Hello all, this month is a slightly new iteration on last month’s trial run. Every session is still “drop-in” style for now, even though I know the best way to get results with these decolonial theater methods is to train regularly in a committed group container. I am working on designing various offerings that are more intensive than these drop-in style offerings. But life is short and unpredictable! We live in terrifying times. So, I’m doing what I can.
Also, New writing at the end of this article
Saturday March 23rd 2024 10am-1pm pst CURRENTLY WAITLIST
3-hour workshop for beginning students - min 6, max 10 participants $45
Workshop will not run unless 6 people are signed up and paid. In order to make this work, please fill out this google form & when 6 ppl have committed, I will send you a PayPal link. First come first serve in regard to the max limit. I want everyone to have feedback and practice time.
Saturday March 30 section one 10am-1130am pst CURRENTLY WAITLIST
1.5-hour workshop for beginning students- min 6, max 10 participants $30
*Beginners can stay and audit the continuing class
Workshop will not run unless 6 people are signed up and paid. In order to make this work, please fill out this google form & when 6 ppl have committed, I will send you a PayPal link. First come first serve in regard to the max limit. I want everyone to have feedback and practice time.
Saturday March 30 section two 12pm-3pm pst
3-hour workshop for continuing students, min 6, max 8 $45*
*see email for further details
Continuing students are those that have taken the 45-hour online course.
Workshop will not run unless 6 people are signed up and paid. In order to make this work, please fill out this google form & when 6 ppl have committed, I will send you a PayPal link. First come first serve in regard to the max limit. I want everyone to have feedback and practice time.
All previous information on these deathclown online sessions can be found here:
Theater: Space for Intermediary Ritual Actions
In the bloody journey from animistic-magical consciousness towards mythical-emotional-symbolic consciousness and into modern post-modern rational-logical consciousness, the human race mangled a lot of beings and relationships.
In regard to this decolonial theater work, much of the mangling was a narrative erasure and epistemicide towards how we humans relate, learn and regard various helping spirits that guide, mentor and support us on our soul’s journey from the other world (birth), through this world (life), and back into the other world (death).
Feel free to take a breath and read that again. Because as much as it would perhaps benefit us to explain this origin story very slowly over the course of a 500-page book… there’s no time.
Cutting to the chase, theater springs from the exact same source as ritual and trance, which expands the function of a human being via the capacity for ritual actions. Ritual actions are actions that really can only happen under a certain premise, structure and setting. The light of an invisible sun, the moon of another sky. The darkened stage, a circle of fire.
When the old timey witch doctor puts on the ceremonial garb and chants the hidden song, when they don the sacred mask and the ritual musicians play the anointed drums, we enter into the origins of ritual theater, which is the place of the intermediary.
Intermediary — but now called “an actor” when we speak of “theater”, or a “priest” when we speak of “religion”. But an intermediary all the same. You might also call this intermediary function & role a kind of spiritual diplomat, or a kind of shapeshifting dreamer that can change, and in so changing, change relationships, change perception, and change fate itself.
On one level, the entertainer and the entertainment as spiritual offerings, as food for hungry ghosts, fickle gods, demons & ancestors… on another level simultaneously a midwife of the soul, the merciful executioner, ringmaster of the damned, headless clown, eulogist of the cursed and discarded, buried neck deep in waste, their head like a singing cabbage, storyteller of the unborn world.
We live in a society that has largely decided to falsely remember this role and function, in order to attain a certain kind of identity called the self, called an individual. We can say that we live in a story called “The Self & All MY Glory”. This story is so addicting that it doesn’t appear like a story at all. It appears as “the truth”.
In this story, the self seeks to attain a certain kind of mastery. It wants to be spoon fed the correct sequence of actions that will allow it to become powerful & hold dominion over others, over their soul, over the world. To have power, to have agency, to be protected from death and illness, to be able to have all the resources and pleasure it desires.
On the surface, this seems like the right thing to want.
It would seem to feel nice to be spoon-fed “The Ten Steps to Becoming a Visionary Capitalist”, and to follow “The Seven Principles of The Elite (and how you can be one too!)”
In this story, once an individual has become strong, powerful, undistractable, focused, healthy, wealthy & wise, then they can give some small pittance of their time, money and resources away to the poor, unfortunate souls as another measurable badge of honor signifying their status. Of course, they also get a tax break for doing this, as well as a seat on the board of some non-profit.
This is The American Dream, The Capitalist Dream, The Dream of Aristocracy. A modern take on medieval feudalism. Except now, anyone who can afford it can become royalty.
How many lifetimes, how many lives can we afford to spend on this story?
Even now, those paragraphs about the intermediary feel so far away.
A few lines of text that evoke the uber-propaganda of our time and we find ourselves in the hall of mirrors again, every direction reflecting our lonesome self, a hero-in-the-making that can “rise above” and escape poverty, death, sickness… if only I master the right skills, if only I outcompete the hungry masses…
Opening back up to the process of dreaming via ritual actions, here, now, embodied, solo or in a group, may feel like a fantasy, but remember that we are living in a fantasy called individualism, patriarchy, oppression. Every night when you sleep your soul relaxes into the boundless nature of the formless, every night some secret angle of your being drinks from these perfect waters and dances as energy.
And then you awaken and snap back into the shape your consciousness has adapted to protect itself from pain, fear and hunger, on the endless hunt to find safety, pleasure and power again.
Even writing it feels exhausting.
But there are these glimpses of what the world actually is, and what our role in that world calls us towards, even if there is no perfect roadmap, even if most of the paths are lined with missionaries from various sects and religions beckoning us into their saving grace.
The path of the soul is the path of justice, encompassing all aspects of reality. Called to work in this world, how do we respond?