Article
Breaking Free from Deterministic Reality: Theatre and Probabilistic Perception
by Roberto Prestigiacomo
IIntroduction
Theatre has long been shaped by a dualistic understanding of reality, where the external world is observed, analyzed, and then recreated on stage. In this model, the performer interprets an outside reality and presents it to the audience, either mimetically or through commentary. This paper explores a methodology that instead harvests the internal realities of the Inner World and transforms them into performance, offering an alternative approach to theatrical creation that moves beyond deterministic structures. The research grows out of more than two decades of experimentation with ProbabilisticStages¹, an approach that reconsiders theatrical space, time, and performance through the lens of our contemporary perception of reality.
Theory: The Collapse of Certainty
Newtonian determinism has shaped every aspect of Western civilization, embedding itself in our scientific, social, cultural, political, and artistic structures. Alongside Aristotelian philosophy, it has constructed the mindset through which we have understood reality, built institutions, organized society, and created art.This deterministic model has deeply influenced how we represent perception and experience artistically, making it difficult to break away from a preordained, mechanistic view of reality and respond to an emerging probabilistic paradigm. It is as if we are wearing a powerful headset that immerses us in this deterministic framework, making alternative ways of seeing hard to access.To truly engage with reality as it is now unfolding, we must remove this headset, detach from our ingrained Classical and Newtonian biases, and observe the world from a different vantage point. We need a radical shift in perception that asks us to step away from rigid structures of determinism and control and to approach reality with openness to fluidity, uncertainty, and dynamic interaction. Over the past century, reality has increasingly revealed itself as a probabilistic field of possibilities rather than a fixed, mechanical system. Stable societal structures and long-held convictions have begun to crumble, giving way to uncertainty, disorientation, and existential anxiety. Wars, economic instability, mass migrations, and global pandemics have accelerated this unraveling, exposing the fragility of social systems once assumed to be reliable. In response, contemporary society has fractured into two broad tendencies. One segment, unsettled by uncertainty, longs for the deterministic order of the past, seeking rigid structures and authoritative figures to impose stability and restore control. The other has, often unconsciously, embraced the shift toward a probabilistic reality yet remains confused, lacking the conceptual tools to understand or articulate this transformation. This divide reflects a profound existential crisis that mirrors the transition from a Newtonian to a relativistic and quantum perception of reality. Historically, we have understood the world through causality, determinism, and predictable order. Today, probability, relationality, and emergent phenomena shape our reality. Yet, most of us continue to operate as if we still lived in a fully deterministic universe, trapped in an outdated cognitive mindset. Most contemporary theatre still functions within the deterministic framework of Aristotle and Newton, even though reality itself no longer behaves in a Newtonian way. If theatre is to remain relevant and transformative, it must register the tension between our deterministic conditioning and the emerging probabilistic world. We are too deeply plugged into a manufactured perception of reality that feeds us narratives of stability, order, and control, distorting our capacity to see the world as it is. As long as we remain emotionally invested in deterministic structures, we cannot perceive the nature of reality as we currently experience it. Unplugging from rigid political, social, and historical frameworks that demand constant engagement and reactivity is essential. When our perception is tethered to prevailing discourses, we remain in a perpetual position of response rather than creation, limiting our ability to navigate and shape new artistic and conceptual possibilities. In the United States, political discourse has trapped us in the illusion that we must continually contribute to it. The current political class's overwhelming need for attention imposes its narrative upon us, forcing us to stay plugged into destructive cycles of spectacle. This addiction to political theatre deprives us of perspective and power, keeping us reactive instead of cultivating genuine artistic and intellectual autonomy. Artists must reclaim their power to shape history through their work rather than being compelled to mirror imposed realities. We must reject the expectation that artists must immerse themselves in "reality" to comment on it. Once we unplug, we can begin to perceive, observe, and explore our inner reality without the constant interference of ideological narratives in a society hooked on external validation, cause-and-effect explanations, and deterministic outcomes. From there, we can create and develop new artistic methodologies that align with the probabilistic nature of existence, moving beyond outdated forms rooted in control, predictability, and linearity.
