University
of Exeter Drama Department
THE CHANGING
BODY:
The
bodymind in contemporary training and performance
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Contributors |
Contributors Below is a list of confirmed contributors to the symposium. Several of them have already given presentations during the year-long research series. Scroll down through the page, or click on a names from the list below, to view entries. Pre-symposium
Workshop Leaders Symposium Workshop/Work Demonstration Leaders
Keynote Addresses Multi-disciplinary
Respondents Panel Performer Respondents
Panel Delegate Presentations
Symposium
Organisers Fran Barbe Fran Barbe's work as choreographer, performer and researcher is informed by thirteen years of exploring Japanese Butoh and the training method of Tadashi Suzuki. In addition to choreogrpahing for her own company, she performs for Butoh Mamu Dance Theatre. In 2005 she will be artistic director of the Daiwa International Butoh Festival. She is co-founder of Theatre Training Initiative, dedicated to developing the art of live performance, for whom she has hosted workshops with international guests including Ellen Lauran, Ichiro Nakayama, Juju Alishina, Phillip Zarrilli, Tadashi Endo and John Nobbs & Jacqui Carroll of Frank Theatre. Fran is now a lecturer and researcher at University of Kent, having completed an AHRB / Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Creative Fellowship there from 2001 - 2004. Emilyn Claid Emilyn Claid is an independent dance artist and director of choreography at Dartington College of Arts. Her book Seductive Ambiguity in Dance will be published by Routledge in spring 2006. The book investigates performer spectator relations in Western contemporary dance theatre from 1950s onwards. She has also completed a three-year performance and writing project, Embodying Ambiguities, co-directed with Valerie Briginshaw at University College Chichester. www.embamb.com Emilyn has choreographed for Cando Dance Company, Phoenix, Ludus, and created her own solo shows. Her new show Pocketsize will tour in Autumn 2006. Emilyn is co-director of m&de (music and dance Exchange) a Dartington Plus project. M&de is a performer-led research lab for cross-disciplinary performance. Ben Crocker Ben Crocker is a graduate of the University's Drama
Department. He has been Artistic Director of the Northcott Theatre, Exeter since
May 1998. Chris Crickmay and
Miranda Tufnell Dialogues and Discoveries - The World of an Object An improvisation workshop to explore the world of objects and how we are informed and transformed by them in both performance and everyday life. The workshop will focus on developing physical dialogues with objects - exploring the image landscapes and stories that emerge as we listen and engage with them. It will involve work both individually and with partners - moving, watching, writing and speaking about what we find. We shall explore how we choose objects, listen to them and allow our perceptions of them to transform. The workshop will concentrate on sensory and imaginative exploration - discovering how our bodies respond and following the stories and imagery that this process reveals. Chris Crickmay
originally trained as an architect, but has worked as a writer,
an artist and teacher in Higher Education, with a particular interest
in the strategies we use when we create things. His writings and
practice over
the last twenty five years have focussed especially on links between
imagination and the body as explored through improvised dance and
through making things
with materials. His contributions to arts education began with the Open
University's innovative course, 'Art and Environment', and went
on to the initiation of
the degree course in 'Art and Social Context' at Dartington College of
Arts in Devon. He subsequently introduced a similar programme at
the University
of the West of England. He has written two books in collaboration with
the dancer and Alexander teacher Miranda Tufnell. The first, entitled,
'Body
Space Image', published in 1990, was concerned with movement improvisation
and creating settings for performance. The second, entitled, 'A Widening
Field: Journeys in Body and Imagination', was published in January of
this year. Of it, Antony Gormley wrote: "Perhaps the way that
