The consideration of any work of art requires the frame of some discourse. It can be culture-philosophical discourse or history of art discourse. We can also situate the work in a frame of a ‘universal clinical theory” of Deleuze and Guattari (2004a) or ‘psychoanalyze’ it. The ability to analyze and interpret becomes the possibility to re-think therefore in this way to re-create somebody’s piece of art in one’s own way.

  As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins. (Barthes 1977:142)

Certainly Barthes writes his ‘The Death of the Author’ not just about writing. Further he makes a parallel between ‘the author and his writing ‘ and  ‘the relator and his performance’ (ibid.) demonstrating that it can concern to any author and his creation. The world presented by post–structuralist discourse is the world desacralizing a figure of ‘creator’ and giving his ‘creature’ the freedom to become a new reality. In Essays Critical And Clinical Gilles Deleuze considers this capacity for ‘becoming’, which is a process in constant variation measured by intensity, as the unique power of art. (1998)

 

 The artist about whom this work makes a research Russian video and theater director Boris Yukhananov concentrates his main interest in the art developing in continuity. This kind of art he calls ‘new processuality’. This kind of art does not dedicated to one or few particular products. Its main goal is to create a process, which would give fruits, different kinds of fruits, some of them can be considered as final results, but others can be processes themselves.   

‘New processuality’ of Yukhananov exists in the situation after ‘the death of the author’, but it does not serve post–structuralist idea of desacralization and belongs to another universe – universe of  ‘the unknown author’, this concept is referencing to ‘the Unknown Architect of the Universe’ of Thomas Aquinas.

For the most part, however, Yukhananov is like no theater director you know. This is not an artist who stages a show, unveils it to the public, then goes on to his next project. This is a director who breaks all the rules- while devoting himself to a rigorous study of the rules of his trade. He is never satisfied with anything he accomplishes – in fact the word “accomplishment” may not be in his vocabulary. For Yukhananov, the journey and the search are all there is. (Freedman 2008:9)

   The main interest of this essay is to investigate the theatrical part of Yukhananov activity trying to use different frames and discourses. We are going to ask and answer the questions about Yukhananov’s theatre roots and to trace his relationships with Russian theatrical tradition. The other frame is imposed by the time, when Yukhananov had been starting his new way of theatre thinking. The 80-s was the beginning of collapse of the Soviet Union, the time of its last agony, which synchronized with post-modernist celebration of collapsing modernity. Boris Yukhananov cannot be considered just as artist or theatre director, he is a thinker, his new way of making theatre and art is first of all new way of thinking. That is why we consider that the most appropriate discourse, which helps to understand all hidden mechanisms of ‘new processuality’ projects seems to be a philosophical discourse. Philosophical concepts –‘tool box’ of Deleuze and Guattari assist us to understand real processes of art and to develop new ways of perception, which new radical theatre (such as the theatre of Yukhananov) calls for. Using the concepts developed by radical thinking we are going to analyse a few of Yukhananov projects. The correlation of these concepts with ideas and inventions of his theatre practice explains a lot. Some principals of Yukhananov’s technologies will require the anthropological discourse. Many of his projects operate with communities for example his experience, which calls ‘Diaspora Symphony’.  We will look into phenomena of ‘community’ and research how anthropological principles work on the art territory.  

   Before the start it should be unveiled that the author of this essay was a direct participant of one of Yukhananov’s long-term projects and constant spectator of his other projects. For author this research is an attempt to obtain some new understanding of this experience.

     In one of his interviews Boris Yukhananov states:

” This search is connected with what I call a New Mysterial, New Universal territory. This search and this experience have been developing in three directions that are called a ‘psychological theater’, a ‘theater of play’ and а ‘mysterial theater’. While the psychological theater is connected with a Russian theatrical tradition and has accumulated significant methodological, educational and practical threads, that are expressed in a number of great performances and schools. The theater of play (created by Anatoliy Vasiliev) and, moreover, the mysterial theater – are completely new phenomena for the Russian theatrical culture. “ (http://www.kehila.ru/article/?52 translated by Elena Lubarskaya)

Using this quotation we want to make a transition to discussion about connections with Russian theatrical tradition.

