In a recent TRI article, Gay McAuley advocates rehearsal observation as a means of deepening knowledge and appreciation of the meaning-making process in theatre.Footnote ² Drawing in part on a historical-materialist tradition (as indicated by her invocation of Brecht in the title and epigraph of her piece), McAuley also investigates how rehearsal and performance spaces are pivotal for production choices of Brink, an Australian theatre ensemble from Adelaide, and their workshop process of British playwright Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis.Footnote ³ Specifically, she produces an interpretation of the creative choices in rehearsal as a basis for the production of meaning. Because rehearsal is generally hidden from public view, one might say that the general tendency is to mystify the process of the actor and director as a magical practice. In response to such a view, McAuley's case study suggests that rehearsal is ‘not magic but work’, drawing upon the craft-knowledge and expertise of all those involved in the collaborative process of theatre-making.

By focusing on pragmatic meaning-making, such an account places less emphasis on the discovery of ‘truth’ in rehearsal. Phillip Zarrilli notes in Acting (Re)Considered that many approaches to performance are steeped in discourses of truth.Footnote ⁴ On the one hand, one might dismiss such talk of truth as ‘logocentric’ metaphysics based upon seeing the artist as inspired creative genius.Footnote ⁵ But many theories of acting seemingly do seek to apprehend truth in various forms: access to the emotions, believability or honesty, textual interpretation or the human condition – whether these be culturally relative or otherwise.Footnote ⁶ By this account, each approach to acting contains an implicit theory of truth deeply influenced by its social, cultural, historical and philosophical context. And one might argue that certain understandings of selfhood and truthfulness are in fact created by the discourses of truth in training, rehearsal and performance.Footnote ⁷ But is such ‘truth’ simply empty, misguided or, even worse, damaging?

Rather than dismiss or criticize such discourses of truth, or even claim that truth is simply a metaphor, I suggest that it is possible to offer a theoretical paradigm pertinent to describing truthfulness in at least some processes of artistic creativity. Martin Heidegger's term aletheia (the ancient Greek term for ‘unhiddenness’) can usefully be applied to art (and theatre-making) as a process of ‘world-revealing’.Footnote ⁸ Such ‘truth’ is clearly not the correspondence between propositions and a state of affairs in the world.Footnote ⁹ In Heidegger's philosophy of art such an uncovering is the ‘happening of truth’ and cannot be reduced to materiality but emphasizes the existential context of the artwork. In this sense, truth is processual rather than static, a feature that is particularly important given the essentially temporal and ephemeral nature of performance.

Furthering McAuley's observation that the rehearsal space itself is an enabling condition for meaning-making in rehearsal, I suggest that the place of the theatrical event (of both rehearsal and performance) is a special setting for truth-revealing captured by the term aletheia. At least some discoveries in rehearsal and performance are much more than serendipity, material determination and technical or professional craft-knowledge. Rehearsal can be a process of uncovering and turning over possibilities of existence where words, actions and gestures reveal and hide themselves in the ‘open’ space of the rehearsal room. In this way, theatre space can be a distinctive kind of place where truth can be revealed when combined with the creative vision of theatre practitioners. The place of performance is a unique site for pursuing, exploring and manifesting human possibilities by disclosing and transforming the very space it occupies from physical materiality into an energized play-space of Being.

Such a suggestion borders on a return to the mystical interpretation of theatre practice in contrast to the reality of rehearsal that may comprise many banal and simply practical tasks. By thinking of rehearsal as a process of aletheia, however, it is not a matter of the divine light of Being shining down through the clouds in a moment of discovery, but a careful attention to ‘the things themselves’, as is the catch-cry of phenomenology.Footnote ¹⁰ This interpretation aims to broaden an understanding of the meaning-making process in the theatre captured by semiotics to encompass the existential context of performance. Such an understanding involves not only signs but also what might broadly be referred to as the structures of ‘Being-in-the-world’.Footnote ¹¹ Rather than replace semiotics as a methodology for interpreting the performance process, phenomenology supplements it by filling out the existential context and significance of the work of art.Footnote ¹²

