentiated, it “looses”: it does not “lose” the self because “to lose” implies a place from which some thing can be “lost,” nor does it “loosen,” even if it does so to start with, for “loosen” implies something still with its own shape but “more loose.” The word “looses” here is used to connote a c/easing of the bounded self.22 With each opening to becoming undiferentiated with the material of a practice, the self undiferentiates: the person “looses” autonomy, and a self morphs with a larger ecology—an efortless morphing into what Daoism calls spirit, the condition of becoming. Because the morphed self is undiferentiated with respect to its ecology, and because ecologies are always in an ongoing process, when the nonautonomous state of being diferentiates back to self, it is necessarily changed—changed in the sense both of making the self again diferent from the nonautonomous ecology and of making the self present in a diferent way to the self-presence it presenced/had before the morphing. In performance studies, this is at times referred to as a performer’s “felt sense”23 that is accompanied by “(rest.”24 Felt sense may be understood as the corporeal sensing of a change brought about by working with a material, which transforms the discursive sense of “matter” into a “materiality.” (rest connotes the difusion of time and space that comes into focus as the self reorganizes how to presence the self. Daoist undiferentiation and diferentiation are ways of thinking through the process of change that eventually leads into felt sense. Once sensed, the change can be repeated again and again by an art maker, eventually in performance, by way of other practices, often rehearsal practices that train the performer to embody or carry the feeling of change to the self that was generated by the corporeal practice in which they are trained. It may be that these rehearsal practices could also become more detailed if approached through undiferentiation and diferentiation, but here I am considering the founding practices of theater performers before they enter the possibilities of rehearsal and performance. Second: in Daoist practices, morphing is based on an active not-knowing of the materials of the ecology with which a self looses into undiferentiation. By “material,” I am referring to the “thinginess” of objects. Lacan, working from Husserl and then Heidegger, argues that “En donnant l’imitation de l’objet, elles font de cet objet autre chose.”25 Bill Brown translates this by saying, “that when works of art ‘imitate’ objects, they only pretend to do so, for in fact they ‘make something diferent out of that object’.”26 The philosophical approach of this chapter reverses the direction of this claim and suggests that art making happens not when a person changes the material but when a person registers the change in their self that occurs through their engagement with materials and renders both person and thing in a relation, a materiality. We cannot know how the material

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has changed. The only knowing available to us as people is that, unwilled, the self has changed and that the engagement with the material—the materiality of opening to what we do not know about it—has generated some thing—in this case, a felt sense of change. These materials could be other people or animals, but by “material,” I also include plant-based and less “animate” materials, from trees to paint to clay, to musical or digital instruments or tools, to rivers, to paper and fabric and rope. A “material” in this sense is something we do not know, we cannot know, indeed what we “not-know.” In working with it and becoming a materiality that includes both the material and the loosed self, a theater performer has to begin from an openness to how a not-known corporeality will change them. While the practice in which a performer trains makes it more likely than not that the openness may lead to a morphing with materials, they have no access to how their corporeality might itself change in the process. The efortlessness in Daoist undiferentiation is based on the efort of a practice, and a Daoist practice is a way to learn to attend to particular materials as not-known. Not-knowing materials so that a materiality can happen needs appropriate practices. With these practices, the way a person apprehends a material does not render it fxed or identifable but to be engaged with—something with a materiality that cannot be defned but can be experienced. This is a distinction that has a few elements in common with that made between “object” and “thing.”27 An object is always predicated on the subject perceiving it, but a “thing” has a materiality that is not dependent on the person engaging with it. A thing is more elusive, more generative, and it cannot be controlled into defnite knowledge because it is in a process of becoming-with the person.28 It is vital sometimes to shift into the subject/object pleasures of knowledge ofered by an anthropocentric world because they permit us escape from the troubling strangeness of living.29 But in Daoist philosophy, if we attend to and open the self to not-known materials, that is the beginning of fnding “the way,”30 a Daoist guideline which has some elements resonant with Donna Haraway’s development of “becoming-with.” Finding “the way” and “becoming-with” both suggest the developing of a loosed self that yields into morphing with the surrounding ecology so that a materiality can happen. Morphing with materials as a condition of becoming is in Daoism a spiritual materiality. Third: how a self morphs appropriately depends on the material and the practices that have engaged with it over decades or millennia. The practices also help us gather our self together again as we precipitate into the diferentiation of daily life—what the Tao Te Ching calls the 10,000 things.31 There are long traditions of Daoist practices that attest to this, at times in written texts but mostly in the training that is passed on from teacher to student and held in oral histories; or in visual history, such as with the 2,000-year-old silk remnants of daoyin breathing32 that help a person learn to open, loose and morph; or in principles of Daoist movement held in common across thousands of diferent traditions. For example, in the Daoist movement practices that have informed much of the thinking in this chapter, “yielding”

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is a way of guiding, following and leading, morphed together in play. Yielding is not about giving way, or even about the redirecting of energy, but about becoming nonautonomous as a state of becoming in which the mundane concepts of time and space are released. This state recalls the fgure of the carpenter who becomes-with the thing in the world, referred to by Lao Tzu and noted above—I read this as a materializing of what is possible when the self and thing morph together. These comments are not so far from the contemporaneous writing of Plato’s Phaedrus (ca. 381 BCE),33 which is similar to the Tao Te Ching and not only in that we are currently not entirely confdent we know their writer(s). Phaedrus tells stories about the lover outwith34 philosophical discourse, the fourth lover who rarely gets critical air, who is the gardener or the doctor who can only sustain life by becoming part of the thing sustained, the lover who learns appropriateness and generates kairos. For Plato, through Socrates, to know the self is to not-know the self. For Lao Tzu, the life of a spiritually informed person enables others to not-know the world. Performance traditions that teach appropriateness, or kairos, also train us in practices that generate a materiality for a performance, so that an audience can make their own way and engage and feel change.35 Performance studies has always been interested in appropriateness, from the work on context in the debate between Derrida and Austin, to Butler’s concept of constitution, to Haraway’s situatedness, to Manning’s milieu.36 The discipline increasingly draws from Indigenous traditional knowledge on respect, responsibility and reciprocity,37 and from critical theory that has learned from Indigenous worldviews.38 I would suggest that the appropriateness taught by many acting practices can be thought of as training in traditional forms that sustain a self through what happens. In Daoist terms, this includes attending to what is not-known about the materials being worked with, the morphing of self and material into undiferentiated ecologies and how the changed self is diferentiated back. Appropriateness helps attend to the change that happens to the self’s somatic tangle in the practice of the performer and prior to the particular changes of rehearsal and performance. This is to focus not on the sociocultural, nor even on the socio-situated or on positionality, but on the change that happens to the self before those processes and activities, and then to gesture to how that change becomes present in public locations or presences in co-laboring with other things. To summarize, Daoist concepts of spirituality are key to its philosophy of process and generation of materiality. The spiritual materiality of Daoism is based on the assumption that a person cannot know things in the sense of defnitive knowledge. Not-knowing becomes a condition of being a person with a self, so that a practice of engaging with the not-known material, morphing with it, is engaging with the spiritual. Daoist spirituality is intensely practical and rooted in the ways you engage with the materials you not-know. It ofers a kind of spiritual materiality in which materiality is the not-known matter in process. Hence, Daoist spirituality develops a practice with materials that are not-known and to which a person’s self opens, yielding any autonomy

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to a way of becoming that morphs with those not-known materials, and from which morphing it gathers together a self that is changed. The change cannot be willed because there is by defnition no place from which the will may come. But appropriate practices make it more rather than less likely to happen.

Conversations with actors Whether it is based in performance or in the everyday, a Daoist practice is founded on the way that a person trains to work with the materials of their medium. An actor’s work begins before rehearsal in the learning of a practice and training for that practice to become embedded in the actor’s corporeality. So, for example, thinking about the way Anglo-American actors often train to embody Stanislavski’s second stage of “psychophysical action,” as well as, more rarely, his third stage of “physical action” through Daoist philosophical concepts can broaden the detail of what is going on. John Zibell, one of the actors in conversation below, speaks of how Stanislavski asks the actor to engage with a cup repeatedly, again and again.39 Each time, the actor-in-training looks for where the attention goes—for example, to the tactility, or the weight, and what that weight does to the body, or to temperature—so the actor is flling in the experience of dealing with this cup in ways they do not articulate in life. In life, we simply drink. When the actor deals with this cup on stage, they do not replicate an action night after night but can use the practice to help engage the cup into the repeated form of a felt sense. The actor is working on forms or scores so that when they pick up the cup on stage, their practice is a “living thing.” They can forget all the training because the practice it has generated lets them attend to awareness.40 Many other acting traditions also train the performer to learn modes of attention and corporeal engaging. For example, the infuential actor-teacher Paul Sills from the United States also trained actors to repeat form into embodiment by developing practices through which the materials of the theater, such as objects, gestures and characters, could afect the corporeality of the actor, and change it.41 Even though corporeal practices are resistant to verbal articulation, I work on a daily basis with practice-as-research art-makers who are trying to engage with words as a way of knowing diferently how they are becoming, how they are changing, while they practice. Hence, I have turned to conversations with performers about their experiences. In this current research, I have been listening to how they talk about embedding this practice in their corporeality as they engage with its materiality. For most of the performers I have talked with, fnding a vocabulary for this process of morphing42 with materials they do not know has been difcult because the current Anglo-American vocabulary for acting does not encourage perspectives based on a world that comes into being when materials are not known.43 Nevertheless, while the conversations difer in interesting ways, they have all spoken about practices that change them as being core to their work. As I recount brief excerpts from these interviews below, I

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curate the interventions to bring in some of the details from Daoist practices explored in the preceding section. The following conversations yielded a series of “documentings” of training and practice told by three actors, each with a distinctly diferent vocabulary. Each of these theater performers comes from a diferent tradition and geographical place, yet they all speak not about acting in a performance but about how their corporeality was trained into a practice, and how it might be said to presence into acting.44 Because there is so little vocabulary for the corporeal training into an acting practice, a key aim of this chapter is to listen to what performers say and to try to begin articulating that into a language of scholarly criticism.The stories themselves are often difcult to read, partly because the teller is casting about for words and not adhering to the structures of grammar and sentence that support academic writing. Hence, the intercalated curatorial comments are suggestive, not defnitive.This section begins with a conversation with Álvaro Hernández on form and energy, change and not-knowing materials. It moves on to a conversation with John Zibell on form and energy, efortlessness, awareness and choosing.The concluding conversation is with Kevin O’Connor on working without intention, being made diferent, becoming attuned and his term “in-gathering.”

Álvaro Hernández Álvaro Hernández is a performance artist, theater director, actor, playwright and professor at Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá (ASAB) in Colombia. He has received a number of national and international awards and has participated in and created pieces of street theater, physical theater, collaborative theater and other more formal types of performances with artists and communities in Asia, Europe, Latin America and, more recently, the United States. Since 2003, he has been the artistic director, playwright and dramaturg of Entrópico Teatro, an interdisciplinary laboratory for the arts based in Colombia. He has also been part of the International School of Theater Anthropology (ISTA) and an actor in productions directed by Eugenio Barba, and has extensively studied traditional Japanese theater in Japan. He is currently researching the intersection of afect, activist philosophy and performance, dramaturgy and ecology, practice, trainings, physical actions and bodily approaches, performance ecology, and violence and performance. Hernández has collaborated continuously in artistic and research projects with Indigenous communities of the Amazon and of the region of Putumayo in Colombia, and has developed performances with Colombian communities involved in the armed confict. His project “What do we not know about an empty chair”—a theater/dance/ video/song production, which I was able to see several times—premiered in Bogotá in September 2016. My conversations with Álvaro Hernández took place after I had had the opportunity to become familiar with his acting and dramaturgy over 4 years.

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I invited him to tell me about how he started acting, and what kinds of training had been involved. He began with a story about his frst experience, which took place in Bogotá with the company Teatro de la Memoria during his adolescent years. The director of the company, Juan Monsalve, had experience with both Indian Asian and Indigenous traditional performance practices, and Hernández talked about learning Asian forms and using animal masks for a production early in his acting life, Los Angeles Clandestinos, which involved rehearsals and workshops over 3–4 years: We talk a lot about energy … what could the “form” [of the animal mask] generate in our bodies? It is through the forms that energy is reactivated or that something fourishes as a character, right? So the animal was always frst, the form of the animal. That was the work we did. And then the idea of a character would come, but it was the form that was moving through the body. He continues, [The form] comes from an impulse but then it gets shaped or performed. But this form fnds its own way: if the form is here and then it touches this … energy—it will get into that and change. But it will still have contact with this body but then be bringing also these other qualities that are here. So it [the form] happens through the body, but it is not only the body. A form is a kind of pattern of energy. I think the form is some quality or tone. I guess that’s not the form, but it [quality or tone] is there before … . It is the body that fnds some qualities and it gets set by that, it gets brought into that, and then becomes. And that is the form—the form is shaping that sense, is molding into that, and then that shape or quality is here. It is a multiple, I guess. Just a little changing that it will open to something else. Hence, in Hernández’s training, the actor needs to learn how to be aware of a pattern of energy that includes both the body and the form (here, of an animal). It is brought into becoming by qualities or tones, all being shaped by the ecology around us in the moment. It can be thought of as a materiality that yields the shape of a change. At the same time, It is constantly reforming. I think it [form] is kind of dispersed and passing, extending into the body because this thing that I have here [is holding a cup] is not already just here but is in every part of the body. And if I am doing this, then my fngers, my toes, are hearing or listening to the hand. They are not doing something else, and once I get their call, once I stay here—I don’t think

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this staying can take long, or last, because once I get this—I get a sense of something changing. And it goes through this point, this form [of a cup]. When you shape it, it is also bringing in something and making it a way to change. It’s a sequence, but you cannot divide the sequence into tiers. Or if at some point you can do it, then it’s probably not even form. The tradition in which Hernández trained asks the actor to be aware of how the material they engage with becomes-with them in the whole body, that its form is constantly in process, yet the moment we recognize that it is becoming [“once I get this”] the self has diferentiated back and change has happened. The becoming-with of form is sequential but not linear or end-directed. If it turns into something end-directed, it is no longer form. As an example, Hernández talked about singing words as one of his main practices with materials: One of the things that happens [in singing] is that the material is right here [gestures to his body]. And that is a real interrelation right here and you fnd a something that engages with you … so that you become, you cocompose together, right? You make something happen, but it is not only you but you making a connection, probably connecting with some thing, or maybe not only one thing but a bunch of things—getting together— and you just fnd a way to make them slow. When an actor such as Hernández uses materials such as words, they co-compose with that material. It is not the individual doing it but the materials around the self with which the actor makes connections, with which he enters into materiality. In his case, his practice has trained him to make the process feel slow, so that temporality shifts from the mundane. And that is when feelings are happening, when you enter, enter that collaboration. So it is not something that happens because you wanted it to happen but because you pay attention enough and you are alert enough, and you do not have the disconnection so that you can get connected, connection. I think that that is a training, that is what training gives you: how to go there, how you make this to happen. When slowing happens, feelings happen, and that is a becoming-with materials—what a Daoist approach would call a spiritual materiality. The self of the actor cannot will it to happen but remains alert to the materials, enters a collaboration, morphs with the ecology. Learning how to pay attention, to be alert to materials, is part of what training is.

