Reflections on “The Vigil”
Patricia Ryan Madson
The year was 1980. I was a young faculty member in Drama teaching
acting at Stanford. One day I saw an ad in the San Francisco Bay Guardian
which read something like this: "Come join members of Jerzy
Growtowski's Company for an event called "The Vigil". This four
hour workshop will take place on Haight Street in San Francisco in a Studio
Space (normally used for dance classes )
on Saturday. (date I can’t remember). The cost is $25 to attend and
participate. Please come wearing clothing you would wear for a dance or
movement class and be prepared to do vigorous movement. The fee will be taken at the door and
instructions for the class given at that time. No experience is necessary. All
levels of interest are welcome."
To the best of my memory this is all that was advertised.
I was drawn to whatever they were doing because The Polish Lab Theatre,
led by Jerzy Growtowski was the hottest experimental theatre training happening
in the world at the time. Check out Growtowski's famous book, TOWARDS A
POOR THEATRE, 1968, if you can find a copy or look for him on Wikipedia.
He was attempting to train actors in very fundamental ways
and return to the primacy of the physical body.
Some of his early workshops, I understand, had actors literally running
for hours. He believed in no props, no net, nothing but the human body and
spirit at work. It was raw, physical
work that was the basis for his training.
I decided to show up in my leotard and tights on that
Saturday morning and see what this workshop was all about. Growtowski himself was not present, but I
gather the leader of the day was a women who was a primary trainer of his. A dozen or so strangers assembled on the
sidewalk outside the dance studio, most of us looking excited and a bit apprehensive. It was somewhere near Haight and Ashbury
Streets.
Our money was taken and the leader explained the “rules of
the Vigil.” They were simple, but absolute, she declared.
1. Maintain
silence at all times.
2. Keep
your body moving continually.
3. Be
mindful of your safety and that of others.
4. No
“set movement routines” (e. g. tai chi,
yoga or drills)
This was all we had to go on. We knew also that the experience was to last
for four hours. We were not allowed to
take anything personal into the space, so backpacks and jackets were left in a
pile in the anteroom to the large dance space.
After various questions had been asked and answered the leader reached
out a firm hand and extended it toward one of men standing closest to her. She walked purposefully toward the door of
the room holding hands and escorted the student into the space. Moments later she came back to us and
extended a hand looking directly at me.
I eagerly accepted her strong lead and the two of us walked into the
empty space. I think we got to the
middle of the room and she stopped, looked at me directly, smiled briefly and
then let go my hand. She walked
carefully back into the lobby to escort another student. Her thoughtful lead continued until all of
those registered were finally brought into the room.
As soon as she left me standing in the center of the room I
remembered the instruction: “Keep moving at all times.” So, I began just walking around the space,
observing. The large room featured a well-polished
wooden dance floor bereft of any chairs or equipment or decoration. One of the walls had the obligatory full-length
mirror prized by dancers. I noticed that
others in the room were also moving around randomly. I suppose most of us were slightly nervous
wondering what we were “supposed to be doing” and imagining that someone might
lead us in something after a while.
But no “set pieces” ever happened . . . that is, the leader
never did offer any instruction or lead.
What happened was an amazing, random, physical event. I found myself alternately running and
skipping, flailing around, sitting on the floor doing stretches and movements
to loosen every part of my body. I’m no
dancer but at 38 I was reasonably healthy and fit and moving for a few hours
was possible, albeit a stretch as the hours wore on. Certainly I had never stayed “in motion” for
four hours continually up until this moment.
I don’t have a lot of detailed memories of those four hours
with the exception of one “riff” that is permanently etched in my mind. It is about a relationship. Sometime into the third hour or so I remember
making a connection with another young women, she was young and appeared to be
a dancer and very agile and graceful. At
some point we began a kind of pas de duex. We started swaying together and doing a kind
of “mirror exercise” which evolved into movement and response, coming together
and then going apart. Some kind of story
seemed to be evolving at a subliminal level and we held hands and began moving
in a soft, close way, like deep friends.
The word that has stuck with me after nearly forty years is
“intimate.” I still remember the
feeling of being human together with her, of being two sweaty women, playfully
having fun and being kind to each other.
We explored so many ways of relating physically, although there was
never anything sexual, it was very personal.
I can even today remember the scent of her body. Of course no words were ever spoken, and
after the event ended I never saw her again, and have no idea what her name
is. But I do remember that I thought I
learned something about human intimacy (or was it a form of love?) by the half
hour of physical play we shared wordlessly.
I don’t have much memory of what the other dozen plus
participants were doing. I can say that
there was much in the four hours that was trance like. After the first hour we got over the novelty
of being on silence and in motion and simply began to explore what was
possible. It was a day rich with
discovery . . . much of which can’t really be translated into words in an
essay.
In the years since that vigorous day of being a body alive I
have adopted Growtowski’s “Vigil” idea and led students at Stanford in my
Improvisation class for a two hour version of this event. I have witnessed a wide range of things
happening, and I’ve learned a few important things about setting up the
event. During one Vigil I had left
blocks, tables and chairs stacked on the side of the room (normally used in
acting classes). Almost the first thing
that happened during that Vigil was that the students began arranging and
rearranging those pieces endlessly.
There wasn’t that much physical movement beyond the life sized “building
blocks” game that evolved. I didn’t want
to prohibit expression so I didn’t stop this while it was happening. But I learned clearly that anything, any item
that can be moved, will be moved if
it is in the space. I began to
understand the primacy of an empty space as a crucible for discovery. Peter Brook understood this, and his famous
book, The Empty Space is a testament
to this point. We are all fond of playing with our toys whenever we have
any. The purpose of the Vigil is not to
circumvent the restrictions by substituting activity for pure movement. Also, some groups have begun to make noises
or percussion as diversion. When the
first rule is given as “No talking” (instead of Silence) students have been
known to begin lively gibberish interactions.
And while drumming and humming and gibberish-making are fine things
themselves I’ve come to believe that they can be distractions to the initial
prompt to “MOVE CONTINUALLY”. I’m
guessing that Growtowski wanted his actors to become fully exhausted and
invigorated with what happens to the body during prolonged physical use. Oh, yes, and one of the instructions given
during the question period before the Vigil that I attended was: “If you need to rest, do so only briefly, and
even then, keep some part of your body moving.
Do not just lie down or stop moving altogether. Even rest should be with the awareness of
keeping moving, ” she said.
In a world where the biggest stretch most of us get daily is
with our thumbs, texting, something like the Vigil is a rare opportunity.
October 16, 2014
