Of Pounds of Flesh and Trojan Horses: Performer training in the twenty-first century

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Notes

¹Without going into the specificities of each case, but without trying to conflate individual histories into a unified narrative, it is possible to recognize a red line of spatial or geographical displacement among theatre practitioners that led to a corollary shift in training techniques in the twentieth century, e.g., Stanislavsky's selffinanced Theatre Studio, Meyerhold's laboratory studios, Copeau's retreat to the countryside, Grotowski's workspace in Brzezinka and his Workcenter in Pontedera, Barba's theatre in Holstebro, Decroux's tiny basement studio in his house, even Lecoq's school (Murray 2003: 49, 56) and Brook's three-month meanderings in Africa and his relocation from the UK to France in 1970.

² See my discussion of Ingemar Lindh's investigation of collective improvisation which is permeated by the mechanics of encounter and sensitivity to the other in the context of the performer's technical work upon oneself, the relationship with space and text, the role of the spectator, and the discipline of the work (Camilleri 2008: 252).

³ Nicole Bugeja's discussion of the ‘economic strategies and mechanisms’ applied to safeguard contemporary research theatre practice has been inspirational for this section of the article (2007: 75–112).

⁴ The development of the Cardiff Laboratory Theatre into the Centre for Performance Research (CPR) in 1988 and the subsequent close association with Aberystwyth University (which has been used in 2008 as an implicit excuse by the Arts Council of Wales to cut revenue grants to CPR) is also characteristic of the paradigmatic movements discussed in this article.