In the fall of 2018, Alejandro Tomás Rodriguez—actor, musician and member of the internationally recognized trio Engine, and currently a visiting professor at UNM—introduced a series of singing encounters called Coming Alive through Song, which he described this way in an invitation: “Coming Alive through Song is a cycle of singing sessions open to all. . . . In these encounters, we will dive into a fluid interaction of song, movement, and rhythms rooted in Afro–Latin American traditions, as well as spirituals and shouts from the Deep South of the United States. Part of the day will be dedicated to physical work: exercises of synchronization and reaction contained within a structure that unfolds through different rhythms and games.”

These encounters have continued, and with his return to Albuquerque for the spring semester, they are about to begin again. Rodriguez, who will colead the sessions with collaborator Lloyd Bricken, shared his thoughts about the nature of these encounters, their objective, and their provenance in an interview reproduced here in an edited version, along with a promotional video, details about the upcoming sessions, and a brief profile of Rodriguez’s professional background.

MS: What exactly is Coming Alive through Song? Is it a workshop, a practice, an encounter?

ATR: Our background is a theater background. But we belong to a current of people [who] are not totally fulfilled in theater. We perceive a sort of lack of something in our lives, and so we are searching for this fulfillment. Yes, we are artists, and we have artistic needs, but also we are human beings and have human needs. These human needs are related to touch something special in your life, something that is not conditioned by the context, is not conditioned by right or wrong, something that when you touch this moment, you feel a kind of full presence. You feel that your perception is direct. . . . This is, I think, what we are searching for. It’s a seeking process. We are trying to create the context to coming alive.
            Yes, it’s a workshop in that we are working, and there is an exchange of things that we know and things that we don’t know. It is an encounter. It is a practice, too. But if I should define it, I would say that with these encounters, we are looking to create a space in which people who are participating in it can connect with each other, not through words, not through brains talking, but with something else that is talking within us, between us. . . .

MS: How do the singing and the songs make this bridge?

ATR: Collective singing these old traditional songs from different parts of Latin America. [They] are perfect tools for providing these connections in which there is not much explanation. We are just singing and reacting to what is happening in the song.

MS: What is happening in the songs?

ATR: Well, sometimes you can get so happy that you perceive that you don’t inhabit anymore in the limits of your body. It’s very subjective, but it’s very palpable. Anybody can perceive this in someone else or in oneself.

MS: I’ve seen and experienced this in the sessions. It’s a very interesting experience.

ATR: “Experience” is the right word—and how do you experience that? Through your senses, through the body. This kind of context [i.e., Coming Alive through Song encounters] would not exist if that experience was more often in our life. Because that is not the case, we need imperatively, mandatorily to create a context in which we can live in a full way at least for a few seconds.
            You know, our social mask—no, not mask—our social presentation to other people, which is very, very important, it also becomes a wall, a separation between us and the other. . . . So when you start to question how you function and how you behave, question in the sense of observing it . . . we have the chance to pass through this wall.
            In moments of intense happiness, joy, there is not such a thing. You are not describing right or wrong, what to do—“I should do this. I should do that.” No, in these moments, there is a suspension of that. . . . It is as if a door of perception is opened, and there, whomever does it is an invitation to everybody to get through this door.

MS: That’s a door I’ve seen and written about in Engine performances and at Omar Sosa concerts and others, where suddenly, we are all in a very different space together—transported into a different reality. It’s like a window opening, and we are invited to pass through that aperture.
            So where and how did this practice of Coming Alive through Song develop? I know that, in part at least, it comes from the travels of Jerzy Grotowski, the theater director and theoretician, who extensively researched the musical traditions of various cultures.

