"I have to act to live." ~ Laurence Olivier 5.7.04. New page. Somewhere between Freud and Yoga (new plains of Method Pages). Acting One Fundamentals : BioMethod These three phenomenon, psychopomp, preservation of the body or resting place of the soul, and conveying myth, are the essence of Shamanism. And because Shamanism is primitive, "the first of its kind", wherever the phenomena exists, it will always have these three elements along with some form of Initiation. ... who acts as a medium between the visible world and an invisible spirit world. Summary Chapter 3. Sympathetic Magic. Section 1. The Principles of Magic. Chapter 3. Sympathetic Magic. Section 2. Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Chapter 3. Sympathetic Magic. Section 3. Contagious Magic. Chapter 3. Sympathetic Magic. Section 4. The Magician's Progress. [ Frazer, ref. ] Notes Method: Yoga & Freud + Frazer & Shamanism * Shake 2004: Bianca Story Film Acting * I had enough of it in Russia and Alaska, I write about shamanism to give you an idea about the roots of acting. If you want to be a shaman, not an actor, go some other places... "The place has changed but little since Diana received the homage of her worshippers in the sacred grove. The temple of the sylvan goddess, indeed, has vanished and the King of the Wood no longer stands sentinel over the Golden Bough. But Nemi’s woods are still green, and as the sunset fades above them in the west, there comes to us, borne on the swell of the wind, the sound of the church bells of Aricia ringing the Angelus. Ave Maria! Sweet and solemn they chime out from the distant town and die lingeringly away across the wide Campagnan marshes. Le roi est mort, vive le roi! Ave Maria!" Frazer. Freud & Occult: According to Freud's theory of dreams, there are two types of dream-contents. There is the latent dream- content, which consists of the actual psychical material behind the dream, and there is the manifest dream- content, which is the material actually remembered by the dreamer.(31) A process called the dream-work serves to transform the latent into the manifest.(32) Sha"man*ism (?), n. The type of religion which once prevalied among all the Ural-Altaic peoples (Tungusic, Mongol, and Turkish), and which still survives in various parts of Northern Asia. The Shaman, or wizard priest, deals with good as well as with evil spirits, especially the good spirits of ancestors. [Webster 1913] Shaman is an English word from the Tungus language of Siberia, Russia. The Way of the Shaman Michael J. Harner [ from Theology in The Book of Spectator ] First Death and First Resurrection > Many > gods > God "Private in Public" -- audience Âî Âòîðîì Ñîáîðíîì ïîñëàíèè àïîñòîëà Ïåòðà ñìåðòü îáîçíà÷åíà åùå è ïîíûíå ÷àñòî óïîòðåáëÿåìûì â ìåäèöèíñêîì ñìûñëå, íî óæå íå â áóêâàëüíîì ñâîåì çíà÷åíèè ñëîâîì "exitus" "îòøåñòâèå") (2 Ïåòð. 1: 15), ïî-ãðå÷åñêè "åõodos" - èñõîä, - ïóòü, âûâîäÿùèé âîâíå. p. 55 and 2. Ïåðåâîïëîùåíèå. Îò Áóääû ê Ëåññèíãó "Èìÿ è ôîðìà"; îíè-òî, ó÷èò Áóääà, è äîëæíû áûòü ïðåîäîëåíû íà ïóòè âíóòðåííåãî ñòðåìëåíèÿ.  õðèñòèàíñêîì ïîíèìàíèè "èìÿ" îòðàæàåò "ÿ" ÷åëîâåêà; çåìíîå èìÿ êàê áû çàìåùàåò âå÷íîå èìÿ, êîòîðûì Áîã ïðèçâàë ÷åëîâåêà ê áûòèþ. [  1913 ãîäó Ðóäîëüô Øòàéíåð îñíîâàë Àíòðîïîñîôñêîå îáùåñòâî. Ãëàâíûå åãî òðóäû: "Êàê äîñòè÷ü ïîçíàíèÿ âûñøèõ ìèðîâ?" (1904), "Òåîñîôèÿ" (1904), "Î÷åðê òàéíîâåäåíèÿ" (1910). ] Method, System, Reincarnation (ID), Resurrection...

Shaman

"IF we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious Magic. To denote the first of these branches of magic the term Homoeopathic is perhaps preferable, for the alternative term Imitative or Mimetic suggests, if it does not imply, a conscious agent who imitates, thereby limiting the scope of magic too narrowly. For the same principles which the magician applies in the practice of his art are implicitly believed by him to regulate the operations of inanimate nature; in other words, he tacitly assumes that the Laws of Similarity and Contact are of universal application and are not limited to human actions. In short, magic is a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an abortive art. Regarded as a system of natural law, that is, as a statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events throughout the world, it may be called Theoretical Magic: regarded as a set of precepts which human beings observe in order to compass their ends, it may be called Practical Magic. At the same time it is to be borne in mind that the primitive magician knows magic only on its practical side; he never analyses the mental processes on which his practice is based, never reflects on the abstract principles involved in his actions. With him, as with the vast majority of men, logic is implicit, not explicit: he reasons just as he digests his food in complete ignorance of the intellectual and physiological processes which are essential to the one operation and to the other. In short, to him magic is always an art, never a science; the very idea of science is lacking in his undeveloped mind. It is for the philosophic student to trace the train of thought which underlies the magician’s practice; to draw out the few simple threads of which the tangled skein is composed; to disengage the abstract principles from their concrete applications; in short, to discern the spurious science behind the bastard art.

