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.Antero Alli
.paratheatrical .research
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ANTERO has been creating a variety of original performance works using paratheatre processes since 1977 and, experimental video documents and feature fiction films since 1993. His paratheatrical research is documented in his book, "Towards an Archeology of the Soul" (Vertical Pool, 2003) and in his videos "CRUX", "Archaic Community" and "Orphans of Delirium". Alli's 2005 docufiction feature, "The Greater Circulation", incorporates a paratheatre performance in a critically acclaimed cinematic treatment of poet Rainer Maria Rilke's "Requiem for a Friend". His 2008 experimental feature, "The Invisible Forest" (2008; 111 min.) explores the radical ideas of French Surrealist, Antonin Artaud. Antero currently facilitates paratheatre labs in Berkeley California with a focus on rituals based in movements recalled from dreams.
EARLY TRAINING
My earliest theatrical training came in 1970/71 from Mime Artist Keith Berger (who studied with Paul J. Curtis and the American Mime Theatre, NYC) and from the Lee Strasborg Institute in Hollywood (1971-72; method acting). Between 1974 and 1999, I wrote, produced and directed numerous original works of theatre and/or "paratheatre" (see Production History section below). Between 1976 and 1978, I participated in a series of paratheatrical experiments directed by David Rosenbloom and inspired by the early paratheatre of the late Polish visionary of the theatre, Jerzy Grotowski (1933-1999).
THE GENESIS OF PARATHEATRICAL RESEARCH
In 1977, I began to develop my own paratheatre medium combining principles and techniques of theatre, dance, Zazen meditation, voice/song to access the internal landscape in an asocial setting of group ritual dynamics. Over the next thirty years and three cities (Berkeley CA, Boulder CO and Seattle WA), hundreds of individuals from all walks of life -- dancers, actors, ritualists, singers, martial artists, and non-performers -- brought their unique backgrounds and influences to this medium, some of which shaped the backbone of this ritual technology. Though I call this ongoing group work "ParaTheatrical Research", I have no ambitions or pretense for emulating or replicating anything "Grotowski" or "Brook" or "Artaud". It is toil enough to continue learning from our own ongoing experiments and its yield of new mistakes, corrections and insights to guide us.
A ROTATING SKELETON CREW
No established theatre company exists. We are more like a rotating skeleton crew of highly committed and skilled individuals who come and go according to our own needs to work together and part ways until the next ritual lab, theatre or film project magnetizes its unique group animal. We are not a "cult" (and I am no "guru") yet we hold ourselves to specific work ethics supporting our core values of individual integrity, autonomy and the development of asocial ritual dynamics.
THE NEED FOR PRIVACY AND FALLOW PERIODS
Most of our ongoing work occurs behind locked doors of dance and yoga studios with occasional sojourns to wilderness settings. If and when this private work develops into something worth sharing, we begin structuring a performance vehicle. Advancement in this medium seems to also necessitate fallow periods -- usually four to eight weeks between labs -- where no paratheatre work is pursued and when the results of our work can find more integration in daily life.
DOCUMENTATION, PUBLIC EVENTS, FILM PRODUCTION
After thirty years of non-performance oriented ritual labs, certain themes and directions have ripened into public events, lectures, demonstrations, video screenings and performance rituals (also see Production History section below). The techniques, principles and rituals of this work are documented in my workbook, "Towards an Archeology of the Soul" (2003; Vertical Pool Publishing) and three video documents.
In 1996 singer/composer Sylvi Alli and I established Vertical Pool Productions (a ParaTheatrical ReSearch affiliate) to serve our ongoing artistic collaborations in video, film and music production. To this end, paratheatrical processes were used to stimulate story, character and theme development in four feature-length art films: Tragos (2000; 105 min), Under a Shipwrecked Moon (2003; 96 min.), The Greater Circulation (2005; 93 min.) and The Invisible Forest (2008). An audio CD, Songs as Vehicles (2005; 43 min.) was also recorded to document the 2004 Song As Vehicle lab.
A RECALIBRATION TOWARDS THE DREAMING
In the Spring of 2008, I reached a personal "crisis of context" around the purpose of this paratheatre medium. It was time to recalibrate my approach. This change of course quietly began twenty-three years earlier in 1985 after an initiatic encounter with Australian Aborigine (koori) elder Guboo Ted Thomas that impacted my past, present and future relations with dreams, the dreambody and the dreamtime. I now know the Earth and the so-called Dreamtime as one and the same. I now see the Earth as a vastly intelligent entity embodied as this planet dreaming itself and all its creatures into existence... every unfolding moment of creation.
