I move air for a living – I’m a theatrical sound designer. At really fun moments I make air dance in harmony with itself. What I do leaves no trace – - – you have to catch it in the room, with a bunch of other people listening and some actors onstage. After that it is gone.
So it is fascinating to find myself the substance of an artform that consists entirely of reflexes in a human body: mine, my fellow students’, Sensei’s, – - – and the bodies of a lineage of masters and students going back four hundred years – all the way back to Ito Ittosai.
This knowledge is completely different from the knowledge I acquired at Oxford. It encompasses ways and ways of dealing with and understanding the non-conscious mind. It is knowledge from the performer’s and creator’s point of view. It resonates profoundly in my own work, and it helps me figure out how to pass that work along.
Truth be told, on a personal level it is profoundly transformative.
And – on a less personal level – I think all of us, we will need a little bit of the samurai to help us through the coming century.
- Peter John Still
Boise Contemporary Theater – Idaho Shakespeare Festival – Tahoe, Cleveland, New York
Peter at the sound board