New Tools for a Probabilistic Theatre
Once we recognize reality as probabilistic, nonlinear, and relational, we can no longer rely solely on inherited artistic methodologies; we must develop new tools that engage with probabilistic daily life. How can an actor trained in method acting, a fundamentally deterministic approach to character psychology, perform in a probabilistic, indeterminate world? How can visual artists, trained in linear perspective and naturalism, reflect a reality that behaves as both wave and particle? How can directors and playwrights create performances that are indeterminate in their very structure? Even when playwrights write plays that disrupt Newtonian order and Aristotelian poetics by playing with nonlinear time, fragmented space, and probabilistic narrative structures, these texts are usually rehearsed and staged with deterministic theatre techniques. The result is that they are pulled back into the gravitational force of Newtonian dramaturgy.Nietzsche² famously argued that modernity had "killed God" by replacing religious belief with science and technology, while society still clung to moral and ethical structures grounded initially in religion. This produced a crisis of meaning: humanity found itself adrift, without an existential framework to navigate a post-theistic world. Similarly, we have moved beyond Newtonian determinism in theory, yet continue to operate with linear structures in our social, artistic, and philosophical thinking. Nietzsche's proposed figure of the Übermensch, the Overman who generates meaning from within, independent of religious dogma, offers a helpful analogy. We now need an Überkünstler for the probabilistic age: an Over-artist who fully embraces uncertainty, fluidity, and multiplicity. This Over-artist, once unplugged from the Aristotelian/Newtonian "headset," can perceive the larger contextual shifts shaping our world and can create new paradigmatic approaches to theatre and art.
Praxis: Rethinking Performance Through the Inner World
Our immersion in daily events, media spectacles, and political dramas creates the illusion of engagement and awareness. Yet this very immersion restricts our ability to see the underlying structures that shape reality. The more deeply we invest emotionally in deterministic narratives, the more subject we become to their influence, unable to recognize their constructed frameworks. Theatre can help break this dependency by fostering a mindset that reveals rather than obscures the complexity of lived experience. This requires new methodologies in acting, directing, and design that embrace indeterminacy; a movement away from rigid narrative structures toward emergent, relational storytelling; and a recognition that art must not only depict reality, but also actively shape perception.
At ProbabilisticStages, our process of "unplugging" began with two questions: What kind of experience can we offer a community if, instead of relying on the traditional dualistic observation of reality, we create theatrical content by exploring the inner worlds of ensemble members during the devising of community-based performances? What methodology must we develop to collect, value, and transform the community's experiences, emotions, and intuitions into performance material?
This paper presents the results of that inquiry, detailing the methodology applied in two projects carried out in Sicily: Virennu Facennu (2022), developed with volunteers from the Sant'Egidio Community in Catania, and Ma Solo 36? (2023), created with graduating students from the DAMS program at the University of Palermo. These projects are part of over twenty years of theatrical and performance investigation through ProbabilisticStages. Our work embraces our contemporary, immersive, and aural reception of reality, engaging the brain's right hemisphere in perceiving a relative, relational, and probabilistic world. We experience daily life as shaped by Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, while questioning the deterministic and linear understanding of the world inherited from Aristotle's Poetics and Newtonian physics. In that traditional view, the linear progression of narrative is dictated by cause and effect, with the unity of action at the center of dramatic movement. The unities of space and time, first outlined in Poetics³ and later formalized during the Neoclassical period, became the three fundamental rules governing dramatic structure. With the advent of Newtonian physics in Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica⁴, the principle of causality was elevated to dogma. Space became an empty container waiting to be filled; time became a linear flow moving inexorably from past to future through the present. Newton provided a model in which nature functioned as a deterministic "clockwork universe," governed by immutable laws. This paradigm implied that, given a system's initial conditions, its future evolution could be predicted with absolute certainty, reinforcing the idea that nature was rational, predictable, and reducible to universal principles. Deterministic structures rooted in Aristotle and Newton have shaped theatre from its inception. In Poetics, Aristotle established the foundations of dramatic structure, insisting that a well-formed tragedy should adhere to aesthetic and dramatic unity. His emphasis on unity grows out of his broader thought in Physics⁵ and On the Heavens⁶, where change in the natural world follows a purposeful trajectory toward a final cause. In Poetics, this principle becomes dramaturgical: a tragedy is a closed system in which every event follows necessarily from what precedes it, culminating in catharsis. "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude…"⁷, an action with a beginning, middle, and end. This