In a discussion at The Applied Improvisation Network [http://appliedimprov.ning.com/forum/topics/status-stress-and-social] on "Status stress and social structure" I contributed the following comment:

Every person, on-stage or off, should act to create the optimum environment for right relationship. I find it interesting that you write, "acting provides a safe fake world, a refuge ..." You go on to comment on how "real life colleagues ... have not chosen to enter/create."

Doesn't the whole concept of "status transactions" deal with perceived reality? Resolution of "status stress" is found in how one plays status oneself. If I insist on playing a certain status without regard to the other who is facing me, then I will find myself under more duress than if I am more willing to adjust my status to the other (Keith Johnstone makes this very clear in his book). Of course, one must be sensitive to the other, something those on the autistic spectrum find difficult.

Entries in an anarchist's journal

These are entries scribbled in the journal of the anarchist character I am playing in SS ELISABETH:

Whoever lays his hand on me

to govern me is a usurper

and a tyrant, and

I declare him my enemy!

Anarchy is ORDER!

To be GOVERNED is

to be watched, inspected, spied upon,

directed, law-driven, numbered,

regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated,

preached at, controlled, checked,

estimated, valued, censured,

commanded by creatures who

have neither the right nor

the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

To be GOVERNED is

to be at every operation,

at every transaction noted, registered,

counted, taxed, stamped, measured, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.

It is, under pretext of public utility,

and in the name of the general interest,

to be placed under contribution,

drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized,

extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed,

then, at the slightest resistence,

the first word of complaint,

to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed,

hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned,

judged, condemned, shot,

deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed,

and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

That is government; that is its justice;

that is its morality.

Property is theft!

destroy property!

take away task of production from proprietors

give to worker’s association

Let property wither away!

Marx infected us with Hegel

thought only of revolution

You must have a god, a religion, a dictatorship, a censorship, a hierarchy, distinctives and ranks.

For my part,

I deny your god,

your authority,

your sovereignty,

your judicial State,

and all your representative mystifications.

Government is

an association of men

who do violence to the rest of us!

They have made

a revolution without ideas.

Their movement is being drowned

under waves of argument.

There are no ideas in their heads.

There is anxiety but

the muddle is now inextricable.

They are a mob of lawyers and writers

each more ignorant than the others,

who squabble for power.

No place for me in all that.

Stupidity upon stupidity.

Governments are by their very nature incapable of revolution

– immobilist, conservative,

refractory to initiative,

counter-revolutionary.

Performing acts of anachronistic anarchism

I am presently preparing to play the part of an anarchist who is part of a group of survivors from catastrophe aboard the ship on which he had been the engineer. The production, SS ELISABETH: EXHIBITION OF LIVING HISTORICAL ARTIFACTS by Gerhardus, will take place at Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia on September 7 & 8. The SS Elisabeth was a small steamer hauling passengers and parcels from New England to the Carolinas – in 1870. Its battered crew, and traumatized passengers are on display in the Independence Seaport Museum. Through interaction and dialogue the audience will discover what happened before it sank.

SSelisabeth's Blog

sselisabeth.wordpress.com

PERFORMATIVE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE

The performance metaphor has significant potential for the revitalization of biblical interpretation.

Performative interpretation draws from the discipline of performance studies

to offer an integrative conceptualisation of the task of scriptural (and indeed theological) hermeneutics.

It is only in the practice of interpretation that theories of such can be developed.

Scripture is not as a constitution or lawbook, but as a place of encounter with God.

The orthodoxis dimension attends meaning; the orthopraxis dimension attends to practice.

The continental hermeneutical tradition is perhaps best summarised by Derrida:

In the beginning is hermeneutics.

With texts all we have is interpretation. There is no immediacy between interpreter and Scripture.

As James K. A. Smith, one of America’s foremost interpreters of continental hermeneutic theory, puts it,

Interpretation goes all the way down.

Interpretation is not a result of the fall, but part of God’s good creation.

