The Engagement Challenge
The search for presence is what has defined my work in this study to explore the various definitions of presence in relation to performance and meditation in particular. Starting with the base of Jean Jacques Lemêtre’s workshop on September 14 to establish the endless amount of possibilities when it comes to interpretations of presence and bodily experience and following through the work of Campbell Edinborough, Rick Hansen, Ellen Langer and Thomas Hanna who’s work explores presence and balance for everyday people as well as actors. What I want to suggest is the implicit mindfulness tactics an audience member can take while experiencing a performance and the inability of a performer or creator to control the presence of the audience. In order to explore the presence abilities of an audience member I will partake in a simple experiment of mental and physical applications to presence. First I will outline my theoretical and practised base of mindfulness and my experience of theatre, and apply what I have learned to my experience of a Pantomime, which could arguably be the hardest or easiest piece of theatre to pay attention to. If an audience member practises mindfulness during a theatre piece without prompted guidance, then their skills of self reflection and decision making will be balanced and their understanding of the piece may not be enhanced but will be thoughtful.
I will begin by describing Ellen Langer’s mindlessness in order to establish the importance of mindfulness. Campbell Edinborough describes Ellen Langer’s Mindlessness by saying “[it] emerges from reliance on existing categories of experience, where the individual accepts his habitual way of looking at the world without necessarily reflecting on its appropriateness,” ultimately achieving a “failure in decision making,” (Edinborough 21). Langer further defines mindlessness by having someone “hear or read something and accept[ing] it without questioning it,” which elaborates on a lack of active presence and engagement when it comes to experiencing a performance in any role (1). The relevance of mindlessness in a performance can be easily applied to the actors and performers as difficulty in “mediating the relationship between observation and experience,” while also taking into account that this mindlessness emphasizes the lack of embodiment in a performer (Edinborough 20, 23). The effects of mindlessness on a performance lead to a misguided and sloppy experience for the audience and ultimately a failed performance. The creators could approach a performance from a place of intentional mindlessness for a purpose, but I would rather accept Jean Jacques Lemêtre’s approach to a mindful bodily experience (Lemêtre 2015).
While approaching a graduate workshop at the University of Toronto Jean Jacques Lemêtre did not let a language barrier stop him from expressing his practise as leaning into the experience of the body, and by going through activities that alleviated the pressure of thoughtfulness and an overwhelming attention to reason, we became mindful through present embodiment (Lemêtre 2015). Lemêtre reinforces the importance of presence while engaging in performance by paying attention to small details and listening to the self—a technique echoed in Thomas Hanna’s studies in somatics that will be evident later—and explores the relevance of presence when it comes to understanding (2015). If a participant is too caught up in their own thoughts or their mistakes, then they miss out on improvement.
Mindfulness then, is not the opposite of mindlessness in the sense that one is constantly aware of one’s thoughts, rather “by framing mindlessness as the failure to adjust to changes in the environment, Langer’s theory of mindfulness establishes the importance of recognizing the individual as embodied…The mindful individual is able to relate her decision-making to the changing nature of her presence within the varying environments,” (Edinborough 23). Edinborough establishes a dualistic relationship between mind and body that exists in a mindful state that can be explored through performance when that “magic” happens as a performer where the electricity onstage is organic and comes from engagement of mind and body (Edinborough 23). Lemêtre would argue that this moment of electricity and raw response would accompany a present participant who is mindful of not only themselves but the presence of others around them (2015).
The interdependent relationship between movement and the mind can be explored through Thomas Hanna’s school of Somatics (Edinborough 24). Hanna encourages participants of somatic awareness to observe small adjustments in the body that encourages responsibility for actions and ultimately finding an optimum level of interdependence (Edinborough 25). The example used in Edinborough’s study is a workshop where participants worked on the fluid motion for twenty minutes and were asked to focus their minds on solving the problem of complexity to sit cross-legged the easiest way possible (26-7). By combining the effort of the mind and body together the participant has no choice but to be present as all aspects of thought are focused on one thing together.
