According to our publishing schedule, this issue is meant to come out on the very day the UK leaves the European Union, but as I write there are still countless futures being debated in parliament. In such circumstances, the output of an academic journal seems of little significance next to the prospect of delayed artist visas, the collapse of the much-cherished Erasmus + scheme and an ever-deepening sense of cultural isolation. But that is perhaps to do the work of a scholarly journal a disservice. As a vehicle for the exchange of ideas across borders, for the robust and critical expression of culture from multiple sources, for the celebration of advanced modes of communication in the hands of skilled practitioners, a journal such as ours is a small but important manifestation of the need for respectful (and well-evidenced) interrogation of cultures – both within and beyond Europe. For these editors at least, that is something to hold on to, if not treasure, in these unprecedented times.
For those of you waiting expectantly for four issues of TDPT to drop through your letterbox (or ping into your inbox) in 2019, we must send our apologies. We announced our intention to move to quarterly status in the opening issue of 2018 (9.1) but have slightly revised our timetable to allow us to refine our structure and enhance our staff base so that we can fully exploit the luxury of landing TDPT in your laps not twice (up to 2012), not three times (from 2012 to 2019) but four whole times a year (from 2020).
We have spent the time wisely, we hope, shifting things around and trialling ideas in the last Special Issue, Training Places: Dartington College of Arts (9.3), and in this generic issue (10.1), to get the balance of materials across the journal right and, equally importantly, to make sure we can sustain the expansion without causing permanent harm to ourselves! To this end we are delighted to announce some quite big changes in this volume and in the brilliant team of people who work with us on TDPT.
Two veterans are leaving us after a decade of dedicated activity in Training Grounds. Enormous thanks are extended to Kate Craddock (off to become a prestigious Clore Leader) and Dick McCaw (delivering on a daunting programme of book projects). Both Kate and Dick have been with us since the very early days in which Training Grounds was conceived, and have been hugely influential in setting the right tone for, and broadening the voice of, TG. Their influence remains in every polemical and witty, inventive and gritty piece of Training Grounds material we publish. These changes have prompted a rethink of how we organise Training Grounds and specifically a levelling out of the unwitting hierarchy of a ‘back pages’ section dedicated to the practitioner voice. A back door into the journal? A trade entrance? The complexities and undesirable associations such metaphors throw up have troubled us for some years. TDPT has of course always celebrated the practitioner voice in all its sections and this false binary was one we were keen to address, learning from our approach in Showing and Writing Training (7.2) and in Dartington (9.3). From 10.1 onwards, then, we will be dispersing the shorter pieces of thinking, still categorised as Training Grounds, throughout the journal, so that the longer Articles now rub up directly alongside the shorter Essais and extended Sources vie for space with the elliptical and concentrated prose of our Postcards.
We have not eschewed the back pages entirely, however. These we have now exclusively reserved for an expanded Reviews section, holding three kinds of review: book reviews, reflections on classic texts or Re-reviews, and events reviews. A discipline’s strength is clearly expressed in the scholarly writing and investigative practice which emerges from that discipline. As the only journal dedicated solely to performer training research, we feel it is vitally important that we celebrate, critique and engage with the state of the discipline’s expression as much as possible and we are trying to do this now in clearer terms and with more space in this section. As a gesture of our commitment to this, we have recently appointed two new reviews editors starting from this issue: we are thrilled to introduce you to Chris Hay from the University of Queensland (Book Reviews Editor) and Aiden Condron from the Institute of the Arts, Barcelona (Events Reviews Editor and formerly Editorial Assistant for TG). Both are charged with expanding and enhancing the Reviews section, building on Kate Craddock’s excellent work. Chris ([email protected]) and Aiden ([email protected]) are open to suggestions for reviews and you can make these directly to them, or via Libby and myself.
