Acting Freely

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Notes

¹ My own participatory experiences in these three sites includes practising training exercises with members of the Odin Teatret, time spent conducting research on rehabilitation wards in South Wales and the South West throughout 2007–2008 and a period of research spent living in Worth Abbey, a Benedictine Monastery in Sussex. The physical examination that provides the central point of reference for this article was conducted on 1 January 2008. In keeping with the wishes of the physiotherapist who conducted the examination, further details have been withheld.

² Berlin argues that such an individual liberal ideal of freedom would appear to be a very modern doctrine because discussions of individual liberty as a political ideal are scarce in the ancient world (1969 [1958]: 129). In considering the various historical versions of this doctrine in Hobbes, Mill, Locke and others, Berlin states that such doctrines are characterized by a commitment to protect a sphere of negative freedom while accepting (to varying degrees) that limitations must be placed on the complete expansion of this sphere so that individuals can function as and within a polis.

³ While Alan Read (2008) has preserved some currency for the term ‘acting’ in Performance Studies via his mobilization of Bruno Latour's Actor Network Theory (2005) and Nicholas Ridout has aligned the term ‘acting’ with the ‘relational aesthetics’ of contemporary performance, the present moment, where makers of performance ‘cannot be untheatrical enough’, remains one in which acting, like ‘theatricality’, is a key (and negative) term (Ridout 2006: 5).

⁴ This is, he maintains, because childhood roleplaying informs and supports the kind of social role-playing on which society relies, but it also is the case because to act ‘symbolically’ is also to act ‘really’, since, when an actor on stage sits down or accepts a cream bun, they really sit down and really take the cake. Conversely, the kind of social role-playing in which things really get done in the real world relies on the symbolism of action as so many, following Searle (1969) and Goffman (1959), have shown.

⁵ It is important to note that, as Nicholas Ridout has observed, despite the declining importance of skill-acquisition to European actor training, the ‘necessity’ of the reconciliation of ‘repetition with the equally exacting necessity of apparent spontaneity’ has remained central to modern theories of acting (Ridout 2006: 20).

⁶ Several academics have explored the ‘eastern’ spiritual and performance-based influences on Jerzy Grotowski during his studies in Moscow and his travels in central Asia (Meyer-Dinkgraefe 2006: 74–80; Lavy, 2005: 175). With respect to other religious traditions and practices Schechner refers to Grotowski's research into ‘old forms of Christianity’ (1997:476) and Osinski notes the ‘hermit … asceticism’ (1997: 398) of his work.

⁷ Dykstra's description of the wide-reaching effects of formation – ‘the faith community has formative power in the lives of people. It can nurture their faith and give shape to the quality and character of their spirits’ (in Astley et al. 1996: 252) – reflects what he calls a ‘general consensus … among religious educators at the present time’ (252).

⁸ According to Kumiega, Grotowski asserted that Stanislavski's primary legacy to the profession of acting was his emphasis on the need for daily training (1987: 110) and Wolford observes that in her experiences ‘Grotowski consistently upheld this mandate, requiring the actors under his direction to engage in regular physical and vocal training’ (in Hodge 2000: 198).

⁹ John Dillon observes that the archetypical practices of restraint and denial can be traced back through the historical development of Western traditions of asceticism to Plato's Phaedo and two implied conceptualizations of the relationship between body and soul. One interpretation of the word phroura, ‘prison’, in Socrates statement ‘we men are en tini phrourai and one ought not to release oneself from this or run away’, led to the development of a ‘world-negating’ version of asceticism (1995: 81). This version is also associated with a Pythagorean dictum, known to Plato, that the body (soma) is a tomb (sema) for the soul. But Dillon also explains that phroura as well as meaning ‘prison’ can also mean ‘guard post’, and it is through this interpretation that a ‘world-affirming’ conception of asceticism develops that views restraint and denial as associated not with rejection of the world but with a ‘refining of the body, to make it a worthy, or at least non-injurious receptacle of the soul’ (81).