   In the beginning of the past century the history of Russian theatre development could be presented as a story of revolts and protests. “Stanislavski gained his fame first and foremost for the revolt against his predecessors and their tackling of the dramatic text” (2012:389), - states Michael Klebanov in the article ‘The culture of Experiment in Russian Theatrical Modernism: the OBERIU Theatre and the Biomechanics of Vsevolod Meyerhold’, he points that Konstantin Stanislavski process-oriented methodology was a protest against artificial and superficial approach of 19^th century theatre (ibid.). The next key figure of Russian Theatre, Vsevolod Meyerhold articulated himself separating and rebelling against the psychological theatre of Stanislavski. This rebel launched from his experimental studio within the Moscow Art Theatre where he developed ‘meta-theatrical’ innovation, where “he used devices and figures such a masks, pantomime, and clowns that highlighted the meta-theatrical aspect of performance”(Burry 2012:365). Meyerhold himself was also criticized from the more radical standpoint. His main opponents were ‘left artists’ of 20-ties: OBERIU (Association for Real Art) Theatre with poet Daniil Kharms, theater director Igor Terentiev, It was very fruitful period for theatre development, because, fighting, all those new paradigms grew and became mature.  At the same time they demonstrated how lively and gentle in their newbornness processes established themselves, by the way creating a dead structures and product-like-technologies. Looking into the very essence of every of those paradigms we can discover those living streams which were nourishing theatre afterwards giving a birth new schools and new processes. But at the same time we can notice how established technologies were successfully commodified over the world.

The established concept of ‘naturalism’ originates from Stanislavski concept of ‘life’ and ‘the feeling of truth’ (1948:467) but as Mark Fortier claims: ”‘life’ as in phenomenological sense of fully engaged consciousness what Stanislavski calls ‘THE SUPER-CONSCIOUS THROUGH THE CONSCIOUS’ (Stanislavski 1948:483) – is a paramount importance to Stanislavski, but such life is most available ‘in Art’, in living theatre”(2002:48, cursive by author). The phenomenological concern, a try to avoid mechanical and lifeless processes in theatre, emphasis that truth can not be repeated just recreated are key points of Stanislavski which we are interested in, revealing the roots of ‘new mysterial territory’ of Yukhananov.  However from this territory we can make also a link to ‘meta-theatre’ of Meyerhold. Alexander Burry in his article ‘Vsevolod Meyerhold’ claims; ”In Meyerhold’s conception, theatre become a place of worship and ritual, rather than attempt to depict ordinary, everyday experiences.”(2012:362) Another trace from Meyerhold leading to the theatre of ‘play structures’ and ‘mysterial theatre’ is Meyerhold’s understanding of ‘distanciation’ and ‘grotesque’. In his own definition:

The grotesque mixes opposites, consciously creating the harsh incongruity, playing entirely on his own originality (…) The grotesque deepens life’s outward appearance to the point where it ceases to appear merely natural (…) The basis of the grotesque is the artist constant desire to switch the spectator from the plane he has just reached to another that is totally unforeseen. (Braun 1995:68)

Yukhananov’s two direct teachers are two remarkable Russian directors Anatoli Efros and Anatoli Vasiliev.  Both of them put in centre of their practice “the art to turn a dialog into performance.  But they considered this art in two different ways: one of them (Efros) worked with a dialog creating ‘emotional wire’, which he called a ‘psychological drawing’, using director’s demonstration; the other (Vasiliev) was using special art of forming ideas and creating interpretations, which resulted in the construction of play structure.” (1998:134).  If practice of Efros was the direct inheritance of Stanislavski School, method of the play structures of Vasiliev continues the tradition of Meyerhold, investigating a ‘distanciation’ between a persona and a character. Thus, telling about ‘new universal’ and ‘new mysterial’ territory, about three directions of psychological, ‘play structures’ and ‘mysterial’ theatre, Yukhananov indicates a triangle on which his theatre based. The ‘mysterial’ theatre is his own innovation. To explain what it is as well as what these Yukhananov’s ‘universal territory’ and ‘new processuality’ is we have to make some history discourse.

