This new issue of the journal is international in scope with rich contributions from around the globe including articles on indigenous theatre in New Zealand, explorations of planetary performance pedagogy from practitioner scholars in Singapore, USA and Australia, training histories in Australia and in the former Yugoslavia, and a collated series of conversations on theatre pedagogy from Drama School Mumbai. Contributions include short essais, postcards and reviews as well as articles, several of which respond to creative responses to being in the midst of a pandemic.
It’s always a delight to see how submissions to one of the open issues of TDPT reveal new debates simply by sitting side by side with each other. In 12.1 a prominent theme that emerges is that of tracing past training practices and examining how they link with or challenge contemporary training experiences. One way of exploring this, beyond the pages of the issue, is to read the essai on Peter Hulton’s pioneering work on Arts Archive that links perfectly with Hulton’s offer here in the blog to make a wide range of training workshops available to explore. .
Contents
Editorial
Libby Worth, Jonathan Pitches, Chris Hay and Aiden Condron
Articles
Embodied exploratory processes in Australian performance training and international influences
Melanie Beddie and Peta Tait
Towards planetary performance pedagogy: digital companions in multipolar classrooms
Felipe Cervera, Theron Schmidt and Hannah Schwadron
Essai
Peter Hulton and arts archives – an appreciation
Dick McCaw
Articles
“Until I know this sure uncertainty”: actor training and original practices
Chris Hay and Robin Dixon
(Re)discovering the Self through an ‘Other’: reflections on the spiritual education of the actor in the remnants of Yugoslavia
Mihailo Lad-evac
Postcards
Training and… masks
Vicky Wright
Training and… masks
John Wright
Charging
Cheryl Stapleton
Training and… masks
Thomas Wilson
Articles
Body. Breath. Text. Freedom: an investigation of concurrent training in Linklater voice and the Suzuki actor training method
Jo Loth and Rob Pensalfini
Decolonising theatre and ensemble training in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Te R_akau Hua o Te Wao Tapu Theatre
Helen Pearse-Otene
Embodying unpredictability
Catherine Seago
Book Reviews
Making Site-Specific Theatre and Performance
Lawrence Ashford
Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training
Josephine Christensen
The Five Continents of Theatre: Facts and Legends about the Material Culture of the Actor
Rachel Karafistan
The Life of Training
Kevin Skelton
Events Review
133 Unrehearsed Futures: A series of public conversations on theatre pedagogy hosted by Drama School Mumbai
Jehan Manekshaw
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Contributors
Dr Melanie Beddie trained as an actor at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), and has a PhD from La Trobe University on lineages in Australian actor training. She was a co-founder of the $5 Theatre Co., and artistic director of the independent theatre company, The BRANCH. Melanie works as a director, dramaturg and actor trainer and has directed many productions with a focus on new Australian writing and received numerous Greenroom Awards for her work. Melanie was a Lecturer in Acting at VCA, and more recently teaches actors at the Federation University, WAAPA, and University of Tasmania.
Felipe Cervera is a Lecturer of Theatre at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. He has published on collaborative research for theatre and performance studies with a focus on planetary methodologies in Global Performance Studies, and Text & Performance Quarterly, on the interplays between performance, astronomy, and astronautics on Theatre Research International and Performance Research, and on theatre and politics in the Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics and Performance Philosophy. He is co-founder of the research ensemble, After Performance, and serves as co-editor of Global Performance Studies, and Associate Editor of Performance Research and of Global Performance Studies.
Robin Dixon is a School Interdisciplinary Unit Co-ordinator in the School of Literature, Arts and Media, University of Sydney. He is an interdisciplinary theatre historian with a wide range of research interests, but a particular enthusiasm for ancient drama, reconstructions of performance conventions and stagecraft informed by cognitive approaches, improvisation, and spatial dramaturgy.
Chris Hay is a Lecturer in Drama and ARC DECRA Fellow in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is an Australian theatre and cultural historian, whose research examines the history of arts subsidy in Australia, and the impact of state funding on the nation’s live performance culture.
