Phillip Zarrilli - Essay on Altered Consciousness

CHAPTER 14

Altered Consciousnessin Performance:West and EastPhillip B. Zarrilli

Altered Consciousness in Performance

This essay addresses the complex question of altered (or alternate) statesof consciousness (ASC) in performance. Given the clear limitations of astrictly materialist account of mind/brain/consciousness and the defini-tional problems surrounding consciousness (Austin, 1998; Block, 1995,1997, p. 227; Cardena, 2009; Di Benedetto, 2010; Nunn, 2009), forpurposes of this essay, I assume that there are ordinary states of conscious-ness (or modes of conscious awareness) and that there are transition orborderline experiences between and among these ordinary states of con-sciousness (Austin, 1998; Tart, 1975b). Cardena (2009) explains howwe transit between and within these states of consciousness and thatsuch states organize experience, cognition, physiology, and behavior.

In addition to ordinary states of consciousness and their borderlands,I also assume that there are what Austin describes as extraordinary discretealternate states of consciousness that are rare, highly valued, distinct statesthat represent a sharp break from other states of perception or intuition(1998, pp. 306307), and within which new logics and new ways ofperceiving are experienced (Tart, 1975b, p. 28). This essay selectivelyaddresses some of the complex patterns of alternate consciousnessassumed in specific approaches to performer training and performance,patterns that reflect systemic logics, ways of perceiving and experiencingassumed to be different from ordinary consciousness and that may lead toa transformation of consciousness.

What Is Performance?

Derived from the Middle English verb parformen, performen, perfor-mance is the act or process of enactment, of bringing something to com-pletion. In the field of contemporary performance studies (Schechner,2006), performance refers to a broad spectrum of human activities includ-ing discrete genres where an act or process is brought to completionrit-ual/shamanic performancesaesthetic performances across a range ofactivities including contemporary mind-altering, participatory secularfestivals such as the Burning Man Festival (Bowditch, 2010; Di Benedetto,2010); [see St John, this volume]; performances in everyday life (Goffman,1959); embodied practices such as sports, martial arts, yoga, and other con-temporary forms of body work; the use of drama techniques in applied/therapeutic contexts (Woods, 2009); forms of imaginative play (Huizinga,1970; Winnicott, 1971); and contemporary mediated performances, amongothers. In this essay, I focus on discrete types of live performance (ritual/shamanic and aesthetic performances) and embodied practices used to trainperformers today.

Ritual/shamanic and aesthetic performances are usually framed or setoff from daily life in some way as a time out of time. They possess astructure and performance score shaped by performance conventions. Aperformance score consists of all the specific tasks/actions that constitutethe visual, auditory, enacted, tactile elements made available in the perfor-mance by the performer(s) for the audience/participants. (In improvisa-tory performance, the score may be a set of rules that delimit andshape what it is possible for the performer to do.) When enacting a score,the performer embodies and deploys an optimal mode of embodied con-sciousness, a state that may be described as an extraordinary discrete ASC.

Well-established genres of ritual/shamanic and aesthetic performanceoften have processes of initiation, training, or apprenticeship throughwhich the performer is initiated, achieves virtuosic performance skills,and attains the ability to actualize the extraordinary ASC necessary for asuccessful performance. Although there are underlying biological com-monalities to the states of awareness/consciousness discussed here, thenature of altered consciousness in performance is also shaped by cultural,contextual, aesthetic, and religio-philosophical factors. Depending on the cul-tural and historical context, the performers optimal mode of embodied con-sciousness may or may not be self-consciously articulated or reflected upon.Given the highly reflexive nature of aesthetic theatres and the desire ofactors to create virtuosic performances, not surprisingly actors and criticsacross a broad spectrum of historical periods and genres have reflected

302 Altering Consciousness

on the nature and training of the actor or on the aesthetic principles thatinform artistry and audience reception (see Cole & Chinoy, 1970, onWestern acting; Hare, 2008, on Japanese noh; Ghosh, 1967, and Zarrilli,2000, on the Natyasastra in India).

Research on Altered Consciousness in Performance

Because achieving an ASC may be central to the efficacy of ritual/sha-manic performances, anthropological, ethnographic, and ethnopsycholog-ical studies often focus on its nature and how the performers/participantsactualize or are transported into these extraordinary states (Besmer, 1983;Goodman, Henney, & Pressel, 1974; Hobart, 2003; Kalweit, 1988; Kim,1998; Laderman, 1993). Until recently, studies of aesthetic theatre in theWest have only occasionally studied theatre as a phenomenon and focuseddirectly on issues of consciousness. In the past, studies of Western literarytheatre often assumed that meaning resided in dramatic texts, to be appro-priately conveyed by the actors to an audience that would understand par-ticular meanings. This limited semantic/semiotic view of performance didnot provide an adequate account of the performance experience. In addi-tion, the dominant view of theatre in the West has historically been framedwithin representational and mimetic discourses; therefore, considerationsof acting have often conflated the self of the actor with that of the characterand thereby also the everyday experience and emotions of the actor withthose of the character.

Arguably the most important historical study of Western theories andpractices of acting is Roachs examination (1993) of how historically vari-able scientific and medical discourses and paradigms have shaped theoriesand practices of acting. The issue of the actors awareness or consciousnessis explicitly in the foreground when Roach discusses the actors doubleconsciousness in Diderots paradox of acting, and in subsequentWestern theories and practices (1993, p. 147ff.).

Given that non-Western paradigms of acting are usually informed bynonrepresentational aesthetic theories and practices, there is a recognitionthat aesthetic sentiments are not the same as moral, real-life emotions(George, 1987, p. 156); therefore, non-Western acting processes are under-stood as potentially open[ing] the doors to other states of being (George,1987, p. 156). Research on non-Western theories, practices, and aestheticsof acting often address issues relevant to the consciousness of the actorand audience (Quinn, 2005; Ortolani, 1995; Riley, 1997; Zarrilli, 2000).