    The first evolutionary project Yukhananov started in 1989. The 80ties was a time when old socialist economic and politic system was convulsing in agony while culture in post–modernist ecstasy was celebrating the demolishing of old ethical and aesthetical system. It wasn’t just the political protest against socialist system of values but it had a passion of total deconstruction.  Yukhananov memorises in his lecture about ‘new processuality’, that by the end of 80-ties to participate in this fest of desacralisation was already absolutely impossible. (2011 http://geniroom.com/room14411/event/3000, translation by author)   Therefore he went ahead with creating a new sacred territory. With company of his students (the Studio of Individual Directing) he began to develop a myth about ‘Orchard’ – the land of happiness and its inhabitants. This myth was based on the play Cherry Orchard by Chekhov. However the myth wasn’t a kind of interpretation of the drama. The company of artists devised a myth, finding confirmation for it in the text of Chekhov. They traced a potential mystery in Chekhov text, learning by the way, how to work with potentiality of texts, potentiality of people, one’s own potentiality. They started to discover the principles, in which the potentiality resides in the culture, in communications, in a human being. As a result they discovered the ability to work with invisible territories. (ibid)

    Talking about invisible ‘universal territory’ Yukhananov claims that this territory exists inside every human being as a universal potential of personality, this concept shouldn’t be mixed with concept of  ‘individuation’. The universal potential of personality can stay undiscovered forever if something or somebody does not provoke it to open. Yukhananov makes a guess that working with potentialities, learning to trace them can be a way to unlock it. In other words he states that ‘new processuality’ theatre with its evolutionary projects is an advantageous territory for it.

 Let’s move ahead and investigate the phenomenon of ‘mysterial theatre’. The word ‘mysterial’ is a neologism in English language.  It has direct reference to the word ‘mysteries’ – “the secret rites of any ancient or tribal religion, to which only initiates are admitted” (Dictionary Apple 2005-2009).  But we also want to note another meaning of this word a ‘mystery’ –‘enigma’.  In human society the phenomenon of art always was connected with mystery. The society has no need in a novel or a picture. All objects of art seem to be absolutely unnecessary. Art initially does not have a direct purpose to entertain or teach, it seems to be useless but at the same time it is the evidence of some other imaginary reality, which cannot be explained and understood. This inability of art to be a subject of knowledge very often is a reason for hostility in society. Thus art becomes a subject of mystifications and demonization; moreover the society tries to destroy the mystery of art and to commodify its fruits. Telling about the mystery of art, we should emphasise a particular place of theatre. Unlike drama, theatre is not words on the page. Theatre is a performance with its magic of presence. It is complex relations between space, actors and audience who are locked into a bodily experience of time. This common bodily experience is a unique possibility to interrupt the flow of everyday life and create the new reality, which unavoidably would be experienced by each who is present.  To this very aspect of theatre applies Antonin Artaud, central figure for the 20^th century performance, when he says that at the time when modern society with technological efficiency exterminates the sacred, nature, fully lived experience and the work of art – in this society theatre can only prostitute itself (1958:89) and the only way to survive is to “rediscover an idea of sacred theatre”. (1988:276) Artaud claims that this theatre would constitute “the creation of the reality, the unprecedented eruption of a world” which would wreak havoc with the dull reality we know (1988:155). Jerzy Grotowski, one of the major theatre directors of 20 century distinguishes two types of actor: “actor – prostitute” and “holy actor”, who transcends his material presence in “giving” himself to the audience. Grotowski suggests the “total act” - the act of  self-sacrificing of actors to the audience, in response to which the audience will open itself. (1991:33-35,43).  Telling about origins of ‘mysterial’ theatre Yukhananov articulates:

We can draw a line between the greatest figures of the European theater: Stanislavski, Craig, Artaud, Grotowski. I put them now in one line because they are not just people, who worked in theater, but “mystagogues”. “Mystagogue” is a leader of the mysterial performance (…) Each of these directors has suggested not just a new method of theater education and creativity but has, in his own individual manner, organized theater as a sacred place. These experiences in the European culture can be defined as experiences of the mysterial theater and can be visualized as a tree with a lot of branches growing from the main stem.  (http://www.kehila.ru/article/?52)