‘Rehearsal studies’ is an emerging discipline still in its infancy and it seems difficult to provide a definitive model. As practised at the University of Sydney, it is significantly inflected by ethnographic participant observation in an attempt to grapple with the question of what is going on in rehearsal by paying close attention to the meanings made by the practitioners involved.Footnote ¹³ In this sense, it is an attempt to interpret rehearsal on its own terms.Footnote ¹⁴ Of course, there are many other types of written accounts of rehearsal: diaries and memoirs of actors and directors in productions as ‘insiders’, the recording of official elements of a production for the purposes of reproduction (think of opera productions added to a repertoire or even an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical or Broadway production), systems and manifestos for rehearsal by directors and theoretical writing about those writings by academics as ‘outsiders’, publicity material and interviews, and so on. These forms emphasize different aspects of rehearsal for various purposes. But an interpretation of rehearsal as truth-revealing emphasizes the philosophical import of artistic practice and grapples seriously with the talk of truthfulness in the rehearsal room.

What follows below is a revisiting of Brink's development process for 4.48 Psychosis described by McAuley. In many ways the workshop sought to depict consciousness itself and became an attempt at finding a corporeal, visual and visceral articulation of an intrinsically non-physical fragmented body–mind. The playtext itself ponders many philosophical issues (including the relationship between mind and body) and provides a challenging alternative to the discourses of logic, rationality and fixed meaning in language. In Heidegger's terminology, the struggle between ‘world’ and ‘earth’ – the lived experience of life and the unfathomable material ‘fleshiness’ of existence – is for this reason notably foregrounded in Brink's process. This article is therefore an additional or supplementary commentary on McAuley's ethnographic description that unpacks the philosophical side of performance-making as a process of truth discovery.

The workshop process

Working with director Geordie Brookman in 2004, Brink undertook a rehearsal workshop of 4.48 Psychosis. The workshop took place at the University of Sydney over a two-week period. I observed the process along with a small group of third-year performance-studies students, staff of the department and a number of other academic staff.Footnote ¹⁵ The resulting production of this workshop took place a few months later at the Queen's Theatre, Adelaide, after a separate later rehearsal period. The earlier workshop was thus used as an exploratory and experimental process with no urgent need for pinning down any staging ideas. While some of the actors from Brink had participated in a laboratory-style rehearsal observation some years earlier at the University of Sydney, this was the first time that the director had taken part in such a process.

4.48 Psychosis is ostensibly a theatrical exploration of a mind in the depths of despair. Indeed, it was the final play written by Sarah Kane, who committed suicide soon after its completion. This arguably adds a palpable intrusion of ‘the real’ into the piece (I recall observing a ‘feeling of heaviness’ in the air that was difficult to describe). The title refers to 4.48 a.m., where depression takes over, restful sleep is found, speech is ended and sanity visits.Footnote ¹⁶ The script contains no list of characters, locations, stage directions or even who is speaking what parts, but rather twenty-four sections separated by lines across the page. Some sections are in dialogue form (between what seem to be a psychiatrist and a patient) and others in monologue. Notably, Brink and Geordie wanted to avoid a ‘naturalistic’ representation of the text with discrete characters and ‘slice-of-life’ delivery. In a way, the task of its performance became about ‘staging consciousness’ – finding a physical and theatrical means of presenting the psychosis of a mind experiencing an awareness of its own dysfunction. Such expressions of consciousness were crucial to the workshop. Finding a concrete articulation of these states of mind led the performers to explore space, energy, speeds, words and sounds in a physical and at times emotional way.

As an ‘open text’ (offering many and varied interpretations, resisting definite meaning) the script allowed the performers to be a central site of the construction of meaning.Footnote ¹⁷ Indeed, as an actor-run company, this was one reason the play appealed to Brink. Rather than provide a definitive reading of the text, the process was very much an opportunity for the actors to explore their own consciousness in a deeply personal way.Footnote ¹⁸ Such a view of creativity was apparent both in the sensitivity in physical exercises in approaching this text and in the personal stories shared in ‘around-the-table’ discussion. A number of books and pieces of music were used as inspiration for the creative process, indicating a broader artistic approach than simple textual interpretation.

