IT’S ALL THEATRE: THE EMBODIMENT OF EROS

Dr. Lou Montgomery

“All the world’s a stage and we are but players on it.”Shakespeare

“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.” Bertrand Russell

     Since I was a child, I have taken the clichéd message, “ you fake it till you make it”  to heart.  Also, from the idea that I could either be an extra in somebody else’s movie or a star in my own, I have crafted not only my professional vocation but discovered my deepest spiritual path. Indeed, since I  have discovered that I make most of it up  anyway, I might as well write a script where I win instead of lose. I might as well act as if  until the dream comes into manifestation.

     Dramatization is not only a potent means of psychological individuation but is, in fact, precisely rooted in the tradition of  Eros. Art infused with Eros is inclusive, open, celebratory, courageous, energizing, compassionate, fresh, youthful, and innocent, rather than exclusive, elitist, materialistic, or narcissistic. I have always envisioned my theatrical art is a blessing, a grace, a source of delight for others.  Theatre is an embodiment of Eros. Within my artist’s soul swims the need to gift and so I see my craft as a sacrament between myself and the universal life force. The erotic field within which my performance takes place is a means of healing my relationships because it is deeply sensuous, passionate, heartfelt, and compassionate. As African spiritual teacher Onye Onyemacchi says, “ Praise takes all of you. Give it all away. Hold nothing back.”

     .Dramatization is truth embodied in action. For me it’s where the juice and magic is-- where the rubber meets the road. Think about it. We are always in constant dialogue—we dream, enjoy active imagination, mentally argue with dead parents and rejecting lovers, and talk to different parts of ourselves constantly.  The inherent nature of our psyche is essentially dramatic and dialogic. When we dream we are the scene, the prompter, the player, the producer, the audience, and the critic. Likewise, in our imagination we are essentially polytheistic, or as Jean Houston calls it, “polyphrenic,”--embracing conflicting tensions and hosting a variety of images.  I agree with James Hillman that rather than try to seek centeredness and integration foremost, the goal of a monotheistic psychology, we should learn to be tolerant, patent, flexible, embracing, and courteous to our multifarious images --respecting their autonomy and unique messages. Rather than reducing the characters, creatures, and landscapes that visit our imagination, we need to respectfully listen and watch for what they have to say and discover what they need from us, not what we want from them. We should be attentive and hospitable to our inner cast of characters. Each one acts itself out and thus tells us what it is doing.  Creating a welcoming sensuous environment for our own  “inner-tainment”  in itself can be an erotic gesture, ensuring  pleasure, reciprocity, and even passionate conflict.  When I am in the throes of writing  a new theatre project, characters vie for my attention like evacuees in a crowded  elevator all screaming at once. As I become a more disciplined writer, I’m training them to take a number. Our soul is endless as are its images. Our interior life is a show!

     One of the first jargons I learned as a psychotherapist was the pejorative around someone who was “acting out”.  The term usually connotes behavior that is unconscious, narcissistic, infantile, reckless, and often downright stupid and asinine. We all know a friend or colleague who left a good twenty year marriage to take off with the vapid skinny secretary. We have all sighed, rolled our eyes ( knowing where this script leads), shook our heads and proclaimed that poor desperate puer Fred was clearly “acting out” his midlife crisis. Teen-age runaways, bored wealthy kleptomaniacs, premenstrual dish breakers, and clumsy failed suicides all share in common an engagement in unconscious “acting out” designed “ to get attention”. On the national level as political scandals pile up like thirty car collisions and the revelations of our military operations  abroad bespeak a regression to a barbarity we can hardly comprehend, we lament that America is “acting out” its arrogant adolescent neighborhood bully through its nightmare jackboot foreign policy and gross domestic neglect.  You can’t make up theatre this bad. Unfortunately, such amateur acting out might get us all blown to pieces in a Fascist mushroom cloud. 