John Zibell John Zibell is a US scholar-practitioner whose art making—scripted, scored and/or improvised—springs from 25 years of professional performance practice

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and training in New York (among other locations) in divergent disciplines ranging from the Stanislavski System to the “bodied storytelling” of Grotowski’s Poor Theatre to nonnarrative performance and body art. He works and has worked in theater and flm with a diverse range of collaborators including Mike Nichols, Diane Paulus, Paul Sills, André Gregory and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Zibell is also an award-winning flmmaker, currently collaborating with dancers, actors, programmers, theorists and digital artists to develop a range of theater strategies for virtual reality and video, which in the past have included DataMining Beckett: A Multi-Reality Performance Installation for Bodies. This piece joins players from anywhere on the globe in a virtual playing space, not as 3D avatars but live-streamed, 3D holograms—making space for bodies to play within immersive 3D, digital environments. I had experienced Zibell’s work for over 7 years before I had conversations with him about acting. His vocabulary for what he feels and what he does is diferent in key terms from that of Álvaro Hernández. For Zibell, the word “form” signifes both a nonnarrative form of energy and a referential narrative or representation. Yet his account aligns with Hernández’s sense that there is an energy that is carried by an actor’s body to the audience through the material of whatever things they are working with. He begins, I don’t start with forms. What’s a form? There’s a moment of dealing with a prop [picks up a cup], and the forms that might emerge are “narrative forms,” and I want the [form of the] story. I’m talking specifcally about narrative forms in acting, for this [the cup] is a form already. I might be able—say, two weeks from now—to actively remember when I picked up the cup. And picking up the cup becomes a shorthand for something that we all started seeing happening. It’s [the energy of the action is] the frst thing that goes away […]; it becomes imperceptible. The real easy example is the laugh, and joke is a joke, and four weeks later we are not laughing, but the audience laugh hysterically. So somehow that form, whether we thought about it or not, carried through. I think that, lately, I’ve been calling it the energy or the juice in rehearsal. There are diferent ways that forms work, but here the cup as a “form” can be approached as a materiality. There are representational forms, or linear narratives, and forms that carry energy or stories. The form of a story carries the energy of what happens in the particular moment an actor works with a material. In particular, for Zibell, is the practice of “space work” that he learned from Paul Sills.45 Sills himself had “lived into” the practice through the work of

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his parent, Viola Spolin,46 and told his actors to “just do it,” but Zibell recalled that he would go home and endlessly repeat to embed the practice.47 Describing one occurrence of the training in this practice, he says, I can lift it [the cup] and I can feel the pressure. But I can feel it directly without the real cup … . I always want to say it’s an encounter, it’s an encounter with chance. Just as for Hernández, the self cannot will something to happen, and for Zibell, “chance” is a key word: for him, acting attends to the habitual and fnds cracks where chance thinking comes in. He is standing back and talking about the felt sense of the change that occurred when he trained with the cup. A Daoist perspective could expand this encounter into a moment of materiality. Zibell says the actor has to “fnd a way to bring in your day, to start from where I am”: It just happens. Here I am putting my hand so close to the cup [the cupshaped encounter, not an actual cup], getting about fve or six inches away, and I surprise myself by feeling the temperature. And I can feel it; when I go to pick it up, it’ll surprise me. I’m looking at the thing already and it’s completely diferent from the cup that I would have in my life. And it has weight; it actually does have texture, and temperature. But I don’t think it will always have all of these at the same time; I don’t think it has them at the same time in the ordinary world—it would be impossible to get about it if we were aware of it all the time. Zibell’s training has led to a practice of awareness that enables him not only to become-with the thing and generate a materiality for this process, but also to sense when the multiplicitiousness of not-knowing has led to a change that means the self can now diferentiate back into ordinary life and/or the life of the actor in a rehearsal. A person cannot be “aware” of the things in the world all the time. It would be overwhelming. Yet, when it happens, it changes the experience of space: It’s always much bigger than my actual body, my skin-in body. I’m thinking of this very specifc time in New York. And I felt like I was falling through the foor. My awareness when this started felt like more than the awareness I could have had. It felt like a moment of relaxation I had never experienced before … feeling a relaxing I wouldn’t normally call relaxing. […] It was energized, totally present; I could see details I just don’t normally take in … . It felt like I was attending to much more of my physical self in the space than I ever had or had ever been able to before … and my sensory body was extended, and for a split second in there, I felt like I could feel all of my bones, my skin, and all of my hair

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at the same time, and it was totally efortless, totally without any kind of urgency. The account could well be articulated as a moment of Daoist undiferentiation, and Zibell trains by loosing his body into a much larger ecology, a practice he here compares to an unwilled experience when he felt as if he were falling through a foor. He describes the sensation of the fall as a relaxation, “totally efortless,” during which he could attend to all the particularities of his own body as if the physical space around him had expanded in response to the way that his attention was expanding his body. I don’t know how long it took but it didn’t matter because it felt like it was so complete, that it had nothing to do with time […]. For a while, I was still feeling like I was in the balloon. Even when I was standing up, I was still in it; I couldn’t get rid of it—I have a little bit of it now. It had nothing to do with chronological time—on refection, time had also expanded as well as the space. But when the morphing or loosing into this ecology felt “complete,” he still felt as if he were in a “balloon.” Zibell rephrases that as “being a balloon”: the experience helps him express some of how he uses this expansion into becoming-with as a practice of awareness that he can bring to the materials of acting—whether they be his body or a cup. In the conversation, Zibell went on to talk about the training needed to acquire the practice of efortlessness. He frst experienced this in a martial arts class: You learn the techniques, the punch and the block, and get it into the body, but when you work with a partner, you have to make space for them. It’s the two of you. The technique is never enough. A perfect block will never work. You learn you have a choice. Training is between noticing technique and choosing, maybe fve years. For Zibell, the choice an actor has to learn to make is to work with other materials and be prepared to “make space for them,” to loosen the dependence on the concept of an individual ability to cause efects, to “block” a punch and to control efects through technique. “Choosing” is Zibell’s word for practicing, and to move from technique to practice, the actor has to train in many diferent ways of becoming aware. But choosing has little to do with willed intention and more to do with learning skills in how to be open to what happens. He says, I was working with Grotowski’s method and I was doing something with my shoulder—it was all part of some violent shoulder work. So I just backed up and I was trying to isolate something small in my shoulder and it just started swinging, forward and back, purely by gravity, and for

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a second, I had this image of the horse gate I used to sit on, this horse gate which started to swing slowly back and forth. And this person who I was working with, he looked over and he said, “You’ve got something happening.” And the image of the gate then went away and suddenly something started happening, and all over the room, people knew that something was happening—it was just like the balloon. I tried to get rid of that and I just couldn’t; it just stayed. So here there was a second when I released that image and something happened and [it just stayed]. Choosing is the awareness of the self and the becoming-with at the same time that comes with learning a practice. Just as Zibell enacts the practice that makes him acutely aware of the materials he is working with as an actor, he also speaks of practice that helps the actor to know when to rest from the openness of being aware: Included in this is “I don’t care if it works.” It’s never beyond the will, but the will is irrelevant. What’s left is exhaustion, the exhausted material, yet the moment is there, I couldn’t get rid of … is it something that’s new that can’t be named yet? And might be named in the future? It’s like words, or my shoulder again, one way I know something’s happening is when I don’t have to control them, they are just there. The actor with this kind of practice can be simultaneously aware that something is happening that they not only did not intend but also could not have thought/imagined—in other words, a simultaneity of self (that ofers a location for intention) and morphing becoming-with (that is, not-knowing the materials, including not-knowing the self ). This recognition is similar to the beginning of a Daoist sense of change in the diferentiated self. A Daoist approach might gesture toward a change that has happened when the actor has loosed self, morphed into the ecology with the things they are working with, to generate a materiality that consists of becoming-with those things.

Kevin O’Connor Kevin O’Connor, from Ontario, Canada, is a somatic practitioner specializing in cranial-sacral bodywork, with an MFA in choreography and a doctorate exploring emerging fascial anatomies, body performance capacities and imaginations, environmental activism and community-based performance activism. He is a multidisciplinary artist working as a choreographer, dancer, improviser, circus artist, installation artist and actor in the San Francisco Bay area and further afeld. He is involved in a decade-long artistic collaboration exploring participatory decolonizing performances within polluted watersheds in urban Ontario. He has also worked with NAKA dance and the artists of Skywatchers, exploring the intersection of race and gentrifcation in

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the Tenderloin in San Francisco, and with Caro Novella and her feminist art and activist collaboration called oncogrrrls in Spain. In 2017 and 2018, he acted in Peter Lichtenfels’s production of Shogo Ota’s Elements (California and Colombia). I participated in Kevin O’Connor’s work for 6 years before sitting down to talk with him about the ways he thinks about his practice. Despite the completely diferent training traditions experienced by the three actors, his stories ran close to those of Hernández and Zibell in several ways. He began by talking about a close friend and co-laborer on art making, Billy, with whom he had grown up, and about how to be in the process of making without intention, how to stay open to what happens: Billy always pushed us not to notice when we were closing down potential for something to emerge that we didn’t know could emerge. And when we listened to that and something emerged, it’s changed or there was an excitement—not because we had done anything but because we didn’t see that possibility. And, you know, it created stories that we told that we wouldn’t have told otherwise—so that was one way we knew. Like Hernández with the forms drawn from animal masks and Zibell’s space work, O’Connor speaks of his particular training for the body to attune to things around it in a process that generates somatic change as a core practice. And just as they did, he told a story: So I live on a hill by a bay and behind us is a state park, and if you hop over the neighbor’s fence and walk through their yard and go down through a couple of other properties, you hit the bottom of a hill—or you hit a kind of creek at the bottom in this really steep valley. You hit the creek. And I tend to go down there about four times a week, and the creek—there’s always water but it fuctuates a bit. So I normally walk up the creek, and this one spot I always go to. And there’s a pool and I put my fngertips on the surface and suction my fngertips away without losing contact and then I just wait and see if I notice diferent currents. And I’ve done it for about three years now and I’m starting to feel I’m just into the diferences in the stream each time I go. And sometimes I can’t feel a diference for a while. And often in this pool it looks like it’s still, but when you throw a leaf in the leaf moves, so often I just sit and wait for a while and then slowly I start to feel something diferent and that settling … after, I feel kind of settled. And I stay there for a while and I sense into just the movement in this particular pool and then I go away. I asked him why he was telling this story to open up the work he does in performance, and he replied, “It’s […] in the relation […] I’ve been made diferent by the creek.” Becoming diferent in O’Connor’s story resonates with the focus on change made by Zibell and Hernández, and I asked him to say a bit more:

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I mean, it’s very hard to talk about. I often notice, you know, those spiders that foat in water, and I pay attention to them for a while, and they are not afected by the current. They can do a diferent thing, but every so often, they will foat down it, yeah, just this kind of sensitivity to movement. It isn’t visual because in some ways those little bugs are tricksters and … often that is not just movement in one direction. And the more you sit, the more you notice that the way the fow of water … this is like a fow and friction—there’s two things going on, yeah. How to listen to this story that is a documenting of a practice? One way is to begin to feel the stability and the unsettling that make up the creek. The bugs are “not afected” by the current, but sometimes “foat down it,” yet are also “tricksters” moving in diferent directions. These bugs are apparently stable and apparently able to foat with the current at will, yet at the same time, “the more you sit” and “pay attention to them for a while,” the more you become aware that there is so much else going on. The pairing of nonvisual “fow” and “friction” yields resonances with turbulence, and with the undifferentiated and diferentiated self. The creek makes O’Connor aware of this in himself: Often I get there and sometimes I’ll close my eyes and I’ll forget I’m touching the water. But I’ll start to feel fows of movement, sometimes I’ll even be moved. Yeah, like it’s starting to fow slow through me or something … sometimes. But because I’m on the side, there’s this kind of grounding and a kind of fowing, maybe similar to the fow but also the friction. And then often I stand back away because, at frst, I often look and see if I can see something, and then I go into the doing of it and then I stand. And I go back into the doing, doing, of it and notice the diferences from me. In me. And often just getting on the creek time makes a diference. He describes a morphing with the ecology in “the doing, doing, of it,” as he starts to feel the fows of movement “fow slow through me.” But he’s also grounded on the creek-side bank and can “stand back away” and see the diferences “[i]n me.” In words resonant with the process of undiferentiation into a materiality, and diferentiation into a changed self, he goes on to say about his practice: I’ve been made diferent by the creek and I wonder how the creek has been made diferent by the tension [from the fngertips]. But I think, in the practice, it allows the diferences in me, like I’m already inside of it, I’m inside the diferences that are made, so that when I leave the practice, I am not what I was when I entered.

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If touching the creek’s surface tension is, in this case, his actual practice with materials, O’Connor goes on to talk about what the practice enables: I think there’s a gathering of attention and, for me, that can be difuse. It reminds me of hunting seal—you can’t actually look for the seal; you’ll never see it, so you go into this kind of … this state of attention on a boat for many hours … and ways of coming back are kind of ingathering because you also know there’s a … kind of difuseness—so it’s not letting go of that; it’s holding it within the other thing, yeah, and … you might be holding both things, for those things are the extremes, but when you go back to the land, you’re all holding both of those things and it creates a kind of being together, so even in the everyday, [you are made diferent]. Once more, the story tells us of the difuseness of morphing into the larger landscape at the same time as “ingathering” when you “come back” to the self. Just as Zibell speaks of not being able to get rid of the sense both of a balloon of energy around the body and the self-body itself, a key element here is the ability to hold both things. Even when you leave the boat and the sea to go back to the more grounded (for people) scape of the land, you carry that sense of “being together,” of both the difuseness and the ingathering, with you into the everyday. O’Connor ties this practice of attention generated by undiferentiating and diferentiating directly to working with things that he not-knows, as he talks about his current work with movement and fascia in performance: Everything else gets the not-knowing to be layered somewhere else, so that’s why I think I’m drawn to fascia, because I use it as a way to get to the not-known. So I slow down; I ask a lot of questions. I’m interested in people fnding out how certain practices made it diferent or won’t make it diferent and try to get them to articulate those diferences. They are often not what they thought they would be, and this often brings a sense of confusion. Or I sense “I didn’t know I had that pathway.” So I try to create scores, where in thinking of Billy, I don’t try and close down the potential. Again, the practice is about slowing things down, about being aware of things— in this case, people, about recognizing when attention is about to be overwhelmed/ing, about feeling the change that happens to the self when it opens to the not-known, about diferentiating back or ingathering the self, about not controlling. In a curious way, the simultaneity of un/diferentiation is only apparent in everyday time and space. Daoist philosophy enables one to separate the two by dissolving the normative concepts of these dimensions and allowing us to consider more fully the way that an actor trains in some practices of change.

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Thinking about acting through Daoist philosophy From these radically diferent yet occasionally convergent conversations I draw a number of elements that resonate with the vocabulary from the Daoist philosophical approach introduced above. These elements are: • • • • • • •

• • • •

an acute attention of the three interviewed actors to the things in the environment of the practice; an awareness of the unpredictable quality of relations because the things are not-known; a sense of a loss of autonomy through the forms of the practice being learned; a feeling that the forms of a practice rest in or pass slowly through the actor’s body, so that it becomes-with the things around it in an ecology; a sense of the difusion of the mundane experience of time and space; the forms of a practice encourage an engagement with things that are notknown, so that a morphing of the actor’s body with those things happens; an insecurity that seemingly derives from this unpredictability and loss of autonomy but is mitigated by the guidance and support from the practices of the tradition; there are also practices in the tradition that support the actor in gathering back to their self; there are also practices in the tradition that encourage the actor to sustain what has happened during the morphing change; a felt sense of that change, of something being made diferent, is presenced in the change to the actor’s corporeality; and in moving from practice to rehearsal: rather than cognitive choice, there is a reliance on a practice that has been embedded by the actor’s training and experience to manifest that felt sense into a performance form that can be repeated.

To me, these elements imply that the practices of these actors, if viewed from a Daoist perspective, can be regarded as a spiritual materiality that generates a nonautonomous way of becoming that is based in not-knowing. This encourages me to suggest some elements of what makes up an actor’s practice in the following way: instead of assuming that an actor acquires a practice by training to use materials skillfully, a Daoist approach would focus on how to train a practice that encourages the actor to be aware of the not-known in their materials. In other words, the actor is not training to control materials but to engage with them on a more ecological or morphed basis. While conventional Anglo-American training aims to help an actor develop character by presenting the change in an identity, a Daoist approach would rephrase this completely and ask the actor to learn to engage by opening to the process of

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morphing-with-materials that they know will change them in unpredictable ways. Many actors feel that they have to control “how far to go” with identity change because it can damage their ability to function in the daily world. The Daoist revisioning of this event would be to develop a practice that guides one not only in opening to change and loosing the self but also in gathering the self together again. These suggestions could extend toward performance, although this chapter is not able to explore that trajectory in detail. If an actor is often expected to learn theatrical conventions that demonstrate the change in identity that is called the “character,” they could focus instead on learning the socially or culturally or historically appropriate skills for diferentiating out of the momentary ecology of morphing, a diferentiation that generates a presencing of a changed self. Many people experience moments when the self changes, but an actor’s skill can be thought of as the practice of making the process of that change presence again and again. Rather than thinking of how to create the giveand-take in rehearsal that builds the dramatic trajectory of the meaning of the narrative, a Daoist approach would encourage the actor to attune in rehearsal to the moments of (rest—those recognitions of a felt sense of change that generate forms that can in turn be scored into repetitions to carry the energy of their changing into an embodiment for a performance. Instead of attempting to get an audience to understand what the play means, the actor can develop ways of embodying the felt sense that emerges when audience participants are engaging with the materials of the performance—the forms of change embodied by the actor. And instead of training an actor to know when the audience is reacting to something they are communicating, an actor can train to encourage their own morphing performativity—one that ofers the audience its own opportunity for change.