Somatics apply directly to what performers would call a warm up: “if you want to be in control of yourself you have to take time to get acquainted with yourself.” (video 0:40). I have participated in numerous rehearsals where Yoga and interdependent training such as breath and body relationship work in order to engage with the presence of the ensemble. Thomas Hanna’s “experience of the soma” is an internal experience of the body that is commonly hidden from the experience of the performance from all perspectives or taken for granted (video 0:55). The somatic experience explores the inability for anyone else to truly feel the sensations that you yourself feel in your own body, therefore you are the only one with the responsibility to be present and focus in any way you choose. Hanna’s bodily changes through somatics accompanies Rick Hansen’s “experience-dependent neuroplasticity” nicely as it is “the mapping of mental and neural activities…how you use your mind changes your brain, for better or worse,” (Hansen 1-3). Hansen suggests that in order for your brain to take the “shape that you want” you must “take action,” meaning practise the small and simple mindful exercises that encourage your behaviour and neurology to co-exist in a balanced way (4). By combining the ability to feel your own body or soma from the inside and the mental awareness of Rick Hansen’s mindfulness a performer can embody the interdependent relationship between mind and body internally and without external influence; all by being aware. With these practises in mind a performer can have an enhanced approach to action and reflection while making decisions onstage which can be explored through improvisation or collective creation practises where actors and creators are expected to constantly be providing decisions for the sake of a performance.
An article from the Huffington Post outlines a study that shows that ill hospital patents who experience art or “wonder and amazement” has beneficial physical recuperative powers (Frank 2016). It includes a message from Donna Betts, the President of the American Art Therapy Association saying “There is increasing awareness on a global scale of the mind-body connection and the implications for psychological and physical health," she said. "It’s the idea that the mind and the body are interconnected, the health of one affecting the other,” (Frank 2016). Studies have been focusing on the beneficial effects of art on cytokine interleukin and cortisol levels which, if positive, would be a literal cure for illnesses and while Western medicine focuses on chemical cures clearly benefits have the power to come from untraditional approaches to illness as well. These studies suggest that the effects of art and performance have benefits further than self improvement or development of decision making skills, and I wonder if explored further would research prove that attending theatre performance just as beneficial to contribute to an audience member’s experience with amazement and wonder?
With that being said I would like to suggest that through somatic training and mindful awareness performances could be better understood and used for personal therapeutic purposes if these approaches were used by the audience. While experiencing a piece of theatre the performers have no control over the audience to force them to pay attention, unfortunately we cannot see inside of each other’s heads therefore erasing any assurance that anyone is actively engaging with the performance. By teaching audiences, the importance and benefits of mindfulness meditation we can encourage not only better focus but also a more beneficial performance when it comes to the livelihood of the audience members and atmosphere within a performance space. Mindfulness refers to the awareness of something, beginners use the mindful breathing method:
identify the in-breath as in-breath and the out-breath as out-breath. When you breathe in, you know that this is your in-breath.
When you breathe out, you are mindful that this is your out-breath. (Naht Hanh 2013)
What every mindfulness teacher will tell you is that it is okay for your thoughts to stray from the focus point, but once you are aware of your own drifting thoughts’ you come back to the focal point.
I would argue that this method is what every audience member does anyway, but by preparing the audience in this training they are given the opportunity to be in charge of their own awareness and can actively combat those drifting thoughts with a performance that is also thought-provoking; this mindful method can supplement audiences failing to be affected by a performance by engaging the performative space with their mental space. Would this require a mindful practice to be the prologue to any given performance? Or, alternatively, do we need to better train our audiences to be mindful before attending?
Rick Hansen’s book Just One Thing describes a variety of mindful practises that can be done anywhere and anytime, and the practice I find most relevant here is to “Be Curious,” which dictates a curiosity but also “courage…to face an uncomfortable aspect of yourself, other people, or the world,” and encourages two steps to “look deeper” and “look again” in order to properly “be curious,” (Hansen 134-137). By suggesting that audiences have courage to attend performance and be vulnerable consumer of a narrative and performance gives them the respect they deserve for attending at all. The performance should encourage focus, but as aforementioned there is no way for a performer to assure engagement, but to encourage audiences to be mindful in their curiosity can prove beneficial to all involved.