The portion of the script dealt with in the relevant part of the rehearsal here was the second section of the play:

This text offered a shared examination of consciousness in rehearsal in an embodied way. In hindsight, it is the perfect case study for my own research interest focused on theatre's power to unearth the inextricable link between self and world – as physical philosophy.Footnote ²⁰

In her article ‘Not Magic but Work’, McAuley provides a generous and insightful description of Brink's workshop, including much of the following information. The first three and a half days were spent reading the text, talking about it and drawing in the other texts that Geordie had brought in, discussing the implications of the layout on the page and staging possibilities. A significant amount of these first few days entailed participants sharing stories of experience of mental illness, depression and suicide and relating those experiences to themselves or those close to them. The intimate, frank and open discussions moved the rehearsal space into a delicate, raw and fragile place. Indeed, Geordie described the workshop as ‘an independent, safe place in which to excavate the play’.Footnote ²¹ I suggest that this metaphor of excavation is significant. In one read-through, the actors alternated lines of the text around the circle as a means of breaking up the tendency to ‘lock into character’.Footnote ²² This became a significant part of the final production where the actors delivered lines and moved around the four corners of a delineated space of performance, surrounded by their audience.

McAuley focuses on one afternoon's work on day four of the process that was essentially the first attempt of the actors to embody the text after three days of reading and discussion. The actors in this particular section of the rehearsal were Michaela Cantwell, Lizzie Falkland and Ksenia Logos. The director wanted to explore the text in a large space and then move gradually towards confinement. In the first runs ‘on the floor’ the actors spoke lines in unison (divided up beforehand). A chair was in the middle of the space, used in the doctor–patient sections. They tried a run where Ksenia was the focus of the scene whilst the other two women described her experiences. Lizzy felt that they did not have a form for the scene and that there was a danger of cluttering the stage with the movements of non-speaking actors. The chair was then removed and Ksenia moved slowly from the back of the space forwards. Importantly, Ksenia felt the impulse to speak at some points. This led into the important phase that followed.

The actors expressed dissatisfaction and reservations after each of their early improvisations inspired by the section of the text mentioned above. As a result, Ksenia suggested an exercise of ‘the impulse grid’: an exercise in which the actors were to take up positions on the edge of the space and enter it only when they felt the impulse. When in the space they were to walk, run, sit, stand or lie down according to their impulse, without being affected by the others in the group. Gradually, they were to open up their own impulses to become aware of the movements of the others. Finally, they introduced the text into the situation.

Initially, the performers stayed on the edge of the grid (an imagined square within the floor space) without taking up any of the options of the exercise. Then Lizzy ran into the centre of the space and darted back out. Michaela took a step forwards and lay down. Ksenia walked around the space looking in. Gradually, they began to pay attention to each other. The energy level increased. Their movements brought them together as they formed a line as their bodies moulded into one. From the muddled heap that collapsed onto the floor, Ksenia tried to escape, but was held back by the others. This led to Ksenia stamping on the floor in contrast to the nurturing, huddled, hair-stroking of the others. Then Lizzy darted off into a kind of play-space with Ksenia, as the two ran around the grid. And finally, Ksenia took up the script, reading the speech ‘a consolidated consciousness’. Mirroring one another, Lizzy and Michaela moved through the centre of the space and then to the rear wall with their backs to one another.

The impulse grid exercise led to trying out different forms of contact between the actors, as representations of conscious experience. Following from his earlier spatial image of confinement, Geordie suggested an image of the three actors as parts of the mind trying to hold together against a ‘centripetal force’ tearing them apart. Beginning with their arms around each other's shoulders, they changed their start position after concluding that this particular moment was to be found in the text's image of a ‘harmonious accord with friction’. Ksenia was on the ground holding Michaela by the knees, Michaela grabbing onto Ksenia by the hair and Lizzy holding both of them. Next, Geordie suggested trying a run where the energy was contained and the actors crossed over their hands so that each held each. They tried to pull apart until collapsing on the floor. And finally, the performers tried a run where their only point of contact was their hands.