Notes 1 Singularity is a concept that entered critical discourse, largely through the work of Henri Bergson, to account for why subjectivity leaves out so much of a person’s lived experience. However, it has acquired divergent meanings. Gilles Deleuze describes singularity as a turning point at which normative movement breaks down and reassembles in alterior ways; see his Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, translated by Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988). However, in the 1950s, John von Neuman took up the word “singularity” to describe the moment at which artifcial intelligence becomes a super-intelligence that can control people. Ray Kurzweil presents a more recent version of this in The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (New York: Penguin, 2005). 2 There are many translations into English of the three Daoist virtues or “treasures.” Jonathan Star refers to them as “love,” “moderation” and “humility”; see Jonathan Star, trans., Tao Te Ching: The Defnitive Edition, by Lao Tzu (New York: Penguin/ Jeremy P. Teacher, 2001), 80, 232. 3 For example, Abbot Zhou, White Cloud Temple, Beijing; Sifu and Dr Alex Feng, Zhi Dao Guan, Oakland.

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4 Daoist texts in English abound—from those by Arthur Waley in the early twentieth century, through Thomas Cleary’s Taoist Classics published in the latter half of the twentieth century, to the many detailed translations of the Tao Te Ching such as Jonathan Star’s, to the more poetic translations by writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin in Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, with J. P. Seaton (Boulder: Shambhala, 1998). 5 For example, the musician Dylan Bolles, who works with rocks and streams. While co-performing vocal scores from Daoist practice, we co-wrote “Scoring Daoist Energy: A Rhetoric of Collaboration,” Journal of Daoist Studies 5 (March 2012): 153–68. 6 See Chuang Tzu, Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), which dates Chuang Tzu ca. 369–298 BCE. 7 Ibid., 59–60. 8 Jane English and Gia-Fu Feng suggest this period of 500–600 BCE; not only the date is contested but also the existence of Lao Tzu; see Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: A New Translation, trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (London: Wildwood House, 1973). 9 The evocative and precise translation by Le Guin gives us both “what works reliably/ is to […] hold the uncut wood” (poem 19), and “a great carving/ is done without cutting” (poem 28). Le Guin, 26, 39. 10 See Bolles and Hunter, “Scoring Daoist Energy”; see also Alex Boyd and Lynette Hunter, “The Art of Play: Lishi, Contemporary Dance, and Cricket,” Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writing 12, no. 1 (2012): 91–108; and Lynette Hunter and Richard Schubert, “Winning, Losing, and Wandering Play: Zhuangzian Paradox and Daoist Practice,” JOMEC Journal 5 ( June 2014): n. p. 11 See for example, Lynette Hunter, “Constellation: Engaging with Radical Devised Dance Theatre: Keith Hennessy’s Sol Niger,” in Performance, Politics and Activism, ed. Peter Lichtenfels and John Rouse (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 132–53; esp. 151, fn. 3. 12 “Alterior’ is a word used by Levinas to describe the world that is, in his terms, “otherwise.” I have theorized this elsewhere as “outwith.” See Lynette Hunter, Politics of Practice: A Rhetoric of Performativity (London and New York: Palgrave, 2019), chapter 3. “Alterior” is used by several philosophers to indicate concepts that are not diferent in response to sociocultural norms (that would be “alternative”) but diferent because they are generated by sociosituated practices that are not concerned with the sociocultural norms. 13 See Lynette Hunter, Modern Allegory and Fantasy: Rhetorical Stances of Contemporary Writing (London: Macmillan Press, 1989), which specifcally outlines the liberal political conditions for modern fantasy. 14 The Tao Te Ching does not conceptualize autonomous identity; instead it turns to the process of “undiferentiation.” Le Guin and others call the self of a person who has found the “way” of being with the world “triply undiferentiated” (poem 14) (Le Guin, 18). Star collates the words “formless” or “subtle” as other translations of “undiferentiated” (Star, 124). 15 The importance of recognizing and welcoming the notion that one cannot know the world runs throughout the Tao Te Ching; indeed the opening chapters all stress the “unnameableness” of the Way, the value of not-knowing, and not-doing (chapters 1, 2 and 3, respectively). A great leader attempts to render people “ignorant”— in other words, to recognize that they not-know the world. 16 Chuang Tzu explores the appropriateness of ecology in the allegory of the Penumbra and the Shadow. Chuang Tzu, Basic Writings, 44. 17 Daoist practices in daily life are advocated for in the Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu (comp. ca. 239 BCE), quoted in Russell Kirkland, Taoism: The Enduring Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 195. There continue to be life-infusing practices in activities such as cooking, cleaning, walking to work, etc. in Daoist communities

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throughout China (personal communications with Daoists in Weihai, Chengdu, Beijing, Wuhan, Shanghai, Qingdao). See André Lepecki, “Errancy as Work: Seven Strewn Notes for Dance Dramaturgy,” in Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement, ed. Pil Hansen and Darcey Callison (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 51–66. On tangles, see Donna Haraway, “Cyborgs, Coyotes and Dogs: A Kinship of Feminist Figurations: Interview med Donna Haraway,” by Randi Markussen, Finn Olesen and Nina Lykke, Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, no. 2 (2000): 321–42, and Haraway’s further work on string fgures; see also the work of her student Karen Barad on entanglements in, for example, “Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come,” Derrida Today 3, no. 2 (2010): 240–68. See Hortense J. Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Diacritics 17, no. 2 (1987): 65–81. Intersectionality was introduced through the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw in an attempt to honor the complexity of the subjectivities that discourse allows any one person; see her “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–99. It has been used in an increasingly narrow manner since, but Jasbir K. Puar has an energized reclamation of the concept in “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory,” philoSOPHIA: Journal of Feminist Philosophy 2, no. 1 (2012): 50–66. The term “looses” is derived in part from William Shakespeare’s use of it in Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo speaks of “loosing” his self in the context of having to assume a stable social identity that tries to make that “loosing” impossible (Act 1, Scene 1). See also the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “loose,” esp. 4.6.7.12, which notes the primarily Scots use of the word in modern English. On “felt sense,” see the work of Eugene Gendlin, esp. Focusing (New York: Random House, 1978). The concept of “(rest” is articulated most fully in chapters 3 and 4 of Lynette Hunter, Politics of Practice: A Rhetoric of Performativity (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). It is part of an analysis of what occurs before a public performance and proposes that we think of a sequence from felt sense to (rest, to form, to embodiment or score, to medium. (rest signifes the moment of recognition that a felt sense may become a repeatable form. Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, Livre VII. L’éthique de la psychanalyse, 1959–60, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 1986); The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–60, trans. Dennis Porter (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 169. For a clear description of the background to Lacan’s development of the “thing” in the context of art, see Bill Brown, Other Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 147–48. For a discussion on the limit and extent of Heidegger’s distinction between “object” and “thing,” see Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004): 225–48. One compelling book on the life of materials is Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). Timothy Morton, “Thinking Ecology: The Mesh, the Strange Stranger, and the Beautiful Soul,” Collapse 6 (2010): 265–93. Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, in lines that difer remarkably little in English translations, begins with the words “The way you can go/isn’t the real way” (Le Guin, 3), or “A way that can be walked/is not the real way” (Star, 14). The “way” is a word that comes to defne the philosophical system that is laid out in the Tao Te Ching. It is impossible to defne or to speak of or to achieve, but is nevertheless what we

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31 32

33

34

35

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all do—particularly when we not-do. It is the undiferentiated morphing with the ecologies in which we exist, which is inevitably infected by another central phrase of the frst chapter: the 10,000 things—the distractions of discursive life. Le Guin, 3. Movement in particular, such as breathing exercises of the daoyin in the third century BCE Chinese paintings held in the Smithsonian Museum, or the Yellow Emperor’s Book of Supple Muscles, attributed to the Chinese emperor Huangdi (ca. 2600 BCE). However, the Huangdi Neijing is more likely to have been compiled by several people versed in ongoing Daoist medical and movement practices, around 300–400 BCE. See James Curran, “Review of The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine,” by Maoshing Ni, British Medical Journal 336 (2008): 777. Plato (428–348 BCE) is said to have written Phaedrus around 370 BCE because it complements The Symposium so well. However, there has been a discussion about whether he wrote the text or whether it is a compilation of texts from the time, because there are several “voices” in the text. See Plato, Phaedrus, and the Seventh and Eighth Letters, trans. William Hamilton (New York: Penguin Books, 1973). For a detailed discussion of the Scots word “outwith,” see Hunter, Politics of Practice, chap. 3. Outwith signifes the place not accounted for by the boundaries; it is not exactly beyond the boundaries, as if that could be a place “to go to,” but not imaginable, not sayable, not recognizable within the boundaries defning the place where part of you exists. Outwith is not in relation to an “inside” but rather a positionality formed from its conditions of emergence. On transformation, see Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, trans. Saskya Iris Jain (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), in particular chapter 3 on “radical presence” and the performer’s body in the process of becoming, and chapter 6 on “play” as transfgurative rather than reconciliation or sublation. See Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc, trans.  Jefrey Mehlman and Samuel Weber (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988); Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99; Erin Manning, Always More than One: Individuation’s Dance (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013). See, for example, Shawn Wilson, Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods (Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2008), esp. 52f. On Indigenous methodologies, see Peter Cole, Coyote and Raven Go Canoeing: Coming Home to the Village (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006); Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientifc Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013). For other Western critics drawing on these ways of knowing, see Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitics I, trans. Robert Bononno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). See, for example, Marisol de la Cadena, “Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Refections beyond ‘Politics,’” Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 2 (2010): 334–70; Povinelli, Economies of Abandonment. See also Lynette Hunter, “Equality as Diference: Storytelling in/of Nunavut,” International Journal of Canadian Studies 39, no. 3 (2005): 51–58; “Listening to Writing: Performativity in Strategies Developed by Learning from Indigenous Yukon Discourse,” Journal of Canadian Studies 50, no. 1 (2016): 36–69; and Disunifed Aesthetics: Situated Textuality, Performativity, Collaboration (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), esp. chap. 3.

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39 A major work on an actor’s development from training to practice is the forthcoming volume Prefatory Notes on Scripting and Scoring by John Zibell. 40 Many practitioners talk about this process. John Zibell quotes Stanislavski as talking about the “system” he is developing being a living thing—a formless form that only becomes a system when you try to fnd a form for the kinds of encounters that come up in the theater. See John Zibell and Peter Lichtenfels, “A Playground of Technicities: Pulling Theatre Technology into Process in a Production of Shogo Ota’s Elements” (forthcoming); see also Konstantin Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work on a Role, trans. Jean Benedetti (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 687–90. 41 See Paul Sills, “Introduction,” in Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques, ed. Viola Spolin (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999), ix–xii. 42 “Morph” signifes a changing cell. As a scientist who worked for some time in laboratories using morphology to study the way that cells change, specifcally in the late 1960s with mRNA exploration with Professor Hall at McMaster University, the word is, for me, redolent with the unexpected ways that materials become-with each other. Morphing in this chapter, as in my other writings, calls on the openness with which we welcome (or not) the porousness of our skin, not as a separation from other materials but as a possibility for engagement. 43 “Worlding” is usually attributed to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 243–61. However, it is also embedded in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Le Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945). 44 I have worked with many actors, dancers and performers. These three performers have been chosen because they are actors, and because they come from three quite diferent training backgrounds. For a parallel, see Lynette Hunter, “Ethics, Performativity and Gender: Porous and Expansive Concepts of Selving in the Performance Work of Gretchen Jude and of Nicole Peisl,” Palgrave Communications 2, no. 16006 (2016): 1–8. 45 Paul Sills (1927–2008) was a theater creator and director and founder of the Compass Theatre, the frst improvisational theater in the United States, in 1955. Four years later, he founded the Second City theatre in Chicago and, in 1965, moved to New York to form the Game Theatre. His form of “story theatre” has transformed acting training in the United States. 46 Viola Spolin (1906–1994) was an actor, director, theater practice teacher and author of the infuential book Improvisation for the Theatre (1963). 47 Zibell later worked with Rex Knowles and Sherry Landrum, who insisted that repetition of movements for space work was essential. Knowles and Landrum were students of Sills, Spolin and Keith Johnstone. They took over from Sills at the New Actors Workshop when he retired. They now run the program at Chattanooga State Community College in Tennessee, reframing the New Actors conservatory program.

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Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Penguin, 2005. Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, Livre VII: L’éthique de la psychanalyse, 1959–60, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Seuil, 1986. ———. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–60. Translated by Dennis Porter. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. Lao, Tsu. Tao Te Ching: A New Translation. Translated by Gia-Fu Feng, and Jane English. London: Wildwood House, 1973. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004): 225–48. Lepecki, André. “Errancy as Work: Seven Strewn Notes for Dance Dramaturgy.” In Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement, edited by Pil Hansen, and Darcey Callison, 51–66. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Le Guin, Ursula K., trans. Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, with J. P. Seaton. Boulder: Shambhala, 1998. Manning, Erin. Always More than One: Individuation’s Dance. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Le Phénoménologie de la perception [Phenomenology of Perception]. Paris: Gallimard, 1945. Morton, Timothy. “Thinking Ecology: The Mesh, the Strange Stranger, and the Beautiful Soul.” Collapse 6 (2010): 265–93. Plato. Phaedrus, and the Seventh and Eighth Letters. Translated by William Hamilton. New York: Penguin Books, 1973. Povinelli, Elizabeth A. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Puar, Jasbir K. “I Would Rather be a Cyborg Than a Goddess: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory.” philoSOPHIA: Journal of Feminist Philosophy 2, no. 1 (2012): 50–66. Sills, Paul. “Introduction.” In Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques, edited by Viola Spolin, ix–xii. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999. Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics 17, no. 2 (1987): 65–81. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 243–61. Stanislavski, Konstantin. An Actor’s Work on a Role. Translated by Jean Benedetti. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Star, Jonathan, trans. Tao Te Ching: The Defnitive Edition. Edited by Lao Tzu. New York: Penguin/Jeremy P. Teacher, 2001. Stengers, Isabelle. Cosmopolitics I. Translated by Robert Bononno. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Wall Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientifc Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013. Wilson, Shawn. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2008. Zibell, John, and Peter Lichtenfels. “A Playground of Technicities: Pulling Theatre Technology into Process in a Production of Shogo Ota’s Elements.” Forthcoming.