If my analysis of the magician’s logic is correct, its two great principles turn out to be merely two different misapplications of the association of ideas. Homoeopathic magic is founded on the association of ideas by similarity: contagious magic is founded on the association of ideas by contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which resemble each other are the same: contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which have once been in contact with each other are always in contact. But in practice the two branches are often combined; or, to be more exact, while homoeopathic or imitative magic may be practised by itself, contagious magic will generally be found to involve an application of the homoeopathic or imitative principle. Thus generally stated the two things may be a little difficult to grasp, but they will readily become intelligible when they are illustrated by particular examples. Both trains of thought are in fact extremely simple and elementary. It could hardly be otherwise, since they are familiar in the concrete, though certainly not in the abstract, to the crude intelligence not only of the savage, but of ignorant and dull-witted people everywhere. Both branches of magic, the homoeopathic and the contagious, may conveniently be comprehended under the general name of Sympathetic Magic, since both assume that things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy, the impulse being transmitted from one to the other by means of what we may conceive as a kind of invisible ether, not unlike that which is postulated by modern science for a precisely similar purpose, namely, to explain how things can physically affect each other through a space which appears to be empty." [Chapter 3. Sympathetic Magic by Frazer]

The primite is the heart of the PostAmeriKa. In many ways it is more ugly than the Soviet forms of the New Age, because it's natural. It has to be this way. The silent majority, the low, must have their say -- it's a democracy, freedom, it's America, man!

Well, well, who do you think comes back first? Song and dance.

The performers, who are the "stars"!

Actors...

I quote Frazer so much, because he studied the cult of Madonna longer than me, because he understood the return of the barbarians without saying it, because it is here and I have to accept it, if I want to talk about the future.

Many years ago, many moons, I said that the only church I can be in is theatre. Perhaps, I didn't understand what I was saying. But I ment it. The place of church before the idea of church came about. The sacred space, the act.

Oh, no, I am not about to push the past on you, I simply want to set the record staight.

Jesus Christ! Yes, I wish I can examine Christianity from the universal spiritual positions, not as a religion. The God-Head concept is a simular to Freudian theories, especially, if we are to apply Fromm. Theatre Theory is centuries behind our time! Semiotics is only the apparatus, we have to move further... What? "Spectator Theory"? "Virtual Theatre"?

Theatre theory is developing somewhere else. Where? New Physics? Same with postmodern philosophy. Film?

NB

[ The pix are hyper-linked ]

Next : system

Crying Conference Freud Museum : "One perennial aspect of my work with popular culture comes from its status as one of the principal places in our society where the private world of emotions and psychology is allowed exposure to the public world of mass production and media. If we allow that post-Puritan societies like the UK and the US are based on the sharp division between the private and public ? most obviously in the language of institutions like the news ? then pop music allows the private language of emotion to be directly plugged into the mainstream of public life". Jon Savage's ("England's Dreaming") Chapter 23. Our Debt to the Savage: "... We are like heirs to a fortune which has been handed down for so many ages that the memory of those who built it up is lost, and its possessors for the time being regard it as having been an original and unalterable possession of their race since the beginning of the world. But reflection and enquiry should satisfy us that to our predecessors we are indebted for much of what we thought most our own, and that their errors were not wilful extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable as such at the time when they were propounded, but which a fuller experience has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the successive testing of hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited. After all, what we call truth is only the hypothesis which is found to work best. Therefore in reviewing the opinions and practices of ruder ages and races we shall do well to look with leniency upon their errors as inevitable slips made in the search for truth, and to give them the benefit of that indulgence which we ourselves may one day stand in need of: cum excusatione itaque veteres audiendi sunt." [ Frazer ]

Buto(h) (Shaman Logo image) -- Pagan Japan

"You can throw away the privilege of acting, but that would be such a shame. The tribe has elected you to tell its story. You are the shaman/healer, that's what the storyteller is, and I think it's important for actors to appreciate that. Too often actors think it's all about them, when in reality it's all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you." Ben Kingsley

All I try is to imagine what Stanislavsky would do, if he is immortal and still working of acting theories. I had the same conversation with Anatoly Morozov in the early seventies, when he was interested in spriritual natute of theatre and acting. It's not about the techniques, but why do we need them.

After two decades in America, I believe more than ever that we are the post-humans, neo-primitive, and we need to return to the origins of humanity, "pre-historical" forms of art. "Theatre" must go back in order to go further...

Grotowski was interested in the same zone, same direction of theatre development...

