#5 The blind spot

The blind spot is a location on the optic disk in the eye that is characterised by having no photoreceptor cells and therefore insensitive to light and visual stimuli. In other words, a tiny part of the human eye is not receptive to the visual information that is normally transmitted to the optic nerve and the brain.

This black spot makes us theoretically partially blind and yet does not prevent us from seeing perfectly well. This is an extraordinary phenomenon that despite its presence does not reduce the visual field and our ability to see through the eye.

I often refer to this as a metaphor to explain how we can relate to the demons of emotional hurt.

As human beings, we are exposed to emotions that can sometimes result in actions and thoughts that we may find very difficult to consciously make sense of. These emotions are experienced with various degrees of distress and pain that, at their most extreme, can feel like absorbing the entirety of our own self and our ability to contemplate anything beyond it. This feels like as if our entire field of vision was obstructed and as if the blind spot had grown so big that our entire ability to 'see' was compromised.

The blind spot is only a tiny part of the eye. The remarkable complexity of the organ cannot be reduced to the singularity of one of its parts. Equally, the part of us that suffers and carries emotional hurt remains a part amongst the many other parts that make us who we are and what we have become as a person amid other persons.

It is possible for what may feel overwhelming to recede, and for our field of vision to slowly open again. With time, the blind spot of emotional hurt can be reduced to the point of not preventing us from 'seeing'. It remains a part of our apparatus of existence, and the awareness of its presence reminds us of our own vulnerability. But, like for the blind spot in the eye, its plain presence does not compromise the entirety of our visual field.    

#4 When personal trauma intertwines with collective trauma

A client came to see me one week saying that she was upset that as she was waiting in the reception area for her appointment nobody had been observing the minute of silence for the victims of the Paris attacks on the 13^th November 2015.

She did not know that I had myself been sitting in silence before greeting her.

She said that it felt important to talk about what happened and how it had left her with a sense of fear and powerlessness. She said that people talked factually about what happened but that the opportunities to share how it affects us emotionally were scarce.

She said that as she listened to the news over the weekend she had felt an urge to reach out and to hug her children and grandchildren. I did not tell her that I had felt the same urge towards my son.

 

She was in the process of working through some of her past trauma that resulted from assaults, abuse and attacks on her own person. I thought to myself that the bodies of innocent people had also been assaulted and attacked by the terrorists and their murderous acts.

She was in a process of reconnecting with parts of herself that for a long time she had disconnected from because of the intolerable pain and hurt. She came with a picture of herself as a young child that she was particularly fond of. The child was smiling and this might have been the last time she smiled before being caught up in dread and incomprehensible situations. 

 

She decided to take care of that child who had been living in fear and had been powerless to do anything about the situation she had been put in. She had been talking for some time about making use of a box where things could be laid to rest. She had a box at home and I suggested she could bring it with her.

She placed the box on the table. It was finely decorated with delicate drawings. She wondered how best to use it. She felt that she wanted to place in it the picture of the innocent and vulnerable child. She wrapped a small piece of fabric around the picture as if she was tucking in the child. She gave her a kiss and said ‘I love you’.

As we both looked at the box, we noticed a small word repeatedly printed on the different sides. That word was ‘Paris’. We smiled. Her personal story became intertwined with a collective tragedy.

We stayed in silence for a minute. This time we shared the moment.

#3 Community theatre in context

The great German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in 1948 in a seminal essay entitled 'A Short Organum for the Theatre':

'We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself'

Brecht viewed theatre as something very much embedded in its time. He advocated for a theatre that claims its responsibility to reflect and explore the tensions, contradictions and conflicts of the particular historical moment in which it takes place. He also recognised that theatre is a very dynamic event that socially engages with the lived reality of people at different positions within the social hierarchy. But Brecht also insisted on the transformative potential of theatre that does not solely engage with the world but works towards changing it by developing individual and collective critical reflective capacity.  

