Jodorowsky, Alejandro - Psychomagic - The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy

What is “ephemeral panic” exactly?

At this point in our discussion, I should refer to a passage published in 1973 in a book conceived by [Fernando] Arrabal titled Le Panique . This book allowed me to formulate the essential concepts of my process and my theatrical conceptions: “To attain panic euphoria, one must liberate oneself from the theater structure—this is a necessary precondition.” From the architectural point of view, whichever form they have, theaters are designed for actors and spectators; they obey the primordial law of the game, which amounts to delimiting a space, that is to say, isolating the stage from reality, and that is why they impose (such imposition being anti-panic) an understanding a priori of the relationship of the actors and the space. Before everything else, the actor must serve the architect and then the author. Theaters impose corporeal movements, even though, in general, it is a human gesture that determines the architecture. By eliminating the spectator from the panic party, one automatically eliminates the “seat” and the “interpretation” from the unmoving stare. The place where the “ephemeral” takes place is a non-delimited space in which one does not know where the stage ends and where reality begins. The “panic company” will choose the most attractive place: a useless terrain, a forest, a public place, an operating room, a pool, a dilapidated house, or even a traditional theater, but using all of its spaces: euphoric demonstrations between the seats, in the dressing room or the restrooms, going beyond the long corridors, in the cellar, the foyer, the roof, and so on. One can also make an “ephemeral” act in the ocean, in an airplane, in a very fast train, in a cemetery, in a maternity ward, a slaughterhouse, a nursing home, a prehistoric cave, a gay bar, a convent, or at a funeral. Since the “ephemeral” is a concrete manifestation, it cannot call up problems of space and time. The space has its real measurements and cannot symbolize another space; it is what it is in that moment. This is also true for time: there can be no depiction of aging. The time that passes is truly the time during which the actions last. In this real time and this objective space the ex-actor moves. An actor divides his activity between a “person” and a “character.” Before panic, one could describe, in a clear and precise manner, two theater schools. In the first, the person-actor subsumes himself totally in the “personality,” lying to himself and to others with such precision that he ends up losing his “person” to turn into an other, a character with more concise restrictions and more precise definition. In the second school, one learns to act in an eclectic manner, in a way that the actor in being the person was simultaneously the character . The actor should never forget being in the process of acting , and the person, during the performance, could criticize his character .

The ex-actor, panic man, does not act a performance and has totally eliminated the character. In the “ephemeral,” this panic man tries to bring to the person what he is trying to be.

Playwrights love to force a performance. It often happens that atop one stage another stage is staged where other actors perform before the first actors. Panic man thinks that in everyday life the “majestic” go around disguised, interpreting characters, and that the mission of the theater is to quit interpreting characters facing other characters, to eliminate that in order to ultimately get closer, little by little, to the person.

It is the inverse path of the old theater schools: Instead of going from the person to the character—as the old schools believed—panic man tries to begin with the character, which is (according to the anti-panic education implanted by the “majestic”) the person he carries inside himself. This “other” who wakes up in a panic euphoria is not a puppet made by definitions and lies but a being with fewer restrictions. The euphoria of the “ephemeral” drives the totality, to the liberation of superior forces, to a state of grace.

To conclude: Panic man does not hide behind “characters” but tries to find his mode of real expression. Instead of being a lying exhibitionist, he is a poet in a trance state. (We understand by poet, not the office writer but the athlete creator.)

How did you put this program-manifesto together?

I promoted among the spectator-actors the practice of a radical theater act, which consisted of interpreting one’s own drama, exploring one’s own intimate enigma. It was for me the beginning of the sacred theater and was almost therapeutic. Then I came to realize that if I had, in my theatrical expression, shattered form, space, the relationship between actor and spectator, I had not yet attacked time. I was still a prisoner of the idea that the show must be repeated, performed many times. At the time when “happenings” were taking place in the United States, on my part in Mexico, I had invented what I called the “ephemeral panic,” which consisted in staging a show that could be presented only once. It had to be accomplished by introducing perishable things: smoke, fruits, jelly, live animals . . . It had to do with accomplishing acts that could not ever be repeated. In summary, I wanted the theater, instead of tending toward the fixed, toward death, to return to its uniqueness: the instantaneous, the fugitive, the only moment forever. This way, theater is made in the image of life where, according to a saying by Heraclitus [of Ephesus], one never bathes in the same river. Thus, to conceive the theater was to carry it to the extreme, to go to the paroxysm of this art form. Through the happenings, I rediscovered the theatrical act and its therapeutic potential.

How did you pull it off? What were the ingredients for the happening?

Well, I would rather choose an ordinary place than a theater: the School of Fine Arts, a psychiatric ward, a sanatorium, a school for people with Down’s syndrome . . . I chose existing places and placed the action there.

You really wanted to set up the “ephemeral panic” in these places?

Yes, that’s the marvel of Mexico! Discipline does not exist; they let you do this kind of thing. One day, we performed a large ballet in a cemetery. It was a strong act, the dance of the living among the dead . . . So then, once a place was selected, I made calls to a group of people who wanted to express themselves. In no way did I direct actors. These people came to carry out a free, public act. All the conditions were thus brought together for the coming of the ephemeral.

The ephemeral, such as what you practiced, had, if I’m not mistaken, something impressive: it had all the ingredients of a sumptuous party. How did you find the means to finance such events?

I always found the money. For me the ephemeral panic had to be precisely a party. Now, when one throws a party, one does not charge his guests for the drinks or food they consume. I always gave that free. I received money from royalties, from staging more classical pieces, many times under another name. The fact is that, like [Ivanovitch] Gurdjieff, I never had financial problems, which, seeing as it always worked out, is truly a miracle! Apart from that, I believe in miracles, or rather in the existence of a law that if my intentions are pure and I do what I must do, the money will follow, in some way or another. Maybe I will never be what a person calls rich, but I will always arrange the financial means that are required each moment. When I had money in my safes, I would invest it in a happening. I asked acquaintances if they wanted to express something, then I gave them the means to do so. This method of approaching the happening already had a therapeutic value. It was also a way to continue in line with the poetic acts we have talked about.