ATR: Yes, musical and ritual traditions. . . . It’s a current of work, it’s a practice that, of course, Grotowski has refined, refined in the sense of shaping it. He was searching different places and different traditions for tools of inner transformation. He was, in my view, trying to insert this research in the West, because in the East, it is more common to find practice of inner transformation, or inner development. . . . So what he was trying to do, in my view, is to create a space hidden to the eyes of the mainstream theater or art [world], but to have an underground research, and to see if this kind of research can be developed. And he did it, and still it’s alive. . . . They are carrying on this work that has a leg in theater and a leg in this practice of let’s call it inner transformation, inner exploration, inner development, where you somehow work to tune your perception, to perceive in a more subtle way. . . . This is a kind of river, a kind of practice that comes one leg into the theater, one leg into other parts of the arts and in society.

MS: Which is why Coming Alive through Song invites everyone to participate—not just actors and musicians.

ATR: You know, for us, the question is how to create this space where we are. . . . This work is not just for actors. We are not aiming to connect with only artists. We are aiming to connect with whoever has this need. But we are actors and musicians. We are performers. So we are putting out the word there. . . . But if you feel in your life something is missing, come. Maybe you can find it here.
            You will not learn how to be a better actor, but you will learn something about acting, and you will learn something about your behavior and thinking process. And you will learn something about many other people, and this will not be spoken. You will just perceive it being present there. You will learn how to be fully present while in connection with someone else.
            But yes, the requirement is not [that you must be] an artist or an actor or a student. But we will sing, we will dance, we will work physically, we will be sitting on the floor, we will be sitting on chairs. We will be working with some texts, reciting some texts, doing scenes.
            I don’t know where all of this is going, and that is very good news. We are going toward someplace that nobody knows what this place is, because it depends very much from the people who are coming. But the thing that we know is that this space should be nourished, should be created, should be supported. The space, which means the walls that contain the space, the floor, the roof, and mainly the people who work in this space. That should be nourished, developed. More people should come. . . .

MS: Why call-and-response songs?

ATR: There is an intentionality when we look for call-and-response songs. . . . The call-and-answer, you can find it nowadays in every kind of music. Even in concerts with Engine, I feel how we can connect with people when they sing along with us. It’s an attempt to be in the same moment doing the same thing together. Breathing together. It’s a very weird thing. We are doing something that never happens by itself in our life. We never speak or do exactly the same at the same time for extended periods of time. You know? It’s actually the opposite. We are always going in many different directions. So somehow this alters our quotidian way of living.

Alejandro Tomás Rodriguez
A native of Rosario, Argentina, Alejandro Tomás Rodriguez trained as an actor at the Escuela Provincial de Teatro 3013 in Rosario and completed his graduate studies in Academic Actualization in the Theory of Art. As a circus artist, he specialized in slack rope technique from 2003. In Rosario, Rodriguez created and was a member of several theater and circus groups. He began directing in 2004. In addition to his performance work, Rodriguez founded and edited Señales en la Hoguera: Theater Retrospective Magazine, which researched the history of Argentinean theater groups and directors.
           Searching for a deeper training in theater art, Rodriguez found his way to the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Pontedera, Italy, becoming a member of its highly selective Open Program in 2007, and training and performing at the Workcenter for eight years. There, he met and worked with Robin Gentien, with whom he founded the band Engine, and Lloyd Bricken, who will colead the Coming Alive sessions in Albuquerque.
           In 2016, Rodriguez moved from Italy to Buenos Aires to work as artistic director of the actors’ team Casa Talcahuano. The same year, the team presented their first work, Oda a los Desterrados (Ode to the Outcasts), directed by Rodriguez, and created multiple innovative teaching programs that led to the performative structure The Invisible Mountain.
           A visiting professor in the 2018–2019 and 2019–2020 academic years at the University of New Mexico, Rodriguez has been invited to join the faculty as a tenure-track member in the fall of 2020.

Coming Alive through Song
Led by Alejandro Tomás Rodriguez and Lloyd Bricken
UNM Theater Department
Hartung Hall, Room 104
2414 Central Ave. SE
February 15–16, 22–23, and March 7–8
10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
For more information, please email comingalivealbuquerque@gmail.com.

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© 2020 Mel Minter