Yukhananov emphasises the significance of Grotowski experience, especially his “theatre of sources” period and his interest to rituals of various cultures. Although he notes that Grotowski is more interested in technique of sacred gesture than in sacred act itself, which is not so expressive. But sacred gesture by itself is “deprived of main essence – a connection with God. This happens because this connection was created at a different time and by the other formation of a human being.” Yukhananov makes a different choice: his research is connected with the territory of the ‘new mysterial art’, which, according to his explanation, can be defined using the concepts of “myth” and “mystery” as the maximally broad concepts which do not refer to any specific religious tradition. His experience is an experience of creating of a myth that has never existed before. This is the case of being a myth’s participant and its creator in the same time. (ibid.)  This experiment was made in Yukhananov project “Orchard”, which we already mentioned before. He and the students of his Studio of Individual Directing ‘sacralised' the text of Cherry Orchard by Chekhov. They started a long process of devising a myth, which wasn’t just imaginary world but a complicated system of communications of individual artistic worlds and personal lives of participants with their common creation. Yukhananov tells:

We treated Chekhov as the great Mahatma who has written an enigmatic mystical text.  And we decided to reveal a myth of the indestructible orchard, of human happiness that cannot be destroyed, from there, from the depth of the text. (…) The orchard creatures inhabited this locality, and they could live there in life as well as in death. There was no time, no space, etc. The experience of revealing this myth and creating specific performances has developed into an “Orchard” mysteries that existed for 10 years. This path led us to the performance, driven into the evolution. This is a performance that has an accurate date of the beginning but has no end. The theatrical culture is used to building a form that has a time set for its birth, exploitation and death. We were interested in a different theatrical experience. An experience, where the artwork is created and cultivated by us in such a manner, that it can never die. (ibid.)

Telling about performance, which has no end, Yukhananov means ‘a performance’ as a living organism, which can appear before audience from time to time, but rest of the time its ‘life’ belongs to the rehearsal process. “During the eleven years of its life, from 1990 to 2001, this evolutionary project was transformed continually into new “Regenerations,” the last of which was number eight. Early versions ran as many as five evenings in a row. The Fifth Regeneration, a seven-hour, two-day affair, incorporated several actors with Down syndrome, they played the role of guerilla actors interrupting and interacting with the professional actors on stage.” (Freedman 2005:8-9)

   Using the concepts of Deleuze we can suggest that a new mode of existence was produced, which was “a process and not a goal (…) pure process that fulfills itself, and never ceases to reach fulfillment as it proceeds – art as “experimentation’”. (1998:li) Accordingly we can state that their using of the text of the Chekhov’s play was not an act of interpretation but act of experimentation, act of producing ‘ontological power of Life” (1998).

    Referencing to Deleuze we carefully shift from the territory of theatre history to philosophical discourse. This shift from theatre to philosophy is possible in both ways. Thus Deleuze in Negotiations sets up a kind of philosophical theatre (opera), which “tends towards these three poles: concepts, or new way of thinking; percepts, or new way of seeing and hearing; and affects, or new ways of feeling” (1995:164-165)

This reference to Deleuze Yukhananov uses to introduce his ‘new processuality’, pointing that the concept, being perceived by someone continues to develop inside and can turns out to be anything on the ways of its development. It can give a birth to new concepts, can mutate to sensual aggregate (it happens in mysteries). Further it can turn into a ‘percepts’ space of a new kind.  Everywhere it will seek to attend new development. This is the way for the myth to develop. This, in fact, the new processuality is. (http://geniroom.com/room14411/event/3000, translated by author)

The attempt to analyze Yukhananov’s art using the concepts of the radical thinking is not new. Thus Dmitri Bavilski in his analysis of archives of Yukhananov’s project Orchard makes a parallels with analysis of lectures of famous Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili about his ‘Rational theory of perception’ and with deconstructionism of Darrida (1997:220-243). Thus a ‘set of tools’ (2004) developed by radical thinkers turn out to be the universal set of tools to perceive art, theatre, all creative processes.  In What is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari define philosophical concepts as fragmentary wholes, “not pieces of jigsaw but rather outcome of throws of the dice”, which resonate however. The philosophy, which generates these concepts, introduces a powerful ‘WHOLE’ that includes all the concepts on one and the same plane – ‘plane of immanence’. (1994:35) The plane of immanence considered by Deleuze and Guattari as ‘prephilosophical’, where all concepts refer to non-conceptual understanding, something that  “implies a sort of groping experimentation and its lay out resorts to measures that are not very respectable, rational or reasonable. These measures belong to the order of dreams, of pathological processes, esoteric experiences, drunkenness, and excess. (…) To think is always to follow the witch’s flight. (…) pure immanence provokes a strong, instinctive disapproval in public opinion”(1994:41-42). This description, including the disapproval in public opinion, clearly resonates with description of a creative process with its system of intuitive snares for meanings and provocations. Everything, from nightmares and psychotic explosions to revelations and spiritual enlightenment, create a body of creation.  This body becomes a special territory, ‘a plato’, which exist as a multiplicity of communications between participants (in example of theatre we have many participants), their lives, their personal mythologies and psychoses weaving between and with a common mythology, intercrossing sphere of live activity with ‘life-as-art’ (life perceived as art) sphere.   Growing on this territory sprouts of theatre reveal themself as a chain of provocations, which form a system of utterances on the territory of its operation. Thus the essence of such theatre process seems to be not an action, but the evolution of provocations. In his article ‘Theatre in General. Dialog Between Monster and Minstrel’ Yukhananov enunciates:

