Rasaboxes Performer Training

Whether one accepts the idea of "rasa" as a literally gustatory experience, or simply understands food-rasa as a metaphor for the process of theatre-rasa, the practical question still remains as to how one can achieve this shared experience between actor and spectator in the time-space of performance. What of abhinaya (the actual behaviors of a performance), the very concrete art of the actor? What are the "ingredients" at her disposal? How does she know when to add one thing, how much to add, how fast to stir it, how long to let it cook? And how does this idea of rasa as the space between serve the Western performer? These questions can be partially answered by the Rasaboxes.

Fascinated with the idea of rasa, and challenged by Antonin Artaud's demand that the actor be an "athlete of the emotions," my teacher, colleague, and co-artistic director of East Coast Artists, Richard Schechner, designed the Rasaboxes exercise, in which the performer's emotional/physical/vocal expressivity and agility are trained. As we perform, direct, and teach workshops with East Coast Artists, Paula Murray Cole and I continue to develop this work, using it as a tool not only for training, but for performance composition. ¹

How do the Rasaboxes work? The key to their design is the spatialization of emotions. What makes our use of rasa "Western" is that rather than codifying the expression of emotion through particular gestures and facial expressions that are always performed in the same way (as in classical Indian dance), we use space to delineate each rasa, and allow the individual performer to find her own expression of the emotion/s contained within it.

The first step toward movement improvisation involves getting into one box at a time and creating a "statue" or fixed pose for each rasa. We then establish the rule that a participant cannot be in a Rasabox without expressing it dynamically. Participants then move among the rasas, embodying each rasa by means of the pose they have chosen. The idea is to move from one box to another with no "daylight"--no period of transition--between them. This develops an emotional/physical agility the actor can use to transform instantly from expressing rage to love to sadness to disgust, etc. Once participants are comfortable with being statues, we introduce breath and then sound and finally movement and sound together. What starts as a fairly controlled exercise develops into a very free improvisation, involving a wide range of interactions or "scenes" between different people in different boxes.

Since being introduced to the Rasaboxes in 1996, I have been fascinated by their power to free performers (myself included) to experience ranges of physical and emotional expression that might have otherwise seemed unavailable to them. Through this training it is possible to develop an incredible range of expressiveness--from the filmic to the operatic or grotesque--without sacrificing the element of greatest concern to Western performers: "sincerity" or "truth." I have found, in fact, that because of its focus on physical embodiment/expression, Rasaboxes training can serve to deepen a performer's ability to find authentic emotional connections.

The Rasaboxes externalize what is often considered an "internal" process, proving that "real" emotion does not have to be kept inside, but is actually a physical as well as a psychological process. In this way, rasa training serves as a bridge for the actor between his psycho-physiology and his expressiveness. Because it acts as a link between the actor's individual, physical body and emotions, and his emotional/physical relationship to the environment and other performers, rasa technique can serve as a multidirectional training ground where old habits and patterns can be brought to light and new ones can emerge. Unlike many other forms of actor training--in which the actor is encouraged to lose himself, to act on impulse, to give way to inspiration--the Rasaboxes encourage the actor to approach his craft as a conscious, body-oriented process...