9 TEATR ZAR’S SONG THEATER AS SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE1 Maria Shevtsova

Threads and links Besides being a mathematician, physicist and philosopher, Blaise Pascal was also deeply invested in Jansenist Catholic theology that set the latter apart from the dominant Jesuit beliefs of seventeenth-century France. It was from the viewpoint of his multiple capacities for generating knowledge that he contemplated the great question of how human beings could know what was inefable and invisible, which was the case of God. This question permeates his thought fragments, published under the title of Pensées (1670), in which he distinguishes the “reasoning of reason” from the “reason of the heart,” noting that the latter has its rights and reasons for knowing what “reason does not know.”2 Raison, the word Pascal uses in a double meaning, covers both “reason” and “right.” The former—reason—apprehends the concrete material world through the mind and biological sensations, but it is the heart that, reasoning through feeling, knows God or what in the context of this chapter can also be called the divine, the transcendent, a higher level of existence, or enlightenment, which escapes rational defnition and explanation. This plenitude, this state of being beyond rational understanding, is certainly not confned to Christianity since it is integral to Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, and especially to such mystical strains of Islam as Sufsm. In recent times, and most vigorously during the second half of the twentieth century, it became part and parcel of numerous kinds of New Age spiritual practices across the world. These practices, while committed to “spiritual life” in whichever form a personal, “inner” spiritual quest was manifested, generally did not necessarily have an explicitly religious, denominational base (Christian, Buddhist and so on). Theater practitioners, especially in North America and Europe, took up DOI: 10.4324/9781003372837-13

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a similar kind of perspective during this period. In the 1960s and 1970s, they included dancers and performance-aligned musicians who followed the salient example of the composer John Cage (1912–1992), prominent for his Buddhistinspired experiments in meditation and silence as a means for transcendence. The key fgure in European spoken theater during these decades to generate quest-like research was Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999). Having made his international mark from within Poland by the mid-1960s, Grotowski soon spread his wings by traveling abroad, frst to the United States with members of his Wrocław-based company, the Laboratory Theatre, and then alone on several occasions to India, whose purposes he kept secret. It transpired in subsequent years that, during his sojourns in India, he had met and befriended a group of traveling performers from Bengal known as the Bauls. Their chanting and dance were capable of leading them into trance states, and Grotowski saw in their poverty and uncontaminated, “pure,” itinerant existence the prototype of the “holy fool” whom he had discovered in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels, highly charged with Russian Orthodoxy. The “holy fool” was a trope of major signifcance for the Laboratory Theatre in which was born the idea of the “holy actor,” who was singularly dedicated to making theater with absolute truthfulness and self-exposure, thus banishing the clichés of acting and pretend-playing typical of established and establishment theater.3 Grotowski returned from India to the Paratheater in which he had involved his actors since 1969 until its demise in 1978. Paratheater had turned its back on the theater to focus on “meetings”—Grotowski’s word is “encounters”— designed not for the production of artifacts but for opening up individuals, each fnding in Paratheater events that he or she needed or wanted for personal illumination and liberation. These concerns overlapped with the explorations of Theatre of Sources (1976–1982), where Grotowski developed his interest in transcendental, ritual and ecstatic practices in the song as a vehicle for inner spiritual journeys.4 The idea of the inner was crucial for the development of the person. In acting terms, it was crucial for the development of the holy actor and, later, for the performing person Grotowski frst called the “doer” and then “Performer”5 in the phase known as Art as Vehicle, which went from 1986 until Grotowski’s death in 1999. Paratheater began in the form of workshops concentrated in Wrocław and Brzezinski, the forest retreat not far from the city, which was intended to function as a laboratory and now served hundreds, if not thousands, of international participants. Running workshops developed as a standard method of this phase of Grotowski’s research, taking his company to diferent countries until it scattered, many of its foundation contributors returning to pursue their own particular research in Wrocław. Grotowski, after spending 3 years teachingtraining newly gathered actors at the University of California, Irvine, fnally settled in Pontedera in Italy in 1986. It was here, in the role of a guru or master, that he helped his chosen pupil-disciple Thomas Richards to accomplish his

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journeys into himself—the concept of the “self ” being vital to modern quests for plenitude. Such a journey was at once a private engagement with what Grotowski termed the “vertical,” so as to avoid any specifcally religious and denominational connotations, as well as a search for improving what he called theater “craft”—that is, how something was done adequately to the tasks of making a specifc piece of theater. Self-improvement was an integral part of the vertical. Some questions quickly arose from Grotowski’s Pontedera practice: Which took the upper hand? Was it the intensive internal journey that enlightened the human being who was undertaking it? Or was it the artist embodied in this very human being who, at the same time, was exploring the technical potentials and the potentials of the psyche for performance? Grotowski believed that the two—the personal, even private, journey and its public rendition (when there was a rare public showing)—went together so closely that the emergent Performer, as he now called this entity, melded the two into one. This kind of person-performer was to take the theater to a higher plane on the vertical, going upward toward transcendence. Neither Performer nor those who watched him/her could grasp Performer’s movement upward with the mind and reason. These “witnesses,” for Grotowski no longer spoke of spectators, grasped it with their heart, intuition, spirit and soul—in short, with those aspects of ontological being that were incarnated, and so in and of the body, but not visible to the naked eye, as was the physical body itself. In Pascal’s apprehension, the heart—with “heart” now understood in the comprehensive sense given here—is the means by which the nonmaterial and that which is not provable scientifcally is known. For Pascal, of course, this kind of knowing went hand in glove with religious faith; for Grotowski and Performer, it went with conviction in the rightness of the journey comparable to such faith. This brief contextual outline is important because Teatr ZAR, the focus of this chapter, is a song theater that emerged from the Grotowski legacy and is linked to it via two preceding generations of “transmission,” a quintessentially Grotowskian term that refers to the direct person-to-person relay of knowledge and technical know-how, so diferent in its oral and corporeal dimensions to learning from books. Transmission is, indeed, like the body-to-body learning typical of dance, a practice known from classical ballet—how choreographies stored in muscle and afective memory are passed from dancer to dancer in the moment of practice. ZAR’s immediate antecedents are the song theater groups known as the Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices and the Song of the Goat. Włodzimierz Staniewski, one of the leaders of Paratheater events, founded Gardzienice in 1977, largely in opposition to Grotowski’s dismissal at that time of all theater structures, whatever their specifc character and aesthetic intentions may have been; he named it after the village in Eastern Poland where Gardzienice is

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still based today. Anna Zubrzycki performed with Gardzienice for 16 years before she and Grzegorz Bral, who was with the company for 5 years, established Song of the Goat in Wrocław in 1996. Jarosław Fret and Kamila Klamut, who founded Teatr ZAR in 2003, had worked with Zubrzycki and Bral from 1996 to 1999. Fret had spent a year and a half with Staniewski in the early 1990s, and, like Klamut, had been involved in workshops run by former members of the Laboratory Theatre, with Rena Mirecka and Zygmunt Molik notable among them.6 Although these groups come from the same source, each has its distinctive identity and remains utterly itself. This is true, too, of the Pontedera branch of the family tree, the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski, to which Grotowski added Richards’s name in 1996, meanwhile grooming Mario Biagini, who is now Richards’s second in command. Yet none of them has so completely made the journeys of the spirit the very subject of its theater work as Teatr ZAR. None of the four groups afrms a collective religious allegiance, irrespective of whatever religious views are held by its individual members. Zubrzycki and Bral, for instance, are Buddhists and, while Buddhism underpins their artistic outlook and several of their principles for training performers, Song of the Goat performances are not explicitly about Buddhist concerns. ZAR’s works, on the other hand, explicitly mediate their single-minded attention to the human spirit through Christianity, and their themes of birth, life, death, rebirth and resurrection are fully shaped from within a Christian perspective, although not one defned as Catholic, for example, with Catholicism being Poland’s predominant religion. Nor would all of ZAR’s collaborators claim to be Christian. What unites them are the spiritual dimension and context of the ancient songs from time immemorial that they sing, regardless of their personal beliefs. A few songs in their performance pieces are secular. The titles of ZAR productions identify their spiritual dimension—thus Gospels of Childhood: Fragments on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, with which the group was ofcially formed in 2003. It was the frst part of what ZAR was soon to call its “triptych,” the term’s allusion to Christian icons being altogether deliberate. Caesarian Section: Essays on Suicide followed in 2007. Then, in 2009, came Anhelli: The Calling, based on Juliusz Słowacki’s 1838 poem “Anhelli,” in which the titular hero travels to Jerusalem to accomplish both a spiritual and a secular mission, failing in the latter, which was to liberate Poland from the Russian Empire, but undergoing signifcant experiences and revelations in pursuit of the former. Given the links between ZAR and Grotowski, it is worth recalling that Grotowski used Słowacki’s play Kordian (1834)—which has similar quest motifs and allegorical intentions—for his production of the same name (1962). Quest and allegory, driven by Messianic, not to say metaphysical or mystical, ideals are features of nineteenth-century Polish Romanticism,7 at the core of which are the writings of Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), author of Forefathers’ Eve, which

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Grotowski staged in 1961. This culturally specifc type of Romanticism has left its mark on Grotowski’s worldview, and it could be said to have resurfaced in ZAR’s activities from which the idea of “journey,” both as inward and physical travel, is inseparable.

Knowledge through expeditions: Armenia, Georgia and Iran Before founding ZAR, Fret and Klamut had undertaken a number of “research expeditions,”8 this term being very much Staniewski’s for Gardzienice’s travels in the border territories of Eastern Poland in search of peoples and their songs. Fret and Klamut went elsewhere, motivated by their fascination with very early Christianity, and Fret has dwelt on the importance, for him, of its musical forms. Both had read Andrew Welburn’s The Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the Christian Vision (1991), and it is not difcult to see how Welburn’s account of Gnostic “secret knowledge” and the relations and disconnections between the canonical and the apocryphal Gospels had made a great impact on two young people eager to discover worlds beyond their traditional Catholic upbringing. Their frst expedition was in 1999 to Armenia, the frst country to adopt Christianity as its ofcial religion, and to Georgia for its old Orthodox tradition and polyphonic singing. Iran was also an important destination because Welburn’s brief references to the Mandaeans had excited their curiosity. The last surviving Mandaeans living unobtrusively in Iran are purportedly the descendants of a people who had known John the Baptist and who practiced rituals of immersion baptism thought to have been specifc to him.9 Fret and Klamut did indeed witness these rituals and returned to Iran for two consecutive years afterward. Images of washing, probably in part inspired by this experience, recur frequently in Gospels, where they are linked by association rather than by direct reference—association is typical of ZAR’s compositions—to the signifcance of baptism as rebirth in the apocryphal Gospels of the apostles Philip, Thomas and John.10 Fret and Klamut returned to Georgia with a small group of collaborators in 2000, where, in Tbilisi, the country’s capital, the extraordinary singing in the Sioni Orthodox Cathedral transported them. Most extraordinary of all was the Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy) of the liturgy, sung by a soprano to a male base line, which, in ZAR’s version for several female voices, was to become key to Gospels. An audiotape of the Sioni Kyrie in the ZAR archive, although of poor quality, manages to convey its transcendent beauty. Something of its deep calm and abnegation of ego was to reappear in Anhelli, which has the intimate, quiet atmosphere of prayer, and which closes the triptych thematically as well as emotionally, connecting the emotional threads of its separate sections. It is hardly accidental that Klamut, in the closing scene, drops light feathers across

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the heart of a prostrate man, where they foat as if to suggest that the soul ascends from this knowing heart. In 2001, Fret and Klamut went for the frst time to hear and learn the polyphonic singing, believed to be some 2,000 years old, of the Svan—Orthodox communities in Svaneti, a Georgian province in the highest part of the Caucasus Mountains. They were taken under the wing of Eptime Pilpani from the Mestia district, who, together with his middle-aged son Vakhtang and, on occasion, two other family members, taught them, and then the group of six who subsequently accompanied them in 2002, a range of polyphonic songs that became part of their growing repertoire. Among them was the funeral song Zar, which is sung, as are other Svan polyphonic songs, in an ancient language no longer spoken or understood; and it is sung for hours on end to help the deceased’s soul on its journey to the afterlife. Zar, from which the company took its name, is sung diferently according to the village to which it belongs, and it is mostly kept and sung by a specifc family rather than given over to the community at large. Pilpani, in one of his teaching sessions in 2002, demonstrated the singing styles of a number of villages: some were softer, others in a higher key, and his own from the village of Lendjeri in a fully abdominal, resonant sound.11 His comparisons are enlightening, all the more so when it becomes evident that ZAR’s way of singing Zar is by no means mere imitation; it is an innovative transposition, for a generically diferent kind of performance, of what ZAR had frst learned by copying and then by fully making its own. One could call this the alchemy of raw material turned into theater. Pilpani rigorously taught the 2002 group, breaking down the syllables of unknown words and connecting syllables into sounds. He continually repeated them and had his pupils repeat them, building up phrases and then whole lines, which the pupils had to sing with him as they caught the right vocal sonority, phrasing and tempo. All of this had to be memorized since the transmission of Svan polyphony is oral, none of it ever having been written down. Meanwhile, Pilpani’s pupils invented their own notation to help them absorb and remember what they were hearing and singing. The whole Pilpani–ZAR dynamic of teaching and learning conveys very precisely what it means to speak of an oral tradition and how it is transmitted from generation to generation. With it are transmitted the feeling and the atmosphere of the song and of the communal situation in which the teaching-learning takes place—that is, other nonmaterial aspects that convey sounds from body to body. By the time the 2002 group premiered Gospels, it had acquired a strong sense of ensemble, which was fostered, among other factors, by the demands of three-part harmony to work cooperatively, mindfully and carefully together. When some left the group around 2006, its remaining core transmitted the group ethos together with its songs to the incomers, teaching much as Pilpani had taught them. This reconstituted ZAR, now made up of 11 people, traveled

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to Svaneti at the beginning of 2008, providing new members with the opportunity to learn directly from Pilpani. Similarly, they were able to experience the convivial environment of the Pilpani household at frst hand, which hosted them as it had previously welcomed the frst travelers to its hearth in a majestic snowbound, mountainous landscape.12 Immersion of this kind is conducive, as Konstantin Stanislavsky had discovered and shown decades previously, to developing an ensemble spirit among those who come together to be an ensemble, which is not automatically established just because they are in a group. Equally, immersion facilitates the accumulation of shared memories, the warmth of which feeds into what Stanislavsky called the “attitude” of performers toward each other and their material as they perform, setting the emotional tones of their work through which spectators connect subliminally. Connection of this kind could even be described as an intuitive knowledge of what the work is doing and “saying.” The ethnomusicological aspect of ZAR’s research can hardly be ignored, but nor can it be dismissed as mere cultural pillage, frst of all because the work is consistent and serious and, second—more important still—because Pilpani was not only moved by the interest ZAR had shown and was continuing to show in the tradition close to his heart, but he was also ready to pass on this tradition, regardless of the fact that ZAR was not Svan. And he was happy to see it in a theater form and in a performance situation in stark contrast to the domestic, religious and, in the case of Zar, the funereal contexts in which the Svan sing. ZAR, moreover, includes women singing, whereas Svan polyphony is confned exclusively to men, and the presence of women’s voices introduces a lighter quality that lifts the weight of sound produced by the Svan male timbres. Whether this is a case of modernization as such is moot. What appears to be certain, however, is Pilpani’s understanding, along with that of his family, that fexibility and even compromise with regard to tradition are necessary in order to prevent the tradition, as defned by its custodians, from losing its impetus or simply dying out.13 Further, had Pilpani not been satisfed with ZAR’s adaptations, he would not have willingly traveled to Wrocław to teach ZAR there—his frst of three visits, the last being in 2009 during the celebrations of the Year of Grotowski (the tenth anniversary of Grotowski’s death), when he visited with his family, gave open workshops and sang with ZAR in public. Nor, still, would he have so hospitably welcomed Fret’s next visit with several new people who were brought to Svaneti in 2011 in order to understand at frst hand why Svan polyphony was seminal to the company. Such contact, apart from inspiring appreciation, facilitated the sense of belonging and the practice of sharing necessary for ensemble theater. The people who had been added at this later stage were given insight into ZAR’s past achievements by way of preparation for a new project that was now turning to Armenian liturgy.14

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Expeditions further afeld and musical composition While the majority of the 20 songs and chants in Gospels are Georgian, whether Svan or from the Sioni Cathedral in Tbilisi, 3 are from the Orthodox Monastery of Mount Athos in Greece, to which ZAR had made expeditions from the very early to mid-2000s. There is one Polish Catholic funeral song as well, performed shortly before Zar in the musical sequence Fret put together for Gospels, attentive to its overarching musical texture. Gospels is 50 minutes long, as is Caesarian Section, while Anhelli is 40 minutes. These parts are performed either as a triptych or singly as discrete pieces. When they are performed together, their respective tones and temperament respond to each other, modifying each part in terms of the bigger whole. Performed separately, each part opens out its own particular qualities. An expedition to Egypt in 2002 in search of the Coptic components of early Christianity did not produce performance material either for Gospels or for the following pieces. Another expedition in the same year to Bulgaria, which has a renowned, centuries-old culture of polyphonic singing, provided two songs for Caesarian Section. ZAR also uses for this production a recomposed Svan song, a Chechen lament for women’s voices and a Danish lullaby. There are, in addition, two chants from Corsica, to which the 11-strong group mentioned above had traveled in 2006 and 2007. One is a chant sung on Good Friday and the other a Kyrie eleison. The rest of the musical material of Caesarian Section is secular and not sung. Astor Piazzolla’s tangos, ragtime and Erik Satie’s Gnossienne 3 layer other sonorities in the tapestry of sound. These are not recorded music but played by the performers on cello, violin, accordion, piano, wind instrument and carpenter’s saw, and they are played at regular intervals in the ongoing fow of voices and movement. Caesarian Section is the only part of the triptych in which instruments of this kind are foregrounded. The music of a violin and an accordion are heard rather briefy in Gospels, whereas gongs, chimes and bells of varying tonal qualities and pitches prevail. In Anhelli, subtle sounds, including an intermittently brushed string, color the tapestry until the magnifcent richness of a Persian drum beats out the penultimate scene. Anhelli, in contrast to Caesarian Section, has a rather austere palette. The piece opens with an irmos (a short hymn in Byzantine liturgy) for Good Friday from the Valaam Monastery in Russian Karelia, and it concludes with another Russian Orthodox irmos for the “falling asleep” or death of Mary, the mother of Jesus, during one of the 12 great feasts of Eastern Orthodoxy (the Assumption in the Roman Catholic Church). This highly sacred framing of the work, with its clear evocation of the resurrections of Christ and Mary, is sustained by hymns, notably one from the Sioni Church—the Georgian thread continues right through the triptych from Gospels—and mostly paschal chants from Sardinia. ZAR’s expedition to Sardinia was in 2008, frst to the