        Framed differently however, acting out, as in acting our way out, can effectively shine a spotlight into the darkest corners of one’s history, unthaw frozen tundra stratas of psyche, work our way through the maze while following Ariadne’s thread, liberate parts of the self held hostage by paralyzing beliefs, concretize new dreams and visions and, as Star Trek’s Captain Pecard  says, “Make it so.” Unconscious acting out tends to take us down the spiral into more rigidity and contraction whereas conscious acting out takes us up the spiral into higher frequencies of energy and expanded options. My life as an actor and drama therapist has shown over and over that anyone can act his or her way out of any rigid limiting role. Indeed, the method can be as psychologically astute and emotionally penetrating as the most erudite consulting room. Most depression, anxiety, and impasses or crises, simply stem from a one’s spontaneity being shut down, truncated or starved.  In short, we take ourselves far too seriously. We mistake our masks and personae for who we are and become trapped in the delusion that the drama of our lives constitutes our real existence.

     Jacob Moreno, the founder of psychodrama, called it  being “role locked”. Any situation, seen through the  lens where one is locked in a role, say of the jilted lover or the unappreciated martyred mother,  is not only one dimensional but, like grainy 1950’s  TV, usually seen only in black and white. When we are stuck in a locked role, our primary relationships become arid, humorless, brittle, and have squeezed out the erotic juice that drew us to our lover in the first place. Injecting a dose of irreverent clowning or spontaneous role-play is not only spicy and sexy, but can restore the trusting lighthearted  innocence that ignites truly erotic love play.

      Indicators that one is role locked might include shallow breathing, feeling brittle and hard, hearing voices that sound shrill or that are competing with white noise, a flat-line affect that seems like driving across West Texas, an intolerance of others that spreads and irritates like poison oak, or  a sense of being painted into a corner that rims the canyon. My way or the highway.  We have all been there--in a lock down cell of our own fabrication wherein we police ourselves and confiscate any contraband that might cheer or enlighten us. We are insulted by the idea of fun but jealous of others’ good times. Some of  the more obvious tip offs to being role locked consist of  taking myself ultra seriously, convincing myself that nobody else “gets” it ( and of course, ironically, being infinitely creative even when role locked, producing reams of evidence to validate my position), and taking up residence on top of my soap box. Fortunately, I have been through the drill enough times that I can bust myself quicker and stop believing the headlines of my own tabloids. The only downside is that is as you get bored with your own soap opera, other people’s frantic tabloids or clenched realities start to get really uninteresting and you  want to cancel your subscription.

      Another by-product of being role locked is that the Story tends to get writ in stone.  When we look back at the past through the window pane of the present, things change like the landscape whizzing by a speeding locomotive. We make it all up as we go. So how can these stories we freeze frame and tell ourselves about “what happened” have any validity? Well,  our stories are tenacious critters and so we must give them the respect they deserve. They remind me of steel bear traps where you have to saw off a limb to get free, or better yet, the story of Brar Rabbit and the Tarbaby. Every time you repeat the Story you get stuck with all fours.

      Fortunately, we don’t have to believe our Story any more than the Tooth Fairy. Our stories are just the way we love to scare ourselves, torture ourselves, numb and distract ourselves, or entertain ourselves at beddy-by.  And its really all okay until we get identified and act as if the Story is who we are and is the “real” cause of countless other  tawdry spin-offs  that generate compounding residuals.  We get so invested in the Story that we can’t pull out and then continue to repeat and reinforce our stories until like Velveteen Rabbits they become REAL. Our identification with the Story’s “realness” becomes a negative feed-back loop and we are off to the races of misery and victimhood. Our Story takes on cinematic veritude and Central Casting readily supplies actors and Greek choruses to fill in all the necessary supporting roles. Sound familiar?  What to do?! 

 Well, first of all, through simply infusing a generous dose of play and spontaneity, one’s role repertoire is increased and new options magically surface like dolphin pods,  I’ve witnessed it in myself and others over and over—this instant shape-shifting from Munk’s “Scream” to dancing  prisms. It can shift in a nanosecond. Acting out is quantum mechanics. Veritable repertory companies of possibilities are accessed . We all have Tarot decks inside, not photo IDs!