structuring of reality extended beyond drama. In On the Heavens, Aristotle applies the same logic to cosmology, portraying the universe as an ordered system of concentric spheres in which celestial bodies follow precise and immutable paths. Nature, for him, is designed to achieve the most optimal arrangement, with all things tending toward their best possible state. In this model, just as a dramatic plot unfolds according to necessity, the heavens operate within a self-contained system governed by intrinsic laws of motion and purpose. Aristotle's structured perception of reality shaped Western civilization for over two thousand years and continues to inform how we think, create, read, and interpret theatre today. When Newton's Principia replaced Aristotle's teleological cosmos with a mechanistic, mathematically precise framework, the linearity, unities, and deterministic approach to theatre were reinforced. Newton's three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation established a universe governed by predictable forces, in which time, space, and causality operated with absolute certainty. In Book I of Principia, Newton describes time and space as independent, homogeneous, and universal: "Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external."⁸ Similarly: "Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable."⁹ This worldview fortified the Neoclassical interpretation of the Three Unities. If the universe operated under absolute laws of motion, theatre, too, was expected to adhere to strict causal structures that mirrored this perception of reality. In the Neoclassical period, dramatists such as Racine and Corneille systematized the Three Unities into rigid conventions, echoing Newton's rationalist approach to nature. Theatre became a mechanical construct in which every action followed a necessary cause, unfolding within a predetermined spatial and temporal framework. Just as Newton's laws dictated the motion of planets, the Three Unities dictated the motion of characters and the construction of plays,a paradigm that still dominates much of theatre today.
The TransPerformance Process
In the twentieth century, Einstein's theory of relativity¹⁰ shattered the notion of absolute time and space, demonstrating that both are fluid and dependent on the observer's frame of reference. Later, quantum mechanics introduced the principle of superposition¹¹, in which multiple potential states coexist until observation collapses them into a single outcome. This led to the development of observer theory¹², which reinforces the idea that meaning and reality emerge dynamically from the interaction between observer (audience, performer, artist) and observed (performance, reality, artwork). This shift in physics parallels the breakdown of the Three Unities in modern theatre. Playwrights such as Brecht, Beckett, and Artaud rejected unified time, space, and action, instead embracing fragmented narratives, multiple temporalities, and non-linear structures. Yet, as noted earlier, we often continue to stage their work using Aristotelian and Newtonian structures. Over the last twenty years, through ProbabilisticStages, we have sought alternatives by applying the principles of modern physics directly to the theatrical process, allowing time to become a probabilistic flow.
Figure 2. Image from 14, a TransPerformance. Photograph by Siggi Ragnar, 2016.
Instead of a singular, linear progression, time in ProbabilisticStages unfolds as a field of possibilities. Scenes do not necessarily follow a fixed sequence; they emerge dynamically from the ensemble's interactions according to the needs of the performative moment. Space is understood as relational rather than absolute. Performance unfolds not in a rigid container but in a fluid environment shaped by actors' movements and the audience's engagement. Rather than a singular, preordained action, ProbabilisticStages embraces multiplicity. Emergent narrative replaces the traditional unity of action. Exploring the Inner World is one of several thought experiments in a twenty-year process of developing alternative structures that bring probabilistic theatrical life to both classical and modern texts. This exploration is part of Probabilistic Stages, a volume currently in progress, which examines how theatre can break away from deterministic frameworks. With Inner World exploration, we move beyond adapting existing texts and focus on devised performances in which the text emerges as a fluctuating matrix of images, emotions, and subconscious narratives. Through techniques such as Active Imagination and Asemic Writing, performers access deep subconscious material, allowing themes to surface organically rather than imposing a predetermined storyline. This approach transforms theatre into a dynamic field of possibilities, where meaning is continuously generated through interaction, perception, and probability. It also aligns with Jung's concept of archetypes¹³ as universal yet contextually fluid structures. Like quantum particles that do not exist in a definite state until observed, archetypal themes in Inner World exploration exist in a state of flux, shaping and being shaped by the ensemble's engagement. In what follows, we outline the methodology we have developed to generate theatrical content from this interior dimension, showing how the Inner World becomes vital and authentic theatrical material.
The Generative Process: Harvesting the Inner World
The process of gathering material from the Inner World integrates multiple creative techniques, including: Thematic and Spatial Exploration, Automatic Writing, Active Imagination, Asemic Writing, Monologue, Image and Forum Theatre, and Three-Image Workshop. Before detailing these steps, we must introduce the container that supports the process.