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Catholic Castelsardo Brotherhood, which is celebrated for its singing, and then to Orosei, whose three confraternities come together with the whole town for the religious rites of Holy Week, culminating in the ceremonial masses of Easter Sunday. Anhelli’s entire choral structure, then, is a cradle for the very brief concluding irmos whose last line is “Lord, accept my soul.” A vigorous paschal chant, the beating drum, and the increasingly louder fall, again and again, of fve male bodies precede this gentle, profoundly moving irmos. The fve men fall at different moments to avoid doubling the choral singing with a chorus efect of movement; Fret’s aim was musical counterpoint rather than repetition through visual mirroring. And the hard, thudding sound of falling on boards segues into the raucous and also syncopated sound of the men ripping up the boards of the foor. The narrow open spaces they make are the graves on which they lie to sing the closing irmos, their voices accompanied by the female voices of ZAR further away, in the shadows. The emotional impact of the scene is such, and the power of its theatrical construction is such, that the scene supersedes its immediate religious meaning, as implied by its hymns and chants for the souls of the dead falling visibly to the foor, and becomes a synoptic image of all human sufering regardless of creed. In any case, the great majority of ZAR listener-spectators does not know and is not expected to know either the precise sources of the songs or the precise liturgical circumstances in which they are sung. This is the task of researchers. What matters (or not) for listener-spectators is how they engage (or not) with the material ofered to them as a theater performance and so as an artistic construction and whether, in a world suspicious of avowed faiths as well as the convictions of secular humanism, they “accept”—fundamentally emotionally as feeling turns into illumination or transcendence—to go along the journey on which the performance takes them. Here it is only the heart that has the right and reason to know whether it accepts the journey. To say this is not in the least to imply that only religious people can accept this musical-spiritual journey. Anyone, including nonbelievers, can accept it, but the issue is how they might accept it; and Pascal’s reminder that access to God (the divine, Grotowski’s vertical, ZAR’s nondenominational spirit) comes through the heart must be remembered in the context of this discussion about knowing through feeling, intuition and the other characteristics noted earlier in this chapter. The intense hush that envelops the space suggests that numbers of listenerspectators of Anhelli are deeply afected by its irmos sequence, which gathers up the concentration of energy that accumulates as the performance progresses and communicates itself to them while it returns to the performers within the energy circuit. Not all succumb to this compelling energy nor perceive it uncritically. The well-known theater critic of the Guardian, Michael Billington, when writing of the whole triptych, comments on its “limited physical vocabulary” and

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observes that “there is also something strenuous about the attempt to turn theatre into surrogate religious ritual.”15 Leave aside for the moment both Billington’s critique of the production’s movement vocabulary and the point of view emerging from this discussion that the triptych draws on religion and ritual without needing to be a surrogate for either of them. Stay instead with the irreducible importance of ZAR’s musical heterogeneity, which, as indicated, refects the breadth of its travels. The triptych does not fully cover the range and number of the songs the company has learned, nor does it accentuate its mixture of people who, although predominantly Polish at the time the triptych was prepared, were Danish, DanishEnglish, Slovakian, French and Italian. But then, origins, for them, are not at issue, especially because they do not intend to make “intercultural” theater out of anything that might identify them culturally or mark out cultural diferences between the elements of their compositions. What is primary for them is to sing the songs that they cull with moral and artistic integrity and to treat with the same integrity the type of collaborative work that they do.

Breath There can be no question that song is the spine of Teatr ZAR, all elements of its pieces stemming from there and relying fully on song for their coordination and coherence. Yet the song is initiated by breath surging from within the body, which channels and circulates sound. It is the workings of breath that generate energy, and breath and energy together focus the audience’s attention so that, by the end of a performance, the performers and the audience are breathing as one. In this very breathing, which is perceptible and palpable, lies the unifying energy that precipitates the vibration happening not only internally within the performers’ bodies but also as visceral responsiveness on the part of the listenerspectators. This can be compared to the string of an instrument that vibrates near other playing strings in “sympathy,” or to glasses of water that, their rims having been activated, shake and “sing” in response to each other. At the same time, the breath goes upward and downward in the density of sound inherent in polyphonic structures, where, in addition, overtones thicken the sonosphere. Fret describes this as a “column of breath, a column of singing,”16 while the Svan speak of the singing as a “ladder” for the ascent of souls to heaven. Fret’s “column” image also evokes the idea of the vertical, that aspiration to the divine that was fundamental to Grotowski’s search. The performers group in various diferent ways according to how they have to listen to the harmonies they sing—and thus listen to each other—and how they have to adjust their breath to project their voices according to the changing moments of their singing. Their physically close grouping visually refects the sense of togetherness conveyed by their voices, and the audience is near enough to observe how one or another singer—in Gospels, it is often Fret—indicates with a moving hand or

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hands the inhalation or expiration of breath or its prolongation or interruption. While this whole process is, in itself, an eloquent demonstration of what it means to be an ensemble and be working integrally and harmoniously together, the performers’ closely knit togetherness throughout their performance draws the audiences in, most likely quite unconsciously. This too provides the conditions for vibration and for breathing as one. The close proximity between performers and listener-spectators helps the process during which individual egos are abnegated and fall away before the converging and thus unifying energy of the breath, song, sound and movement. In Wrocław, audiences are usually restricted to around 50 people and, when on tour, ZAR attempts to replicate the intimate spatial confguration and small audience numbers that it enjoys at home. Nowhere is the vibratory energy more eloquent, in any part of the triptych, than in the silence when Gospels draws to a close. The performers leave the space, and three large wheel chandeliers that had come down close to the foor as points of an uneven triangle, one slightly higher than the next, swing and sway, their candles burning, to signify closure. However, this is only a formal closure since the open-endedness of the work—there, too, in the burning light and sway—is a glimpse into Mystery, of which the story of Lazarus at the heart of Gospels is emblematic. Nor can there be closure when the atmosphere surrounding the listener-spectators left in the performance space is one of deep contemplation. These listener-spectators sit in silence that no applause breaks, some sitting for a long time as if in meditation or simply lost in thought, while the pendulum swing of the chandeliers and the dancing fames of light mesmerize others. The event of Lazarus’s resurrection is not enacted but frmly read as narrative by Maria and Marta (portrayed by Kamila Klamut and Ditte Berkeley, respectively), who sit opposite each other, by candlelight, at a table with bread and wine, and beneath which a pile of earth implies a grave (text fragments other than these from the Gospels of Thomas and Philip are from Dostoevsky and Simone Weil). Earlier, in the pervasive chiaroscuro of the piece, urgent knocking on the table, as if to awaken the dead, seems to have anticipated this moment, and drama is generated subsequently by the sudden darkness into which the space is plunged when the men sing Zar, breathing audibly with their singing and thus making breath integral to the sounds they produce. They end Zar with a pronounced inhalation-exhalation on the last, strong sound, which is not usual for the Svan, who sing it along an even breath. ZAR’s variation was invented during rehearsals for artistic reasons as dramatic breath punctuation and as a counterpoint to the limpid, otherworldly Kyrie that precedes it.

Sound and counterpoint None of this is in linear sequence but in a montage of apparently disconnected fragments from which it is not always possible to construe meaning. Meaning

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can be guessed at, and it is most successfully deduced in retrospect, as the performance develops, or simply after it ends, when people can refect upon it. Thus, the various fragments in which Klamut washes in large bowls and pails of water and another that alludes to giving birth can eventually be linked to the motifs of purifcation and rebirth emerging and reemerging here and there in Gospels of Childhood. But Gospels does not so much seek literal meaning as atmosphere, mood, release, palpable energy and a sense of shared mystery generated by theatrical means. Counterpoint plays a large part in Gospels, going from the shards of the biblical narrative to the suggested rape of a bride at her wedding, thereby juxtaposing the sacred and the profane through separate bits. Light—candles, lanterns, spotlights and diagonal low beams—and dark—in shifting hues with occasional blackouts—are in perpetual juxtaposition. The image of a table with tens of candles burning on it at the beginning of the production is an image of stillness, irrespective of performers quietly scraping this table, and it contrasts with the moving wheels of light at the end of the performance. Elsewhere, the performers form tableaux that, despite their picture-like confguration, are never still lifes because the performers are in continual motion, even when their movement is slight. Small movements and gestures are in rhythmic counterpoint with each other. They are in counterpoint again with more ostentatious movements. Rhythmic counterpoint operates in a similar fashion in Caesarian Section and Anhelli. Of the three parts of the triptych, Anhelli is the quietest, relying on the smallest and lightest of sounds for its delicate transitions of rhythm. There is, among a range of sounds, the brush of the string referred to earlier—an invisible string across a doorframe that, because the string is plucked, suggests a harp. In actual fact, there are three frames that several performers move about in the space, not simply for reasons of spatial modifcation—the latter is necessary for choral regrouping—but also because the sound of moving them, although discrete, is part and parcel of the production’s musical score. There is also the breath of air lightly emanating from what can only be described as an elliptically sketched-in “sail.” This is a white, thin canvas held up close to the ceiling by a pole that is lifted up and down, irresistibly suggesting “rowing.” Its association is with Anhelli’s double journey, religious and political. Even so, another trigger for the imagination is at hand for those not familiar with Słowacki’s epic poem, since the production’s implied journey on water may be perceived as an allusion to the crossing of the river Acheron to Hades, the abode of the dead. Słowacki’s is a Christian interpretation, the Acheron a mythological one, and the two, in performance terms, are synchronized. Whichever way listener-spectators take it (and they may take it purely on a sensory level without any explanatory references or cultural “hooks”), the efect of the scene is ethereal, helped by the play of spots of light enveloped within the white canvas. These spots, while illuminating the canvas, appear

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to foat with it. The play of light, the presence of white (also in most of the costumes), gentle motion and the slightest of sounds capture, in an abstract, extrapolated and imagistic way, the subject of ZAR’s Anhelli; it is none other than the journey of the spirit. Yet Anhelli plays a sonic trick through what can be called an illusion of sound, which occurs near one of the harp-doorframes. The sound of singing in this moment is real enough, as is that of a soft footstep, or of the swish of a belt that Klamut ties around her trench coat. But the illusion of sound in question is that of a few feathers gently falling. They fall from the hand of the Angel in the trench coat onto the chest of a man lying on the foor (Matej Matejka). Once again, the moment is cryptic. It can be deciphered via Słowacki’s poem: the man could be Anhelli opening his soul to receive the Angel. Or else, it can be left in its opaqueness, allowing the senses to take the moment in. At three diferent times, Przemysław Błaszczak, one of the performers who falls on foorboards toward the end, loudly recites several lines in Polish from “Anhelli” as well as from “King-Spirit” (Krol-Duch), Słowacki’s poem of 1847 which deals with similarly intertwined metaphysical and political themes. These are the only spoken words in the production, which, although full of singing, is a production where, paradoxically, sound heightens its silences, making it seem more silent than it actually is.

Movement and Caesarian Section Moments of Anhelli seem visually impenetrable and not tuned-in to its movement score quite enough to stimulate the senses fully. This is especially noticeable in its middle section, which tends to rely on held positions rather than develop the movement dynamics of the piece. These positions are usually prolonged sitting and lying down, which, the last grave scene excepted, fail to communicate why they might be necessary. Vignettes like the one in which Matejka inexplicably ties up Berkeley with a coarse rope is of no help to the kinesics of the work. Such lapses must surely have prompted Billington’s critique of ZAR’s “limited physical vocabulary,” which, although justifably sparse when its aim is to confgure stillness and silence, needs more contrapuntal variety of movement to sustain the work’s momentum and carry it through. Be this as it may, Anhelli echoes Gospels, which Caesarian Section with its multiple images of attempted suicide does not. For this very reason, Caesarian Section requires further attention. It is a robust piece despite its subject and the fact that a number of its images of suicide were inspired by the writings of Romanian-born Aglaja Veteranyi; Veteranyi took her own life at the age of 40 in 2002, just as her work was beginning to be internationally recognized. As Lyn Gardner, dance critic of the Guardian, accurately observed when reviewing Caesarean Section as a stand-alone piece at the 2012 Edinburgh Festival, “There is pain—but a sense, too, that these people are survivors, clinging to life with

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a grip that may be fragile, but which can’t be loosened.”17 The work received, among several prizes won in Edinburgh, the Total Theatre Award for the category “Physical/Visual Theatre.” That Caesarian Section was placed in this category is not surprising, given its range of dance movement: tango-like dance to Piazzolla’s music (which opens the piece); dance in bare feet more or less on glass beside a thin river of small pieces of shattered glass that is lowered slightly into the wooden foor and traverses the performance space; dance on chairs in a short section called “Suicides’ Cinema” (its quirky choreography and wry humor is reminiscent of Pina Bausch’s compositions); a dance with a broom (a neat way of cleaning the foor of its scattered glass splinters); and an array of duets and trios that could well be defned as “dance” because of their pronounced bodily ebb and fow. These include sequences around the suicide attempts—humorous without loss of gravity—of a woman (Klamut) with a huge rope tied to her neck, its other end intended to be hung from a miniature mandarin tree. Among them, too, is a series of extensions—poignant this time rather than humorous—made by the same woman, who pulls herself upward as she stands precariously on a chair; her position and gestures on the vertical are both an expression of despair and a call for salvation. Instrumental music or singing almost always accompanies the movement material, without, however, illustrating or duplicating it. Strongly articulated movement of this kind prompted Gardner to describe Caesarian Section as a “memorable piece of Jerzy Grotowski-infuenced Polish dance-theatre.”18 Gardner’s allusion to Grotowski in a dance-theater context might be unexpected, although it is not necessarily out of the ordinary in the context of ZAR. ZAR, if primarily song theater, can more than tolerate other descriptions because of its hybridity—its intermix of genres: song, instrumental playing, sound composition, dance, movement (broadly speaking), visual-art efects, verbal texts, speech, mime and, of course, its interface between sacred and secular knowledge and so between the diverse cultural sources from which comes diverse knowledge made fesh. Some of the dance noted above was devised collectively with the choreographer Vivien Wood. Movement, more generally speaking, arose from the performers’ ear for sound and its relation to the sound patterns of the instruments being played and, above all, to their singing. Thus, the big sound of empty glasses being smashed in the dark, one after the other, before the music by Piazzolla begins, is an overture, with brio, to the smaller but also powerful fall of this or that glass of wine pushed by the foot of each cellist (two of them). Fall and smash—repeated sounds at precisely timed intervals—anticipate repeated climbing and falling movements, which also make sounds. All these sounds are syncopated so that none can be in tandem with any other. Klamut’s continual running in a wide circle is, in the same way, a sound composition, all the more so because the variety of sounds of her accentuated run—their variety depending on the changing weight of her feet—is added

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to by changes of step in the run. She noisily hops, for instance, when she tries to take of her underpants. Perhaps her incongruent gesture of undressing is linked to her failed suicide attempts, but the force and resilience of her run surges from the piece. Slapping and tapping on tables and the foor contribute to the triptych’s sonic texture. Even the spill of wine is meant to be sound: its spilling sound could be heard, or half-heard, or illusorily heard, like the feathers in Anhelli. Fret chose the wine with great care for its consistency so that its movement did not spread, thereby not causing anxiety in the listener-spectators about how far the wine would go.19 Attention, then, is not distracted. Another fne sound is the trickle of small fragments of glass falling, like tears, from a dancing woman’s face (Berkeley). The concluding scene in a duet between Klamut and Berkeley involves bright oranges, their color being as striking in its vibrancy as the scene’s comic edge in a decidedly unfunny situation. The oranges break out of a transparent plastic bag and roll at diferent moments and diferent speeds but not too far from the performer, like the spilled wine. Klamut sits, her legs spread wide, while Berkeley’s body lies across them, her face downward. The sound of rolling, although soft, is unmistakable. Klamut’s various attempts for her character to smother herself with the plastic bag fail. Berkeley’s face is up against the river of glass and is sometimes half in it, depending on the performance. Her position highlights danger, as did her dancing on glass previously. In what is meant to be a catatonic state, Klamut opens her mouth in a silent scream. Silence is as integral to the sound score of Caesarean Section as to the rest of the triptych. Klamut’s silent scream is the scream of intense, insuferable pain, and in this image of sufering humanity can be felt the compassion that the work embodies in its diferent facets. Sufering is unavoidable in the journey of life, and perhaps the triptych says as much by ending Anhelli with its prayer. Teatr ZAR is an example of a theater whose hybrid form is totally characteristic of contemporary performance. However, its impetus to probe the spirit—the nonvisible, which is known only with great difculty—is uncharacteristic of the feld as a whole. How indeed does the rational mind come to grips with and verbalize spirit? ZAR, by singing, indicates that spirit can be called up and “articulated” through singing and the fnely fligreed web that it weaves between performers and listener-spectators. The creation of this “web” has to do with the acute listening to each other, both of the performers as they sing and the listener-spectators as they listen to the performers as well as “listen,” subliminally rather than consciously, to themselves. It could be said that listener-spectators subliminally undertake a journey into themselves that is their very own inward, spiritual journey, their very own immersion in how they interact with musical and other made sound, rhythm, pace, tempo, infection, cadence—also of physical movement—and, of course, with the silence that is part of the performance score.