When Max Hermann in Germany began to focus in 1914 on theatre asan embodied phenomenal event, he called attention to the importance of

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addressing issues of the experience within the theatrical event (Carlson,2008; Fischer-Lichte, 2008). This shift was reflected in theatre andperformance practices of the 1960s as they moved away from a literaryunderstanding of meaning residing in texts to a completely new, deseman-ticized understanding of how meanings arise during a performanceevent. As Fischer-Lichte explains, perception grasps something as some-thing. Hence something is not first perceived as something to whichmeaning is subsequently attributed. Rather, meaning is generated in andthrough the act of perception (2008, p. 141).

In the moment of experiencing a performance event, the spectators areaffected physically by their perception throughout that event and the asso-ciations that arise from it. They are experiencing the performance as phe-nomenal beings and cannot, in the actual moment experiencing theevent, understand it (Fischer-Lichte, 2008, p. 156). Any attempt atunderstanding, interpretation, and/or criticism takes places retrospec-tively. In addition to Fischer-Lichtes research, other researchers have uti-lized a postMerleau-Ponty phenomenology to analyze the experience ofthe performer and/or audience (Fraleigh, 1987; Garner, 1994; States,1971; Zarrilli, 2009).

Some theatre scholars are drawing explicitly on recent developments incognitive neuroscience to examine both the experience and consciousnessof the actor or audience (Blair, 2008; Di Benedetto, 2010; McConachie &Hart, 2006; Soto-Morettini, 2010). The essays in McConachie and Hartexplore a variety of models proposed by cognitive scientists on issues suchas theatricality, audience reception, meaning making, identity formation,the construction of culture, and processes of historical change (2006,p. 19). Blair examines how developments in cognitive neuroscience . . .might be used in a new generation approach to help the actor, in Stanislav-skys words, reach unconscious creativeness through conscious technique(2008, p. xii). Di Benedetto explores how theories drawn from cognitive sci-ence and physiology affect live art practice and the experience of those whoattend performances and how the senses shape our consciousness (2010,pp. 1, 5). The most sustained of these contributions is Soto-Morettinis inter-rogation of mainstreamWestern assumptions conceptualizing and questionsabout acting. She focuses on the difficulties of conceptualizing our inner life(2010, p. 90), the actors self or multiples selves in performance (2010, pp.91103), and emotion (2010, pp. 115155). She questions and reviews vari-ous models of consciousness assumed by paradigms/theorists of acting suchas Stanislavsky and Chekhov (2010, pp. 6970).

Before addressing issues of consciousness in performance and per-former training directly, I provide a brief overview of some of the complex


issues of the historical relationship between ritual/shamanic performanceand aesthetic theatre.

Ritual, Shamanism, and Theatre: An Historical and Cultural Perspective

Ritual and shamanic performances share some features of aestheticforms of theatre such as masking, costuming, impersonation, dance, music,narrative, and humor (George, 1987, 1998; Schechner, 2006; Zarrilli, 1990;Zarrilli et al., 2010). Rituals are often performed to be efficacious, that is, toallow access to certain powers or to effect a change or an end such as healingor initiation. Some ritual performances achieve their effects and also pleasethe gods, ancestors, and/or humans gathered to participate or witness. Toachieve their ends, rituals are performed by cultural specialists understoodto possess the ability to access special powers to diagnose and/or heal anillness, read signs of the future, conquer an opponent or an enemy army,or uphold the universe itself. Therefore, many ritual specialists are under-stood to enter an ASC. In some cultures, these ritual specialists are knownas shamans, a term deriving from the original Siberian Tungus word, saman,meaning one who is excited, moved, raised (Laderman, 1993, p. 7).Shaman refers to a traditional branch of religious specialists believed to beable to heal a variety of illnesses, counteract misfortune, or solve personalor social dilemmas after entering an ASC to communicate with powers inthe unseen world [see Winkelman, this volume].

The issue of the performers consciousness is usually one of the impor-tant ways of differentiating ritual/shamanic performance from aesthetic per-formance. As Besmer states with regard to the ASC of the Hausa performer,

When a medium enters possession-trance he is believed to be inhabitedin Hausa terms, riddenby a supernatural being, and this is evidencedby one or more of the following: talking and acting like the possessing spi-rit; lapsing into a comatose state; speaking unintelligibly to the observerthough subject to translation by adepts or musicians; exhibiting suchphysical symptoms as twitching, wild dancing, acrobatic displays, frothingat the mouth and nose, and heavy perspiring. During this time the medi-ums own identity is invisible, and everything he does or says is attributedto the possessing identity, and [ . . . ] typically, when he returns to himselfhe is amnesic about the activity of the spirit which possessed him. (1983,p. 140)

Anthropologist E. L. Schieffelin describes Kaluli spirit possession seancesin Papua New Guinea as highly entertaining, even thrilling events


where if anything, it is the spirits themselves who perform; the spiritsspeaking through a medium have more of the character of a telephoneconversation than the trappings of an aesthetic performance (1998,p. 203).

Schieffelin provides the following description of the effects of the rela-tionship between dancers and spectators in the Gisalo ceremony of theKaluli of Papua New Guinea:

In Gisalo, the dancers sing nostalgic songs about the lands and rivers of theiraudiences community. Members of the audience are moved so deeply theyburst into tears, and then, becoming enraged, they leap up and burn thedancers on the shoulder blades with the resin torches used to light the perfor-mance. Indeed, this remarkable response could be interpreted as virtuallynecessary to the performance, since if the audience is not moved and the ten-sion between the performers and audiences does not rise to the pitch of vio-lence, the ceremony falls apart and is abandoned in the middle of the night[ . . . ] [A]fter a successful performance, the dancers pay compensation tothose whom they made weep [ . . . ] It is real grief and rage that are evoked[ . . . ] The performers are held accountable for the painful emotions theyevokeand the retaliation upon them (and the compensation they mustpay) return that accountas well as those emotions being an indication ofthe beauty and effectiveness of the performance. The dancers and song com-posers [ . . . ] are extremely pleased if they have managed to provoke numbersof the spectators to tears, despite the consequences to themselves. (1998,p. 203; 1976, pp. 2125)

