On CoArts

"The tragedy and comedy of the human condition is that we spend most of our lives thinking, feeling, acting, perceiving and relating on behalf of a non-existent self.”

~ Rupert Spira

Theatre as a Social Contract

When we buy a ticket to the theatre we enter a kind of social contract, an implicit law. For the duration of the performance the contract states -

1. I will pay attention in a particular way to the present moment of what is happening on the stage

2. I will suspend my disbelief and identify with the fictional character or action figure being depicted

3. I will pretend as if all there is is that which is happening on the stage

4. I will imagine a fourth wall that separates me and the rest of everything from the space and time designated for the play, which can be anywhere and anytime. It’s the stage vs the rest of the world!

When we take our seat in the auditorium, (what in the ancient Greek amphitheatre was called the ‘theatron’ or ‘place of looking’) the lights dim, the curtains open and we follow the social contract. Notice how this moment is similar to the first moment in mindfulness practice, when we take our seat and turn our attention to physical sensations, then thoughts and emotions, then impulses arising - the inner drama. With practice we develop what is called open or choiceless awareness, when all there is is that which is happening. We are fully absorbed in the flow of all that is arising in this moment.

Of course, that is not what happens in theatre…when it works! We are swept up in the story of the characters on stage, absorbed in a whirlwind of emotions. To be gently deposited at the end, the applause both a token of appreciation and a signal for both spectators and actors to ‘snap out of it’. We leave the theatre somewhat purged and at peace, what is called catharsis, precisely because we are NOT the characters. We have just lived vicariously through them for a while.

Not all theatre is like this. Some innovators have broken the social contract.

Brecht

Bertolt Brecht, the Marxist German playwright and director wanted to break this ‘manufactured consent’ to be a passive recipient of catharsis. He wished to create an ‘useful theatre’ by distancing the audience from the characters. So rather than being caught up in a kind of disabling empathy, the audience could analyse the characters dispassionately and the system of political oppression to which the characters were unwilling participants could be exposed. He wanted the audience to see reflected back at them how they, like the characters, were puppets of capitalism and to follow the strings up to those who were in power, the master controllers that needed to be overthrown in a political revolution. The method he famously developed to do this is called Verfremdungseffekt or ‘distancing effect‘. In his plays the actors introduce their characters to the audience and are always breaking the fourth wall.

To anyone who practices or studies mindfulness this distancing effect might remind you of the cognitive defusion that is encouraged or happens naturally when we watch our thoughts as simply passing clouds, or traffic, or in Coming to Our Senses, balloons! Another word for this is ‘meta-cognition’ where we are watching the thoughts, not watching the world through the thoughts, which is what creates the drama!

Boal

Another significant innovator in theatre was Brazilian activist and director Augusto Boal. Like Brecht, Boal sought to create a "useful" theatre, but his approach was the opposite, achieving a similar effect. In his Forum Theatre, the actors base the play on the real experiences of oppressed people. These plays reflect the harsh realities of their lives, where there is seldom a happy ending. Oppression—whether through poverty, discrimination, or the threat of violence—persists.

The play, in Forum Theatre, is performed twice. During the second performance, audience members, often those who face similar oppression, can shout "stop" and take the place of the protagonist, with whom they identify. They then act out what they would do in that situation. Meanwhile, the remaining actors, playing the antagonists, strive to maintain the oppressive reality of their ‘anti-model’ world, resisting the audience members' attempts to create a better outcome for the protagonist—a model of a more just world.

In Boal’s theatre, it is the audience, not the actors, who break the fourth wall. As an audience member, you are not distanced from a Forum Theatre play; you are deeply involved, you are a spect-actor. You have "skin in the game" because if you don’t shout "stop" and try to change the story, the oppression will continue. The entire audience, through a shared consciousness, becomes critically aware—fully engaged, not just intellectually, but with heart and soul. They too are human beings, living the same struggle and desiring change. This is compassion in its truest form - ‘willing to suffer with.’