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Notes 1 This chapter develops my “frst-draft” refections on the subject published as “Teatr ZAR’s Journeys of the Spirit”, New Theatre Quarterly, 29:2 (May, 2013), 170–84. 2 Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Paris: Garnier, 1960), 146. Translated by the author. 3 See Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), 34–39, 41, 43. 4 Scholars generally agree on the attribution of dates and names to the various phases of Grotowski’s work, and essays are grouped usefully around them in The Grotowski Sourcebook. Grotowski’s Theatre of Sources refects on ecstatic practices, which belong to what he generally calls “traditional techniques.” Cf. Richard Schechner and Lisa Wolford, eds., The Grotowski Sourcebook (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). 5 Ibid., 376–80. 6 For a fuller account of the three generations related directly or indirectly to the work of Grotowski, see the relevant section of “Directors, Collaboration and Improvisation,” chapter 7 in The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing, ed. Christopher Innes and Maria Shevtsova (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Fret, it should be added, is the director of the Grotowski Institute, for which he continually organizes various events in honor of Grotowski’s heritage and where artistic and intellectual projects, including publications, are nurtured and brought to fruition, maintaining the Institute as a lively and signifcant cultural center locally as well as internationally. 7 See Harold B. Segel, Polish Romantic Drama (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), 1–43. See Norman Davies, God’s Playground: 1795 to the Present, vol. 2 of a History of Poland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 25–41. 8 Jarosław Fret, in discussion with the author, 3 July 2010. The word for “expedition” in Polish was used in the sense of “reconnaissance,” “exploring the terrain”––without colonial overtones. Poland was not like Imperial Britain or Germany, or tsarist Russia: it did not have colonies; it was colonized. 9 Ibid. 10 See Andrew Welburn, The Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the Christian Vision (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1991), 43, 95, 104–7, 174–80, 194–195. See Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 119–41. 11 Recorded on an uncatalogued audiotape dated 22 July 2002, held in the ZAR archive, Grotowski Institute, Wrocław. 12 Recorded in 2008 on uncatalogued videocassettes marked “Georgia,” held in the ZAR archive. The group that was formed in 2006, which created Caesarian Section and Anhelli and has performed the triptych ever since, consists of (with two additions who did not create the two works cited): Nini Julia Bang, Ditte Berkeley, Przemysław Błaszczak, Tomasz Bojarski, Emma Bonnici (2009), Alessandro Curti (2009), Jean-François Favreau, Jarosław Fret, Aleksandra Kotejka, Kamila Klamut, Matej Matejka, Ewa Pasikowska and Tomasz Wierzbowski. 13 Fret indicates as much in discussion with the author, 3 July 2010. 14 The project, leading to the performance piece Armine, Sister, was in process for at least 3 years (here not counting Fret’s sustained interest in Armenian liturgy). It entailed various expeditions to Istanbul and Anatolia in Turkey (the last, involving most of the company, in July 2012), to which intensive work with mastersingers of two Armenian churches in Istanbul was absolutely central. Several workshops, public study days and concert presentations were integral to the process, notably in the program “voicEncounters” at the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław in November 2012. They were followed by a series of meetings in Warsaw in March 2013 dedicated to the Armenian genocide, together with a concert by ZAR. Other

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15

16 17 18 19

events prepared the premiere of Armine, Sister in November 2013 in Wrocław as part of a broader program showcasing Armenian and Iranian musicians, a major photographic exhibition, flms, seminars and a conference. The whole project/ enterprise was envisaged as a celebration of the tenth anniversary of Teatr ZAR. Thereafter, Armine, Sister toured internationally. Michael Billington, “Gospels of Childhood,” Guardian, 27 September 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/sep/27/gospels-of-childhood-review. Performances were at St Giles Church and the Barbican Pit, hosted by the Barbican Theatre Centre in London. For a fne study of earlier, pre-2008 performances of Gospels of Childhood in Brzezinka, see Dariusz Kosiński, “Songs from Beyond the Dark,” Performance Research 13, no. 2 ( June 2008): 60–75. Fret, in discussion with the author, 3 July 2010. Lyn Gardner, “Caesarian Section: Essays on Suicide—Review,” Guardian, 16 August 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/aug/16/caesarian -section-edinburgh-festival-review. Ibid. Jarosław Fret, in discussion with the author, 10 December 2010.

Bibliography Billington, Michael. “Gospels of Childhood.” Guardian, 27 September 2009. https:// www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/sep/27/gospels-of-childhood-review. Davies, Norman. God’s Playground: 1795 to the Present. Vol. 2 of A History of Poland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981. Gardner, Lynn. “Caesarian Section: Essays on Suicide—Review.” Guardian, 16 August 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/aug/16/caesarian-section -edinburgh-festival-review. Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. Innes, Christopher, and Maria Shevtsova. “Directors, Collaboration and Improvisation.” Chap. 7 in The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing, 218–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Kosiński, Dariusz. “Songs from Beyond the Dark.” Performance Research 13, no. 2 ( June 2008): 60–75. Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Pascal, Blaise. Pensées [Thoughts]. Paris: Garnier, 1960. Schechner, Richard, and Lisa Wolford, eds. The Grotowski Sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Shevtsova, Maria. “Teatr ZAR’s Journeys of the Spirit.” New Theatre Quarterly 29, no. 2 (May, 2013): 170–84. Segel, Harold B. Polish Romantic Drama. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997. Welburn, Andrew. The Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the Christian Vision. Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1991.

hts reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

CODA Meditation on not-knowing Christel Weiler

Nuisance The invitation to write an essay about spirituality in performance has been haunting me for quite some time now, or one could also say that this ofer felt a bit like a burden. I thought: I do not know what to write, where to start; it is all too complex, too intricate. Whether there is a spiritual dimension either in a production process or in a performance depends on the viewer’s gaze, on the perception of the spectator. So how could I write about this topic in a way that would not be too personal, too intimate, too deeply connected to my private life and still emerge from real life experience, from (my) experience of life, as this is where spirituality is practiced? And—uncovering a bit of my narcissistic corner—what would be the use of the essay anyhow? Nobody would miss it. My name would simply not be on the list, not be part of the index. So better let go, savor everyday life and not struggle with this nuisance. We all know these situations well: moments of confusion, of doubt, of not knowing what to do, trying to fnd excuses and justifcations. They are not welcome or pleasant but rather irritating, something we try to avoid in general. They are not a problem of insufcient research, of lack of knowledge of literature, but describe a deeper condition that can accompany our worldviews and our basic motivation to work. Yet one day, while doing a morning meditation—trying to be exclusively focused on breathing and let every thought vanish into thin air like a cloud— one thought persistently stayed. As if a troublemaker was whispering in my ear: start from scratch, write about not-knowing, think about the void, which— from time to time—goes along with writing and not only with writing but seems to become an all-embracing topic in these times of pandemic uncertainty. DOI: 10.4324/9781003372837-14

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This experience, too, seems to be an everyday occurrence. All of a sudden, we “know.” As if all we had to do was wait for an answer. As if it only takes patience to fnally be back on solid ground. From a theoretical perspective, we know that the knowledge we acquire is always preceded by these moments of not-knowing, by moments of ignorance.1 On the level of experience, however, this relationship between knowing and not-knowing does not only show itself in a multiplicity of ways; we can also conceive of it as a threatening tension or as a generative force. It is the latter that primarily interests me.

Make friends With this somewhat banal starting point—the personal hesitation and ambivalence—it seems that not-knowing presently decisively characterizes our relationships with the world around us on many levels: we don’t know what this viral pandemic will bring, neither with regard to economic issues nor to questions of social coexistence; we don’t know how climate change will shape our future lives, whether there will be droughts or foods, how many species will survive, how many climate refugees will have to leave their homes; we, at least in Germany, are no longer sure that social peace will be maintained and that the ice in the Arctic will actually last forever. Many of our former certainties have turned out to be illusions or at least vain hopes. We have to make decisions which former generations never thought about. And so far nobody knows the answers. One could argue that the future has been and always will be open and insecure. This is certainly true. Yet all these pressing questions are on the minds of politicians, scientists and economists at this moment in time and to a great extent on a global level. Not-knowing seems to be a crucial topic in many parts of the world. So perhaps this is the time to make friends with not-knowing on a more general level, time to befriend the unknown and take a closer look at what it means when we say: I don’t know.

Latency Of course, we all “know.” We know how to ride a bike, prepare breakfast, use our computer, make a phone call, book a fight, write an email, address a friend, organize a birthday party, etc. This kind of practical knowledge enables us to exist in everyday life, even if it is questioned from time to time and has to be readjusted. Every new update, program or app confronts us with this feeling of “not knowing how to do.” As mentioned above: my primary interest is directed at this intermediate area, this latency between knowing and not-knowing. Not-knowing is a state of being which is neither good nor bad. Rather, it is a latency in time; it could also be seen as a pausing, as a stopping of habits—be it in acting or in speaking.

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This in turn means that it can also be brought about, that it can be intentionally generated and induced. It could mean tentatively distancing yourself from what you are supposed to know and creating space for knowing as if you had not known before. For Zen practitioners, in particular, these considerations are anything but new. Zen practitioners are experts of not-knowing. Let me take a brief look at some of their basic assumptions about not-knowing to clarify my point.

Beginner’s mind In the numerous essays and refections written by Zen Buddhist practitioners and teachers on the topic of “not-knowing,” there is a repeated reference to one book, which itself is not taken as “new” and outstanding but conceived of as continuation of tried and tested old knowledge: Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.2 The book gathers a series of lectures recorded and transcribed by his students. These lectures were intended as an inspiration and impulse for practice, i.e. as suggestions for shaping a life lived in the spirit of Zen. Suzuki did not miss an opportunity to emphasize that the purpose of his lectures is “to give you some idea of our way,” not for you to talk about it, but instead to practice it. 3 Suzuki speaks less of “not-knowing” but uses the term “beginner’s mind” to indicate that his lectures on the spirit of Zen are not about a theoretical model or concept, but rather about a fundamental attitude toward oneself and the world we live. A beginner’s mind aims to understand the world as a miracle, not to stop with the questions that make up our existence. In other words, it is about a spiritual practice that approaches the meaning of life with a fundamental openness and sense of curiosity. This also includes one’s own actions in everyday life. To practice with a “beginner’s mind” in this comprehensive sense means to live one’s life with a consciousness that is awake moment by moment, as if everything is experienced for the frst time. This is an extremely challenging endeavor indeed. Yet there are countless examples from everyday life that make it possible to train this beginner’s mind. And very likely you will never reach the end in this process. Be it listening to someone,4 trying something out, preparing a dish, writing something, asking “who am I,” “what is this”—it should all be done as if it were the frst time. This requires an open mind, or in Suzuki’s words: an empty mind. He says: “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” In his prologue to Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind he additionally suggests: “You should not say: ‘I know what Zen is’ or ‘I have attained enlightenment.’ This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.”5

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It would be a great misunderstanding to think that adopting a beginner’s mind is about irresponsibility or that one is abandoning or denying all one’s knowledge gained through experience. David Loy says that not-knowing “doesn’t imply willful ignorance about what is happening. When a student once asked Chan ( Jp., Zen) Master Yunmen what the goal of a lifetime of practice is, he replied: ‘An appropriate response.’ […] Don’t-know mind is not an excuse to evade responsibility. Rather it involves letting go of our fxed ideas about the world, including our expectations.”6

Defciency It is not surprising that there are a considerable number of essays in Zen literature devoted to the question of how and where the beginner’s mind fnds a practice feld. We must not expect there to be a strict self-contained theory that explains what a beginner’s mind is all about. Rather, we are called on to look for it wherever we require a fresh view or where fnding an answer is not easy. Stephen Batchelor puts it like this: Not knowing is necessarily the fip side of questioning. When we ask a question, we are implicitly acknowledging, “I do not know what this is.” If we are really serious about wanting to understand something, that means that we do not know it: We are agnostic about it. We seek therefore to pursue it to gain a deeper insight. […] The kind of not-knowing I’m speaking of is what you cultivate through asking almost obsessively “What is this?” to the point where you do not even need the words anymore.7 Most of our daily activities take place as a routine; we do not pay special attention to them. Rather, we rely on having knowledge at our disposal that enables us to act efciently and economically, to perceive our environment in such a way that it appears to us as a familiar frame that does not require special attention. This also refers to situations in which we do not know; we then know where to go for help, where and how to compensate for this “defciency.” Not knowing as such—so it seems—is not highly appreciated. We do not have to all become Zen Buddhist, but if we heed—just for fun, out of curiosity—the call to understand everyday life as a training ground for a beginner’s mind, there is almost no area that is excluded. To be successful, we would ideally fnd a way that David Loy describes as follows: “‘Not knowing’ is not a fxed position but a way of engaging with the world just as it is, right here and now. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, but we do the best we can according to what we can see. We remain ready to change what we are doing as the situation, or our view of the situation, changes.”8 This also implies

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that we are not attached to a particular result. Everything could also be diferent, become diferent, from what we imagined. To make it clear once again: My aim is to investigate moments of “notknowing,” to look at them more closely in their various manifestations. That they are always linked to “knowledge” is self-evident. It is the shifting of perspectives that is important to me. In a nutshell: assumptions and the fact that something seems plausible to us are expressions of not-knowing. We need to ask ourselves, what do we really know? The same applies to concepts that we fnd reliable. Why are we so sure? Finally, it might be interesting to pay attention to the gap that opens between perception and naming. Numerous examples of the latter can be found in the performing arts—from Cage to Ivana Müller.9

Training grounds As a theater scholar, I am of course particularly interested in exploring the advice that Suzuki so casually mentions: “This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.” This suggests that the work of artists has something in common with the attitude of Zen practitioners, that probably aesthetic and spiritual experience share a resemblance.10 The latter would imply that we as spectators can also enter this feld of practice and train the beginner’s mind—without doing so consciously or perhaps by calling this behavior something else. Let me take a closer look at specifc examples.

Actor training, becoming an artist To say that “all the world’s a stage and men and women merely players” might help to distance ourselves from troublesome everyday issues, but it does not mean that we are all excellent actors—even if contemporary performance art invites its audiences to come on stage and raise their voices. Actor training is not only meant to enable a person to professionally act on stage, i.e. to learn how to respond to the audience, to address the spectator, to know how to use their body and voice, to handle props or instruments and to be part of an ensemble, but—if we conceive of it as a durational process of subjectivation—it could rather be regarded and designed as a place where the virtue of not-knowing can and often does play a crucial role, alongside the acquisition and honing of skills. In a variety of actor training programs, a strong emphasis is put on the demand to “play like a child.”11 Rather than an invitation to be “childish,” this must be seen as a call to unlearn, to disband habits and concepts, and to look at objects, spaces and beings of any kind from a fresh angle. In other words: there is cross-fertilization between being able to play like a child and having a

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special kind of not-knowing. Zenkei Blanche Hartman, one of Suzuki’s early disciples and the frst woman abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, shares the following observation: I was having lunch with Indigo, a small child, at City Center [a Soto Zen practice center in San Francisco]. He saw an object on the table and got very interested in it. He picked it up and started fooling with it: looking at it, putting it in his mouth, and banging on the table with it—just engaging with it without any previous idea of what it was. For Indigo, it was just an interesting thing, and it was a delight to him to see what he could do with this thing. You and I would see it and say, “It’s a spoon. It sits there and you use it for soup.” It doesn’t have all the possibilities that he fnds in it. Watching Indigo, you can see the innocence of “What is it?”12 There is a similarity between this childlike play and what actors do in rehearsals: play with possibilities.13 The child does not know yet and the actors voluntarily behave as if they do not know. One could also say: they want to know more, they want to encounter something hitherto unknown. But this wanting includes temporarily abandoning preconceived notions of what it/he/she “is” and instead acting with curiosity to explore the potential of a mutual relationship. They are asking themselves: what is it? Thus, they are trying to experience what is beyond the known. With the help of intuition and an active imagination, things and people can be transformed. The spoon can become a drumstick, a mirror, an instrument for writing, a treasure, etc. The actor suddenly shows her birdlike movements or produces strange sounds. Very often in rehearsals there are surprising moments when something comes to light that was not known before. Of course, not-knowing and playful engagement with the environment is not the only “skill” actors learn at drama school. It might go hand in hand with another principle, another imperative: to let go of fxed concepts of who they think they are, in other words—an all too rigid and infexible concept of one’s identity. To play a variety of diferent roles, to transform into all kinds of characters, one needs to take a broad view regarding one’s potential; it requires accepting the dark side of a character in a play as having equal rights. This describes another central point valid for spiritual development and for becoming an actor: letting go of one’s ego in order to reach a diferent state of consciousness, to surrender to the present moment, to be receptive and with an empty mind, without rigidly fxed concepts about how things, people or actions should be, but willing to see things and especially people as they are at the very moment.

