Physical Theatre

Lorenzo Mango, Studing acting during avantgards age. Some methodological
issues
The avantgard theatre of 1900 has changed completely the theatrical style,
counterposing the concepts of representation, the mise-en-scene and the
centrality of the literary text.
According to that, the concept of acting has changed deeply. New scenic
conditions didn't consider as important the problems connected with acting
a specific character and two new phenomena were born such as the change
of position of acting and the improvement of it.
The former considers the work of the actor as a physical action during the
development of the stories, not contemplating his interpretation of a
specific character. The latter is referred to the insertion of non-theatrical
phenomena in the world of acting such as dance, happening and
performance.
The main point of these procedures is the centrality of the presence,
considered as the most important thing concerning the actors.

El presente trabajo procura una revalorización del teatro de César Vallejo y de su estética teatral (tal y como aparece El arte la revolución) a partir de situar correctamente su obra dentro de los parámetros de teatro político y soviético del momento. Vallejo, como Piscator, Meyerhold, Maiakowski, Mishon y otros autores de teatro revolucionario, presentan un proyecto ideológico y estético paralelo en el que la nueva estética proletaria supere a la burguesa. En esta estética es fundamental el uso de la nueva cinematografía, el documento, la “Biomecánica”, la coreografía armónica y una concepción escenográfico-espacial constructivista. A la par, este artículo adelanta que, desde el Instituto del Teatro de Madrid, nos encontramos en un proceso de realizar una edición de los textos teatrales en francés que incluya los tachones, enmiendas y correcciones. Esta edición podría beneficiarse de ser planteada a partir de los presupuestos de la crítica genética de modo que se deje a las claras el proceso de composición del autor y que permita una mejor fijación del arquetipo de unos textos de tan complicada transmisión.
Palabras clave: César Vallejo, Teatro soviético, proletariado, revolución, filología, ecdótica
Keywords: César Vallejo, Soviet Theater, Proletariät, Revolution, philology, textual studies

Abstract: In keeping with the auto-ethnographical approach (as postulated by Mitra (2010) and Spry (2001)) this paper strives to frame physical actions as expressive performance narratives in my own work as part of contemporary South African theatre. I aim to do so through ...

Viewpoints are a structural approach to both training and devising. Originating from the innovative, inventive and exploratory approach of Mary Overlie and the self-confessed scavenger approach of Anne Bogart, Viewpoints offers a practical philosophy of working. As a training approach it begins with a disciplined engagement of the body in space and time; yet it similarly generates spaces for both invention and innovation and for scavenging, appropriating and adapting. The tangible elements of Viewpoints provide a set of tasks on which the student can focus, thus freeing the imagination and spirit to improvise. Yet at the same time the systematic logic of Viewpoints supports young makers to begin to question their perception, invest in creative practice that demands action and exploration, and to deconstruct, re-organise and rebuild scores and sequences in the pursuit of theatre that is visceral and visual. Examining ways in which embodied engagement in training in tandem with the multiplicity of subject positions of observer/participant/creator/reflector/director/composer/actor are utilised and accessed the essay discusses undergraduate training in Viewpoints with particular interrogation of the demand on non-dancers in the embodied learning of a movement/structural system within the university context.

An extended conversation hosted by Amy Russell with fellow guides of Embodied Poetics : Kamili Okweni Feelings; Aurelian Koch; Lazlo Pearlman; Norman Taylor; Ed Woodall; Jonathan Young

This is an extended conversation about a shared project of canonical intervention, the new London-based training organization, Embodied Poetics, specializing in the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq, Jacques Copeau and Suzanne Bing”. Seven pedagogues, all of whom have completed a two-year, Lecoq-based pedagogy, and hold a significantly different embodied positions vis-à-vis each other, discuss their pedagogic practices, invoking notions of physical and dramatic neutrality, aesthetic permanence, archetypes of gender and character, and a eurocentric map of theatrical territories.

The aim of this dissertation is to provide the reader with a clearer picture of the interplay between the sociocultural and psychological factors that contribute to the development of eating disorders, and to suggest that theatre – and in particular physical theatre and clowning – could offer some valuable support to other forms of therapy in helping eating-disordered people address the issues that are at the root of their problematic relationship with food and body.

