by Kathryn Syssoyeva
Roundtable discussion, in development as a proposal for ATHE 2012 (PENDING).
CO-AUTHORED WITH: Kris Salata, Michael Hunter, Rachel Joseph and Kyle Gillette
SUMMARY
This panel investigates institutional dynamics, tensions and shifts encountered while hosting the... more
SUMMARY
This panel investigates institutional dynamics, tensions and shifts encountered while hosting the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in our respective universities (events initiated and organized by Kris Salata, Michael Hunter and Kyle Gillette). We consider interactions of the Workcenter with the university and partner institutions at four levels: administration, faculty, students, and community. Our questions, analysis and documentation examine challenges across a spectrum from institutional structure to student experience. At the heart of our project lies a single question: what are the relational possibilities between art and the university?
PARTICIPANTS
Kyle Gillette, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Trinity University
“Institutional Politics: Shielding the Workcenter”
Rachel Joseph, Instructor of Theatre and English, Trinity University
“Community Reactions: Incorporating San Antonio”
Michael Hunter, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Introduction to Humanities Program, Stanford University
“Institutional Collaborations: Stanford, SF MOMA, and the Performance Art Institute”
Kris Salata, Associate Professor of Theatre, Florida State University
“The Encounter of Apprenticeship and Pedagogy”
Kathryn Syssoyeva, Visiting Assistant Professor of Performance, Florida State University
"...strangely, suddenly, deliciously slanted...": Nurturing and Demonstrating Student Experience
ABSTRACT
In Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics, Shannon Jackson writes: “Like any coordination of human welfare, performance requires an encounter with some very difficult problems that are both formal and institutional.” This panel investigates institutional dynamics, tensions and shifts encountered while hosting the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in our respective universities (events initiated by Professors Salata, Hunter and Gillette). We consider interactions of the Workcenter with the university environment at four levels: administration, faculty, students, and community. Our questions, analysis and documentation examine challenges across a spectrum from institutional structure to student experience. At core, our investigation asks a single question: what are the relational possibilities between art and the university?
The praxis of the Workcenter proposes a form of "public" which insists on intimacy and direct connection as its basic condition. It depends upon slowness, accrual, rigour: both in the group’s work and, proportionally, in our approach to witnessing that work. If one meaningful definition of civic action is nourishing the quality of life in a community, then the meeting between the Workcenter and our institutions - the introduction of the laboratory model, the relational action of the performance, the transcultural interaction - constitutes a deeply civic engagement.
Panel members will briefly present challenges and solutions involved in the Workcenter’s encounter with their institutions and communities, as the prelude to a broader conversation about the university’s potential role in supporting forms of performance that might be compromised by the “interests” of bureaucracies, governments, even rigid communities.
THE WORKCENTER OF PONTADERA
After decades of influential and groundbreaking work, in 1986 Jerzy Grotowski founded his Workcenter in Pontedera, Italy, which eventually became the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. Until his death in 1999, Grotowski worked intensively with Richards and a small group of actors, developing a systematic, continuous line of “performance research.” This research continues today at the Workcenter, under the leadership of Richards and Mario Biagini, and involves both extremities of what Grotowski called "the chain" of performing arts: "Art as vehicle" and "Art as presentation". The distinction between these two poles of performance is that "Art as vehicle" has as its aim the performer’s work on him/herself, with a view towards analysis of the ways in which certain modes and techniques of performance might lead to expansions of individual cognitive and perceptual capacities; while "Art as presentation," is oriented towards the perception of the spectator, with a view towards investigating questions regarding intersubjective communication and relationships.
THE RESIDENCIES
Richards and his Workcenter team engaged with the FSU community over eight days, through an extensive acting workshop, classroom visits, performances of The Living Room, and a conference. The FSU School of Theatre is a home for 400 students and multiple programs: BA, BFA, MA, MS, and Ph.D. Because of this broad range of training and educational focus, the visit by the Workcenter created a perceptional challenge, as their “post-representational performance” is not driven by dramatic text, doesn’t seem to have a plot, invests very little in theatrical illusion, and doesn’t seek the spectator’s engagement in the ways traditional performance might. In addition, the workshop revealed seemingly irreconcilable differences between the modes of work, expectations, and methodologies employed by the host and the visitors.
The workshops and performances in San Antonio took place at Trinity University and were largely attended by the Trinity community. The institutional framework of the visit made the participation of the larger theatre community small yet meaningful. Members of the community that attended the performances were skeptical at the outset, but enthusiastic after witnessing The Living Room. As the large proscenium theatre and black box space traditionally used for theatre productions at Trinity were not right for The Living Room, we utilized a space elsewhere on campus, typically used as a meeting room for faculty and administrators. The Faculty Gold Room's conventional uses intersected with the hospitality and warmth of the Living Room in several significant ways, framing it within the civic life of the university.
In the Bay Area, Stanford’s initial support of the Workcenter’s visit sparked a broader collaboration with SFMOMA and the Performance Art Institute. Together, these institutions were able to support the Open Program of the Workcenter (with a team of 12 people) for a month-long residency, during which performances, workshops, and symposia took place at extremely diverse venues across the Bay Area. In the case of this residency, our focus will shift away from examining encounters directly between the Workcenter and the university, and look instead at how Stanford was able to participate in existing performance communities, as well as to help create a new community: over the course of the month, spectators and local arts professionals returned to participate in multiple performance events, creating a network of support and shared interest that was both based in the particular overlap between, on the one hand, the Workcenter’s traditions and the Open Program’s current explorations (notably the texts of Allen Ginsberg) and the Bay Area’s own social and aesthetic histories.
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