Towards the Stillpoint

This workshop is an introduction to the performer’s inner creative process – the awakening of awareness of the physical and psychological centre of energy and presence, the transformation of energy from the daily-life level to a heightened performative, extra-daily level and the circulation of energy and its organization into performance action, through specific intentions and choices. It is based on “Sahrudaya – Theatre of Resonance”, a deeply researched pedagogical process developed by Arka Mukhopadhyay in collaboration with various traditional and contemporary practitioners, that draws equally upon fundamental philosophies of western psychophysical performance practice and age-old Indian traditions of performing arts, music, ritual arts and martial arts.

The Process:
The focus of the work is not to be ‘actors’, i.e. it is not about telling stories by imitating daily life behavior through clichéd stage mannerism, vocal inflections, and modulations. It is not about learning formal dance technique. First and foremost, it is about organicity, i.e. a lack of inhibitions, of psychological blockages. It is a state of pure presence, i.e. stillness, a sense of inner silence, grounding, openness, responsiveness, a lack of self-consciousness. It is about surrendering completely to the moment, to space, to the other human beings in that space, of communicating purely through the impulses of the body, not mental concepts and ideas, not saying ‘no’. It is about finding a quality of honesty and truth, spontaneity, and precision, deep, inner playfulness, a quality of awakening and aliveness.

About Sahrudaya:
Sahrudaya (literally, ‘of one heart’) refers to a performer who is in a state of radiance and grace, resonant with her/ his interior awareness, with the co-creators and with personal space. It is the performer who has the courage to be vulnerable, to be spiritually naked, and to meet other human beings with this vulnerability, without pretense. This is the name chosen for the approach to performance craft developed by Arka Mukhopadhyay, based on over seven years of collaborative research with various artists into Indian performative/ embodied sources (martial arts, song, ritual) as well as organic possibilities of the body and voice.

The basis of the work is the simple, everyday act of breathing, but looked at as a bridge between the inner and the outer world, and the foundation of the rhythmic, awakened body, a body alive to its own creative potential. The work draws upon elements from various forms (Kalaripayattu, Baul praxis, Kootiyattom, Butoh and others), but ultimately focuses on the human body, the organic being, as the source of creation. It challenges the body and the imagination, improving our focus, attention, precision, and presence, opening up a rich, dynamic language of the body and voice, full of a deep, inner life.

The work will include:

The Way of the Warrior – The Awakened Body:
1. Exercises of the breath, eye, and face.
2. Body conditioning and tuning through the ‘dynamics’, a set of exercises based on tension, opposition, and symmetry, designed to give the performer a way of being in space with a heightened perception.
3.Working on the unity of breath, gaze, movement, and gesture.
4. Awakening the rhythmic body through breathing and dynamic movement in space.

How to be the River, the Wind – Impulse and Improvisation:
1. Working on improvisations both through spontaneity and structure; using contact, basic acrobatics and more.
2. Opening up the organic voice by delving deep into the body and the subconscious.
3. Experiencing the bhavas in our bodies through breath, rhythm, and singing, finding expression.
4. Finding intention, precision and flow through movement and song – finding connections with oneself, the partners and space.
5. Working with text through breath, rhythm, and images.
6. Creating solo, duet, and ensemble performance structures – towards a poetry of space.

Philosophy:
More than trying to become ‘actors’ or ‘dancers’, producers of cultural commodities, what we are trying to do in this session is to dive underneath the surface of conscious, everyday reality, where we are forced to wear a thousand masks, and live a thousand lies, taking us far away from the source of our humanity and creativity. Can we go deeper, to a place where buried memories, dreams, and desires are unearthed? Can we go on a journey, as if body and voice were a country with its holy mountains and sacred forests?

Through simple acts – breathing, looking, walking, moving, can we awaken rhythm in our bodies? And through these acts of the body, can we touch something which is higher than us? Can we have the courage to not hide, to be vulnerable, spiritually naked before the human being in front of us?

When we work with words, can they come ‘from the depths of truth?’

More about the Work:

Who the workshop is for, and what shall we be doing in it?
The workshop is for the following kinds of people:
1) Actors with a certain amount of stage experience and possibly training in different theatre techniques/ processes, physical or otherwise, who recognize the body as the center of creation.
2) Trained dancers (classical or contemporary) who also wish to explore dimensions of the voice, expressivity, awareness of the center of energy, movement, or more accurately, to step beyond the formal aesthetic boundaries of dance and seek wider creative possibilities
3) Aspiring actors who want to take up theatre/ performance at a serious, professional level, and are hence interested in imbibing a detailed, precise, technical training that involves a lot of repetition and rigor.
4) Practicing directors/ writers/ dramaturges/ performance makers, who again wish to explore a body-centered approach towards writing for performance or the creative process, rather than starting with a bound script or a purely intellectual concept.
5) Those interested in the healing and self-integrative potentials of performance, though in a broad and not a strict, clinical sense.

What we shall not do in the workshop:
1) Learn dance or movement ‘technique’ or ‘routines’ or ‘sequences’ or ‘choreographies’.
2) Follow a synthetic, additive approach where we acquire a goody-bag of skills and tricks which we can paste together to create performance-products.

What we shall do in the workshop:
1) Work on ‘opening up’ or ‘tuning’ the body – develop an embodied, perceptive presence that is characterized by a quality of listening and watchfulness. This we shall do through specific warm-ups and structured exercises developed over the last few years through original research.
2) Work on how to transform our inner energy from a daily to an extra-daily quality.
3) How to find grounding and an energetic center through specific, repetitive actions, transforming our inner sense of time from ‘normal’ to ‘ritual’ time, revealing the ‘body of ritual’.
4) How to be receptive and responsive. Not to do, but to respond. To not say ‘no’.
5) How to develop a sense of lightness, effortlessness, and flow in our presence, how to work spontaneously yet with precision, to engage rigorously in free play making specific choices at each moment.
6) How to develop an awareness of breath and the oneness of breath-gaze-gesture.
7) How to connect the voice and body – to ‘speak’ and move with the whole body-voice, which becomes a landscape of the imagination.
8) To work with fundamental principles, which apply to any style or genre: proprioception, impulse-intention-action, tension-opposition-symmetry, balance-imbalance, transposition/shift, buoyancy, curvilinearity, spiral lines of force, push-pull, the fluidity of space and how to ‘open it up’ with our bodies.
9) To work on ‘inner actions’ or ‘personal mythologies’, revealing dimensions of the poetic, grotesque and fantastic within us, finding our inner messiahs and monsters.

About the Work-Leader:
Arka Mukhopadhyay is a physical theatre performer and teacher who has been practicing for over twelve years. His performances and workshops have taken place all over India and many other countries. He has also deeply explored many ritual or mystical practices, from Baul songs of Bengal and Sufi Qawwali to Theyyam and other rituals of Kerala to name a few. He has also been an award-winning poet and has written on travel and culture. In his work, he brings together his different experiences of physical, intellectual and spiritual practice to explore the totality of human expression. His most recent solo work, “If It Be Now – Fragments and Impressions of Hamlet”, has been performed to acclaim in several countries, including the IInd International Theatre Festival of Solo Performance, “Solo Tu”, in Spain, in March 2016.

To register, call on: +91-7411568663 or email at: theatreofresonance@gmail.com