Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Volume 14, Issue 1 (2023)
Editorial
Libby Worth, Jonathan Pitches, Thomas Wilson & Aiden Condron
Article
The listening actor: intersections between the musicality of Meisner Technique and ear training in Dalcroze Eurhythmics
Andrew Davidson
Article
Beyond the stomp: the Nobbs Suzuki Praxis as an Australian variant of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training
Antje Diedrich & Frances Barbe
Speaking Image
Skills shared
Anja Meinhardt
Essai
There is no such thing as an accident
Thomas Wilson
Article
Performing while documenting or how to enhance the narrative agency of a camera
Nathalie S. Fari
Article
Access for autistic student-actors: interrogating the role of empathy within actor-training methods
Zoë Glen
Speaking Image
The interpersonal body: knowing another through the shared embodiment of ‘energetic contact’
Juliet Chambers-Coe
Events Review
Unrehearsed Futures – Season 2: a series of public conversations on possibility, plurality and planetarity in theatre pedagogy hosted by Drama School Mumbai
Phalguni Vittal Rao
Editors
Jonathan Pitches is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Leeds and Head of School of Performance and Cultural Industries. He specialises in the study of performer training and has wider interests in intercultural performance, environmental performance and blended learning. He is founding co-editor of the TDPT and has published several books in this area: Vsevolod Meyerhold (2003), Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting (2006/9), Russians in Britain (2012) and, Stanislavsky in the World (with Dr Stefan Aquilina 2017). His most recent publications are: Great Stage Directors Vol 3: Komisarjevsky, Copeau Guthrie (sole editor, 2018) and the monograph, Performing Landscapes: Mountains (2020). His most recent publication is the co-edited Routledge Companion to Meyerhold (2022) (again with Dr Aquilina).
Libby Worth is Reader in Contemporary Performance Practices, Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a movement practitioner with research interests in the Feldenkrais Method, physical theatres, site-based performance and in folk/traditional and amateur dance. Performances include co-devised duets; Step Feather Stitch (2012) and dance film Passing Between Folds (2017). She is co-editor of TDPT and published texts include Anna Halprin (2004, co-authored), Ninette de Valois: Adventurous Traditionalist (2012, co-edited), Jasmin Vardimon’s Dance Theatre: Movement, Memory and Metaphor (2016). Chapter contributions include on clog and sword dancing for Time and Performer Training (2019, she co-edited) and ‘Improvisation in Dance and the Movement of Everyday Life’ for the Oxford Handbook of Dance Improvisation (2019).
Training Grounds Editors
Thomas J M Wilson is Programme Director for BA (Hons) European Theatre Arts at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Initially training in Equestrian Vaulting he competed at European-level in the mid-1990s. Subsequently he has engaged in practices rooted in the intersection between dance and theatre methodologies, working as both a performer and director/choreographer in a range of contexts. Thomas served on Oxford Dance Forum’s Steering Group (2008–2010) and has regularly contributed to Total Theatre Magazine since 2001. He was a member of the Board of Theatre Deli from 2013 to 2021 (including serving as Chair and Co-Chair). He is an Associate of Gandini Juggling working as their Archivist and Publications Author. He is the author of Juggling Trajectories: Gandini Juggling 1991–2015, which was shortlisted for The Society of Theatre Research Book Prize 2016.
Chris Hay is Professor of Drama in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, Adelaide. His current research examines knowledge transfer in creative arts training, with a particular focus on embedding diversity. Some preliminary findings of this research was published in the monograph Knowledge, Creativity and Failure (Palgrave, 2016), and his work also appears in the edited collection New Directions in Teaching Theatre Arts. Chris is also continuing his research projects examining the early days of Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (AETT), and Australia’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Aiden Condron has been an actor, performance maker and actor trainer for over twenty-five years working across the UK, Europe and the US. Aiden was founding artistic director of Nervousystem, a Dublin-based international performance laboratory from 2002–2012. Aiden’s current research activity investigates processes and practices of actor and performer training within the domain of presence, play and action, examining the actor’s dramaturgy as a field of autonomous creation. Aiden is currently pioneering an actor training initiative in Saudi Arabia working in collaboration with the Theatre and Performing Arts Commission of the KSA Ministry of Culture.