*HONORABLE MENTION FOR THE BIENNIAL SALLY BANES PUBLICATION PRIZE

Why theatre and dance? Making a compelling case for the significance of resisting genre distinctions in the arts, Kate Elswit demonstrates why and how the interdependence between theatre and dance needs to be understood as the rule, rather than the exception. This illuminating text focuses on the interconnected ecosystems of practice that constitute performance history, the expansion of theatre and dance forms on contemporary North American and European stages, and the disciplinary methods that scholars use today to understand such practices, both past and present.

“The book was excellent ... If you work in a department of Theatre and Dance and you have an annual department retreat, I do think everyone should buy this book and read it and talk about it together.” —On TAP Podcast

“A brilliantly lucid account of the tangled histories and contemporary partnership of theatre and dance.”—Susan Manning (cover blurb)

“The ideal guide to the complex entanglements of theatre and dance. A distillation of Elswit's expertise, broad in scope and rich in elegantly formulated insights.” —Nicholas Ridout (cover blurb)

Cet article est le résultat d'une brève recherche et d'un entretien avec M. Jorge Gayon qui a eu lieu le 17 mars 2018 à Aguascalientes, Mexique. Le théâtre européen (occidental), à différence du théâtre oriental, centre son importance sur les faits et les discours sur la scène. En France, ce n'est pas l'exception. M. Gayon m'a expliqué pendant l'entretien, ce qui est le bon théâtre pour le français moyen, ce sont « Les beaux textes » ou l'art de la parole, ça veut dire : un théâtre fondé sur la littérature, l'un des objectifs de la comédie française, c'est la préservation du « bon français parlé » Cependant, au XXe siècle, il y a eu quelques rénovateurs du théâtre qui cherchaient à reformer le théâtre occidental, (confer. Franca Angelini dans Quadra (s.a 5)). M. Gayon m'a dit qu'ETIENNE DECROUX « Le grand Maître réformateur du théâtre du XXe siècle » a créé un théâtre dont les idées divergent de la tradition française : « L'art de l'acteur ». ETIENNE DECROUX, (Boulogne-Billancourt, France 1898-1991) a été un acteur de théâtre, cinéma et radio qui selon Annette Lust (1974 : 17) est considéré comme le père du Mime moderne,« il a commencé la construction de sa technique à partir de 1928 et en 1940, il a ouvert son école à Paris ». Cette école a été référence du mime au niveau mondial. Selon Barba (1990 :19) : « Etienne Decroux est, peut-être, le seul Maître européen qui a élaboré un ensemble de règles comparables à celles d'une tradition orientale » DECROUX, préoccupé pour étudier le mouvement de l'acteur, il a créé une méthode, celle de l'acteur total pour donner de l'importance au mouvement du corps. Il a été professeur de JORGE GAYON, selon Lizárraga (2014 :11) « est un expert en Mime Corporel Dramatique et en notation du mouvement Laban qui mène un projet dans lequel, les travaux des deux professeurs (Decroux et Laban),convergent : Laban-Decroux (©1988) » Ce projet, il s'agit d'appliquer la notation du mouvement aux travaux d'Etienne Decroux. M. J Gayon exécute « le menuisier » pièce emblématique d'Etienne Decroux. GAYON est un artiste, pédagogue du mouvement, chercheur, choréologue et ethno-scénologue, franc-mexicain qui a eu sa formation à Paris de 1986 a1995 avec DECROUX et ses assistants. En 1998 il a réalisé un doctorat à l'Université de Paris 8 où il a appliqué la méthode Laban (analyse et écriture de mouvement) au travail de DECROUX pour faire une préservation et transmission beaucoup plus accessible de la technique de Decroux au monde.

In 2018, Efi Birba offered the Greek public a different theatrical version of the famous Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote. Exclusively profiting the storytelling dynamic of the body, she used playing as the main tool of the literary interpretation and meaningfulness. Her directorial choices removed her from the concept of theatrical adaptation and introduced her into the field of metanarration. In this article, I explore the dramaturgical rhetoric of the performance and the narrative devices being used in. Highlighting the concept of ‘play’ as the main technique, I point out the performative flow as a non-verbal field where the body may not just represent or tell a story, but actually be that story and shift it from one level to another. Questions about corporeal awareness, timing and spatiality are raised, as well as questions about the metanarrative potential of a corporeal performance to translate literary meanings and deepen into allegorical insights and symbolisms.