the world sees itself is changing, and the divide between participant
and observer, objects
and intelligence, is diffusing into field activity. This handbook is
part of that process." Workshop: This session will be participatory. Niamh Dowling
Niamh Dowling is currently Head of School of Theatre at Manchester Metropolitan University. She trained with Monika Pagneux in Paris, and as a teacher of the Alexander Technique. Niamh has worked as Movement Director at Manchester’s Library theatre, Royal exchange and Contact theatre, Sheffield Crucible, Bolton Octagon and at West Yorkshire Playhouse. She regularly teaches workshops abroad including actors in Malta, Syria and Africa, psychotherapists and performers in Poland, refugees and nuns in Central America, dancers in Uruguay, performers in Argentina and an eighteen month movement training course for Blanc Space a theatre company in Singapore. Workshop: This session is participatory and participants will need to learn a short piece of text or song. Soledad
Garre-Rubio Sol Garre’s education as an actress started in 1988. In 1995, working in Teatro de La Abadía she encountered Michael Chekhov’s techniques, which initiated a shift in her ideas about acting and theatre. In 1996 she attended her first International Conference on Michael Chekhov at Emerson College, UK. Later she attended several workshops and symposiums in Birmingham, UK (1999), Lake Baikal, Russia (2000), and Grozjan, Croatia (2004). Further training has been carried out in workshops during over the past few years with David Zinder (at the University of Exeter, UK), Joanna Merlin (at the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático, RESAD, Madrid) and Lenard Petit (at Teatro de la Abadía, Madrid). Her investigation into the appropriateness of psychophysical training and understanding of the actor started in 2000, while doing her MA in Performance Practice at Exeter University. She has been working and training with Phillip Zarrilli since then, and she applies his training principles in her pedagogical approach to Michael Chekhov´s work at RESAD, the official Drama School in Madrid (Spain), as well as in her own practice as a director. Workshop: This session will be participatory. Professor
John Gruzelier Professor John Gruzelier (Division of Neurosciences and Mental Health, Medicine, Imperial College, London). His research interests are in the area of psychosis and personality disorders, neurofeedback, and hypnosis. He is President of the Society for Applied Neuroscience and a Principal Investigator in the Cognitive Neuroscience Group. Some of his recent scientific research has focused on ‘Psychobiology of altered States of consciousness,’ ‘Hypnosis and Mind-Body Connection,’ and ‘Enhancement of artistry in musical performance through brain rhythm training’. Alison
Hodge Orientation In this lecture/demonstration I shall introduce a series of actor training exercises that are concerned with the process of inter subjectivity within the present moment. I describe these exercises as 'Orientation'. Biologically, orientation is understood as a 'reaction to stimuli' but it can also be described as a positioning, adaptation and alignment. Whilst the partner is the focus of the exchange, it is also the space between the actors that becomes a key consideration in each encounter. The actor finds her/his bearings through a partner and in doing so, attends to the temperature of the relationship, attuning to it rhythmically and adapting to each circumstance as it arises. The actors are encouraged to attend to the micro-seconds of changes occurring between them and to discover and, most importantly, reveal each other through touch, breath and rhythm. Significantly, the word touch comes from the Latin 'tactus' meaning rhythm. Through a series of physical exercises related to touch the actors can engage each other through the body and initiate a rhythmic response in an intimate exchange. We will examine this process by which actors can become highly sensitised to each other and examine the changes in the space and the temporal contours of their encounter as they occur. Alison Hodge is a freelance theatre director and Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway College, University of London. She was a founder