Embodied exploratory processes in Australian performance training and international influences

Abstract

While Australian training of performers generally reflects the dominant international processes, it also includes exploratory training that encourages innovative ways of working. This article considers the alignment of training in Australian conservatorium tertiary courses with the teaching of approaches to encourage responses ‘in the moment’, and spontaneity and physicality in the training of the performer. The article is based on research tracing the training backgrounds of influential teachers to understand what is being taught. It argues that the five teachers discussed here in detail value these embodied approaches because they also contribute to the process of working with dramatic text. These teachers are: David Latham, Lindy Davies, Robert Meldrum, John Bolton and Kim Durban. The article reveals that while the embodied exploratory training to energise performance greatly expanded from the 1980s in Australia, it has a trajectory back to the stylised work of Jacques Copeau and Suzanne Bing in France in the early twentieth century, and came under the influence of Laban, Jacques Lecoq, Grotowski, Brook and other teachers of physical styles including Mike Alfreds and Yat Malmgren. Embodied exploratory approaches that underpin devised postdramatic works are also used in training to work on dramatic theatre.

Keywords:

• performance training
• Australia
• physical
• impulse
• international

Interviews

Robert Meldrum interview with Melanie Beddie 9 May 2017

Kim Durban interview with Melanie Beddie 17 May 2017

Terence Crawford interview with Melanie Beddie 5 June 2017

Wal Cherry, interview with Kate Cherry by Melanie Beddie 8 June 2017

Kevin Jackson interview with Melanie Beddie 8 June 2017

Brian Syron, interview with Lisa-Mare Syron by Melanie Beddie 9 June 2017

Lindy Davies interview with Melanie Beddie 10 June 2017

Lisle Jones interview with Melanie Beddie 21 June 2017

Chris Edmund interview with Melanie Beddie 24 July 2017

David Latham interview with Melanie Beddie 3 October 2017

John Bolton interview with Melanie Beddie 16 November 2017

Aarne Neeme interview with Melanie Beddie 13 December 2017

Julie Holledge interview with Peta Tait 15 November 2018

Notes

1 For a description and diagram for each interviewed participant in the 2017–2018 research, see AusStage.edu.au (search: Name – click: document – click: La Trobe University Library). This research project, Performer Training in Australia and International Practice, was funded by La Trobe University in 2017–2018. This grant facilitated the completion of one section of a proposed larger project to investigate the history of actor training in Australia working in conjunction with Professor Anne Pender and Associate Professor Ian Maxwell.

2 Beddie was taught by David Latham and recorded his class instruction in her notebooks (Beddie 2018).

3 In 2014 Latham was awarded the Gascon-Thomas Award by the National Theatre School of Canada – co-named after Powys Thomas.

4 See AusStage, for Mellor: https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/contributor/531; for Whaley: https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/contributor/1837.

5 For example, the Australian background of Lloyd Newson, a founding member of the British physical theatre group DV8, points to a further dimension to this expansion. In the 1970s Newson trained with Margaret Lasica and worked with her company, the Modern Dance Ensemble, and later with Impulse Dance Theatre. He performed with One Extra Dance Theatre in 1980 and he danced with Extemporary Dance Theatre (UK) before forming DV8.

6 Gerstle (2008) documents her own process called ‘Pulse’.

7 See AusStage: https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/contributor/4173.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melanie Beddie

Dr Melanie Beddie trained as an actor at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), and has a PhD from La Trobe University on lineages in Australian actor training. She was a co-founder of the $5 Theatre Co., and artistic director of the independent theatre company The BRANCH. Melanie works as a director, dramaturg and actor trainer and has directed many productions with a focus on new Australian writing and received numerous Greenroom Awards for her work. Melanie was a Lecturer in Acting at VCA, and more recently teaches actors at the Federation University, WAAPA, and University of Tasmania.

Peta Tait

Peta Tait is Professor of Theatre and Drama at La Trobe University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She has written over 60 scholarly articles and chapters and recent books include: the authored, Theory for Theatre Studies: Emotion (Bloomsbury 2021); the edited The Great European Stage Directors: Antoine, Stanislavski and Saint-Denis, volume one (Bloomsbury, 2018); the co-edited Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene (2018); the authored Fighting Nature: Travelling Menageries, Animal Acts and War Shows (SUP 2016); and authored Circus Bodies (Routledge 2005); Performing Emotions (2002); and play, Eleanor and Mary Alice (Currency Press 2018).