Consciousness,
Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume
1 Number 2, July 2000
_______________________________________________________________
human
mind, the real theatre?
by
john
chris jones
notes while attempting to clarify some
ideas of how theatre and other
performings might be now
(april 1977 and january 1979, revised
1990 and 1995)
NOTE: This paper is a record of thoughts as they
occurred during a performance and afterwards. It is more a poem than a statement
of truth. - the only truth claimed is
that this is what I wrote.
HUMAN MIND.
Gertrude Stein’s phrase [1].
As opposed to what she calls HUMAN
NATURE.
Human mind is present,
she seems to say,
when one is lost, unaware of self,
while attending to what one is doing.
Completely involved.
One is, when acting thus,
not the person known to one’s friends
but in some other mode of being. A mode
I’d call sublime.
As John Cage puts it
(quoting, I imagine, from medieval
mystics)
'I am nowhere’, 'open to divine
influences’
(I can’t find the references now).
Though
this is not at all an other-wordly state
but one of being extra attentive to
one’s context,
while being neglectful of
one’s usual conscious attention to
one’s self-interests,
the state of what Gertrude Stein calls
HUMAN NATURE.
I like very much the implication,
in her odd choice of names for these
well-known states of mind,
that 'human nature',
though it may be fixed more by social
influences than by choice,
is, nevertheless, an optional state,
one we are free to leave, at times,
if we are blessed with the gift of being
able to attend to externals,
and to the spontaneous flow of thought,
to the neglect of social imperatives and
of self-interest.
And obviously there are plenty of
occasions when everyone,
not just the makers of masterpieces,
becomes lost in activity, or in thought,
of some kind.
But perhaps my main reason for choosing
the term human mind
is that I’m thinking of a theatre that
is organised on the assumption
that the play is not what happens on the
stage
but is what happens in the mind of each
person present.
Thus there are as many plays being
performed
as there are people to perceive them.
The scale of the play can thus be
released from the limitations
of realistic portrayal,
by illusion, within the limits of the
cost, time, imagination, etc,
of the players, directors, writers, etc.
The scale of the play
can be at the full extent of all that
can be experienced,
the scale of mind itself,
which I take to be the largest entity
possible.
(Not that it’s an entity, or an it . .
. . . . or?)
As in oriental folk theatres and courtly
theatres,
(Noh, Javanese shadow puppets)
realistic simulation is dropped in
favour of conventions
(shadow of cut-out is person,
dance is an emotion portrayed but not
felt by the dancer)
which are not those of ordinary life
and, by their presence in the playing,
admit the presence of mind,
or more of it than naturalistic realism
allows.
And, unlike oriental theatres but like
many kinds of ‘modern art’,
there is the intention not to impose
meaning
that has been decided in advance by the
artists or the performers.
Instead there is the intention of making
a context
in which it’s possible for each person
to find,
in the
thoughts-aroused-by-the-performance,
vast new distances and spaces of
experience
that are normally out of the reach of
one’s thoughts.
The art, the skill,
in making art-works, or plays, or
whatever, in this way
is partly transferred to the audience
who do ALL the creating and interpreting
that is done
while perceiving.
This is the perceiving, the thing
itself.
But there is a hidden part of the
artistic activity
(which I call composing,
using the word to mean the organising of
context)
which operates at a different scale from
that of audience-mind
(what I’m calling the play).
I see this hidden part as a
so-far-nameless entity
which is being slowly discovered
in the efforts of twentieth-century
experimental artists of all kinds.
It is the composing of contexts,
situations,
in which one is released to experience,
to think, to be, outside the range of
how one is in daily life
(the modern equivalents of grace, or
other religious states,
but shorn of belief in hierarchy?)
What do you think of that, John Milton?
(Question added in 1995.)
To me this is what is behind
such seemingly empty, challenging
phrases
as anti-art, minimal art, the
alienation-effect, the music of silence.
These are, I believe,
all examples of a general wish
among artists
to explore the possibilities of
experience freed from
the single-interpretation
that is usual in conventional (i.e.
hierarchical?) human affairs.