member and Co-Artistic Director of Theatre Alibi. Since 1989, she has collaborated on a number of practical and research projects with Gardzienice Theatre. She is the contributing editor of Twentieth Century Actor Training (Routledge 2000) and co-author with Wlodzimeirz Staniewski of Hidden Territories: The Theatre of Gardzienice (Routledge 2003). Workshop: This session will be a lecture-demonstration. Dorinda Hulton Dorinda is a freelance theatre director and also a part time lecturer in the Drama Department at the University of Exeter. As such, her research and her practice are closely aligned and the following three areas have contributed directly, over some thirty-six years, to the teaching of graduates and post-graduates at Exeter, and to professional theatre work, as well as to publication: the first is an inquiry into the methodology appropriate to a University Drama Department for facilitating connections between theory and practice within different of areas of study. The second is an inquiry into the theory and practice of movement and voice training for the performer. In relation to this area, Dorinda studied Yoga in India (BKS Iyengar Institute, Poona); Shinto training exercises in Japan (Ishikira-Jinja, Osaka); voice training in France (in the Roy Hart method); and a study of Indonesian movement with Suprapto Suryodarmo. Her third research area has been an inquiry into the creative processes that facilitate innovative theatre making. As part of her research through practice she has directed national touring productions with Foursight Theatre and Theatre Alibi. The project she is currently engaged in is an interdisciplinary one, working with creative artists either side of the military border in Cyprus, in collaboration with Echo-Arts Cyprus. She is the author of ‘The Creative Actor’ in Christopher McCullough, ed., Theatre Praxis. Macmillan, London, 1996/97, and ‘Joseph Chaikin’ in Alison Hodge, ed., Actor Training in the Twentieth Century. Routledge, London, 2000. Workshop:
Yoga and Imagination Peader Kirk Peader Kirk is the Artistic Director of MKULTRA PERFORMANCE GROUP based in London and F2 PERFORMANCE UNIT based in Athens, Greece. In the past five years they have made 20 pieces and shown work in five European countries. They make work for theatres, galleries and found spaces: combining performance and installation, working beyond theatre time and utilising distinctive performer/audience formats. Each piece is devised collaboratively with an ongoing group of performers and artists. The work engages with the real (task based work), the reproduced (events from the biographies of the performers and other “stolen” biographies) and the rehearsed (social architectures). Through the use of repetition and pattern the work seeks to rupture the surface of representation and renegotiate ideas of liveness. Philosopher Gernot Bohme has spoken of music as an “atmospheric art,” not the composing of notes but the composition of atmospheres. The embodied experience of these atmospheres may account for the emotional effects of music upon listeners. “Music forms and informs the listeners sense of self in a space; it reaches directly into his or her corporeal economy.” The patterning and compositional structures of F2's work seeks to affect the audience in a similar way, to go beyond overt content, to give an intimate experience of what it is to be human. Peader has been making performance since 1990 and lecturing at HE level since 1996; currently Visiting Lecturer at Brunel University. Eli Konijn Dr Drew Leder Rebecca is a practitioner, performer and researcher
in the area of actor training and psychophysical awareness practices;
particularly the work and legacy of Elsa Gindler (1885-1961) and
