by Remy Marin
Jerry Goralnick has been
working with the
Living Theatre, a
pacifist anarchist theatre
company that explores
expressionism, movement and
improvisation as forums
through which to convey
powerful and controversial
subject matter, for 25
years. This past fall, I
had the amazing opportunity
to participate in a workshop
that Jerry and fellow
company member
Lois Kagan Mingus
conducted at Skidmore
College. The Living Theatre
has a very refreshing and
unique way of approaching
movement, and so I was
thrilled when Jerry agreed
to share with us his
experiences with the
Company.
REMY: Jerry, you have
been working with the Living
Theatre for 25 years now,
and perform both new plays
as well as pieces that the
company has been performing
for decades. What about the
Living Theatre continues to
capture your attention and
dedication after all these
years?
JERRY: Well, the
Living Theatre is a pacifist
anarchist collective and
it’s very important that
that opinion, meaning
pacifist anarchism, is
continually expressed.
REMY: Could you describe
what pacifist anarchism
means to you? I know that
people tend to view
anarchism in a way that is
not exactly how the Living
Theatre views it.
JERRY: Well, first of
all, we’re pacifists and
when we look at all the
different forms of political
organizations, we see that
the only form that really
allows us to create the kind
of world that we want is
anarchism. The confusion
about anarchism comes from
the mainstream media using
the word ‘anarchy’ when they
want to say political chaos,
and that started back in the
1880’s. So for 100 years,
people have seen the word
‘anarchy’ and thought that
it meant political chaos,
which in fact it does not.
REMY: Going to the pieces
that you’ve done with the
company, so much of what you
perform covers such powerful
and controversial topics
like the
death penalty,
liberation and
the plague. How do you
decide what subjects to
address?
JERRY: The Company
usually meets after we
finish the current
production. We start to
discuss and the way we do
that is we say “What’s the
burning issue?” For
example, back in the late
90’s, we had one of these
discussions and what came
out of it was that we felt
that water was going to be
the war commodity for this
century the way oil has been
the war commodity for the
last century. So we started
to work on the Water Play.
REMY: Has the water play
come out yet?
JERRY: No, we worked,
we developed, we did a
workshop production of about
a 35 minute piece and then
it didn’t develop after
that. We moved on to
something else.
REMY: Does that happen a
lot, where you start to go
with an idea and it just
doesn’t work out?
JERRY: Not a lot, but
it happens
sometimes. Usually it’s
because something else
occurs.
REMY: Do you ever go back
to the old piece?
JERRY: Yes. For
example, last year, we did a
play about the Biblical
character
Korach. Korach is a
story that Judith Malina and
the Company has wanted to do
for at least 20 years.
REMY: When you came and
did the workshop at Skidmore
you taught us a piece about
Cain and Abel, and
you’re mentioning that you
wanted to do this piece from
the Bible as well. So you
have these extreme, relevant
topics and then on the other
hand you have stories from
the Bible. What strikes that
balance there?
JERRY: There have
been several dissertations
on the Jewish roots of the
Living Theatre because
Judith Malina is the
daughter of the Rabbi and
has had a very strong face
in Judaism all her life. In
fact, every year we
celebrate Passover as a
Living Theatre ritual
because, as far as religious
rituals go,
Passover is the one that
is about liberation.
REMY: During the
workshop, you taught us a
lot about
tableaux vivants and
movement improvisation.
Could you explain what,
exactly, is tableaux vivants
and why improv is so
important for your theatre
productions?
JERRY: Over the
years, we are constantly
looking for performance and
so we mime old forms, which
tableaux vivants certainly
is—it comes from parlor
games from the 17th
century—and then we’re
always asking ourselves,
“what is the new form?”
We’re happy to take from the
past and use it where we
feel that it works for us
and then we’re always
sitting around or moving
around and say “what’s the
new form?” A lot of our
work is done in the street,
and so this is very
different from being inside
a theatre where a pin spot
can isolate something and
draw everyone’s attention
and you can do something
very simple. Of course,
that’s totally different
from the street, where
you’re bombarded by all
kinds of stimulus. And so,
we’re always looking for
forms to use in the street
that will focus attention.
We took the tableaux vivants
form from the parlor game
and started to develop it to
where we could use it in the
streets. For example,
tableaux vivants really
means “freezes,” and in the
street, freezes are
extremely powerful. Often,
when we’re going to do a
street theatre play, we will
deem a procession, we will
decide where the performance
is going to be, and then
we’ll go a few hundred yards
away from that point and
we’ll do a
procession. That’s merely a
way to attract
attention—people hear a huge
uproar and then silence with
everybody frozen. That
immediately attracts the eye
and the interest. That’s
one of the ways that we took
that idea and turned it into
something we could do in the
street.
REMY: In addition to
improvisation, we learned a
bit
Meyerhold’s method of
Bio Mechanics, and
that’s such a different form
of movement. How would you
say that Bio Mech factors in
to everything?
JERRY: This goes
back to the accosted search
for new forms. What happened
was, of course, nobody knew
what was going on in the
Soviet Union because there
was a wall and there was no
communication between
artists and there was a book
that the Living Theatre
stumbled on of Meyerhold’s
Bio Mechanics. In the book
were photographs of the
etudes, but they showed
position 1, position 2,
position 3 and so forth, but
they didn’t show how you got
from position 1 to position
2. So the company together
worked on what that might
have been, and so the Living
Theatre supposed what Bio
Mechanics looked like and
created a form. And then,
when the Soviet Union
dissolved and students of
the students of Meyerhold
were able to come to the
West and give workshops, we
met.
REMY: What is it about
Bio Mechanics that you feel
really fits into the Living
Theatre?
