Birth and Death ceremonies

How do we mark births and deaths?  How do we make sense of these miraculous events?  The coming into and the leaving of existence of life forms is something that has been discussed by religious, humanistic and scientific philosophers.  Much of our art on some level responds to the emotional and cognitive challenges that we come across when trying to comprehend the nature of both our existence, and our non-existence.

I've been very influenced in this area by two events.  Firstly by reading books by Roger Grainger, a dramatherapist who works with ritual and who has written about the importance of the death ritual - the funeral, and how this is used to make sense of loss.  This includes both the loss of our loved ones, and the knowledge of our impending loss of self, as we inevitably move closer towards our own impending cessation. The other event was a naming ceremony that I was invited to some years ago.  The parents of the child were christian, however, aware that many of their friends were of different religions, or even of no religion, they called the christening a naming ceremony.  There were many elements of christianity in the ceremony, however there was an implicit acknowledgement that the people present, the friends, neighbours and family of the child, were  from different backgrounds which were all valid, and this tactful and inclusive approach to a traditionally sectarian ritual was very impressive to me.

Births and deaths are not marked by ceremony for any other reason than that they are extremely important to us as individuals, and as social groups, right across the planet.  They are the times when we are struck by the miraculousness of life, and fear the dreadful awesomeness of death.

Ritual, or ceremony, contains these experience.  It uses metaphor, repetition, shared understandings in an atmosphere of deep intensity in order to reflect, express and hold our deepest wonderment and terrors.  Or at least it should do.

Drama and ritual are inseparable.  Ritual is drama, and traditionally, drama is ritual.  The use of masks, song, dance, archetypal characters, folk tales and so on, give us a framework, a sense of shared understanding and learning.  Being part of the same thing, Safety in numbers.

A christmas tree, an easter egg, a straw man burning on a bonfire.  Rituals contain our need for something greater, the hope of new life, and the dread of pain and death.

After a short warm up, the group was divided into two.  Each group was told that they were to devise a naming ceremony for a person or thing, that the other group would be invited to take part in.  Following this, the groups devised death ceremonies for the person or thing that was named by the other group.  I had reasoned that under normal circumstances, it would be unusual for the main people attending or presenting the birth ceremony to be the same as the people attending or presenting a death ceremony.  It also meant that there was a richer ceremony, as each group embellished the initiall ideas presented by the other.

We learned several important things

1.  A ritual may be performed in all seriousness, but may be experienced as funny.  This may be because of nervousness in the part of the participants, or because of ridiculousness, as the actors may take it too seriously, and this may result in visual absurdity.

2.  An effective ritual involves the active participation of all present.  If the attendees are confident enough, a being able to be creative about their involvement leads to a greater level of engagement.

3. Change of dynamic energy are also good ways of drawing people in to further engagement with the ritual. This can be done by a leader or leaders presenting sounds and gestures that are reflected by the participants, and gradually altered, to bring about a transformative shift.

4. Giving people particular roles or characteristics enables them to enter into the drama with less self consciousness.  One group gave each participant and element, earth, air, fire or water, and the element became an object that took focus and self consciousness from the participant, again enabling a greater engagement.

We have one more session this term, and then in January we start looking at the idea of devising a horror production.  Horror in this sense, not to be blood, guts, vampires etc, but to contain the elements that we have been working with, and to include pathos, romance, tragedy and comedy.  All of the things that give us our lives and dramas meaning.

Creations and Transformations

As a facilitator, I am starting to learn to be able to use whatever energy I bring into the session, be that angry, apathy, lighthearted, downcast, troubled...

I also try to encourage others in the group to use whatever energy that they bring into the session.  There is no bad energy.  There is energy that blocks us, energy that we get confused by, frightened by, energy that releases us, energy that drives us.  I call energy that we can use "energy", and energy that we can't use (or rather haven't learned to use yet) "difficult energy" ...

