Presenters

Abstract:

Dilemmas of consent-making have taken center-stage in today’s performing arts processes.

Parallel to tendencies of juridification and horizontalization of rehearsal dynamics, it remains an engaging question for practitioners, throughout the field, how we agree in artistic contexts. In this perspective, the artistic constellations marked by a significant power differential (i.e. actor-director, student-teacher) find themselves not only under scrutiny but harmful suspicion. Even more so when such asymmetric relations enter sensitive and possibly transgressive explorations, which in modern and postmodern histories have been of central value for art’s capacities for societal critique or to transform relations.

In this work-demonstration, Johannes Maria Schmit (director) and his collaborator Anders Carlsson (actor) share their research findings from a 4-week pre-study. In the start, the participants get briefly introduced to the Wheel of Consent; a therapeutic model drawing on the practical knowledge of body workers, synthesized by chiropractor and “self-propelled erotic adventurer” Betty Martin. The facilitators Anders and Johannes then step-by-step transpose the therapeutic practice into a method for theater rehearsals, gradually embedding it in the actor-director dynamics.

The ambition is to create a non-restrictive space that normalizes mutual negotiation and contextual limits;, showing/testing to what extent this method may harbor a transgressive performing arts rehearsal work, summoning including phantasmatic projections and unconscious transference processes.

BIO:

Johannes Maria Schmit is a PhD researcher at SKH Uniarts Stockholm. His project prefigures possibilities of a re-invented director’s theater in a post-disciplinary performing arts field. Anders Carlsson’s is a PhD researcher at HSM Gothenburg university. He investigates acting through the fictional character Bartleby, as an instituent practice via the recognition of complex and asymmetric mutualist relationships between art and institution.

Anders and Johannes met in the context of Malmö‘s independent theater scene, where they were active as founders of the theater collective Institutet and within the performance Duo White on White.

Abstract: 

This presentation draws on Aiden Condron’s thirty-year experience as a performer, maker, researcher and educator who has trained and coached actors and performers in the UK, Europe, the US, India and the Middle East in live and recorded media across a range of settings and cultural contexts including private tuition, community arts projects, barter exchanges, laboratory theatre, commercial theatre film and TV and institutionally as a Lecturer in Acting in leading higher education conservatoires and universities.

Operating under the auspices of Living Acting Studio which he founded in 2020, in this talk Condron seeks to examine possibilities for a universal, decentralised and deterritorialised pedagogy by positing an approach to performer training that eschews named culturally specific methodologies and traditions in favour of a universal triad of organising principles; Presence, Play & Action: three investigative fields that encompass and essentialise all that has endured across disparate approaches and the global ecology of actor and performer training.

These three guiding pillars, each comprising its own evolving sub-areas of study, are encountered individually and concurrently to form a continuum around the actor/performer’s developing process, guiding them in becoming a whole and fully integrated living actor-creator.

This pedagogy of principles promotes a holistic & integrative approach to contemporary actor training which sees successful acting and optimal living as interrelated and mutually beneficial processes.

This presentation is aimed at performers, teachers, curriculum makers and all who are interested in exploring an inclusive guiding framework for their thinking and practice.

BIO:

Aiden Condron has been engaged for over thirty years at the forefront of established and emerging theatre and performance practices in the UK, Ireland and Internationally. He is a Lecturer in Acting & Performance at London South Bank University and associate editor on Routledge’s international journal of Theatre, Dance & Performance Training.

Abstract: 

Everyday artists grapple with new realities brought about by the recent global events that left communities in a state of perpetual uncertainty that gave rise to a wave of emotional and mental turbulence affecting people across the globe. This unpredictability has been particularly challenging for artists, which have felt disoriented and adrift in its wake. How can artists reignite their creative spirit and maintain a continuous flow of inspiration for their work?

The Creative Sensory Attunement Workshop (CSAW) embraces the transformative power of nature to reignite, reconnect, and realign the artist’s creative self, allowing them to explore innovative methods for crafting new works and harnessing their creative flow.

