How does paratheatre differ from improvisation?
Paratheatre is not ‘improvisation’ as commonly defined by traditional theatrical conventions. Paratheatre does not depend on the energy or cues of other participants to motivate action, expression, and characterizations. Instead we access energy sources in the body itself — currents of impulses and natural rhythms — as resources for animating presence, movement, action, and vocalization. The initial results of this approach are often convulsive, chaotic, and unpredictable. As one advances in this work, this initial phase — of liberating the stream of impulses — enters a distillation phase where the raw sources of vital energy are tempered towards greater clarity of form, articulation of gesture and transmission of its living presence through actions, vocal creations, and sometimes story. The asocial nature of this paratheatrical work differs from social and theatrical conventions defined by the interpersonal objectives of wanting things from others. Our aim is to accumulate enough
