C. U. T. University Theater Center of Perugia
The Psychonautical Way
project to edited by Roberto Ruggieri

I know that, following "psychonautical" paths as is my specific and established practice, one must abandon oneself "serendipitously" to the unknown and enigmatic course of events, letting oneself be guided by the spectacle as it unfolds, by the evanescent signals emanating from its soul. "Serendipity" is the term with which Eugenio Barba defines the technique of finding what one does not seek. For me, it is an integral part of "psychonautics," it has to to do with the integrity of the individual.
A performance lives thanks to many roots, some visible, some unknown, to sometimes they enigmatically conceal themselves even from the eyes of the agent subject himself and, accompanying him, in the form of mysterious insights, throughout the creative journey, inscrutably trace his in many ways occult and mystical journey. I could say that we have measured ourselves against our tedium, against the evil of living, stubborn to wanting to understand in an absolutely pure way the intimate and occult reason of things, to the very last, and beyond, aware of the impossibility of grasping the divine meaning of life, with our reason wanting to catch the mysterious shadows of life, as it pierces us with thoughts.
In our "static drama" a maiden watches motionless herself, before dissolving at dawn. She prepares to to live, unseen; she is born when she is at the end. She spends this space of time speaking occult truths to try to escape, to prove herself alive, to resist Destiny. She lives the space of a night and to believe herself real she is obliged to to speak and to tell herself. Our challenge: to create and propose an implausible and improbable 'static drama' through a path of knowledge, gnostic I would from say, as it is not only mental, but of integrity, before to waking witnesses (the 'pisciaturi').
This became the slender narrative thread that guided us in the dark, from above: our story to posterior.
We allowed ourselves to be guided in our psychonautical explorations by the reptilian and limbic part of the brain, as if searching for a hidden and unknown object with metaphysical gestures. Thus the score was defined.
On Emanuela's organic and personal actions signals and clues emanating from my 'black holes' were inserted. In this sense it can be said, with Pessoa, that 'we have been acted out' from ourselves, as if thoughts were suggested to us from time to time, 'slaves to the multiplicity of ourselves,' even though we are aware that we will die sick from not being able to express ourselves. This is all part of 'serendipity' and 'psychonautics'. The performance becomes from itself, follows its own path from us only favored, unknown even to itself: its mystery echoes beyond us. We have surrendered to her with confidence, trusting fully in our intuitions (from intus, 'within,' to meaning 'understanding coming from within'), "in the deserted plains of the soul," intuitions born as "acts of intellectual magic," on the instinct of intelligence, "but without the employment of intelligence, in a fourth dimension of the mind," "psychically besieged in our Hell." To live is not to think. The complete man is the man who ignores himself. Deepening ourselves, we multiplied ourselves.
We ended up dreaming our own dreams, trying to "abdicate to ourselves," turning ourselves into literature, inventing spiritual companions, writing with the soul "as if it were ink," not pretending to be argonauts of exhausted sensibility, but trying to "communicate , false pontiffs, with the Other World of ourselves," trying to decipher the ineffable enigma of life, pregnant with meaning, trying to clear some of the misty confusion that shrouds, I believe, the Destiny of us all, between souls and stars, through the forest of fears... We presume to sense within us, we say this with much secular caution and some reluctance, a single faint certainty that has emerged from our psychonautical and esoteric explorations: there is indeed an inner place, within us, exactly at the center of us, where everything goes to to end, from where everything about us comes from, and where we do not know what happens there.
This is the true seed of our searches, it is the true source that has directed us on our journey, moved by the breeze of the search for our shadow.
Roberto Ruggieri

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