Welcome to issue 11.4 of TDPT, a decimal point only available to us this year, after ten years of ending a volume with .2 and, then later, .3! With this issue we are formally ‘a Quarterly’, both in the planning and the execution. It may seem frivolous to muse upon a suffix in the face of a global pandemic but we have tried desperately to maintain the usual operations of the journal over these last difficult months, and this modest augmentation of our capacity has helped a good deal. As you will see, this is another very full issue, replete with six long-form articles, threaded through with postcards (for those still accessing the journal as hard copy), a vibrant transcribed discussion, book and event reviews and a beautiful obituary, marking the passing of our dear friend Ali Hodge, and complementing a moving series of blog posts already published.
There are two other new elements to look out for in this issue: the addition of a new Training Grounds format, Speaking Image, and the move to plastic free publishing, eradicating the plastic lacquer from our covers and the polywrap used for posting. The latter change is a much-needed innovation, and will remove 3.1 million copies of plasticised covers from Taylor and Francis journals, each year. Speaking image takes forward - in microcosm - a key debate we have been having in the journal since its inception: how are embodied training practices communicated across media – and what does the interplay of image and word offer to this communication?
The articles in 11.4 are typically eclectic and as such justify our continuing commitment to publishing ‘ground up’ research. Our Special Issues have gone from strength to strength over the years, and we now have plans going forward at least three years (with Independent Dance and Training in Australia slated for next year). But there remains an urgency for us to provide a platform for research into performance training which is scholar-led and which cuts across the themes we suggest in Special Issues. In ‘Cut-paste-repeat?’ Nic Rowe and Xi Xiong sketch the history of dance training in China and offer up for critique its history of authoritarian pedagogy. Recognising the complexity of the cultural transmission of teaching styles, with emulation of past practices common, they advocate a long term ‘breaking of the cycle’ and a concerted revaluation of some elements in dance training which have long been highly valued in the Chinese context, including didacticism and rigour. Luke Hopper, along with co-authors Peta Blevins, Shona Erskine, Danica Hendry, Raewyn Hill and Richard Longbottom continue the theme of well-being in classical dance, but here draw on testimony from dancers in Australia participating in a blended training programme of physical and psychological exercise and support. Findings from a series of research interventions into the dancers’ training point to the need for a more collegial approach to fitness and wellbeing and for the establishment of ‘communities of practice’ to counter the isolation of the independent performer. Dance pedagogies are further examined in Sherrie Barr’s ‘Embodying one’s teaching identity’. In common with Rowe and Xiong, Barr challenges the trope of ‘teaching as I was taught’, observing two highly experienced dance teachers with a predisposed appreciation of somatics in order to tease out the relationship between teaching identity and pedagogic values. Her conclusion is starkly simple: ‘our beliefs, values, and experiences cannot be separated from our teaching bodies’. In ‘Body awareness in acting’ Norwegian scholars Cathrine Thommessen and Margit Fougner report on their trialling of Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) with drama students using Method acting in their training. Again, the aims behind this work – perhaps counter-intuitively focused on inducing bodily trembling and shaking – are to enhance wellbeing in the actor and were seen to be effective in overcoming stage fright for some students. Given the histories of anxiety associated with Stanislavsky and Strasberg’s experiences as performers, the TRE methodology raises interesting possibilities for hybridising the Method. Circus researchers Nick Neave, Angie Johnson, Kathryn Whelan and Karen McKenzie share their work on developing physical literacy in schoolchildren (aged 9–12). Circus Skills Training is revealed to be a powerful antidote to sedentary lives and particularly for those with a suspicion or antipathy towards team sports. Very much on the ‘quant’ end of TDPT research, the paper suggests that emotional and physical wellbeing can be positively impacted by exposure to acrobatics, aerial and juggling skills training. Finally, in Dana Blackstone’s explication of ‘The Gauntlet’ - a tool to facilitate recognition, connection, and communication - students’ responsiveness to a feminist, community-building pedagogy is considered. Blackstone outlines details of her ensemble skills training before analysing the results of interviews with the student body undertaking this training. The insights, drawn for her own work and from colleagues Jared Nelson and Clare Chandler’s practice, point encouragingly to the Gauntlet playing a role in conflict resolution work and more generally in levelling group hierarchies. If there is a dominant theme amongst this eclecticism, it has to be the increasing concern for actor well-being, a point noted in previous issues. As such, it is timely to announce here that we are just about to advertise a call for papers for a Special Issue on Training and Well-being, co-edited by Virginie Magnat and Nathalie Gauthard. Please do keep an eye out for that.
This issue’s Postcards reflect on the theme of training within/without Edges, Boundaries or Limits. Tina Carter’s ‘Skinners’ and Michelle Man’s ‘Kitchen Contemporary Dance Classes in times of Covid-19′ capture boundaries and possibilities of doing circus and dance training in lockdown; Ingrid Mackinnon’s ‘Waiting is a Limitation’ reminds us of what can be gained by fully turning up for ourselves in creative work, even without an audience; Dana Blackstone’s ‘Joy is the Way’ considers joy as a vehicle to negotiate boundaries and differences in ensemble work. Finally, Jo Ronan and Diana Serbanescu’s Postcard pairing offers two points of view on the same teaching moment, teacher and student considering the crossing of a threshold from initial spark to the journey that follows.
