Making rainbows: Flow and rehearsal

Ahhhhhhh. Great rehearsal tonight.

After weeks of building scenes in people's living rooms, we finally put them all together in the space. They're hot. The work you build in people's homes has an unconscious realness to it. Ed Okolovitch says, "That's how we bring the universe into the theatre." Transplanted, they ricochet off each other and greedily expand to fill the space.

We did our first stumblethrough. Two-thirds of the play is built; a couple scenes and many transitions to come, plus tightening & transcending. It's Golden Time.

GOLDEN TIME

You can build things in Golden Time easily, which you could not even attempt at other times. Miracles flow like white bloodcells to this site of luminosity.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalhyi, who wrote Flow: the psychology of optimum performance studied characteristics of people when they were “in the zone.” In Flow, our unconsciouses and intuition are finely educated, so the quality of decision becomes precise, profound. There is individual flow, a person in the transcendant state of grace. There is also that more rare and precious fruit, team flow.

Golden Time is the period in rehearsal where Flow is the norm.

At the Odin Teatret, an ensemble regularly in a deep state of Flow, brilliances appear in a flash. I saw a song arise with no rehearsal and little discussion. The actors thought the play needed a song here, so bam -- suddenly there's a 2-verse-with-chorus song, in 3-part harmony and 3 instruments, in less than ten minutes.

The divine form of work is sacred play.

MAKING RAINBOWS

The Dalai Lama and his monks often create rainbows at the end of their kalachakra sand-mandala ceremonies. They always schedule the kalachakras to finish on the day of the full moon. In Sydney, the cloudcover broke and we got a double-rainbow, just as we all walked out the door. "Yes," said the Dalai Lama, "You did that." It was as matter-of-fact to him as your car running cleaner after an oil change.

(Oh, THIS is funny -- I went to get the link to the Dalai Lama's official site. When I clicked on it, it said, "Under Construction." Talk about a teaching in impermanence.)

Bart Sher, head of the Intiman Theatre, uses the Grateful Dead as a model of Flow. "In the first set, they warmed up. In the second set, they just headed OUT there." "This is pretty second set stuff right now," he said at Seattle Opera rehearsal one day. The power had gone out that morning, so on a wooden rehearsal stage the size of a ship's deck -- with the same creaks and silences -- a soaring diva pleaded with a baritone from across the world. Masters at play, children at work. It was absolutely medieval.

I notice all kinds of things about Flow in the theatre. You know you're in it when:

- no one wants to leave the space where this great thing just happened
- everything looks extra-brilliant, colors are heightened
- things are soft and slow, even the really fast or hard stuff
- you can’t remember who thought of an idea, it grew out of everyone
- the room sounds like a river: gurgling, silence, roars of laughter or argument
- everyone’s a genius all the time
- there's lots of time, great pools of time
- everything's getting done with no fuss
- people just do what they do, lightly and well
- trust is infinite, fun is high, even the control freaks are giggling
- if you're rehearsing in a place with kids, the kids want to play
- if you're rehearsing in a place with cats, the cats come and lay right on your script, or right in the middle of the floor (cats stay away when you're in any other state)
- even more amazing greatness starts happening at the edges

Like, last night, we went out to eat after rehearsal (not wanting to leave the space). Driving back afterwards, we started to whistle a song from the play -- four tuneless, giggling whistlers. Then, "I'll sing, you whistle," said Erika, a girl from Rumania. So we have three harsh whistlers over one sweet low soprano. It sounds fantastic. "The YAKS should whistle!", I said, having a flash about our play. "NOOO!" they all groaned and yelled at once, and then we broke up laughing. Sal turned on the soundtrack to “Chicago” really loud and we all sang along. When we got to the parking lot, he swerved in big S curves in time to the music. Some got out of the car and danced, others stayed in and talked.

Golden time.