In acting improvisational classes with Ranters Theatre’s Adriano Cortese , we have been exploring the concepts of following and leading, and it is in the beautiful and magical possibilities of performance, that a way may be provided as an alternative answer for the conduct of an individual in society.

It provides an insight and potential enlightenment to the society outside and it’s condition.

Following and leading is ideally a relation of listening and trust.

Breakdowns and problems arise when there is a lack of trust, or a conflict of power relations, for following is not a slavish, overtly act but one of an autonomous complicity, it is an act(ion) of critical choice. One which is ACTIVE…

Without a relation of listening and trust , one begins to resort to the politics of a dictatorship, where choice becomes a slavish , narrow-minded understanding, and communication becomes propoganda and dogma….

What choices are deliberate, that is, DELIBERATED or merely accepted, and dictated in the name of so-called “noble virtues” and “values” by a ruthlessly simple expediency.

This would appear to be the terms of  capitalism’s “economic rationalism” and the events transpiring from September 11^th 2001 such as Iraq and sadly New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina…

… “…Esse est percipi..” stated the philosophical Bishop George Berkeley translated as “…to be, ..is to be percieved”…

What takes place outside ourselves, takes place within ourselves…what we witness, is what we become…

There is no such thing as a person of character, because a person is beyond a singular, one-dimensional entity, that is to say a constant, consistently “locked down” and pigeon holed; for a person is MANY THINGS, a multi-dimensional being, like those persons that make up nations…

Following,… or dissent for that matter is a call to action , a form of choice from which we cannot be decieved and be bereft of our humanity in order to destroy the humanity of others (NOT in OUR name)…

And the conditions of this possibility is that we are inter-dependant…

Each of us is the other to others, acting, reflecting, thinking thoughts, understanding, transforming, changing for good or for ill, we are agents with affects that effect…

…GO FUCK YOURSELF…

Personal responsibility; it IS political, and competition creates suspicion and a distrust of values, instead of empathy, support, and a being simply TOGETHER…

Competition, resulting in the victory of a designated winner makes US ALL potentially each other’s ENEMY…

Our habits of perception anchor us in impaled patterns , until we are frozen, fixed, unmovable, immobile, until like a capitalist trickle down effect, we simply work off the top of society’s crust, where very special advantages are on display ,…like the wayward son of a former President, called George W Bush…

Recognition can lead to a collaborative process of act(ion)s, requirements, gatherings, meetings, demonstrations, eligibilities and invitations…

Acting ettiquettes subscribed to or renounced, recommend through stylized performance, a way of being visible, recognisable, comprehensible, validating a definition of identity in a costume that are clothes for protection…in other words a mask subject to flux…

These are ways to sell different modes of being in the disguises of sincerity, that which is presented…

…“…I saw the President …and he had compassion in his eyes…”…

…GO FUCK YOURSELF…

…Of course he did !!!…he is human afterall…we hope…!!!….

Actions from the “good” version of the person that’s “him”, or “her”, or “you” or “me”, or “them” or “us”, we respect and encourage;…the “bad” version of the person that’s “him” or “her”, or “you” or “me”, or “them” or “us”, we one day hope and wish to have sovereignty over…and finally a version of the person that’s “him” or “her”, or “you” or “me”, or “them” or “us” which is NOT “him” or “her”, “you” or “me”, “them” or “us”….that is to say “THE OTHER”…an UNKNOWN expression which is not recognised (yet) as an authentic “me”…

We are surrounded by expressions of “good me” and “good you” to reinforce the “good us” (or the bad) for our benefit ,…and if we do not accept and appreciate this, then one may be considered one (or many)of “them” which is “misguided” and “dangerous”, by the rejection of the “good” in favour of the  “bad” , and therefore there must be an elimination , an extermination,..there must be a death,..by judgement....

President George W Bush, his Republican Administration in cahoots with big globalised business, like some kind of fucked up born again Hitler, Satanic Lucifer, devilish Anti-Christ, as the pied piper, taking us toward OUR DESTINY, leading us over a cliff to our willing materialistic demise..to a christian’s apopalyptic armageddon and judgement day…

…GOD BLESS GOD FEARING AMERICA ..!!!…for we fear his strength, …and then emulate it …validation by duplication…

“When your children shall be found of murder,

You shall make laws,

But these laws shall not bind.

You shall be made to think,

And although fear of your thoughts shall exalt you,

Many of your thoughts shall bring you sorrow,

And cause you to forget your exaltation.

You shall use your mind,

Not to understand,

But to doubt.

And even if you understand,

Still you shall doubt.

And your children shall live in fear of me, you and each other.

You shall be afraid of everyone else,

And you shall even be afraid of yourself.

Fear and shame.

We are supposed to be afraid.

In the day shall be endured,

The same longing as in the night,

And in the night shall be endured,

The same longing as in the day,

Accursed you shall be, you,

Alone.

For whatever thought,

And whatever seen or heard,

You shall think it, and see it, and hear it,

Alone.

And henceforth shall you thirst after me…”

…the self; imprisoned, and eroded by a hopeless history of sin…

Cinema validates our experience, and the more confused and chaotic an era is, the more celebrities are taken on as models to help sustain all kinds of misconceptions which permeate the status quo…

The most successful aspect in the act of persuasion is that people are made to aspire to things they don’t even really want..and lack things they don’t really need…

Television promotes a uniform, inner life of imagination…

By a loss of respect, the circle or pattern that is perpetuated is broken, and we begin to learn of other(s) places to inhabit…

In the act of witnessing , we develop our identities in relation to actions and the concept of character , we simply imitate an aesthetic that remakes the very same system’s processes and findings, and therefore limit possibilities and conceal alternatives…

Perhaps, if on September 11^th 2001, the way America looked at the world was changed forever,; after Hurricane Katrina, America had changed in the way it looked at itself…

From these words extracted from the Open Theatre’s Jean Claude van Itallie and Joseph Chaikin’s book “The Presence of the Actor”, R.D Laing’s “The Politics of Experience” to these taken from the emancipator and President Abraham Lincoln, banging on about America … “…with it’s institutions belongs to the people who inhabit it.Wherever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it ..”…

…There are intuitive things in us, which we knowm, know more than we think they do, …the secret is knowing how to listen to them…

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