Dear Joseph,
You know how an actor works and works, and then one day enters a phase of transition, where masks and blocks start melting away? Day by day, the actor is more supple, strange, fresh, true. I watched Laurence, doing dance-theatre by day and Suzuki training by night, transmute. He became molten. "You are almost ready to work naked," observed Lee. There was no "no" left, just a steady radiant "yes."
That's where I am.
Much is asked, then more is asked.
After 18 years of developing software, I found myself in a small start-up, McCarthy Technologies, running week-long team labs called Bootcamps. These were conscious experiments in how to reliably & reproducibly create ultra-high-performance teams. Students had to form a team, use the protocols, and ship something Great in a week. Assignments were recursive, the results astounding. Stanislavski's ideal lab.
We gradually evolved a system of protocols called "theCore," that worked. Lithe, angelic, brutal, joyful teams -- as carelessly interactive as a pack of 10-year-olds, with the maturity & grace of adults -- were intentionally creating Greatness.
The basic effect of "booting" is a huge "first reduce noise, then send signal" clarity. Rapport improves by an order of magnitude.
Think of the difference between rehearsal and daily life. The purity & sacred rigor of rehearsal. How clearly signal is transmitted in a deep rehearsal, versus how noisily & muddily signal is transmitted in normal life. Now imagine that people in daily life were working in the same aware & heightened state as rehearsal; that they could do ANYTHING as well as actors can walk & sing. That's what booted teams can do.
This is bliss on earth, to work & create with people in this state."Our problems were created with our current way of thinking," says Einstein. "To solve the problems, we must think in a different way." Booted thinking is thinking in a different way.
"As a director, you have a different complicity with the actors than with the staff," said Eugenio. "You don't have to," I said. "But it is very unusual." "I have never seen it," he said.
People working on a meta-level, a heightened level, are working much more powerfully than on the direct level. When you focus on the meta-level, you get the direct-level results almost for free.
You think it's hard to describe Grotoswki's work, try describing this.
But oddly, of everyone I've met in theatre, Grotowski is the closest to what I'm doing. "I walked out of paratheatre into theatre," I told Eugenio.
What do you call it when all of life is theatre? When a wild human can, just as an actor stands naked in the work, stand naked in their life and work in the same aware-yet-surrendered way an actor works?
I have found that any Way requires scrupulous protection, a classical system of training, meticulous practice. In scripted theatre, the actor is scrupulously protected by the text; in physical theatre, by the form & levels of evocation. Here, the protocols of theCore provide that scrupulous protection, make possible the stunning release.
It lets people be gods & mortals at once, to simultaneously BE the entire fractal system in their own bodies. I stumble on earth, I stumble in heaven, I stumble in my karma, all at once.
It's the endless knot. Everything IS all connected, all the time. It's Indra's net.
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One day I was thinking about how to do a perfect clap. The most authentic Rachel clap possible.
First I visualized directing an entire production of Hamlet, ending with Fortinbras surveying all the dead bodies and clapping once.
Then I thought, no -- MY perfect clap is I walk into the theatre. The stage is empty. The house is full, expectant. The whole audience stands up, performs a play they have never done before, spontaneously & perfectly, and as one -- claps.
That's the Rachel clap. That's what I can create.
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I have created software since 1979, computer games since 1989.
I have created using theCore & led bootcamps since 1997.
I have created theatre since 1998.
This year, 2006, everything is combining.
I can work with wild humans with the same presence, force, Art talks, laughter, compassion, & results, that I work with actors. Everyone looks like actors to me.
My true image of me at Microsoft right now, is an ultra-slow-motion film of a match falling into a lake of gasoline. My level of awareness & work, when applied to this quality & brilliance of minds, is compoundingly incendiary. Not fire, but wildfire.
Let us burn.
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Such work requires a pristine foundation and self-care.
I started booting people at work. I am now in a group where everyone in it is booted, and working at that high pure level. I have a waiting list of people who want it. I am choosing by who wants it the most, and who, in my archaic bootcamp/rehearsal eyes, is likely to stay the course.
I am booting for my own joy.
I am booting like I rehearse.
In a month, or six, I will have better language for this.
This is why you have not heard from me. I am engrossed in the most fascinating rehearsal process, and I have no language to describe what I am doing. "What is this system?" asked Ania. "It is... mutuality," I said, a correlary from Staniewski's Gardzienice philosophy.
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Radmila is in Tibet. "I went to see the monks," she said. "I asked a blessing for you and your bootcamp."
Hope you are well. Love to Zhenya & Catherine.
rachel
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