Those who gather at ritual/shamanic performances are often expected toparticipate in and/or be affected by the ritual. From this brief summary,it should be clear that ritual/shamanic performances have long beenunderstood to create alternative realities and require their performers toenter an ASC. In contrast, the reality effects of theatre are aesthetic andin the West are considered fictional. The modes of alternative conscious-ness performers utilize to achieve aesthetic affects are similar to but usu-ally different from, those of ritual/shamanic performance. George arguesthat the view of aesthetic theatre in the West has long been informed bya classical western logocentrism and that theatre creates its own formsof a strange reality in that its space, time and persons are all radicallydifferent from those we experience in other realities (1998, p. 13). Untilrecently, these other realities have been ascribed some greater degree oftruth (1998, p. 13) than reality effects achieved aesthetically. Studies oftheatre should therefore recognize the complex cognitive feat assumedin aesthetic performance:


The ability to conceive of other worlds, alternative realities, and to performthem; to see one person as both character and actor and to adopt a splitconsciousness and a split affective system as well; to live in two planes ofreality simultaneously, projecting oneself into other consciousnesses, otherspace-time matrices with different rules, which presuppose the ability toconceive of other consciousnesses and other realities; and to translatesigns into cognitive operations, and it would not be at all difficult evenon the basis of such a rudimentary listing of its presuppositions to derivea religious consciousness from a theatrical consciousness. (George, 1987,p. 156)

In aesthetic performances, the state of consciousness embodied whenone creates theatres strange realities is different from ordinary states and,depending upon the context, may be considered altered or extraordinary.But in most genres of aesthetic performance, the performers consciousnessis not understood to be altered in the same way as in spirit possession. Unlikethe Hausa example above where another entity takes over, in aesthetic per-formance the performer is usually assumed to remain him- or herself, ableto recall and reflect upon ones performances. This distinction is of coursenot absolute, and there is a vast phenomenal territory ranging between theamnesic paradigm of forgetting at one end of the spectrum and the aes-thetic paradigms assumption of remembering and reflection.

Between Ritual and Theatre: The Historical Problem

Until recently, theatre historians accepted the argument that theatrewas born out of ritual. This theory was put forward by a group of Cam-bridge University classics scholars known as the Cambridge Anthropolo-gists: Gilbert Murray (18661957), Francis Cornford (18741943), andJane Ellen Harrison (18501928). These arguments have been revealedas spurious, since they are based on a mistaken notion of social Darwin-ism. Underlying social Darwinism is the assumption that cultures haveevolved, so they can be viewed hierarchically from the primitive cultureat the bottom to the great civilizations at the top, with such Westerngenres as tragedy considered the pinnacle of theatrical culture. Thistheory of the origins of theatre is now thorough discredited (George,1998; Noel, 1998; Rozik, 2002; Schechner, 2006; Zarrilli et al., 2010).The assumption that it is possible to find a single origin of theatre is initself a problematic proposition. Theatre is not one thing but rather acomplex set of human communicative activities involving, as does thepractice of ritual, fundamental human desires to imitate, play, imagine,and structure the experiences of both actors/performers and audiences.


Although the origins of all theatre are not in ritual or shamanic perfor-mances, in a few instances it may be argued with a certain degree of his-torical certainty that there is a direct relationship between early forms ofritual/shamanic practice and the development of a specific genre of aes-thetic theatre that emerged, in part, from these earlier practices. The clear-est example is Japanese noh theatre, discussed below.

Asian Psychophysical Modes of Altering Consciousness

As Tart asserted long ago, direct experiential knowledge is central tomany non-Western modes of psychophysical practice (1975b). The dailypractice of psychophysical training processes in Asia is one of the primarymeans of attaining actualization of a certain type of virtue and/or self, aswell as a potential means of transformation or enlightenment. Across Asiathere exist an array of techniques for altering consciousness includingyoga, Zen meditation, martial arts (Chinese taiqiquan; Kerala, Indias kalar-ippayattu), and performance genres such as Indias kutiyattam and katha-kali and Japanese noh [see Maliszewki et al., and Shear, this volume].

As Japanese philosopher Yuasa Yasuo explains, the concept of per-sonal cultivation (shugyo) . . . is presupposed in Eastern thought as thephilosophical foundation because true knowledge cannot be obtainedsimply by means of theoretical thinking, but only through bodily recogni-tion or realization (tainin or taitoku) (1987, p. 27). As exemplified in theIndian and Japanese descriptions offered below, an array of daily psycho-physical practices are believed to actualize alternative, nonordinary,extraordinary modes of consciousness or awareness appropriate to thepractice of that specific art/discipline.

Yoga-based South Asian Modes of Transforming the Bodymind

The term yoga is derived from the Sanskrit root, yuj, meaning to yokeor join or fasten . . .make ready, prepare, arrange, fit out . . . accomplish(Monier-Williams, 1963, pp. 855856). Yoga encompasses any ascetic,meditational, or psychophysiological technique that achieves a bindingor uniting of the bodymind. A variety of yogic pathways developed histor-ically in South Asia including karma yoga or the law of universal causality;maya yoga or a process of liberating oneself from cosmic illusion; nirvanayoga or a process of growing beyond illusion to attain at-onement withabsolute reality; and hatha yoga or specific techniques of psychophysio-logical practice. Classical hatha yoga includes repetition of breath-controlexercises and forms/postures (asana) combined with restraints/constraints


on diet and behavior. These practices are understood to act on both thephysical (sthula sarira) and subtle body (suksma sarira) most often identi-fied with Kundalini-Tantric yoga.

As early as the Rig Veda (1200 BCE), ascetic practices (tapas) are men-tioned. The earliest use of the specific term yoga is in the Katha Upanisad,where the term means the steady control of the senses, which, along withthe cessation of mental activity, leads to the supreme state (Flood, 1996,p. 95). Yogas psychophysical/spiritual practices have therefore never beenconfined to any particular sectarian affiliation or social form (Flood,1996, p. 94). As a consequence, both yoga philosophy and practices areubiquitous throughout Southern Asia (Feuerstein, 1980; Varenne, 1976;White, 1996), and inform all modes of embodied practice includingIndian wrestling/martial arts and moving-meditation practices such asthe Tibetan trul khor (magic circle), as well as the visual, plastic, and per-forming arts.