Is that why Gertrude Stein used the term
human nature
for what I’m calling single-meaning?
But this is not meant to be an academic
essay,
in the meanings of words,
it is I hope a practical statement of my
thoughts
about how theatre might be organised
now,
and of how I’d like to attempt it
myself, given the opportunity.
How, in practice, could 'the theatre of
mind’ be realised?
What would it be like?
It’s hard to imagine.
To approach that question I’ll have to
be indirect,
to step back a bit to the source of
these ideas,
to the notes that I’ve been making,
for several years now,
while sitting, often in the dark, in
theatres, cinemas, galleries
and in front of the tv.
These notes are only occasionally in the
form of practical suggestions. More often they are records of the thoughts
aroused by the play, or dance, or mime,
or film, or whatever-it-is,
as I attend to it.
They are sometimes my attempts
to write down fragments of the whole new
world that is being aroused,
in my mind,
by what’s happening in the
performance.
More often, perhaps, they are more
critical than that:
notes of features that irritate, that
grate on me,
and my guesses about why present theatre
etc. is so alienating
in so many of its details.
But there’s no need for me to
anticipate,
I’ll look for some typical notes, in
the dark . . . . . .
Here are some remarks
selected from many more written at a
performance of Hamlet,
in the costumes and language of
traditional Korean acting,
at the Mickery Theatre, Amsterdam, in
April, 1977.
There are additions made in 1990
and I’ve slightly clarified some of
the abbreviations of the original notes:
We wait in darkness with music to see
them motionless.
Each moves hardly at all and hardly
reacts to the others’ actions.
Each action is only to express emotion!
It’s expressed but not ‘sincere’,
so no falsity,
because it’s a 'formal’ expression.
The key to oriental theatre is that it
is emotional
but the expression of it is formalised.
"What to do with my hands?” is
not a possible question
because each holds to a formal pose
while the other speaks,
& switches to a new pose after each
'emotional unit’.
Units can be quite long, like the
fool’s dance, perhaps minutes.
Not glimmer of a real smile on
Hamlet’s face as the others fill in the fool’s dance,
he smiles formally all the time.
Very colourful versions of the clothes
they normally wear in Korea?,
and also some very sombre versions.
So why not do the same in 'audience
theatre'? [2]
Let each bring own clothes
and decorate or embellish them
in the manner of Adam’s silver coat
(Adam’s friend unpicked his worn
jacket
that had grown to fit him so well
and used the pieces as patterns for a
new coat in silver).
Hamlet doesn’t react during
someone’s speech
but his arms are held in
eighteenth-century-like postures.
Is that why such plays are so good,
because of their formalism?
Is it that what is good in plays is
false in life?
Is this a consequent theorem?:
on stage: formal emotion = non-deceit, or truth
in life: formal emotion = deceit, or untruth
But why?
Is it
because of who is communicating with whom, or what?
Hamlet’s hand moves very slowly &
formally to his sword
which he very slowly raises and partly
withdraws from its scabbard
and then hesitatingly slides it back in
and then very slowly lowers it
to accompanying slow chant.
He says nothing.
(This I took to be their way of enacting
'to be or not to be'.)
During this very slow motion
the man performing Hamlet looked
directly in my eyes
(I sat in the front row
and he stood close to the audience on
the same level as ourselves).
I felt as we exchanged glances
that he did not feel himself to be there
‘as Hamlet’
but as himself,
as I am me.
I felt this also as he smiled gently to
the applause that followed.
There were more notes, ending with:
Face drenched in visible sweat is no
obstacle to formal acting.
Grave becomes winding sheet for Ophelia,
who is now in white . . . . no, no . . .
.
.
. . . (oh, I see, the long waving sheets across the stage
are representing the water as she
drowns).
FOOTNOTES:
The paper is from his book 'Notes and Plays', published in 1998 by Paul
Green, at Spectacular Diseases, 83(b) London Road, Peterborough, Cambs. P2
9BS.