CSAW blends the rich creative pedagogy of the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) with TAXI Theater’s distinct sentient pedagogy. This harmonious union fosters a deliberate and mindful approach that capitalizes on the senses to recalibrate creative processes, opening new and exciting pathways for performer training and storytelling all while immersing participants in the healing embrace of nature.

This online presentation looks at the potential of the Creative Sensory Attunement Workshop to explore the limitless realms of creativity that spring to life when the self, senses, and circumstances are finely tuned and deeply connected to the natural world.

BIO:

Eric V. Dela Cruz (TAXI Theater) is a transdisciplinary artist and educator engaging in performance design and theatremaking through devised, site-based and sensorial performances that intersect with bioart, sentient performativities, disability and sustainable community development.

Abstract: 

Current understandings of working with neurodivergent students in actor-training centre around reasonable adjustment and ‘bolt-on’ support structures, designed to support neurodivergent students in an environment and training that is inaccessible to them. Performer training institutions use the language of the neurodiversity movement, but operate in a way that is more aligned with the medical model and ideas of pathology. With this, an approach is taken to neurodiversity which is not actually aligned with the current principles of the neurodiversity movement.

In contextualising this, I explore the gaps in current literature around performer training and neurodiversity, and make observations around institutional resistance to considering the perspectives of neurodivergent students.

In this provocation, I explore how ideas from phenomenology can allow for new innovations in integrated access for neurodivergent students, considering what an actor training space that integrates a neurodiversity-affirming approach could look like. In doing this, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception (1945); Phillip Zarrilli’s (towards) a phenomenology of acting (2019)  and ideas of neurophenomenology. (Thompson, 2005; Di Bernardo, 2022) The result is a proposition of how centring subjective experience can allow for a more neurodiversity-affirming pedagogy.

BIO:

Zoë Glen is a neurodivergent practitioner and researcher with interests in neurodiversity and access in actor training; She is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Kent, investigating the experiences of autistic student-actors on BA acting programmes.

Description: 

This multidimensional dialogue is a tactical disarming of hegemonic structures and internalized queerphobia that utilizes queer methodological strategies and embodied contemplative practices. Working with LGBTQ2IA+ dance and theatre students in higher education, Queer Contemplative Pedagogy provides a fluid, holistic, and supportive scaffolding for performance training, individual student development, and creative/critical thinking. Queer Contemplative Pedagogy is a countermeasure to the sweeping bans on queer/decolonial education within the United States by challenging binary thinking and static approaches to performance practice. I ground this work theoretically in interdisciplinary artist Adesola Akinleye’s theories of emplacement, artist Jane Brucker’s framework of contemplative pedagogy, and queer feminist Gloria Anzaldúa’s practice of Spiritual Activism. Pedagogically, this process creates the conditions for LGBTQ2IA+ students and allies to confront and articulate mechanisms of power impacting their distinct positionalities while using embodied acts of creativity to connect deeply with self as a member of a collective community. I propose that this framework is adaptable to fit the needs of the artistic practitioner or educator who may situate themselves within various relationships to queer theory, contemplative pedagogy, and populations of practitioners. This 45-minute digital workshop includes an ancestral invocation, a period of contemplative movement, a lecture describing the practice and theoretical framework, and dialogue for deploying this fluid pedagogical approach to performance training in various academic/artistic contexts. As members of the LGBTQ2IA+ community and our allies, we transgress toxic, oppressive legacies with this practice galvanizing queer contemplative approaches to embodiment as an essential labor of care and connection.