From the earliest stages of its development, yoga developed as a practi-cal pathway toward the transformation of consciousness (and self) andspiritual release (moksa) through renunciation by withdrawal from theworld and the cycles of rebirth. Some yogic pathways provide a systematicattempt to control both the wayward body and the potentially overwhelm-ing senses/emotions that can create disequilibrium in daily life. Rigorouspractice therefore can lead to a sense of detachment (vairagya) throughwhich the yogin withdraws completely from daily life and its activitiesand is understood to achieve a state of kalalita where s/he transcends time.

However, yoga philosophy and its practices have also informed andbeen adapted by non-renunciants, those who keep both feet firmly in thespatio-temporal world. Traditionally, this included Indias martial artistsin the service of rulers and a wide variety of performing artists who livedand acted in/upon the world. Performers were expected to bring pleasureand aesthetic joy both to the diverse gods of the Hindu pantheon and tothose they were serving and entertaining.

In contrast to the yoga practitioner-as-renunciant who withdraws fromeveryday life, for practitioners of psychophysical disciplines such as mar-tial and performing artists, psychophysical techniques quiet the ego andthe emotions so that the practitioners bodymind is transformed into analternative, nonordinary consciousness better able to act within his orher respective sociocultural domain. Within the martial arts tradition ofIndias Dhanur Veda (the science of archery), the yogic paradigm is aleitmotif in the earliest extant text (Agni Purana) dating from the 8th cen-tury (Pant, 1978, pp. 35). Circumscribed by rituals, the martial practi-tioners training progresses from preliminary body postures through


mastery of specific weapons techniques to attaining single-point focusto ever-subtler aspects of mental and psychophysiological attainmentwhere having control of the hands, mind, and vision . . . .[one] conquerseven the god of death (Yama) (Dasgupta, 1993). This yogic patternof transformation is part of the contemporary practice of Indianmartial arts including Manipuri thang-ta and Keralas kalarippayattu(Zarrilli, 1998).

A yogic paradigm also underlies the traditional Indian performersassumptions about the performers state of embodied consciousness. Con-sider the following example from the kutiyattam style of staging Sanskrit.In 2004, when Usha Nangyar began to instruct Gitanjali Kolanad abouthow to enact a set piece known as head-to-foot acting within this tradi-tion, Usha instructed Gitanjali how to visualize and thereby become ortransform into the goddess:

Breathe through the eyes whenever there is a point of emphasis, as inthis solo acting when visualizing the goddess. Close off all other avenuesof breathdo not use your nostrils, but inhale/exhale through your eyes.Hold all the orifices closed, and close your ears. It is like looking asin yoga. (Zarrilli, in press a)

Ushas instructions focus on the actors relationship to and use of thebreath. In South Asia, the breath, wind, or vital energy (prana-vayu)is the conceptual and practical link between the gross, outer, physicalbody and inner experience of the subtle, yogic body. Taking the goddessin through the breath awakens, enlivens, and communicates the connec-tion between the actor/character and the goddess before her in order toprovide the audience with an experience that itself transports them intoa nonordinary aesthetic reality. Only through long-term forms of psycho-physical training is the Indian performer able to achieve the type of virtu-osic alternative mode of embodied consciousness required to become(Zarrilli, 2000, in press a).

From Shamanism to Acting in Japanese Noh

The earliest pre-Buddhist/pre-Chinese forms of performance in Japanare Shinto-inspired shamanistic propitiatory ceremonies and dances.Shinto is a set of utilitarian ritual practices intended to harness the naturalforces of the environment in which it is assumed that everything (trees,birds, seas, animals, mountains, wind, etc.) has its own soul or spirit(kami), sometimes identified as a divinity. When Buddhism came to Japan,


it did not displace Shinto; rather, Buddhas and kami were and are oftenworshipped side by side. In addition, contact with China also broughtthe influence of Daoism and Confucianism.

The centrality of supernatural beings and ghosts and the traces of sha-manic practices in the early development of noh theatre is seen in mugennohphantasmal or dream dramas (Ortolani, 1984, 1995). It was underthe leadership of Kanami (13331384) and his son Zeami Motokiyo(13631443) that noh evolved into a unique form of Japanese theatreand drama. In phantasmal noh, the shite (doer/central performer) oftenappears as a restless female spirit who remembers a past event through adream or unsettling memory, encounters the waki (sideman/secondary per-former, usually a wandering Buddhist priest) who reveals what is troublingher, and is pacified or transformed in some way. Inspired by a chapter inThe Tale of Genji, Lady Aoi (c. 15th century as revised by Zeami) enacts thestory of the mortally ill and pregnant wife of Prince Genji, Princess Aoi, rep-resented on stage by an elaborate folded robe in the middle of the polishedwooden floor. She has been possessed by the angry, restless spirit of LadyRokujo, Genjis former mistress, whose living spirit leaves her body whenshe sleeps. A female shaman performs a ritual to call forth the spirit possess-ing Lady Aoi. At the far end of the bridgeway (hashigakari), the curtain islifted by stage attendants, and from the green room emerges the spirit ofLady Rokujo, performed by a male actor in an exquisitely carved femalemask. Lady Rokujo eventually reveals her true identity:

In this moral world ephemeral as lightning,I should hate nobody,nor should my life be one of sorrow.When ever did my spirit begin to wander?Who do you think this person iswho appears before you nowdrawn by the sound of the catalpa bow!I am the vengeful spirit of Lady Rokujo.(Goff, 1991, p. 135)

Since the female shaman only has sufficient power to call forth but notexorcise this invading spirit, a male Buddhist mountain priest (yamabushi)is summoned to perform the exorcism. At the conclusion of the play, herrestless spirit is pacified.