W swojej praktyce scenicznej Wsiewołod Meyerhold rozpoznał zapotrzebowanie na „nowego aktora”, obdarzonego nową świadomością miejsca, jakie zajmuje w wieloskładnikowej kompozycji spektaklu. W jego koncepcji aktor, operując świadomie dostępnym mu materiałem (ciałem i głosem) ma być odpowiedzialnym współtwórcą przedstawienia. Biomechanika powstała jako odpowiedź na to zapotrzebowanie, zmieniając fundamentalnie paradygmat pracy aktora. Stworzony eksperymentalnie trening jawi się nie jako skończona, dana do opanowania i naśladowania technika gry aktorskiej, ale jako scenariusz „przygotowanego doświadczenia”, który może zostać odtworzony i zaktualizowany, pozwalając aktorowi w praktyce, na poziomie doświadczenia somatycznego, zrozumieć generalne zasady rządzące zawodem i według nich komponować swoje działania w dowolnej estetyce i dowolnym kontekście.

Nous travaillons depuis plusieurs années dans le but d'élargir et d'influencer la façon d'enseigner le jeu théâtral aux États-Unis en y faisant découvrir la biomécanique théâtrale de Vsevolod Meyerhold. En même temps, nous reconnaissons que le jeu à la manière américaine a ses forces et que de n'en pas tenir compte serait de la folie. Ce jeu est imprégné de vigueur et de vérité émo-tive, mais les acteurs américains sont souvent incapables de se servir du corps d'une façon expressive et convaincante, de créer des images vives qui dépassent les limites de l'identification subjective et émotive. Le défi 1. Cet article est une adaptation d'une communication donnée en anglais au congrès « L'acteur, l'actrice en scène : corps, jeu, voix », de la Fédération internationale pour la recherche en théâtre, en 1995, à l'Université du Québec à Montréal. La traduction de cette communication et celle des citations en anglais sont de Jane Baldwin.

The avant-garde Japanese form of performance art called butoh is concerned with the body as subject, material and image. This essay will explore how this form of art challenges the idea of the body as a signifier in performance through diverse signifying practices. The essay further seeks to analyse how butoh expands the idea of the body, widening the body as a language. This will be done by employing some seminal examples of Butoh in action. The essay will also explore butoh’s connection with western aesthetics and intellectual practices, beginning with Artaud.

This thesis examines how mental illness has been represented in British theatre from c. 1960 to the present day. It is particularly concerned with the roles played by space and embodiment in these representations, and what emerges as bodies interact in space. It adopts a mixed methodology, drawing on theoretical models from both continental philosophy and contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific research, in order to address these questions from the broadest possible range of perspectives. The first part of the thesis draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre to explore the role of institutional space, and in particular its gendered implications, in staging madness. The second part introduces approaches to the body drawn from the cognitive turn in theatre and performance studies. These are connected to the approaches of the first section through phenomenology’s concern with lived experience. Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher’s work on ‘the phenomenological mind’ provides important context here. In addition, Emmanuel Levinas’s critique of ontology offers a solid basis from which to think about how to act ethically as both a producer of, and an audience member for, representations of mental illness. Through these explorations, this thesis suggests a model of madness, not as something to be bracketed as ‘other’ and belonging to a deviant individual, but as emerging between bodies in space – there is no madness outside of social, spatial and embodied contexts. This in turn suggests a new approach to understanding the role theatre can play in addressing the lived experience of mental illness. While many productions currently attempt, unilaterally, to reduce the ‘stigma’ of mental illness, this thesis suggests that, in fact, discrimination against people experiencing mental illness is more likely to be reduced through the interaction between an ethically minded production and an ethical spectator. Such a model does not claim to be able to reduce the experience of madness to a totalising concept which can be communicated through theatre, but rather insists that it is only through an embodied, empathic interaction that a true concern for the (‘mad’ or ‘sane’) Other can emerge.

This essay considers the processes of affective attunement in The Viewpoints, Mary Overlie’s theoretical and practical structure for actor training and artistic practice.  Developed by Overlie in the interdisciplinary arts scene of New York City’s SoHo district in the 1970s, The Viewpoints operates as an approach to performance, rather than a method, attuning the performer to six key ‘materials’ present in any performance ecology – Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement, Story.  The Viewpoints approach addresses these materials not as objects for the performer to control, but rather as a practice attune to them as languages being ‘spoken’ by those materials.  Through the consideration of simple physical gesture used by Overlie in her teaching, I describe how The Viewpoints pedagogy and practice operates in the minor key – a ‘minor gesture’ for the production of minor gestures that is enabled by the actor as what Overlie calls, ‘The Original Anarchist.’

