Richard Garcia(VII)

In 2002 Richard Garcia earned a BA in Psychology from Minot State University where he wrote for the campus newspaper, produced a show on the campus TV channel, hosted a campus radio show and was on the football team. Later that year he began studying Acting for the stage under Dr. Tawyna Pettiford-Wates at Seattle Central Community College and with her troupe 'The Conciliation Project'; Dr. Pettiford-Wates work with (TCP) began by exploring a deconstruction of the archetype Uncle Tom from Harriet Beecher Stowe's controversial novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." She taught and created performances using the Ritual Poetic Drama process, during this process Garcia studied voice under Andrienne Wilson and David Duvall as well as dance with Anita Kuroiwa & Kabby Mitchell 3rd. The Conciliation Project is now in West Virginia and exists with its own history and process pulling from energy developed in Seattle back in 2001.

Ritual Poetic Drama is the methodology used in creating the plays. The Ritual which is a series of activities designed to foster an atmosphere of trust allowing for the willing participation of each individual in facilitated and guided journeys where the participants enter into an "altered" state of consciousness. The journey's purpose is to engage the inner creative content of the participant in order that unconscious, blocks and barriers that serve to inhibit and prohibit the artists 'ability to be vulnerable can be broken down. Through these facilitated and guided journeys the artist/participant LIVES in moments and re-visits events that we call Rite of Passage Moments. After each journey there is an immediate series of writings and "sharings" that are created and publically presented for the community at large. The Poetic: is the imagery, the music of the story. The poetic uses the infinite power of WORD imagery through the rhythm, rhyme and the poetry of language with its multiple meanings and messages. It must be spoken with passion and power. Drama: is the essence of the story and it is the story itself. "The story is impelled by the necessity to reveal itself; a story has nothing to hide (at least not intentionally.) There is no resolution to a story. The aim of the story is revelation and, that occurs in each of us in what we make of the questions with which the story leaves us." (James Baldwin) what we are looking for is revelation.

In 2006 Garcia began a documentary project titled businmotion, in this he converts a retired school bus to operate on Waste Vegetable Oil and solar panels at Frybrid in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle Washington. www.businmotion.webs.com After this exhaustive process Garcia briefly lived in Harlem to work with and learn from Richard Foreman, founder of the The Ontological-Hysteric Theater located in the historic St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery of NYC's East Village neighborhood. Foreman founded this theater in the 1960's "-with the aim of stripping the theater bare of everything but the singular and essential impulse to stage the static tension of interpersonal relations in space. The (OHT) seeks to produce works that balance a primitive and minimal style with extremely complex and theatrical themes." His use of theater and film in combination is something I will never forget, The theaters websites Mission statement reads "Foreman's trademark "total theater" unites elements of the performative, auditory and visual arts, philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature for a unique result. Foreman's style is not meant to be 'cerebral', but rather, the density of his compositional theater is an attempt to viscerally reflect and process everything that he has inherited from his explorations in twentieth century thought and art. Foreman engages in what the poet John Keats famously described as "negative capability" - i.e. "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." He seeks to make work that unsettles and disorients received ideas and opens the doors for alternative models of perception, organization, and understanding. Of course as times, technologies and experiences change, strategies must shift as well. In 2005 Foreman began a second chapter in his work with the introduction of the digital video and film media as dominating forces in his redefinition of ontologically hysteric theater."

Since that time Garcia has been on many fascinating movie sets and looks forward to future creative projects. In 2016 Garcia began studying at 'The Film School' in Seattle, this includes script development under Screenwriter & Director Brian McDonald; as well as Advanced Acting & Directing under (TFS) Founder & Emmy Award Winning Actor Tom Skerritt.