Director Anne Bogart reminds us that all live performances ask the same questions: How are we getting along? Both onstage and off, what and how are we really doing together? This inquiry is at the heart of the controversy – and opportunity – that The Rite of Spring represents. The same might be said of The Marfa Intensive.
Throughout the two weeks in Marfa, each of us asked what kind of workspaces we want to create for ourselves and for others. The usual answer is to work in an environment where we do not just have to survive, but rather, can thrive and flourish as artists. Yet, none of these states of being looks the same across a group of people. The Marfa Intensive implicitly requires defining what we mean by surviving, thriving, or flourishing as individuals in a collective, just like The Rite of Spring asks what it means to have a functioning society in times of increasing uncertainty.
Psychologists focused on wellness, performance, and learning debate the differences between thriving and flourishing. Though used interchangeably, thriving indicates an experience of positive well-being despite complex or challenging circumstances; flourishing implies that the environment and individual are well-suited to each other, co-existing in a state of harmony. Both terms attend to a sense of well-being and development. While thriving emphasizes the need for resilience despite hurdles, flourishing involves removing the obstacles around us, or better yet, reframing them entirely. Whatever the term one uses, to grow we need to develop new personal approaches to discomfort. We need to reframe what grace under pressure means.
Over the course of the Intensive, participants perform three group Compositions (along with daily training in Viewpoints, dance improvisation, art tours, and more). The “Comps” are created from ingredient lists filled with both the theatrically mundane, "a revelation of space," and the impossible, "incite a riot." With very little time to construct, the process is deliberately daunting. How to create a short play in less than two days? The first phase of the Intensive invites students to make site-specific theatre – to survive – with the barest of elements: no script, no proscenium, no tech, and no time. Comps two and three add more elements: a stage, sound, lights, props. Critique sessions that follow are honest and to the point. We focus on what worked and what did not. More importantly, the question then becomes: How can we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and go back to the drawing board together?
In The Marfa Intensive, artists are given the skills to turn surviving into thriving. With a wonderful hotel just a block away from the Theatre, and the small quirky town of Marfa at their fingertips, participants can spend two weeks in a constant state of artmaking. Through training in the Viewpoints and other ensemble improvisation techniques, students have the tools at hand to cultivate resilience in the face of trial and error: to thrive. While flourishing in The Marfa Intensive may just be a state of mind – a choice – it is humbling to watch artists who learn to thrive by determining how they want to become themselves together. It is not always easy, and that might be the point.
Infamously, the premiere of The Rite of Spring started a riot. The ballet onstage is of a sacrificed woman who exuberantly dances herself to death to “save” society: she is sacrificed to bring on a new season of growth. The question of the event was how this audience, these artists, and these musical characters could coexist. The result: an uprising that echoes still today. The lessons to be found are democratic, existential, and more important than ever. Who is sacrificed for whom? What does choice look like? Do the ends ever justify the means? What rules have we accepted without thought? And, how can we tell this story today?
In a world of increasing chaos, where systems are designed to pacify rather than provoke, the only way to thrive, or to spring into flourishing, is to navigate resilience head-on. The Marfa Intensive encourages us all to seek out the challenges facing us with resolve and empathy: to choose radical kindness, even if that means discomfort, over politeness, so we can all grow together.
We look forward to asking these questions with you at Rites of Spring in February. Stay tuned for exciting changes for next year’s Marfa Intensive!