It is this traditionedness that is denied in immediacy models, particularly in evangelical theology,

which proposes to read Scripture apart from the ‘distortion’ of presuppositions or biases

and which claims that ‘Scripture itself’ can stand over and correct our presuppositions.

There is neither a single nor infinite number of interpretations,

but a multiplicity, a set of well-read inter-related construals,

each requiring an act of faith to move beyond undecideability to interpretation.

This is not to be decried but celebrated as the gift of intersubjectivity given by God to creation.

The Trinity itself is the perfect interpretative community, sharing and receiving in pure love

and hence perfect comprehension.

Gianni Vattimo says it simply, ‘The Trinity is a hermeneutical structure par excellence.’

There are limits to and rules of interpretation, which bank this river of interpretation somewhat severely:

the text itself, cultures and languages, ethics, humility ...

But the limit — or better, the authoritative text/drama — is God revealed fully in Jesus of Nazareth,

‘in whom the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily’ (Col. 2:9).

The incarnation means that

a true, authoritative revelation of God is made in history, in our materiality and culture.

That is, the limits to our interpretation are the same limits taken upon God in kenosis.

Neither matter nor subjectivity... thwart God’s self-revelation.

What faculty does interpretation require?

If reason only means rationality, then this is insufficient.

The hegemony of cognitive knowing dominates Western tradition.

Given creation, incarnation, and resurrection, ‘a Christian epistemology accords equal status, if not primacy, to the senses and imagination.’

Scripture is a given, shaping orthopraxis and orthodoxis.

Tradition is interpretation, from creation to eschaton and beyond.

Reason is metonymy for the whole person

— embodied, sensate, cognitive, spiritual —

in a stance of self-aware, critical discernment.

The Spirit ceaselessly whispers

with the wounded polyphony of Babel and Pentecost

to the true Word of God, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

Drama can provide the conceptual richness and robustness necessary to do justice to the whole person in community as interpreter and actor.

Drama also naturally incorporates ritual and liturgy, two quintessentially performative activities.

In theology and drama, the towering figure is the Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, in his monumental five-volume Theo-Drama ^(1973-1983). Recently, the evangelical theologian Kevin Vanhoozer has also argued for a similar approach.

Drama is ‘nothing less than the missing link between right belief (orthodoxy) and wise practice (orthopraxis).’

Drama is intrinsic to Scripture and theology, and not an imposed analogy.

This apologia is largely due to

the neglect of performative approaches to Scripture and theology,

thanks in no small part to

Augustine’s and Tertullian’s unhelpful disparagement of theatre.

Balthasar in fact spends 600 pages justifying such an approach,

which Aiden Nichols succinctly condenses into nine keywords:

incarnation,

history,

orthopraxis,

dialogue,

political theology,

eschatology,

structuralism,

role,

and freedom.

The ability of drama to combine praxis and meaning is also widely recognised by performance theorists.

The success or failure of performances, both secular or sacred,

can be considered in terms of

the authenticity of the actors and audience

and the degree of fusion between script, actors, and audience.

A successful performance conveys meaning and prompts appropriate action.

If love is the rule, then the ‘how’ of reading Scripture

together is as important as the ‘what’.

Scripture will thrive

as performative, liturgical, enacted, evocative dynamism

is experienced and embodied, interpreted and believed.

The challenge is to train faithful dissidents

who direct their congregations in the ‘public service’ of liturgy, for and before the world,

under the guidance of the Trinitarian God, together studying the Script(ures)

in order to stage faithful, innovative, local performances of God’s drama of reconciliation.

Christian interpretation is an embodied, communal event, taking place in and through Christian life and worship.

Christian communities comprehend the speech of God through and in their embodied lives.

The Bible has a surplus of significance for Christians. It contains the command to perform.

Habakkuk the Faithful Dissident: A Performative Hermeneutic for Anglicans in Australia

Matthew Anstey / St Mark’s Review, No. 203, November 2007 (2)

WHAT WOULD A PERFORMANCE OF THE GOSPEL OF MARK HAVE BEEN LIKE?

