This book began as academic research, but is not only for academics. It is for anyone that has left a theatre show, or a performance, feeling elevated; more alive. It is for art practitioners and yoga practitioners and Vipassana meditators. It is for anyone interested in their own potential for evolution as a human being.
The research investigates ways in which creative processes in the making of theatre work(s) can be augmented by contemplative practices, including yoga and meditation. It focuses on three theatrical productions that were publicly presented across three consecutive years: Blood Lines (2014), Tommy’s Song (2015) and Awkward – A life in Twenty-Six Postures (2016).
Specifically, the book researches Bikram Yoga and Vipassana meditation as ‘bodymind’ training systems for performance. It charts the development of a Conscious Theatre Practice (ctp); a theatre in which the ideologies, as well as the physical aspects of these Eastern disciplines contributed to the shaping of a working manifesto for socially engaged theatre company, Black Star Projects.
The theatrical productions forming the practical elements of this research were analysed and deconstructed using the ‘three C’s’ research model. This comparative framework was the paradigm for exploring three aspects of theatre making: Conscious Craft: writing, directing, performance; Conscious Casting and Conscious Collaborations.
Creating a conscious theatre practice has been part of an ongoing self-realisation process. Themes of self-discovery and enhanced somatic harmony have been inherent in this project, informing the field of contemporary performance studies via the philosophies and practices of ancient disciplines.
Research for this book included several ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreats and a nine-week Bikram Yoga teacher-training programme, contributing to autoethnographic research methods and subsequently, to partly autobiographical play texts and their theatrical performance outputs.
The ancient ‘know thyself’ adage has been instrumental as a guiding light in both theatre-making and yoga/meditation practices. This research argues that these disciplines can work in unison to transform the lives of individuals, and that personal shifts in consciousness have the potential to improve society.