Odin 2. Work process, breathing together

This post was added later, backdated to when it was written.
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I have finished the first half of my Residency at Odin. I feel like a hummingbird among whales.

WORK PROCESS

The show the Odin are preparing is devised, ensemble-created. They can only work on it when they are not touring, and they tour nine months of the year.

This is the rehearsal schedule for Andersen's Dream.

Jan 2003
Feb 2003
Mar 2003
Oct 2003
1/2 Dec, on a prototype of the set
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Jan 2004, on the full set
Feb 2004
Mar 2004
May 2004
Aug 2004 - until done
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February 2005 - Performed in Torino, Italy

Andersen's Dream: Iben Nagel Rasmussen & Roberta Carreri

The Grotowski-lineage work begins by seeding the actors, and having them seed themselves, with root texts, paintings, objects, & songs that resonate to the theme without being the theme. For example, in Akropolis Performance Lab's production of Jeanne the Maid about Joan of Arc, the actors were given paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, poems of Rilke, and liturgical prayers of the High Church as seed material. From this the actors create Actions -- sequences of action/text/song for which the actor has invented a completely specific chain of internal meaning, which the director never knows. The director then uses these Actions as source material to montage for the piece.

That is a very crude description.

Andersen's Dream work began at least a year ago. They began with an investigation into the theme of slavery. Each actor had done deep research and begun creating improvisations. Then Eugenio added the theme of Hans Christian Andersen, and had the actors create more improvisations, and direct each other in improvs based on Andersen's tales.

At the point I am joining, the Actions have already been created. The core songs have been composed and learned, although new ones come as needed and old ones fall away. Eugenio has put together a rough framework of the piece, and is now refining. Or that's what I would say. Eugenio says to him it is still dough; he does not even see the piece yet, he is still kneading.


Andersen's Dream: Tage, Torgeir, Iben, Julia, Roberta

BREATHING TOGETHER

It is profound, being surrounded by master actors who are a master group, working with a master director. The whole room breathes together. They can do incredibly precise, dangerous things while remaining soft.

Eugenio says it is against Nature to have a theatre company this old: that most companies break up after about 10 years. "The actors get tired of the director and they leave. Or the director gets tired of the actors and he leaves." He shrugs. "At the Odin," he says, "It is something necessary about the work itself, the frail work, which has kept people here." Even Theatre du Soleil, which is also turning 40 this year, has almost none of its orginal actors. The Odin has stayed small -- 9 actors, 26 company members total -- and survived.

I have not met a group-theatre company yet which can survive without touring and teaching.

Eugenio Barba can do more with this sentient group in one organic day, than I can do in two of my best, deepest weeks. His skill, the actors', and his with theirs together, is so deep that they become truly what Stanislavksi said -- We cannot create, only Nature can create. Our job as theatre-makers is to get soft enough that Nature can create through us. The Odin rehearsal room is as supple and responsive as a wind-kissed river.

Watching these rehearsals is like watching the sea. Dawn emerges, the sun comes, the high day passes, dusk falls, night deepens, stars appear. Everyone works. There is consummate skill and diligence and ethics everywhere... and the piece organically grows itself.

I feel like a child again, lying in the dusty golden haygrass, staring at the clouds, not thinking, listening to birds and the lake, distant voices, bees.

They say, "How do you learn from a zen master?" The answer is, "Watch anything they do." This is true of the Odin actors, director, and staff. It is not remarkable, any more than living at King Arthur's court was remarkable. You polish the armor, feed the dogs, wash off the Table, watch the knights joust, curl up in the stable, and sleep with the hounds. It seems completely ordinary to be living in a theatre in the Danish countryside, where our dining table seats 24, our hall is lined with yellowing posters of Grotowski's theatre -- Dziady, Hamlet, Akropolis, Constant Prince, Apocalypsis, and even a rare and fragile original of the Berliner Ensemble's production of Brecht's ThreePenny Opera.


Posters from Grotowski's Polish Theatre Laboratory

When a visiting theatre comes, we have a sit-down dinner with them before they perform for us -- and we for them, in barter.

We each are responsible for cleaning one part of the theatre. I mention this over and over, because it is the single most transformingly binding force I have encountered. To make a theatre belong to someone, give it to them. Make it their own. Even if it is only the stairs, as I had during Odin Week. Or the library/dining room, as I have now. Every wood floor in this theatre is clean enough to eat off.

It is completely ordinary. Except, of course, that places like this don't exist hardly anywhere in the world.

The big lesson I am absorbing is ethics. The ethics of Denmark pervade this company. From the integrity and ethics of the director flow the ethics of the company. From that, flows the work. From the work, arises the delicate touch upon the audience's inner heart.