Roanna Mitchell is a performance-maker and movement person, co-director of the Chekhov Collective UK, and lecturer at the University of Kent where she is course leader for the MA Physical Acting. Her work explores performance and training in the intersection between acting and dance, and applications of Chekhov technique beyond the theatre. She has directed/created/movement-directed performance internationally, often working site-responsively and including collaborations with Richard Schechner (Imagining O, UK/India/US), Platform 7(Resting Place, Ramsgate/Charing Cross Station/Folkestone Seafront) and Accidental Collective (Here’s Hoping, Theatre Royal Margate/Oval House London). www.roannamitchell.com; www.chekhovcollectiveuk.co.uk
Sara Reed is an independent academic, researcher, writer, project manager and a qualified Feldenkrais practitioner. With a career that has spanned a wide range of dance, performance, arts and education contexts, she has published widely in the area of embodied-movement, dance, somatic practices and pedagogy. Her experience includes interdisciplinary teaching across art forms. Sara is an Associate Editor for TDPT Training Grounds and on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices and Dance, Movement & Spiritualities. She is Co-chair for Independent Dance and a trustee for Wriggle Dance Theatre – for children and families.
Contributors
Dr Frances Barbe is a performer, director and movement director currently based at Edith Cowan University’s Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) in Perth, Australia where Associate Dean of Discipline: Performance. Her teaching and research focuses on movement, devising and the creative process with particular emphasis on embodied and intercultural approaches to performer training and creative process. Frances has trained in Nobbs Suzuki Praxis since 1992 with John Nobbs and Jacqui Carroll and as a company member performed in The Romance of Orpheus (Brisbane 1993, Bunya Mountains 1996); Heavy Metal Hamlet (London 2005); The Royal Fair (Croatia 2004); Macbeth (Switzerland 2009); and Oedipus (Switzerland 2010).
Juliet Chambers-Coe is a GL-Certified Movement Analyst and is Lecturer in Movement at E15 Acting School (University of Essex). She is Principal Editor for the Journal of Dance, Movement, and Spiritualties published by Intellect. Her research focuses on Rudolf Laban’s philosophy of movement and its spiritual foundations, with a particular focus on training actors.
Andrew Davidson is an Australian theatre practitioner and musician with specialisms in actor training and music education. He is based in London, UK, and is Senior Lecturer in Acting & Musical Theatre at Guildford School of Acting (GSA), University of Surrey. Andrew is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and the Royal Society for the Arts (FRSA). He is a graduate of Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and holds a Master of Music degree from Longy School of Music, USA. Andrew directs theatre, writes music, and plays piano for dance. He is a qualified teacher of Dalcroze Eurhythmics and has undertaken training in Meisner Technique. Andrew has presented at conferences and workshops internationally, and has published inStanislavski Studies and Research in Dance Education.
Dr Antje Diedrich is a senior lecturer, theatre maker and researcher based at Middlesex University in London. She mostly teaches in the areas of performer training and devising. She previously lectured at the University of Bedfordshire, Rose Bruford College, Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Hildesheim, Germany. Her current work explores the intersections between text and performance, and the performer and the audience, with a particular emphasis on physicality. Having mainly trained in Nobbs Suzuki Praxis and the Suzuki Actors’ Training Method, she is researching performer training disciplines. Antje also creates performance projects under her stage name Adie Mueller.
Nathalie S. Fari (b. 1975 in São Paulo, Brazil) is a performance- and visual artist and researcher exploring questions of documentation, mediation, and the relation between body/space. She holds a degree in Art Education from the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado University (98) in São Paulo and a Master of Arts in Space Strategies – Exploratory Art in Public Contexts (09) from Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin. Additionally, she has completed trainings in acting and physical theatre at the TUCA theatre school (94) of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo and at the Centro de Pesquisa Teatral Institute (95) under the direction of Antunes Filho. Since 2010, she has also been designing workshops and performance laboratories with the focus on the concept of Body Mapping and on issues around performance documentation and screen performance. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Performance Practices at the Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Zoë Glen is a neurodivergent actor trainer and performer trained at Rose Bruford College and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Her research interests are in neurodivergence, subverting the canon and adapting actor training. Zoë also has a performance practice which focuses on devised ensemble work and facilitates in community arts settings.
Anja Meinhardt is the founder and artistic director of Justice in Motion, which she founded in 2013 to combine her passion in social justice with her skills in the arts; desiring to make a difference in our culture and society. https://www.justiceinmotion.co.uk
Phalguni Vittal Rao is an actor, writer/journalist and theatre-maker. She is an alumnus of Drama School Mumbai.