It was our good fortune to have three immediately positive and highly distinctive responses to invitations to ‘try out’ the new Speaking Image format and we are grateful for the time and patience it took to refine the offer through tweaking the process. Chris Crickmay in ‘Theatre of the Everyday – a way of going for a walk’ and ‘Drawing as a part of a performance practice’ untangles the complex information of his chosen photo and drawing to reveal the memories of intimate moments of process and performance. In ‘Twists, turns and a loose web of contradictory truths,’ Karen Christopher shares drawn scores and discusses the delicacy necessary in employing these in workshops ‘to foster what encourages openness and expansion’ rather than following a fixed technique or safe plan. Elena Benedettini, photographer and Aiden Condron (theatre director/practitioner) in ‘That, There, Then… Now’ open up an unusual space of communication between the workshop facilitator and the photographer as they relook at an image they shared from such different perspectives.
Denis Cryer-Lennon’s events review looks at the Technology and Performer Training online event, hosted by University of South Wales in May, planned before lockdown but thrown into relief by the Covid-19 context. In book reviews, we include Janet Gibson on Strategies for Neurodiversity and Dyslexia in Actor Training: Sensing Shakespeare, by Petronilla Whitfield.
We have an expanded page budget next year, along with our four issues, and hope to be able to reflect the diversity of performer training research even more effectively in 2021. We are very aware that the pandemic has disproportionately affected research just as it has impacted differentially on communities. We remain committed to publishing high-quality thinking on training in many forms, from 50 words up to 8000; from philosophical and theoretical research, to quantitative, data driven work; from allusive image-based thinking to prose-led dissertations. We mentor early career researchers, and sometimes work with authors for many months on their papers. But if there’s anything else we can do to level the playing ground, we would like to hear from you.
The editors
Jonathan Pitches is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Leeds and Head of School of Performance and Cultural Industries. He specialises in the study of performer training and has wider interests in intercultural performance, environmental performance and blended learning. He is founding co-editor of the TDPT and has published several books in this area: Vsevolod Meyerhold (2003), Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting (2006/9), Russians in Britain (2012) and, Stanislavsky in the World (with Dr Stefan Aquilina 2017). His most recent publications are: Great Stage Directors Vol 3: Komisarjevsky, Copeau Guthrie (sole editor, 2018) and the monograph, Performing Landscapes: Mountains (2020).
Libby Worth is Reader in Contemporary Performance Practices, Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a movement practitioner with research interests in the Feldenkrais Method, physical theatres, site-based performance and in folk/traditional and amateur dance. Performances include co-devised duets; Step Feather Stitch (2012) and dance film Passing Between Folds (2017). She is co-editor of TDPT and published texts include Anna Halprin (2004, co-authored), Ninette de Valois: Adventurous Traditionalist (2012, co-edited), Jasmin Vardimon’s Dance Theatre: Movement, Memory and Metaphor (2016). Chapter contributions include on clog and sword dancing for Time and Performer Training (2019, she co-edited) and ‘Improvisation in Dance and the Movement of Everyday Life’ for the Oxford Handbook of Dance Improvisation (2019).
Training grounds editors
Thomas J M Wilson is a Module/Year Coordinator for BA (Hons) European Theatre Arts at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Initially training in Equestrian Vaulting he competed at European-level in the mid-1990s. Subsequently he has engaged in practices rooted in the intersection between dance and theatre methodologies, working as both a performer and director/choreographer in a range of contexts. Thomas served on Oxford Dance Forum’s Steering Group (2008–10) and has regularly contributed to Total Theatre Magazine since 2001. He is an Associate of Gandini Juggling working as their Archivist and Publications Author. He is the author of Juggling Trajectories: Gandini Juggling 1991–2015, which was shortlisted for The Society of Theatre Research Book Prize 2016.
Roanna Mitchell is a performance-maker and movement person, co-director of the Chekhov Collective UK, and lecturer at the University of Kent where she is course leader for the MA Physical Acting. Her work explores performance and training in the intersection between acting and dance, and applications of Chekhov technique beyond the theatre. She has directed/created/movement-directed performance internationally, often working site-responsively and including collaborations with Richard Schechner (Imagining O, UK/India/US), Platform 7(Resting Place, Ramsgate/Charing Cross Station/Folkestone Seafront) and Accidental Collective (Here’s Hoping, Theatre Royal Margate/Oval House London). www.roannamitchell.com. www.chekhovcollectiveuk.co.uk
Chris Hay is a Lecturer and Drama Major Convenor in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. His current research examines knowledge transfer in creative arts training, with a particular focus on embedding diversity. Some preliminary findings of this research was published in the monograph Knowledge, Creativity and Failure (Palgrave, 2016), and his work also appears in the edited collection New Directions in Teaching Theatre Arts. Chris is also continuing his research projects examining the early days of Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (AETT), and Australia’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Aiden Condron has been an actor, performance maker and actor trainer for over twenty-five years working across the UK, Europe and the US. He is a senior lecturer and Course Coordinator for BA (Hons) Acting at Falmouth University. Aiden was founding artistic director of Nervousystem, a Dublin-based international performance laboratory from 2002–2012. Recent work includes a solo stage adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Worstward Ho which he co-created with for Mouth on Fire and performed at Theatre X Cai, Tokyo and Thalhya Lapse, a live art performance intervention he performed and co-curated with artist Paul Regan in Zurich for Manifesta 2016. Aiden’s current research activity investigates processes and practices of actor and performer training within the domain of presence, play and action, examining the actor’s dramaturgy as a field of autonomous creation.