Itsi Bitsi, a three-person piece with Iben, Jan, and Kai, begins with Jan welcoming people at the door. The audience files in. After everyone is inside, courteously, with no rush, Jan shuts the door. You realize, "Oh, he was waiting for us." As he walks across the gleaming wood floor, he stoops to pick up a tiny shred of white tissue paper, the size of a baby's fingernail. "Oh, he's cleaning the floor," you think. And then, he carries the piece over and Iben whirls her inside-out parasol, and thousands of those tiny flecks fly out and become the Danish snow, and you realize -- that paper was SET there.

It was part of the play, planned from the beginning. This work is so tuned, so delicate, so precise, that one piece of tissue paper laying just here -- was put there to lead the spectator into the world of snow, the world of this play.


Itsi Bitsi: Iben Nagel Rasmussen

Eugenio said the other day, "I believe each of us as directors has our, what I say, superstitions. Very near, dear, even childish, core of our work. It is very difficult to talk about these. I am not sure you can." He paused. "But money," he sighed, "I can talk to other directors about money for days."

Odin 1. Eugenio, Clelia, teachings

Note -- this post was added after the blog was begun. I inserted it on the date when it was written. Living at the Odin was exactly what Grotowski promised: I was being taken apart at a molecular level. At an ethical level. I didn't know at the time what was happening. I just wrote what I could see.

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I am sick. I have a cold, I can't breathe. I think my spirit is purging. I had a ticket to go to Poland for 5 days, and the day before I was to leave, I decided not to go. Within two hours, I was sick.

I sometimes write Eugenio long letters about his rehearsals. Over time, I got more comfortable, and they got deeper. He put a sticky on my folder saying, "dear Rachel -- Thank you. More!!" I feel as if I am writing someone already dead. Someone from an older generation. As if smoke were writing to fire. Related but not the same.

My theory is that we are all hungry for the Teachings. For a source of spiritual wisdom, who knows us and holds us in their heart-hand, and murmurs to us. It is incredibly comforting to be around another spiritual seeker, to hear what they are wrestling with, what truths they are contemplating, what they perceive in me. To be reminded that the Teachings exist.

This last year I have been surrounded by Teachings, by the Questions. By humanness and presence, vibrant aliveness, in the cloth of spirituality.

Last week I asked Clelia, a visiting theatre history professor from the University of Rome, if she would give me a Teaching. "About what?" she said. "On what is important about theatre, why it matters." "Okay," she said. A week later, she came, dressed up, with notes, to the bibliotek/ dining room, and said she was ready to teach me.

Clelia began with an ancient Japanese story about how theatre began, and moved to the Greeks and the commedia dell'Arte, then shared a paper she had found on how theatre performance positively affects the biological organism -- watching tragedies creates a heightened level of white blood cells that lasts a while; watching comedies creates an even higher level of white blood cells, that diminishes less and lasts longer. She ended with, "Wellness is relationships. And theatre is the REALM of relationships." Her talk was formal, gorgeously classical, warm, 90 minutes long.

Clelia cooks toast in a skillet, making a hole in the middle to cook tomatoes with it, to eat with eggs. I learn as much from watching her cook, or hearing her speak Italian, or laugh and greet everyone warmly, as I do from her theatre talk. It's all Teachings.

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Sometimes I picture me and Eugenio sitting on a little green hill, back to back. Other times it is as if I, or he, am leaning on a great tree.

It is important to see someone like me, who is all grown up. To absorb what it is possible to become. I am not the same oak tree that he is, but I am another oak tree. I wanted to spend some time around a big one.

What I see in Eugenio is ethics and integrity everywhere. In his speech, practice, his smallest acts. "A clean theatre and a clean yard is a loved theatre and a loved yard," he says. On Saturday, he came in to vaccuum his office and its foyer. He says, "Individual training goes 8-10, rehearsal goes 10-4." He is always in his office by 8. Not 8:10 or 8:15, usually not before 7:45. But, by 8am he is there and the door is cracked open, meaning you can knock and come in. At 10am, rehearsal begins. When you speak with him, he is present, whole, truthful, decisive.

The Odin's integrity is part of the Danish character. The Odin has absorbed its integrity from the farm buildings which house it, from Denmark where it lives. I am living in a more civilized country than my own.

I think it is not a coincidence that, in this year when I am 46, the first year I have outlived my father, I have found an ethical, accomplished, teacher-father.

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I read a book, Seven Steps On The Writer's Path. The author would set up seven chairs in front of the room, name each one, then ask people who knew they were in that stage, to come sit in that chair and speak for it.

It wasn't until Chair Six that you were finally in full flow of Creating. Chair Seven was Finishing. And then, it was back to Chair One, Not Knowing.

I think I am searching for my next Chair One. Something is surely finishing. I am unrecognizable, by an irrefutable inch or two more, each new week.