Performance and the Sacred: a living exploration of community and practice (in other words, what we do every day...)

7/23

Myrto, Bob, Mario and Katherine

We finally sit down and talk with the reGroup theatre folks to try and finalize their contract. There have been some bumpy places but I still have respect for what they are doing in trying to reclaim the legacy of the original Group theatre and I am anxious for them to have  a good run for their  Texas  Trilogy, which I haven’t seen since my Tulsa days.( http://www.atexastrilogy.com/home.html) There is enough shared culture on both sides of the Red River to have made a real connection with the Tulsa theatre community.

People from the Work Center are arriving and setting to work for tonight’s open conversation on the intersection between performance and spirituality.

Last night while they were singing, a couple wandered in and asked what was going on. I told them it was an open choir singing songs from the old southern black church tradition. They listen awhile, see the bare feet and the dancing circle and look as if they’re not quite sure.

Pat O in for our weekly meeting. We have to get Danielle’s job replacement description finalized. And keep moving towards finalizing our construction manager contract. And doing whatever’s necessary to expedite getting the stop work order lifted. But underneath it all, there is progress. We are moving forward.

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Starting off with music

A crowd is gathering in Mc Alpin Hall for Performance and the Sacred: a living exploration of community and practice. The event begins with a round if singing. People drawn up and into the moving circles.  Jeremy G gives us an overall introduction and I set the context for West-Park as a sacred space.

There’s a lot to talk about beginning with the theme for the evening.

* I remember when we were working with the accordionist extraordinaire Bill Schimmel (http://www.billschimmel.com/) every Sunday. Other of our house musicians complained and said that it felt more like performance than worship. Katherine responded that all worship is performance,  it’s a matter of what kind of performance. So I argue that  there is no distinction between performance and sacred. 

Jeremy G welcomes us

* Jeremy M argues that for himself as a recoding artist, performer and church musician, for him there is a difference.

* Katherine says that ultimately it’s an issue of intention.

* The issue of repetition comes up. Mario talks about working on some pieces for 10 years before they are ready. I say that repetition can be an effort to recreate an experience. To do it so many times that it becomes embedded. Like a recipe. You may need to do it 10 times before you know it well enough to take it off in another direction. It’s when the word  is fully incarnated that the door to the deeper place opens.

* There are folks here from St. Augustine, a Roman Catholic Church with garifono members, women in African print and turbans. All you need for your church to grow, says one woman, is good music. One good singer. And feed the people good food.

Mario tells us about the Work Center

* We have good food, donated by our neighbor Barney Greengrass, arroz y habichuelas from Flor de Mayo, Mario’s favorite spot, and a giant pan of shepherd’s pie from our home base, the Gate.  Generous neighbors...enough to feed us all and more...

* There are people from the Manhattan Church of Christ, an evangelical break away from the Disciples. They have a strong program with the homeless. But what is their theology? Where are they vis a vis lgbtq? Women? That is important to me.

* The question of context comes up. The music Mario uses is from the American south. African-American Christian music. Some of the seed group members are Buddhist. Jewish. Hindu. Secular. They are wrestling with what does to mean to sing words they don’t believe and still feel moved? Is thee something inherent that in the music that has meaning deeper than the words?

* I press the context discussion in an other direction. The music they sing comes form a  context of struggle, From a project of creating liberated space in the midst of slavery. Oppression. That sustained people in the struggle to make that liberation concrete. What does it mean to remove that music from that context?

Myrto makes a point

* Mario suggests that we are all involved in some level of struggle, even if personal and internal. That’s not enough for me. We live in the midst of the agony of Gaza. Of tens of thousands of children crossing the US-Mexico border. Of a black man on Staten Island choked to death for selling loose cigarettes. Does this experience of singing and/or performance challenge one to engage? I recall that Thomas Merton said that when one begins in true meditation, one ends in revolution.

* Also at stake is community. At last week’s Petefest, in honor of Pete Seeger, I finally got it. When I was an early folk-singer, I hated sing-alongs. I wanted to slay you with my songs. But I realized that Pete had an intention. (That word again) to create a sustaining community of struggle through shared song. That his sing-alongs, the very act of communal singing, had concrete political content.