Provocation can be defined as a minimal unit of theatre; an act that forms an utterance (a match but not the fire). The combination of provocations and the utterances it forms and the simultaneous involvement (existence) in a unified process – theatre ensures our interest (pleasure) in (for) the performance. We trace how provocation, impinging an object, energy or sign, forms a trace of meaning. Audience’s perception determines the tremor, shiver, the final cardiogram, and the flexibility of borders; auditorium-stage. During the performance it is always unstable; it as if intervenes now the stage, then the auditorium. As a result, the contemporary theatre is more and more interested in that boundary itself. To be more precise, in the methods of controlling it! (1994:116-127 translated by A.Oleva)

Actually this boundary ‘auditorium-stage’, turning into a cardiogram, become an evidence of life - ‘ a Life of pure immanence ‘, in Deleuze’s understanding, ‘a new mode of existence’, which Deleuze calls “powerful nonorganic and intensive vitality” and points out that Artaud discovered and named as ‘the body without organs’ (2004b: 165-168; 1998:xxxvii). In Yukhananov theatre it is the myth, which is being created and playing with its creators at the same time (playing as the owner of dog plays with his pet), it is ‘new processuality’ in its constant evolution, which is not displaying itself to the audience, but becoming ‘here and now’ as the new reality for them, attracting, poisoning, penetrating.

    The next subject of our attention is something, without what the ‘new processuality’ cannot exist. This is a group (group of people). ‘New processuality’, as Yukhananov states, is collective art, it is impossible without communications. (http://geniroom.com/room14411/event/3000)  Referencing again to Deleuze we spot that “the problem of the work of art is to establish a system of communications (…) “the multiple must be made” that is never given itself”. (1998:xxiii)

    We are going to tell about art-community. The concept of community is widely used in social science nevertheless the definition of this term has proved elusive.  Looking through various attempts to define community we have chosen the definition of Robert Redfeild, mentioned in the Social and Cultural Anthropology by Nigel Rapport and Joanna Overing. It  “identified four key qualities in community: a smallness of social scale; a homogeneity of activities and states of mind of members; a self-sufficiency across a broad range of needs and through time; and consciousness of distinctiveness.”(2007:72). We will consider these characteristics for a group of people who work in one theatre project. If to differentiate theatrical groups as being and not being community, two clear examples of art-community go in mind: Moscow Art Theatre of Stanislavski and Nimerovich-Danchenko and Theatre Laboratory of Grotowski. Both these collectives where concentrated on art as a process, and this process gave them  “consciousness of distinctiveness” and “homogeneity states of mind”.

      The names of groups, with whom Yukhananov worked, clearly display the ideas about which they were gathered: Studio of Individual Directing, Laboratory of Angelic Directing, LaboraTORia (from Torah). Our questions are: what is happening inside a group, what makes it art-community, how communications inside a group become a basis and, at the same time, a tool for ‘new processuality’ theatre? To answer these questions is our next target.