South Indian martial/meditation arts. Bella Merlin Bella Merlin trained and worked as an actor in Britain before undertaking an intensive one-year actor training programme at the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. Over the last ten years, she has continued her investigation into Stanislavsky’s legacy of Active Analysis through her books Beyond Stanislavsky (Nick Hern Books, 2001), Konstantin Stanislavsky (Routledge 2003), 21st-Century Stanislavsky: The ‘Psy-Phy’ Practitioner (forthcoming NHB 2005) and her own teaching and performance practice. She was one of the actor-researchers for Max Stafford-Clark and the Royal Court’s production of Talking to Terrorists, she is currently performing in David Hare’s The Permanent Way (Out of Joint/National Theatre) in Britain and Australia, and writing a book for the National Theatre on Nicholas Hytner’s productions of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2. Her psycho-physical work combines strands of Stanislavsky, Butoh, Grotowski and Michael Chekhov, whose autobiographies she is editing with Russian scholar, Andrei Kirillov for Routledge (due for publication in 2005). Recent and forthcoming workshops include The Psycho-Physical Actor (Actors Centres in London, NE England and the Midlands), Stanislavsky (INSET programme for the National Theatre in London and Plymouth), National Theatre INTERACT Summer School, and Let’s Get Psycho-Physical! for the NISDA Conference (York) 2004. Workshop
during symposium: Shigenori Nagatomo Shigenori Nagatomo is Associate Professor at the Temple University, Philadelphia, US, where he lectures on comparative philosophy and religion. He specialises in Japanese Buddhism and philosophy, comparative philosophy, and issues around the bodymind relationship from the perspective of Buddhist philosophy and practice. He is the author of several books: Attunement Through the Body, A Philosophical Investigation of Miki Kyoshi’s Concept of Humanism and Science and Comparative Philosophy: Introducing Yuasa Yasuo (with Yuasa and David Shaner), as well as numerous articles and book chapters including ‘Ki-Energy: Invisible Psychophysical Energy’ (Journal of Asian Philosophy); ‘An Asian Perspective of Mind-Body’ (Journal of Philosophy and Medicine); ‘Two Contemporary Japanese Views of the Body’: Ichikawa and Yasa’ (in Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice); and ‘Toward the Philosophical Foundations for Preventive Medicine’ (International Review of Chinese Philosophy and Religions). In addition, he has been the translator of, and written Introductions for, several books including those by Yasuo Yuasa: The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, and The Body, Self-Cultivation and Ki-energy. His current research includes translating and writing the introduction for Yuasa’s Space-Time and Mind-Body Integration: Image-Thinking and Synchronicity, as well as conference presentations including ‘The Body’s Role in Aesthetics in Japanese Philosophy/Culture’ (University of Leeds, 2003). Sandra
Reeve Workshop: This is a participatory workshop with no observers. Eva Schmale Workshop: 14 people will participate in this session and the others will observe. Participants will either engage in or observe gentle psychophysical awareness experiments. Andrew
Sparkes Professor Andrew C. Sparkes PhD is Director of the Qualitative Research Unit in the School of Health & Sport Sciences at Exeter University. My research interests are eclectic and include: performing bodies, identities and selves; interrupted body projects and the narrative (re) construction of self; sporting auto/biographies; and the lives of marginalized individuals and groups. He is drawn towards qualitative methodologies as a way of exploring these interests and aspires to represent his findings using multiple genres. Jatinder Verma Born in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, Jatinder grew up in Nairobi, Kenya and migrated to Britain in 1968. He is Artistic Director of Tara Arts, the first Asian theatre company to be set up in Britain, which he co-founded in 1977. He has written, adapted and directed many of Tara's productions. Jatinder has drawn upon his own eclectic cultural background to develop a distinctive performance style which infuses his reinventions of both European and Asian classics as well as his productions of new writing. In 1990, he became the first director from among Britain’s migrant communities to be invited to stage a play at the National Theatre - his adaptation of Molière’s Tartuffe – which he produced with an all-Asian cast. The success of this production was followed by The Little Clay Cart and Cyrano de Bergerac, both for the NT. 2002 saw the completion of a five-year cycle of work in Journey to
the West, a large-scale trilogy of plays which he wrote and directed.