Does Brecht's statement relate in any way to community theatre in how we understand it or could understand it?

The answer I believe is yes because as obvious as it might sound community theatre should be committed to the community in which it operates.

This commitment is about ensuring access, diversity and openness to the whole of the community to make community theatre a celebratory moment of encounter, sharing and creativity.

But this commitment is also about exploring and engaging with what feels like important issues to that community. It is about considering what matters and offering a space whereby emotions, thoughts and desires can be safely explored, transformed into a creative moment and shared with the rest of the community. This makes community theatre not solely a place of creative freedom and play, but also a place of social significance that supports debates and democratic vitality within the community.

#2 The naked performer

Maybe the time has come to document some of the work that we do as part of the community theatre I direct.

Over the years I have learned that the most important skills as an improvisation performer is the ability to attune to what one experiences physically and to become completely available to others and to what might emerge in an improvised scene.

This means a stripping of layers of learned behaviours and automated physiological responses in the interest of playful engagement with others and the creation of riveting, spellbinding and unique spontaneous dramas. The performers learn to become comfortable with their own nakedness of not knowing and to indulge in the sheer pleasures of playing with the unexpected.

In rehearsal tonight, we looked at the creation of short improvisation scenes generated through the activation of physical impulses and the knowledge that a performer can draw from an embodied experience in order for these scenes to develop in substance and rhythm.  

As an illustration, I devised the following exercise:

1. a group of 3 to 4 performers come on stage one by one and adopt a physical position that should not have any intentional meaning. They gradually complete a freeze frame where they are in relation to one another and achieve some sort of connectedness.

2. one of the performers will have been given a totally random line that he/she will deliver once the freeze-frame has been completed

3. the other performers respond to the line by paying particular attention to the way that line makes them feel physically in the position that they initially adopted. A short improvisation develops from there. The possible discrepancy between what may unfold and the initial position of the performers in the sculpt is not something to swiftly correct or level, but on the contrary something to 'stay with' for the sake of the exercise.  

4. the general idea is not to guess what might be happening in the scene and to respond accordingly, but to tune into the physical self and follow the impulsive embodied knowledge that the given and arbitrary line will have triggered. This is an exercise that attempts to bypass our pervasive cognitive faculties and to reconnect with what our body can teach us. This is a process of constant adjustment and attunement to oneself and others. It can result in wonderful and most unexpected scenes.

We did this exercise with the view of working on improvised scenes that will help develop the group's next devising project.

#1 Tribute to those I am supposed to help

This may sound like a platitude but I keep learning from the people I work with to such an extent that I felt some sort of acknowledgment was timely. Whoever they are, whatever psychic place they come from, and for whatever reason they have ended up in my company, there is something unique about each of them that makes me feel different about myself.

I am not talking about interpersonal dynamics that have been described in various ways depending on the paradigm that one adopts as a therapist and that helps explain and understand the content of one's own internal life. I am talking about the genuine and real effects of two human beings coming together in a privileged and unique way. I think this is something that may remain difficult to acknowledge provided that too often the therapist keeps seeing herself or himself as distinct and separate from their clients and their problems. They create a barrier that may be protective but that also denies the way in which we are transformed and healed through human relationships and through our encounter with an other. Therapy is in my mind a dialogical process through which certainties are being openly and honestly reassessed. There is no doubt for me that this happens for the client and the therapist in very similar and powerful ways. Failure to recognise this would be dismissive of the way we as human beings constantly influence and enrich one another. It is a recognition of the way we become ourselves through our encounters with others.

The people I work with have pushed me, challenged me, astonished me, inspired me in ways whereby I was able to reconsider aspects of my own self. This is an incredible gift especially in a world that keeps privileging the interest of the self as opposed to the self in relation to others.

Thinking about it, I have realised that the people I work with are behind the creating of this blog. My voice remains mine and I am not writing this for them or to do justice to any of them, but my voice is polyphonic by carrying the music of their own voice.