BIO:

Jeremy M. Hahn (he/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, educator of dance and performance, and is in residence at the Brewery Artist Lofts in Los Angeles, California. Their research investigates the formation/practice of Queer Ritual Ecologies, illuminating how the embodiment of queer presence promotes self-knowing and collective transformation. Artistically, they create durational site-oriented performance installations, poems, and facilitate “Cultivating the Expressive Body,” a movement workshop investigating queer embodied art practices with J&S Arts. He has worked notably as a performer with Jane Brucker, Efflorescence, Lucent Dossier Experience, Pennington Dance Group, Yuval Sharon, and SkyE. He holds a BA in Studio Arts from Loyola Marymount University, an MFA in Dance from California State University, Long Beach, is pursuing a Ph.D. in Dance at Texas Woman’s University, and is a full-time lecturer in The Department of Theatre and New Dance at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Abstract:

I think that performer training should be first and foremost about giving tools for theatre makers to discover – to find their own ways of making theatre. The students should learn to constantly surprise themselves. They should find the enjoyment of the in-the-moment value of theatre and praise unexpectedness and interruptions, even when all is well prepared.

Impulses for theatre are everywhere. They might come from the movements of falling leaves, from a random object in the wrong place, from a sentence misheard or out of original context, from bizarreness of seemingly normal moments, for example on public transport, on the street, anywhere. Theatre training should open the eyes, prepare the antennas, tune in to the search. Performers should be able to cross all the invisible genre borders, and use object manipulation, dance, puppetry, circus skills, new technologies and techniques etc. when needed. There should be no shouldn’t in theatre.

BIO:

Linnea Happonen is a theatre maker (performer, director, teacher) – MA from the Prague Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU), department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre, and also a graduate of the Commedia School, Copenhagen. She is artistic director of Krepsko Theatre Group, founded in Prague in 2001, and still active. Her performances are mostly non-text-based, emphasize visual expression and atmosphere, and often incorporate object theatre, puppetry and other disciplines. She has worked in many formats, from tiny solo shows to cabarets for 20 performers, and created numerous site-specific projects with different ensembles.

Abstract:

The prevalent use of the (distorted) Stanislavski model in Polish actor training, particularly the use of affective memory, consistently raised my skepticism. Physical techniques appeared to be an obvious alternative for addressing the risks associated with the psychological method. However, they carry specific dangers that may lead to abuse.

During my exploration of Grotowski’s methodologies, training, and teaching in the model developed by Gardzienice, and other Polish theatres of that lineage (notably Chorea), I have experienced and come to realize (only after Mariana Sadovska’s call-out) that fatigue—stemming from physical effort and the organization of work—serves as gateways to these potential hazards. My prior practices had inadvertently ingrained fatigue as an integral component of my theatrical worldview, serving as criteria for evaluating the quality of commitment. Fatigue has been seen as a means of ‘liberating’ oneself from ego and superego constraints, enabling a flow of the body’s organic impulses and a genuine ‘truth’ of expression. However, if we consider the ego and superego as shields protecting an individual’s identity, then disarming fatigue can be seen as a tool potentially facilitating manipulation and exploitation. In my current pedagogical practices, I try to integrate self-care routines (e.g., de-role procedures, initiation and closure rituals). Simultaneously, I challenge the emphasis on instinctive action—prevailing in Polish teaching—advocating for a re-intellectualization of the performer’s experience through reflection and self-assessment.

BIO:

Małgorzata Jabłońska, PhD, is a theatre researcher at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw, Poland, having graduated from Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Her areas of interest encompass the history and challenges of actor training and the history of Polish alternative theatre. As an artist and researcher, she is a founding member of the CHOREA Theatre Association and has co-authored the book “Trening fizyczny aktora. Od działań indywidualnych do zespołu” (Physical Actor Training: From Individual Actions to an Ensemble) handbook. She is a member of the Polish Theatre Research Society and the National Theatre OFFensive. She is actively involved in research, serving on the research team for the Polish Ministry of Education and Science development grant “Safe Space: Good practices and tools for the transformation of theatre education” at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw. Additionally, she contributes to an interuniversity research grant project “Violence in Theatre – Practices, Discourses, Alternatives” from the Strategic Program Excellence Initiative at The Jagiellonian University.

