THE STAGE IS IN YOUR MIND

Instructions. Be blindfolded for two hours of investigation of self and others. After reading this sign,

take off your shoes and any sweaters that you don’t want to wear. Select a blindfold. You will be

asked to put it on and enter the space for 2 hours of interaction and exploration without sight. There

are no rules nor a set plan or schedule of things that will happen. Nothing is expected, nothing is

guaranteed.

Experience. The eyes are blindfolded and I am being lead into the realm of ‚unknown’. There is a

trust. Relaxed music is in the air. I let things to happen, but not from my own initiative. A moment.

Back in the childhood – I am sitting on someone’s lap, the stranger is holding me and singing a

lullaby. A moment. I do not feel secure anymore. The surrounding is more aggressive and I am

vulnerable. A moment. Laying somewhere, there is something cold and heavy across my face – like

water, like a snake. I would like to know, what it is, without touching. I do not know. Touching.

Pearls. A moment. „Outside” someone is peeling a mandarin on my right hand. Someone is placing

someone’s head on the top of the pillows that I had stacked on my lap. Someone is giving an apple to

my hand and is taking a bite. I am feeding him/her. A moment. Dance, dance, dance. I do not know

who they are. I do not see, I feel.

Many hands. Curious hands, gentle hands, hands that you can dance with, caress, feel. Long hands,

short hands, hands that quickly touched my face to see if I am wearing a blindfold, or am I one of the

‘performers’ that see and knows and protects. Hands that checked my hands and identified them as

female. There were hands that touched and moved on, others that were annoying and sticky. Hands

that were cute and playful, hands that were uninteresting, and hands that made me feel at home. Other

hands surprisingly touched my feet, rolling my socks up to my knees and back down. And others that

felt I am rather small, and can be lifted and put down somewhere else in the room. It was strange,

funny, pleasant, and scary. 1

Opinion. Experience can be purely kinaesthetic, having to do with the felt experience of the body and

movement. Experience can be filled with emotional content and felt meaning … or not. Emotional

content as it arises can be light or dark, follow your curiosity into whatever realm interests you, feels

relevant or important. Exploration can contain words. What do you want to talk about, really, and

why? What do you want to know? What would you ask? Your experience may also be beyond

words. You don’t have to talk. Experience can be as simple or complex as you take yourself. What do

you bring to your search for experience? What are you open to find? Is there such as thing as chance,

or do we invoke our own experiences. This is a space of permission… you are invited to act in ways

that you might not otherwise. What new rules and order do we find, when we let down the old ones?

You have permission to do nothing. Activity, passivity, receptivity are all choices you can make.

Background. Karl Frost2 (USA) and Ina Stocken (The Netherlands) are choreographers, who are

dealing with theatre, that brings together different genres. They are challenging typical boundaries and

constructions of theater, audience, and performer. Some notable antecedents and reference points

include the participatory works of The Living Theater, theatrical happenings explored by Jerzy

Growtowski, recent works of Felix Ruckert, and a plethora of small scale, undocumented

performances and happenings from the bohemian performance art scene. Karl Frost is searching for

the answers of what is meaningful experience in the experimental theatre work Axolotl. Ina Stocken is

telling about her interests in Body Lounge3 in the interview.

How did Body Lounge start – who, when and where?

Body Lounge started in 2004 with a question of Mark Koolen, the artistical leader of the theatre

residence Pick Up4

, an alternatieve theatre space in Amsterdam Koolen’i. He asked me to create a

venue where all people that use Pick Up would be included in – contact improvisation dancers, actors,

dancers, singers, body therapists and a DJ. I am into interactive theatre, i deided that the borders

between art and life should be kept as fluent as possible.Is this a performance, a workshop, a therapy experience, or something else?

It is a bit of all, but at the end it is a social happening. It is a theatrical proposal new about yourself.

to learn something

What’s the relation of fiction/reality? What’s the theatrical element?

First I would say, we mix them completely. The experience is as real for us performers as for the

audience. But when I look a second time, I question that. Just the fact that participants are coming as

participants and even if we don’t call it a performance, they are coming with the openness to give

themselves to a situation. And because we place it in a theatre context, they trust it completely.

Quotation of Gilberto (theatre director): ‚There are different ways of performing, but I believe that

there is a common point between all those ways of acting or dancing. It’s all about fiction! We tell

them that we play with their bodies and we hope they will understand us… .. we do our best!

BL is a real and personal experience… it’s a private bond between the host and the guest… I

think everything may happen… but we are totally responsible for every word we say and every action

we take… Sometimes I play it rough… and I don’t care too much what people feel… I’m an actor and

I’m used to theatre performance: fiction! BL is not fiction… is it?? How can we convince our guests

that we are playing, that we want to involve them in a play where everything can happen… happiness,

sadness, cruelty, cynism and so on… It is not only about trust and feeling safe, because “not feeling

safe” and “no trust” are also interesting feelings to me. Sometimes people get confused… and don’t

understand what is real and what is not… Is that something interesting to make it deeper? In my

opinion: Definetely Yes!!’

What were the challenges?

We create a space with rules, wherin participants for a limited period of time, can meet in multiple

ways: silent, verbal, physical, with people they know, they used to know and with strangers. Complex

realtionships will develop, that all together will create a ritual. Art in a BodyLounge is to admit to be

sensual. Art can be touched.

We need a moving culture and a touching culture, in which diverse forms of closeness, love,

friendship and being together can develop and can be lived and played with. We need a structure in

society wherein a healthy way of physicality and safe, trustful sexuality without moral stigma can be

lived and played with. It is important to free the body in a body-positive attitude and to find more

importance for physical communication in society.

One of the key words in what is happening during the performances is ‚unconciousness’ – what is

your experience in connection to that?

One has got to be conscious about the unconscious parts of BL. It requires a special sensivity,

alertness and mutual respect from both – host and participants by consciously trusting and being open.

You get confrontated with memories, past, dreams and hidden aspects of creativity and your self; also

fears and bad memories as a confrontation. For me it is a tool to get more consciosus about yourself

and how you communicate and relate to your environment on a personal and theoretical level.

While observing the others after taking off my blindfold I remember a man in his 50’s dancing like

Travolta and really enjoying himself. It was wonderful! What has happened and given you a strong

impression during the performances?

Participants crying after the performance because of happiness. A father embracing his son whom he

had really met blindfolded in BL. The overall playfulness and openness of participants. The sunny

day on the beach where we spontaneously created a BL for kids – how they were playing in the sand

and throwing with water and laughing. The first time I worked with demented people with BL material

and I manged to get an old dancer in a wheel chair, wanting to get out of the wheel chair and dance.

The first time we gave a management development trainings and they were playing and improvising

with each other as children.

The fact that it is possible to stimulate the bodily intelligence while working with sensual tools as in

the BL. That piece about communication, trust and senses creeps under the skin of the participant –that it is possible to create a bridge between (not) seeing and feeling. Dance and movement are getting

very close to inner landscapes and emotional circumstances. Theatre goes back to the body.

What is the feedback from the audience – do you have fans coming to experience every

performance?

Yep, we do have fans that keep coming back and we offer them the so called ‚strippencards’ so that

they – how often they come – pay less, and more and more get involved in an active playful way as

new host.

Whatever you or we are deciding to do, something is going on in your mind and that is the

performance.

1. The experience of Shahar Shiloach at the performance Axalotl from Karl Frost in Tel Aviv in

Israel on 2005.

2. www.bodyresearch.org

3. www.bodylounge.nl

4. www.pickup.nl

Eve Arpo

Tallinn, 2007