Scholars have long understood that

the texts we now know as the Gospels were read aloud in the Greco-Roman world,

but few have actually envisioned

what a performance of the Gospel of Mark would have been like in the first century

and how it would have shaped the experience of its audience.

Proclaiming the Gospel shows us.

Oral performances in the New Testament world were lively affairs.

In the performance of Greco-Roman theater,

readers lose their voices from the stress of emotional passages.

Audiences cheer for philosophers as if at a rock concert,

and in law courts, they are paid for their responses.

Storytellers compete for attention with jugglers,

and some speakers must fend off hostile crowds.

Congregations at churches and synagogues cheer as if at the theater.

Shiner reveals the ways that

Mark wrote his Gospel to compete in this arena

and how his audiences would have responded:

applause for the miracles of Jesus,

then an altogether different response at the cross.

Proclaiming the Gospel, First Century Performance of Mark. Trinity Press International, Harrisburg,PA.

Whitney T. Shiner, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Undergraduate Coordinator, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA

Perfecting Performance: The need for rehearsal and direction

No one is born a lector; those who are selected to be lectors ought to be trained. If the lector is perform ministry to the glory of God, one will practice and seek out constructive criticism: “Was I loud enough; could you understand the text; was I reading in a tone that is good for my voice; did I read too quickly; what did I look like when I walked up …”

Voice Matters: Breath, Posture, Articulation, and other Physical Aspects of Reading

The English speaker normally uses three pitch levels, and a fourth for special emphasis:

1. The first level is the one which signals the statement has come to an end. If there is no difference between this ending level and the pitch level at which the speaker began the statement, it would be monotonous.

2. The second level is the normal level at which a speaker begins a statement. This is higher than the ending pitch.

3. For emphasis, a speaker, at a certain point in speaking, pitches the voice higher than the rest of the statement.

4. A fourth level of pitch will signal extra emphasis.

Starting to speak, one pitches the voice comfortably and goes on to complete the statement.

· MONOTONE:

Starting to speak, one pitches the voice comfortably and goes on to complete the statement.

· NORMAL w/emphasis:

Starting to ^speak, one ^pitch-es the voice ^comfortably and goes ^on to complete the state-_ment.

· NORMAL w/ extra emphasis:

Starting to ^speak, one ^pitch-es the voice ^comfortably and goes ^on to com-^plete the state-_ment.

Two other things to consider in terms of pitch:

inflection (which describes a pitch or glide within a particular sound)

and intonation (which refers to the pitch pattern of a sentence or longer unit of utterance).

Consider how the use of pauses, or phrasing, sets off units of discourse. The pause

· gives one a chance to breathe;

· gives the speaker time to consider the next phrase or sentence;

· gives the listener a brief moment to absorb what has been said;

· provides a clue to meaning.

It is best to speak conversationally when reading. This advice

· emphasizes the idea carriers rather than unimportant words;

· emphasizes the new idea or the contrast rather than the old idea;

· emphasizes causal or conditional relationships;

· emphasizes the main thought rather than parenthetical phrases.

Any word that can be omitted without significantly changing the meaning should not be stressed.

Consider articulation – moving the tongue, lips and teeth to precisely form sounds.

Try the saying the following phrase, increasing the speed each time while continuing to speak precisely as possible:

“The tip of the tongue, the lips, and the teeth.”

Projection is a function of both loudness (breath control using the diaphragm) and articulation.

· Breathe more from the diaphragm to force air through the vocal tract; pause often enough to breathe.

· Measure speech to avoid running sounds together.

· Concentrate on reaching listeners at the farthest reaches of the space.

Be alive to others when speaking! Look at those who are listening, letting eye contact cooperate in communication.

Identify with the characters being quoted and visualize what is taking place, projecting the experience to the listener.

Fully utilize all vocal and physical resources to bring to life that about which one is speaking.

Gordon C. Bennett’s Readers Theatre Comes to Church: A New Form of Christian Communication for Worship, Teaching & Evangelism