Although phantasmal noh dramatically enacts such transformationscenes, the actor-dancers state of consciousness in performance has beenshaped by Zeamis concerns with the development of the performers


superior artistry informed by Buddhist and Daoist thought and practice.One of the fundamental aesthetic principles that Zeami utilized in shapingnoh is yugen. Although yugen can not be translated, it has been described asmystery and depth and as what lies beneath the surface; the subtle, asopposed to the obvious; the hint, as opposed to the statement (Hare,2008, p. 472). Phantasmal noh may be likened to an echo chamber ofallusions (Quinn, 2005, p. 14).

Ultimately, Zeami located the source of yugen in the underlying sen-sibility of the actor himself, the informing, embodied intelligence thatmediates all stage techniques (Quinn, 2005, p. 10). As he developed hisapproach to noh performance, Zeami moved away from imitation andmimesis toward poiesis (production of something new). To embody,express, and enact this poiesis, Zeami developed a nuanced, subtle, andsophisticated process of cultivating and attuning the actor-dancers voiceand bodymind through progressive stages of development. Following thepathway of Buddhist meditation-based pedagogies [ . . . ], self-cultivation of the body can lead to a higher epistemological perspective[ . . . and] such a perspective, in turn, is correlative with the ontologicalstatus of reality (Quinn, 2005, p. 17). The training and cultivation ofthe actor-dancer is, like Buddhist meditation, fundamentally a transforma-tive process in that it creates a new mode of being that is removed fromeveryday ego consciousness (Quinn, 2005, p. 17). The transformationof the actor-dancers consciousness from ordinary modes of being/doingto an extraordinary state of being/doing in aesthetic performance is funda-mental to noh training as developed by Zeami. According to him, the per-former ideally reaches a state of nonduality where striving for effects issomething that is not part of the actors conscious orientation (Quinn,2005, p. 5).

Although Shinto, Daoism, and shamanism played an historical role inthe development of noh, for Zeami the noh performers ideal state of con-sciousness is a fully embodied state of nondual awareness/consciousness.To attain this state, the actor must train until he reaches a level at whichhis innermost intent is beyond his own discriminating consciousness(Quinn, 2005, p. 229), an active state of mushin (no-mind) that liesbeyond active intellectualization and where the effects of a performanceare not the result of the actors conscious intention (Quinn, 2005,p. 226). Zeamis treatises and the example of noh illustrate the fact thatperformers and master teachers of embodied practices have long reflectedon their processes and how best to achieve a transformation in andthrough long-term trainings that cultivate an optimal state of nondualbodymind awareness deployed in performance.


Contemporary Performer Training: Psychophysical Techniquesfor Accessing Alternative States of Consciousness

Since the late 19th century when the Russian theatre director KonstantinStanislavsky (18631938) began the revolutionary process of developinga systematic approach to training the Western actor, a vast array of tech-niques and processes (yoga, Asian martial arts, songs, night running,dynamic exercises, or ritual/shamanic techniques) have been utilizedto explore how the performer might transcend bodymind dualismand secure a dependable process for actualizing the ASC required of theperformer.

Stanislavskys use of the term psychophysical for acting was an innova-tive, historically limited, and not always successful attempt to solve therelationship between the psycho and physical elements of textuallybased character acting. Roach explains how:

The Stanislavski System is a means of manipulating levels of consciousnessto achieve certain specific effects on the body, especially the illusion ofspontaneity. [ . . . ] He believed that an inner dialogue runs within uswithout interruptiona stream of consciousness sustained and constantlyredirected by subconscious impulses and sensory stimuli . . . This is thelife that the actor attempts to emulate by living the role. (1993, pp.206207)

In order to accomplish the task of living the role, Stanislavsky drewon two main sources, the work of psychologist Theodule Armand Ribot(18391916) and the limited versions of Indian yoga available in turn-of-the-century Russia, filtered through then-popular occultism and spir-itualism (Carnicke, 1993; White, 2006). Stanislavsky described how theactors physical score, once perfected, must go beyond mechanical exe-cution to a deeper level of experience that is rounded out with newfeeling and [ . . . ] become[s], one might say, psychophysical in quality(1961, p. 66). In My Life in Art, Stanislavsky described the actors optimalstate of awareness or concentration as one in which he reacts not only onhis sight and hearing, but on all the rest of his senses. It embraces hismind, his will, his emotions, his body, his memory and his imagination(1948, p. 465). Stanislavskys ideal was that in every physical action . . .there is concealed some inner action, some feelings (1961, p. 228).

To help achieve this optimal state of awareness while living a role,Stanislavsky drew upon and adapted his limited knowledge of yoga exer-cises and principles to heighten the actors sensory awareness in


performance. Arguably the most important material element Stanislavskyborrowed from yoga was prana, the breath(s), wind, vital energy, or life-force understood to circulate throughout the body from your hands toyour fingertips, from your thighs to your toes creating thereby an innerrhythm (Carnicke, 1998, p. 141). Stanislavsky translated his work withprana into the actors ability to radiate feelings as a character to commu-nicate with fellow actors-as-characters.

After working with Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov (18911955)developed psychophysical exercises, psychological gestures, and radia-tion in order to penetrate all the parts of the body with fine [ . . . ] vibra-tions (Chekhov, 1991, p. 43). Byckling (2005) quotes Chekhov as sayingthat the training of the body is [ . . . ] a training in awareness, in learninghow to listen to the body, how to be led by it. Chekhovs actor worksfrom body awareness to psychophysical composition. The actor sensesand feels the form of the psychological gesture as she creates and inhabitsit. Although utilizing limited elements and principles of yoga, Chekhovand Stanislavsky did so in order to develop the kind of alternative con-sciousness necessary for an actor to perform textually based characterroles in mainstream aesthetic theatre. As Soto-Morettini explains, the kindof second order intentional thinking necessary to understand and ana-lyze a dramatic text at the beginning of rehearsals must be forgotten onceonstage (2010, p. 206). Actors are engaged in a dual form of forgetting;they both pretend to forget and they pretend to be the character (2010,p. 206). This dual forgetting is the essential quality of acting andrequires of the actor fictional immersion (2010, p. 206). QuotingMcGinns (2004), fictional immersion occurs when the work disguisesitself as reality, while never concealing the fact that it is a disguise (Soto-Morettini, 2010, p. 207).

