Malin B. Erikson

This dissertation explores the concept of the actor's presence in the context of Western actor training and performance driven by physical and psychophysical practice. Drawing upon published texts on and by Constantin Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov, Jerzy Grotowski, Ariana Mnouchkine, the author argues that learning through both physical and psychophysical actor training is central to the understanding of presence. Using the framework of 'embodied cognition', the writings of Margaret Wilson's theories of 'cognition is situated' and 'cognition is time-pressured', and personal experience, the author explores how human beings perceive the world in relation to body, mind, environment, and time. The author demonstrated how qualities of 'embodied cognition' relate to the work of above practitioners and presents the possibilities for the actor to grow, regardless of which tradition they work within. This demonstrates the weight that physical and psychophysical approaches have in contemporary actor training when searching for presence and how these two approaches can be incorporated into Wilson's theory of 'embodied cognition'.