The Panoramic Field: A Living Archive of the Inner World
The first step is to set up a shared Google Drive to serve as the ensemble's archive. One crucial document within this archive is The Panoramic Field¹⁴, a multidimensional platform for collecting generative material, texts, images, sounds, and intuitions, forming a dynamic foundation for performance. This shared book is a living repository where ensemble members deposit their discoveries and simultaneously witness the evolving material of their peers. The platform is integral to the creative process, allowing real-time engagement with an unfolding performance landscape.
Thematic and Spatial Exploration
Every community has a preferred mode of creative expression. Thematic and spatial exploration help identify this mode rather than imposing theatre as the default or only form in socially engaged projects. In Virennu Facennu¹⁵, the ensemble was composed of women involved in social work through the Sant'Egidio Community, none of whom had prior theatre experience. Their communal gatherings often included church services, with choral moments and spoken or sung recitations forming a familiar performative pattern. We therefore structured Virennu Facennu around these forms and staged it in a church, honoring their existing expressive vocabulary. In Ma Solo 36?, our exploration focused on the dynamic interplay between the Inner World, spatial arrangement, and the evolving relationship between performers and audience. The ensemble, composed of graduating university students, was uniquely positioned to reflect on their imminent futures. We experimented with multiple spatial configurations, from traditional proscenium and thrust stages to in-the-round, black-box, promenade, and immersive site-specific settings. Without the constraint of a single venue, spatial fluidity became a key aspect of our methodology, continuously refining our understanding of how space shapes both performance and inner-world exploration. As the process moved from spatial to thematic investigation, rehearsals began with meditation. These sessions served as a bridge, helping performers shift away from the structured rhythms of daily life and into a generative realm of inner exploration. We guided them through visualization exercises beginning with an aerial view of their presence in the rehearsal space, then expanding outward toward their "safe future place",a sanctuary or emotional state associated with their envisioned future selves.
Figure 3. Image from Ma Solo 36? a TransPerformance during spatial exploration. Photograph by the author, 2023.
Each session concluded with performers documenting their experiences in the Panoramic Field. Over time, a pattern emerged: when imagination was driven solely by rational, goal-oriented methods, it tended to produce predictable or superficial material. By shifting from meditation to Active Imagination, we created a space where personal and collective themes could surface organically. The imagery from these sessions deepened the performers' connection to their narratives and inspired the ensemble to explore the fluidity of their Inner World. This fusion of spatial experimentation and inner exploration allowed us to move beyond rigid theatrical conventions and build a process that was neither fully pre-scripted nor purely improvisational, but instead emerged probabilistically from the ensemble's interactions, insights, and shared discoveries. Ma Solo 36? became a theatre of fluidity, where space, the subconscious, and the thematic core of "the future" unfolded in dynamic, relational ways.
Automatic Writing
Automatic Writing opens a path to material that differs sharply from text shaped by observation or conventional analysis. Rather than responding to external stimuli or constructing narrative through deliberate logic, automatic writing offers an unfiltered stream of expression that is symbolic, abstract, and often archetypal. Unlike traditional writing, which is subject to self-censorship, logical sequencing, and intentional meaning-making, automatic writing bypasses these filters. The result is unpredictable, raw, and emotionally charged text that captures nuanced internal states and unconscious associations. It invites interpretation and contemplation and reflects the world as it is felt. Because the process unfolds without predetermined rules or structural constraints, it encourages the emergence of experimental forms, unconventional narratives, and ideas that might never surface through conscious planning alone.
Active Imagination
Active Imagination functions as a kind of quantum field, where multiple storylines exist simultaneously before being actualized in performance. Adapted from Carl Jung's work, it is a core technique in our creative process,a portal into the artist's dormant creative potential. Jung presents Active Imagination as a fundamental method for engaging directly with the unconscious, particularly in The Transcendent Function¹⁶ and The Red Book¹⁷, where he describes it as a bridge between conscious and unconscious processes that allows fantasies to emerge spontaneously and take form. We incorporated our own version of Active Imagination to harvest the richness of subconscious imagery for performance creation. Through practice, we discovered that it can produce both epic journeys and small, whimsical explorations, all unfolding behind closed eyelids. It became a field of potential encounters, a probabilistic, fluid landscape of dreams, fantasies, transient images, and spontaneous visualizations that contains immense emotional, creative, and intellectual material. In rehearsal, actors found a comfortable position and closed their eyes. Each session began with quiet attunement, letting images arise without forcing meaning or structure. They witnessed and followed these images as they appeared, evolved, dissolved, and transformed, actively engaging with the narrative emerging behind their eyelids. After each journey, actors recorded their experiences in the Panoramic Field, describing what they saw without interpretation or commentary. This preserved the raw essence of their experiences and maintained the imagery's symbolic potency before external analysis could dilute it. Over time, recurring patterns and symbols appeared, echoing Jung's archetypes of the collective unconscious¹⁸. Active Imagination thus generated material and revealed shared subconscious narratives within the ensemble, reinforcing the idea that theatre is not just an external construct but an emergent reality born from collective Inner Worlds. By allowing performance material to surface from subconscious exploration rather than from predetermined narrative, we moved toward a theatre discovered in real time.
