Streaming file 1 (approximately one hour and 12 minutes), May 22, 2023. Ruth Zaporah speaks with Sarah Hickler about growing up in a Jewish family in a multicultural area of Baltimore, Maryland, including the origins of her name Ruth Zaporah Glick and of the names of her brother (Daniel Lazar Glick) and mother (Ethel Himmelfarb); her family's music-filled home including how even as a very small child she would move to the music; her first dance classes, when she was three or four at Miss Pims; in high school, attending dance classes after school at the Peabody Institute [of Johns Hopkins University]; how she ended up at Wheaton College in Rhode Island; forming a dance group with other students and discovering an affinity for modern dance; at age 19 marrying her brother's best friend and moving with him to the U.S. Army base in Albuquerque (New Mexico), where he was stationed; having left Wheaton after two years, eventually matriculating for her third year at University of New Mexico; her dance teacher at the University [Elizabeth Hannah Waters]; touring with her in New Mexico performing a mix of modern and Native American dance; after returning to Baltimore with her husband, being hired to teach at Towson State Teachers College and at Goucher College; her experience teaching actors at Towson including how it differed from her experience teaching students at Goucher; an anecdote about Tony Montanaro's advice to just pretend to know what she was doing; how searching for her own physical voice led to her teaching improvisation to the students at her open classes; (very briefly) ending her marriage of 12 years; getting her undergraduate degree from [Johns] Hopkins University; the circumstances that led to her moving with her three children to the Bay Area in 1969; how she was affected by the book Autobiography of a Yogi [by Paramahansa Yogananda, 1964], which had been a gift from her father; how upon visiting a Zen center for the first time she felt an immediate affinity for the Zen aesthetic and started her lifelong journey in Zen Buddhism; the effect of having suffered from eczema from childhood until she was around 34 on her and her family; her parents' support for her and her brother's creative life; her childhood and adolescence as having had both a dark side and a light side including her belief that having a dark side is requisite to a rich life; more on her early improvisation classes in Maryland; in Berkeley (California), forming Berkeley Dance and Gymnasium with Al Wunder and Terry Sendgraff, including its immediate success in attracting students; also doing shows with the singer Rhiannon; the effect on her of seeing a performance by the The Blake Street Hawkeyes (a trio of male actors from the Iowa Theater Lab); subsequently collaborating with Bob [Robert] Ernst, one of the three, for 25 years, doing shows in the Bay Area; their collaborative process; the three elements of successful improvisation that she tries to instill in her students; her collaboration with Ernst as having been essential to making Action Theater what it is; more on her father and mother; reasons she would never label herself an artist; establishing her own studio after having left Berkeley Dance Theater and Gymnasium but prior to meeting Ernst; more on the partnership with Ernst including what she considers the requisites of an effective partnership; the process by which, working alone in Ernst's studio, she gained confidence in using her voice on stage; the open-ended and raw nature of their shows; reasons she called her post-Berkeley Dance and Gymnasium work Action Theater; working with and training a group of students in their twenties who, after 30 years, still work with her; in the 1980s beginning to teach [improvisation] in other countries; teaching and doing shows with Rhiannon including how this gave her confidence in her singing; how working with Rhiannon and Ernst greatly expanded the parameters of what she could do; searching for something deeper when she was studying modern dance in college; more on the Blake Street Hawkeyes including her reluctance to be part of a group; more on the influence of Autobiography of a Yogi; her experience in Nepal where she studied Tibetan Buddhism; physical theater improvisation as a space where everything is happening and nothing is happening; more on her immediate affinity for Zen Buddhism; continuing her meditation practice ever since, including in the Bay Area and at Naropa [Institute] where she roomed for many years with Nancy Stark Smith; reasons she is not [involved] in the Buddhist community today; her comfort with her life as an isolate in New Mexico these past 22 years; the concepts of now and of the absence of mental clutter as the philosophy of Buddhism and as the guiding tenet of improvisation.
Streaming file 2 (approximately one hour and 26 minutes), May 22, 2023. Ruth Zaporah speaks with Sarah Hickler about the extent to which she was aware of World War II as a child and its impact on her family; how the stories told by a concentration camp survivor at an otherwise joyous family gathering affected her; the role of religion in her childhood; more on her father and mother including how they influenced her; her brother; her belief that gaiety and humor are essential to teaching; how the improvisation practiced by Al Wunder at Berkeley Dance and Gymnasium differed from the improvisation at Action Theater; more on her early days in California including her transition from Berkeley Dance and Gymnasium to her own studio; her practice of correcting rather than criticizing her students; her occasional performances with Al Wunder; Rinde Eckert and their show Nomad Mad; a second collaboration [Dangeroulette, in October 2014], at Roulette [in Brooklyn. New York], that was completely improvised; her plan to perform with Bob [Robert] Ernst for the first time in 22 years after her move back to California; her playing the harmonica, especially on tour; her experience at Naropa Institute including how it was satisfying in various ways; her long friendship with Nancy Stark Smith including their sharing of shows at Naropa; how she managed taking care of her children while working and traveling; her tours with Rhiannon, among others, to the Balkans in 1990 and in 1994; her visit to refugee camps during the 1990 trip including the refugees' eagerness to talk about their experiences; how hearing these stories informed a show she later performed in Boston (Massachusetts); make-believe (as opposed to her personal life) as how she describes the content of her improvisations; the roles of the fairy and the engineer in her work including her identifying the engineer and the fairy as herself; the relationship between power (of the body and mind) and the content of a performance; her process, prior to performance, by which she reaches a state of nothing; how, out of this nothing comes the something that determines the content of her performance; the mantra she imparts to her students: knowing where they have been determines where they are going; how she feels about her practice including her gratitude for the support she has received throughout her career; consciousness of aesthetics as a through line in her life; her stress on skill and her highly-developed sense of aesthetics; the congruence of her daily life and her work.
Streaming file 3 (approximately one hour and 13 minutes), May 24, 2023. Ruth Zaporah speaks with Sarah Hickler about her interest in Buddhism and Eastern practices initially sparked by the book Autobiography of a Yogi; her experience attending a two-week workshop in the Arizona desert with a Huichol shaman (Jaichima); more on her time at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and Elizabeth Waters; more on the shaman; her experience traveling up and down the Orinoco River with her three sons; her trip to Cuba including her traveling around the island to hear different drummers; timing (the relationship between pauses and actions) as the most important element of her work [vocally demonstrates what she means by this; also demonstrates the use of different volume levels]; how she came to meet Janet Adler, who invited her to join the workshop with Jaichima; her admiration for the discipline required to practice Authentic Movement; reasons she does not include contact improvisation in her practice and does not allow contact in her classes; the difficulties experienced by her son Eric and her daughter Emily during the first year of desegregation in the Berkeley schools; her book [Action Theater: the improvisation of presence] including its wide use in classrooms; her second book entitled Improvisations on the edge; the challenges of aging as a physical performer including the difficulties she had on a recent foreign trip and her canceling of a teaching residency in Estonia; how her son Zachary has helped her; the reasons she moved to New Mexico; her house and studio in Santa Fe; reasons she is moving back to Berkeley, where she will be living with her son Zachary; her contentment with living in solitude much of the time; her love of her families, which include both blood and non-blood relations and have different places in her psyche; the stories behind some of the items in her house; more on Bobby [Robert] Ernst and their plans to perform together in Berkeley; the intimacy she feels with Ernst; this intimacy as a requisite for her to perform with another person; how Action Theater and her performing before an audience have profoundly informed and added another dimension to her life.