Utopia in Actor Training

Abstract

Can actor training be seen as a utopic enterprise? In her groundbreaking work, Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan posits theatre as a ‘placeholder for social change’ by virtue of ‘its openness to human interactions [and] exchange (Dolan: 63)’. Actor training bears the same potential, insofar as it invites intersectionality and eclipses geographic and cultural borders. It affords promise for a more equitable, inclusive, and diverse world. As such, actor training engenders hope.

Relying on ethnographic fieldwork from my research as a Fulbright Scholar, I present New Zealand’s national drama school as a case study for a utopic model. Named Toi Whakaari, the Te Reo term for ‘performing arts,’ I was in residence at the school from January to July of 2019, where I experienced the acting programme and its staff and students firsthand. My findings demonstrate how Toi Whakaari’s blending of Western and Māori praxis contextualizes a uniquely progressive and student-centered learning environment that embraces cultural difference towards engendering artistic and personal empowerment. The acting programme’s decolonized curriculum balances skills training and cultural diversity, whereby students and staff jointly posit and practice social change. It is emblematic of Dolan’s performative contextualization of utopia and therefore answers this article’s straightforward question in the affirmative: actor training can indeed be seen as utopic.