Eisenstein + Meyerhold. Another point. The missing link -- film mentality. We live in the universe (3rd millenium) of the visual literacy; we need to acknowledge that we do not hear, but see! Spectator vs. Audience. Eye vs. ear!

We crosse the line...

[ Read POV ]

PERFORMANCE STUDY http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/0415146216/about/contents.html

Table of Contents
Preface

1. WHAT IS PERFORMANCE STUDIES? Introducing this book, this field, and myself; The boxes; What makes performance studies special; Literacies, performatives, and texters; Many players, few departments, one emergent field; The Victor Turner connection; The Center for Performance Research and PSi; Northwestern's brand of performance studies; The 'inter' of performance studies; Ethical questions; Conclusion; Things to think about; Things to do; Suggested readings
2. WHAT IS PERFORMANCE? What is 'to perform'?; Performances; Bill Parcells wants you to perform; Eight kinds of performance; Restoration of behavior; Caution! Beware of generalizations; 'Is' performance; 'As' performance; Make believe versus make belief; Blurry boundaries; The functions of performance; Conclusion; Things to think about; Things to do; Suggested readings
3. RITUAL Ritual, play and performance; Varieties of ritual; Sacred and secular; Structures, functions, processes, and experiences; Rituals as actions, as performances; Human and animal rituals; Rituals as liminal performances; Limens, lintels and stages; Anti-structure and communitas; Ritual time/space; Transportations and transformations; Asemo's initiation; Social drama; The pig kill dancing at Kurumugl; The efficacy-entertainment dyad; Origins of performance: if not ritual, then what?; Changing rituals or inventing new ones; Using rituals in theatre, dance, and music; Conclusion; Things to think about; Things to do; Suggested readings
4. PLAY The Joker in the deck; What is play?; What is playing?; Some qualities of playing; Seven ways to approach play; Types of playing; Play acts, play moods; Flow, or experiencing playing; Transitional objects, illusions and culture; An ethological approach to play; The message, 'This is play'; Bateson's Othello; Philosophies of play; The bias against play; Maya-lila; Deep play, dark play; Conclusion; Things to think about; Things to do; Suggested readings
5. PERFORMATIVITY A term hard to pin down; Performatives and speech acts; Postmodernism; Simulation; Poststructuralism/Deconstruction; The diffusion of poststructuralism; Problems with poststructuralism; Constructions of gender; Constructions of race; Performance art; What the gravedigger knew about the performative; Conclusion; Things to think about ; Things to do ; Suggested readings
6. PERFORMING The broad spectrum of performing; Acting; Realistic Acting; Brechtian acting; Codified acting; Codified acting and the avant-garde; Codified acting and ritual; Trance acting; Trance acting and shamanism; Masks, puppets, and other performing objects; Hybrid acting; Performing in everyday life; Trials and executions as performance; Surgery as performance; Belief in the role one is playing; How realistic is realistic acting?; Conclusion; Things to think about; Things to do; Suggested readings
7. PERFORMANCE PROCESSES The earliest performances?; Performance process as a time-space sequence; Proto-performance; A note on 'text'; Training; Imitation as a way of acquiring performance knowledge; Workshop; Rehearsal; Warm-up; Public performance; Larger events and contexts; Cooldown; Aftermath; Rules, proto-performance, and public performance; The performance quadrilogue; From performance montage to desktop theatre; Experimental in one context, ordinary in another; Conclusion; Things to think about; Things to do; Suggested readings
8. GLOBAL AND INTERCULTURAL PERFORMANCE Globalization's throughline; Scenarios of globalization; Cultural impositions and appropriations; Is globalization good or bad?; Colonial mimicry; Tourist performances: leisure globalization; The Olympics: globalization's signature performance; Grotowski's vertical transculturalism; Barba's horizontal interculturalism; Integrative intercultural performances; Guillermo Gómez-Peña: border wars; Answering globalization: new genre public art; Terrorism and performance; Conclusion; Things to think about; Things to do; Suggested readings

Philosophers have struggled with questions of reality throughout history... Here we are -- the post-history.

... shamanism isn't an intellectual exercise: it's a game involving body, mind, and heart.

Shamanism isn't about trying to prove that rationality is unachievable. Or about proving that our beliefs determine and confirm our world – that's unnecessary: the shaman acts as if there are no proofs.

A shaman is the ultimate practical person since he has no emotional attachment to his ideas: a shaman will use any method that produces the desired result.

To a shaman, reality is what we make it to be. A shaman will accept a particular reality at some particular moment, but a part of himself will retain the view that it is only a model.

A shaman tries to become more effective by increasing his ability to use inner power. To a shaman, the source of inner power is infinite and abundantly available to everyone – We don't need to increase or "build up" something that is infinite, we need to discover our freedom to consciously use it.

Work is the effort applied in accomplishing something: force is applied to transfer energy. We transfer energy with our intent and focus. Energy is the strength or capacity to do work.

Escape on a voyage of fantasy using your imagination (one of the few true powers we possess). You may experience some surprising things.

http://www.hawaiian.net/~larryw/html/shaman.html

A true actor is a priest