Starting the session with something personal, such as 'the most interesting thing that happened to me today', brings our personal emotional responses to the session.  These emotional responses are the expression of our energy, whether this mostly expressed inwardly, by the physiological experiences we have - churning stomach, racing heart, inertia, or the opposite, restless agitation, or mostly expressed outwardly - e.g., by our non verbal communication - how loud do we speak? how much eye contact are we making?  Is our posture open to the group or are we physically closed off and guarded?  Language wise, we may be critical of others, or eager to please,  we may mumble our words, or enunciate clearly.  Do we sing when we speak or do we have a dull, flat monotone?  Difficult energy - maybe sadness,or fear, might block communication, as well as our ability to be creative and expressive.  This happens when we are trying to work against how we feel, for instance, surviving a day at work whilst in grief, we try to mask our feelings, or block them out of existence, in order to survive the social and practical demands of the day.  This is exhausting and debilitating.

Drama, the way that we do it, aims to release some of this energy.  Allows emotion and all the expressions that go along with it.  Fear, death, love, craving, conflict ...  all of these things can be acted out.  Now the barriers to expression are lifted, we have permission to be how we feel.  Unfortunately, days, weeks, months and years of denying ourselves this inner liberation, mean that we have great difficulty in allowing ourselves, we feel we cannot create, or express, sometimes we have convinced ourselves we do not feel, or we have replaced one emotional response with another, the result being a conflictual, unconvincing presentation that confuses, angers or bores our audience.  So in the workshops that we do, we work with transformation and personal experience, in order to become more aware of our own inner experience, and our outward presentation, taking ownership of ourselves and becoming more comfortable in our expression.

This also results in some really good drama.

In turns, we sculpted the group into a picture, that represented some element of our personal experience.  Having done this, we told a story, a snippet of a story that was represented by the picture.  Each character devised a movement and sound for their improvisational motif.  Then, the creator said "3-2-1-Action!"  And the scene came to life.

As the scene was described, in the positions of the sculpt, the actors began to have some inner experience of their role within the story.  When they devised their motif, they imagined ways that they could describe, physically, their inner experience, as well as move the plot of the story.

After some time, the creator would shout "Freeze!"  or "It's a wrap!", and the characters would once again become statues.  the creator would then take the position of one of the statues, releasing this person to be the next creator.

However this time, the new creator did not make a new sculpt...  They would interpret the existing sculpt in a new way, and describe the new story, and the new characters that it contained.  Whilst this re-creation was occuring, the actors would, in thier frozen state, respond inwardly to their new role, and whilst these physiological changes were occuring, they would use this emotive response, and the cognitive element of "knowing the story", in the decisions that they made in producing their next motif.

There were many themes explored during the session, conflict, monsters, the mob, crime, nature.  These are common themes for our current group to engage in.  We have 2 more weeks left of this terms work.  All the sessions have been improvisations based on the notions of birth, death and transformation or evolution.  From January we will start thinking about our next performance, the theme of this will probably be horror.  Who knows?  Only time will tell.

Seasons - life cycles

 We used lots of props today, which is unusual for konnektiv, but there was a good reason.  I wanted lots of colours, cloths, and sound making implements for the group to map out the four seasons onto the workshop floor.  This would provide us with a space with an ever changing dynamic, and external, physical, shared cues to mood, movement and transformation.

Four Seasons - Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn

Equating with - death, sleep, rest, recuperation and preparation, breaking down, slowing down (winter); beginnings, hope, new life, dance, sun, green shoots, (spring); fruit, productivity, leisure, (sun) decay, colour, harvest, (autumn).

We can make a lot of this cycle as a metaphor for our own experience, in terms of our life, our love and our ideas.  Also many other things, but these were the notions that we focussed on.

We had plenty of people today, so went into groups.  3 groups, one worked with "life", one with "love" and one with "ideas".  Each group devised a movement sequence that describe the theme, in terms of the cycles of the four seasons.

This of course was just the beginning of the workshop, although as far as the group knew, it was an exersise in itself.  this was built up on, because once the groups had performed their devised pieces to each other, and each commented, we continued to use the dramas, along with sculpt, to bring about and experience dramatic transformation, the magic of theatre, on a personal level.

