Notes Following the Teatro Popular

66 West 12th Street. Never before have I been in this basement. The floor is wide and yellow. I get the feeling I will be made to dance or something. I check the email again. The word MANDATORY does not appear. I do my best to scurry out the door. But then come the others. The ones I know from class I follow back down, into the place I do not know.

The chairs are set up. A slide show begins.

Students, workers, organizers, neighbors. The Escola de Teatro Popular is part of a broader struggle in Brazil. Theater is a practice to be taken out into the streets: to show fellow protesters, and the state apparatus, the possibilities of being. A school of fish chases away a shark. Theater is a component of resistance.

Before long we are standing.

I help move chairs away.

We develop together.

I am not dressed for movement, but a sweatshirt and jeans is a familiar uniform for the likes of me: I have had to move for far worse reasons.

We form a circle. 

First the eye contact, and swap places.

The circle has shifted, but remains.

Then the snaps, to find our rhythm. “Despite what I look like,” I will later quip, referring to my inherent, inescapable paleness, “rhythm is not a problem.” Now jumps: to make a wave. Then 1-2-3-4: counts substituted by actions, shouts, moves. Why did I volunteer to be the first  example, to be the demonstration? I do not know how to move. I am haunted by my panicked suggestions. But a partner stands opposite me, however briefly, and is helpful. 

Then into groups. Incorporate what we come up with. A friend from class gets anxious.

I admit: “We got heavy quick.”  

I do not enjoy playing the part of an oppressor.

Why did I mime a gun so quickly? What does that say about me? 

“Five, six, seven eight.”

To move in lines and break with claps. 

Others might be better organized. But my group gelled quickly: Fresh ideas. Witnesses. Critiques. Mimes.

“I am slightly better at hanging posters,” I tell classmates, “than I am at group improv.” 

Yes, I stayed after. To help. To thank Geo Britto for coming here to help show us the way. Brazil: community, organization, resistance. To be downwind of that history is good. 

Home to rest. Change: new shirt, new sweater. Returned to see: Lang at 40. The history of theater at The New School is engrained in this building. A fond anecdote: Erwin Piscator upstairs, same auditorium. The benevolent dictator demands students give more. Stella Adler, downstairs, stands over that yellow floor, telling students to stop acting. 

Tonight: Zishan Ugurlu speaks. She will hold a 26.5 hour performance within the next few weeks. 

Tonight: Ka’ramuu Kush. An undergraduate thesis on the soul of Akhenaten, heretic king of Ancient Egypt. Memories of this stage. 

1974: Joseph Beuys is also here. The students sit on stage, with him and his chalkboard. His idea of a social sculpture, of art as the gateway to new being. 

I look for this history. To be a part of it.