Crowds and Power and Workshops

Reading the new edition of Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power, a seminal poetic discourse on the nature of human gatherings, is making me think about the peculiar magic of the theatre workshop group, especially with a good number of people in the room. I do believe a great workshop shares many aspects of any more formal theatrical event, which Canetti also writes about. One of the joys of the Theatre of the Oppressed is that it thrives on having lots of people, lots of gazes, lots of experiences, lots of perspectives in the one room – we can get lost in the crowd if we want to keep a low profile or we can join with others if are in the mood.

Canetti makes a distinction between the ‘open’ crowd (what it says on the packet, always willing to accommodate new joiners), and the ‘closed’ crowd (people gathered together for a particular event, usually in a confined space with limited number, to participate in a communal rite or ritual of some kind – be it theatre show, football match or private party).

I am writing the week after a one-day introductory workshop we hosted for about 20 newcomers to the Theatre of the Oppressed. I am always amazed and invigorated by what can be achieved even in such a short time with a group gathered together for the shared purpose of using theatre to look at life. This group, like all TO training workshop groups, is in one sense a closed crowd, because participant numbers are usually limited, the venue is specified, booking is required – (I should add the caveat usually, to all the foregoing – I have so many experiences of leading a workshop in a hostel or other semi-public space and all sorts of passersby joining in). But obviously TO is by definition and intention outward facing and open to all comers – its goal is to engage all and sundry in this quest together, so in this sense it also aspires to the open crowd that Canetti describes, like a spontaneous crowd gathered to protest about something, or to commemorate an important event, or simply to witness something unusual, like a car crash or a meteor. The open crowd is the direction of travel for the Theatre of the Oppressed, it wants to be out there in the public square, in the forum, triggering debate and change.

The workshop has many of the characteristics Canetti identifies, and thus much of the power. However diverse the group gathered together – and at STOP we continue to be lucky in attracting wonderfully variegated gangs of participants, from all walks of life and experience and from many countries – the group rapidly becomes a group, united for the duration of the workshop. As in any crowd, we are within touching distance of each other; sometimes we have physical contact – the opposite of the human characteristic which Canetti opens his book with, i.e. the desire to keep our distance from one another, to avoid being touched by others.

Often when asked in workshops questions about ‘safety’ – notion more concerning perhaps to those of us who have less experience of live danger than to those who have already experienced exile and exclusion – Augusto Boal used to speak about the solidarity of the group. A group ‘in sympathy’ with each other generates a kind of solidarity net, as he put it; a carefully calibrated notion, a step or two away from the stifling security suggested by the words ‘safety net’.

And in this group, a closed crowd in search of an open crowd, what makes this alchemy happen is a deployment of many of the mechanisms of other types of crowds – like raves, or marches, or audiences; we do the same things together, in our own ways, we allow ourselves to be infected by the movements of others and in the process we experiment with other lives. An intensity is generated by these exercises, and that intensity is used to examine our lives using what Boal called ‘the mirror of other people’s gaze’.

Canetti also talks specifically about the conventional theatre audience and the concert audience. With the former he uses the word ‘stagnant’, an uncomplimentary sounding attribute, but by which he really means a crowd waiting for its moment of what he calls ‘discharge’; for so long we sit obediently in the dark till at last we can express our feelings with our whole bodies, applauding, standing, even leaving sometimes. For the concert audience, he speaks of a crowd in ‘stillness’, as we may even hold our breath as we listen. I often speak about the importance of allowing silence to happen, at the start or end, or both, of a game or exercise – which I encourage as a means of elevating a game to the status of art and discovering the simple beauty in a load of bodies no longer in movement.

A crowd is a powerful thing, for good and evil. Perhaps our modern experience of crowds is nowadays too confined to the internet; the virtual crowd which can become a pile-on crowd, of our social media gatherings. To be present from time to time in an actual crowd, large or small, may be a good counterbalance to these mediated experiences of a theoretical closeness, which in fact often becomes a total separateness - different to actually ‘being there’.

There is a lot more to be said about Canetti’s rich range of observations about crowds and our practice in TO, but perhaps I should finish the book first (which I absolutely commend to all interested readers). In the meantime, come and join our next crowd in December, and experience that power!