the space between:
the theater legacy of chögyam trungpa (2)
Lee Worley
Photo: Nina Maria Mudita
The space between audience and performers
In addition to writing and producing a number of plays, Chögyam Trungpa created a series of postures for the Mudra Group. These provide a context within which “intensification” and “relaxation” of form and space are examined, experienced, and increasingly refined. I have been teaching these exercises as a foundation of theater training for almost thirty years. Since it is a group practice, this is the only way that I am able to maintain my own practice of them. They form a precious set of teachings within which I continually discover deeper truths about form and how it interrelates with space, while at the same time presence and confidence in my “performance” is strengthened. Over the years I’ve noticed that my students have become more appreciative of these seemingly boring, repetitive, and painful forms. Space is no longer the mysterious concept it was to the Mudra practitioners of 1972. Intensity is no longer something that happens to people elsewhere. As a species we are gradually becoming aware of space’s significance as both our elemental support base and the interconnection that binds us uncompromisingly, inevitably, together.
When Chögyam Trungpa witnessed Western theater in the late 1960s, he saw acceptably coordinated people who, when placed in situations of pressure or “intensity,” become spastic, dysfunctional, aggressive, or catatonic. He told the Mudra group that we become “hesitant […] completely incompetent and lost, and don’t know how to handle anything” (Mudra Theater Group Meeting, December 18, 1972). Under the pressure of a performance situation, reasonable folks suddenly lose their mindfulness. We who are accustomed to Western theater might think that what we are seeing is “acting.” We do not know that there might be another, less distorted way to give a performance. “Time and space,” Trungpa told us, “have to be a sympathetic environment for the activity to take place. A sense of generosity and compassion, so to speak, has to exist in the space as a mediator between the projection and the projector. And when that bridge begins to span, the gap begins to close, the performance, or any work of art for that matter, is no longer abruptly leaping off a cliff, out of nowhere into nowhere. It becomes a dance.” (Chögyam Trungpa, Introduction to the Theater Conference, February 17, 1973)
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