An act of love

Performance is an act of love. One of the reasons why we gather to watch a performance is to find love. Not sentimental, emotional, selfish love but the kind that tells you that you are not alone, that takes you out of yourself or, (as Alan Watts would say) reminds you that you are more than some ‘thing’ in a bag of skin, that you belong in the universe and the universe belongs in you. Being part of a performance somehow dissolves that bag of skin.

What I do as a performer is merely to try to make this dissolving possible. It doesn’t matter so much what I have as what I give. I must strive to risk all so as to be able to give all. Otherwise I cannot be open and this will take away the possibility of someone in the audience opening too.

We are all children and we need wonder in our lives. This is why playing down to an audience and playing yourself up doesn’t work. Not in the sense of material success but in achieving something more. More magical and more wondrous than what can be put in words.

Love

Paris, May 2003.

Love is important. Both the giving and receiving of it. An audience gathers not just to be loved but also to give love. Not romantic love and not to the actor on the stage although it’s often confused with that.

We want to give love to the whatever-it-is embodied on stage. The actor opens the door to this giving by opening him or herself, and then must step out of the way.