Each group devised a set of sculpts, one for each season, that described the story that had previously been shown in a very fluid manner.  They decided quite randomly at which part of the cycle they would begin and end.

Once they had shown four sculpts, they stayed in position in the last one.  This gave the rest of the group the opportunity to join in, each new person adding a new dimension, or strengthening the original one.  The last person, once everyone else had taken their position, told a story, based on the picture.

This is where the transformation came in.  The picture had been built up based on a shared understanding.  The story teller changed the picture, so for instance, a group of creatures evolving from a swamp became zombies in a horror movie; elderly people walking next to some autumnal shrubbery, were now fleeing from a burning fire; young men, distressed by ardent female attention, became a group of bitter, disappointed carnival competitors, who all blamed one person for their failed attempt to win the cup.

As the story teller described the new scene, the actors sometimes felt an inner shift, a transformation, so that once the story had been told, even though their position had not changed, their energy had done, and the movement reflected this change in energy, and the picture, once moving, was very different dynamically and graphically, to the original story.

I was very taken with this transformative nature that the workshop took.  Not everyone felt it the same, though most people entered into the spirit of it.  In terms of personal development, personal themes were played out, and an unexpected variety of personal experience was felt, shared and communicated, which helps to broaden our own expressive abilties and range of potential dynamic responses.

Story making, birth, death. Horror.

At the start of tonight's workshop, 5 of us sat in a circle, with a selection of instruments.  I instructed the group that they were to create a story.  The story was to begin with the birth, and end with the death, of a being.  The instruments were to illustrate the narrative as it transpired with sound effects.  I gave no other instruction.  We sat in silence for some time before the first threads of the story began to come forth, awkwardly, hesitantly, and eventually, the story came to life, as creature was born that became an object of horror, fear, pain despair and eventually, death.  None of us guessed at the start of the story, that it would be so horrific.  

As the story was told, individuals in the group attempted to steer it this way and that - at times attempting to stem the flow of the horror, to bring redemption to the tale.  But it was not to be.  A blind, kindly priest was drained of his blood and innards, his skeletal remains being found later by the terrified congregation.  An exorsist came, and drove the evil from the creature, leaving the creature nothing but a mass of impotent pain and torment, and who then crawled into a corner and died.

We then took it in turns to direct a short phrase of action from the story, taking on a character in our own story.  One phrase showed the exorcist driving the spirit from the creature.  The evil spirit was destroyed, leaving the creature drained and heaving for breath.  

Dark, cold nights, tiredness, burden of life, dissapointments.  These were some of the themes that we had brought with us to the session this evening, and it was fitting that we ended up creating a tale of such pain and despair.  

I am glad that we don't feel the need to only create nice pretty things, but that we can dig into the darkest parts of our souls and drag out the things of pain, despair, anger, revenge and tragedy.  

The surprise to me, looking back, was that the birth was full of pain, horror and torment, whereas the death came as a peaceful relief, the end of an agonised struggle.  In life, we often think we see it very differently, that birth is a joyous and wonderful event, and death a great tragedy, even, in our culture, being seen as an unnatural event that we must defend ourselves against with great vigour.

In one of the scenes, the final death of the creature was depicted, with one director, describing the action, and one actor physically depicting the words of the director, who reflected the movements of the actor.  We got great satisfaction out of making the death as painful and drawn out as possible, and the ending, when it came, was one of peace and release.

This is sometimes the case with horror.  The object of horror is a tragic accident of nature, that cannot experience anything but pain. It is unlovable, rejected, often starved, sometimes beaten.  When someone does offer kindness, they are repaid with suffering.  maybe the person who offers kindness has their own disability - for instance in this case being blind.  The disability brings empathy for a fellow creature in suffering, and also prevents the kind person from perceiving the true nature of the object of horror.

 Through horror, by breaking the rules of the natural world, we can explore fear of death, superstition around disability and physical difference, the terrible consequences of the self fulfilling fear of people who percieve evil in ugliness, malevolence in difference.  The tragedy of rejection, cruelty and neglect.  Through the experience of the monster, we can feel our own experiences of rejection and cruelty.  Through the revenge of the monster we live out our own need to be cruel, and then, through the death of the monster, we kill our scapegoat, and can bury the secrets hidden in our most vulnerable selves.