Abstract:

I am currently doing an artistic action research about entrance exams of an acting program of Theatre academy of The University of Arts Helsinki. My data consists of the interviews and material of non-participant observation. The aims of the research are to increase self- understanding of the jury and transparency of the process as well as to examine the possible ways of developing the accessibility and diversity in program. I am also interested in entrance exams as pedagogical practice – ­a first phase of working with future students, learning about them and their challenges, a platform for teachers to learn from each others´ working and also a possibility of learning for those applicants who won´t be accepted as students. Framing entrance exams as a pedagogical event opens possibilities but it is also important to consider ethical questions – radically asymmetrical setup between applicants and jury.

BIO:

Anu Koskinen is an actor, a researcher (Doctor of Art in theatre and drama) and a lecturer in University of Arts Helsinki. She teaches acting (actor´s psychophysical instrument), community theatre in different contexts (for example prisons and secondary schools) and art pedagogy and supervises MA theses.

Abstract:

The Latvian theater school is rooted in the principles of psychological realism. According to my observations, this strict adherence limits exploration of physicality, hindering its evolution. During my tenure as an acting lecturer at the Latvian Academy of Culture, I try to ignite actors’ interest in the physical dimension of their craft.

This presentation aims to demonstrate a method I’ve developed to free body language from the confines of psychological realism. In this method psychological realism collides and merges with the interpretations of J. Lecoq’s concept of neutrality and V. Meyerhold’s theatrical vision.

The process begins with a scene performed in the style of psychological realism. The scene is then deconstructed focusing on bodily expressions. Then physical actions depicted in the scene are compared to a theoretically neutral version. Finally, differences are highlighted by incorporating elements such as amplitude, tempo, repetition, and rhythm.

The outcome is a transformation of the etude from psychological realism into a distinctive physical theater scene. Interestingly, even thou actors concentrate exclusively on body and movement, the scene’s dramatic context remains evident, and the emotional shifts of the characters can still be felt.

BIO: 

Karlis, with an artistic background in acting, directing, and playwriting, lectures at the Latvian Academy of Culture (LAC). In parallel, he is pursuing doctoral research on the contemporary use of elements of Commedia dell’arte in the LAC curriculum.

Abstract:

This workshop / provocation presents an idea for performer training called ‘diffractive’ dramaturgy.

The seed for the idea came as an attempt to unpack an unexpectedly difficult and complex experiment in participatory performance I made in 2016. Taking the concept as articulated by Barad and Haraway, I used diffraction to articulate an open dramaturgy where the processes of observation and perception of the material were given priority over the tendency to rationalise, select, and categorise material. Continuing with Barad, a diffractive dramaturgy acknowledged the ‘intra-action’ of all things, offering a way of conceptualising reality where all matter is entangled.

The concept was developed into a training practice having been inspired by a series of workshops given by Wendell Beavers (2022) on Mary Overlie’s Viewpoints. It became possible to align Overlie’s postmodern deconstructions with the non-anthropocentric new materialisms of Barad.

Further research has led to Overlie’s Buddhist influences. This has offered a ‘novel’ meeting point between postmodern and posthuman practice that draws on improvisation techniques, postmodern deconstruction of narratives, and Buddhist practice. Is this a new materialism?

The workshop will attempt to recreate the ‘complex’ performance moment, before introducing colleagues to the concept of a diffractive dramaturgy. In the remaining time, we will test how these ideas can be introduced to students as performer training tools.

BIO:

As a British/Asian practitioner, Jon trained at Rose Bruford College, then did an MA Body in Performance at Laban. He began lecturing at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Drama Centre London at Central Saint Martin’s, then joining London South Bank’s Drama department as a visiting lecturer in 2009. He became a senior lecturer in 2012.

Workshop co-host / Practitioner

Tom Sanigar (Davis) is a lecturer in Acting and Performance at London South Bank University. He holds a Masters in Acting from Drama Centre London, where he trained at the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute in Moscow, under the world-renowned movement director Andrei Droznin.