Being spectators This above-mentioned open-mindedness also applies to the audience. As spectators, we might ask ourselves: What is he/she going to do next? Ah, that’s

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it! And now? Interesting, this completely unexpected turn of events! Oh no, no, please … and so on and so forth. It is only in moments of real risk, when a sudden gap opens and the spectator truly does not know what will happen next that the spectator, too, will be present with eyes and ears wide open. Otherwise, she would say: yes, yes, yes, I know, I know … How boring! All the performing arts—be it theater, dance or a concert—are temporal arts, i.e. they involve the spectator and listener in a process of perception that is, in a certain sense, unique. Of course, we know how to behave in a situation of watching and listening. We also bring with us knowledge that has been imparted to us through program booklets, narratives, possibly reviews and former theater visits. All this means that we are already encountering what is unfolding on stage with a lot of baggage. And that is exactly the problem. All this “knowledge” we bring with us already constellates and colors our perception. We encounter the performance not with an open mind but with assumptions, conjectures and expectations, which ultimately end up in judgments and opinions. When it comes to theater, we could rightly say that one of its special features is that it challenges our expectations and questions apparent knowledge that is linked to them, allowing us to enter this interstitial space and practice not-knowing in order to gain fresh insight. How often do we hear someone say after a performance: “That was not Uncle Vanya/Hamlet/Medea, etc.; this has nothing to do with theater, the stage design could have been better, more modern, the make-up is not adequate; this is typical for SheShePop, Robert Wilson, modern dance, etc.,” as if people know the correct and adequate way to stage a drama, to create costumes and sets, to address the problem presented! Judgement, prejudice and alleged knowledge ultimately go hand in hand. Be it the perception of a music, dance or theater event on stage, it requires us as scholars and spectators to immerse ourselves and at the same time remain aware of what is going on before our very eyes, in our ears and our minds. Immersing ourselves means following the fow of events and recognizing that at the same time an inner theater is taking place: a theater of thoughts, feelings, judgments. The moment the inner theater pushes itself to the fore and takes center stage, we start missing what is happening before our eyes. To practice not-knowing, the inner theater must remain in the background, the discursive mind must step back so that we “become more spacious, more aware of our own reactivity, and more open to the perspectives of others” and thus reach a “not-knowing state of mind,” as described by David Loy. With regard to theater, one could almost say that this is its most noble goal: to give us the opportunity to repeatedly practice a new way of looking, to perceive the world in a new way again and again. To give an—almost historical—example: encountering the frst works of the celebrated theater artist Robert Wilson in the early 1980s—nobody in these educated audiences back then knew how to cope with these performances; nobody

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had seen anything like it before. There was a lot of fascination due to the subtle images on stage, the slowness of the actor’s movement, the light and colors, a lot of amazement because of fying suitcases and voices coming from behind the spectators while the actor on stage stayed silent. The critics did not know what it was all about, so they spoke of a “mystery,” of “enigmatic images.” They had to admit that Wilson had bafed them, had hit a blind spot. Their rehearsed vocabulary was no longer accurate to describe what they had experienced. Clearly, the artist had made the audience experience something hitherto unknown. Within the 2 hours of the performance, the way they conceived of theater had lost its validity. A new language, a diferent approach seemed essential. Spectators, critics and scholars alike had to acknowledge their not-knowing in order to face this challenge and create something new alongside Robert Wilson.

Who am I? Let go of ego Here, at the very latest, it becomes necessary to pause for a moment and ask: what does it mean to let go of one’s ego, what does it mean to see things and people as they are? Interestingly, we can again fnd a provisional answer by looking at what happens when we see a performance on stage. In theater, we are used to reading everything as a sign for something else; we are trained to perceive people, objects and phrases as representing something other than as they appear—namely men, women, beings, objects, words. We never see “Hamlet” or “a ghost” but a (human) being to whom we attribute frst just this name and then a special meaning as the events unfold. In so doing, we are following a convention, a learned pattern, which could be changed at any time. Similarly, we could also look at our own “drama,” our concepts, assumptions, stories, tragedies, which shape our ego-sense. If we could see ourselves as “players” in the aforementioned sense, who are not identical with their roles and stories, we could have—at least to a certain extent—a chance to interpret them diferently. We can see here that it comes to an intricate kind of entanglement, an interweaving of theatrical and spiritual ways of thinking and speaking. Starting from not-knowing, we go on to abandon fxed concepts of self and ego to learn that everything is ephemeral and transitory, that there is nothing eternal but that everything is always in a process of becoming, our selves included. And suddenly it is hard to know whether we are talking about theater and performance or a possible spiritual dimension of life. Indeed, both have a lot in common, and share a number of issues. Nevertheless, there are some fundamental diferences.

Cultivating the mind Art, especially theater conceived as such, is often expected to ofer fresh perspectives, to make us see the world from an unusual point of view, to

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question our beliefs and assumptions, to widen our horizons. Everybody who loves theater would, without doubt, agree that this has happened to him/her more than once. At the same time, all these experiences, all these fresh views—except maybe one or two rare examples—are without a greater, long-lasting impact. We might have said: “Ah, I did not know that; maybe I am wrong; yes, this could also be possible; well, I have to think about that; wow, what a surprise!” But this most probably would not have had larger consequences with regard to our overall way of living. We might have absorbed new knowledge, learned to accept our errors or gotten used to the darker side of life—but all that happens by chance, in the course of living our daily life and—maybe—with the support of the arts, of theater and performance. As scholars, we learned at best to cherish an attitude of not-knowing, to develop an open mind as a kind of methodological tool to be successfully applied to our research. Un-knowingly, we thus got a glimpse of what could be an additional dimension of theater: that we could learn how to not know on a broader level. But just the way it is with theater—this proves to be a feeting matter and we hardly think about what it does to us in the long run. Can we still say like a beginner: I don’t know what theater is? Are we ready to meet our loved ones, our neighbors, the woman sitting next to us in the subway with a beginner’s mind? Walking a spiritual path, as a Zen Buddhist does, for example, aims at a very special goal. It comprises being in the world comprehensively and means—with regard to not-knowing and a series of other virtues—to consciously cultivate being in the world and with others at every moment of your life. The priority is not to become a better person or a better spectator and improve your skills and techniques, but to get to know yourself and what is happening around you in order to free yourself from concepts and knowledge, to move beyond them and nevertheless respond appropriately. Spiritually cultivating the mind to reach this kind of awakening is seen as a lifelong enterprise, as a constant exercise, which does not exclude partial felds of life. This enterprise does not have anything to do with experiencing the self but rather with the experience that a self as such does not exist. It conceives yourself as an object to be transformed by time and ceaseless efort. In doing so, not-knowing is only one, albeit critical, virtue to be developed and at the same time it is the ultimate goal. There is a wonderfully telling Zen anecdote of a scholar who came to see a Zen master for advice. The scholar was full of knowledge and opinions, and he interrupted the master to express his own point of view about this and that. Finally, the Zen master started to serve tea and flled the scholar’s cup, then kept pouring and pouring. “Stop! The cup is full,” said the guest. “Yes,” said the master, “you are like this cup. I can’t put anything in. Before I can teach you, you will have to empty yourself.”

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On top of it Of course, we want and need to know. Knowledge means orientation, to be in a position of control, to feel secure, to be able to act and talk and write, to be on safe grounds—there are many positive aspects which make knowing/knowledge a most important and vital condition for our daily life. Not-knowing, however, might be associated with shame, feeling stupid and lacking confdence, with imperfection, sufering from misconceptions, showing weakness, being blind, losing control, taking a foolish risk, being vulnerable … We are living in strange times. A virus is haunting the globe, climate change is threatening life on earth, the Russian army has invaded Ukraine and we do not know what the future will bring. The thought and feeling that we do not know, that in these difcult times we are being confronted with the limits of our beliefs, intentions, assumptions, certainties and willful actions, makes me think that “not-knowing” is not only in the air but determines our lives. I have been more than willing to start here. It may have been an appropriate, albeit limited, response on my part. On a broader level, there may be an urgent need to let go of accumulating useless knowledge and instead try to use our senses in order to fully understand what is going on around us. The knowledge we need for this cannot yet be found in books. Perhaps we should practice the skills we have acquired as spectators in the theater and understand that we are part of a performance that requires us to look closely, listen carefully and, at least for a few moments, push what we think we know into the background. Perhaps we should see ourselves as actors in a rehearsal and, with an open mind, allow several possibilities to shape the scene. Whether that will save us is another story.

Notes 1 See William Franke, “Learned Ignorance: The Apophatic Tradition of Cultivating the Virtue of Unknowing,” in Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, ed. Matthias Gross and Linsey McGoey (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 26–35, last accessed 24 February 2022. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324 /9781315867762.ch3. 2 Zen teachings on not-Knowing go back to the ffth and sixth century CE. See Domyo, “The Practice of Not-Knowing: Relief, Intimacy, and Ground for Efective Action,” Zen Studies Podcast, 28 September 2017. https://zenstudiespodcast.com/not-knowing/. 3 See Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (New York: Weatherhill, 1995), 90. 4 Ibid., 87: “When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is.” 5 Ibid., 23. 6 David Loy, “Don’t-Know Mind and the Election of Our Lives,” The Buddhist Review Tricycle, 19 October 2020. https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/dont-know-mind -election/.

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7 Stephen Batchelor, “Freedom Through Not Knowing,” Insight Journal (Winter 2010), last accessed 17 June 2022. https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/freedom-through-not-knowing. 8 David Loy, “Don’t-Know Mind.” 9 For example Ivana Müller, While We Were Holding It Together. http://www.ivanamuller.com/works/while-we-were-holding-it-together/. 10 John Cage would seem to be the most cited example with regard to this. See Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism and the Inner Life of Artists (New York: Penguin Books, 2012). 11 See for example Cassandra Fleming, A Genealogy of the Embodied Theatre Practices of Suzanne Bing and Michael Chekhov: The Use of Play in Actor Training, PhD Thesis, De Montfort University, September 2013. https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2086/9608/Cassandra%20Fleming%20PhD%20Thesis.pdf ?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. 12 Zenkei Blanche Hartman, “The Zen of Not Knowing,” The Buddhist Review Tricycle, 6 January 2022. https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/zen-not-knowing/. 13 This is obviously the case in rehearsals which conceive of themselves as creative processes or co-creations. The situation is diferent when their goal is repeating what has been produced.

Bibliography Batchelor, Stephen. “Freedom Through Not Knowing.” Insight Journal (Winter 2010). Last accessed 17 June 2022. https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/freedom -through-not-knowing. Domyo. “The Practice of Not-Knowing: Relief, Intimacy, and Ground for Efective Action.” Zen Studies Podcast, 28 September 2017. https://zenstudiespodcast.com/not -knowing/. Fleming, Cassandra. A Genealogy of the Embodied Theatre Practices of Suzanne Bing and Michael Chekhov: The Use of Play in Actor Training, PhD Thesis, De Montfort University, September 2013. https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2086/9608 /Cassandra%20Fleming%20PhD%20Thesis.pdf ?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Franke, William. “Learned Ignorance: The Apophatic Tradition of Cultivating the Virtue of Unknowing.” In Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, edited by Matthias Gross, and Linsey McGoey, 26–35. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Last accessed 24 February 2022. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324 /9781315867762.ch3. Hartman, Zenkei, Blanche. “The Zen of Not Knowing.” The Buddhist Review Tricycle, 6 January 2022. https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/zen-not-knowing/. Larson, Kay. Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism and the Inner Life of Artists. New York: Penguin Books, 2012. Loy, David. “Don’t-Know Mind and the Election of Our Lives.” The Buddhist Review Tricycle, 19 October 2020. https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/dont-know-mind -election/. Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. New York: Weatherhill, 1995.

INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate fgures, and references following “n” refer to endnotes. acknowledgments in relations building 39–44; see also relations, building of acting: fexibility role in 92n11; perceptual/sensory awareness for 148; stylized/style 88, 101, 103–4, 113, 115–16, 121; thinking through Daoist philosophy 194–95; treatises on 106–12 actor(s) 92–93n12; aesthetic knowledge of 104, 111; conversations with 183– 93; defned 178; embodied knowledge 101–6, 114; emotions of character in 107, 111; getting into characters 151; holy 203; Kaṭṭaikkūttu 79, 82; loosed self of 190; need of afective sensibility 149; psychophysical training 153; solo 47; training of 21, 26, 47, 150, 183, 185–86, 193–94, 223–24 aesthetic knowledge 101–22; actor 101– 6; embodied 25; generation through emotions 106–12; globalization 117; interweaving kunqu aesthetics with kabuki 112–14; interweaving various Asian performance traditions 114–17; treatises on art of acting 106–12 afective knowledge 150–53 Ahmed, S. 172; Queer Phenomenology 167 Aki Studio 40, 51 Alfred, T. 54n39

Allen, C.: Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies 38–39 Anderson, B. 69 anger 88; defned 108; due to racist practice 18; expressed in N āṭya śāstra 111; in facial expressions 111; and sexual desire in actors 94n23; types 108; see also emotion(s) Anglo-American 179, 183, 194 Anhelli: The Calling 205–6, 209–10, 213–14, 216, 217n12 The Archive and the Repertoire (Taylor) 32n85 Armenia: knowledge through expeditions 206–8; liturgy 208, 217n14 artist(s): becoming an 223–24; challenges faced in interepistemic research 7; Indigenous 8, 10, 52n7; interweaving dance forms 131, 133; partnership with other 132; in postmigrant theater culture 19; rules followed by 135; spectators and 21, 23, 26; strategies for virtual reality and video 187 Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Chen) 3 attentive listening 151, 152 Auführung see performances

232 Index

Austin, J. L. 45, 182 autopoietic feedback loop 14 The Bacchae (Terzopoulos) 25, 101, 102, 104, 121 Bakhtin, M. 44 Bala, H. 59 Ballhaus Naunynstraße 19 Barba, E. 184 Barthes, R.: A Lover’s Discourse 128–29 Beckett, S.: Footfalls 151; Ohio Impromptu 151 Befndlichkeit (Heidegger) 152 beginner’s mind 221–23, 227 The Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the Christian Vision (Welburn) 206 Behar, R.: The Vulnerable Observer 162 being and unknowing 161–74; disorientation of 167–68; kinesthetic intercorporeity 171; ontology and epistemology of 161; spirituality role in 162 being spectators 224–26; see also spectators being-in-the-world 169, 173–74 Bell, E.: Theories of Performance 30n54, 32n85 Berkeley, D. 214, 216 Berlin: Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 1, 27n1; Bühnenwatch (Stage Watch) 16; Interweaving Performance Cultures 4; lively postmigrant theater scene 19; postmigrant theater scene in 5, 19, 20 Bhabha, H. 163 Bharucha, R. 39 Bhau, S. 59–60 Biagini, M. 205 Billington, M. 210–11 Błaszczak, P. 214 Bliese, J. 31–32n63 body: control exercises 137, 139; experiences, disorientation as 167–68; techniques 25, 102–3, 112, 114 Boenisch, P. M. 19 Bolles, D. 196n5 Bourdieu, P. 129 Bral, G. 205 breath 83, 211–12, 219; breath-control exercises 150–51; as per Ayurveda 142 Brook, P. 117 Brown, B. 180

