developing presence through psychophysical actor-training ofer ravid a dissertation submitted to ...

305 Pages·2014·1.15 MB·English

PRESENTNESS:
DEVELOPING PRESENCE THROUGH PSYCHOPHYSICAL ACTOR-TRAINING

OFER RAVID

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAMME IN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES
YORK UNIVERSITY
TORONTO, ONTARIO
CANADA

April 2014

© Ofer Ravid, 2014
ii

Abstract
There is a variety of understandings of the notion of presence in theatre and performance
studies as well as in the field of actor-training. Presentness, an aspect of presence, is the
experience of the emerging here and now as shaped by the performer’s psychophysical
engagement with his or her surrounding. It is, thus, a tangible aspect of presence that can
be enhanced and developed through training. Presentness developed through training is
an acting skill although it does not necessarily determine how actors act in terms of style
or form. Rather, techniques of presentness are meant to develop and fine-tune the actor’s
instrument as a psychophysical whole that can be used for any style and type of acting.
This dissertation examines processes of developing presentness in the practice of
three prevalent psychophysical acting techniques in North American actor-training:
Viewpoints, Suzuki, and Lecoq. It is based on three years of practice-based research as
participant and observer in various training sites with these techniques. Building on
detailed descriptions of practiced moments accompanied by interviews and conversations
with practitioners and teachers, various emerging manifestations of presentness are
exposed to make a complex and deep understanding of this term. Using Maurice
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology alongside theories from the emerging field of cognitive
neuroscience grounds the experiential accounts of ephemeral processes within concrete
existing constructs of motility, perception, and cognition.
iii

In loving memory of Lisa Wolford-Wylam.
iv

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank my most immediate collaborators in this project – the practitioners who
participated in the workshops, training sessions, and classes that I took during my three-
year research in Chicago, and who were willing to be documented, interviewed, and share
some of their experience. Particularly, my deepest thanks go to Dennis Grimes, Erica
Mott, Jeremy Sher, Meghan Schutt, Amber Robinson, James Holbrook, Kat Evans, and
James Palmer.
My deepest gratitude goes to the teachers whose work is very much at the center
of this dissertation: to members of the SITI Company Barney O’Hanlon, Leon Inglsrud,
J.Ed Araiza, and Akiko Aizawa, whose curiosity, openness, and willingness to share, are
as inspiring as their uncompromising professionalism; and, to Paola Coletto whose
teachings, mentorship, collaboration, and friendship made this dissertation richer, more
significant project.
I am grateful for having received the priceless support of my committee members
Laura Levin, Rhonda Blair, and Guillaume Bernardi.
Finally, this project could not have happened without the support of my partner
and best friend, Noa Vaisman.
v

Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii
Dedication….…………………………………………………………………………......iii
Acknowledgments..……..…….….……..….….….…..………....….….…....….…...........iv
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………….....v

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter 1:
Presentness in Practice and Theory……………………………………………………….8
Presence and Presentness in Practice and Theory………………………………..14
Phenomenology and Cognitive Studies…………………………….…….……...32
Theatres and Techniques: sources, genealogies, definitions………..….….….....43
Viewpoints, Suzuki, and Lecoq………………………………………………….54

Chapter 2:
Various Positions: Locating Practices…………………………………………………...74
Sites of Practice/Research……………………………………………………….97
The Training Group……………………………………………………...98
Viewpoints/Suzuki Intensives….…….…………………………………105
Lecoq Workshops and Creation Processes with Paola Coletto….……..110

Chapter 3:
Know Your Lines: The Vertical and Horizontal……………………………….……….119
Introducing the Vertical and Horizontal……………………..…..……….…….126
vi
Suzuki…………………………………………………………………….…….140
Lecoq’s Neutral……………………………………………….………….……..158
Vertical and Horizontal Connected……………………………………………..171
Viewpoints………………………………………………………………….…..177

Chapter 4:
Training Time: Temporal Presentness in Practice…………………………………..….185
Present, Time…………………………………………………………….….….188
Acting Time: The Moment……………………………………………………..197
Training Time…………………………………………………………………..206
Suzuki…….……………………………………………………….…….206
Viewpoints………………………………………………….…….….….217
Lecoq……………………………………………………………………229

Chapter 5:
Failure, or the Paradox of Embodied Success..……………………………...……..…..236
Failure (in Theory)……………………………………………………………...241
Embodied Micro-Failure: Suzuki Training....…………………………………..250
Neutral Mask: from Micro Failure to Disorientation……....….....……...….…..265
Viewpoints: Uncertainty of Knowledge……...…...………………….….….….272
Training to Fail – Red-Nose Clown…………………………………………….276

Appendix A……………………………………………………………………………..284
Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….286
Introduction

