The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography

by Alejandro Jodorowsky

  Just then, I was surprised to see a luxury car arrive, its seats covered in leopard skin. The chauffeur, wearing a blue Hollywood-style uniform, entered the house and inquired after me. I presented myself, covered in flecks of paint. “Monsieur Maurice Chevalier wants to speak with you.” I followed the chauffeur, stepped into the Rolls Royce, and found myself face-to-face with the famous singer, who at that time was already over seventy years old. “The impresario of your trio, Mr. Canetti, who is also my impresario, recommended you highly to me.” (While working with Marceau, I had made a foray into the music hall, directing a group of singers called the Three Horatios.) “I would like you to help me improve the gestures in my songs and put on a couple of comic pantomimes. I am returning to the stage after a long break, and I want to surprise the audience with new things. If you are a true artist and not a house painter, come with me.” I took a moment to say goodbye to Julien, Amir, and the owners of the house, who, open-mouthed, watched me depart for good.

  For a month, the old celebrity came three times a week to my staff quarters, two meters wide by three meters long, where we rehearsed with great discipline. Canetti, for his part, told me a secret: “Chevalier is already passé. His success does not interest me; I believe it impossible. Instead, I know a great young musician, Michel Legrand: I’m going to take advantage of the show to launch him. I’m hiring a one-hundred-piece orchestra, something never seen before. It will be an absolute triumph. He’ll fill the Alhambra Theater. I’m asking you to accentuate his presence with your staging.”

  I set up the hundred musicians on a wide staircase, forming a wall at the bottom, each wearing a suit of a different color in order to reproduce a painting by Paul Klee. Legrand was dressed in white. His arrangements of popular melodies were truly outstanding. But he, his hundred musicians, and the monumental sound of the instruments, were all overshadowed when the old man entered, dressed as a vagrant, with a red nose and a bottle of wine in hand, singing “Ma pomme.” It was a delirious success! So much so that the show, which had been expected to stay in theaters for a month, kept running for a year. The theater was renamed the Maurice Chevalier Alhambra. The singer rented an apartment across the street, so that every day he could look at the huge illuminated letters of his name.

  From that moment on, I never ceased my theatrical and poetic activities. To relate everything I experienced during those years would be a subject for another book. Because Marceau’s sign holder had fallen ill he asked me, as a special favor, to replace him for the tour of Mexico. I did so. I fell in love with the country and stayed there, founding the Teatro de Vanguardia and putting on more than a hundred shows over the course of ten years. We worked with the greatest actresses and actors of the day; we premiered works by Strindberg, Samuel Beckett, Ionesco, Arrabal, Tardieu, Jarry, and Leonora Carrington, among many others, as well as the works of Mexican playwrights and my own works. We adapted Gogol, Nietzsche, Kafka, Wilhelm Reich, and a book by Eric Berne, Games People Play, which is still being performed today, thirty years later, and for which I had to assert myself, fight against censorship, and at one point even spend three days in jail. Some of my performances were shut down; at others, members of the extreme right wing stormed the theater, throwing bottles of acid. I had to flee in the dark, hidden in the back of a car, to avoid being lynched when my first film, Fando y Lis, premiered at the Acapulco Film Festival. Gradually, between successes, failures, scandals, and catastrophes, a profound moral crisis was demolishing the fanatical admiration I held for the theater. Theater, as a profession, is characterized by a display of those vices of character that people who are not artists do their absolute best to conceal. The egos of the actors are displayed in full view, without shame, without self-censorship, in their exaggerated narcissism. They are ambiguous, they are weak, they are heroic, they are traitors, they are faithful, they are stingy, they are generous. They fight for recognition; they want their name to be bigger than everyone else’s and to be at the top of the poster, over the title of the work. If they all earn the same salary, they demand that an envelope be slid into their pocket containing a few more dollars. They greet each other with great embraces but say horrible things about one another behind each other’s backs. They try desperately to get more lines; they steal the scene by stealthily calling attention to themselves. They are full of pride and vanity but also have no security in themselves, they want to be the center of attention, and they never stop competing, demanding to be seen, heard, and applauded at all times, even if they have to prostitute themselves in commercial advertisements. They only know how to talk about themselves, or about humanitarian problems such as a famine, epidemic, or genocide if they happen to be the lead promoters of some superficial solution. To increase their popularity they pass themselves off as devotees, tagging along with the pope or the Dalai Lama. All in all, they are adorable and disgusting, because they show in full daylight what their audience keeps hidden in darkness.

