THE ARTISTIC GUILLOTINE - BY CHRIS BOHAN

“I need to get out of my head!” Many an artist has uttered this phrase, a plea invoked to ‘stop thinking and start doing’. In more desperate cases, an artist might shout “I just want to cut off my head!” thus employing the metaphorical Artistic Guillotine. In a perfect world, the artist is working from a place of true inspiration, that ethereal space where the Thinking (head), Feeling (heart), and Willing (desire) centers are symbiotic, feeding off each other to create beauty.  Artists don’t need to cut off their heads, what they need to do is reconnect their head with their heart and their desire. They don’t need an Artistic Guillotine, they need an Artistic Bypass. Seat of the Pants is working to create this Artistic Bypass in the way it approaches the production process.

The American theater establishment has settled on a budget-driven formula in an attempt to streamline the artistic process. It goes a little something like this: Pick a play, hire a director and design staff, hold auditions, hire actors, smash together a design concept. Then, start rehearsing about four weeks before you open. Actors get three weeks to figure out the play, then the designers come in and build the set, get actors in costume, and add lights and sound. This is a very thinking-centered process which lacks the connection with the feeling and willing centers. If the process does not come together in that final week, the production goes on as planned and hopefully the audience won’t notice. It is during this process where I hear “I just need to get out of my head’ most often. Bring in the guillotine.

This is my first time working with Seat of the Pants and it is such a joy to experience the symbiosis of creating the concept of the show as a team in the rehearsal hall, as opposed to in my office. The extended rehearsal process gives us time to present ideas created in our thinking centers and test them out with our feeling and willing centers in the rehearsal hall. At the beginning of the rehearsal process, the designers and the actors meet once a week for three weeks to test out theories about the action of the play. We spend some time ‘thinking’ around a table, throwing ideas around to see how they ‘feel’ and then we put them on their feet to see how they work in action. It is such a joy to reignite the connection between our centers and discover moments naturally, as opposed to the formulaic process which is constrained by budgets and time. Moments of inspiration and discovery happen every few seconds and each artist in the process (director/actor/designer/producer/stage manager) is involved in the creative process at the same time, as opposed to being siloed until that final week of rehearsal. The bypass is working.

The Book Club Play is inherently ‘thinking’ centered: it is a play about people that read books and think about them. It takes place in a living room. They eat snacks. The genre is realism. This play is perfect for the budget-driven formula of American theater. But having the extended rehearsal period to explore the play with our thinking, feeling, and willing centers for six weeks BEFORE we begin the traditional rehearsal process, has allowed us to discover what is underneath this play, how it feels and how it acts. By using techniques from The Michael Chekhov Technique, and others, we have discovered the heart and soul of the play and are eager to apply those discoveries as we move into the more traditional structure of staging the action of the play. We can feel the energy moving through the bypass and we are working on all cylinders. The bypass has allowed us to take a play from realism to heightened realism. The head, heart, and desire of the play is always present.

Next time you find yourself saying, “I need to get out of my head!”, I would encourage you to edit that phrase and say, “I need to reconnect my head to my heart and my desire!” Don’t put your head in the guillotine, instead give yourself an artistic bypass.