A parallel can be drawn to compassion practice in mindfulness, when we notice that our suffering is not personal but common to all humanity and to be free of our suffering is not separate from the wish for all beings to be free of suffering.

Brook

Perhaps the theatre innovator who drew the most explicit connections between mindfulness and theatre in the last century was Peter Brook. He spoke of the sacred power of this empty space we call the stage and how a holly theatre is created by a simple formula 'Theatre = Rra': 'Répétition,' 'représentation,' 'assistance.' The same actions are repeated (in rehearsals and night after night) until no effort is required. This frees the actor to be totally present to their actions, to re-present. This doesn’t mean to show up every night for the performance it also means to show up in every action. But all this is simply in vain without the presence—'assistance'—of an audience. This formula could equally be applied to mindfulness.

With repeated practice, every time our mind wanders, we gently bring it back to the breath and body, away from thinking. Over time, staying grounded in the present moment requires less effort, as we begin to shift from the mind's constant activity to the pure awareness from which the mind arises. In this analogy, the audience represents the "place where we are looking from," akin to the origin of the word theatre, theatron. What is the ‘assistance’ of returning our attention to this place of awareness? I would suggest it is the grace that dissolves the illusion of separation.

Vargas

The final innovator in the lineage that inspired CoArts is Colombian theatre anthropologist Enrique Vargas. Frustrated with having to teach the traditional Western theatre canon at Bogota University, Vargas moved into the building's flooded basement, where he and a group of volunteers created what became the internationally acclaimed production, El Hilo de Ariadne ("Ariadne’s Thread"). Drawing from his childhood games on a coffee plantation and his interest in indigenous rituals and culture, Vargas developed a very different kind of theatre. Audiences would book a time slot and enter a dark labyrinth alone and barefoot. As they navigated the winding path, alone and lost, they encountered multi-sensory "happenings" in which they participated, stirring deep memories and emotions.

In what Vargas calls ‘sensory poetics,’ the fourth wall doesn’t separate the stage from the audience, but rather our sense of an inner and outer world. When this boundary is breached, the illusion of a separate self is momentarily undone, revealing our true nature.

One might wonder how this relates to mindfulness. That we question the connection suggests how far mindfulness has drifted from its original intentions—perhaps a consequence of the effort to secularize it and make it more palatable to modern sensibilities.

The aim which, in Buddhism is called enlightenment has another name in Christianity - ‘theoria’.

Brioc

This is where I enter the story! Working initially in Theatre in Education, which is steeped in Brechtian theory, then training with Boal and creating Forum Theatre with oppressed communities internationally, Enrique’s work opened in me a realisation that different modes of theatre represent and can bring about in audiences different modes of consciousness.

I developed a methodology for creating immersive (proprioceptive) performances with communities called Sensory Labyrinth Theatre (SLT). This method is now widely used by various companies to create transformative theatre experiences for both audiences and actors.

In the course Coming to Our Senses, I incorporate these methods—referred to here as ‘creative challenges,’ to provide glimpses of non-duality within the framework of an 8 week mindfulness course.

How CoArts informs Coming to Our Senses

What if all there is just ‘this’ that’s happening right now. And it’s not happening to any ‘real’ person, it’s just happening. That’s pure theatre, isn’t it? Great theatre!” 

Iwan Brioc

The influence of CoArts on Coming to Our Senses extends beyond the creative challenges. It also shapes how we view the human experience as a form of theatre. In this theatre, much like in the Cartesian model, we have erected a “fourth wall” between the observer and the observed. The overarching goal, through dialogues, creative challenges, practices, and journaling, is to gradually dissolve this fourth wall and offer glimpses of our non-dual nature.

As the fourth wall fades, our true nature—peace, joy, and compassion—is revealed. Mindfulness, then, becomes a practice of remembering what is always present and available to us in every moment, when we surrender to life’s flow as part of the cosmic play.