Between Ritual and Aesthetic Performance: Artaud and Grotowski

During the 20th century, a series of practitioners working awayfrom mainstream Western realist theatreAntonin Artaud (18961949)in France, Alexander Fersen (19112001) in Italy, Jerzy Grotowski(19331999), and Nicolas Nunez (1946) in Mexico, among othershave drawn inspiration or specific techniques from ritual/shamanic prac-tices in order to explore both alternative approaches to acting and/orprocesses of audience/performer communion. These explorations haveoften taken place over a lifetime in laboratories, spaces set aside forfocused, in-depth development of the performers consciousness. Mostpractitioners divest their work of the traditional belief systems in which


the source techniques were historically embedded as they attempt toachieve a secular sacredness.

In his rebellion against textually based theatre, Artaud wanted to createa new actor who was an athlete of the heart. As Cardena explains, Artaudwas one of the first if not the first theatre practitioner to explore theterritory of the performer as shaman (1986, p. 299). Artauds vision ofthe performer was as a master of the attainment and induction of alteredstates with the purpose of healing a degraded humanity (p. 299). In aseries of manifestos inspired in part by his encounter with Balinese danc-ers and visits to Mexico, Artaud called for actors to become crude empiri-cists who examine the material aspect of the expressive possibilities oftheir bodyminds. Artaud postulated that the actor, through breath control,would be able to place the breath in specific locations in the body in orderto cause psychophysiological vibrations that would increase the internaldensity and volume of his feeling and provoke . . . spontaneousreappearance of life (in Cole & Chinoy, 1970, pp. 236, 239). Artaudassumed that these emotional states have organic bases locatable in theactors body; therefore, for every mental action, every leap of human emo-tion, there is a corresponding breath which is appropriate to it (p. 236).The actors task is to develop an affective musculature which correspondsto the physical localizations of feelings (p. 235), the actor must cultivatethe emotion in his body (p. 239) by training the breath. As the actorbecomes able to localize control of the breath, s/he will be able voluntarilyto apportion it out in states of contraction and release, thereby serving asa springboard for the emanation of a feeling . . . [Once trained] with thewhetted edge of breath the actor carves out his character (pp. 237,239). In spite of the speculative specificity of his vision of the actor as anathlete of the heart, Artaud was never able to develop an actual psycho-physical technique actualizing this vision.

Although he always viewed his work as a continuation of the explora-tions of Stanislavsky, Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski embracedand actively engaged the territory between ritual and performance. AsWolf-ord argues, Grotowski is not so much a person of the theatre as one whoseinterests, for a certain period of time, passed through theatre, but alwayswith an orientation toward elsewhere (1998, p. 85). Schechner hasdescribed Grotowskis projects, whether the early theatrical phase (trainingactors andmaking performances) or his later post-theatrical phases (Theatreof Sources, Objective Drama, Art as vehicle), as informed by his pursuit ofspiritual, mystical, and yogic interests even though this pursuit nevergrasped after a definite and particular kind of spiritual knowledge(1997, p. 463). The psychophysical processes of actor training he explored


early in his career provided a necessary structure for the performers innersearch where theatre became a means rather than an end (Wolford,1998, p. 85). Since 1986, Grotowski focused on art as vehicle, carried outas a practical research program at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski andThomas Richards in Pontedera, Italy. Grotowski described the work asfocused on actions related to very ancient songs which traditionally servedritual purposes, and so can have a direct impact onso to saythe head,the heart and the body of the doers (Wolford, 1988, p. 87). Grotowski alsodescribed the work as a type of yoga, noting that while, in one sense, Art asvehicle is very much concerned with elements of performance craft, theinterior goal of the work is analogous to that which is sought in meditativedisciplines (p. 88). This work is autotelic, focusing on the experience ofthe doers. It becomes a tool by means of which the human being can under-take a work on her/himself (Wolford, 1998, p. 88).

Mnemodrama: An Actors Version of the Ritual Journey of the Shaman

One of the often overlooked pioneers exploring the territory betweenshamanic models of consciousness and acting is the Italian theatre directorAlessandro Fersen (19112001). From 1957, when he established a thea-tre laboratory for research on acting, he began a lifelong journey of explor-ing the mythopoetic territory between ritual and theatre. John Green(1993) provides a comprehensive account of how Fersens years of practi-cal research in the studio, inspired by the ecstatic figures of the shaman,was eventually codified asmnemodramaa studio-based exercise in whichthe actor progressively explores advanced steps in the techniques of aban-don (Fersen, quoted in Marranca, 1984, p. 22).

The memory of the mnemodrama does not seep through the protectivefilters of consciousness: it has its own hallucinating nakedness, like meatskinned off its epidermis. It draws not just from the individual past, butalso from an antenatal or ancestral past. Its behaviors have little in commonwith remembering or having memories. (Fersen, 1980, p. 74)

Fersens research was based in part on exposure to Carnival, Samba,and Candomble in Bahia, Brazil, and subsequent collaboration with Italiananthropologist Alfonso Di Nola. Fersen claims that in mnemodrama, theactor experiences an ASC where what one inhabits is not a life, nor a sec-ond life as a character, but It is a second state of mind, which has anoneiric quality (Fersen, in Marranca, 1984, p. 20).


Fersen characterized the exercise he was creating as an actors versionof the shamanic journey where the actor abandons himself [ . . . ] tothe unknowns of the possible event [ . . . ] (Fersen, 1980, p. 75). Modeledon ritual practices, Fersen interprets his work as a dialectic operatingbetween abandon techniques and control techniques (1980, p. 65). Ulti-mately for Fersen, his attempt to allow the actors process and experienceof mnemodrama to touch textually based character acting failed becausethere was an unsuccessful suture between the two (Green, 1993).