As I embraced more of this dreambody/earthbody unity, I was compelled to recalibrate my paratheatrical research towards the dreaming. I have been doing this by recalling movements from my night dreams, movements that can be precisely replicated upon awakening and then, combined in the choreography of a "dreaming ritual". My current and foreseeable future work in paratheatre is now devoted to developing this ritual in small groups, first indoors and then, outdoors on Mount Tamalpais where, like Guboo said, "the mountain teaches the dreaming".
-- Antero Alli
Director, ParaTheatrical ReSearch
11/11/08. Berkeley CA USA
production history
Antero Alli, writer/director/producer
(unless otherwise noted)
from "Requiem for a Friend" (2005)
Rainer
Maria Rilke's "REQUIEM FOR A FRIEND"
Intermedia Performance Ritual
incoporating Rilke's text (circa 2005)
Leah Kahn, Sylvi Alli, Felecia Faulkner, Paradox
Pollack, Nick Walker, Lee Vogt, Antero Alli
A reprise of the 1990 paratheatrical treatment
of Rilke's lyrical lament as a live
performance
ritual which was filmed and incorporated
into "Rilke's Requiem"
a feature
dv-film.
Translated
by
Stephen Mitchell. Music by Sean Blosl and Songs
as Vehicles.
ParaTheatrical ReSearch.
May
21, 22, 28, 29, 2005. Finnish Brotherhood Hall,
Berkeley .
from "Songs as Vehicles" (2004)
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"SONGS
AS VEHICLES":
Winter Solstice Performance Ritual
Towards
the embodiment of songs in a cross-cultural context
Ten
vocal performers work for
three months on one song each, chosen from their
ancestral
culture, towards their ritualistic embodiment
in solos, duets, trios, quartets, quintets, and
mass cacophonies. Performers
and their ancestral sources: Lily Nova (France),
Julian Simeon
(Philippines), Olga Kupriyanova (Bulgaria), Gary
Belanoff (Russia), Antero
Alli (Finland),
Sylvi Alli (Deep South, USA), Linda Rose (Sicily),
JoJo Razor (Scotland), Robin
Coomer
(Ireland), and Nick Walker (Autism). Dec. 20,
2004. Finnish Brotherhood
Hall, Berkeley.
Audio
document recorded (CD)
from "Orphans of Delirium " (2004)
"ORPHANS
OF DELIRIUM"
Paratheatrical performance
rites incorporating Coleridge's "Kubla
Khan"
An actor drifts
through reveries of an absinthe binge that erupts
in a bevy of ritualistic dreams
where aspects of his psyche materialize before
him. PARADOX POLLACK, SERENE ZLOOF,
ALASKA
YAMADA, BRIAN LIVINGSTON, NICK WALKER,
GABRIEL, JULIAN SIMEON, DESMONDE DAISY,
ADAM
PALERMO, JUSTIN PALERMO, JAKOB BOKULICH.
Live music by SYLVI
ALLI. Text
also by
Paradox
Pollack. Video
document recorded. ParaTheatrical ReSearch. March 2004, Berkeley & SF
from "Hungry Ghosts of Albion " (1999)
"HUNGRY
GHOSTS OF ALBION"
Two-act Intermedia Dream
Play
Two lovers attempt to make
a short film based on a monologue from Chekhov's "The Sea Gull."
When they sleep at night, the ghosts of William
Blake and Isaac Newton appear in their dreams;
when Blake and Newton sleep, they dream the lovers
awake. Meanwhile two mythic archetypes,
Anima and Daemon, intervene and orchestrate all
the dreamers into a ritual of mystical union.
Neil Howard, Dan Wilson, Gary Barth, Sylvia Burboeck,
Nick Walker, Deanna Anderson.
With additional text by William Blake and Isaac
Newton. Video document recorded.
Live
music by SYLVI
ALLI. ParaTheatrical ReSearch & Vertical
Pool, May 1999, S.F.
from "Hungry Ghosts" (1998)
"HUNGRY
GHOSTS"
Two-act Intermedia Dream
Play
with sean john walsh, Jennifer
Pratt and Kevin Haggerty, Ed Byrne.