A brief word on the production that eventuated from a separate rehearsal two months later may also shed some light on the dynamic creative choices made in the process. The portion of the performance corresponding to the part discussed here was markedly different. The stage space itself was a square with dirt on the ground and at this point had an empty chair in the middle. The actors twitched to the ground and scratched a box in the earth around the periphery, then slowly turned, crouching inwards, looking at each other. A scattered array of overhead lights also created some shadows and the audience were in darkness around all four sides. The beginning of the section was spoken by the male in the ensemble – Cameron Goodall (who joined the workshop later) – followed by group intonation as if a liturgical response, then rapid flicking of lines from one corner to the other, carefully rising in unison on ‘Remember the light’, and echoing one another on ‘Don't let me forget’. As if on impulse, Lizzy stepped into the square and moved to her corner before crouching and hugging her knees.

It is indeed difficult to describe adequately the improvisations in search of elusive manifestations of consciousness with such a challenging text. The fact that the exact movements from the impulse grid were not used in the final performance highlights the experimental nature of the workshop process and its many shifting possibilities of ‘truthful’ theatrical expression. If nothing else, the members of the ensemble became attuned to on another's presence with a discernible awareness of movements and words. This was certainly evident in the public performance of the piece. The energetic session of rehearsal that contributed to this attunement displayed a skilful exploration of 4.48 Psychosis using the actors’ bodies and indeed their entire beings.

In order to account for these playful explorations of states of mind, one might refer to the training of the performers, the ability of the director to identify and utilize certain images for the creation of meaning, or even luck and chance. All of these may have played a part, but I suggest that there was a tension between the irreducible materiality of the performers’ bodies and the world in which they were embedded at that moment (that space, that society, that time) that allowed such an exploration to take place. In other words, the place of rehearsal was transformed by the artistic act into a ‘world-revealing clearing’. In order to explain this assertion, I now turn to one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century and his description of creative practice as truth-revealing, which I suggest is useful in unpacking what was going on in this piece of rehearsal.

Heidegger's aletheia

Martin Heidegger's lecture series The Origin of the Work of Art reflects upon the ‘essence’ of the work of art.Footnote ²³ This may seem directly against the anti-essentialist thrust of contemporary critical theory, though Heidegger notes that it is art in general that allows the work of a specific artist in any given case. Though he does not use such terminology, he articulates a hermeneutic circle between specific works and broader understanding of what art is. As a starting point for his analysis of art, Heidegger begins with the ‘thingly’ nature of the work of art since this is what the works ‘are’ in one sense. The problem is, of course, that works of art are much more than their material support; they can function as symbols and allegories bringing meanings together over and above sheer matter. In this respect, the work of art already brings in the ‘world’ of its context that endows it with meaning.

This raises the question (Heidegger's central question) as to what ‘Being’ is. Different things ‘are’ in different ways. Things like stones ‘are’ in their materiality. Things like hammers ‘are’ in their usefulness as equipment. Things (if we can call them that) like human beings ‘are’ in that they have a world – a meaningful environment of life and caring comportment towards others in the world. The problem (in Heidegger's view) is that the history of Western metaphysics since the early Greek thinkers has caused an oversight of the distinctions between these different senses of being. Art is a thing, but it is certainly more than just materiality. And this insensitivity towards understanding the meaning of being had also been noticeable in established approaches to aesthetics – in their emphasis on the formal qualities of a work, the assessment of aesthetic properties and appeal to a privileged set of connoisseurs able to apprehend value. For Heidegger, the nature of art rests in none of these things as pure material, but rather in dynamic relationship between the work and its world. Heidegger uses three art forms to explore the nature of the work of art: painting, architecture and poetry.

