Paratheater continues to intrigue

Paratheater describes itself as "a non-performance climate of meditative action. Paratheater labs start out in a non-performance climate of meditative action where the pressure to perform is released and replaced by the freedom and the responsibility for creating your own pressures. This process of self-created pressure begins with each participant taking a silent vow to become fully accountible for their own safety and creativity. This vow is taken to support the development of autonomy and integrity within each individual as a prerequisite to doing this work."

Their web site has more detailed information and interesting music... If they have any public performances in the next year I hope to attend.

What is Paratheater, asked Princess Haiku

The term "paratheatre" was coined by the late great Polish theatre director, Jerzy Grotowski (Aug. 11, 1933 - Jan. 14, 1999), to address a stage of the work his group was doing between 1970 and 1978 in Poland. Generally speaking, paratheatre refers to private, non-performance oriented processes of group dynamics usually involving rigorous physical and vocal techniques for accessing, expressing and embodying the internal landscape. Without an audience, the focus shifts away from the external "pressure to perform" and shifts to the self-created pressures of performing actions with enough commitment to transform and refine the instrument (of the self). Grotowski himself claimed no 'legacy of paratheatre' due to the many transformations his own work underwent over three decades, and beyond his death, at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Pontedera, Italy.

The paratheatre medium that I, Antero Alli, have been developing with others since 1977 expresses an asocial ritual technology for Self-initiation with its own principles and techniques of physical theatre, mime, song and standing Zazen meditation to access, express and embody the internal landscape.

More information here

Performance Art and....