      More than inspiring spontaneity, a noble if carnivalesque vocation, acting out my performance art is my way of making love to the totality of the universe. Several things constitute this ecstatic exchange —the nature of humor itself, the ability to truly role reverse, how acting out relativizes or humbles  the ego, the willingness to act out of the wound, and the Eros implied in gifting my art to the world.  On a brief but more serious note, like the tribal shaman, healer, or magician, the dedicated conscious actor  serves a sacred communal function.  The sacred actor, who is often marginalized, lives at the edge of culture mediating between visible and invisible realms. Refining my craft in isolation, incubating for long periods, appearing incomprehensible and eccentric to others, requiring copious reverie and a comfort with the gestation’s endless unknowns, there is an element of sacrificial willingness to endure the wait, afterwards often only to be publicly dismembered. From the ancient Greek perspective, the actor takes on the role of “protagonist”—the one who is in “agony” and acts on behalf of the collective. The sense of acting for the many implies service to the community, indebtedness to truth, a humbling rather than exalted function.  Acting on behalf of is always in the background and infuses the interactive field which is charged with Eros. The audience and I become a seamless whole, a mobius strip loop contintually reinforcing and amplifying one another. The sacred actor is wedded to this notion of continually moving past fear toward transparency. Like a Bodhisattva, she has to be empty enough, expendable enough to be impaled and penetrated through and through by the spear of truth.

      Self-disclosing parody is a most liberating practice. Comedy is the lubricant of the soul. It’s about being a survivor and taking the path of the Fool. It’s the cheapest and safest medicine we can get over or under counter. Humor is the best digestive enzyme and can metabolize the lumpiest woes. When we take ourselves too seriously we inflate our problems like zeppelins; laughter blows them away. Laughter has proven to have all sorts of curative medicinal effects inclusive of alleviating depression, promoting relaxation, increasing oxygen levels in the blood, reducing stress , lowering blood pressure, and increasing endorphin levels which affects the whole sense of well being. It keeps up socially attractive and binds us to those we laugh with. It is perhaps the most loving medicine.

     As an artist I use comedy to massage open the psyche so that the most searing truths can penetrate through ego defensives. Like a secret tryst, I come through the back door. As lover to my audience, I try to write comedy where laughter erupts and splashes over the cultural demarcation line, but that is inclusive, relational, and mocking of norms, affectations, hypocrisies, and the mindless following of social norm. It never targets individuals per se. Rather than divide, it seeks to build solidarity at no one’s expense—promote hilarity and pleasure wherein everyone wins. As love struck comic, I am in a committed long-term relationship to my audience. As Frances Miriam Berry wrote in the 1840’s “ It’s a very serious thing to be a funny woman.”

     The art of role reversal, or true deep immersion in another role, is for me, sacred erotic  play. Ibn ‘Arabi wrote “ prayer is a dialogue in which the two parties continually exchange roles.”  I willingly walk in your shoes, see through your eyes, feel through your heart, leave the chair of my position and come sit in yours. What could be more intimate? The act of dramatic role reversal is the most potent practice I know of to engender true compassion—not just as a wannabe mental exercise but as embodied reality where real shifts can take place. As our dramas are acted out in community, suffering finds context, a sense of identity is concretized, and one discovers fresh ways to navigate through one’s life. Because one is mirrored, one feels reassured of his or her place in the world, is reconnected to others, and feels less isolated.

      In terms of my own inner romance, from which all other erotic connection develops, I keep things juicy by always experimenting, expanding my role repertoire, and training for new roles. Conversely, true freedom entails being uninvested in role appearance or role attachment. I grant myself unlimited license to try on any role, knowing that any one I find grotesque, repulsive or resist probably holds an important key to my psychological freedom and is a great ally in hiding.  As I act out what I stubbornly resist, rejected sub-personalities are integrated and the scar tissue of psyche is healed. The shadow demon lover is transformed to intimate Beloved. My erotic inner connection to Self matures, deepens, and gains wisdom

 Acting out serves as a way of making sense of things when former identities have been radically shattered or outdated worldviews have needed to be drastically dismantled.  Acting out is the way the “act into” empowerment, freedom, and inspiration. Theatrical art has allowed me to dis- identify with my life drama and relativize my bruised ego.  Getting enough distance from myself has constellated objectivity and psychological coherence while penetrating to the core essence of my experience. Acting out is like a depth charge—the mini submarine in which I have initiated myself and taken others down into the deeps.