Anticipating a greater load following the move to four issues, we have also made a further appointment to the Training Grounds team – Dr Sara Reed, whose extensive experience in somatic practices, including Feldenkrais, her research and consultancy across the international dance community, is a massive boost to the TDPT team in general and to TG specifically. She will be making her influence felt from this year onwards, along with two other highly skilled and dynamic individuals – Katy Weir and Simone Kenyon – who join us from now, too. We have been very happy to see, in these straightened times when colleagues’ capacity even to offer a short peer review is reduced, that people are prepared to work with us on a voluntary basis, sharing their expertise and expanding the voice of our creative team. We hope that they might also get some training for themselves from Training Grounds.
Parallel to these developments has been the welcome growth of associated special events, under the umbrella of the journal. Last year saw gatherings in Sidcup and in Totnes. The first, curated by Associate Editors, Paul Allain and David Shirley, was designed to demystify the processes of publication and peer review; the second, organised by Simon Murray, Bryan Brown and Libby Worth, was the formal launch of the Dartington College of Arts Special Issue, attracting nearly 100 people to revive, review and redirect the spirit of DCA. It was a pleasure and an honour to contribute to both those days and we hope fervently that more will spill out of our forthcoming special issues in this volume: Training and the Digital and Training and Voice.
Our content in this generic issue is typically eclectic: a bumper collection of eight essays which move across a range of challenging territories, even though half of them originate from the same country: Australia. From Martha Harrison’s gender critique of heteronormativity in Circus, to the use of critical disability studies to examine fairy tales by Rob Kitsos, Elizabeth Marshall, Linnea Gwiazda and Rowan Shafer; from Mark Seton, Ian Maxwell and Marianna Szabó’s study of actors’ health and use of alcohol in the Australian acting industry, to the ‘affective dramaturgy’ of site-specific work elucidated by Rebecca McCutcheon; from Glen McGillivray’s use of a renaissance-inspired method for acting Shakespeare today, to Janet McDonald, Scott Alderdice and Katrina Cutcliffe’s description of how to adopt a ‘clown-state’ to increase performer resilience when working on traumatic material; and from Arjun Raina’s practice-led scrutiny of Kathakali pedagogies, to the description of a fascinating cultural transmission project in Malta by Stefan Aquilina.
You will make your own connections and distinctions between these essays, but for me there are clear signs here of where performer training research might be taking us in the soon-to-be 2020s: a concern for actors’ health, well-being and resilience; a sharpening of the challenge to assumptions made in traditional forms of storytelling and performance (fairy tales, circus, kathakali for instance); a desire to value affect, sensitivity and feeling above dry rationality; a palpable drive for teaching excellence (not, it must be said, in empty governmental terms, but in localised expressions of reflexive pedagogy); and a continuing and strengthening movement in interdisciplinary research methodologies and practices.
Our new Reviews section carries six reviews in total: four book reviews and two events reviews. In the former category, Franc Chamberlain takes on the mammoth Jacques Lecoq Companion from Routledge, edited by Mark Evans and Rick Kemp; yoga experts Maria Kapsali and Dorinda Hulton consider Sergei Tcherkasski’s latest book on Stanislavsky’s fascination with the form, Margaret Coldiron appreciates the scholarship of A History of Japanese Theatre edited by Jonah Salz and Kristine Landon-Smith critiques Saumya Liyanage’s collection of essays and interviews: Meditations on Acting. In events reviews Armando Rotundi’s review of the inaugural EASTAP conference, which took place last October under the guiding topic of ‘Decentring Vision(s) of Europe’ clearly eschews the pervasive fear and uncertainty around the UK and Europe’s future, and seeks rather to both deepen and expand discourse and exchange among thinkers, trainers and makers within contemporary performing arts in Europe. Carol Fairlamb’s review of the recent International Voice Symposium at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama offers further cause for optimism in her personal and professional account of a sharing of international pedagogies and practices in the area of voice training.
You will find our usual Postcard feature, which turns its attention to home, quite literally, by exploring Training and Family. This issue’s missives come from Kate and Oliviero Papi responding to their life at Au Brana, Dr Andy Smith channelling Dr Seuss, Robert Marsden thinking about training directors, and our own Jonathan Pitches digging into the family archives.
Viewed collectively these essays and reviews engage with heartening themes. They represent recognisable continuations and welcome developments in our discipline – ones which, at least for a short time, keep us from spending all night thinking darkly about the future.