Care and shared agency in actor training: a new transformative departure (sets of practices)

Abstract

This dissertation proposes training strategies (sets of practices) for actors envisioned through and in discourse with a theoretical framework of post-psychophysical acting. The postpsychophysical provides alternative conceptualizations of the performer’s work that are based on socio-material relational dynamics, mechanisms, and networks that situate that activity in the overlapping contexts of living and practice (Camilleri 2020: xxi). By devising training evolving out of the post-psychophysical discourse, this artistic research aims to encourage other practitioners to step in and find their strategies to devise processes deeply connected to the instances of a post-human condition. The methodology of this dissertation consists of practice-as-research, literature review, and autoethnography. It includes a theoretical analysis of the notion of post-psychophysicality in relation to actor training, focusing on the relevance of new materialism and posthumanism in tracing the transformative trajectory of actor training as a mixed practice of conflict and care. In exploring how to link the performative process of acting to concepts drawn from 21st century studies, this research describes the development of four works: a theatre performance with a posthumanist dramaturgical approach; a theatre pedagogical process based on principles of both psychophysical and post-psychophysical approaches; site-specific research on sociomaterial relational dynamics; and a site-specific, multidisciplinary performance based on the concept of assemblage. This research concludes by proposing a set of strategies to develop the actor’s sense of self and agency in a way that is open and attentive towards human and non-human developments and fulfils the promise of maintaining a (critical) connection with the basic notion of psychophysical training.