Abstract:

Monster in Greek is associated at once with monstrous and miraculous qualities. Deriving from my research on mythological voices, matriarchal “differentiated concepts of self” (Carson) and posthumanism, monster mirrors a residual matrix of unwitnessed and extrapolated vocalities, linked with nature, animality, femininity and myth.

Textual-as-topological treatment Level, aiming to:
1.   Provoke inner-outer-third spaces’ boundaries to excavate residual geographies of trauma. Using the analytic psychology’s concept of archetypes as transcultural well of memories with symbolic appearances, we awaken “mythic time” as universal temporality of human/more than human encounters; Silence, listening activation through sound studies’ concepts along with nature’s sounds’ imitation and corporeal imagination are valorised towards immaterial archaeologies’ awareness.
2.   Intrigue disruptive vocalities between sound and logos associated with lament, tragedian femininities and revolution. Using lament techniques (Mirka Gementzaki’s training, based on Mani dirge/Greece) and lament-roles as taxonomy of witnessing and emanating the words of the missing ones (Seremetakis) we organize an architecture of liminal testimonies.
3.   Textual exploration as sonic specific topology towards logos’s re-vocalization (Thomaidis) by valorising monstrousness as prosodic residuality: Collective utterance of textual Abstract:s, by real-time linguistic manipulation as a sound-scape of buried phonologies, we form paradigms of sonic/specific-textual liminal approach. Mentally and experientially intrigued, this path to embodied vocality aspires to inform with specific theoretical notions towards alternative all- inclusive embodied politics, reenforcing and expanding non-mediated phonetic ecologies.

BIO:

Vocal performer, postdoctoral researcher, teaching fellow (University of Thessaly), musicologist (Ph. D/State Scholarships Foundation). As a practitioner, she has collaborated with Greek National Opera, Onassis Foundation, MedeaElectronique, Paris MSH, Alea III, dance/performing/conceptual art groups, etc. She has published articles and participated in conferences, lectures, sound installations, experimental movies, and broadcasts in Greece and abroad. She conducts postdoctoral research, theorizing and artistically investigating vocal mythology and bioethics within the posthuman turn.

Abstract:

This project delves into the exploration of embodiment, the intricacies of bodies, and gender dynamics within the realm of physical theatre training and production in the United Kingdom. Despite a noticeable shift in contemporary dialogues surrounding gender inclusivity in acting and relevant literature, there remains a need for further development in establishing gender-inclusive pedagogies in physical theatre. The focus of this investigation is on examining the current landscape of physical theatre in the UK, emphasizing the importance of gender-inclusive practices. The approach involves the formulation of a feminist physical theatre praxis using somatic methods, aligning with the 21st-century somatic shift that prioritizes the body in both practical applications and theoretical frameworks. The overarching goal is to integrate somatic movement and physical theatre methodologies, drawing inspiration from the parallel developments in intersectional feminism and the recognition of feminist somas. The specific strategy employed incorporates experiential anatomy, influenced by the somatic movement practice of Body-Mind Centering® (BMC®), along with physical theatre techniques such as Viewpoints and composition. Through this, the aim is to instill gender-inclusive discourses within the domain of physical theatre training and artistic creation.

BIO:

Amaia Mugica is a director, movement director, somatic educator and performer with expertise in physical theatre and movement for actors. She holds an MA in Movement from the RCSSD (UK). She is a Professional Doctorate student at UEL (London).

Abstract:

Practice-based research on re-organization of training and exploration of performance practices beyond geographical/aesthetic background to look deeply in to practice model for actor-performer training in an intercultural scenario.

1. To what extent is it possible to push the boundaries of the development of physical Actor training. Which will enable as actor to work with any dramaturgical context in this present time?
2. To what extent might it be possible for an intercultural actor-performer to successfully incorporate combinations of principles and practices toward cultivating a unique actor?
3. What is our interculturality? Where is it located?