We also explored the role of the exorcist.  Calm, confident.  Funny enough, no-one had considered the monster evil until the exorcist turned up.  They just thought it was horribly ugly and frightening.  The response of the creature to the predicament of it's birth, though shocking, was in a sense, understandable.  Once the exorcist drove out the evil spirit from the creature, the creature had lost it's last defence.  It had nothing but it's pain, and could only exist, in a state of torture, until death came.  This was a tragic horror.  In the final scene creation, the father of the creature silently, thoughfully, walked onto the stage, holding the wrapped up creature.  He slowly waded into a river, and placed the creature, in a basket, onto the top of the flowing water, watched it for a while, as it drifted up river, and then walked silently away.  Disappointment, loss, fear for an object that was almost loved, but could never be nurtured.

From mud to mud

Following the theme of 'birth and death, today's main them was the notion of being a created object, and being initially ignorant of one's purpose, working it out as a group by a series of experimental responses to an original sculpt.

Today's warm-up consisted of some sound and movement.  Each person chose one sound and one movement.  This became their personal 'motif', they did not change it, but changed the texture of the sound by altering its tempo, pitch, or volume.  What they could do, is to group together and join with another person or people.  This created an interesting piece of music and movement, as the sound drifted, shifting but remaining true to it's original form.  In this picture, the group was all walking behind and reflecting the sound and movement of one member.  A fifth member chose to remain with his own sound and movement, which was not altered during the piece.  This of course is allowed.

By the end of the piece, the group decided to break the rules, and take up different movements and sounds.  At this point the warm up broke down, as there was confusion about whether rule breaking is ok or not.  It is actually allowed, but it was an interesting experiment while the rules were being followed!

Creating with intent

For the main part of the session, we played a game in which everyone started lying down on the floor, as mud.  At some point, one person would 'come to life', and become the Creator.  They would wordlessly sculpt the other group members into an object, or a set of objects.  In this picture the group are being sculpted, at this point not having any idea about what they are supposed to be.  

Once the  creator has finished forming the object(s) into shape, they 'breathed life' into the object.  At this point it started to move.

As the group members experimented with different sounds and modes of movement, they imagined what they might be.  In this picture, the group gradually came to realise that it was a merry-go-round in a children's fair.

 What I was interested in during the game was the process of experimenting with modes of being - and wondering, as created objects, what our purpose was.  Also, in the case of the creator, what was their response while the group experimented, and made guesses, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, about what they were supposed to be.

If the group really had no idea, then they would create some sort of cohesive movement.  Rules may be implied in the original positions, such as in one case, the sculpts were placed facing outwards from four corners.  Each person sensed from this that we were not supposed to interact; they all responded differently to the positions they were placed in, yet all obeyed the rule of no interaction. 

In this sculpt, the group were bell ringers, and again, this was guessed following the movement suggested by the original position, to move up and down in different intervals.

These games are good for experimenting with sound and movement, but also for continuing our work with group cohesion, as each individual member, as well as finding and testing their own hypotheses about what they are, also responds to the actions of other group members.  

As human's, unlike other animals, we often question the purpose of our existence.  Why are we born?  What to our parents/teachers/bosses etc want from us?  As parents/teachers/bosses, we communicate with varying degrees of success, what it is that we want from our children/students/employees.  We hope that they will understand our intention.  We hope that we correctly interpret the intention of others, when they indicate that they want something from us.  The guesses that we make depend on the clarity of the original instruction, along with our comprehensive skills.  That's just the cognitive stuff.

What is happening emotionally?  What happen's when we don't make ourselves clear and people misinterpret us?  Do we get frustrated?  angry?  Do we blame them?  Ourselves?  Might their interpretation of our request be as valid as our request and thus acceptable, or do we stick rigidly to a request and insist that only the correct interpretation is valid?  What happens when a complete lack of understanding occurs?  Is there fear?  Do people worry about 'letting someone down'?