Subsuming the Self into the Whole

Another example of those working between ritual and aesthetic theatre isthe lifelong work on communal co-presence of Mexicos Nicolas Nunez.Nunez founded the Taller de Investigacion Teatral or Theatre ResearchWork-shop (TRW) in 1975 at the National University in Mexico City. Since found-ing TRW, Nunez and his collaborators have undertaken practical cross-cultural research between ritual and theatre, actively exploring ASC accessedby means of specific psychophysical techniques drawn from both pre-Hispanic Mexican traditions such as the Nahuatl conchero (shell dance) andTibetan Buddhist monastic Black Hat dance (Middleton, 2008, p. 43). TRWaims to effect psychological, physiological, and spiritual change through thedissolution of negative psychophysical modes of behavior (Middleton,2008, p. 44) both in ritual dynamic training sessions and in performances.

Nunez describes the actor as a sacred animal, alongside the bull, thedeer, etc. Actors/participants access heightened states of being in whichperception alters (Middleton, 2008, p. 45). For Nunez, the actor and sha-man alike are able to go into an altered state of consciousness [ . . . ] atwill and thus can perceive reality directly with no interference of anykind of thinking (quoted in Middleton, 2008, p. 45). Middletondescribes Nunezs dynamics as follows:

Attention is focused in the moment-by-moment somatic experiencethrough intentionality, breathing technique or use of mantra. Receptiveconsciousness is engaged through the necessity to remain within long-durational activities, abandoning end-gaining strategies and time-consciousness. Conceptual activity is subdued, partly through intention,and partly through the psycho-physically strenuous tools of running, ener-getic position, etc. Energies are dilated through physiological effects (suchas adrenalin and endocrine release), and this in turn intensifies the somaticnature of the experience. (2008, p. 48)


Nunezs dynamics as well as the participatory performances he createswith TRW are intended as rituals of personal transformation bringingtogether mythology, cosmology, and personal transformation (Middleton,2001, 2008).

Cultivating a Nondual Bodymind Awareness/consciousness

Often inspired by Artaud or Grotowski and influenced by non-Western principles and techniques, cultivating a state of nondual aware-ness so central to Asian modes of embodied practice has become amain if unarticulated tenet of many approaches to performer trainingtoday (Hodge, 2010b; Zarrilli, 2002). Daily training in Japanese butoh(Fraleigh, 1999), Suzuki technique (Suzuki, 1986), Gardzienice TheatreAssociation techniques (Hodge, 2010a; Staniewski, 2004), or Zarrillis(2009) martial arts/yoga-based psychophysical training all provide in-depth embodied experiences through which one can achieve the typeof nondual state of consciousness/awareness required in meditationwhere one is both being attentive and not thinking (Blackmore, 2003).Their modus operandi may be compared with concentrative meditation(Blackmore, 2003). Citing recent cognitive scientific research, Soto-Morettini differentiates between attention training and [ . . . ] attentionstate training (2010, p. 214). The former attempts to control thoughtswhile the latter induces a state of restful alertness, enabling a highdegree of awareness of body, mind and external instructions (2010,p. 214). This is a state inducing or coming very near a meditative state(Soto-Morettini 2010, p. 215). Each approach to training in its own wayawakens, shapes, focuses, and concentrates the performers energy,attention and awareness through specific psychophysical exercises/tasks.Butoh performer Hijikata Tatsumi developed butoh-fu in the 1970s asmodes of visualization (Fraleigh & Nakamura, 2006) through whichthe performer could enter and sustain a dynamic embodied state ofawareness. Gardzienices night running takes the performer into an alter-native mode of openness to others and the environment when having tonegotiate running without illumination (Hodge, 2010a; Staniewski,2004). Like some forms of concentrated meditation, Zarrillis psycho-physical training begins with breathing exercises and attentiveness tothe breath (2009). But these approaches also differ from forms of medi-tation that take the meditator out of the world into a different reality.Here, the performer, like the martial artist, always remains responsiveto the immediate environment.


Phenomenal Consciousness and Performance

Ned Blocks nuanced discussion of the differences and relationshipbetween phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness (1995, 1997)provides a useful way of describing aspects of the performers nondual con-sciousness. Block explains that phenomenal consciousness is experience;what makes a state phenomenally conscious is that there is something it islike to be in that state (1995, p. 227). P-conscious states are sensations,whereas the paradigm A-conscious states are propositional attitude stateslike thoughts, beliefs, and desires, states with representational contentexpressed by that clauses (1997, p. 384). Access consciousness servesmore of a functional process than phenomenal consciousness because it car-ries specific types of information generally available for the organism. Theseare not absolute categories since thoughts may be P-conscious andsensations/experiences often have representational content (1997,p. 384). Performances and modes of performer training may be understoodas practices that shape culturally and historically specific forms of extraordi-nary nondual phenomenal consciousness that are different from ones ordi-nary states of consciousness.

Although the performers phenomenal consciousness is shaped toembody/enact the performance at an optimal level of attainment such as inthe example of the noh actor, since a performance score is a repeatable struc-ture when the performer is not performing the score one can self-consciouslyreview that score mentally. The performer uses access consciousness toreview and reflect upon the performance of a score or structure or to reflectmore generally on his or her artistry as an actor/dancer. When performing,a specific score is available as representational content at the periphery ofones phenomenal consciousness even as one embodies/enacts that score.The representational content of the score in its entirety and of each task/action that constitutes the whole is available; however, the performerideally does not use access consciousness to become directly conscious of atask or action within the score as it is being performed.

Block also calls our attention to what he calls monitoring consciousness,the notion that there is some sort of inner perception or P-consciousness ofones own states (1997, p. 390). Because performer training techniques andperformance are highly repetitive modes of embodiment, P-consciousnessmay be characterized as conscious awareness where an embodied, sedi-mented relationship to the performance or doing is experienced as a residue,an echo, or resonant shadow. At the periphery of P-consciousness in the actof doing is an inner perception, sensory awareness, or consciousness of the


doing, sometimes described by performers as the feeling of the form. There isoften a what it is like for me state viewed from the first-person perspectiveinside the process of embodying a specific performer training process andwhen enacting a specific performance score. This mode of inhabitation is dif-ferent from ones ordinarymode of consciousness, it is experienced as extraor-dinary. Performer training and performing can therefore be described as aspecial form of P-consciousness with awareness where the performer inhab-its an awareness of the doing at the same time the actor remains completelyinside the feeling of the doing. The feeling of the doing is the additionallayer of resonance within the performers consciousness. For actors, it is thelistening or hearing within oneself in the act of speaking. It is what makesa performance that may look like everyday life more than everyday life.