We have strong purpose in intercultural theatre training system and if the purpose is to become an intercultural actor, you should be able to respond, to interact with and create something that may be unknown to you and completely unfamiliar with your historical, geographical, linguistic and aesthetical background. So, the constant challenge is to consciously suggest a completely new body of receptivity and psychological acceptance toward the actor’s creativity.

How do you develop an actor’s body and mind toward this direction?

Theatre should not be a location of exhibitionistic manifestations of actor training methods. Training methods in theatre and acting need to be catalytic in the creative sojourn of characterization. A contemporary actor has to develop psychological states which can appropriate the new and inquire the unknown otherwise it would be difficult for a contemporary actor to engage a novel and inspiring acting method. The choices of an actor to preserve and experiment with his body as a medium must be scientific, objective and rational in an age where mechanization and techno crazy prevail. The actor is entitled to explore his/her energy to bring out a bang of the mass media maintained and manipulated consistently by hegemonic cultural practices and dominant ideologies in the world of art. The creative ambience in acting is to be reconsidered so that the actor can reconstruct the creative process through once own body and psyche is to be fashioned.

BIO:

Actor, director, researcher and theatre-trainer, Sreejith Remanan is currently Head of the Department at the School of Drama and Fine Arts, and Campus Director at Dr. John Matthai Centre,Thrissur. (University of Calicut).
Born in the southern most state of India, Kerala Sreejith has completed his Bachelor of Theatre Arts (School of Drama, Thrissur), Master of Performing Arts (University of Hyderabad), Master of Philosophy in theatre (Mahatma Gandhi University) and three-year diploma in contemporary acting (Theatre Training Research Programme, Singapore). He is an active performer, who has participated in about 80 productions in various capacities that were staged all over India and abroad. He was casted in the lead role in the play Saketham that was staged in Tokyo and also in the plays of Maya Tungberg, Philip Zarilly, Fueda Uichiro, Leela Alaniz, Kok Heng Luen,  S.Ramanujam, Abilash Pillai,Hiroshi Koike and Ram Gopal Bajaj. He has also won the best actor award by the state government of Kerala in 2003 for Chayamukhi, directed by Prasanth Narayanan. He was the Technical Director for the prestigious International Theatre Festival of Kerala.

Abstract:

The manifesto aims to restore repetition as the underlying principle of theatrical performance, alternative to representation. The premise is Gilles Deleuze’s: repetition “for itself” creates difference “in itself”. Understood and experienced “in itself”, difference goes untethered to pre-existing individualities being actively compared; its significance is a new reality, not a looked-for novelty. The session will be structured as a deconstruction of this premise through a series of principles to be tested in practice. The aim is to perform “pure repetition”: the participants’ attempt to repeat physical and vocal acts as empty forms that reveal their contents each time they are performed.

Question 1, after last year’s IPPT: can repetition be a method to explore and expand eco-somatic practices?

Question 2, after Karen Barad: can it be used to experience embodiment as a mode of empathy with/in an environment made of continuous entanglements of imagination (e.g., characters and dramas) and matter (i.e., both human and other than human)?

The manifesto aims to restore repetition as the underlying principle of theatrical performance, alternative to representation. The premise is Gilles Deleuze’s: repetition “for itself” creates difference “in itself”. Understood and experienced “in itself”, difference goes untethered to pre-existing individualities being actively compared; its significance is a new reality, not a looked-for novelty.

BIO:

Filippo Romanello is an independent researcher and theatre-maker. His practice encompasses dramaturgy, directing and actor training. He holds a PhD in drama for a research titled Spontaneity and Repetition: Towards Immanence in Text-based Performance (Liverpool John Moores University, 2020).

Abstract:

This workshop will address Core Training and the Relational Actor (Hodge 2013) as a (re)nascent form. Hailed as a pioneering “critical acting pedagogy” (Peck 2020), core training is characterised by its emphasis on relationality, care, touch, sensuality, and listening, as opposed to individual virtuosity. It does not “hone a particular aesthetic body,” but instead “celebrate[s]… [the] uniqueness [of bodies] and the particularity of each encounter” (Hodge 2013, 27), which resonates with today’s turn towards feminist, queer, decolonial, anti-racist, anti-ableist and activist training practices.

