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Abstract
Professional actors learn and generally conduct warm-up processes, which prepare them for the demands of performance. However, they neither learn nor gradually develop post-performance cool-down practices, despite significant activation experienced; this absence is identified as a gap in the actor’s training and practice. During the post-performance phase, actors experience adrenaline rush, hot states (emotions) and visceral drives (hunger, thirst, pain or exhaustion), regularly and up to 8 times a week, for weeks or months at a time. Moreover, established cultural norms require the actors’ engagement in perpetual performance; the blending of artistic and social performance, which further exacerbates their considerable exertion, especially when combined with alcohol, rendering them exposed to disturbed sleep, alcohol dependency and burn-out. In the first part of this paper, the cool-down is located strictly as a post-performance phase, rather than therapy and distinguished from the de-role and the de-brief, whilst six cool-down processes reflected in literature are evaluated. The second part highlights the imbalance between the emerging academic interest in the cool-down and the lack of practice indicated in contemporary professional stage actors, suggesting that training environments could do more to incorporate the concept and practice of the post-performance cool-down for their actors.
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Christophoros Panoutsos
Christophoros Panoutsos worked as an actor for 15 years in Greece and the UK and studied at Veaki Drama School, L.A.M.D.A., A.A.D.A., and Meisner Technique at the Impulse Theatre Company, London. He holds degrees from the Open University, St Mary’s University, Twickenham and Royal Holloway University, London. He is currently a third year PhD student at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.