Phenomenology for Actors

Daniel Johnston

Description

This book gives new insight into acting and theatre-making through phenomenology (the study of how the world shows itself to conscious experience). It examines Being-in-the-world in everyday life with exercises for workshops and rehearsal. Each chapter explores themes to guide the creative process through objects, bodies, spaces, being with others, time, history, freedom and authenticity. Key examples in the work are drawn from Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Sophocles’ Antigone and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Practical tasks in each section explore how the theatrical event can offer unique insight into Being and existence. In this way, the book makes a bold leap to understand acting as an embodied form of philosophy and to explain how phenomenology can be a rich source of inspiration for actors, directors, designers and the creative process of theatre-making.

This original new book will provide new insight into the practice and theory of acting, stimulate new approaches to rehearsal and advance the notion of theatre making a genuine contribution to philosophical discourse.

The fundamental task of the actor is to be on stage with purposeful action in the given circumstances. But this simple act of ‘Being’ is not easy. Phenomenology can provide valuable insight into the challenge. For some time, scholars have looked to phenomenology to describe and analyse the theatrical event. But more than simply drawing attention to embodiment and the subjective experience of the world, a philosophical perspective can also shed light on broader existential issues of being.

No specialist knowledge of philosophy is required for the reader to find this text engaging and it will be relevant for second-year students and above at tertiary level.

For postgraduates and researchers, the book will provide a valuable touchstone for phenomenology and performance as research. The book will appeal to theatre and performance studies, and some applied philosophy courses. The material is also relevant to studies in literary and critical theory, cultural studies and comparative literature.

The work is relevant to The International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT) (Performance and Consciousness), Performance Studies International (psi) and the Performance Philosophy Research Network — an influential and growing research field.

Primary markets for this book will be students (both at university and conservatoires) and academics in theatre studies, as well as practitioners and actors in training. The text will be useful to students in units or modules relating to acting theory and theatre-making processes, and which combine critical theory with practical performance. It will also be useful for practitioners of theatre looking to expand or inflect their own methods of approaching performance.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

A Note on the Text

1. Beginnings: Being There

Touching Hands with Being

What Is Phenomenology?

Performance and Phenomenology

Philosophers on Stage

Mapping the Self

2. Phenomenology: Being-in-the-World

Some Background Terms

Space and Bodies

The History of Being

Destruktion and the Text

From Theory to Practice

Observe a Walk

Observe Stillness

Scrutinize an Object

Chart a Place Well Known to You

Unpack a Place Where You Feel At Home

Dissect a Familiar Activity

Describe a Person

Recount a Time When You Struggled to Communicate

Demonstrate a Moment When You Had an Unusual Experience of Time

Stage a Life Choice

Recreate the Instant in Which Your Life Was Threatened

Text-Character-Performance

3. Being-with Others: The Cherry Orchard

Equipment

Involvement

Touch

Being Elsewhere

Other People

4. Authenticity and Freedom: Antigone

Falling

Nothingness

Moods and Faring

Thrownness and Projection

Fate and Destiny

5. Time and Resoluteness: Hamlet

Timeliness

Having a History

Being-a-Whole

Resoluteness

Being-towards-Death

6. Possibilities: Aletheia

On the Essence of Truth in Theatre

Poetry, Language, Theatre

Building, Dwelling, Theatre

The Question concerning Theatre Technology

Ereignis

References

Index

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des Arts
• Shakespeare
• Performing Arts
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• The Cherry Orchard
• Criticism
• Anton Chekhov
• William Shakespeare
• ART

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 19 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789384116
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Phenomenology for Actors

