ARTicles vol. 1 i.3: Introducing the SITI Company

A big white ball, slightly off center, dominates the rehearsal room. A few actors perch on a windowsill, quietly gazing at it. They’re alert, poised to respond. A woman quickly goes down on one knee in front of it, placing her hands above her lowered head. Her gaze is serene, her body motionless. Three people stand along the opposite wall, focused on the ball. The atmosphere has the quality of a suspended breath, of waiting. The ball remains an object of mystery, a calm, glowing sphere, resting expectantly on the floor. Two women hide behind it. Suddenly everyone jumps, or stumbles backwards, and begin to chase each other. The air currents they’re kicking up cause the ball to roll back and forth slowly. Seized with inspiration, one woman rushes to the door and madly begins swinging it open and closed in a desperate attempt to generate more wind to push the ball. They’re all frantic to make the ball move. But they can’t touch it. That’s the rule.

Anne Bogart proposed the rule that morning. It’s a means of structuring the Viewpoints exercise that follows. The Viewpoints training developed out of the postmodern dance world; it’s a vocabulary, a set of tools, for actors to focus their awareness on space and time. It generates visual, visceral, and dynamic responses on the part of the actor that contribute to the exploration of a play.

Ms. Bogart combines Viewpoints training with the training developed by internationally acclaimed Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki. A physical and vocal technique for actors, Suzuki training is a physically rigorous vocabulary, focusing on the lower half of the body, especially the feet. The connection to the earth, manifested through rhythmic stomping, forms the core of Suzuki training, allowing the actor to send and receive energy to and from the earth. Suzuki training demands the actor to face him/herself; Viewpoints training asks actors to face each other.

The SITI Company, founded in 1992 by Ms. Bogart and Mr. Suzuki, challenges itself to maintain balance on the seesaw that is the strictly defined work of Suzuki training and the evolving, improvisatory nature of Viewpoints training. As Ms. Bogart explains in A Director Prepares, the pairing of the two disciplines produces a “great alchemy . . . introducing these two training methods into the same body results in strength, focus, flexibility, visibility, audibility, spontaneity and presence.”

Anne Bogart’s fascination with theatre began early. Play rehearsals were the “site[s] of grace . . . where everybody got close, worked hard towards something wonderful and then later said goodbye forever” in the many schools she attended as the daughter of a naval captain. After graduating from Bard College in 1974 and moving to New York City, Ms. Bogart continued to develop her work, staging shows wherever she could find space. After directing a project in Berlin, Ms. Bogart had a revelation: “I realized with profound conclusiveness that I was an American; I had an American sense of humor, an American sense of structure, rhythm, and logic. I thought like an American. I moved like an American. And, all at once, it was clear to me that the rich American tradition of history and people exists to tap into my own.”

Ms. Bogart’s cultural memory was filled with silent movies, vaudeville, Andy Warhol, Meredith Monk, Robert Wilson, Orson Welles, and Leonard Bernstein. The productions that followed this revelation explored the American experience. However, they did so by defying expectations. Productions of South Pacific (set in a clinic for emotionally disturbed war veterans), and A Streetcar Named Desire (with twelve Stanleys and eight Blanches) were followed with productions that focused on a central figure, such as The Medium, based on the writings of Marshall McLuhan and bobrauschenbergamerica, a theater piece in the style of the visual artistry of Robert Rauschenberg.

Anne Bogart and the SITI Company are now turning their attention to La Dispute by Marivaux in collaboration with A.R.T. company members and students. Written in eighteenth-century France, the play asks, “Which is the more unfaithful sex, male or female?” Recognizing the potency of this classic French text, Anne Bogart envisions part of the theatrical event of La Dispute as the exploration of “love as a high stakes sporting event” asking “Is there a battle of the sexes encoded into our very bodies?” The rehearsal process begins with an orientation to the world of the play and its structure of events. But, before Ms. Bogart’s words of introduction have settled, the orientation shifts, evolving into questions about relationships, erotic desire, and recognition of the self. The air hums with the excited potential of “what if,” generating questions about the world of the play such as ” is anything private?,” “how do you disguise yourself without changing clothes?”, and “how do we project a screen of meaning onto other people, thereby fulfilling our own needs?” Every pebble of an idea is picked up, the earth underneath scraped away. Ms. Bogart creates an environment that celebrates the potential of the question. Each question nudges assumptions aside, demanding our willingness to hurdle our old expectations.

Ms. Bogart states, “I want to use the theater to question the limits and boundaries of human experience.” With this production of La Dispute, she continues her commitment to theater, exploring the question “What happens when a man and a woman face each other?” Anne Bogart’s commitment continues her own history of creating compelling theater, sharing with us her determination to explore present day assumptions, her willingness to risk disorientation, and her absolute faith in the potential of the present moment.

Barbara Whitney is a first-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training.