Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
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From Walking and Talking to Cartwheels and High Cs: An Examination of Practice-Based Laboratory Work into Physio-Vocal Integration.
No full textFollowing a series of investigative workshops inquiring into the possibilities of the vocal body, artists of Experience Vocal Dance Company trained intensively in an experimental method called the Integrative Performance Practice (IPP), developing an exacting technique that allows the performer the freedom to completely integrate unlimited movement and uncompromised voicing including bel canto singing. This article shares the work of the company through case study, exercises and application to performance propositions examined through the methodology of Transdisciplinarity. The article reflects on how many approaches to voice and movement within the disciplines of acting, singing and dancing can promote disintegration of the physio-vocal instrument. It touches on the implications of integrating the performance instrument through the notion of the psycho-physical and addresses certain inter- and cross-cultural perspectives present in recent discussions about voice and movement. Finally, it lays out exactly how, with the IPP, it was discovered that everything needs to originate from the breath/body; how language and skill sets are best rooted in process-based terms; and that action, be it vocal, physical or emotive, needs to initiate from awareness, reconfiguring the artist as self, working within an active aesthetic. As a key finding, a most precise articulation of centre is described in detail and related to physio-vocal praxis
Mimesis and Remembrance
No full textThis article asks what is the function of theatrical simulation, or mimesis, in the testimonial performance genre? The analysis focuses on a verbatim project by Daedalus Theatre Company, A Place at the Table, an eye-witness expos of the atrocities of the conflict in Burundi and the civil war in Rwanda, 1993 - 1994. This production was a design-led, overtly theatrical response to the varying documented truths about these events, from UN Security Council reports to personal testimony, that positioned the performers as multiple testifying subjects, emerging in a range of performance genres from seemingly realist performance, to abstract embodied simulation of the disputed territories. These performances, a combination of conscious theatrical replaying, testimonial and remembrance, drew heavily on theatrical simulation; a particular testimonial mimesis. To explore how this might function as a part of the testimonial genre, I draw on the theories of mimesis by Roger Caillois and the more positive version thereof by Michael Taussig. Caillois's material mimesis is a dangerous lure between self and space based on the desire not for visual replication or the facsimilie of similarity, but for the act of being similar. Taussig interprets in this temptation a potential for the self to playfully sample the Other, an act of selfing of space which suggests agency in mimesis. My analysis of this in A Place at the Table countenances possibilities in the performance of the intolerable, and offers an example of Ranciere's witness as artist, not victim. Thus I argue for an emancipated understanding of mimesis that asks us to consider the agency of performing the remembered
Establishing a Moral Discourse: a Limiting Outcome, or an Opportunity for Tactical Action? An Exploration of Alternative Perspectives on Health Education in South Africa
No full textStemming from a viewpoint that my applied theatre practice should include both a dialogical element and an opportunity to take creative risks, this article explores how creative risk-taking can lead to seemingly repressive outcomes for the participants. Examining two moments of practice, which occurred during sexual health communication projects in the Nyanga township, this article examines how and why these particular outcomes emerged, and explains my concerns over this outcome and its apparent inherent contradiction with the notion that applied theatre practice is based on creating a dialogue. Yet the suspicion that something else was occurring in these moments leads to the proposal of another viewpoint, where by situating the practice and the resulting outcomes within both a healthcare framework and one of tactical action, alternative explanations become apparent: that the individuals' actions were tactical acts of protection and resistance in an environment where life is not always ‘tolerable’
What is Place? How Do We Think About Place?
No full textThis entry collects together various video clips from a workshop undertaken at the Half Moon Theatre in July 2012.
The first clip shows excerpts from the final sharing of work at Half Moon. The diverse exercises carried out by the participants to explore fearful and everyday place are brought together and shared with an audience through the frame of a day in the life of the participants. From the eating of breakfast in the morning, through going to school and coming home, this framing allows the processes of the work to be shown in a coherent form to an external audience.
Next is an audio clip. The ideas of place are introduced to the audience for the final performance of the work through a series of interviews conducted by researchers, which explore individuals’ perceptions of what place is and means to them. Responses to the work are also gathered through a twitter feed present in the foyer and post show questionnaires, allowing greater understanding of the impact of the work. The audio clip is a selection of audience responses to questions around place which can be activated by clicking the play button above.