There are many many more questions that are posed during this game, but ultimately, it's success, as in all of the work that we do, is based on how much people are enjoying themselves.

Negotiating change and finding our part in the machine

Last week, I didnt' get around to blogging, however, we did have Lauren to take some photo's, so here are a selection of the ones that she took.

The theme was still death, the action was more like a story, rather than the abstract interactions of the previous week.

Phenomena that we came across included sabotaging the story plan in order to avoid the intended killing, which actually make the killing happen sooner.

Also the need to end the death process, to "get it over with", which also sabotaged the initial point, which was to have drawn out, dramatic death scenes.










Anyway, on with today's session, altogether closer in time and easier to remember, however no pictures this time.

Warm up - Sound
Inspired by a music therapy awareness workshop that I went on earlier this week, I started the group with a sound based warm up. In a circle, group members used their body, including their voices, to create sound, eg stamping, clapping, whistling.  They were instructed to change the sound that they were making as often as they wished.  When they felt ready and comfortable to do so, they closed their eyes.  I moved slowly round the circle, In turns putting my hands on one members shoulders.  This person was to stop making a sound, and just listen to the sound that the group was making.

Questions I wondered about included:
What was it like creating the sound?
What was it like being made to stop contributing to the sound?
What was it like listening to the group sound without being part of it?
How was it joining back in again once the person had stopped?

Some people enjoyed listening to the sound the group made, however, others felt that they wanted to get back in again and weren't so keen on just listening.  The eyes being closed helped to focus on the sound and be involved, however two group members didn't like having their eyes closed.  One of these found it easier to stare fixedly at one spot on the floor.

As time went on group members became more comfortable with making the sounds and contributing to the total sound, we got some quite adventurous rhythms, and I also noticed that some people were very physically involved in the sound that they were making.  These may have been more relaxed.

There was talk of a "trancelike" feeling, of being part of the group sound, and when listening to it as a witness.

Internal and external changes, fitting in, accomodating, negotiating and initiating change.

The group became a machine, each with a different interacting part.

Once the action of the machine had a smooth and interactive flow to it, I said "stop".  Based on the position each person was in, they had to decide on how they would change their move when i said "start" again.  Everyone of course, had decided on a change but then they had to accomodate the changes made by others, so a period of initiation, negotiation, and accomodation had to take place, in order for the machine to become functional again.

Changes that we made included:

Making the parts of the machine closer together and further apart
Making the parts of the machine have contact with each other
Introducing sound (some people did this automatically, for others it was more difficult)
During the stillness part of the exercise  deciding upon a "primary other" to interact with when the machine started moving again (of course this also would conflict with the "primary other" that other group members had decided upon)

The transition was quite a challenging period for the group, and lots of variation was witnessed in terms of how different people negotiated the changes imposed, and fitted in with the machine.  At times one person would seem to be separate to the rest of the machine.  Some would take on a liaison role, linking different elements of the machine together.  Sometimes, there would appear to be two or three different machines rather than one.  At times the complete machine was quite a spectacle to witness, smoothly operating, with differently functioning and interactive parts, all having negotiated the change period without exchanging a word.

At different times I took group members out of the machine so that they could witness from the outside, the functioning, changing, negotiating and refunctioning elements of the machine processes.

I would like to explore this further in different ways:

Have a biological machine (inspired by the interactive functions of the living cell), which has random elements to its activities.

Have people change their function one at a time, so that the machine has to restructure itself in response to someone changing what they do, or even leaving altogether, and maybe rejoining at a later time.

Ending ritual:

We did a group story for the ending ritual.  With eyes closed we composed an adventurous journey with heroes, lost maidens and fierce and friendly monsters.

As a closing thought I note that Everything that we have done today, and for the last few weeks, has been about building group cohesion and the sense of complicite.  A good thing as we have lost and gained a few members, so the shape of the group is very different.

I would like to do some more work on slow movement and body awareness, in the near future, and then maybe come January to start working once again on bouffons.