Browning, B. 165 Bühnenwatch (Stage Watch) 16–18 Butler, J. 182 Byrd, J. 52n5 Caesarian Section: Essays on Suicide 205, 209, 214–16, 217n12 Cage, J. 203 Canada 37, 39–40, 44 capoeira 161–63, 165; hip-hop and 169; history of 168; tango and 169–70, 172, 174 capoeiristas 165, 169 Cara, A. 166 Carvalho, W. 19 Cavarero, A. 151 Çelik, N. 19 Cetina, K. K. 20–21, 28n13, 31n71 Chen, K.-H. 3 Chiplunkar, V. 60, 61, 67, 71 Chomdhavat, P. 115 choreographers 26, 127–30, 137, 190 Chuang Tzu 178 Cinthio, G. 44 Cleary, T.: Taoist Classics 196n4 collective emotions 17; see also emotions Corporeal Generosity (Diprose) 173 creative structures 8, 11 Crenshaw, K. 197n21 Cronin, B. 150 culture/cultural: diferences 6, 134, 170, 211; as epistemic cultures 6–7, 18–23; Indigenous 46, 51, 52n6; piaoyou (ticket friends) 15–16, 18; see also interweaving performance cultures; performance cultures Curreen, A. 41 Dallapiccola, A. L. 155n16 Damasio, A. 110 dance: communication through 133; genres 127; Indigenous 11–12; knowledge transmission 130; martial 115; meaning in 127, 129; military 102; spiritual 26; tango-like 215; traditions 131, 134; training 137; viewers 126–35 Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back (Simpson) 42 Daoist philosophy 177–95; conversations with actors 183–93; thinking about acting through 194–95; undiferentiation and diferentiation 180, 181, 192

Index

de la Cadena, M. 10, 30n54 De Marinis, M. 14–15 deep listening see attentive listening Deleuze, G. 195n1 Derrida, J 182 “Dialogue and the Perception of the Other” (Merleau-Ponty) 173 Dice and Disrobing (Rajagopal) 86–90, 94n26, 94n27 Diprose, R.: Corporeal Generosity 173 Dirty War (1976–1983) 166 Döhler, A. 16 Dostoevsky, F. 203 Drury, L. 29n30 Dunham, K. 130 Edge of the Woods (ceremony) 40, 53n23 ego 174, 206, 224, 226 Ekman, P. 110 Elements (Ota) 191 emotions: aesthetic knowledge 106–12; audience 17; collective 17; discourse in 90; feld 31n65; personal 173; in Rajagopal’s dramaturgy 87–88, 94n23; of researchers 31n65 Engel, J. J. 105 epistemic cultures 4–7, 28n13, 31n71; defned 20; mobile 21; performance cultures as 6–8, 18–23 epistemological frameworks 3–4, 67 epistemological perspectives 4–6 Erpulat, N. 19 esoteric tango 166; see also tango Euro-American: epistemologies 7, 13; liberal philosophy 179; philosophy 179; universities or art institutions 2–3 exoteric tango 166; see also tango expeditions: knowledge through 206–8; and musical composition 209–11 export tango 166; see also tango Ferrari, R. 3; Transnational Chinese Theatres 21, 32n82 feld emotion 31n65; see also emotions Footfalls (Beckett) 151–52 Forefathers’ Eve (Mickiewicz) 205–6 Frasca, R. 94n26 Fret, J. 205–7, 211, 217n6, 217n8, 217n14 Gallagher, S.: “Social Kinaesthesia” 171 Gardner, H. 16

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Gardner, L. 215 Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices 204 Geary, D. 54 Geenty, C. 38 George, D. 164 Georgia 217n12; knowledge through expeditions 206–8 Germany 1, 31n68, 166, 220 Gilbert, H. 3–4, 28n15 globalization 23, 117 Gnossienne 3 (Satie) 209 Gómez-Peña, G. 187 Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (MacDonald) 49 Gospels of Childhood 207, 209, 211–13 Gregory, A. 187 Grotowski, J. 46, 136, 203–6, 211, 215, 217n4, 217n6 Grundmann, R. 13–14, 129 habitats of knowledge practice 7–8, 20–23, 28n13 Hairi, K. 115 Hallervorden, D. 31–32n63 Haraway, D. J. 182 Harlem Duet (Sears) 49 Hartman, Z. B. 224 Hay, D.: Ten 126–27, 129, 131 Heidegger, M. 147, 180; Befndlichkeit 152 Hernández, Á. 184–87, 191 Hillje, J. 19 home tango 166 hospitality 39, 41 Hume, D.: Treatise of Human Nature 106 Husserl, E. 180 identity politics 117, 170 I’m Not Rappaport (Gardner) 16 improvisation 48, 162, 165; contact 161, 162, 164, 167–70, 172; etymology of 165; structured 149, 149–50; tacit knowledge 153 Indigenous knowledge production 38–39 infelicitous performative 45 intercultural theater/performance 2–4, 21, 28n17, 31n70, 154n4, 211 interculturalism 3; hospitality in 39; new 4, 28n17; rhizomatic potential of 4, 28n15 intersectionality 180, 197n21 interweaving performance cultures 1–4; difculties of 116; models of 9;

234 Index

relations with habitats of knowledge practice 5; see also performance cultures Iran 26; knowledge through expeditions 206–8 Jeyifo, B. 27n1 Joshi, R. 59 kalarippayattu 26; fghter/warrior 145; practitioner of 149; reality of 144; repositioning of 145; skills of masterteachers 143–44; training in 137–44, 148, 154 Karim, G. A. 115 Karṇa Mōkṣam 92n8 Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu (Rajagopal) 91n1 kathakali 15, 26; choreography in 145; in Kerala 111, 136; senior performers 144; training in 138–44, 154n6 Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam (residential theater school) 79–91; defned 91n3; entry of young women in 87; fexibility in operation of 82, 92n11; historical background of 82; interweaving and knowledge creation at 89, 92n8; masklike makeup 94n23; naming of 91n3; performances 92n7; performers of 80, 82, 90, 94n23, 94n25; practice-based knowledge use in 25, 81–89, 94n24; sacral power of 82–83; susceptibility of vesam 94n25 Kattaikkuttu Young Professionals Company (KYPC) 86–88 Kerala, India 154n2; kalarippayattu (martial art) 136–37; kathakali dancedrama 111, 136; Kerala Kalamandalam (Kerala State School of the Arts) 137 Kermode, F. 47 Khan, A. 64 kinesthetic experiences 171 kinesthetic intercorporeity 171 Klamut, K. 205–7, 215–16 Knoblauch, H. 17 knowing, ways of see ways of knowing Kolesch, D. 17 Koothu (Kumar) 95n31 Kordian (Słowacki) 205 Krishna, T. M. 91n1 kśetriyas (warriors) 66–67 Kumar, S.: Koothu 95n31

Kunte, M. M. 60, 61 kūttāṭi 92–93n12 Landrum, S. 199n47 Langhof, S. 19 Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching 178–79, 181–82, 196n4, 196n14–15, 197n30 Latour, B. 149 lāvaṇī 61, 73 law of analogy 108, 109, 112 Le Guin, U. K. 196n14 Lear (Sen) 106, 114, 116, 117, 120 Levinas, E. 147 Lichtenfels, P. 191 limited physical vocabulary 210–11, 214 listening 141; attentive 151, 152; deep 152; learning afected by 150–53 Listening (Nancy) 151–52 Lo, J. 3–4, 28n15 Loher, D. 16 Looking Out: Perspectives on Dance and Criticism in a Multicultural World 131 A Lover’s Discourse (Barthes) 128–29 Loy, D. 222, 225 MacDonald, A.-M.: Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) 49 Mahābhārata 70, 80, 83, 92n8, 117, 155n14; characters of 94n25 Manning, E. 182; Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy 163–64 Māori 37, 38; cultural texts and practices 39, 40, 45, 48; forms and traditions 47; instruments 47; language 42, 53n38; threat 46; tino rangatiratanga 43; women 50 Marler, T. 47 Mauss, M. 129; “Techniques of the Body” 103 Maxim Gorki Theater (Berlin) 19 McIvor, C. 28n17 meditation on not-knowing 219–28; defciency of 222–23; in difcult times 228; latency between knowing and not-knowing 220–21; making friends 220; mind training 226–27; nuisance 219–20; training 223–26 Mercouri, M. 101 Merleau-Ponty, M. 147, 174; “Dialogue and the Perception of the Other” 173; kinesthetic intercorporeity 171, 173 Mican, H. S. 19 Mickiewicz, A.: Forefathers’ Eve 205–6

Index

Milton, J.: Paradise Lost 70 mind see beginner’s mind mind training 226–27 Mirecka, R. 205 Molik, Z. 205 Moltzen, P. 16–17 Monsalve, J. 185 morph/morphing 179, 190, 192–93, 199n42; self 180–82 Murphy, A. V. 173 music/musical 115; composition 209–11 Nair, G. 137, 142, 146 Nair, R. 137, 140 Namboodiri, M. P. Sankaran 137, 142 Namboodiripad, K. V. 142 Nan, Z. 15–16 Nancy, J.-L.: Listening 151; “Of Being Singular Plural” 173 Nā rada 70 native performance culture 8, 9, 11 N āṭyaśāstra 105–7, 110–19 Nāya ṉ ar, C. 92n8 new interculturalism 4, 28n17 Nichols, M. 187 not-knowing see meditation on not-knowing Novella, C. 191 O’Connor, K. 190–93 Odom, G. 28n12 “Of Being Singular Plural” (Nancy) 173 O’Hanlon, R. 64 Ohio Impromptu (Beckett) 151 Ota, S.: Elements 191 Othello (Shakespeare) 37, 44–46, 49–50 Paine, T.: Rights of Man 63 Paradise Lost (Milton) 70 Paratheater 203–4 Pascal, B. 204; Pensées 202 Patil, K. 59, 59, 61, 67 Paulus, D. 187 Pensées (Pascal) 202 The Peony Pavilion 119 Performance (Taylor) 32n85 performance cultures 6–7; as epistemic cultures 18–23; jingju 16; studied as epistemic cultures 8 performance-poetic forms 62–68 performativity 179, 195 performing arts 5, 13, 103, 143, 223, 225 Phaedrus (Plato) 182, 198n33

235

Phandi, A. 60 Phule, J. 60–65, 67 Phule, S. 64 Piazzolla, A. 209 Picado, M. 152 Pilpani, E. 207–8 Plains Cree Round Dance 11–12 Plato: Phaedrus 182, 198n33 Politics of Practice: A Rhetoric of Performativity (Hunter) 197n24, 198n34 positional knowledge see relational knowledge postmigrant theater 5, 19–20 povāḍā 58–74, 59; history 60–68; performance and 68–73; performancepoetic forms 62–68; theories 60–61 Povāḍā : Chatrapatī Śivājīrāje Bhoṃsale Yāñcā 62 pōwhiri 40–41, 45, 53n24 prayoga 82, 89, 92n9 pre-movement bodily orientation 163 Qihu, J. 114, 115 Qing dynasty 15 queer 166–67; milongas 166; tango 5, 162, 166, 169–70 Queer Phenomenology (Ahmed) 167 race/racism 18, 31–32n63, 49–50, 66, 190 R ājā Śivājī 68 Rajagopal, P. 79, 80, 84, 94n23; Dice and Disrobing 86–90, 94n26, 94n27; Karnatic Meets Kattaikkuttu 91n1 Ramayana 70, 155n14 Ranade, M. G.: Rise of the Maratha Power 63 reductionism 10 Rēhia, T. 38, 39, 41 relational accountability 38 relational aesthetics 116 relational knowledge 136–53; afective knowledge 150–53; in embodied practices 138; learning afected by listening and touching words 150–53; searching for 136–37; through interweaving 144–50; training in kalarippayattu 138–42; training in kathakali 138–44 relations, building of 37–52; acknowledgments and 39–44; adapting to Shakespeare 44–51; guests and 39–44; Indigenous knowledge

236 Index

production 38–39; trans-indigeneity 38–39; welcomes and 39–44 Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy (Manning) 163–64 repertoire 12, 23, 61, 92n8, 207 rest 180, 190, 195, 197n24 Richards, T. 203 Rights of Man (Paine) 63 Rio, K. 115 Rise of the Maratha Power (Ranade) 63 Robinson, D. 43 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) 197n22 RUTAS Festival 38, 40, 44, 50

Staniewski, W. 204, 206 Stanislavski, K. 183, 199n40, 208 Starr, F. F. 8–9, 11, 29n39; on actors/ performers 12; on moving away from known 10; on performing songs and dances 12 state sovereignty 54n39 Stehr, N. 13–14, 129 Stodulka, T. 31n65 Suzuki, S.: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind 221–22 Suzuki, T. 8, 102, 104; Trojan Women 102–3

Sapir, E. 95n37 Satie, E.: Gnossienne 3 209 Schechner, R. 12 Schlosspark Theater 31–32n63 Scott, A. C. 146–47 Sears, D.: Harlem Duet 49 Sen, O. K.: Lear 106, 114, 116, 117, 120 Senda, A. 103 Shakespeare, W.: adapting to 44–51; Othello 37, 44–46, 49–50; Romeo and Juliet 197n22 Shanghai Theatre Academy 149 Sherif, C. M. 146 Shivaji (King) 58, 59, 62–64 Siegel, M. 161 Sills, P. 183, 187–88, 199n45 Simpson, L. B. 51, 53n26; Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back 42 singularity 178, 180, 195n1 Śivājīcā Povāḍā 65, 67 The Slaying of Afzal Khan (Ajnānadāsa) 64 Słowacki, J. 214; Kordian 205 Smith, L. T. 43 Smith, N. S. 165 “Social Kinaesthesia” (Gallagher) 171 SolOthello (Taylor) 38–41, 46, 47, 50–51, 52n7 Song of the Goat 204–5 Sousa Santos, B. de 28–29n21 spectators 109, 115–16, 226, 228; aesthetic knowledge in 105, 118, 122; being 224–26; expert 16; liminal state 25; perceptions of 18, 120; regeneration 5; rural 87 spiritual knowing 162 spirituality 162, 182, 219 Spolin, V. 188, 199n46 stage shows 145

tacit knowledge 89, 153 Tamasaburō, B. 106, 114, 119 Tamilarasi, S. 86, 88–89, 95n31 tango 166; capoeira and 174; queer 5, 162, 166, 169–70 Tango Argentino 166 Tao Te Ching (Lao) 178–79, 181–82, 196n4, 196n14–15, 197n30 Taoist Classics (Cleary) 196n4 Taranaki 46, 55n66 Taylor, D. 12, 13; The Archive and the Repertoire 32n85; Performance 32n85 Taylor, R. 47–49; SolOthello 38–41, 46, 47, 50–51, 52n7 Teatr ZAR (song theater) 202–16; breath 211–12; Caesarian Section 214–16; expeditions and musical composition 209–11; knowledge through expeditions 206–8; movement 214–16; sound and counterpoint 212–14 techniques of the body 129 “Techniques of the Body” (Mauss) 103 Ten (Hay) 126–27, 129, 131 terra nullius 37, 52n2 terukkuttu (street theater) 92–93n12; see also Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam (residential theater school) Terzopoulos, T. 101–4; The Bacchae 25, 101, 102, 104, 121 Thalheimer, M. 16 Theatre and Interculturalism (Knowles) 3 Theatre of Sources 203 theatrical competence 14 theatrical fction 15 theatrical representation 15 Theories of Performance (Bell) 30n54, 32n85 Thompson, E. 147 Thompson, J. 95n33

Index

Thorne, R. 47, 49 Tibetan Buddhist 156n31 Todres, L. 136 touching words 150–53 trans-indigeneity 38–39, 52n7 Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies (Allen) 38–39 transmotion 51 Transnational Chinese Theatres (Ferrari) 21, 32n82 Treatise of Human Nature (Hume) 106 Treaty 13 (1805) 40 Trojan Women (Tadashi) 102–3 Tukiwaho, T. 40, 41, 44 twice-behaved behavior 12 Umewaka, N. 114, 115 unknowing see being and unknowing Unschuld (Loher) 16 vernacular cosmopolitanism 163 Verses for Meditation (Ramdas) 71 vēṣam (character) 83–86, 94n25 Veteranyi, A. 214 Vizenor, G. 51 von Neuman, J. 195n1 The Vulnerable Observer (Behar) 162

237

Wakeham, P. 52n18 Waley, A. 196n4 Washington, G. 63 ways of knowing 5–8, 11, 14, 17–18, 23, 28n21, 38, 42, 48 Weber-Pillwax, C. 38 Weiske, A. 166 Welburn, A.: The Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the Christian Vision 206 welcomes in relations building 39–44 Whorf, B. 95n37 Williams, D. 164 Wilson, R. 225–26 Wilson, S. 37 Wood, V. 215 Yi, S. 150 Yu-Beng, L. 115 Zaroulia, M. 28n12 Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Suzuki) 221–22 Zen practitioners 27, 221–23, 227, 228n2 Zibell, J. 183, 186–90, 193, 199n40, 199n47 Zubrzycki, A. 205