ParaTheatrical
ReSearch workshop
production; May 1998, Seattle WA
(Video document recorded)
"MASS
OF THE ICONOCLASTS"
Winter Solstice
performance ritual
with Stephen Pitts, Richard
Bradshaw, Camille Hildebrandt, Steven Miller,
Gavin
Greene, & others. Video document recorded. ParaTheatrical
ReSearch;
Oct-Dec 1992, Seattle WA
from
"Requiem
for a Friend" (1990)
"REQUIEM
FOR A FRIEND"
Performance ritual incorporating
poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
with Jadina Lilian,
Sylvi Pickering, Camille Hildebrandt and Kia Sian;
Kara Amundson, cello
Rilke's tribute to friend and artist, Paula Modersohn-Becker,
in the wake of her sudden death
stemming from childbirth complications. Text by Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell. Music by
Sylvi
Alli. Video
document recorded.
ParaTheatrical ReSearch. Oct.
1990. Bell Gallery, Seattle.
"CROSSING THE WATER"
Performance ritual incorporating poetry of Sylvia Plath
Antero Alli, Camille Hildebrandt, Richard Bradshaw, Steven Miller, Gavin Green
(ParaTheatrical ReSearch; Spring 1990, Wonderful World of Art Gallery, Seattle)
"ANIMAMUNDI"
Performance
ritual inspired
by the Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice
Created & performed by Antero Alli & Camille Hildebrandt.
Music by Sylvi
Alli
(ParaTheatrical ReSearch; Autumn 1989, Victoria
BC/Seattle/Portland/Berkeley/Santa Cruz)
"CHAPEL
PERILOUS"
Dreaming Phases for
Lovers
a 2-act play based
on archetypes
of the "anima" and "animus"
Antero Alli, Leesanne Modine, Marc Sabin, Molly
Dwyer, Julian Simeon,
Cedrus Monte.
Directed w/Marc Sabin. Executive producer, Cathleen
O'Connell.
Theatre
23.
Jan/Feb. 1983
(Cinnabar Theatre, Petaluma; Studio Eremos,
S.F. Helen Schoeni Theatre in Mendocino)
"WHERE
I ?"
Mimetic
treatment of Robinson Jeffers' poetry
with
Antero Alli, Jacob Shefa and Johanna Modisette.
Barbara Rose Shuler, recitalist; Peter Metcalf,
cellist
(Point Blank Mime Troupe; Spring
1982, Carmel CA)
"THE
CONJUNCTION"
Two-act
Alchemical Mystery Play
A writer's night dreams force
a confrontation between his craft
and pending fatherhood.
with Carole Swann, Harvey Wasserman,
Ben DiGregorio,
Theresa Laferriere, Antero Alli.
(The Chamber Theatre Troupe; 1978, Berkeley).
"SONGS
OF INNOCENCE & EXPERIENCE"
Performance ritual utilizing
William Blake's poetry
with Leslie Mahler, Antero
Alli, Ben DiGregorio, Theresa Laferriere
(The Chamber Theatre Troupe; 1978, Berkeley)
"CORONATION
AT STILLNIGHT"
Two-Act Play inspired
by Dante's "Divine Comedy" (utilizing
choir)
In his dreams, a man unexpectedly discovers
he has passed away and about to
be
judged
in his
afterlife.
with
Antero Alli, Ben DiGregorio, Theresa Laferriere,
Sima Wolf, Terri Shell, David Cohen, John Rock
(The
Chamber Theatre Troupe;
November 1977, Berkeley/Crown Hall,
Mendocino)
"HIM"
A 3-Act Poem Play by e.e.cummings
Paul Townsend, Antero Alli, Dan Risko, Sima Wolf, Mary Forcade and many others
(1976, Mendocino Art Center Theatre)
"CIRCLES"
A Full-length Mime Play with Music and Accompanying Text
Seven mute characters portray aspects of one psyche interacting within
itself and
and
unravelling
in the wake of a series of outside interruptions.
Antero Alli, Brian Wasserman, Julie B. Oak, Leigh Lightfoot, Sima Wolf.
Spring 1975, Berkeley; Mendocino Art Center Theatre)
DUDESHEEP
THEATRE COMPANY
Experimental theatre
company living and working communally in a
downtown
Oakland mansion.
Performances included a paratheatrical
treatment
of sections from "Tibetan Book of
the Dead" (San Francisco).
Directed by Dale Fast with Judith Kangar,
Dean Webb,
Antero Alli,
David
Luddington & others.
(1972-73, Oakland and SF)
ANTERO ALLI, director/founder
P.O. Box 7518, Berkeley CA 94707 USA
voicemail: (510) 464-4640
electronic mail link