Katherine does too

* And I pushed the community question further. As I see it there are two agendas. One, the relationship with St. Augustine, the Manhattan Church of Christ, existing faith communities, is dialogical and dialectic in nature. The other has to do with creating new communities. To ask those who have been attracted to the weekly practice of singing what the next step would  be. What would it taken to make a commitment of mutual accountability to each other? To become  a community that would reach out in service, in struggle? I offer to assist that process for anyone willing  to undertake it.

* For me, I now that the church as I have known  it is over. Something new must be born. I want to help midwife that new reality. Is something here part of that new birth? Is there a new community waiting to be born? We’ll review it all next week before Mario returns to Italy.

Saying goodnight after a great conversation

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Open mic starts late out of  courtesy for the discussion going on upstairs. There’s at least one new singer-songwriter named Jesse.

Jesse

I do a late set after Joel, Pat O and Mandola. But the real moment of the night is Alex,

Alex

back again. Getting ready to head back to northwest Arkansas, territory  knew well in my Tulsa days, to record her first EP in Kansas City. She wants to play some songs. Get some video. For her kick-starter campaign. I’m elected to take the video, which I do until her battery runs out. There is something raw and untouched in her voice. I look forward to us being  a community of support as she ventures out. We’ll publicize the campaign as soon as it is on. RL invites her to join him on Stay Awhile. And she does. Smiling all the while.

Stay Awhile 

Welcome back, Mario

7/9

Seemingly from the four corners of the earth, Mario and his colleagues from the (Grotowski) Work Center in Italy have regathered at West-Park. In the meantime, Jeremy G has kept the home fires burning with weekly open choir sessions and seed group meetings. Now they are all here to put together the symposium on the meeting point between the sacred and art practices… Performing (and) the Sacred ..A living exploration of artistic and community practices.

There is Myrto, Greek by way of Toronto; Graziele from Brazil, still in a state of shock from yesterday’s, as Zeljko would call it, mythological World Cup game between Brazil and Germany; Lloyd, the American with his Williamsburg hat and Mario from Italy.

As always, the conversation shifts between working out practical details and deeper levels where words like ontological and didactic come into play. And Mario moves back and forth between his very grassroots connections and connecting with the upper echelons of tall steeple religion. I keep pushing the conversation past the reformation of what already exists to the creation of new intentional spiritual communities.

Someone has said to Mario there is a difference between the spiritual and the aesthetic. I don’t think so. It’s intersections we’re looking for.  And someone asked what he would answer if asked if he believes that Jesus is God or the son of God. And he’s not sure. And I say it depends what assumptions underlie the question. That it is didactic in a a world of being, of ontology. And we talk about evangelicals. And  Catholics. And how colonial Catholicism allowed the survival of indigenous religion, especially Native American and Yoruba, by translating one set of gods into a different set of symbols. And how somehow the experience of singing transcends any theological boundaries. And hoe somehow we’re going to explore all this in a night together. With theatre people. And musicians. And clergy. And old garifona women choir singers from the Bronx.

Well, at least we’ve got the outline down.

Argentina is ready to play the Netherlands. Several of the Work Center folks are chanting go global south…..

SIkhs. And gnostics. And ecstacy.

2/2

Simran, Bob and Christine

The steps are the worst I’ve seen in a long time. I get Joe and La Toya up. Point to how trashed things  look. He volunteers to take the broom and dust pan and sweep up. And I put on the gloves to pick up and remove clothes, bedding, etc. Then head to the side door where there’s another mess. Sand bucket turned over, empty bottles. Not the way to start my Sunday.

Andre shows up ready to sing. Points to Joe and La Toya still on the steps. Those two savory? He says. Well not exactly un, I say, but that’s a long story.

A Sikh film crew is already here setting up, ready to film today’s dialogue between Simran Jeet Singh of the Sikh Coalition and Christine Hong of the Interfaith Office of the Presbyterian Church(USA). Christine is also already here. . Waiting. As we wait for the congregation to arrive and my anxiety rises. To add to the stress, the boiler is still out and a chill is setting in. Just like those old days.

