My interest in the notion of contact, a Grotowskian notion that I have been investigating for three decades in the acting classroom, has led me to work with my students, helping them to perceive themselves as part of a subtle network of relationships between human and non-human, living and non-living beings. Focusing my research on these relational processes, an experience presented to me and captured my attention as a teacher-researcher: when the contact was established in its totality – with a floating attention – a continuous and delicate adjustment of actions, a liberation of the corporeal-relational blockages of the students involved, what prevailed were less the individualities and more a rhythmic, vibrational, almost sonorous and, in a certain way, impersonal flow that I named, faithful to the Grotowskian lineage, the “flow of life”. In this kind of immersion (Coccia, 2018), relationships, actions and affections appeared modified in relation to the most common ways of experiencing our individualities, both in theater and in life. In this moment of maximum capture of our subjectivities by the neoliberal-individualist, competitive, productivist model – and the climate crisis – born of the objectification and consumption of nature – these artistic experiences, even if circumscribed and fragile, can bring us closer to that “more of less me” that Byung-Chul Han (2015) locates in a certain kind of tiredness that, by loosening the bonds of identity, creates a deep friendship between beings. What scenes and worlds could we invent (or remember) from this?

Venue: School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, Room B112.G
Date: 06th of May, 2024
Schedule: 06:00 pm

Organisation: Centre for Theatre Studies | Programme in Theatre Studies
Vítor Lemos, Gustavo Vicente, José Maria Vieira Mendes