Figure 4. Asemic Writing sample during Ma Solo 36? a TransPerformance—photograph by the author, 2023.
Asemic Writing
From the term asemic, meaning "without specific semantic content," Asemic Writing is an open vessel for subconscious thought. It produces visual metaphors, coded expressions of emotions, thoughts, and spiritual insights, that transcend conventional linguistic articulation. In dialogue with the other generative tools, Asemic Writing becomes central to harvesting material from the Inner World and translating it into performance. It engages both the intentional kinesthetic movement of the hand and the spontaneity of unfiltered feeling and thought. The seemingly random lines, shapes, and curves that emerge on paper are not meaningless; they are maps of an inner terrain too elusive or complex for straightforward verbalization. These inscriptions become a bridge between the personal and the collective, allowing subconscious imagery to take fluid, intuitive form beyond the limits of ordinary language.
Figure 5. Asemic Writing sample during Ma Solo 36? a TransPerformance—photograph by the author, 2023.
The process unfolds in a calibrated sequence. Immediately after Active Imagination and Automatic Writing sessions, when the subconscious is fully engaged and imagery remains vivid, actors enter a timed Asemic Writing session. This happens in two phases: a ten-minute free-writing exploration, during which performers allow their pens to move instinctively without imposed structure, followed by fifteen minutes dedicated to "translating" and completing the signs that emerged. This time-sensitive approach preserves the urgency of subconscious communication, keeping impressions immediate and unfiltered rather than over-analyzed. The atmosphere of the moment is crucial. The previous exercises work as a mental and emotional tilling, loosening the soil of the subconscious so that Asemic Writing can take root. The ensemble's writings often reveal recurring patterns and themes, resonating with Jungian archetypes and shared subconscious imagery appearing across participants. Asemic Writing generates raw material that can be incorporated visually, physically, and thematically into performance.
Monologue
Crafting a monologue marks a transition from deep immersion to contextual reflection. Here, the performer engages with their creative archive, drawing from the vast material generated during harvesting. The monologue is an exercise in curation. No new words are introduced; performers must work exclusively with the texts, images, sounds, and moments that have already surfaced. The monologue resists conventional dramatic unity. It can be a field of feelings, thoughts, and images, free from linearity, causality, or the demand for narrative cohesion. It becomes a contextual reflection of the performer's subconscious journey, a distilled articulation of inner landscapes. Once completed, these monologues are read aloud to the ensemble, transforming inner material into shared experience. This reading allows the group to recognize thematic resonances, recurring motifs, and subconscious interconnections across their work. Throughout the process, we move between deep immersion in the creative moment and stepping back to perceive the work as a whole. Drawing on Jung's Red Book, Pollock's all-over painting, and Stein's landscape theatre, the Panoramic Field makes this oscillation possible. Immersion unlocks raw material; contextualization reveals meaning by placing individual discoveries in a broader creative landscape where meaning emerges through relationships. Just as quantum mechanics suggests that observation affects reality, witnessing and organizing one's creative output alter its significance. The Panoramic Field provides this reflective space, allowing performers to see their work as part of a living artistic process. Within this context, the monologue functions as a moment of synthesis, where deeper connective patterns become visible.
