Actor training and intercultural jam in a multilingual context

Abstract

Actor training in Singapore’s multicultural context often sees a synthesis of acting methodologies, which emerged out of a conscious interaction between training methods borrowed from foreign contexts. This process is mostly found in local acting schools and theatre academies. The recently formed theatre company Nine Years Theatre adapts the actor training methodologies of Suzuki Tadashi and Anne Bogart within a bilingual (English and Mandarin) context. This essay closely investigates their training methods in order to examine the specific nature of this training process and how Singapore-based actors have received the training. Drawing from interviews with the co-founders Nelson Chia and Mia Chee, and by observing their ‘jam sessions’, this article closely examines the subtler modes of intercultural negotiation that occur offstage. ‘To jam’ suggests a tentativeness to their synthesis but also a commitment to actor training. It reflects the company’s continual efforts to discover and train actors to meet the demands of their acting disciplines and to perform in Mandarin. Such intercultural training hinges on the suitability of foreign techniques to be absorbed by the actors’ bodies. In one particular exercise, actors sing a Japanese song often used by Suzuki to train breathing techniques and text delivery. Those instances bring into relief that interculturality is more than the blind adoption of mixed art forms. Instead, the switching of languages in order to recalibrate a body for performance suggests that culturally defined bodies often change viewpoints, and their shifts in corporeal registers can include phonological negotiation.

Keywords:

• actor training
• multilingualism
• intercultural theatre
• Viewpoints
• Suzuki Method
• Nine Years Theatre

Notes

¹ For an overview of the two respective programmes please visit the following links: National University of Singapore at http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/ell/Modules_TS.html and National Institute of Education at https://www.ntu.edu.sg/Students/Undergraduate/AcademicServices/AcademicProgrammes/Documents/minorindramaperformancewriteup.pdf

² They are namely Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee (1962), Twelve Angry Men, screenplay by Reginald Rose (1957), Art by Yasmina Reza (1994), An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen (1882), Tartuffe by Molière (1664), and The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky (1902). The artistic director, Nelson Chia, translated the English translations of the original texts into Mandarin.