Phenomenology for Actors
Theatre-Making and the Question of Being
Daniel Johnston
First published in the UK in 2021 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2021 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2021 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Frontispiece: Justin Amankwah at the Pop-up Globe, Sydney, 2018.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
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Print ISBN 978-1-78938-409-3
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78938-410-9
ePub ISBN 978-1-78938-411-6
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This is a peer-reviewed publication.
For Harry and Elliott
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun …. there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand …. nor look through the eyes of the dead …. nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
(Walt Whitman, Song of Myself )
The question of whether human thinking can reach objective truth is not a question of theory but a practical question.
(Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach )
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Text
1. Beginnings: Being There
Touching hands with being
What is phenomenology?
Performance and phenomenology
Philosophers on stage
Mapping the self
2. Phenomenology: Being-In-The-World
Some background terms
Space and bodies
The history of Being
Destruktion and the text
From theory to practice
Observe a walk
Observe stillness
Scrutinize an object
Chart a place well known to you
Unpack a place where you feel at home
Dissect a familiar activity
Describe a person
Recount a time when you struggled to communicate
Demonstrate a moment when you had an unusual experience of time
Stage a life choice
Recreate the instant in which your life was threatened
Text-character-performance
3. Being-With Others: The Cherry Orchard
Equipment
Involvement
Touch
Being elsewhere
Other people
4. Authenticity and Freedom: Antigone
Falling
Nothingness
Moods and faring
Thrownness and projection
Fate and destiny
5. Time and Resoluteness: Hamlet
Timeliness
Having a history
Being-a-whole
Resoluteness
Being-towards-death
6. Possibilities: Aletheia
On the essence of truth in theatre
Poetry, language, theatre
Building, dwelling, theatre
The question concerning theatre technology
Ereignis
References
Index
Illustrations
1 Stars above the pier at Coffs Harbour, New South Wales.
2 Walking into the world.
3 The Cherry Orchard workshop, Sheffield Hallam University, 2017.
4 Antigone seminar workshop, The University of Sydney, 2019.
5 Hamlet workshop, Pop-Up Globe, Sydney, 2018.
6 The Tamar River, Launceston, Tasmania, 2019.
7 Walking in the forest.
Acknowledgements
Sincere thanks to Tim Fitzpatrick, Ian Maxwell and Paul Dwyer for their generous feedback. Thanks also to the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at The University of Sydney, where various sections of this book were presented as seminars. Versions of the chapters in this book were presented at the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies which has provided an encouraging environment for academic exchange. Initial practical work leading to this book began with a workshop funded by Sheffield Hallam University. Special thanks to Henry Bell for his directorial contributions, together with Neil Sissons and Ashley Barnes for their practical guidance and support. Finally, thank you to Russell Emerson and Antonette Collins for their videography skills in recording rehearsals and workshops contributing to the thinking here. Antonette is my extraordinary wife, and none of this would be possible if it wasn’t for her.
A Note on the Text
Where Heideggerian terms are employed in this book, I have used capital letters to indicate their philosophical use; for example, ‘Time’, ‘Historicality’, ‘Being-with’, ‘Moods’ and so on. I have used ‘Being’ with a capital ‘B’ to indicate Being (itself) and ‘being’ with a lower-case ‘b’ to pick out the being of specific entities – a difference explained throughout this text and in Heidegger’s philosophy. Page numbers from Being and Time (Heidegger 1967) appear with an ‘H’ before them to indicate the original German pagination so that you can consult a different translation of the text should you wish. I have attempted to write this book in an engaging way by using ‘I’ and ‘you’ in order to invite the reader into the text. While I imagine a readership that is interested in acting, the text itself should be relevant to directors, creatives, scholars and even those just curious about theatre-making. The use of ‘you’ in this context is intended to be inclusive but always with the aim of inspiring practical exploration in mind. At the end of most sections in the work, I have included some suggested discussion points and exercises for this reason. These are simply suggested starting points, and my hope is that they can be expanded in any practical theatre laboratory situation with your own tweaks and explorations. Indeed, creating your own exercises will fulfil the hope of theatre ‘talking back to philosophy through creative practice’ – a theme that runs throughout this book. Some portions of Chapter 2 appeared in an earlier form in Johnston ( 2017b ). Parts of Chapter 6 are revised sections from Johnston ( 2019 ) and (2011). The majority of this book was written before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the world in 2020, and it has been tempting to dwell on examples of how life has changed in this period. Nevertheless, I have resisted the temptation in order to focus on the phenomenon of theatre itself.
1
Beginnings: Being There
In Konstantin Stanislavski’s An Actor’s Work: A Student’s Diary (widely known as An Actor Prepares ), Tortsov (the fictional distinguished actor, director and teacher) suggests that actors should attend to action on stage with a focus on being there in the ‘here-today-now’ to achieve spontaneity in the given circumstances of the play (Stanislavski 2008 : 289; Merlin 2015 : 35–37; Whyman 2013 : 110–11). Although the craft of theatre often involves creating a fictional world, a keenly attuned attention to the immediate physical environment is crucial to training, rehearsal and performance. Stanislavski asserts that truthful actors should develop their focus on ‘being there’ through conscious awareness as a resource for creativity and fostering the conditions for luring inspiration from the unconscious. In fact, striving for presence is a common goal to actors from many traditions in terms of the fictional world, the aura of the performer and meaning making through the signs of performance (Power 2008 ).
But what exactly does ‘being there’ mean? Theatre scholar Elinor Fuchs defines an actor’s presence in the theatre as ‘the unique self-completion of the world of the spectacle, and the circle of heightened awareness flowing from actor to spectator and back that sustains the world’ (1986: 163). How is such self-completion achieved in this intersubjective experience? A number of assumptions about the structure of consciousness and its relationship to the world in Stanislavski’s account of the creative process might need investigating if we are to answer these questions. As I will ask you to think about here, every theory of acting is based on an implicit or explicit theory of selfhood (and a set of scientific understandings of the body and emotions) in order to understand the creative apparatus of their immediate situation and the fictional world of the play (Roach 1985 ). In fact, all human actions are founded on a model of selfhood within an historical and cultural world view that can open up and close off certain aspects of ‘Being’ (i.e. Being itself and the fact that things ‘are’ at all). Yet although we almost always have a specific focus of action in everyday activities in life (as you do the washing up, make your bed or brush your teeth, for example), the same kind of concentration of attention is difficult while performing on stage with others looking in on the scene and without an immediate purpose to action. For this reason, Stanislavskian actors cannot depend on spontaneous ‘inspiration’ in the moment of performance as it is so unreliable. Instead, the well-developed performer should have a dependable technique for allowing the conditions for truthful performance. The state of being there experienced ‘naturally’ in real life needs to be relearned on stage. According to Tortsov, successful performers discover how to ‘see again’, and I would argue that this requires a special attitude towards Being much in the same way as ancient philosophers. It is not simply a matter of focusing one’s attention on ‘what is’ but also exploring the conditions for the possibility of encountering what is in the first place. I believe that theatre can be a medium for investigating Being in a practical way.

Figure 1: Stars above the pier at Coffs Harbour, New South Wales. Photograph by Christopher Lee-Joe. Printed with permission of the artist.
Phenomenology – the approac