thots on spontanaiety and control

i think there is a fear of abandon...of the chaotic energy at the heart of creation which we all have within us...it seems we are afraid of being overwhelmed by it...kids, of course have a lot more immediate access to this energy, it is a birthright and huge resource...there is this myth that the process of growing up, maturing, involves giving up access to this sense of spontanaiety, play, unpredictablility....our lives become much more about obedience and conformity, following set paths toward certain rewards...yet through drinking, drugs, video games, art etc. we do whatever we can to not lose this part of our lives...and dreams, of course insist we keep contact with the underground, however much we are cut off from it in daily life.

in ‘night follows day’ (tim etchells/forced entertainment) there is a scene where the kids kind of just go wild, but it’s not wild really, (anyone who has kids or works with kids sees this all the time) just human play, a sense of abandon, provocation, contact, conflict, physical risk, the gap is shrunk between impulse and action-- this maybe is the key, thought processes are moving with the body, or sometimes the body is actually leading...it feels slightly dangerous and fun both to watch and participate in!

we have a theatre here in canada where, for the most part, the mind is always carefully mapping things out and justifying it in terms of authority/status quo/common sense/the rational way, before moving ahead with emotion, passion, the body....we do shows about the effects of repression without incorporating subconscious and irrational energies into our creative processes. what we seem to like best is doing productions of artists who have themselves worked with these irrational forces in ways that, though once new and bold and potentially subversive have long since been incorporated into society, (mommy/daddy/corporate and gov't funding bodies) as culture. so that we pretend to be exploring, out there, "still very relevant" stuff, when actually we are just rehashing, things which now are quite comfortable, familiar perspectives, and not at all connected to the newness and strangeness of the current moment.

art, of course, requires structure and is, well, artificial, so in the end there needs to be impeccable control and interplay of elements....i think though that we only allow ourselves a very reduced sense of what those elements could consist of...in our desire to name and control, and prove our thesis as it were from the get go, we cut off many avenues of possible exploration....a certain life force in the mix...perhaps dark, perhaps radiantly bright-- because it is somewhat frightening...it reminds us of things we are trying to repress, have been taught are childish, that we should grow up from. all these absurd rules about behaviour which are part of socialization, most education. most of our theatre reflects this fear of our birthright-- to experience the creative font of anarchic exuberance and spontanaiety at the core of being.