by Susan Merson, Producing Artistic Director

NY Theatre Intensives, www.nytheatreintensives.org.

Transformation is carrying a pretty heavy load these days. It’s a buzz word for the everyday work of showing up for ‘now’. But maybe its not transforming—changing– but rather becoming more who we are—being– that is what we are after.

As an artist in my wisdom years, my job continues to be that of constant clearing of debris and receptor attunement. This work allows me to go deeper and access more resonance in the simple present moment rather than climb new transformational mountains. The artist’s journey is a passionate rush at truth so specific that it opens channels and, through practice, keeps them open. Thought vacates and “being” in the moment of the work, (the true moment of our present lives), takes over automatically. Soon, we are allowing more than creating, effort is replaced with the ease of breath and wonder of deep listening.

Here’s how I track the artists path, the circular alpha/omega. The artist finds himself in a five dimensional pedagogy.

The first dimension is of a single solo dot. We perceive ourselves as alone, unique, in that no one else experiences what and how we see the world. Yes, this is a truth, but how long can this single perspective remain vital and alive?

The 2nd dimension arrives. We have a realization that our singular experience is enhanced and deepened by encounter, which pushes us toward a need to fulfill its volume.

We have traveled from the single solo, through an encounter with other that changes and affects us and now demands manifestation in the third dimension. Things are palpable here, interaction leads to growth and a flowering of a vision.

This third dimension is where many live. For many, this is as good as it gets and no need to open any more channels clogged by ego and belief systems to something greater than ourselves. But, this is where the artist begins to differentiate himself. Here he begins to intimate that there is more to his mission, his full expression than just the brush against simple reality that creates an object, a static and knowable experience.

Soon, the artist, having enhanced his receptors and continuing his work on this path, begins to recognize that he has access to more. The artist brings down associative experience that has been created by his two dimensional interaction with life and his three dimensional interaction with creation. The resonance of three dimensional creations begins to pulse and the artist cannot ignore the truth that something bigger than his own specific and singular experience is feeding the manifestations of his work and life.

So, the work continues, the breathing increases, the channels become more relaxed and as the artist continues his work of manifestation in the third dimension, he begins to access more than his own vision. He realizes that the more complete the creation in the third dimension the more it is being fed by the etheric storehouse of fourth dimensional shared experience.

The fourth dimension is the repository of all the choices we did not act upon. The knowing that allowed us to make something real, the fuel for the tools with which we create. Here is the gateway to understanding that there is more than us alone.

Then our work is really buzzing, truly alive with our energy and an increasing understanding that we, the artists, are not the only Creators involved in this process.

Inexorably we move forward, we sand the corners to get them right, we sing the song in another key, we access experience and wisdom and begin to gain humility for the journey.

And then ‘consciousness’, and ‘energy and flow’ resonate as true. All those fourth dimension facts and fancies support that third dimensional creation. it is now soaring and taking on a life of its own. And that is where the fifth dimensional access becomes clear.

This fifth dimension is the playground of Divine Spirit, or the Great Access Point; the embrace of everything that is nothing. The embrace of that which carves out the story in its unique truth. Words and concepts are left behind and there is a unity recognized, a deepening expansion that holds all dimensions and understanding that all dimensions are pathways to the divine. There is a circularity to finding truth. We are the truth. We have everything we need as artists, as human beings. We need not transform, we need rather to “be” more and more deeply. To keep clearing out the channeling systems connecting us to the larger and larger truth of what is. Alpha and omega.

This is the work we engage in as artists and specifically as theatre artists at New York Theatre Intensives, a program I have created with the specific intent to enter the cycle of the creative process and in clarifying, modeling and teaching the creative process, we bring us all more present into the expansive moment