Acting the Metaphor
The Laban-Malmgren System of Movement Psychology and Character Analysis

Abstract

The article discusses certain features of The Laban-Malmgren System of Movement Psychology and Character Analysis, an influential actor training methodology which has helped to shape the thinking and work of some of the most expressive actors of our time, including Anthony Hopkins, Colin Firth, Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy. The System is an original synthesis of Rudolf Laban’s late-career ideas on movement, Jungian typology and Stanislavskian physical action, brought together by the dancer and acting teacher Yat Malmgren (1916-2002). The System continues to be taught in conservatoires and University drama departments across the world.

The distinguishing feature of the System are the direct links it posits between physical (Motion Factors - Laban) and psychological (Mental Factors - Jung) concepts, from which it develops a classification of character and action into ‘Inner and Action Attitudes'. The article outlines the principal pedagogical approach of the System, the ‘scenario’, modelled on the work of the American solo performer Ruth Draper; it also illustrates the application of the System in professional practice. The article considers the System from the perspective of Metaphorical Concept Theory (Lakoff and Johnson). Finally, the article describes the outcomes of the training in a transformation-oriented acting mode defined as ‘attenuated Expressionism’.

Drawing extensively on conversations with three theatre practitioners about the use of the Feldenkrais Method in puppetry training and performance contexts, this article aims to think
beyond the more obvious benefits such as enhanced movement awareness, coordination and pain-relief. It suggests that the Feldenkrais Methodw and puppetry together offer a strong dyad
for ecological and restorative human performance practice.

This publication was developed as part of the Make a Move – An Art Incubator for European non-institutionalised and independent theatre project and co-founded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. The Make a Move – An Art Incubator project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

The special issue of “Mise en Abyme” dedicated to the Make a Move project represents a complementary academic outcome to "Make a Move – An Art Incubator for Contemporary European Non-Institutionalised and Independent Theatre” (project co-funded by Creative Europe), with critical essays on excellence parameters and business model, case studies and specific focus, including a mapping section on festivals, markets, companies, training centres, and funding organization. The issue include contributions by Armando Rotondi, Valentina Temussi, Daria Lavrennikov, Eugen Păsăreanu, Raluca Blaga, Traian Penciuc, Freya Treutmann, Lyudmyla Honcharova.

The initiator and leader of the project is an arts organisation – Creative Laboratory of Contemporary Theatre KRILA from Rijeka, directed by Ivana Peranić. The main partners of the project are the Galway Theatre Festival (Ireland), the Institute of Arts Barcelona (Spain), the University of Arts Târgu-Mureș (Romania). The associate partners are ACTS (Oslo, Norway), MOVEO (Barcelona, Spain), Platform 88 (Montpellier, France), Poulpe Èlectrique (Arcueil, France), ToTum TeaTre (Barcelona, Spain) and Workinglifebalance Ltd. (Graz, Austria). The project has been co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, RIJEKA 2020 LLC, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, Kultura nova Foundation, City of Rijeka, Primorje-Gorski kotar County, Austrian Cultural Forum Zagreb, the European Capital of Culture Galway 2020, the Galway City Council, the Arts Council of Ireland, the Ajuntament de Sitges and the French Institute Barcelona. The Make a Move project has been developed under the European Capital of Culture programme – Rijeka 2020: Port of Diversity, project “Unreal Cities”.

This issue invites a broad range of contributions from scholars and artists globally, in order to offer a contemporary consideration of training for directing. We invite longer articles or 'Sources', each interrogating director training as it appears in a contemporary context; shorter 'Essais', inviting more personal reflections; and quick-fire 'Postcards' responding to a question or illuminating a moment of practice. We are especially keen to receive material that can host audiovisual contributions on the popular 'TDPT blog', integrated with the journal.

Guest editors: Adam J. Ledger (A.J.Ledger@bham.ac.uk) and Avra Sidiropoulou (avra.sidiropoulou@ouc.ac.cy).
Training Grounds editor: Thomas Wilson (thomas.wilson@bruford.ac.uk).