  The cast of my theatrical work Zaratustra (Mexico, 1976). From left to right, back row: Henry West (musician); Héctor Bonilla (actor);Mickey Salas (musician), with his son; Carlos Áncira (actor); IselaVega (actress); Jorge Luque (actor); and Álvaro Carcaño (actor), with his son. Front row: Luis Urías (musician); Brontis Jodorowsky; Valérie Trumblay (in her womb, Teo Jodorowsky); El Greñas (seller of programs for the play); Alejandro Jodorowsky with Axel Cristóbal Jodorowsky; and Susana Camini (actress), with her son.

  I wondered, Would it be possible for the theater to dispense with the actors? And, Why not the audience? The theater building seemed limited, useless, outdated. A show could be created anywhere, on a bus, in a cemetery, in a tree. It was useless to interpret a character. The person acting—not an actor—should not be putting on a spectacle to escape from himself, but to reestablish contact with the mystery within. The theater ceased to be a distraction and became an instrument of self-knowledge. I replaced the creation of written works with what I called the “ephemeral.”

  During the performance of Zaratustra in Mexico, with Fernando Arrabal and the Zen master Ejo Takata. Photo: Hermanos Mayo.

  During a performance an actor should completely melt into the “character,” fooling himself and others with such mastery as to misplace his own “person” and become another, a character with concise limits, made from sheer imagination. In the ephemeral, the acting person should eliminate the personality and attempt to be the person he is playing. In everyday life so-called normal people walk around in disguise, playing a character that has been inculcated by family, by society, or that they themselves have fabricated: a mask of pretense and bluster. The mission of the ephemeral was to make the individual cease to play a character in front of other characters, and ultimately to eliminate that character and suddenly become closer to the true person. This “other” who awakes amidst the euphoria of free action is not a puppet made of lies, but a being with minor limitations. The ephemeral act leads to the whole, to the release of higher forces, to a state of grace.

  Without my realizing it, this exploration of the intimate mystery was the beginning of a therapeutic theater that ultimately led me to the creation of psychomagic. If I did not imagine this at the time, it was because I thought that what I was doing was a development of theatrical art. Before happenings began in the United States, I put on spectacles that could take place only once; I introduced perishable things like smoke, fruit, gelatin, the destruction of objects, baths of blood, explosions, burns, and so on. Once we performed in a place where two thousand chickens were clucking; another time we sawed through a double bass and two violins. I proceeded by searching for a place that someone would let me use, any sort of place, as long as it was not a theater: a painting academy, an asylum for the mentally ill, a hospital. Then I persuaded a group of people I knew, preferably not actors, to participate in a public presentation. Many people have an act in their soul that ordinary conditions do not allow them to carry out, but under favorable circumstances they rarely hesitate when offered the opportu
nity to express what sleeps within them. For me, an ephemeral had to be free to attend, like a party: when we staged them, we did not charge the guests for food or drinks. All the money I could save was invested in these presentations. I would ask the participant what he wanted to expose, then give him the means to do so. The painter Manuel Felguérez decided to slaughter a hen in front of the spectators and do an abstract painting on the spot using its guts, while at his side wearing a Nazi soldier’s uniform was his wife Lilia Carrillo, also a painter, who devoured a grilled chicken. A young actress who later became famous, Meche Carreño, wanted to dance naked to the sound of an African rhythm while a bearded man covered her body with shaving cream. Another woman wanted to appear as a classical dancer in a tutu without underwear and urinate while interpreting the death of a swan. An architecture student decided to appear with a mannequin and beat it violently, then pull several feet of linked sausages out from the crushed pubic area. One student came dressed as a university professor carrying a basket full of eggs and proceeded to smash one egg after another on his forehead while reciting algebraic formulas. Another, dressed as a cowboy, arrived with a large copper basin and several liters of milk. Lying in the container in a fetal position he recited an incestuous poem dedicated to his mother as he emptied the milk bottles, drinking the contents. A woman with long blond hair arrived walking on crutches and screaming at the top of her lungs, “My father is innocent, I am not!” At the same time she took pieces of raw meat from between her breasts and threw them at the audience. Then she sat down on a child’s chair and had her head shaved by a black barber. In front of her was a crib full of doll heads without eyes or hair. With her skull bare, she threw the heads at the audience, screaming, “It’s me!” A man dressed as a bridegroom pushed a bathtub full of blood onto the platform. A beautiful woman dressed as a bride followed him. He began to fondle her breasts, crotch, and legs, and finally, getting more and more excited, submerged her in the blood along with her ample white dress. He then rubbed her with a large octopus while she sang an aria from an opera. A woman with a great deal of red hair, pale skin, and a gold dress that clung close to her body appeared with a pair of shears in her hands. Several brown-skinned boys crept toward her, each one offering her a banana, which she sliced while laughing out loud.

