Establishing an ecology of practice: a ‘Do It Yourself’ approach to performer training

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how deeply engaging embodied perception can be nurtured and refined over a lifetime. In this article, we propose the ways in which an industry-based, self-styled performance training trajectory and a DIY approach to lifelong learning in performance-making cohere as an ecology of practice. Selected exercises are drawn on to consider how skills are accrued and how a consistent approach to practice can afford the practitioner a sustainable and flexible approach. These training examples are then considered as enablers of kinesthetic listening and embodied knowledge through the theorising of Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, George Lakoff, Mark Johnston and Shaun Gallagher, in order to discuss the deep perceptual learning that is possible when an ecological approach to performer training is adopted. Finally, we open up the paper to a broader discussion about industry sustainability and performer wellbeing, arguing for this ecological approach, which affords the practitioner aesthetic agency, social responsibility, and political engagement, as a crucial contribution to the debate.

KEYWORDS:

• Performer training
• actor training
• embodied agency
• ecology of practice
• perceptual awareness practices
• practice across the lifespan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rea Dennis

Rea Dennis is a theatre practitioner and scholar who lives and works in Melbourne Australia, Wurundjeri country. Based in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, her practice research investigates questions of embodied knowing, perception and affect in identity and felt experience. Rea has published on refugee performance, actor training, ecological and telematic performance and is on the editorial board of Dance and Somatic Practices journal. A maker and performer, her live performance, socially engaged and multimedia works have been presented in UK, USA, Taiwan, UK, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia.

Kate Hunter

Kate Hunter is a theatre-maker and researcher whose work juxtaposes digital and analogue technology, storytelling and the live body, and investigates innovative use of polyphonic verbatim recordings to examine the complex interplay between hearing, listening, reading and speaking that is implicit in the ways humans communicate through language. Kate’s research draws on cognitive and biomedical sciences, diseases and dying, perception and the senses as provocations for enquiry. Her work is characterized by a very specific, writerly approach to devising - gathering, crafting & re-voicing an extensive array of found texts from contemporary media, oral histories & personal stories, which are layered, repeated and extruded to create a comic and highly distinctive theatrical form. Kate is currently Lecturer in Art and Performance at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.