Two caveats are in order. First, the description provided above is theoptimal ideal assumed in virtuosic performance and therefore is oftennot achieved during initial training or in performance. Second, in this pro-cess the performer ideally never becomes self-conscious, the actor does notthink about what she is doing but remains within the flow of phenom-enal consciousness as appropriate to the training or the dramaturgy of aspecific performance (see also Cardena & Cousins, 2010).

The actors phenomenal consciousness has often been described as adouble consciousness or multiple consciousness, apt descriptions ofthe feeling of the form and the presence of the score/structure at theperiphery of phenomenal consciousness. The performer constantlyadjusts this specific performance to the stimuli in the performance envi-ronment moment by moment (Blair, 2008; Yoo, 2007; Zarrilli, 2009).From the performers perspective inside this embodied process, as onepractices, performs, or plays within the structure of a process, there isoften a strong autotelic element to that engagement. One enjoys the prac-tice/act of performing.

Systems of actor training like those described above are designed toshape the performers phenomenal consciousness to achieve an extraordi-nary discrete alternate state of nondual consciousness. The phenomeno-logical account that concludes this essay provides one example of howthe actor shapes and focuses her or his energy, attention, and so on inorder to enact a particular dramaturgy/performance score.

A Phenomenological Account of an Actors Performance Score

Cocreated by Kaite OReilly, Jo Shapland, and Phillip Zarrilli, Told by theWind premiered in Cardiff in 2010 and continues to tour internationally(see Figure 14.1). Inspired by but not attempting to reproduce its sources,


it draws on phantasmal Japanese noh dramas, Oto Shogos theatre of qui-etude, and the minimal work of Samuel Beckett. It is a fragmentary perfor-mance piece consisting of 10 structures, described by critics as hypnotic,a meditation, dreamlike. Throughout the performance, a Female and aMale Figure are onstage but never make direct visual contact. There is nodialogue per se, but Male Figure delivers fragments of suggestive text during4 of the structures. Female Figure occasionally mouths words that eitherremain unsaid or are barely whispered and remain inaudible. Male Figuresintermittent spoken text is delivered during approximately 11 minutes ofthe total running time. Except for the barely audible white noise in thebackground throughout the performance, there are lengthy periods inwhich no overt and little inadvertent sound is made by the actors.

In the first structure, the two actors are discovered onstage: FemaleFigure is seated in the center stage-left chair, and Male Figure is seatedin the upstage-right chair at a writing desk looking out the window framein front of him, suspended in air. Their backs are to each other. Betweenthem is a square of earth on a diagonal surrounded by evergreen branches.In silence, for approximately 3 minutes the two figures only make subtle,


Figure 14.1 TOLD BY THE WIND. Structure 5: Male and Female Figuresmove point/counterpoint within the earth square.(Photo courtesy of Ace McCarron.)

slight physical adjustments to their positions as they listen in the silence.This is my description of the actors work and consciousness in playingthis nonverbal structure:

When Jo Shapland and I step into the playing space and are seated to beginStructure 1, our initial performance task is to open and engage our periph-eral awareness to the possible presence of an other in the environment.From my perspective inside the performance, the act of opening myperipheral awareness means using indirect visual focus, my eyes do notattempt to focus specifically on anything/anyone/anywhere. Because myvisual focus is secondary and indirect, my energy and awareness open toand attend to the spatial environment surrounding me. The other towhom I am opening my awareness is not a specific individual, but rather apossibility or a question. This other is constituted by a series of embodiedquestions, such as

Is someone/something there?Is she present?Is she there? Where?There . . . there . . . or there?I do not literally ask myself these questions in my mind, nor is this

other or this she given a specific name, identity, or history. Rather,I psychophysically engage my embodied consciousness in subtly respond-ing to the impulse of a question or possible presence if/when/as eachquestion/possibility emerges in the moment of performance. It is importantthat this embodied process of questioning/probing remains indeterminate.My focus/attention should not land or resolve itself. It is a constant pro-cess of active searching/questioning.

Half way through Structure 1, this initial probing becomes more specificas both Shapland and I attune our auditory awareness to our possibleother. We actively engage psychophysically in what may be described asattentive listening, opening our ears to the sonority of the immediate envi-ronment. The psychophysical task here is to let go and abandon oneselfcompletely to this state of deep, profound listening where all that existsis a question. Nancy asks, What secret is at stake when one truly listensand thereby encounters sonority rather than the message? (2007, p. 5).We are listening, but what is there remains a secretunknown to eachof us. There is no message. No thing and no one emerges as an answerto the psychophysical questions posed. Our embodied consciousness/awareness is always on the edge of meaning; however meaning andunderstanding never emerge. As Nancy explains: To be listening is alwaysto be on the edge of meaning, or in an edgy meaning of extremity, and asif the sound were precisely nothing else than this edge [ . . . ] (2007, p. 7).

The kind of listening I describe here is not a passive act of the earshearing, but an act of absorption so full that ones embodied consciousness


is woven in the moment. Optimally, this process of embodied, aural attune-ment absorbs and re-directs our energy and awareness in a process of tak-ing in, searching, and questioning . . . We are still but not frozen; rather,each of us is animated from the inside-out by constantly being active andreactive. Our performative engagement with deep listening may bedescribed as opening a space of possibility within us as performers/stage-figures. (see Zarrilli, in press b)

Thus, in a successful performance, we reach an alternative state ofnondual awareness/consciousness.

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Phillip Zarrilli - Essay on Altered Consciousness