Jorge Picó

Affiche Lecture Demonstration University of North Florida

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The first thing I found out about my trip to Florida is that there is no public transport to get from the airport to the university. You can get a taxi, of course. Pay your way. What will happen in a country like this when the gas runs out? Should I start talking about this before my lecture? Shall we pull the thread and see what’s behind? Or shall I shut up, beat about the bush and get on with theatre, which is like a suit I have been sewing for myself during all these years so I can question the rulers? Why do we hate these guys so much? And what is the antidote? Mine is to carry Walden, Or Life In The Woods by Henry David Thoreau in my suitcase. As you know, he elaborated a theory about civil disobedience and refused to pay taxes to a government he morally disapproved. “Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine”, he wrote. I should think it is more elegant, elegant for the soul, to have your own rulers questioned by one of their own. The other possibility, to make up for my visit —I don’t know who could pay, I have been invited by the University of Florida—, is to send an American to Spain, who might give a lecture on drama and ask to himself or herself: Why do these Spaniards copy the worst things we have? And now, I’ll put on my suit, which often comes unstitched, and I’ll talk about theatre.

Damn your soul, theatre
(A lecture on acting in theatre)

 

If it’s not political, then it’s not theatre

“****, can’t see anything!” When the lights switch off and we are left in the dark, we often curse, especially if we happen to trip over something. Rehearsing theatre normally means to switch daylight off and step inside a dark room, reasonably lit if you are lucky, and feel your way along until you see the light again. It’s about spending some time in the dark before you see again. In Apuleius’ tale, Psyche always loves Eros in the dark and in the end she pays the price for searching the light to see his face. I was shocked to find out that in Greek “psyche” means both “butterfly” and “soul”. Confused butterflies rehearsing in search of light, this is the sign I might hang on the door of the rehearsal room when I don’t want to be disturbed by annoying producers. Drama and darkness. Oriental people say that when the material vision starts to fade, the spiritual vision grows. Rehearsing in the dark entails bruising oneself a little, nothing much, but it hurts, and makes us curse our luck. Just a little pain, just enough to feel compassion. Without suffering ourselves it is difficult to understand the pain of others. And this is exactly the opposite of anesthesia, or lethargy, or if you like that numb dumb face we all wear now under this neoliberal frenzy of lamp lighting. My hometown, Valencia, in Spain, ruled by a right-wing mayoress, one Rita Barberá, suffers from light pollution, such is the amount of lighted lampposts. I do not mean to celebrate obscurity or gloom, but the darkness of our own closed eyes when we are thinking. Theatre is exactly the opposite of a television reality show. When camera crews come to the theatre for filming a play, they always say the same thing: “we need more light, this is for television”. In television you set up your camera and you need light to film and capture reality. But then what one captures in those programs is that living together is so difficult, almost impossible… The camera seems to be saying: “we are like that”. A rehearsal sets out to find out what we are like, and comes up with changes and contradictions. Role playing is all about human relations and how people are influenced by circumstances. «We would love to be good and not so rude, if only circumstances were different» say the characters in The Threepenny Opera by Brecht. This reservedness which is natural to theatre rehearsals leads you to make up reality so you can expose it with clarity, forces you to occupy it and poke it with your elbows so you can open up a space for reflection and analysis. That is a political action. This is what rehearsals are about, and this is why they need half-lights and quiet. I dare imagine that the candles which gave light to rehearsals and shows by Molière or Shakespeare were powerful, as the mist over a landscape, to sharpen the attention of the audience, and help them complete reality as it was shown on the stage. When there is too much light, as in a television studio, we might see much too soon, or be dazzled. We need to go through the half-light, through uncertainty, during rehearsals if we want in the end to see something. Italians, as Italian as they can get, say provare for rehearse. In the theatre, one can “provare” in two quite clear-cut ways: horizontally and vertically. In this lecture I aim to propose relations between these two axes: the horizontal axis and the vertical axis, the butterfly or the soul of theatre, if it does have one, damn it, and my own productions. As Thoreau says, physical laws must be in correspondence with moral laws.

The stage as a white sheet. The actor as a pencil

My first big blackout with Eros happened in Jacques Lecoq’s school, in Paris. We were given the task of inventing something, not too long, five or six minutes, along this line: “a place and an event”. It is worthwhile to pause for a while round this very simple equation. Our blindness had to do with thinking that a space could only be a bar, the local pool, the office of the President of the United States… I never thought that the first place at hand was, space itself! Suffice to remember Peter Brook’s idea: “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage”. For me, the good news is not in the fact that it is empty, as many point out, but rather the christening of any space as theatrical space. The simplest event, Brook goes on, would be to walk across that space while someone is watching. “A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged”. What I’ve never had the time to ask Mr. Brook is: does the person walking know that someone is watching, or does it really not matter? When I am teaching I say “from that line onwards is theatre, and when you’re off it is not”. Allegedly it is not much to ask: you cross the line and let life become theatre. If we walk, and few things are more difficult than walking on a stage, my path is the horizontal line, and the way I move would be the vertical line.