A performance that took place at the Theatre Centre in October 2015 called What Happened to the Seeker held itself in various parts that used a meditation in order to force the audience to focus on itself. The first of two parts of the performance was split into three participatory exhibits that included a video, a museum-esque exhibit, and an auditory meditation with headphones. The second half was a film and performative spoken piece, but I will focus on the meditation portion for the purpose of this study. The meditation took place in the seats above the museum exhibit, and the audience was able to see the other audience members (split into three groups to experience the performance separately) but were given headphones to listen to the meditation. With the visual stimulus before them the meditating audience members were encouraged to close their eyes—but did not have to—and were spoken to by the Seekers in an interview that explained the purpose of the performance, and then attempted a guided meditation. The contextualization of the performance was solace and confirmation for audience members which either confirmed their engagement or solved their curious confusion. I believe that by encouraging the groups of audience members to search for their own answers to the performance and then contextualize the performance in a meditation-style audio the performers and creators essentially teased the focus out of the audience members. This piece is an example of intentional mindlessness with engagement of both mind and physicality throughout the performance. What Happened to the Seeker exemplifies the audience’s agency to focus on anything they want, but with this performance the audience is encouraged to have a drifting mind and then return at their own pace. This freedom of both thought and physicality (the audience moves around the Theatre Centre space throughout the performance) gives the audience space to think, reflect and make decisions and would be, as Edinborough would argue, mindful.
Another performance that embodies focused mindfulness would be The Sex Tape Project that first appeared through fu-Gen theatre in 2012 and then again in 2015 in Toronto, and boasted a multi-writer and multi-location experiment in focus and fluidity. This piece took place in three hotel simultaneous hotel rooms and the audience sits across the street facing the windows of those rooms and listens to headphones that play one of the three different storylines that accompany the choreographed movement that they see across the street. In order to see all three storylines an audience member must commit to watching the performance three times, and each time is an extremely different story line and impact. I believe that the possibility of an audience’s mind wandering in this theatre piece conducts an experiment in engagement tactics of using headphones and choreography that is intricate, as well as the possibility of missing parts of a story due to the three different storylines. If the audience gets bored they simply have to look down, or sideways to the Toronto street to find other stimuli, but the possibility of missing out or hearing something interesting on their headphones can pull them back to the focused hotel rooms. The audience is aware of their physically not being in close proximity to the performance and also their thoughts that pertain to the performance, and while staying in the present moment their mindfulness can positively affect the success of the performance but also give them a bodily and mental experience that cannot be achieved otherwise because the various senses being reached out to by the performance (like the various visual windows and choreography to absorb, the headphones with the audio, as well as sitting across an entire street from the performance) contribute to the relevant mind shifts but also beneficial effort to focus on the theatre piece that ultimately takes an audience outside of their own lives and literally situates them in a totally different world.
The Third and final Theatre Performance that I would like to personally include as a specific audio-driven piece for me to use as a literal anchor for meditation would be Einstein on the Beach, the opera by Phillip Glass. The first two tracks in particular are consistent rhythms that encourage a meditative process to be mindful of the sensations present in the mind and body, and encouraging the focus on the content such as the numbers, words and sounds of the piece. The repetition of the piece is pleasing to listen to and familiar in a way that I find the easiest way to practice my mindfulness, if anything it is the easiest thing to remain present in because of the content of the piece. One thing I have yet to explore is the content of theatre pieces, if interesting or familiar are easy to latch onto and become engaged with. If the content makes you feel uncomfortable you are also more likely to engage, or if, like this Glass piece, it is confusing or complex, then you are more likely to put effort in to figure things out as an audience member. This implicit mindfulness and focus only contributes to the success of this piece. The presentation as an opera on a grand scale with large sets and jarring visuals also accentuates the encouragement of focus from the performance. I use the first track in particular to do the mindful breathing exercise where the numbers accompany my breath and are my anchor, with the amalgamation of voices provides fluidity and a platform for your thoughts to potentially float away (as does the repetition of the rest of the piece) but its complexities does the dragging back to the anchor. The traditional physicality of experiencing this piece of theatre does not deter the importance of the interdependency of the mind and body, but only stabilizes the body so an audience member can focus more on consistent sensations within the body throughout the length of the performance. Most performances are traditionally delivered in an auditorium-based venue where the audience sits and the performers perform before them, but by being aware of the fluctuations of the mind as well as the sensations in the body can contribute to further focus and understanding of the self-reflected in the performance.
All three of these theatre pieces include headphones and focus on listening to encourage focus which remains an interesting conclusion so far in this study. Can there be a correlation between the way we consume performances and the ability to feel mindful as an audience member? More importantly, does mindfulness include all senses of the body? Hanna’s somatics suggests that only one part of the body needs to be focused on in order to make a significant change, but when it comes to a performance does the range of focus need to be broader in order to incorporate the variety of stimuli?
