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Abstract
Method acting, in both theory and practice, is a technique that actively creates emotionally embodied performances. Yet the theory of method acting views emotions as experiences generated by an individual, independent of his or her social or geographical context. This article offers a spatialized rereading of method acting, highlighting the relational spatialities involved in the bodily performance of emotion, thereby developing literatures in theater on space, emotion, and meaning. A focus on Asian American theater enables an examination of the racial politics of this acting technique and its emotional performances. By drawing on four months of ethnographic research working as an assistant stage manager on an Asian American theater production, my analysis demonstrates how relational spaces of emotion enabled fluid performances of racial identity. The performance of emotion was marked by an ambivalent tension between seeing emotional experience as universal and also being marked by racial difference. Examining the theatrical practice of method acting therefore opens up geographical discussions surrounding race and emotion beyond a critique of universality or a focus on difference by attempting to reconcile these contradictory perspectives of emotions in performance. Dramatic forms of theater can be considered sites through which to demonstrate the complexity of creating, experiencing, expressing, and reading emotional bodies.
El método de actuación tanto en la teoría como en la práctica, es una técnica que de forma activa crea actuaciones emocionalmente encarnadas. Sin embargo, la teoría de las técnicas del método de actuación ve las emociones como experiencias generadas por un individuo, independiente de su contexto social o geográfico. Este artículo ofrece una relectura espacializada de la técnica del método de actuación, destacando las espacialidades relacionales involucradas en la ejecución corporal de la emoción, desarrollando así literaturas en el teatro en el espacio, emoción y significado. Un enfoque en el teatro asiático-americano permite un examen de las políticas raciales de esta técnica de actuación y sus representaciones emocionales. Al pasar por cuatro meses de investigación etnográfica trabajando como ayudante de director de escena en una producción teatral asiático-americana, mi análisis demuestra cómo los espacios relacionales de emoción permitieron actuaciones fluidas de identidad racial. El desempeño de la emoción estuvo marcado por una tensión ambivalente entre ver la experiencia emocional como universal, y también ser marcada por la diferencia racial. Por lo tanto el examen de la práctica teatral del método de actuación abre debates geográficos en torno a la raza y la emoción más allá de una crítica de la universalidad o un enfoque en la diferencia, tratando de conciliar estas perspectivas contradictorias de las emociones en la actuación. Las formas dramáticas del teatro pueden ser situaciones a través de los cuales demostrar la complejidad de crear, experimentar, expresar, y leer cuerpos emocionales.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the three anonymous referees who gave me incisive comments on earlier versions of this article. I would also like to thank Audrey Kobayashi for her perceptive suggestions, guidance, and patience. Thanks also go to David Lambert and Philip Crang for their advice. A version of this article was presented at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, on 24 October 2008, and I am grateful for the feedback that I received there. Special thanks go to all those at Lodestone Theater Ensemble, particularly Philip W. Chung, Chil Kong, and Jeff Liu. This research was funded by an ESRC doctoral studentship (PTA-030-2003-01127), and the article was written during a subsequent ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (PTA-026-27-1668) and revised during a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (PDF/2009/429).
Notes
1. These debates also move beyond geography into biology, sociology, psychology, and physiology (see Thrift [2004] for an overview).
2. I am grateful to Audrey Kobayashi for suggesting the phrase “spatial embodiment” as it reflects the idea that the performance of emotion continually brings the body into being through a dialectical spatiality that simultaneously constructs the internal and the external. This approach transcends the Cartesian dualism associated with the spatiality of emotional experience in the theory of method acting.
3. In so doing, I am aware that I am privileging feelings that can be described or explained as emotional experience at the expense of those that cannot, particularly disregarding more affectual realms of embodied experience; however, as suggested, the theatrical context often privileges discursive readings and experiences of emotion, and the remit of this article is confined to emotional rather than emotional and affectual theatrical embodiment.
4. For instance, blaxploitation films depended on hypermasculinity, with the black male as an oversexed “love machine.” In distinct contrast, Asian Americans have often been stereotyped as emasculated, distinctly undersexed or effete, and unable to articulate or experience feelings related to love. The overall project of moving from comedy and action to drama as a way of gaining recognition of emotional complexity, however, remains a roughly parallel one between the two groups.
5. Although Strasberg suggested that affective memory was based on the actor's own experiences, the process Roger deploys works in a similar manner because the memories work as a stimulus to emotion that he can use onstage. The difference is that he is inventing a series of memories to work with. His description of technique, although undoubtedly influenced by method acting, can therefore be seen as a combination of Strasberg's and Adler's variations.