POETRY IN SPACE
by Lucia Scheckner

On the wings of French dramatist Antonin Artaud - and with contributions over the last half-century from such performance artists as Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, Anne Bogart, and The Wooster Group - theatre has experienced a paradigm shift from "text-oriented theatre" to "theatre-oriented text."  With this shift, other elements in theatre - lighting, sound, set, the actor's body - are no longer secondary to dialogue.  Greater emphasis has been given to the spectacle and physicality of performance as the conveyer of meaning.  Theatre director, critic, and innovator Richard Schechner canonized this development when he famously exclaimed, "Theatre as we have known and practiced it - the staging of written dramas - will be the string quartet of the 21st century: a beloved, but extremely limited genre, a subdivision of performance."

Bill Pullman's Expedition 6 aptly demonstrates this approach.  Built entirely on found text from news articles, the Internet, books, and interviews, and employing a heavy use of sound and choreographed movement, Expedition 6 embodies the kind of interdisciplinary "performativity" which Schechner describes.  Particularly innovative in this piece is the tension between the literal and psychological uses of language and the expressionistic movement of the actors.  This dialectic between opposing styles offers audiences a new way to apply their understanding of the space travel experience within the tradition of theatrical innovation.

The original Expedition 6 workshop began in an academic context at the National Theatre Conservatory at the Denver Theatre Center.  Since the piece developed in an office space turned performance space, the actors-in-training sought to create meaning out of whatever objects surrounded them - the desks, rolling chairs, an overhead projector.   The Magic's production maintains this aesthetic. By treating space and object as metaphor, the actors transform everyday objects into something expressive.  The result is a unified space that reinvigorates the potential of every single structure in the room, from the stairway to the heater.   The choice is not only practical, but it also parallels the ways astronauts reinvent found objects on shuttle flights to serve new ends.  Through this dramaturgy, audiences are invited to use their imagination and, in the process, to turn the empty performance space into a pedestal of an entire world and, moreover, the universe.

Pullman makes the body the focal point of the storytelling process. The ensemble members move as if on a grid, their actions synchronized along geometric angles.  Their physical gestures are at once methodical and spontaneous.  They are acutely aware of each other's spatial relationships.  This organization of seemingly random, even chaotic, movement expresses something former Astronaut Edgar Mitchell described after first seeing the earth orbit the sun.  Upon seeing that this relationship between the sun and earth existed, rather than simply knowing it on faith, Mitchell said he understood that what often appears to be purposeless molecular movements is in fact harmonious.  Similarly, seen in its totality and through intense repetition, the ensemble's dance-like steps do the same to give meaning to otherwise seemingly random kinetic movement.

As Expedition 6 unfolds, the actors release the trapezes on the set, a key element introduced by Pullman to convey the sense of movement free of gravity.  The effect is a poetic simulation of floating that also recalls the fragile make-up of the shuttle and the ingenuity of the astronauts maneuvering it.  In one memorable moment, an actress hangs off the mere rope and wood by her legs, rotating around the center of the space.  As she circles, another actor describes the female flight engineer: "She was perfectly at ease, she floated from one corner to another as a bird would fly to another branch."

Astronaut Tom Jones said that the most amazing thing for him about space travel is the crew and the aesthetics.  The same is true for the world of the play: ordinary things are made beautiful by the extraordinary acts of a collective.  Rather than representing a single character, each part the actors portray gives meaning to the whole of the play.   This process of learning how to act in an ensemble mirrors the process of the astronaut crew.   The sacrifices and efforts made by the actors - the labor involved - to illustrate and confront the hazards of space travel, thus gives life to the otherwise distanced experience of the Expedition 6 mission.

Speaking in another context, perhaps Artaud best captures the production's style when he said, "[It is a] substitution, for the poetry of language, of a poetry in space."

THE ACTOR’S TRAPEZE TRAINING
by Robert Davidson

Five of the actors in this piece are graduates of the National Theatre Conservatory (NTC) and trained intensively with me in movement disciplines over a three-year period.

The core of their training is Releasing (Skinner Releasing Technique, or SRT).  SRT is a kinesthetic training discipline in which one's perception of movement becomes highly refined and sensitized.  An emphasis on skeletal alignment creates a state of suspension within one's organism promoting both freedom of motion and physical strength. In the "space age," there truly is no up or down.  Likewise, in Releasing the principles at work include a continuous sense of multi-directional awareness, multi-dimensional awareness (inner, outer, and psychic), enhanced by economy and efficiency of effort while moving. Movement is stimulated by poetic imagery that is nature-based (not anatomy-based.) For example, as one is lying on the floor images of floating in a gentle stream are presented; tissues around the bones are softened and loosened; they may gradually melt away and dissolve into the water; then one's floating bones are washed, rinsed. This becomes the dance - the dance of tissues dissolving, and bones loosening and floating in a stream of clean tepid water. Always, the imagination comes in to play.

Once I sense students are "getting" this process, usually after five to six classes, the low-flying triangular trapeze is introduced.  The introduction is methodical, from simple swinging and circling, simple hangs, to more vigorous (and dangerous) activities. Improvisation is encouraged from the beginning.  Respect for the trapeze, for the dangers at hand, and for the space the trapezes hang in is also cultivated from the start.

The combination and integration of SRT with the trapeze stimulates incredible creative growth in the students. After a year of training, a movement class with me is a mixture of improvisational scores, SRT and solo or group dancing on as many as six trapezes.  After two more years of training, the students' movement, dance, and aerial capabilities are the equal of many professional aerialists and dancers. The NTC is the only program in the country of any kind (under-graduate, graduate) where studying SRT and trapeze for three years is not only possible, but mandatory. The results over the past ten years have been enormously gratifying. Watching these actors move in Expedition 6 is always a pleasure.

ON NASA ASTRONAUT TRAINING

Candidates for pilot and mission specialist undergo one year of general training at Johnson Space Center. After successfully completing this training, they become astronauts.

Survival training teaches candidates how to survive after an unplanned landing in water or in a forest. Before shuttle flights, returning spacecraft landed in the ocean. The space shuttle lands on a runway, but astronaut candidates prepare for emergency bailout over water. For example, they are towed through the water in a parachute harness to simulate being dragged by a parachute in a wind. In addition, candidates practice survival training in the wilderness.

Basic mission training involves the study of cockpit layout and flight-control systems. During such training, candidates also prepare for the actual conditions of space flight.

Candidates for pilot and mission specialist train for weightlessness in two ways. They experience the near absence of gravity as large airplanes fly through a series of arcing climbs and dives. For about 30 seconds during each arc, they float weightlessly in the padded body of the aircraft. Floating in water also simulates weightlessness.

Advanced mission training: Once assigned to a crew, astronauts spend most of their time training in simulators. Shuttle astronauts train in the Shuttle Mission Simulator. This device can reproduce the events of an entire mission. Crew members spend as many as eight hours a day in the simulator. Instructors continually give the crew problems to solve in order to prepare them for emergency situations.

Training in simulators is valuable preparation for what the astronauts may later face on actual flights. For example, in 1970, the Apollo 13 astronauts used the oxygen and power supply of their lunar module to return home safely after an explosion damaged their main spacecraft. This operation was less difficult to carry out because the crew was very knowledgeable about all systems on board.

Oberg, James. "Astronaut." World Book Online Reference Center. 2005. World Book, Inc.