Total Theatre: What is the Role of Soil?

What is the role of soil in Total Theatre?

Passing Thoughts from the Guggenheim Ground Floor.

Why does it matter on what earth we are performing? How does it affect us?

I'm in the back corner of the Guggenheim, among the grandest art museums in Europe, let alone the Basque Country, and the single biggest provocateur in the re-imagination of the industrial city of Bilbao into the capital for arts and culture in the north of Spain. I stumbled upon a curious room with a film playing.

“O Horizon” is projected on a backdrop surrounded by stump seats and people glancing. The film is by the Otolith Group, it documents a performing arts school called Visva Bharati in India and their unique approach to creating community. At this school, there are students from all over India. These students are separated not only by distance in mileage, but by culture, language, and life paths. It is here the school’s director carries out a very unifying practice. He imports soil from all over the country of India to fill the outdoor grounds where the students perform. This literally grounds the students on the land of their ancestor’s history and culture. More than that, as the soil from all over is mixed together, the students share space on a united ground. The mixed clay connects the unique identities of each individual student with one another, on land in which no one is held to higher esteem than the other, but all can be equal.

As I watched this performance unfold on screen from within the Guggenheim of Bilbao, I wondered: how is the earth I’m standing on affecting this experience for me? Completely paved, there is no dirt to feel as I’m standing in the heavily air-conditioned room at the bottom of the Guggenheim, one of the most architecturally famous buildings in the world. Watching these performers on screen react to gravelly sand interspersed between their toes, there is a degree of active privilege I am feeling from my position, as well as a sense of my own jealously towards they who are able to connect directly with the land and history beyond sterile walls. I need to find more earth to exist on during this year.

I began to wonder: what are my fellow museum goers thinking as they watch this? I’ll be honest, when I first came into the space and saw a video about dirt for two minutes-- I thought to walk out. Why were people remaining in this audience? With several grand halls of the museum outside this room left to explore. Where did the attraction exist to this space? In shared community with one another, when one person peels others follow; similarly when one stays, perhaps they all stay. Those who just entered, exited quickly. However, those who came, stayed for the long haul.

Total theatre enraptures the totality of the human spirit. Is our human spirit not fully embodied in our environments?

Whether at this rural school in India, or in the audience watching this film, the environment is having a direct effect on our understanding. I decided to stay, to breathe in the air with this community of my peers who all came to the museum today by some chance. Whether we acknowledged each other or not, it was a choice to share space, a choice to partake in our own, silent community, and that meant something.

After the film finished, walking into the gray, drizzling sky, and looking at the cosmopolitan Arriaga Teatro, the largest of the Basque country in its largest city, Bilbao, how does this ground affect an audience’s connection with the experience. I hope to explore this more as I enter the open-air theatrical paradise of Lekeitio.

July 6, 2022

Gallery image credits to the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao Exhibition The Otolith Group O Horizon 2022