Re: RAT dramaturgy

[NOMADMONAD@aol.com]

Dramaturgy in its exceptional role is the study and orchestration of reality. 
The true adepts at this dramaturgy practice their art at the venue Theatre 
Passe Muraille (Theater Beyond Walls).

The most powerful cabal in world today is known simply as the Seven 
Dramaturgs.  In the peculiar tract below Hakim suggests an initiation into 
this Supreme Court of dramaturgy.

And speaking of courts, the first vote on the Sassies by the members of the 
Committee has taken place.  I'm sure everyone will find the final choices 
very interesting, if not surprising.  However, remember that Committee 
members vote sometimes more than once. They may switch sides during the 
process.  Actually the most interesting part of the procedure has begun now.  
In the writing of both the majority opinion and the main opinion for the 
dissenting viewpoint members have been known to switch sides. 

--nick 

*************  
"Secret Theater" by Hakim Bey

As long as no Stalin breathes down our necks, why not make some art in the 
service of... an insurrection?

Never mind if it's "impossible." What else can we hope to attain but the 
"impossible"?  Should we wait for someone else to reveal our true desires?

If art has died, or the audience has withered away, then we find ourselves 
free of two dead weights. Potentially, everyone is now some kind of artist -- 
& potentially every audience has regained its innocence, its ability to 
become the art that it experiences.

Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided 
we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we 
can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: 
changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols.

We might now contemplate aesthetic actions which possess some of the 
resonance of terrorism (or "cruelty," as Artaud put it) aimed at the 
destruction of abstractions rather than people, at liberation rather than 
power, pleasure rather than profit, joy rather than fear. "Poetic Terrorism."

Our chosen images have the potency of darkness -- but all images are masks, & 
behind these masks lie energies we can turn toward light & pleasure.

For example, the man who invented aikido was a samurai who became a pacifist 
& refused to fight for Japanese imperialism. He became a hermit, lived on a 
mountain sitting under a tree.

One day a former fellow-officer came to visit him & accused him of betrayal, 
cowardice, etc. The hermit said nothing, but kept on sitting -- & the officer 
fell into a rage, drew his sword, & struck. Spontaneously the unarmed master 
disarmed the officer & returned his sword. Again & again the officer tried to 
kill, using every subtle kata in his repertoire -- but out of his empty mind 
the hermit each time invented a new way to disarm him.

The officer of course became his first disciple. Later, they learned how to 
dodge bullets.

We might contemplate some form of metadrama meant to capture a taste of this 
performance, which gave rise to a wholly new art, a totally non-violent way 
of fighting -- war without murder, "the sword of life" rather than death.

A conspiracy of artists, anonymous as any mad bombers, but aimed toward an 
act of gratuitous generosity rather than violence -- at the millennium rather 
than the apocalypse -- or rather, aimed at a present moment of aesthetic 
shock in the service of realization & liberation.

Art tells gorgeous lies that come true.

Is it possible to create a SECRET THEATER in which both artist & audience 
have completely disappeared -- only to re-appear on another plane, where life 
& art have become the same thing, the pure giving of gifts?

We take Kirkegaard's "leap of faith," but absent the old existentialist's 
Fear & Trembling & Sickness unto death. Our leap of faith into sorcery & 
secret theater is more like a wet dream than a nightmare, "awe-full", not 
awful.

We name our peerage of this new plane the Seven Dramaturgs. But no Peer Panel 
here, please. We prefer, like Jacob, to wrestle with our angels, & if our 
tussling turns amorous, all the better. Let the games begin. The Seven 
Dramaturgs show us that the universe wants, more than that, intends to play 
with us. We can be pawns or partners in this intention of the Seven 
Dramaturgs.

In Sufiism there is a belief in The Forty Guardians who protect & keep 
mankind from destroying itself. What's interesting is, these Guardians are 
human, but they remain completely unknown & are constantly in flux. Anyone in 
the world could be one of The Forty at a present moment, including oneself. 
Of course you would never know if you had been one of The Forty - they remain 
anonymous even to themselves. That is why Sufiism calls for you to bow your 
head whenever you meet a stranger -- he could be one of The Forty Guardians.

Do we lead or follow the Seven Dramaturgs in their sorcery & secret theater? 
Ali Baba is merely one of The Forty Thieves -- each of The Forty Thieves is 
Ali Baba. The text does not begin or end here -- the pencil is passed like a 
baton amongst the Seven Dramaturgs. The universe is still being written.