The next video documents a particular sharing of work, in addition to the performance in the theatre space, film and performers are placed in the foyer area of Half Moon, so that this place is also changed and re-performed. Film footage taken during sessions, but not used in the performance (see On Sites / 2. Scattering Cornflakes and 3. The Lost Boy), is projected in the foyer, so the audience can get a flavour of the work before seeing the performance itself. In addition the performers are positioned around the space prior to the show, in their ‘disrupted’ costumes which mix everyday items of school uniform and pyjamas.
In the final performance of work at Half Moon, a range of digital content is utilised in conjunction with the performance of the participants in the space. This includes filmed material from the exercises described in the Half Moon: On Sites section. It also includes the live mixing of digitised sound by Patrick Furness, allowing the soundtrack to be responsive to the work of the participants. Questions about Digital Place had arisen during the workshops – e.g. to what extent did young people inhabit digital places? The use of the digital was highlighted throughout the process as part of this thinking about digital places. It was appropriate to reflect this in the final performance sharing
On Immersive Theatre
No full textThis article considers what might be implied in the term ‘immersive theatre’, asking what kinds of ‘interior’ audiences are invited to become immersed in. To facilitate my argument I draw on performances by two London-based theatre companies, Shunt and Punchdrunk, as examples of immersive theatre which use architectural interiors: extensive environments which audiences explore in order to find the performance, and sometimes to give performances themselves. I begin with a description of how these physical interiors and the audience member's movement through them becomes part of the dramaturgy of the work, before moving on to a critique of the term ‘immersive’. This critique is initially based on analysis of its metaphorical character, using an approach derived from cognitive linguistics, and is developed through Josephine Machon's (syn)aesthetics and Heidegger's phenomenological aesthetics
Towards a Theatre of Psychagogia: An Experimental Application of the Sesame Approach into Psychophysical Actor Training
No full textThis thesis based in practice as research proposes a pedagogical model for supporting the actor’s inner psychological process within the area of psychophysical actor training. By invoking Socrates’ concept of psychagogia, I critically examine key aspects of psychophysical actor training in order to clarify the conceptual and pragmatic meaning of ‘psyche’ within the psychophysical process. Socrates describes psychagogia as the educational art of leading the psyche towards dialectical examination of the good. It is Aristotle, however, who identifies the art of tragedy as the greatest form of psychagogia, and it is in this context that the thesis re-introduces psychagogia for actor training. My research investigates in practice the application of a modified Sesame Drama and Movement Therapy approach for actors. It entails a series of projects and workshops exploring a pedagogical model based on the Sesame methodology and structure, and using ancient Greek myths as vehicles to encounter conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche. The research addresses the necessity for an embodied experience and awareness of the psyche by confronting creatively its conscious and unconscious aspects. I aim to show how a Sesame Drama and Movement Therapy approach facilitates this process in a safe and reflexive way, raising the actor’s awareness of this tacit and intangible inner quality
Challenging Places: Performance and Discomforts
No full textA talk and seminar about the Challenging Place Research Project, delivered to staff, research and MA students at the University of Cape Town
A History of Theatre in Spain
No full textLeading theatre historians and practitioners map a theatrical history that moves from the religious tropes of Medieval Iberia to the postmodern practices of twenty-first-century Spain. Considering work across the different languages of Spain, from vernacular Latin to Catalan, Galician, Castilian and Basque. This history engages with the work of actors, directors, designers, publishers, agents, impresarios, architects and ensembles. Indicating the ways in which theatre has both commented on and intervened in the major debates and issues of the day. Chapters consider paratheatrical activities and popular performance, such as the Comedia de Magia and flamenco. Alongside the works of Spain's major dramatists, from Lope de Vega to Federico García Lorca. Featuring revealing interviews with actress Nuria Espert, director Lluís Pasqual and playwright Juan Mayorga, it positions Spanish theatre within a paradigm that recognises its links and intersections with wider European and Latin American practices
Pretty War
No full textInfluenced by Farquar’s the Recruiting Office (1704), Pretty War is a participatory performance that employs a frivolous restoration backdrop to a horrible war. Restoration manners and army drill are taught in attempt to understand physical vocabularies beyond that of the civilian 21st century.
Pretty War is a Gareth White and Jane Munro project
Zdenka's Journey
No full textThis multi-media performance lecture explores the intersubjectivity which determines what I might describe - borrowing from Philippe Lejeune - the testimonial ‘pact’: the relationship that emerges between the witness who speaks of that which she has lived through and what we might call the ‘witness to the witness’ (Levine 2006), the person who listens to this testimony and attends to it