   The Studio of Individual Directing was created in 1988 in St. Petersburg as the independent educational structure for studying of stage, television and movie direction. In 1989 it moved to Moscow where Yukhananov collected a new group, which became a basis for the project Orchard. ‘New processuality’

theatre suggests a special technique of stage acting; it is one of the subjects to study. This acting technique is inductive game, which creates its rules during the time of playing. Any other game has rules before the game starts. However inductive game is developing and forming its rules on the way of playing. Yukhananov states:

Dramatic (inductive) game is included into the rehearsal process. The system of inductive (dramatic) games gives birth to the final and growing text of the performance-orchard, which is launched into evolution and by this reveals the break away from the theatricality. From the dramatic play to the inductive…

The inductive game, unlike the dramatic one, does not imply an ‘overcome’ spectator. It resides where the ‘life-as-art’ action participates in a real destiny: not of the protagonist, the character but the author himself – artist, actor, participant of the game, master of individual directing.  (http://www.vavilon.ru/metatext/mj51/yuhananov.html)

Accordingly the performer here is not an actor (a marionette in hands of a director) but a ‘master of individual directing’, whose acting become a personal ‘life-as-art’ performance which is being created not only for ‘production’ but also “for that mysterious realm of spirit, where the growth of personality hides; of the soul that performs the ballet-dictation of its universal potential.” (ibid.)  Thus the members of the group were students interested in their own personal development and promotion. However, discovering, that on the territory of inductive game the oppositions between personal and common, between life and game, between actor and director were resolved, they obtained the real situation of the project-performance Orchard, the “situation in which:

Actor is an Unknown author

           Director is an Unknown author

Painter is an Unknown author

Composer is an Unknown author

           And all of them together are an Unknown author (ibid.)

Having this discovery as the first common mystical experience, group obtained it as the awareness of group’s connection and uniqueness.  Therefore the group realized itself as a community. The symbolic approach to the notion of ‘community’ suggests that “the notion of community encapsulates both closeness and sameness and distance and difference’ (2007:74-75, italic original). This approach considers “community as a practise being social.” (ibid.) Developing this idea for the community which have found itself as ‘a community’ on the territory of Myth, not social, but imaginary reality, we can indicate that as the result of the practise being community on this territory, the group obtained this imaginary world of Myth as really existing one. In this way we have come very close to the mechanism of actualization of ‘new processuality’ through the group.

   The next group, we are going to tell about, is the group of LaboraTORIA. In the name of this group we can clearly see the wordplay with ‘laboratory’ and ‘Torah’, what give us the first information about purposes and interests of this collective.  The group was created in 2002 by Yukhananov and Grigory Zeltser.  “LaboraTORIA is conceived as an indivisible continuity of the rehearsal and the analytical studio. We look though theater and with the help of theater we read canon Jewish texts and listen to them. And then the canon text of Torah leads to the further development of the theater art”, - tells Yukhananov in the interview for the magazine Community Life (http://www.kehila.ru/article/?52).  After two years of analytical seminars mutating to rehearsals, members of group, who initially were no actors neither directors, approached to some possibility, some productive opportunity and vivid potential of theatre, which is capturing the special intersection, and mutual absorption of life and play”(ibid.) It was how the ‘Diaspora Symphony” appeared. Yukhananov notes:” We call our experience a “Diaspora Symphony” because a young person who grew up in the diaspora and then suddenly self-opens on the territory of such type reveals not only the features of the own consciousness that is here and now aspiring to the text, but also the energetic sources of his life, his real life in the diaspora.”(ibid.) Thus the members of LaboraTORIA perceived themselves as the members of much wider community - Jewish diaspora, that is arguably the only community in the world, which is being enormously big, still keeps a feeling of community. Their work was concentrated on the canon texts of Torah, concentrated on the meaning which shifted to the territory of action, discovering on the way capacity of the theatre to ‘become a speech’.  The ‘theatre becoming a speech’ is another concept of Yukhananov’s conceptual arsenal:  “this speech is not just a speech that is aware of the meanings of words and letters and that is able to discern different narrative regimes. This is also a special kind of speech that reveals meaning, not known before, through the open public act of thinking and thus acquires an ability to choose one or the other playing approach to the text. (ibid.)