  Smashing a piano on Mexican television, in 1969.

  Destruction and restoration of a piano.

  All of these acts, these true delusions, were conceived and realized by persons considered normal in real life. The destructive energies that eat away at us from the inside when they are left stagnant can be released through channeled and transformative expression. Once the alchemy of the act is accomplished, the anguish is transmuted into euphoria.

  The ephemeral panics were conducted without publicity, with the place and time given out at the last minute. On average about four hundred people would attend through this system of word of mouth. Thankfully, no articles about them were published in the newspapers. The government’s office of performances, headed by an infamous bureaucrat named Peredo, exerted an imbecilic form of censorship. In one theatrical work I was forced to hide a character’s belly button. In another, the actor Carlos Ancira wore a cape with two balls about the size of soccer balls hanging at the bottom; the troublesome civil servant considered them too suggestive of testicles and made us remove them. Thanks to the discrete and free nature of our ephemerals, we were able to express ourselves without any problem. The reaction was very different when I was invited to perform one on national television.

  My work in the Teatro de Vanguardia had drawn the admiration of Juan López Moctezuma, a writer and journalist who was the host of a cultural television program. He had been given an hour of airtime without any commercials because an American TV series that attracted the majority of viewers was on at the same time on a different channel. Juan asked me to do whatever I wanted during those sixty minutes. I concentrated deeply, then knew precisely what ephemeral act I wanted to perform: what I had hated most, back in my dark days, was my sister’s piano. That instrument, smiling sarcastically with its black and white teeth, showed me that Raquel was my parents’ favorite child. Everything was for her, nothing for me. I decided to destroy a grand piano on camera. The explanation I gave to the public on this occasion was the following: “In Mexico, as in Spain, bullfighting is considered an art. The bullfighter uses a bull for performing his work of art. At the end of the fight, when he has expressed his creativity by means of the bull, he kills it. That is to say, he destroys his instrument. I want to do the same thing. I will put on a rock concert, then I will kill my piano.”

  I found an old grand piano in the newspaper classifieds that was within my price range and had it sent directly to the studio where the cultural program was filmed. I also hired a group of young amateur rock musicians. When the broadcast began, after reciting my text I gave the order for the group to start playing, pulled a sledge hammer out of a suitcase and began to demolish the piano with great blows. I had to use all my energy, which was augmented by the rage that I had built up over so many years. Smashing a grand piano to pieces is not easy. I progressed slowly but incessantly in the demolition. The few spectators called their family and friends. The news spread like an uncontainable flood: a madman is smashing a grand piano with a hammer on channel 3! After half an hour, most Mexican viewers had switched from their favorite programs to see what this strange man was doing. The phone calls rose in quantity from one hundred to a thousand, two thousand, five thousand. Parents’ groups, the Lions Club, the minister of education, and many other notable entities protested. How dare this man destroy such a precious instrument before the eyes of so many poor children? (At that hour, the children were asleep.) Who had allowed this scandalous act of violence to be shown? (The American program being aired at the same time was a bloody war show.)