Jorge moves

Lecoq would tell us of the difference between discourse (horizontal) and the word (vertical). Discourse would be to go from one place to another, and the word is the way I move towards it. Example:

“We are gathered here, as every Sunday, to listen to the word of the Lord” (discourse)
“This is my blood and this is my flesh” (word)

My work during rehearsals is to privilege the vertical line over the horizontal line. The word over discourse. Not the fascination for the skin but the look inside the wounds. That’s why it took us so long to walk upright: we are vertical and we defy gravity. Bodies embodying words. On the stage there is a tendency, especially when you are improvising, to let things roll out, as with a carpet, occupying the space: wordiness meets wordiness, exaggerated gesturing (often confused for gesture) meets gesturing and the space is covered by a second layer, adding not much to the ground itself. What we search for is relief, depth, the human as it grows from the Latin “humus”, humanity. That’s why I find so alluring the story of Jupiter examining the mud that was shaped by Care. An earthy paste that gets higher and bigger as it is shaped, a mud that Theatre, I like to imagine it that way, manages to polish and give it a “psyche”, or now a “breath”, which is another of its meanings. An idea is profound and human not because it is complicated or hard to understand, but rather because it is able to change existing structures. I believe that this fashion to fill the stage with gesturing, video screens, speeches and lighting has something to do with the concept of addition, which is a tendency very much respected by the present powers. To add is to accumulate, to produce earnings. But on stage subtracting is more difficult. And more interesting. Later on we will deal with that, with subtracting, in a show, titled Chair de Papillon, a production I directed in 2001 in Lyon, France. Most of the time, a director is busy discarding possibilities, eliminating gestures, filtering intentions. Actors, especially if they are improvising, fear the void, the lack of proposals and the passive listening; we have the production knack deeply wrought in, they are afraid to “fast” on stage. We are children of our times, and the fad is to turn the stage into a proposal-mart, ideas accumulating on top of each other, horizontally: this is the time of the huge shopping malls. Horizontal comes up again. Plentiful production is just a mirage, and only means to win spectators, in economical terms a market.

Humour as a defense

More vertical lines. If we move along the line of our body we find, from top to bottom, the head (the world of ideas), downwards we reach the bosom (the emotions), and the pelvis (sex) and the feet, which sustain the whole structure as much as they can.

Jorge moves

During the courses many actors enjoy walking barefooted so they can get a better feel of the ground. For Damien Bouvet, the actor in Chair of Papillon, walking barefooted is like returning to childhood. It is interesting, but this would be the subject of another lecture, to discern between the authors who write with one part of the body and those who write with the whole body. The same principle applies for actors: there are those who play with the head, others get emotional, and work from their bosom, but fail to move us, and a few privileged actors play with the whole body. These are said to be very “organic”, which is true, because in fact they use all their organs. Another evidence is that the lines can twist, enlarge, diminish, compress, expand, open, close. For instance, if we observe Charlot the Tramp as a character, we can see that his feet are open, like ten to ten in a watch, but his shoulders are closed.

Jorge shows

and if we remember Jacques Tati’s way of walking we laugh at the way he jumps a little step backwards before moving forward.

Jorge shows

Why? Because laughter is provoked by the attempt to bring together things that are very different, almost irreconcilable. What is funny is having to go backward before moving forward. It is funny and it is a lesson too. To go forward we have to move backward. That’s why comic couples are so successful, they tend to be individuals who have nothing in common but keep together “in spite of”. It is true, as Freud remarks, that humor reduces the possibility of emotional development in a given situation. But it can work as a defense. I would love to push some politicians, some bankers and soccer hooligans together with their intentions deep down into a ravine so they could have their lunch there and take their time before going back. But I don’t know any ravines nearby, and I can’t push very well. As a consequence, I play humor. That’s why good humor is always directed against any power. Can one make humor of everything? This is a big debate, as not everybody laughs at the same things. Well, I think that one can protect oneself from graveness, from injustice, and from ugly souls. The first play by ring de teatro, Joe Zárate te necesita (Joe Zárate wants you), was conceived when we saw the picture of José María Aznar, our right-wing president round about 2003, and right now aide to Rupert Murdoch, landing his boots on the table in cahoots with George Bush. As there was no ravine at hand to help him to his lunch —we were not introduced, you see— I wrote a play with Alfonso Amador. We shall talk about that one in the latter part of the lecture: the play was a defense through humor to our ex-president’s arrogance. I also believe that it is quite difficult to play humor if there is no truth. The recipe was handed down to us long ago: comedy is about truth and pain. Truth would be the horizontal line that sustains a situation, and pain would be the vertical line: when we risk a greater pain, we will find deeper, more intelligent humor.
The big vertical line that holds or sustains the scene, the line upon which every human will runs, is the line that goes from the earth (sometimes the underground, out of which clowns come up) to the sky (whence gods look upon us). Tragedy is a vertical line (man) that breaks. No one can live through tragedy standing up, one breaks down and falls to the floor or coils up like a fetus and looks for the ground. Standing up, one can live through drama. I remember a movement I learned at Lecoq’s school: it is called “discobolus”, and it is an analysis of disk throwing in ancient Greece, and it traces very clearly this relation between sky and earth.