To build on Thomas Hanna’s ideas of somatics and the internal observations in order to explore optimal body and mind connectivity I would like to share teachings from Marilyn Mayberry, a certified Yoga instructor who taught at the University of Guelph’s Athletic Centre over the 2010-2014 terms that I attended the University. In February 2013 Marilyn began teaching in a different way to incorporate embodiment in a new way due to a recent near-death experience that inspired her to teach in a mindful and present way that valued limitations and boundaries. She would ask us to lay on our backs and listen to our breathing, and then ask us to pay attention to the “sensations” in our bodies, and in particular various parts of our bodies. For example, she would say “Feel your legs, how do you know that they are your legs? What sensations can you feel against your legs? The floor? Your clothes?” and through these sensations we would be engaged in a deep connection with our legs. Another very potent addition to these classes were longer holding times for yoga poses, and when we would feel uncomfortable sensations Marilyn would say “breathe into that part of your body, let your breath empower your body to continue,” which sounds like a mind-over-body situation where if you believe you can hold the pose longer you can. But literally envisioning the air going to that body part and helping it helped me hold poses longer. This relates back to the Mindful Breathing exercises which the meditator envisions the “anchor” where the breath is to enter the body and use that to regain focus when their thoughts drift off. This focus helped develop a stronger body and ultimately reinforce the interdependency of my mind and body. This internal somatic process would accentuate audience engagement but only upon prior knowledge of mindfulness as an unreliable audience member is the average audience member, and so the failure to focus can be strong in any performance. What you can rely upon is that audience members in attendance want to see the performance so there is already an element of engagement, but the contract given between the audience and the performers is that they will remain engaged, which is the most broken contract in theatre.
Before finally addressing my experiment I want to suggest a correlation between the void and mindfulness practice when it comes to performance. We speak as performers and our relationship with the Void as being a contradictory space of freedom but focus, which I believe to be synonymous if not similar to a state of performative mindfulness. Between the workshop with Jean Jacques Lemêtre and studying mindful meditation for years I consider mindfulness not only a state of awareness but an acceptance and acknowledgement of the present in any state it comes in; not trying to achieve a blank slate but to accept the slate in any form it comes. The application of somatics and Lemêtre’s workshop is used to improve from the inside (intuition) and out, but ultimately instead of giving into the void and existing nowhere in order to exist somewhere, to lean into the sublime organic nature of the self and experience raw reactions and actions in response to ourselves in the states that they are. Mindfulness makes us honest, and through that we can respond accurately to performances as audiences. HINDUPOEMAUTHOR explores poetry and moments of performance as interpretations of interiority which defines the void’s relationship to mindfulness perfectly: the void attempts to not be mindful, as experiencing the void suggests absence as opposed to presence, but the void accompanies mindfulness by exploring the interiority of one’s self (394).
The experiment I took part in for this study was a self-imposed practice in mindfulness meditation prior, during, and after a performance of a local performance of Aladdin as a pantomime at the Drayton Theatre in St. Jacob’s. Prior to the performance I did a short mindful breathing practice, and throughout the performance my plan was to not force myself to pay strict attention to the stage but if I noticed my mind wandering to pull it back to my anchor: Aladdin. At intermission I was going to talk to my father, who was accompanying me to the performance, about his engagement levels, and then after the show I wanted to reflect fully on my engagement as a whole. I would call this experiment an awareness of participating in active and honest engagement because if the performance was failing to capture my focus or thoughts I would not consider this my fault, or the performers’ fault, but just a happening. The idea of a space of no-judgement is integral to mindfulness meditation (mindful.org). I chose the pantomime to conduct this experiment because it has pop culture references and fun sequences but essentially is the most likely performance for me to lose focus on, because the stimuli is less thought-provoking than What Happened to the Seeker the challenge would be to stay focused and conclude something three-dimensional out of it.
