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Performing Consciousness PDF

230 Pages·2010·1.036 MB·English
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Performing Consciousness Performing Consciousness Edited by Per Brask and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe Performing Consciousness, Edited by Per Brask and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe This book first published 2010 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2010 by Per Brask and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-1634-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1634-2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction...............................................................................................vii Chapter One.................................................................................................1 Catherine Fitzmaurice Zeami Breathing Chapter Two..............................................................................................10 William Weiss The Ego and the Self in Actor Training Chapter Three............................................................................................26 Peter Malekin and Ralph Yarrow The Pashyanti Project Chapter Four..............................................................................................47 Jade Rosina McCutcheon Theatre - Re-assessing the Sacred in Actor Training Chapter Five..............................................................................................63 Barbara Sellers-Young Breath, Perception, and Action: The Body and Critical Thinking Chapter Six................................................................................................74 Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe Consciousness, Theatre and Terrorism Chapter Seven............................................................................................89 Kenneth Robbins The Healing Power of Butoh Chapter Eight.............................................................................................96 Jennifer Ewing Pierce The Actor-Problem: Live and Filmed Performance and Classical Cognitivism vi Table of Contents Chapter Nine............................................................................................113 Jude James BEYOND CONVENTION: Border Crossing From the Social Body to the Porous Body: The Porous Body as Ontological Site – Interface for A-Located Realities Chapter Ten.............................................................................................129 Per Brask Acting and Archetypes: A Point of Departure Chapter Eleven........................................................................................135 William Weiss How do you Apply “Spirituality” in Theatre Training? Chapter Twelve.......................................................................................143 Jerri Daboo The Altering I/Eye: Consciousness, ‘Self’, and the New Paradigm in Acting Chapter Thirteen......................................................................................162 Jade Rosina McCutcheon Post Human Interactivity on the Global Stage: The Culture of Simulation Chapter Fourteen.....................................................................................169 Craig Turner The Association Process in Stanislavski’s “Threshold of the Subconscious” Chapter Fifteen........................................................................................194 Susan Mower Etienne Decroux: A Corporeal Consciousness Contributors.............................................................................................213 INTRODUCTION Since its inaugural issue in April, 2000, the journal Consciousness, Literature and the Arts has regularly published essays on the intersection of theatre and consciousness. Often these essays have seen theatre as a spiritual practice that for both the performer and her audience can bring about experiences that help heal the world, a shift in consciousness. This practice, though spiritual, is not ethereal but is rooted in doing, in actions, in breathing. That is, theatre is seen as an art form understood as part of a whole, as taking place in total Consciousness as well as expressing consciousness(es), making both breathing a source of meaning and shamanic journeying part of the creative process that brings into “being” imaginative resources for the actor that undermines traditional understandings of character/self/ego. Catherine Fitzmaurice’s “Zeami Breathing,” suggests how practices of breathing and breath developed in the No can found an understanding of “vibration as soul.” William Weiss’s “The Ego and the Self in Actor Training,” outlines the need for the inclusion of the “universal spiritual self” in actor training in order to clarify the possibility of transitioning from one “ego” to the portrayal of another “ego,” so that the body becomes a symbol that can play “different egos.” Peter Malekin and Ralph Yarrow’s, “The Pashyanti Project,” may be read as a kind of manifesto for a theatre that brings audiences and theatre makers nearer “a universal level of mind.” Jade Rosina McCutcheon’s “Theatre: Re-Assessing the Sacred in Actor Training,” charts how shamanic journeying exercises bring actors into altered states of consciousness that are highly creative and productive of soul making. Barbara Sellers-Young’s “Breath, Perception, and Action: The Body and Critical Thinking,” makes clear how body and mind are intimately connected: indeed they form a whole system, the bodymind that needs holistic stimulation and exercise. Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe’s “Consciousness, Theatre and Terrorism,” explores the redemptive effectiveness of the theatre and the root causes of violence and terrorism through the Natyashastra, and profiles a Vedic Theatre where an audience experiences pure consciousness. viii Introduction Kenneth Robbins’s “The Healing Power of Butoh” is a personal account of a curative encounter with a Hikaru Otsubo performance on September 13, 2001, an the days leading up to it. Jennifer Ewing Pierce’s “The Actor Problem: Live and Film Performance and Classical Cognitivism” shows how human emotion is the hub where theatre studies and cognitive studies can link in productive interdisciplinary explorations. Her essay also makes clear how classical cognitivism begins to “unravel” at this point. Jude James’s “Beyond Convention: Border Crossing From the Social Body to the Porous Body: The Porus Body as Ontological Site – Interface for A-Located Realities” situates the body as the “narrator” in theatre making, and see that body as a complex matrix, enfolded in and expressive of its environment. Per Brask’s “Acting and Archetypes,” suggests an approach to actor training that uses archetypes to help students to “see through” character. William Weiss’s “How do you apply ‘spirituality’ in theatre training?” argues that theatre in itself is no more spiritual than any other pursuit and that as “a model of world making” it is the opposite of spirit, but that “[a]ny theatre exercise that seeks to neutralize our body in order to make it an instrument for playing characters different from our selves could advance our spiritual understanding.” Jade Rosina McCutcheon’s “Post Human Interactivity on the Global Stage: The Culture of Simulation” problematizes concepts of “self” and “acting” in view of “the experience of playing selves in various cyber- contexts.” Jerri Daboo’s “The Altering I/Eye: Consciousness, ‘Self,’ and the New Paradigm in Acting” uses insights from quantum physics and Buddhist psychology in order to put forward an approach to acting in which “the inner and the outer cannot be separated.” Craig Turner’s “The Association Process in Stanislavski’s ‘Threshold of the Subconscious’” applies trance techniques from neuro-linguistic programming in order to help the actor more effectively and more deeply make the shift from normal self-awareness. Susan Mower’s “Etienne Decroux: A Corporeal Consciousness” illustrates how the corporeal mime’s extra-daily behavior brings into being an alteration in consciousness that leads to a theatre “of the invisible made visible.” All the pieces collected here, then, reveal a concern with consciousness and the theatre, the ways that performance can be a spiritual practice, a means of reaching higher levels of consciousness, as well as the ways the Performing Consciousness ix theatre may have healing effects on audiences by engaging them in wider and deeper levels of imagination, the levels where dualities disappear. ‰g{{x Xw|àÉÜá

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