Short Note on Process:
The challenges that we bring to the stage are universal: from dealing with loss to the numerous struggles with identity; from the yearning for love to the desire to control one’s environment. We use the public forum to explore these struggles. As we see it, the theatre is a place where the public comes together to witness life. By applying our collective awareness on performers as they navigate through our stories, the public is witness to the process of transforming ignorance into awareness (“you can’t un-see what you’ve seen”). When the witnessing public is engaged in the process, then they too may experience a change in consciousness along with the performers onstage.
Our lives appear to us as stories. These stories are mysterious and complex. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are what hold us in place and separate us from each other and the world, and they are what bring us together. As entertaining and exciting as a story may be, it still remains that story is the source of suffering and joy. STO Union brings our stories to the point of disintegration, revealing what lies behind narratives: space void of content*. In a sense, STO Union’s work is both a new beginning for the theatre and also its demise, as we see the theatre as a place which says it all.
Our plays are best approached moment by moment, they are live, and that is a nice place to be.
*(suggested reading on this topic: *The Empty Space” by Peter Brook)