First, Vincent van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes is paradigmatic of the work of art for Heidegger. Merely considering the ‘thingly’ nature of these shoes will not get at what they ‘are’: the wooden material or bast fibre from which they are made, leather soles and uppers joined by thread and nails, and so on. In a sense, the shoes are also equipment for working in the field or dancing. This materiality fades into the background when the peasant simply wears the shoes. In the painting, the shoes stand in for the ‘world’ and ‘earth’ of the worker: the environment of the peasant's toil, their daily concerns as a human being in working for sustenance in the ‘world’; as the material support by which existence is sustained in the ‘earth’. The familiar fields of labour stand out as ‘world’ and the food that allows the peasant to survive as ‘earth’. These dual aspects are supposedly present in the image of the worn-out shoes. For Heidegger, Van Gogh portrays the ‘being’ of these shoes, allowing them to be seen through interplay between world and earth. Such a ‘letting-things-be-seen’ is an ‘uncovering of being’ equivalent to the ancient Greek word aletheia, a term Heidegger appropriates as the unconcealmeant of Being. Neither the sheer materiality nor the use-context of the shoes accounts for what the shoes are. In a sense, the shoes point towards the existence and being of the peasant – much more than just matter or equipment. The artwork is the event of that uncovering.

Second, Heidegger turns to the image of a Greek temple as capturing the essence of art. The temple is a metaphor for art in its relationship both to society and to the natural world that surrounds it. As shrine the temple stands in the middle of a rock cleft valley and encloses the figure of a god. It gathers the life experiences of its society within itself (ceremonies, rites, funerals and soothsaying). As sanctuary it ‘makes space’ for the world that its people share. Yet the structure also highlights the enveloping ‘earth’ that worshippers can see from within its enclosure. The temple clears a space for the people and their gods yet is both set in opposition to and sustained by the surrounding earth. For Heidegger, truth as aletheia functions in the same way. Truth is a ‘clearing’ in which Being is uncovered. But although such a clearing allows the apprehension of ‘things as they are’, it also covers up other aspects of the being of those things. So, for example, in considering the physicality of the temple, one loses sight of its religious and social being and vice versa. On the one hand, the temple creates a clearing for the human world, yet that world is also sustained by the nature that surrounds it. So in grasping one aspect of the being of this building, another falls out of view. As Heidegger mysteriously intimates, the essence of truth is in the movement of conflict between uncovering and veiling over. To concentrate on the stoniness of the building's structure is to overlook the presence of the gods within it; to focus on the surrounding view from inside the temple overlooks the clearing space which the building itself makes possible. Yet each of these reveals the temple in its being.

One essential feature of artwork is that it is ‘created’ in one way or another. By analysing this ‘createdness’ Heidegger points to the ancient Greek term for both art and craft: techne – a bringing forth, a mode of knowing, a way of seeing what is present. For Heidegger techne is entwined with aletheia. The artist's vision is a revealing and unconcealing of things by manifesting what ‘is’. Such being is always from within the history, culture and life-world of a society.

Third, Heidegger reaches towards poetry as the essence of art. Poetry here is not simply communication, but language as an opening and a clearing for the revelation of Being. Poetry is not so much a matter of uncovering ‘eternal truths’ but a space within which Being can be made manifest. Language in this sense is a living expression of a society's understanding of itself and the world and cannot be pinned down to mere indexicality. The truth uncovered by art is always historical in that it is revealed to and by a people at a particular point in history with their customs, their way of life, their beliefs and, in short, their world. The same is true of language and poetry in that they require ‘preserving’ by the living language and society in which its words exist. Crucially, art participates in the creation of a world and a bringing together of people to witness truth in a unique manner.

