Abstract Index Conference Index

ABSTRACT

Submission Area: Dreams and the Expressive Arts

1. Type of presentation: Two-hour Workshop

2. Title of Presentation: Mythotheatrics: Dreaming as Images on Stage

3. .From the State of Washington, Marie Elliot-Gartner currently lives in Southern Germany. She came over to Berlin on a doctoral research scholarship in sociology in 1982. She has taught English by way of theatre. In her production-type dissertation for Pacifica Graduate Institute she approaches theater as dreaming images on stage: "mythotheatrics".

Marie Elliot-Gartner
email: MElliotAG@aol.com

4. Summary of Presentation

Participants will be actively involved by way of a choreographic technique in creating image on stage. The approach is one of entering and extending the dreaming going on in and around us in our wakeful state rather than delving into personal, dreams of the night. Dreaming will be expressed in a physical form.

5. Learning Objectives

1. To experience dreaming as image-making on stage.
2. To listen and respond to the dreaming going on around us.
3. To enter and extend the dreaming physically thereby giving it further expression through group choreography.

Evaluation Questions:

1. Did the participant learn to approach dreaming as image-making on stage?
2. Did the participant learn that dreaming can be imagined as going on around us in our wakeful state and is not confined to an inner personal-state during sleep?
3. Was the participant able to work and imagine together in a group giving
physical expression to dream?

8. Abstract 

Mythotheatrics : Dreaming Images on Stage

Mythotheatrics is an aesthetic art form whereby performers enter and extend the dreams in and around them, embody them and enliven them by creating images consisting of layered compositions out of music, movement and text. An animated image is like a moody landscape in motion. It is made up of colliding and colluding emotions, memories and ideas personified and performed by actors and things. It is not to be confused with pictorial presentations of characters and illustrative scenes (Hillman, Spring 78 158). Mythotheatrics places metaphorical, emotional-laden images in the foreground. An illustrative performance would focus primarily on a visual viewing of a choreogaphed composition. But this is not so with mythotheatrics where the image is not merely an optical event (Hillman, Spring 78 161), but an entire, sensory-suprasensory, sphere composed of music, voice, movement and props. Here the intention is to emotionally entice the audience to enter, embrace, and be enveloped by the image which is unfolding upon stage and not only to feast their eyes (Hillman, Spring 78 159). As Hillman declares, "images hold us, grip us, they can be gutsy (159).
Images, like paintings, have all their parts going on concurrently, simultan-eously (Hillman, Spring 78 161) and theater offers the most suitable aesthetic form for images to unfold fully: imaginally, sensually, intellectually, inter-connectedly. On stage, Image as performance evokes emotions in a live, physical setting, creating an impact not realizable elsewhere. Theatre is holistic and experential. It opens the door to the dreaming world, inviting it in, putting its needs in the foreground, listening and responding to it in physical form.
Mythotheatrics is a physical and psychical place devoted to exploring dreaming as image-making.. Here images are able to manifest themselves corporeally, orally and aurally. It is a meeting place for the senses, intellect and the dream. Together they bring forth animated and ideational images set in motion by performers. The invisible reality or that which normally is not perceptible with senses; becomes visible and perceptible through performance. Mythotheatrics sensitizes the imaginative faculty, trains it for appreciating and cultivating the mundus imaginalis: "a world both inter-mediary and intermediate, the world of the image (or archetypes) : a world that is ontologically as real as the world of the senses and that of the intellect" (Corbin 7).
Opening the door to this "inbetween" world requires its own faculty of perception or mode of awareness. Mythotheatrics is a literal and metaphorical sensory space inviting the imaginal, the Supersensory to enter and engage in an encounter with physical bodies transporting them into "subtle bodies"; intermingling, interrelating, giving birth to animated images. Tangible-intangibles, being both at the same time; sensory and supersensory, physical and imaginal; inner and outer, images emerge and disperse on stage as inhabitual, choreographed compositions.
Poetry on stage, poetry in action, an expression of the poetic basis of mind; mythotheatrics is a type of applied, active imagination dreaming images before our very eyes, live on stage. It is a place for exploring the multiplicity of meanings embedded in images making theatre not merely a means of entertainment but also a means of cultural, education.
"Text" will be inspired by the surroundings to which we submit and listen to for our cues. Exercises include listening to the dreaming around us and responding physically by way of a choreographic technique.

10. Additional Required Documentation:

1) Marie Elliot-Gartner has been an active theatre-maker for the last ten years, directing and organizing plays in German and in English. Her strength lies not in traditional approaches to dreams, but in innovative, expressive performance of dream as image. Novel and holistic methods of teaching intrigued her and she began teaching English by way of theatre. The emphasis was on text but this changed after being introduced to archetypal psychology and mythology where image is the foreground. "The Dream and the Underworld" by James Hillman was the first archetypal book she read. This book had such an impact on her that together with a director from Paris, a theatre-piece was performed inspired by it. She is currently a doctoral candidate at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her involvement with dream-work is in terms of extending the dream into the wakeful world by way of theater and especially through image composed of movement, music and sound. Rather than being an interpretive approach to dreams, it is a type of tending and extending the dream "holistically", including mind, emotions, and body to perform "images" : archetypal dreaming on stage.

2) Marie has studied dream work at Pacifica Graduate Institute in courses like "Myth and Dream", "Psychology of Religion" and "Depth Psychology".

3) Marie has conducted theatre workshops in her community.

4) The style is choreographic imaginal inspired theoretically by the works of Carl Jung, James Hillman and practically by Pantheatre, Paris.

5) Attendees will engage in relaxation exercises before being introduced to a leader/follower choreographic technique for creating images on stage. In addition listening to the dreaming in the room will influence the choice of movement and encourage the idea that dreaming is going on not only in us, but around us. We try to listen, enter and participate in the dreaming through physical expression. Music and text will be used to combat our "natural" tendency in the waking-state to rely on "ego" in guiding our "moves".