It was February 2008 in Chicago on an extremely cold weekend. I happened to glimpse
an ad by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater presenting Peter Brook’s production,
Fragments, hosted by the theatre for the weekend. In this production director/icon Peter
Brook assembled five of Samuel Beckett’s short plays: Rough for Theatre I, Rockaby, Act
Without Words II, Neither, and Come and Go. The cast included three masters of the
European stage: Marcello Magni, Jos Houben, and Kathryn Hunter. The three are
graduates of École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and had worked
together before on various occasions, including as part of the well known Theatre de
Complicité. It was clear that this production was as much the actors’ work as it was
Brook’s. I was familiar with Magni and Houben’s work as I had taken workshops with
both and had seen both onstage before. However, it was the second short play, Rockaby –
a solo performance by Hunter, which had become a defining moment for my
understanding of one of the most essential aspects of acting and its potential in
performance.
Beckett’s plays pose a significant challenge for any actor. This is particularly true
of a play such as Rockaby in which there is almost no ‘activity’ onstage, no conventional
dramatic action, and almost no change in the mise-en-scène throughout the play. The
2
static nature of this play was further accentuated by the pieces that came before and after
it, Rough for Theatre I and Act Without Words II respectively, both played by Magni and
Houben. The contrast between the two energetic men, who were trying to find reason in
their relationships to each other and in their daily habits through physical actions and
active engagement, and the woman who keeps going inside her head, was striking.
Hunter’s performance was riveting. In spite of the spatially static staging as
dictated by Beckett, Hunter’s small figure managed to pull us in and at the same time
expose her internal emotive stir, even though there was no apparent expression of
emotion. Her body extended, it seemed, to grab every atom in the theatre space. Every
moment was carefully shaped by her, as if time as experienced by all present was flowing
through her and shaped by her. How, then, did she create such a strong effect without
moving her body? How did Hunter move us without moving?
Stripped of most conventions of stage acting, the skill required from an actor
playing Rockaby might be defined as controlling presence. Specifically, it is the ability to
tangibly affect the here and now of performance by means intangible to the audience. It
requires of an actor to be extra involved in the present of performance, demanding
heightened engagement with the space and everything that happens in it for the duration
of the theatrical encounter. Clearly, the particular presentness of performance, the quality
of its hereness and nowness, includes both performers and audience alike. Nevertheless,
it is up to the performer to lead the encounter and shape it. As Hunter’s example
demonstrates, this engagement does not necessarily require movement, activity, or text
although it is entwined with all of these performative elements. At the core of the
3
performer’s immediate presence, which I call presentness, is her availability, sensitivity,
and responsiveness to what emerges in space and time; space and time including both
performers and audience. Further, unlike other notions of presence, presentness can be
developed, grown, deepened, and widened by training the actor’s sensory-motor
apparatus.
This dissertation explores psychophysical actor-training processes in techniques
that focus on developing presentness. The premise is that presentness, the emerging here
and now as shaped by the performer’s psychophysical engagement, is a tangible aspect of
presence that can be enhanced and developed through training. The skills developed
through these forms of training are acting skills although they do not necessarily
determine how actors act in terms of style or form. Rather, these techniques are meant to
develop and fine-tune the actor’s instrument as a psychophysical whole that can be used
for any style and type of acting. Particularly, I examine the ways in which presentness is
practiced within processes of training in Viewpoints, Suzuki, and Lecoq techniques.
Following this short introduction, Chapter 1 acts as an in depth theoretical and
historical introduction, laying the ground for the rest of the dissertation. In it I survey the
various theoretical and practical areas in which my research engages. It serves, then, to
(1) position my research vis-à-vis the ongoing debate about presence, (2) outline and
explicate the main theories and methodologies I use, and (3) provide a genealogy for
techniques of presentness in general and the techniques I examine in particular.
Exploring the particularities of presentness in practice can take many forms. As
my practice-based research progressed along with the writing, I discovered that before
4
getting down to the minute details of the actual practices of presentness I need to situate
myself within the sites of practice and to map the different sites. Chapter 2, titled
“Various Positions: Locating Practices,” presents an overview of my multi-sited practice-
based research and the various methodologies I use in it. In this chapter I situate my
research within and as part of the material sites and examine the complexities of my
positionality as a participant-observer. I explore how the various positions I inhabit
generate different types of knowledge, affording a multi-dimensional outlook on the
praxes. My research sites include a number of workshops and long-term training
processes with the Suzuki, Viewpoints, and Lecoq techniques, in which I participated as
teacher, student or observer. Through this discussion I also revisit a number of questions
arising from the much debated theory-practice rift as it pertains to practice-based
research.
The third and fourth chapters examine presentness as emerging during practice
within and as part of the structuring of the experience of space and time respectively. If
the essence of presentness is a heightened experience of being here and now, these two
chapters answer the need to articulate how the techniques shape the experience and
embodiment of the here—space—and the now—time. This division of spatiotemporal
experience is artificial since spatial and temporal experiences are intertwined.
Nevertheless, it is possible to focus on either the spatial or temporal aspects of a single
experience. Moreover, in some occurrences our experience of time may be at the center
of our attention, e.g. when we listen to one especially long musical note, and in other
occurrences space takes our focus, for example when we enter a cathedral with especially