Eiko and Koma

It's been 100 years since I posted anything here, but:

Quick reactions to Eiko and Koma's Mourning (UNCA 4/12/08)

Won't describe just react: Maybe the purest acting I've ever seen. One hour long and draining--exhausting by the end because (partly Ron talking--saw it with him) it required the audience to be "present" to an uncomfortable degree. Again, I think that is what makes it the purest kind of theatre.

One thought among many that went through my head: The piece didn't feel "designed" at all--it kept happening--and somehow, from that sensation I was led to think about the importance of finding the right starting place. I don't know what their starting place was (I thought: masses of leaves? Not as it turns out because they used to do it with dirt instead). Anyway, that's one (obvious) way to look at directing: Bring everyone to the same carefully chosen starting place. Benedetti's "alignment", but not exactly. Some way of saying, "Here's where we begin, with these elements, these ideas." Getting them clear for oneself and for others. But only as a starting place, a jumping-off point. (Another blindingly obvious point; almost a platitude.)

Back to the performance: (still don't feel like describing anything, though) I experienced a curious sense of being absolutely riveted and, at the same time (or, at times), self-conciously watching myself, commenting on myself reacting. Part fatigue, I think, but something else, too. Sometimes ok to have that double consciousness, and sometimes annoying, as if I were practicing what I was going to say afterward. But much of the time, just there.

One moment of consternation near the end: out of the leaves, as they were lying there, suddenly the man (Koma?) holds a piece of gray fabric, sort of stiff. Why? What's going to happen with it? Thinking: "Wait, there's no story, I don't want there to be a story, but this object somehow is making it a story (unlike the two arrows with which they entered at the beginning)." Why did the appearance of the cloth make it a story? Then he appeared to smother her with it, and she cried out (only time she made a sound, I think). REALLY disturbing, because it seemed to be an "event" and not immediate in the way it had been. Eventually that feeling of mine went away (maybe in a short time), perhaps because that moment, that cry, didn't seem to develop in a narrative way, thank goodness--though, of course, it was absolutely connected to what followed.

Funny thing is, the piece had a definite shape or structure--the final image was very clearly the final image (though not in a plot-driven way, or even as any kind of resolution except perhaps musically and of course with a long, long fade of the lights)--but, except for the moment with the fabric, I never had a sense of narrative. I didn't even impose a narrative--or even a meaning--on it. I just reacted, sometimes very emotionally and always very intensely, to each moment as it unfolded. Yes, there was an "unfolding" without a narrative: one moment unfolding into the next, leading to the next, but so completely in the moment that I never felt the performers were looking toward the next moment in any way--they were just completely filling the existing moment (one reason, as Ron commented later, for the glacial pace, because it took that long to completely fill each present moment).

(I sound to myself as if I've never seen butoh before. I've had some of these same thoughts watching and reflecting on some of Julie's performances, but I'm thinking them again, partly because of the intensity of the experience, partly because of talking with Ron about it a bit afterward.)

I think this performance (and good butoh in general) is exploring in a very direct way some of the same things the Open Theatre was groping toward (not fair, they were getting closer than anyone before or since, maybe). Also, very, very close to Polish Lab Theatre: I had a strong sense that I was witnessing two people deliberately undergoing something very extreme and completely exposed for me--not in the performative sense but in the sacrificial (sacramental?) sense. They were not "performing" in the usual sense of display, nor were they excluding me in any sense--I was absolutely a part of the immediacy of the event. We were all present in an absolute space and time.

Isn't that where all acting tends? Or rather: Isn't that where I think all serious acting should tend? Insofar as I still think in terms of "shoulds" (and I'm afraid I do).