  By the time I finished my work, lying amidst the rubble with a couple of pieces on top of me in the shape of a cross from which I extracted a few plaintive notes, the scandal had reached national proportions. The next day, all the newspapers mentioned the ephemeral. I had stripped Mexican art of its virginity in a brutal manner. I was admired for my audacity while also considered a cursed artist. Satisfied with the enormous notoriety I had achieved, I declared that on the next program Juan López Moctezuma would interview a cow to show that she knew more about architecture than university professors. The television station declared that this program would not take place, because “no cows are allowed in the studio.” I answered, “That is not true, many cows perform in the soap operas.” There was a fresh scandal in the press. The students of the School of Architecture offered me their department’s amphitheater in which to interview the cow. I arrived there, in front of an audience of two thousand students, along with my cow, which a veterinarian had previously injected with a tranquilizer. I presented the animal with its rear, which I compared to a Gothic cathedral, facing the public. The interview lasted two hours with the laughter growing and growing, until a group of burly employees arrived to tell me, and my bovine companion, to leave that honorable place and never return.

  Ephemeral Panic (Paris, 1974). Bathing the father (dressed as an enormous old rabbi) with a liter of milk before castrating him.

  These ephemerals showed me the enormous impact that they could produce, much greater than conventional theater. In those formative years I believed that in order to change the collective mentality I had to attack the fossilized concepts of society; it did not occur to me that a sick person needs to be healed, not assaulted. I had not yet conceived of the social therapeutic act.

  After returning to Paris I met with Arrabal and Topor, and for three years we attended meetings of the surrealist group. Breton, a few years before his death, old and tired, was already a supreme pontiff surrounded by untalented acolytes who were more concerned with politics than with art. It was then that we founded the panic group. We opened it with a four-hour ephemeral that I have described in another book. This show end
ed a stage in my life. In it, I was symbolically castrated, had my head shaved, was whipped, opened the belly of a huge rabbi from which I extracted pork offal, and was born through a huge vulva into a river of live turtles . . . I came out of it sick, exhausted, and anemic. Despite its success—Plexus magazine called it “the best happening Paris has seen,” and the beatnik poets Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso praised it and included it in their City Lights Journal—I was not satisfied. I saw the specter of dark destruction prowling about me and felt more than ever that theater must go in the direction of light. In search of positive action I abandoned all exhibitionist theatrical activity, with its desire for recognition, awards, reviews, and mention in the media, and began the practice of theatrical advising.

  Ephemeral Panic (Paris, 1974). The “ furies” use scissors to cut me a suit made of raw beef. The meat was later fried and served to the audience. Photo: Jacques Prayer.

  Ephemeral Panic (Paris, 1974). One woman dressed as the moon and another dressed as an executioner shave my head on stage. There is a viper on my chest. Photo: Jacques Prayer.

  Ephemeral Panic (Paris, 1974). I submit to torture in order to rid myself of my physical narcissism. The executioner whips me until I bleed. Photo: Jacques Prayer.

  If someone wanted to express his psychic residue, the serpents of shadow that gnaw at him from within, I would communicate the following theory to him: “The theater is a magical force, a personal and nontransmissible experience. It belongs to everyone. If you simply decide to act in a different way from how you act in everyday life, this force will transform your life. Now is the time to break away from conditioned reflexes, hypnotic cycles, and erroneous concepts of the self. The literature devotes a great deal of space to the theme of the ‘double,’ someone identical to you who gradually expels you from your own life, takes over your territory, your friendships, your family, your work, until you become an outcast, and even tries to kill you . . . I am here to tell you that in fact you are the ‘double’ and not the original. The identity that you think is your own, your ego, is no more than a pale imitation, an approximation of your essential being. If you identify with this double, as ridiculous as it is illusory, then your authentic self will suddenly appear. The master of the place will be restored to its rightful position. At that moment, your limited ‘I’ will feel persecuted, in danger of death, which indeed it is—because the authentic being appears by dissolving the double. Nothing belongs to you. Your only possibility of being is by appearing as the other, your profound nature, and eliminating yourself. This is a holy sacrifice in which you will give yourself entirely to the master, without fear. Since you live as a prisoner of your crazy ideas, your confused feelings, your artificial desires, and your useless needs, why not adopt a completely different point of view? For example, tomorrow you will be immortal. As an immortal, you get up and brush your teeth, as an immortal you get dressed and think, as an immortal you walk around the city . . . For a week, twenty-four hours a day, and with no spectator observing it other than yourself, be the man who will never die, acting as another person with your friends and acquaintances, without giving them any explanation. You will become an author-actor-spectator, presenting yourself not in a theater but in life.”