We have an abbreviated service. Then the dialogue begins.

Simran and Christine  in dialogue

The Sikh community sought out this dialogue as they continue to endure racial profiling and hate inspired harassment and even violence. They simply want to be known. We at West-Park are part of the first series of dialogues. Simran talks about how he had always been somewhat tangentially involved until his best friend was jumped  on and beaten by 5 young people yelling Osama as they kicked him and broke his jaw. Most upsetting was that the attackers were young African Americans. Simran had hoped that those who have experienced oppression would be more sensitive to it. But that’s not the way it goes.

He recalled growing up in Texas. Feeling very much unique. And different. But OK until 9-11. When his while community went on lock down as they became targets of a frightened and angry community.

He helps us understand some of the basics:

* The names: Guru Nanak, the founder, wanted to break through the caste system so every man had the royal last name Singh and every woman kaur, or princess.

* Likewise the turban. Was traditionally for royalty. Nanak declared it for all.  A strong sense of egalitarianism.

* Sikh means disciple or student, who follows a guru,an enlightened one or teacher. I tell Simran that it is like that with us…ministers are teaching elders, not priests.

* They have strong tradition of charity and military service. Strong tradition in the British Empire. But the US has instituted a policy against visible religious symbols that also excludes orthodox Jews as well as Muslims and Sikhs.

* Had to make difficult decision not to just say, hey we’re not Muslims and declare that any hateful acts and prejudice are never justified.

* When he came to New York, began to realize that all Sikhs were not like him. Not all Sikhs played pick up basketball...

* And all the frightening times being stopped and asked where he was from (Texas) Especially Ohio where they took his license. From the passenger side. 

From Christine’s side, we learn what it was like for her growing up as an Asian American. Being told that she was so articulate. Or that she spoke good English. Her transformational moment was seeing her grandfather being humiliated. And she asks us to think of our own moments.

To counter the cold, Jeremy brings out the long green scarves that used to go with the Sanctuary NYC choir. It means a lot to me that he is sharing them with us. They always used to look to me like stoles for the long green season, ordinary time.

After the  dialogue has concluded, we gather around  the piano. Jeremy has arranged a version of vehe guru, a Sikh chant. And then we finish with Gonna live so God can use me. And we note that this African-American song fits both Sikh and Presbyterian theology.

We gather around the piano

I was happy to learn  about a group I had only known as providing security services in New Mexico with turbans and long beards.  And to know that they are monotheists, just like us. Almost 24 million of them in the world. That’s way more than Presbyterian.

                  * * * *

Late Sunday afternoon. I have told Rachel her cart is blocking the doorway. Of course she has to come back and tell me about the difference between people. How these fine young people said it was no problem. And that she should come to their performance.

This performance by the Workcenter will be in the gym. The Hidden Sayings. Katherine and John have come. And Beppe too. Mario and his company are dressed all in white.

Hidden SAyings

And bare feet. Begins with a proclamation from the Gospel of Thomas. Much of the text comes from gnostic sources. And it’s amazing to hear the old Nag Hammadi texts run through a southern black gospel voice. And body. Somehow, or rather, of course, it works. Some stretches are mesmerizing. Felicita has fully embodied the soul of the music. Later John H will say it was not so much a performance as an ecstatic religious experience. I want to tell him that that’s typical of the Grotowski praxis…deeply spiritual, recognizing the power of ritual and archetypal meaning beyond any systematic theology. It’s an effort to recover the earthy deep rhythm of creation and wonder as a central focus of theatrical experience. (What we saw in the Dzieci Maraton…) 

Hidden Sayings

Clearly what Mario and the  workcenter do could be the basis of an ongoing community.

We’ve lived through another  performance without heat. Like the old days of 2011-12. Old people struggling with four flights  of stairs. Rachel making a late ..and grand…entrance. Mario taking  her hand at the end of the performance…sigh..for so many she is more symbol than reality.

It has been a good day….