    As long as there is still identification with the Story, however, we are subject to the effects of its endless twists and turns and are thus always readjusting and regaining balance and equilibrium, or as Ram Dass puts it “ still rearranging the furniture within the prison cell.”  To this end, exhausted by the effort it takes most of us to continually dust ourselves off and get back in the saddle, or, for that matter, to just stay mounted, I have developed a workshop I call “The Drama to End the Drama.”  Why would we be remotely interested in ending the drama if we revel in it so?  It is because when we peel back the melodramatic layers of narcissistic self-involvement, taking ourselves seriously, or believing that our versions of fictions are real, our core essence is available and shines forth.  Essence is not what we do but what we are at the core—pure energy and radiant life force. No Thing and No Body.  So whereas acting out and new role training can strengthen the ego and make it more flexible and responsive, it can just as effectively relativize the ego’s perspective. And the more the ego’s inflated position is brought into appropriate scale, the more radical the perceptual shifts and the more new doorways in consciousness open. Stepping out of the drama, ironically through exaggerating the personal drama, ( like tying a dead chicken around the neck of a poultry killing hound until it stinks) encompasses discovery of the soul’s purpose, a rekindling of passion, and a direct experience of the Self within the context of enlivened community.

    One of the most important insights gleaned from ending the drama is learning the difference between life’s inevitable pain and unnecessary suffering.  Suffering is what we add to the basic suchness of life, which always includes pain, through judgment, interpretation, and a kind of demand against life—insisting that it be other than it is.  What ending the drama entails is simply stepping outside of the whole box we call our biography or personality or situation and witnessing it from the perspective of the Self versus the ego.  We need distance to see ourselves. From a detached vantage point, no one is “doing” anything to anyone else. The lela, or divine erotic play, is just playing out and we can see life as the dream that is dreaming us, and take it all lightly!

     Truthful acting out oftentimes demands concrete embodiment of that which we find most abject, embarrassing, or terrifying. It can consist of a direct confrontation with shadow sides of ourselves we would rather forget—like dirty underwear buried at the back of the closet.  Oftentimes the entry point is through the body itself—its pains, secrets, and humiliations. But like the mythic treasure that lies in the depths of the dragon’s lair, pure gold emerges from digging in the dirt.  It has been my experience that after taking on the most taboo subjects and embodying the most repulsive characters, I have felt as liberated as a convict let out of a dungeon squinting into the light of day.  Our wounds serve as gateways and openings to the numinous. The wounds of our bodies and souls invoke and invite the whole universe; they serve as a hallway for myriad invisible presences. Taking the perspective that freedom and healing require attentiveness and respect for ALL parts of ourselves we can inquire: What do our wounds ask of us? The wounds of body and soul often ask to be witnessed, tended, and artistically rendered. Wounds call out to us, wanting to be heard and remembered and loved back into wholeness.  Our maladies and malaise have speech. They ask us to go back to our origins, sometimes to sink into our depths. All of my performance work orbits around particular personal and cultural wounds that the various pieces serve as mouthpiece for.  Therefore, tending and literally textualizing wounds is for me a deep sacred function of art and Eros.

      For me performance is erotic commerce. A gift’s spirit is kept alive by its constant donation. It needs to constantly move, be consumed, used up and perish.  I think of my performances as Tibetan Buddhist sand paintings—intricately and lovingly wrought and then scooped up and thrown to the winds. In opposition to a market exchange value, the gift that is freely exchanged moves in a circular fashion throughout one’s community to the world at large and has momentum and fertility. It cannot be manipulated but rather circles into mystery, lightening as it moves. As the gift is given away, it feeds us again and again. As Eros, erotic exchange, its libido increases with giving. Like Dionysian wine, as it freely pours itself out, the gift only becomes a rare and finer vintage as it passes along. The more the gift is used up, the more it is worth. It binds many souls and gathers generosity, always tending toward community.  When we are in the gifted state we are in an erotic state. As a performer it is my great joy to expend myself copiously and excessively. It is my desire to gift my works to the world precisely in the measure with which they have been wrought—in love.