The Quick and the Dead, the group of actors who collaborated with Hodge on developing the training, gathered for a week of intensive practice research in September 2023 – ten years after our last time in a studio, after injuries, illnesses, marriages, divorces, cross-continental relocations, births and deaths, including Ali’s passing in 2019. The practice was instantly available and powerful; from our new situated realities, new/old bodies, loss and grief, we experienced the training, its ethics and its vocabulary, as a space of discovery, pleasure, hope and connection. I will share some practices that stood out for us in this gathering and propose ways of articulating and experiencing ‘attentiveness,’ ‘embodied listening,’ and ‘care-taking’ in terms of radical care (Hobart and Kneese 2020).

BIO:

Göze Saner is an actor, researcher, theatremaker, and clown. She teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her book Practicing Archetype: Solo Performer Training as Critical Pedagogy is forthcoming on the Routledge Perspectives on Performer Training series. Her latest performance as research engages the ubiquitous flamboyant nudibranch.

Abstract:

The nascent actor needs to be able to recognize and define one’s boundaries and respect fellow actors´ boundaries when rehearsing and acting. However, as the expectations of the profession and the ethical sensitivities intervene in multiple ways, the task can be sometimes tricky. Therefore, we think that during their studies, actors should acquire knowledge of various boundaries (personal, social, structural etc.) and get tools to explore them and negotiate about them in diverse contexts.

To tackle this subject, we have created a study model called EXTREME which we have executed five times in the context of actor training. We have adopted principles of Exploratory Practice (Allwright 2003), positioning students as co-researchers and the theory of edge-emotions (Mälkki 2011; 2019) as a framework for the module. Edge-emotions are considered the biologically based and socially formed boundary structure of our minds at the edges of our comfort zones. The ability to linger safely around edge-emotions seems to form a gateway to work with boundaries.

Our workshop includes a presentation of the study module as well as collaborative experiments with the boundaries the attendees choose to explore. It suggests a new model for pedagogy that fosters brave but sustainable acting and provides practical tools for enhancing ethicality and well-being both in the actor training and in the performer’s profession.

BIO:

Tiina Syrjä, DA (Doctor of Arts in Theatre and Drama), University lecturer in voice and speech at Degree Programme in Theatre Arts in Tampere University, Finland. She is also speech therapist, vocologist, yoga instructor and teacher of the Alexander Technique and an actress and conductor in Playback Theatre Vox.

Samuli Nordberg, MA (Master of Arts in Choreography), University lecturer in movement and dance at Degree Programme in Theatre Arts in Tampere University, Finland. He is also dance artist, director, performer and currently working on his doctoral thesis, Embodied collective processes.

Abstract:

Fear plays a crucial role in the performing arts. Fear is the dominant component of a performer’s stage fright, inhibiting creative potential, but it can also overshadow an actor-director collaboration already in rehearsals.
An idiosyncratic Zero Zone praxis (ZZ) method fuses performer training and directing craft with perceptual techniques, self-cultivation principles and Executive Coaching personal potential opening facilitating methods.  This perceptual training enhances an actor-director dyad creativity, helping to tackle ego-based conflicts, avoid stage fright manifestations in rehearsals, restore the performing flow, train increasingly immersive focus and prepare to perform in a state of higher consciousness.

The Zero Zone Praxis has three stages:
Stage One: The Stairs
This preparation level provides an embodied understanding of psychophysical insight: what are the tools for improving self-confidence and connection with a partner, and how do they work.

Stage Two: The Entrance
The techniques at this level are turning external focus inward, tuning one to be more intimate, peaceful and thereby more concentrated, precise, present and aware of the inner processes of distinction and perception sharpening.

Stage Three: Zero Zone Dynamics
The third level frames everything: the reasons, the destination, the path and the result. The practitioner understands the importance of establishing a solid focus and leaving it flexible, the quality of cultivating directing, and how crucial ensemble-building is.

