♪
>>Participants! 
Ready.
Bring it!
>>The premise of this piece
is to look at the ways that debate has devolved. 
We now occupy a time and space
where communication has devolved
to a strategy of proving oneself right.
>>It’s because we fight with words
that we can’t actually come to the table
prepared to have a productive debate
about our differences.
>>And I knew there was potential
in enacting a series of workshops
with four divided groups
that we read as divided around a central issue, 
as gun violence.
And bring them to a moment of reckoning
to debate one another without using words.
I saw this game
that seemed to be the most primitive of sports
in the ways that was orchestrating violence
for the sake of violence.
>>The sport that he researched
was this Renaissance game called “calcio storico,”
and it’s continued to be played in the present day.
It involves four teams
from four different civic locations
They dress up in costumes,
and there is fanfare, flags, and music.
>>I started decoding some of the body language.
And it seemed to me
that the ways in which verbal communication was failing
had a direct thread
to the ways in which these bodies
were attempting to completely suppress
and defeat and destroy one another.
The four different groups that I worked with
were military veterans,
police officers,
a group that I started to describe as
“citizens impacted by street violence,”
and finally, a group that I coined
“recreational users of firearms.”
>>Shaun has taken these groups
through a series of workshops
over the course of three months
training them in methods
of expressing their thoughts and feelings
through movement.
>>And so that’s what we want to target,
that’s what we want to always go back to:
what are the ways
in which my body has learned
to respond to conflict,
to confrontation?
What I’d like you to do
is just approach us slowly
and stand about four inches away.
To me, the work is in having an individual and a group
start to negotiate
how they even perceive someone as opposite 
before encountering that person.
That is where the real work happens.
Can anyone describe what was happening in their bodies?
>>Very, very uncomfortable for me,
like I feel my body getting hot.
>>Hands get sweaty, OK.
>>You know like, 
when you in a certain predicament, 
those are things that happen. 
>>Right.
>>But I know this is, like,
it’s nothing really happening.
We are doing this is safe and calm.
>>But still 
>>But it still happening.
>>It still starts to activate in your body.
>> Yeah.
I only met him once,
but at the same time,
it’s like, all my preconceived notions
whether it’s his skin color, his nationality, etc . . .
>>. . . all start to surface?
>>Yeah, all start to surface.
>>What about it was awkward?
>>Trying to stare at each other right directly in the eyes.
>>OK, ’cause I noticed that you both made that decision.
>>And so what I really wanted to do at that point
is have them read each other’s bodies,
using the advantage of that dynamic 
that’s already in play between groups
that have an affinity with one another, 
so that they more carefully read the potential 
of what is conveyed through the body.
>>I am a performer
and I am very comfortable going into myself
and going into dark places, if I need to go to dark places.
Shaun, you know, he breaks it down
to really physical sensations in your body.
What have you been trained to do?
How does your body react to fear?
I’m learning to center myself,
and look at that person, and really read that person.
>>So, in this event,
these two lines will quite literally,
at the initiation of the event, collide.
Meaning that I engage you
and I’m going to provide a gesture. 
And you’re going to have to,
based on who you perceive me to be,
respond accordingly.
Now, it’s easy when there is already something,
some type of relationship, in the middle of the two. 
But what if it’s a complete stranger?
What happens if you have to make all those same choices
to someone who you perceive as other?
And not only one person
but members of three other groups?
That’s when it starts
to really question your own perceptions of yourself
based on who’s in front of you.
>>And then when you meet,
you’ll have to go through a few decisions.
Now those decisions
will always be framed by three different choices.
The first one being mirror,
shatter,
or deflect.
Now again,
give me something in the way
that you’ve expressed loneliness in your own life. 
What has your body done?
OK, easy, right?
If I mirror that,
I can decide
I’m going to be with him,
right? 
We’re moving it along the same way. 
Or I might choose
to actualize the thing 
that maybe is causing him to feel this way—
shatter. 
Or I might decide
I don’t want this to go this way at all. 
I might just do something like this. 
Maybe that sort of starts to change the gesture
and gives it a different meaning.
This is where all three options
of engagement
will be at your disposal. 
Now what’s going to happen here
is that I’m going to offer a word.
This side is going to be asked to internalize that word.
And what I’m going to ask you to do
is create an image,
or create a frozen gesture,
that communicates that word.
Kneeling on one knee—good.
Hands up—that’s an interpretation. 
Head down—really important. 
What’s happening?
>>He’s looking down?
>>He’s looking down, yes.
What’s happening here?
>>It’s definitely a loved one.
>>A loved one, OK.
Did this person do something wrong, then?
>>It’s a “I’m sorry.”
>>OK. 
What did he do wrong?
>>It was emotional
because some of the stories
that we were forced to look in 
and dig up—
they were issues
that we probably adequately have not dealt with
on a personal level. 
Most of the times, we feel,
“No one knows my story, 
and they will not understand,” you know. 
But that’s not necessarily true
because they knew, 
and they knew that gesture, 
and they felt it.
>>When a person starts to really observe themselves
in remembering a moment of sadness, 
or reembody a memory of tragedy or conflict—
that there is some just-human place
that is universal,
that has nothing to do with a group affiliation. 
My point of view is
that someone can hold onto their identity
and absolutely be entrenched in their belief systems
and still be in communication with someone.
But it’s those spaces that we’ve not learned to create.
>>He was very clear from the beginning to us
and the participants
that he needed an element of secrecy
an element of the unknown to be part of the project,
that he did not want people coming in
knowing who the other participants were.
>>Words and appearances,
that’s what clouds our minds. 
Because when you strike that all away
and you go into basic nonverbal communication,
the commonality of man is found.
>>The performance itself was set up
as through a series of questions, 
and those questions defined the reality,
the world as we know it.
>>Left: yes. Right: no.
Do you feel American?
>>It was an attempt
to have four groups 
be divided into two lines of combatants
simply based on how, 
as individuals for their first time,
they would connect to a series of questions
that would, for the first time, 
place gun violence in the center of the room. 
>>Left: yes. Right: no. 
Do you believe in the right to keep and bear arms?
>>Left: yes. Right: no.
Have you ever lost a loved one to gun violence?
And I can just remember seeing the waves of movement
and not really being able to clearly understand it
as a person being able to see it right in front of me.
And so we had members of each group on both lines.
And while the piece was incredibly quiet,
and you can hear a pin drop in the arena,
I saw everything from
real aggression
to the melting of two bodies in sadness
and everything in between.
>>I hope that this project 
will make us rethink assumptions 
that we make about people
and question reality more
in a way that the media 
or the sort of state of dialogue and discourse in the country
is tending to shut things down,
and tries to put people in boxes,
and define things very clearly. 
And those definitions are totally false, 
and people have a lot more in common with each other
than they think they do.
