Some in each audience are ready to be active rather than passive.
Some in each audience are ready to blur the distinction between performer
and audience, and take the "risk" of performing which happens best
when participation is optional!
There are numerous forms of Interactive Theatre, ranging from members of
an audience giving suggestions to an improv theatre troupe, to playing a
role in an improv performance, to following a guided process from begining
to end as a "performer". One form that the guided process has
taken has been developed by Jor-El and is known as the Conscious Evolution
Adventure.
In the Conscious Evolution Adventure, the audience is guided step by step
to act out the entire sequence of evolution from single-celled organisms
at the bottom of the sea through stages of fish, frog, dinosaur and mammals
to human. At the human level, the audience-participants are guided to be
infants, babies, toddlers, schoolkids, teenagers, young adults, young marrieds,
middle-agers, old agers, etc and deal ultimately with the issue and experience
of aging and dying! In the final stage, after death, the next stage of human
evolution is acted out as each individual becomes a single cell in the body
of humanity.
It must be remembered that at any stage in the process, participants may
return to the audience-observer mode. In fact, they can do this as
often as they like.
Some people are not ready to be dinosaurs, lizards, or frogs, or infants
and only enter into the performer role when it is time to be a teenager
or an adult; others jump in at the very begining and perform the entire
sequence!
The experience is not only great fun and great training for actors and actresses.
It also is designed to be a powerful personal growth experience fulfilling
the goal of providing acting "stretch" while allowing the personality
to integrate into itself parts that have been denied. In Gestalt Psychotherapy,
the phenomenon is known as re-owning the disowned parts of self so that
the person becomes whole, as when people who have disowned their power or
denied their anger give themself permission to express the denied/repressed/
disowned emotion and thereby become more fully themselves.
In the Conscious Evolution Adventure, participants have the oportunity to
integrate into themselves the sub-human (i.e. "animal") qualities
along with the early childhood stages of life, both of which have usually
been disowned.. This happens not only directly when the audience chooses to
perform, but it also happens vicariously when the audience watches the
performers.
The Conscious Evolution Adventure is designed as a theatrical
experience which includes an "intermission" which comes at a point
where the kids in school have recess maintaining
the role of kids in school. The entire sequence is usually designed as a two
hour process with 30 minutes allotted at the beginning for introduction and warm-up
and 30 minutes (at least) at the end for de-briefing , comments and sharing
The process is suitable for all age groups and for mixed age groups as well.
Jor-El offers to conduct The Conscious Evolution Adventure: An Interactive
Theatre Event either as a brief two-hour entertainment or as an intensive
training that can take a half-day, one-day or two-days where each stage
in the evolution sequence is explored in depth.
On Friday March 12th CEA is offered on Maui by Jor-EL & Devaka at a Maui Meadows location.The cost is $30.
A free preview and demo will be held on Thursday March 4
Call for informantion (808)264-1506 or (808)875-8399
Snail Mail: Ed Jor-El Elkin • PO Box 811, Hana, HI 96713
Phones: 808-248-7543; Cell: 808-264-1506; Email: EdElkin@aol.com
http://www.jor-el.org