Apart from rehearsals and performances, the LaboraTORIA have been organising international conferences dedicated to the subject of “Torah and theatre”. The massive discussions between philosophers, rabbis and artists were sometimes so passionate that absorbed the audience more powerful than any theatre. It was a magnetic mixture of philosophising and acting, where, finally, thinking aloud has became the main action of such a theatre. One year later  “Diaspora Symphony” mutated into project The Golem which was based on the job with text of Yiddish playwright Halper Leivik. Golem is a figure of Jewish legend, an artificially created (of mud or clay) being, which has human form and endowed with a power of life (Freedman 2008:9).  Israel philosopher Uri Gershowitz in his extended research about LaboraTORIA and a legend of Golem, states that the legend of Golem having on the surface the easier interpretation about creature which rebels against his creator, can be nevertheless elevated on the level of myth, what require multilevel deep understanding and elaboration of myth, tracing its roots deep in culture. Another way, he notes, do not trace roots back in culture but recreate them in frame of culture, which obtained the legend. The most fruitful way, he consider, is to  combine  these two   principles. Gershovich states that LaboraTORIA was following this way.   (2013:3, translated by author).   Taking this statement as the initial step of inductive reasoning, we will try to make next one.   LaboraTORIA started their project as a group with communications rooted in religious ground. John Monaghan and Peter Just in Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction suggest that “Religious congregations are an extraordinarily powerful kind of group, which may be composed of a segment of physical community, or may be entirely constitute a community (…), or may extend across several communities and be linked to many other congregations world-like” (2000 kindle book). Applying that to the LaboraTORIA we can claim that the religious kind of connection was providing for group with energy and reason to seek deeper understanding in the frame of Jewish culture, while the technologies of ‘new processuality’ theatre gave them enthusiasm for re-creating the myth in a frame of their new-born theatrical community with all multiplicity of connections being initiated by this theatre technology with personal and cultural spheres.  Thus theatre performance itself became a participant of the myth of Golem, not just a territory where the myth was created.  The performance appears to the audience as a Golem, imperfect creature, serving to and rebelling against its creator – stage director. To give some clues to understand this confusing model, we will give you extract of John Freedman’s review on the performance LaboraTORIA Golem. Viennese rehearsal:

The players in this tale are a theatrical troupe creating a production of Leivik’s The  Golem. Some actors perform the part of Judah Leew, the rabbi known historically as the Maharal, who created the Golem. Other actors play the Golem itself. But everyone is always playing a version of themselves, the actors who are rehearsing and performing the play. Rehearsals of “The Golem” slip into performances of its scenes or discussions of scenes that have been acted. The transformations from one state to another – rehearsal to performance or performance to discussion – are never signaled in any formal way. Yukhananov actors, like a battalion of golems, are in a constant state of becoming without ever actually being any one specific thing. (2008:9)

John Freedman as some other reviewers states that Yukhananov interested most in “exploring the nature of theatre and performance”, that the play “The Golem” is taken just “an excuse to take on material whose topic is one of creating and becoming”(ibid.). Another critic Bavilski also states “‘Golem’ is a performance that is being born (as if being born) right in front of our eyes. That is why both the choice of the play and its title carry extra meaning.  Yukhananov reflects on the process of creation of a performance, which shakes off the ashes of the here and now happening creation.”  (http://magazines.russ.ru/novyi_mi/2009/2/ba24.html, translated by Alisa Oleva). Uri Gershowitz writes about the performance “LaboraTORIA Golem. Viennese rehearsal”, considering the whole evolutionary project. He distinguishes it as a synthesis of two processes. One of them is rooted deeply in history of canon texts and connected with spiritual evolution history.  The other one is a process of art creation.  The personal evolution in this synthesis become an art of creation oneself  “in collaboration with God and in an attempt of assimilation with God ” (2013:3) Starting on the stage this process of ‘becoming’ continues in audience, provoking, as reporter Olga Andreeva claims: “a necessity to answer the question: ”Who am I –The Creator? The Creature? God? Human being? Or all together?” What we encounter is a model of total theatre, something like a new religion (…) give us a chance to experience human evolution from the performer to the author, from the creature to the creator.” (2009: http://www.readoz.com/publication/read?i=1020538#page326). 

    In conclusion we want to reference again to Deleuze and Guattari (2004b:4) concept ‘multiplicity’ which they explain in this way: ”there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories; but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification. Comparative rates of flow on these lines produce phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the contrary, of acceleration and rupture. All this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes (…) a multiplicity…” We suggest to understand ‘new processuality’ of Yukhananov as multiplicity which express itself through the net of communications: in and out of art-community, between community and the ‘new mode of being’ which they created, between personal artistic development and the phenomena of an ‘Unknown Author”, and many others. ‘Lines of flight’, connecting all these territories, provide the evolution as the constant development, which Yukhananov does not consider to be hierarchical as Darwin’s evolution of species, but as a part of constant changing - ‘becoming’ where the beginning not considered without process it following.

 

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