Mihailo Lađevac is a PhD candidate at the Theatre and Performance Studies at the Auckland University of Technology in Aotearoa New Zealand. His topic examines ‘the sacred’ in the work of the actor. Mihailo has taught acting in Serbia and various Theatre studies papers in Aotearoa New Zealand. Along his academic work, Mihailo brings over 20 years of professional acting. Mihailo has been a full-time member of the National Theatre in Belgrade, since 2001 and has performed across Europe, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in more than 50 classical and contemporary theatre productions. Mihailo has also been a core member of Equal Voices Arts, where he has co-devised and developed two large scale touring productions that have been designed to be accessible for both Deaf and hearing audiences (where both languages have equal status on stage). Mihailo has received multiple national awards for his pedagogical and practical performance work.
Jo Loth is a movement, voice and acting teacher, and Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at USC (Australia). She has trained in the Suzuki actor training method with SCOT (Japan) and P3/East (Seattle), and in Linklater voice with Kristin Linklater. Jo has worked as an actor, cabaret writer/performer, and director.
Helen Pearse-Otene is a Māori playwright, performer and psychologist who completed her actor training at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School in 1996. Since 1999, she has been a member of Te Rākau Theatre working in therapeutic theatre programmes in prisons, isolated communities, schools and youth justice facilities throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand. Helen is currently undertaking research that applies Māori performing arts and cultural narratives in a therapeutic Indigenous research project on historic sexual trauma.
Rob Pensalfini has published several books and numerous articles in both linguistics and drama, including ground-breaking work on the performance of Shakespeare in prisons. He leads Australia’s only ongoing Prison Shakespeare program and is the Artistic Director of the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble. Rob is a Designated Linklater Teacher.
Theron Schmidt teaches performance writing and collaborative performance practices at UNSW Sydney and works internationally as a solo and collaborative artist. He has published widely on contemporary theatre and performance, participatory art practices, and politically engaged performance and activism. He has contributed to anthologies and journals such as Thinking Through Theatre and Performance, Postdramatic Theatre and the Political, Performance Research, Law Text Culture, The Live Art Almanac, and Contemporary Theatre Review. He is a founding co-convener of the international Performance Philosophy network, co-editor of the journal Performance Philosophy, and Associate Editor for Performance.
Hannah Schwadron is Associate Professor at Florida State University where she teaches critical dance studies and choreography. She is author of The Case of the Sexy Jewess: Dance, Gender, and Jewish Joke-Work in US Pop Culture (Oxford University Press, 2018, and winner of the de La Torre Bueno First Book Award), and other essays appear in the Oxford Handbook on Dance and Politics and the Oxford Handbook Online in Dance and Music, Choreographic Practices, Perspectives on American Dance, Liminalities, PARtake, and Dancer-Citizen. Since 2013, Hannah has curated Field Studies, an annual creative development lab for dance writing and performance in NYC. She is also Director of Arts in NYC with whom she hosts ARTISTIMULUS, a digital dance speaker series in support of dance artists, administrators, curators, and service organizations hardest hit by COVID-19.
Dr Catherine Seago is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for Dance at the University of Winchester. Further to her PhD she holds a BA from the University of Surrey Roehampton, a Master of Fine Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College NY, a professional certification from the Merce Cunningham Studio and a specialist diploma in choreological studies from TrinityLaban. Her creative practice has been developed in collaboration with artists and artist-scholars. As Director of Evolving Motion she has received support for choreographic research and performance since 1998 in Europe, the USA and South East Asia. The interdisciplinary performance work of Evolving Motion focusses on the somatic experience of dance making.
Peta Tait is Professor of Theatre and Drama at La Trobe University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She has written over 60 scholarly articles and chapters and recent books include: the authored, Theory for Theatre Studies: Emotion (Bloomsbury 2021); the edited The Great European Stage Directors: Antoine, Stanislavski and Saint-Denis, volume one (Bloomsbury, 2018); the co-edited Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene (2018); the authored Fighting Nature: Travelling Menageries, Animal Acts and War Shows (SUP 2016); and authored Circus Bodies (Routledge 2005); Performing Emotions (2002); and play, Eleanor and Mary Alice (Currency Press 2018).