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9(+ 1) Slides about 6 Viewpoints�Wendell Beavers�Saratoga International Theater Institute�June 2015

*labels for sensing and perceiving the present moment

*a technique of grounding presence in immediate experience

*a practice of recognition and response

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Subverting ‘the method’ or Creating the ‘New Method’

The original viewpoints conceived by Mary Overlie and applied at ETW were taught with a very strong strategic bias. The Viewpoints privileged space, time, kinesthetic, sensation(movement) and shape over story and emotion. There were pragmatic reasons for this.The formative period for this was 1978-1985.
The “new method” completed the pallet of “motivation” to include all phenomena flowing through a moment.

My Understanding of “our” job at ETW was to fill in all of the fields of perception and response present in the theater that were not covered by story and emotion—to address the psychological bias of western forms of acting, and the story/character bias. Our job was to shift the subject of performance to a theater of perception and sensation—much closer to modern movements in the visual arts. Success in the theater would be measured by how much a piece altered perception and allowed an audience and a performer to experience the mind behind reference point of me, my story, my feelings—I like or I dislike. To stop the mind basically—not to entertain it. For the performer this was a training in perceiving shape, or kinesthesia for instance and being moved to action from that perception—not looking for a story or psychological reason to move. The byproduct was the creation of psychosomatic, somatic, and visual languages or syntax to convey meaning.

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The Creative Process of Perception

Our world hangs together through shared space, time, kinesthetic relationships, visual presence, feeling and…..our mental projections(the story’s we make up about every moment). The viewpoints work is a practice of bringing these areas of intrinsic connection into the foreground of consciousness through a physical play of recognition and response.

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SPACE: ‘Where Is All’�_{Speaking the Language of Location and Direction�}

Being prompted to ask the question “where am I” leads to a process of location. In the viewpoints one “performs” this process. As this process is performed one’s presence emerges. Presence is a function of the recognition of relationship—to space, to other. When there is nothing left in our consciousness but “where” then we are performing space and, in turn, being performed by space.

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TIME: When is All

Being prompted to ask the fundamental question of “when” followed by subsidiary queries of “how fast?” “how slow?” “how long?” “how short?” leads to a process of recognition of a specific aspect of relationship to other. It is profound to move in relationship to other for reasons of time rather than story or psychological narrative—unearthing deeper narratives and relationships.

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Shape/Line: the visual aspect

Treating the visual aspect of oneself or other as the dominant information
Observation of the architectural arrangement of one’s own body, and the arrangement of others
Communicating through these arrangements of form and line to create a visual language

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Kinesthetic Sensation: the sensation of being and moving

Mindfulness of presence of body
Includes all sensation of body: breath, heartbeat, weight, gravity, contact with environment through touch, compression of supporting surface, suspension from supporting surface, balance, falling and rising
The sensation of being and the sensation of moving

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STORY�Story as Process rather than Product

Story flows like a river through all time and space waiting to be called up by our awareness.
It is the viewpoint of “associations” and “mental contents” arising from the activity of direct perception and experience of our physical world (space, time, shape/line, kinesthesia)
Story is: 1)image that progresses and accumulates over time and 2) changes, revealing a narrative line or arrangement.

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Emotion: Regard of the Feeling Self

A moment of being—the feeling dimension that is not connected to storyline of any kind, including a psychological story line.
Emotion exists independent of story or psychology in the same way that the other 5 viewpoints do. It can give rise to story like all of the other viewpoints.
A beat of “pure presence” or “performance of oneself” is one end of the spectrum and Grotowski’s “impulse work” of moving from an emotion that has location and kinesthetic feeling would be at the other end.

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What about Thinking and Imagination?

Thoughts exist outside the realm of direct perception. To have a thought about the presence of the body separates us from the experience of the body.
To have a thought about space, time, shape or line, or an emotion, disconnects us from the possibility of authentic communication.
I am thinking about you, and you are thinking about me. As we drop thought we have the possibility of experiencing ourselves and one another.