Theatre space and aletheia

There are a number of ways that Brink's workshop process manifests truth as aletheia.Footnote ²⁴ Rather than interpret the material determinants of meaning in the process, I suggest that one might see the rehearsal space itself as a ‘clearing’ for existential meaning. So Brink's early script readings, where each speaker took a line of text and the next actor the subsequent line and so on, were a way of breaking the link between actor and character. In a way, the physical space of the circle of readers allowed for such a choice to arise. The embodied vocalization of the text in such a space opened up for such an interpretation. I would go even further, to suggest that the rehearsal space as a whole is akin to Heidegger's temple in that it allows ‘that which is’ to appear. From the beginning of the process, Geordie identified the workshop space as an open place in which to explore the possibilities of the text and to see them. This clearing is created in part by the words of the text that allow meanings to arise.

The rehearsal space also formed a basis for the exploration of truth by being ‘set apart’. In stepping outside the world of everyday instrumentality and involvement, the company could investigate broader aspects of existence.Footnote ²⁵ Both the studio space separated from the ‘outside world’ and the temporal space ‘set aside’ from regular life allowed such exploration. And the stylistic choice to depart from psychological realism also stepped outside any rational discourse on sanity and mental health. The choice in Brink's process to depart from naturalism ‘made strange’ the notion of selfhood and individuated bodies of the performers as played out in the impulse grid. At times, it really did seem as though all three performers were acting from the one mind.

The process also drew attention to the ‘world’ of the play as a depiction of a dysfunctional mind and the personal ‘worlds’ of the actors – evident in their accounts of encounters with suicide in their own family and friendships. On the other hand, one might argue that the fractured consciousness that is depicted in Kane's work ‘lacks’ a world or at least a world that is comprehensible in a rational or logical way. Indeed this may, to a certain extent, account for the difficulties in finding a physical expression for consciousness in the workshop. At the same time, the ‘earth’ which supports the actors’ existence was more than visible – the heavily breathing lungs, the laboured movements across the smooth floor, the wrenching force of a body to extricate itself from the rest of the group. The conflict between these two – of world and earth, of mind and body – were explicit motifs both of the text and of this particular rehearsal.

Theatre-making as existential seeing

Brink's creative process unfolded by retaining some choices while veiling over or discarding others. For example, the company's decision to work with a cast of four (three female and one male) set up certain possibilities for meanings to be uncovered in the text. This choice provoked a resisting of gender stereotypes (of the passive female patient and the active, empowered male therapist, for instance). The casting choice also provided concrete bodies to work with delimited possibilities. Having rejected a naturalistic representation of discrete characters, Brink opened up and drew attention to the physicalization of consciousness. Each exploration was ‘true’ in so far as it made certain aspects of psychic life manifest: the longing for touch and to be part of the group, the painfulness of not belonging, and the violence of trying to drag the mind into conformity and order. Each was not simply a possibility for meaning, but an uncovering of consciousness expressed in each physical image. Yet the power of Kane's text lies in contradictory rather than coherent images of psychic life.

Heidegger's account of techne as ‘seeing what is’ is helpful here. The training and experience of the workshop participants enabled them to ‘perceive possibilities’ in their rehearsal, to explore the highly abstract concepts expressed in the text in a physical and embodied way. Such an exploration involved an awareness of body and mind on the part of the actors beyond the everyday consciousness. The practitioners possessed a techne – a way of seeing what is present – a skill learnt, developed and practised. This awareness was not simply centred around ‘sight’ but was evoked through a wider sensitivity to the total human experience. In this case, the impulse grid explored a ‘consolidated consciousness’ by means of a minded-body, representing thought through touch and breath. The spontaneous movements of the actors here involved an ‘attunement’ to the possibilities of performance. In this case, as McAuley notes, the fact that the participants were a close group of actors familiar with one another's work practices enabled them to have a special dynamic for investigating the ‘consolidated consciousness’ indicated in Kane's text. Not only were the ensemble members required to become attuned to each other's experience but also the nature of this physical work required them to rethink their own seemingly transparent familiarity with the world.Footnote ²⁶ The director took on the role of an external eye focusing on the images that the actors produced to corral those discoveries together into a coherent performance text. Both Geordie and Simone, the assistant director, were able to observe the possibilities offered by the actors from the ‘outside’ and lead exercises to further those possibilities imperceptible to the actors involved in the process. In the case of the impulse grid, Geordie took the image of a group consciousness and developed it in terms of space and confinement. And such a decision shed light onto a physicalization of consciousness in those terms. The point is that the type of ‘truth’ uncovered here was not simply solipsistic, idiosyncratic or subjective – it was arrived at through intersubjective, embodied negotiation. The grid created an energized workspace of Being – not of a fixed and formulated meaning but of throwing up possibilities replete with paradox.