Discovering Death

This was a fabulous session.  I have spent quite a few weeks wondering about how to approach this season's experimental work on life, death and rebirth.

I didn't want to sound like a mad hippy.   Too much emphasising of the seemingly cosmic nature of the cycle of death and rebirth, could reduce my discussion to the level of the religious.  My intention is to be academic.

During our lives, with varying degrees of success and difficulty, we need to be constantly adapting to the environmental changes that we undergo.  These may be thrust upon us, such as a death of a close family member, or disability following an accident.  They may be changes nature bestows upon us, growing up, growing old.  We may choose these changes willingly - a course of study ending in a professional qualification, having a child, or getting married.  The changes may be big, small, sudden, planned, slow and tortured, or marked by grand celebrations.  They all result in the necessity for our brain to make huge adaptive neuronal changes, as it remaps it's world, over and over again.  Accompanied with these stages of adaptive neuronal changes are emotions.  Emotions like sadness, anger, fear.  These are also adaptive, but how we respond to our emotions can make the difference between sanity and breakdown, wellbeing and dis-ease.

In stories such as that of the phoenix, rebirth is often depicted as a cosmically beautiful, glowing, triumphant even.  This belies the transitions that we go through in our own lives, which can be painful, undergone with reluctance, dread, anger and perhaps terror, as we finally give in to the need to let go of memories of the old and familiar and step into the realities of the new and  unknown, in order to psychologically keep up with our ever changing reality.  This is one of the bedrocks, if not the bedrock, of optimum mental health.

So that's the theory.  Mine anyway.

Here's what we did yesterday in the first of a series of sessions in which we explore and discover our knowledge, attitudes and feelings around death.

Group Discussion
there is a philosophical element to all of this.  I wanted the group to discuss their own feelings around death before engaging in the drama.  This was to provide a framework through which we would dramatically explore the subject.  I felt the need to remind the group of personal safety.  The subject of death is still a taboo.  I reminded individuals to be aware of their responses to the drama's, and to make the group aware if they started to feel distressed.

In fact, no-one did.

Following our initial conversation, which touched on many subjects such as fear of death and religion, we ended up centering around the idea of death being a necessary tool for social and biological evolution to take place, we agreed on an improvisation strategy.

It was to be free improvisation, in all aspects, except that I would secretly elect one person to be the one who at some point, was to die.  Once I had let the elected person know that it was to be them, we all sat in the audience chairs, and one by one, the individuals in the group entered the drama space.  Once in the space, each individual improvised around their own feelings and responses, and those of the people around them.  Once all of the group were engaged in the drama, when they were ready, one of the group died, in whatever way they wished.

Findings:
1)  everyone wanted to die.  Being able to die on stage is a form of expression that we don't normally get.  Some individuals were distressed that they hadn't been chosen to die, and I comforted them with the assurance that over the next few weeks everyone will get the opportunity.
2) People tended to distance themselves from each other in the dramatic space.  There was a subdued element to the improvisation.  It was very focussed and concentrated.  People were focussed more on their own responses than that of the whole group.
3) Saying that, there were brief moments of intimate interaction within the improvisation.
4) People differed in their stated need to be surrounded by others at the time of death, death would be prolonged if people noticed and cared.  Without this, the person dying might die quicker, wanting to escape the fear of ultimate aloneness.

In the final improvisation, I again secretly elected one person to die, but this time, they had an infectious disease, that during the drama, everyone would catch, and eventually die.  For myself as the audience, this was of all the most tragic of the dramas.  It was a bit like watching a slow motion, silent armageddon, as the virus was spread through the group by the infected person, who was the first to die, then followed by others, some alone, and some being cared for, temporarily, before the carer themselves became too ill and began to die.

There were brief moments of humour in these dramas.  The main tone was thoughtfulness.  The playing of death was done simply yet dramatically, with just enough melodrama to remind us that it was play.  The responses to the dying person were varied, mainly focussing around trying to help or distancing.

At the end of the session, all of the group said how much they had enjoyed it.

We will be doing more of this, and also looking at birth.  Also in a literal way, rather than using the elusive metaphor that I had been seeking.