The ZZ praxis enhances innovation, creativity, passion and instincts. It trains to alleviate performing anxiety, prevent conflicts in the ensemble and internally with self and also develops your individual quality of the de-rolling process–if needed.

BIO:

Tamur Tohver PhD candidate, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK Trained as a director and an actor. His academic- artistic research focuses on actor-director collaboration, self-developmental actor training, cultivating directing, consciousness and immediate transmission in theatre. More about ZZ in Tohver, 2023, Director’s fear and self-cultivation: 10.1080/19443927.2023.2243185 and Tohver, 2022, Zero Zone Praxis as Conscious Creative Cultivation: 10.5325/ecumenica.15.2.0167 and MFA thesis https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020/1592/ Homepage https://polygonteater.org/zero-zone-praxis/

Abstract:

This presentation brings into discussion the- still present- sovereignty of the mind over the body and its desire in the inner mechanism of production of theater today.

The presentation proposes some task-led exercises based in two aspects of my ongoing research: 1) the opposition between the concept of immanence and transcendent and 2) the body and its capacity to be affected and affect (mind-body-things). Taking as a source of inspiration the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza by focusing on his Ethics.

1)Immanence, It generally designates the feature of anything that has its principle in itself, as opposed to transcendence, which refers to an external cause, to a higher principle of explanation. From a transcendent perspective, the world is conceived as a creation, so that it is nothing without its creator. From an immanentism perspective, the world is itself a producer (rather than a creator) of itself, or a cause of itself, and we understand it better through philosophy or physics than through theology.

2) Spinoza argues: We are not conscious of our own body directly, nor of our own mind, but we are conscious of our own body by virtue of the affections produced in it by external causes and external ideas.

In other words, being a human basically means evolving in the midst of other human beings and things, by which we are uninterruptedly and immanently affected.

What means to be the author, performer and creator of a Solo-performance?

BIO:

RAUL VARGAS TORRES(1983). Performer, director and pedagogue from Colombia. His creations are a chaotic entanglement between body-movement, theater, visual arts and circus. Currently, he teaches movement research and acting at the MA- Arts of Theater in the Accademia Dimitri in Switzerland.

Abstract:

“The only reason they are photographing our work is to recruit next year’s intake.”
Graduating student, CSM 2019
“Go somewhere, I don’t know where. Find something, I don’t know what.”
Opening statement – MA Acting exchange, Boris Shchukin Institute, Moscow 2019

This provocation explores loss of depth in performer (specifically actor) training, this student generation’s fear of their own psychic material and the loss of faith in practitioners and process.

It explores the horror story some students experience, despite extensive investment in decolonisation of training, and more wellbeing measures than ever before. Students choose instead to protect themselves psychically from performer training – and their own transformative experience.

Through a collective loss of history (the feeling, ‘no-one made any changes before our generation’), ground-breaking companies are disappearing from trainees’ consciousness. Inspiration is replaced by a destructive literalism inhibiting performers’ imagination.

I suggest exploration of psychical dark matter (potent material shaping the creative experience) is a fundamental missing element in training arcs, undermining our attempts to update. Once a collective understanding is reached that there can be no perfect outcome, and the progressive utopia promised is a repackaging of capitalist values, then work can begin.

This provocation questions whether training itself has become a feeder for institutional brand enhancement. We need urgently to make space inside our trainings – to strip them of the collective performance of perceived ‘goodness’, creating instead a deeper learning space where murkier material is allowed, and learner challenges are held and celebrated rather than weaponised.

BIO:

Georgina trained and worked as an actor. She co-founded www.dirtymarket.co.uk using bricolage to make new work with discarded materials of all kinds. Georgina was Course Leader of MA Acting DramaCentre@CSM UAL, Head of Acting at Oxford School of Drama, supervisor for Creative Performance Practice MA LSBU, and Head of Year Fourth Monkey Actor Training.