Jorge shows discobolus. Discobolus treatment.

Acting is translating outlandish images on stage

And now I would like to connect what I have just explained with my own stage experience: let us talk about the plays I did mention, Chair de Papillon and Joe Zárate te necesita.
Chair de Papillon originated from one comment made by the daughter of its creator to her father, when she was just 4 years old: “On est que de la viande papa! (We’re just flesh, daddy)”. This goes to prove that the audience comes to the theatre to see transformations. Damian and I prefer the term metamorphosis. The play is a deconstruction of children’s tales starting from Santa Claus, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and Cinderella, and it ends with a butterfly searching for the light of an electric bulb, as in the chapter “The butterfly and the light bulb” in The Tin Drum by Günter Grass.

Different images of Chair de Papillon

Damien and I always start in the same way. He steps forward and explains to me what he wants to play. I look at him as a sculptor would look at the sculpture inside the stone block in front of him, or like a pencil in front of the white sheet. My task is to help him translate the outlandish images he proposes. In the case of Chair the vertical line was as follows: we would start with Santa Claus dragging a coffin (mark the replacement of the sledge by the coffin), the coffin would open up and he would dig earth off from inside (eventually he would dig off toys) and we wanted a butterfly fluttering around a light bulb in the end. What was to be in the middle wasn’t that clear. We would go from the underground to something in the sky. People ask us if the bulb symbolizes God but we don’t really know, we only know that it sheds light. We were also aware of another find: Santa Claus was a volume to which we would subtract weight, a character who always gets into houses in the dark, and a bug searching for light. We would go from theatrical wardrobe, the artful device and a huge volume (we need to use three hand dryers after each show to dry up the actor’s sweat) to human skin, Damien’s flesh. The play was a fight against gravity, it was about subtracting weight, because humor is also that, making light of things, taking off weight, playing the matter down.
When you work with someone as talented as Damien the meaning of things comes up gradually, during rehearsals, and we run the risk of producing stunning images like these:

More images about Bouvet’s work

And hypnotizing without enhancing the meaning of the play. His work addresses all types of audience, but several times we have had problems with the teachers and mayors of the cities where we go to play because they believe that the content is not suitable for children. And why do they laugh and applaud with their parents, we ask them? Again as with the light bulb, they won’t explain.
Joe Zárate te necesita (Joe Zárate wants you), which came after Chair and was the first play of ring de teatro, was, luckily enough for the company, a commercial failure —there is nothing worse than starting a theatre company with a success, because it is tiring to be always lit up—, and it originated from a particular context: the invasion of Iraq led by the United States of America and backed by the Spanish government of the time. At the beginning I meant to entitle the play Political Diary of the Parts of the Body, but I didn’t know what to do with the title and I opted for the character, Zárate, who is a reflection of our ex-president Aznar, who lived his moment of light and glory when he landed his boots on the table with your president in the so-called Azores trio.

Image of Aznar resting his feet on the table

and starting with the zed, he embodies the story of how someone who is bottom of the class and finds a bomb as a child, becomes the president of Spain, but just when he is about to make it a metamorphosis happens again, and he becomes Americanized and one day he wakes up speaking English, and then he searches his wife, like in an airport, every time he feels sexual desire towards her, walks like a Bronx rapper and feels relieved only when someone recites passages from Don Quixote. The play, which I wrote with the film director and documentary maker Alfonso Amador, started with two actors itemizing the objects disposed on the stage and ended with three astronauts planting the US flag on the moon, which is what the American government usually does when a war goes wrong, just as it happened in Vietnam and in 2003 when the Bush administration seemed to reactivate plans to land on the moon.

Images of Joe Zárate te necesita

The play, just when Zárate was about to take power, seemed to stop, we wouldn’t clearly tell the audience why and in an unexpected change of direction Zárate suffered an interrogation about his very same play and was finally tortured. The premiere of the play coincided with the famous images of abuse and torture inflicted by US military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison.
I would like to conclude by insisting on this sort of theatrical geodynamics I have proposed talking about lines. Last Wednesday I traced, in just one day, a line that went from the last ultrasound scan of my first child before birth, so very snug and in the dark in his mummy’s belly, and in the other end of the line I had to watch over and bury my friend Rafael Romero Zúnica, an accomplice of ring de teatro since its foundation. I traveled by road, horizontally, I don’t like driving, from Barcelona (the place where the scan was taken) to Valencia to watch over his body and bury him, although the real journey took place in a vertical line, an inner movement, full of questions and the different types of music one tries to tune up and recognize. You see, we theatre people are like that, we try to draw up lines with a borrowed pencil, bitten by childhood, somewhere between the mystery of life and the rules of the theatre we play at, damn it.

Jorge Picó (translated by Sabina Morello and Miguel Teruel)