if . . .

Workshop Impulse concluded .  Awkwardly first described as Towards Action (from impulse through association to elements of inaction) the ten day sessions ultimately examined the practice and vocabulary of Joe Chaikin and the creative actor. "I felt a terrific longing for a kind of ensemble," Mr. Chaikin told author William Goldman, for the book, "The Season." "I wanted to play with actors, actors who felt a sensitivity for one another... In order to come to a vocabulary, we had to teach each other: we had no ambitions other than to meet and play around... " ( Playbill ) The days submerged into seven investigations: space, place, territory, emblem, sphere & zone, occupation & inhabit.  The individual body & voice training exercises moved subtly into acts of mapping and connection forming constellations. Words flowed from reflective actors lips: spontaneity, silence, source, partner, community, ether and beacon. Fra...

... digging the well & finding the source. . . two people in the empty space touching the elements of impulse through body and voice . . . moments of contact . . . song . . . pause . . . follow . . . drink from the well . . . the water is fresh . . . " And now, what is impulse? 'In/pulse' - push from inside. Impulses push from inside. Impulses precede physical actions, always. The impulses: it is as if the physical, still almost invisible, was already born in the body. . . . impulses are the morphenes of acting. " (Grotowski in At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions by Thomas Richards.)