To begin I will disclose that the idea of mindful audience engagement is not a new practice for me as it has been a part of my personal meditations for years, but this pantomime was the first time I was truly aware of the effects. I waited until we were seated and the show was about to start) indicated by the announcement to turn off cellphones) before doing a short mindful breathing exercise, which brought my focus to the present moment and how I was feeling at that time. I felt tired and anxious to watch the show, a typical amalgamation of emotions for me, and very aware that, at this matinee performance there were a lot of children. I remember wondering if this would affect my enjoyment of the piece (in hindsight it very much did) and I found myself very engaged with little mind wandering until about an hour in. About ten minutes before intermission (which, as a seasoned panto audience member I knew was coming, from the pop culture references and point in the story) I found my thoughts drifting off, and I let them for a few minutes. The strange experience of mind-wandering while attending a performance is not that you do it on purpose, but that you do not notice it happening naturally. When I did notice I dragged myself slowly back to the performance, by that time just intermission. I asked my father what he was thinking about the show but he just enjoyed it, nothing more really. We did note together that the audience was made up of children and their parents which made the energy high and engagement easier because we felt a childlike wonder approaching the performance. The second half of the performance was harder to focus due to the considerable less energy in the theatre on the performer’s part, and so I was able to work through mindfulness by noticing that my thoughts were drifting and more frequently. Despite my mindful approach to the second half of the performance I do not believe that this helped my enjoyment but that the second half was not engaging—the fault of the production and not my attempts to regain focus. I do believe these results would be different if experienced a one-act here in Toronto, to which I would love to continue to practice this and encourage others to do so too. What was a success with these results was the thought-provoking aspect of this practice in order to approach a performance. Campbell Edinborough describes the mindful experience as “attentiveness and awareness as means to engage with the present moment, illustrating the dynamic relationship between being able to enact an appropriate response to a situation and being able to recognise a full range of available choices,” and in reference to the “present moment” in relation to the pantomime I was transported from my present real life and body to the world of the performance and my role in that world (Edinborough 22). For the purpose of this experiment I do believe that my mindfulness combined with the children in the audience gave me an ”escape” to my real life, which, although not as thought-provoking or productive as I would aspire t for my theatre experiences accomplished the meditative properties of keeping me in the present moment not wrapped up in my own thoughts the entire time. If nothing else I believe that a mindful approach as an audience member can achieve this: an escape, but also to experience situations unknown to us in a way that is safe and familiar at the same time.
I am sure we all do this subconsciously anyway-the constant realization that we are not engaged with our immediate stimulus and then try to refocus, but what I am suggesting is that it is beneficial mentally and physically to have these ellipses of momentary leans into the sublime, or trusting our interdependence of mind and body to become mindful and make informed and thoughtful decisions as audience members. Edinborough argues that informed and mindful actors create present performances with optimal decision making abilities as they exist in the present moment—but the inability to transport themselves into another situation because they are present in their own lives queries the quality of this work. An audience member who has an active participant in the development of their understanding of the story also has a responsibility to be engaged just as much as a performer if not more so, because if the performance fails to ignite thought in the audience then it has failed overall. The mindful approach to theatre performance prepares audiences to engage with both mind and body; in the mind shown through What Happened to the Seeker as well as Einstein on the Beach and the physical location shown in The Sex Tape Project, but further explored in my own personal approach to the Aladdin pantomime. The two prevalent conclusions that can be made from my research is the correlation between the senses—primarily auditory—and the ability to focus, as well as the somatic experience of intentional mind and body changes made to be a further active contributor to performance. Audience members have the ability to be present without the practice of mindfulness, but that level of presence is an unobservant one. The workshop with Jean Jacques Lemêtre taught me to be an observant participant to my surroundings but more importantly to my internal responses. It seems unfair to a performance to come in with low expectations of responsibility as a member of an audience: fewer people enjoy audience participation with a performance nowadays but I mean even to keep an open mind for any and everything performers could bring to the table, and to give them the respect to pay attention to think. The development of a mindful audience member could generate a present audience that provides energy and feedback for the performers. A theatre performance could be enhanced by a mindful audience by higher energy and feedback, as well as engaged responses that are appropriate to the content. Using Aladdin as an example the audience was present: children have little inhibitions and are the most honest about their focus than any other audience member. The performers expected this level of focus and compensated with interactive moments of the play as well as songs that were familiar for the children. The expectations were clear, and when the villain entered the stage (at the beginning of pantomimes the audience is taught to boo the villain whenever they make an entrance) and the children erupted in loud “boo’s” and hissing the level of focus was clear, as was the loud questions being asked throughout the theatre and singing along during the songs. My conclusion from this experiment would be that all audience members should approach performances in an honest and mindful way similar to that of children: ready and willing to engage, but accepting distractions with no judgement and returning focus upon recognition.
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