JERRY: It’s a form of
movement that’s very
expressionistic that
captures the eye. On the
street, it’s very difficult
to express things in words.
You can’t have dialogue
between two characters,
there’s so much going on and
so much noise that there’s a
movement that can express
the idea. So, for example,
you did the Cain and Abel
etude, which clearly shows
this idea of brother killing
brother in 30 seconds. We
adapted the Bio Mechanic
form and adapted it in a lot
of different ways. We have
used Bio Mechanics as a form
of expressionistic movement
many times.
REMY: You’ve been saying
that a lot of the reason why
the Living Theatre is so
movement-based is because
you’re on the street and
it’s hard to hear dialogue,
but what about when you
perform on a stage?
JERRY: We also often
use it on the stage because
a lot of our plays are more
poetic text-based. Again,
there’s not a lot of
dialogue, and so we might
create a piece and we’ll
say, we have to figure out
how to move while we’re
doing this. Often we’ll
say, is there a Bio Mechanic
way to do this? If not,
someone might come in with
something else that they
know and say there’s a yoga
pose that we could use or a
dance form that we could
use. And so we’ll draw from
everyone’s experience.
REMY: You use so many
different forms of movement,
like you were saying, and
you really look beyond
what’s expected and
stereotypical for a theatre
group. What is it that
makes the Living Theatre so
involved in movement and
what is it about
expressionistic, abstract
and improv movement that you
feel is so effective in the
theatre?
JERRY: When the
audience is experiencing the
performance, so much of
working communication is
physical. Even in just a
two-way conversation that
you’re having with someone,
you pick up body language
ques. So we communicate
with what we say and with
our body, and so sometimes
it’s much easier to express
what we want to express
through body movement.
REMY: When you came to
Skidmore and we did the
tableaux vivants, you were
talking about how it is not
only a way to show the
audience something, but also
a way for self-discovery
almost and a way to find
what was within you. Could
you talk a little bit about
that?
JERRY: Improvisation
is a good way to discover.
When you really free
yourself up, you might
surprise yourself, and
that’s why we use the
surrealist form of writing,
the exquisite corpse,
because it’s almost a form
of automatic writing. You
surprise yourself, and it’s
the same way with movement
improv. The more that the
group works together and
gets to know each other, the
further down people feel
comfortable going. For
example, if we had worked
with a group at Skidmore for
six months and we had
continued to do tableaux and
exquisite corpses,
eventually we would have
gotten to a point where we
knew each other so well and
we would say “okay, the
theme for these tableaux is
x, y or z” and we world be
able to do something and the
people watching it would say
“this tableaux communicates
the idea so clearly.” The
director may have never been
able to do that. It’s
almost by chance, but not
really because so much
rehearsal has gone into it.
REMY: I also remember
with the tableaux that, when
we did our piece, we began
it with a series of tableaux
vivants that didn't
necessarily relate to the
subjects that we were going
to discuss in the skits that
we had created. Why do you
find that doing a tableaux
vivant that’s more about
going where you go is so
effective when it’s not
about the topic of that
particular performance?
JERRY: Well, again,
we were introducing the
idea. For example, now you
as a participant know the
idea, so you might become
part of a performance
company that could rehearse
for six months doing the
form. And as you’re doing
it and you’re developing
your piece and developing
the specific ideas that you
want to get across, you’d
start to find that your
tableaux are become more
specific. I’m doing that
right now with
Occupy Wall Street where
we’ve formed street theatre
blocks and a group of people
start to get together and
we’re working with tableaux
forms. The very beginning
of the work is to just learn
to move in the space, you
have to start to become
aware of traffic patterns
and the other people, first
of all so that no one gets
hurt and then so you can
start to learn other
peoples’ patterns and skills
and you start to develop.
We did that, we just moved
and froze, and then we
started to write
exquisite corpses on
specific issues and then we
started to combine the text
from the exquisite corpses
with the tableaux. There
was a huge change because,
like you said, people then
started to think about
what’s the emotion, what’s
the issue behind the
movement, and that changes
it. That shoots it to a
power of ten, we might say,
and so the exploration
deepens and becomes more
profound.
REMY: Could you explain
more about the exquisite
corpses?
JERRY: The exquisite
corpse is a form that’s
surrealist and the idea is
to do more automatic writing
because there is this belief
that our talent lies in our
subconscious and so, if we
find pathways to our
subconscious, our talent
comes out. I think that
everybody in performance
experiences this kind of
thing, whether it be dance
or theatre or music, where
you are going along and all
of a sudden you do something
brilliant. You hadn’t
planned to do it, it just
happened and you say to
yourself “where did that
come from?” It came from
your talent. So the
exquisite corpse is a way to
create text that often we
discover really speaks to
the issue. You remember the
form- you write two lines on
a paper and then fold it so
that the next person can
only read that second line
and writes two lines, and so
forth.
REMY: Would you say that,
in the sense of just saying
what you feel instead of
contriving something, it’s
very similar to the way that
you use movement
improvisation?
JERRY: Yes. So
you’re doing the movement
improvisation and you do a
movement that creates an
emotion within you. That
then forms the next movement
that you do.
REMY: My last question,
which I know might be a hard
one to answer: of all the
performances you have done
with the Living Theatre, are
there any that stand out in
your mind as being your
favorite or ones that you
felt really resonated?
JERRY: Oh, sure.
Mysteries and Smaller
Pieces.
REMY: Mysteries
was a collection of smaller
skits that you did, correct?
JERRY: Yes, you might
say it was one of the first
non-linear plays and it’s a
series of theatrical
rituals.
REMY: Why did that stand
out for you?
JERRY: It’s one of
the few times where I really
experienced that, instead of
me performing the play, the
play was performing me.
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