Performance and poetic historicality

In the same way as Heidegger sees language and poetry as housing historical Being, so too does the theatre-making process constitute a historical expression. This workshop process was ‘in and of its time’ – manipulating contemporary concerns, understandings of society and indeed artistic forms and modes of expression. All art, after all, is world-historical. This was evident in the intertextual links within the script itself, in the external sources of inspiration brought into the rehearsal and in the actors’ own lives brought to the process. In this process, the participants drew on contemporary music, training, discourses surrounding mental illness and physical means of expression in performance. In this sense, the ‘truth’ of performance is not the Truth (eternal and unchanging) but rather a truth that is situated within a specific historical period, the world-time of the rehearsal and the individuals in it. Indeed, the rejection of rationality, the challenge to psychological ‘normality’ and the refusal of fixed meaning that are inherent in Kane's text may well be characteristics of modernity.

McAuley notes that the ‘[o]bservation of the rehearsal process provides vivid insights into the dynamically shifting and contingent nature of theatrical meaning-making’.Footnote ²⁷ In phenomenological terms, this is the capacity to perceive aspects of Being unfolding throughout time. The meaning of a work of art changes throughout history as the proverbial gods leave the building and the temple decays and as the preservers of Being change or pass away. In this case, actors, as well as poets, are able to preserve truth through a sensitivity to Being, not through a museum theatre reviving the traditions of the past, but by engaging with world-historical being. Of course, in performance, there is no physically enduring structure to be laid to ruin for future generations to reflect upon. Theatre is quintessentially temporal. It brings a people together both to reveal and to create a world.

A discourse of unconcealment

On the surface, the name of the ‘impulse grid’ exercise alludes to a discourse of natural science and biology. And in a similar scientific vein, the word ‘grid’ seems to invoke a kind of Cartesian modelling of coordinates on the rehearsal space. But in practice, the work of lying down, sitting, standing or walking provided parameters within which the actors could explore ways of being together. The ‘biologism’ of impulse did not appear as a cold, detached action of cause and effect, but was founded on a ‘feeling’ when a choice was right to move or stay still. The performers would constantly comment on whether a particular run ‘felt’ good after each attempt. And with the gradual introduction of awareness and reaction to others in the space and the text of the play, the restrictions of the ‘grid’ opened up a wider exploration using different forms of expression, both physical and verbal. The human performer was never reduced to a mere ‘thing’ or ‘biological organism’. Yet the grid itself helped to focus on a small set of properties and possibilities within the initial exploration. One might even say that the earth was foregrounded and gradually was opened up to and brought in conflict with world.

In contrast to scientific connotations of the grid exercise, the workshop itself was steeped in a discourse of truth revelation – both from the workshop participants and from McAuley in her commentary.Footnote ²⁸ A group of metaphors clustered around ‘excavating’, ‘digging’ and ‘uncovering’ were apparent.Footnote ²⁹ The talk of the performers’ need to ‘go deep’ in order to discover an inner knowledge is, I suggest, ‘unconcealing’ in Heidegger's terminology. And rather than see these metaphors as incidental turns of phrase, I suggest that they reveal what the practitioners understood themselves to be doing. Such ‘uncovering’ was observable in the different ways in which the company explored meaning in the text from simply reading in a circle to structured physical improvisation. The ‘truth’ of each rested not in some objective ‘correct’ interpretation of the words accompanied by an appropriate action but in so far as the moment made a connection between the world and earth of the performance space. And the practitioners themselves were ‘perceivers’ of the truth in so far as they possessed techne – of seeing existential possibility.