On Presence

On Presence

All art is concerned with presence.

Visual art works with the presence of shape and color; literature with words; music with

sound.

I feel performance expresses itself through the presence of the performer.

Word, story, and idea may be part of theatre, but are not its defining qualities.

The performer’s presence defines performance.

I make art because I am interested in presence.

What is presence?

Presence is simply the quality of one’s being.

Every moment it is different. For every thing it is different.

The presence of the ocean is different than the sky.

The presence of a pelican is different than a pigeon.

The presence of a pigeon perching is different than flying.

The presence of a pigeon in Florida is different than in France.

The presence of a pigeon inhaling is different than exhaling.

Presence is an effect of motion.

Visible or not, everything is moving or vibrating.

Like the voice which reverberates out from our vibrating vocal cords to be heard, the

visible and invisible movements of every thing radiate out into the world to be felt.

When we feel someone or something’s presence, we are feeling its way of moving, or

its quality of being.

The visibility of an object’s movement makes no difference in our ability to perceive its

motion.

The presence of a sitting stone and a galloping horse can be equally felt.

Presence is the felt reverberations of one’s motion.

Presence is experienced before thought.

Presence is always acting on us, whether or not we choose to be conscious of it.

Our presence is constantly changed by the presence of what’s around us.

Before we had thoughts, language, or eyes, we understood the world through presence.

Although the presence of what’s around us is always unconsciously perceived, we may

also consciously perceive it.

We go to the theatre to be moved by the presence of performers.

If their presence were unimportant, there would be no need for the audience and

performer to gather in the same space.

Although we can always bring conscious attention to the presence of any thing and

delight in its sensory pleasure, we go out of our way to experience the presence of

performers because performing is an un-ordinary act that creates extra-ordinary

presence.

Presence is not metaphorical. The audience does not think about the extraordinary, they

experience it, immediately and directly, from the performer.

We go to the theatre to touch the extraordinary.

What is performing?

Performing is simply a state of awareness, a way of being.

You do not need an audience to perform.

Performing is what happens when the whole self is conscious of itself and in harmony

with the world.

To be in harmony with the world is to let it express itself through you.

How can the world express itself through us?

How does the goose know to migrate?

A bee know to make honey?

An acorn to become an oak?

The heart to beat?

The moon to wax and wane?

It is not through cognition – it is because the world freely expresses itself through them.

When we were babies, we too let this force run through us. It is what transformed us

from one cell to trillions and taught us to crawl, walk, and talk. We lived according to

our direct experience. However, as we matured, the development of our prefrontal

cortex and expansion of our consciousness likely interfered with the world’s free

expression of itself through us.

Brains organize the raw experience of cells into patterns.

Human brains organize cellular information into patterns more complex than non-

humans.

This complexity roots itself in the front of our adult brain.

The complexity of our front brain gives us the grace to deeply perceive ourselves and

the world to a degree unavailable to other beings.

To the same degree, this complexity creates a bigger divide between our direct

experience of the world and our front brain’s processed impression of it.

We often confuse our brain’s impression of the world as the world itself.

When any being exists according to their direct experience of the world, the world may be freely expressed through them.

Most non-humans do not have to do anything to let the world flow through them

because their patterns are not complex enough to be removed from direct experience.

When we are led by our front brain rather than guided by our direct experience, we inhibit the world’s free expression of itself through us.

The world now is not freely expressed.

The world always expresses itself in balance.

The world now is not in balance.

Our consciousness is a responsibility.

To perform then, we must devolve.

We must remember how to experience the world directly, untranslated by our front

brain – in other words, we must regress into our back brain.

Can we open our eyes and see the world as it is, before we had words to name what we

saw?

Can we close our eyes and experience the world through the expansion and contraction

of our tissues as we did before we had eyes?

Can we remember our quality of being when we were just one cell?

When we relate to the world through these earlier patterns, we experience the world

directly – we experience its presence.

The sensation of ourselves and the presence of the surrounding world taught our earliest

selves what we were and weren’t, where we were weren’t, and how we could exist

before we had a front brain to organize us.

And unlike our earliest selves, with our mature front brains, we may now be conscious

of this sensation and presence.

Performing then, is the action of consciously and directly perceiving ourselves and

the world.

When we do this, the world runs through us.

Most non-humans perceive the world directly but unconsciously.

Most humans are conscious but removed from direct experience.

Performing is their union.

Performing is one state of presence that contains infinite states of presence.

The world is one thing which can be divided into infinite things.

Every thing in this world, material or not, has tangible presence.

To perform, we don’t have to perceive of the entirety of ourselves and the world

(though we can).

We can let any particular quality of world express itself through us.

For example, I may perform according to the direct experience of the cells in my

knuckles. If I sense them directly rather than thinking about them, their presence can be

expressed through me.

Anything that can be imagined has tangible presence; therefore, the presence of

anything can be expressed through us.

The presence of the surrounding space may express itself through me.

The presence of electricity may express itself through me.

The presence of my bones may express themselves through me.

So may the presence of color, blood, time, skin, gravity, no gravity, the ocean, particles,

planets, or hamlet.

The qualities are infinite.

So too may the means of expression be infinite.

The presence of our pancreas may express itself through our movement, breath,

speaking, seeing, hearing, or overall being.

We can let our experience of the sun rising express itself in the movement of our wrist.

There are infinite qualities, infinite means of expression.

Each has its own presence. Each can change our presence.

Performing is one state of presence that contains infinite states of presence.

Composition is the selection and meaningful arrangement of these qualities into a

performance.

Composition is not necessary to perform.

Composition is necessary to create meaningful performance.

Before we concern ourselves with what we perform, we must concern ourselves with

how we perform.

We go to the theatre to feel a specific quality of the world meaningfully patterned into

composition and expressed through the presence of the performer.

When we create, we reach into the unknown, listening for a quality asking to be

expressed.

We make contact, touch it directly and consciously.

It expresses itself immediately and directly through our bodies, changing our motion, and

giving itself form.

We continue to make contact, making the unknown more known, and eventually, it is

ready to be shared.

We gather, performer and audience, to feel this quality made manifest, expressed

through the whole of the performer.

Through their presence, the performer takes us back into the unknown.

We touch this quality, and it changes our presence, our motion, our way of being.

We leave, both changed forever.

To me, this is theatre.

— Nathan Shu