Where we're going: new show, deathclown, and monthly play jams
Upcoming events and a reminder that theater skills are relational skills
Upcoming events:
(scroll below for more details of each event)
Nondual Theater Jam Virtual (L&D) via playground tier on patreon
Weds 5/17 5:30-8pmPST
Sunday 5/28 10am-12:30pmPST
Play to Find Out Salon (in person PDX)
Saturday 5/20 4-9pm
Deathclown webinar more info here
Monday 5/22 5pmPST
Bad Feeling Go Away: a new experiential storytelling event bit.ly/badfeels
Tuesday 5/30 5:30-7pmPST
Last month we hosted our first nondual theater jam virtual (over zoom) via the playground tier on our patreon. We explored what people “crave” and “avoid” and developed Tabooboo characters based in deathclown methods. Tabooboos/deathclowns are primordial benevolent agents of transformation; they reveal where human cultures are entangled in delusions of supremacy and separation. Starting now (May 2023) we are planning to run these containers twice a month. To attend sign up for the playground tier on patreon (link above).
Nondual Theater Jam Virtual (L&D)
Weds 5/17 5:30-8pmPST
Sunday 5/28 10am-12:30pmPST
This is Embodied Research guided by nondual (holistic) animist principles, the roots of creative expression, and play. Devising as metabolizing, and metabolizing as devising! Varies each month. Training in light ritual improv, devising, subtle sensing, and co-dreaming. They will include elements from previous offerings like Deathclown methods, Social Curious, lay the f*ck down, What Play Be, as well as our combined training in Viewpoints, Buffon, Butoh, Systemic Constellations, Theater of the Oppressed, Physical Theater, and more. As always our knowledge of nervous system health, how organisms learn, and nondual animist relating will steward everything we do.
Play to Find Out Salon (in person PDX)
Saturday 5/20 4-9pm
The Play to Find Out Salon is a culturemaking, placemaking event centered around loosely held showings of creative works-in-process, liminal games, irreverent TED talks, and other whimsical anti-professional performance actions. There will be music, food (potluck style) and emergently weird-cool-fun activities. The event is facilitated by Animist Arts in collaboration with Alchemy Arts and Participatory Arts Cohort, in our post-traumatic-growth-centered style.
Attendees can witness, participate, play and present as desired. We will create the evening flow based on who shows up and what emergent desires are expressed and felt.
Deathclown webinar more info here
Monday 5/22 5pmPST
zoom link: bit.ly/deathclownwebinar
Dare will be giving an overview of the course and application process, answering questions, and if there’s time running through a few basic practices. This webinar will be recorded and put online as a free infomercial. Head over to the night garden for multiple articles about deathclown methods.
Bad Feeling Go Away: a new experiential storytelling event
Tuesday May 30th 5:30-7pmPST with Larissa
What lies in wait for us among the discarded, resented, and disturbing flora and fauna of our sensation-emotions? As any good weirdo, artist, or nondual (holistic) teacher can tell you, much of our suffering and dubious behavior stems from attempting to create a decorative lawn out of a wild and uncontrollable jungle. Our dominant cultural belief systems have us ever lawn-scrambling, training us to become fragile and dull around the culturally exiled, unfamiliar, or taboo. Can art bridge the gap? Join Larissa Kaul (co-creator of Animist Arts) for an experiential storytelling event exploring the archives of BAD FEELINGS, where the “audience” is a participatory force. Larissa and company will implicate us all in the vibrant intimacy of art-making as culture-shaping through meditation, creative prompts, storytelling, and dance.
For mature audiences only. Please note there may be spicy sexy content as well as discussion of sexual assault.
Why Theater?
Ceremony, ritual, community forums, therapy sessions, media campaigns, board meetings, senate hearings, political debates, and performance art all operate under similar principles of theater to varying degrees of awareness and skill. All of them have intentional design to evoke certain outcomes, for better or worse. They all use some sense of containment to create a temporary space that places different participants in roles, including the role of “audience” or witness. There is a shared understanding that whatever is being attempted in this temporary, contained space can, if done well, create a dynamic liveliness, even a crucible of insight and change. Shapeshifting, representing something other than your everyday self, and putting on adornments is common across most if not all original cultures. Not only was this likely play for the sake of play, but it disrupted a stagnant and limited sense of self and individuality for the players.
The roots of theater and creative expression as a whole provide both adaptable structures and relational metabolic processes that can be used in many settings, for many different dreams, visions, and “problems.” Human communities need these structures and processes in order to perceive both reality as a whole and specific issues in more completeness. Devising as metabolizing, metabolizing as devising! Art making is culture shaping, theater skills are relational skills.