Image Theatre and Forum Theatre
Inspired by Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed¹⁹, Image Theatre and Forum Theatre link inner exploration with external social engagement. These techniques allow performers to embody abstract concepts, oppression, transformation, and hope through physical images and improvisation, shifting from verbal discourse to embodied storytelling.This stage of the process marks a crucial shift in perception, moving from visual and linguistic engagement to a more tactile and kinesthetic experience. By leaving verbal analysis behind and entering full-body exploration, we activate the brain's right hemisphere, which supports holistic thinking, spatial awareness, and contextual perception. Unlike the left hemisphere's structured logic and linguistic orientation, this mode fosters nonlinear, intuitive engagement. Narrative, space, and emotional resonance become fluid and expansive, and meaning emerges through body, movement, and shared spatial relationships .As a result, theatre stops being a mere representation of reality and becomes an active sensory reconfiguration of it.
Figure 6. Body Sculpting Exercise during Virennu Facennu, a TransPerformance. Photograph by the author, 2022.
We began by introducing body sculpting. Each performer first created an individual posture representing their current emotional state. Then, in pairs, they sculpted that feeling onto one another. The goal was to let actors experience how the body becomes a vessel for emotion, sensation, and abstract ideas. The ensemble was then divided into small groups and asked to create images reflecting their project's social and thematic focus. In Virennu Facennu, the prompt was "Oppressive Catania." In Ma Solo 36?, the actors visualized "The Future Now."In the first stage, each group had 4 minutes to create a still image in silence, using only their bodies to represent the oppressive nature of their experience. Every member had to be physically involved. In the second stage, they created an Ideal Image symbolizing a future without oppression. In the third stage, they created an Intermediate Image that bridged the gap between the oppressive and the ideal. Unlike the first two phases, which were entirely nonverbal, this intermediate stage allowed spoken discussion. Over fifteen minutes, groups explored various configurations of the in-between state, often provoking conversations about the forces of change, obstacles, and latent possibilities. These images were then documented in the Shared Book.
Figure 7. Image Theatre during Ma Solo 36? a TransPerformance. Photograph by the author, 2023.
Building on these three images, each group developed an improvised short scene that integrated dialogue, relationships, and movement while preserving the essence of their images. These scenes were then presented to the ensemble using Forum Theatre. In Forum Theatre, spectators can intervene in the action, stepping into roles to test alternative strategies and outcomes. As scenes unfolded, actors could stop the performance, replace a performer, and propose a different path to address the conflict. This practice allowed the ensemble to experience the tension between "what is" and "what could be" through embodied experimentation. The discussions that followed were vigorous as participants grappled with power, agency, and transformation. Traditionally, Boal's methods reveal and challenge oppressive structures in the external world. In our adaptation, Image Theatre and Forum Theatre also act as portals into the Inner World, enabling performers to explore both the social forces shaping their lives and their internal responses to those forces. Through this process, the ensemble learned that transformation is simultaneously internal and external, and that theatre can be a space where reality is not only represented, but rewritten.
Three Images Workshop
Figure 8. Images from the Three Images Workshop during Ma Solo 36, a TransPerformance. Photographs by the author, 2023.
In the final phase of harvesting material from the Inner World, each performer selected three images from their Asemic Writing or Image Theatre sessions. These images were arranged in a sequence chosen by the performer, allowing subconscious material to take narrative form while preserving its symbolic density. The Three Images Workshop generated additional material for the Panoramic Field, expanding the collective archive of imagery, text, and movement. The selected images were compiled into a shared database, creating a dynamic reservoir for further narrative and performative development.In this exercise, actors first described their three images objectively, focusing solely on what they saw, not what they thought it meant. Even in this seemingly neutral mode, symbolic significance emerged, especially when images were juxtaposed with others generated in the same period. This confirmed our sense that meaning in theatre often arises through relational fields of images, gestures, and subconscious associations. By this point, a shared symbolic language had formed within the ensemble. The group had cultivated an internal mythology in the Panoramic Field, a familiar terrain of emotions, symbols, and themes that transcended individual experience .The Three Images Workshop solidified this foundation, creating a bridge between raw subconscious material and the TransPerformance process, and ensuring that the final work remained grounded in the ensemble's lived and imagined realities.