The trilogy traced the story of Asian migration and settlement in the
West over the 20th century. Currently engaged in exploring Anglo-Oriental relations through classic texts, his latest project is a forthcoming touring production of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice set in 16th south India. Jatinder also directs for radio drama, has published several articles and is a regular contributor to radio and TV on both arts and current affairs programmes. He is a frequent speaker at conferences both in Britain and overseas, and has written and presented several radio documentary programmes, most recently winning a Sony Award and a CRE Race & Media Award for Ashes to the Ganges (BBC Radio 4). Among several awards he received a Time Out/01 for London Special Award for “his outstanding contribution to the London theatre scene and the bonding of British, Asian and European cultures”. He also holds Honorary Doctorates from both Exeter University and De Montfort University. Scott Williams The Meisner
Technique is an approach to acting which works on several basic principles:
that what happens to you as an actor doesn¹t depend
upon you, but on the person opposite you, and the definition of acting
is "living truthfully under a given set of circumstances." In
sessions with Michael Bernardine and Scott Williams, you¹ll
get an exposure to the basic exercises of the technique, and you¹ll
see and practice the concepts that Sanford Scott Williams studied with Meisner at the Neighbourhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York. Meisner was a member of the Group Theatre, along with Lee Strasburg and Stella Adler. Alumni of Meisner's teaching include Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall and Joanne Woodward. Scott Williams has been involved with the Meisner technique for some twenty years, and currently teaches at The Actors Centre, London. He will consider the Repetition Exercises - one of the foundations of the Meisner technique. "In the repetition exercises, Meisner found an exercise that refined impulse." David Krasner - Yale Drama Department. Phillip Zarrilli Workshop/work demonstration Beginning with
simple, participatory breath exercises, in the first part of this
workshop/work-demonstration, we will examine how psychophysical training
through Asian martial arts and yoga can help prepare the actor/performer's
bodymind toward inhabiting fully the 'transitions' Phillip Zarrilli is now internationally known for utilizing the techniques and principles of embodiment in kalarippayaattu, yoga, and t’aiquiquan for training actors and dancers to paradoxically “stand still while not standing still” and to allow their “body to become all eyes”. The training allows the performer to develop a heightened sense of activation through breath in movement, focus/concentration, circulation of energy through the body and relationship to the performance/spatial environment through the development of the performer’s awareness. He regularly conducts long-term training programmes at his private studio in Wales—Tyn-y-parc C.V.N. Kalari/Studio, in London, and throughout the world. Recent workshops include intensive training sessions with: The Centre of Studies on Jerzy Grotowski (Wroclaw, Poland), Maski Festival (Poznan, Poland), Dublin International Theatre Festival (Thomas McGinty Memorial Workshop), Tainan-Jen Theatre Company (Taiwan), Samuel Beckett Centre and Trinity College (Dublin), Practice Performing Arts Professional Training Programme (Singapore), National Theatre of Greece, Seoul International Theatre Festival (Seoul, Korea), Gardzienice Theatre Association (Poland), Passe Partout (Netherlands), Esalen Institute (USA). Zarrilli is also well known as a director and actor, and his most recent productions include The Beckett Project in Ireland (2004), The Water Station (Esplinade with TTRP, Singapore, 2004), The Dance of the Drunken Monk with Sangalpam (Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, UK Tour 2003), Speaking Stones (Theatre Asou, Graz, Austria and Wroclaw, Poland, 2002-2004), Walking Naked with bharatanatyam dancer/choreographer, Gitanjali Kolanad (Mumbai, Chennai, Seoul, USA, Glasgow, etc. 2000-2003). He is Professor of Performance Practice at the University of Exeter Drama Department. Workshop: This session is part-participatory (opening only), then a work-demonstration in which delegates observe. David Zinder Workshop/work demonstration Born in Israel, worked as a professional actor in Israel for six years, of which two years were spent studying and performing with a professional improvisation theatre group. David received a BA from the Drama Dept. of Manchester University in England (class of '66), and a PhD. from the University of California at Berkeley (class of '76). David taught acting, directing and theory at the Theatre Arts Department of Tel Aviv University from 1976 to 2004, during which time he also directed over 60 productions both professionally and in theatre schools in Israel and abroad. A Master Teacher of the Michael Chekhov Technique and a founding member of the Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA) he has been giving workshops in ImageWork Training and the Michael Chekhov Technique all over the US, the UK, Europe (East and West) and in the Far East. For the past four years he have worked extensively in Romania, and his most recent productions there have been The Dybbuk and The Bacchae. In January he will be doing a production of Macbeth at the Tamasi Aron Theatre in Sfantu Gheorghe, Romania. His book on acting training: Body Voice Imagination: A Training for the Actor was published by Routledge, New York in 2002. Workshop: Description: “The
Actor Imagines with his Body”: The title is the same as David’s
seminar paper. He will focus on the reciprocal relationship of body
and imagination explored through three inter-related exercises. |
Workshop/work
demonstration