TransPerformance Creation Process
By the end of the Inner World exploration, each project's Panoramic Field had expanded to over 150 pages of text, images, drawings, videos, and soundscapes produced during the process. This vast creative platform became the foundation of Virennu Facennu and Ma Solo 36?. From this collection, we began a distillation process, shaping the material into performances that preserved its fluid, organic origins. We divided the 150 pages into three Canti. The most symbolic and abstract material became Canto Tre, the most realistic became Canto Uno, and the liminal material between them formed Canto Due. This structure allowed the work to move from grounded reality into heightened symbolism, reflecting the psychological and emotional depth of the ensemble's journey. The ensemble was then split into three groups, each responsible for one Canto. Their task was to reduce an average of 7,000 words to approximately 2,500, using only the existing material. They were free to rearrange, restructure, and recombine the text to create a distinct flow, but they could not introduce new language. In the next phase of our TransPerformance work, we aim to expand the methodology to integrate the diverse materials generated during the exploration fully. The goal is for the final performance to become not simply a textual distillation but a collapsed field of interconnected text, images, movement, video, and sound that reflects the full depth of the ensemble's Inner World. By the end of this process, each Canto acquires its own identity, and together they form a collective performance that embodies the ensemble's shared exploration and the collapsed meaning of its discoveries. This evolution of the TransPerformance method ensures that the final work is an emergent composition, honoring the process of discovery while creating a layered, immersive theatrical experience in which meaning is relational, fluid, and dynamically shaped in real time.
Conclusion: The Collective Resonance of the Inner World
Our method of harvesting the Inner World began as a deeply personal exploration in which each performer confronted their subconscious landscapes, unearthing fears, hopes, and desires that initially appeared solitary and internal. However, once these discoveries were shared within the Panoramic Field, a powerful realization emerged: these emotions and themes were not isolated. They resonated across the group. This recognition generated a profound sense of connection, transforming individual introspection into shared understanding. As ensemble members recognized common emotional threads, the process fostered a heightened sense of belonging, reinforcing the idea that personal struggles, aspirations, and uncertainties are part of a broader human experience. This collective awareness created strong internal solidarity within the ensemble and became the foundation of the TransPerformance process.When this cohesive ensemble encountered the audience, the resonance of their shared experience extended outward. The performance space became more than a stage; it became a relational field where audience members could recognize fragments of their own Inner Worlds in the unfolding action. The immersive and participatory nature of TransPerformance invited spectators to step into this shared emotional terrain, engaging not as passive observers but as active participants in a communal exploration of meaning.
Notes
1. Roberto Prestigiacomo, “ProbabilisticStages,” accessed 02, 12, 2025], https://www.prestigiacomo.org/.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1995).
3. S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art: With a Critical Text and Translation of the Poetics, 4th ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1951)
4. Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte, 1st American ed., rev. and corrected, with a life of the author by P. W. Chittenden (New York: Daniel Adee, 1846)
5. Aristotle, Physics, trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, The Internet Classics Archive, accessed 01, 20, 2025, http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/physics.html.
6. Aristotle, On the Heavens, trans. J. L. Stocks, The Internet Classics Archive, accessed 01,20, 2025, http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/heavens.html.
7. Aristotle, Poetics, 1450b
8. Newton, Principia, Scholium, I, Book I
9. Newton, Principia, Scholium, II, Book I
10. Albert Einstein, Hermann Minkowski, Meghnad Saha, and Satyendranath Bose, The Principle of Relativity: Original Papers (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1920)
11. Erwin Schrödinger, “Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik” (The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics), Naturwissenschaften 23 (1935): 807–12.
12. The concept of the "observer" in quantum physics is most closely linked to the Copenhagen interpretation, primarily formulated by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in the late 1920s. Key ideas were published in various papers during that time, particularly in Zeitschrift für Physik, where Heisenberg introduced the uncertainty principle in 1927. Consequently, the foundations of observer theory emerged within this context, with its earliest formal articulations appearing in publications from this period.
13. Jung, C. G. 1991. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. 2nd ed. Collected Works of C.G. Jung. London, England: Routledge.
14. See a sample of The Panoramic Field created with the Generative Process. Here is evident the visual and metaphorical impact: https://www.academia.edu/107944540/Libro_Comune_Ma_Solo_36
15. See the performance text of Virennu Facennu. The text was developed through the Generative Process. This text is comprised only by the Inner World Explorations.
16. C. G. Jung, “The Transcendent Function,” in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 8: Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 67–91.
17. C. G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus, ed. Sonu Shamdasani, trans. Mark Kyburz and John Peck (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009).
18. Jung, C. G. 1991. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. 2nd ed. Collected Works of C.G. Jung. London, England: Routledge.
19. Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. United States: Theatre Communications Group, 1985.