Table Of ContentPerforming Consciousness
Performing Consciousness
Edited by
Per Brask and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
Performing Consciousness,
Edited by Per Brask and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
This book first published 2010
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2010 by Per Brask and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-1634-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1634-2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction...............................................................................................vii
Chapter One.................................................................................................1
Catherine Fitzmaurice
Zeami Breathing
Chapter Two..............................................................................................10
William Weiss
The Ego and the Self in Actor Training
Chapter Three............................................................................................26
Peter Malekin and Ralph Yarrow
The Pashyanti Project
Chapter Four..............................................................................................47
Jade Rosina McCutcheon
Theatre - Re-assessing the Sacred in Actor Training
Chapter Five..............................................................................................63
Barbara Sellers-Young
Breath, Perception, and Action: The Body and Critical Thinking
Chapter Six................................................................................................74
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
Consciousness, Theatre and Terrorism
Chapter Seven............................................................................................89
Kenneth Robbins
The Healing Power of Butoh
Chapter Eight.............................................................................................96
Jennifer Ewing Pierce
The Actor-Problem: Live and Filmed Performance and Classical
Cognitivism
vi Table of Contents
Chapter Nine............................................................................................113
Jude James
BEYOND CONVENTION: Border Crossing From the Social Body
to the Porous Body: The Porous Body as Ontological Site –
Interface for A-Located Realities
Chapter Ten.............................................................................................129
Per Brask
Acting and Archetypes: A Point of Departure
Chapter Eleven........................................................................................135
William Weiss
How do you Apply “Spirituality” in Theatre Training?
Chapter Twelve.......................................................................................143
Jerri Daboo
The Altering I/Eye: Consciousness, ‘Self’, and the New Paradigm
in Acting
Chapter Thirteen......................................................................................162
Jade Rosina McCutcheon
Post Human Interactivity on the Global Stage: The Culture of Simulation
Chapter Fourteen.....................................................................................169
Craig Turner
The Association Process in Stanislavski’s
“Threshold of the Subconscious”
Chapter Fifteen........................................................................................194
Susan Mower
Etienne Decroux: A Corporeal Consciousness
Contributors.............................................................................................213
INTRODUCTION
Since its inaugural issue in April, 2000, the journal Consciousness,
Literature and the Arts has regularly published essays on the intersection
of theatre and consciousness. Often these essays have seen theatre as a
spiritual practice that for both the performer and her audience can bring
about experiences that help heal the world, a shift in consciousness. This
practice, though spiritual, is not ethereal but is rooted in doing, in actions,
in breathing. That is, theatre is seen as an art form understood as part of a
whole, as taking place in total Consciousness as well as expressing
consciousness(es), making both breathing a source of meaning and
shamanic journeying part of the creative process that brings into “being”
imaginative resources for the actor that undermines traditional
understandings of character/self/ego.
Catherine Fitzmaurice’s “Zeami Breathing,” suggests how practices of
breathing and breath developed in the No can found an understanding of
“vibration as soul.”
William Weiss’s “The Ego and the Self in Actor Training,” outlines
the need for the inclusion of the “universal spiritual self” in actor training
in order to clarify the possibility of transitioning from one “ego” to the
portrayal of another “ego,” so that the body becomes a symbol that can
play “different egos.”
Peter Malekin and Ralph Yarrow’s, “The Pashyanti Project,” may be
read as a kind of manifesto for a theatre that brings audiences and theatre
makers nearer “a universal level of mind.”
Jade Rosina McCutcheon’s “Theatre: Re-Assessing the Sacred in
Actor Training,” charts how shamanic journeying exercises bring actors
into altered states of consciousness that are highly creative and productive
of soul making.
Barbara Sellers-Young’s “Breath, Perception, and Action: The Body
and Critical Thinking,” makes clear how body and mind are intimately
connected: indeed they form a whole system, the bodymind that needs
holistic stimulation and exercise.
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe’s “Consciousness, Theatre and Terrorism,”
explores the redemptive effectiveness of the theatre and the root causes of
violence and terrorism through the Natyashastra, and profiles a Vedic
Theatre where an audience experiences pure consciousness.
viii Introduction
Kenneth Robbins’s “The Healing Power of Butoh” is a personal
account of a curative encounter with a Hikaru Otsubo performance on
September 13, 2001, an the days leading up to it.
Jennifer Ewing Pierce’s “The Actor Problem: Live and Film
Performance and Classical Cognitivism” shows how human emotion is the
hub where theatre studies and cognitive studies can link in productive
interdisciplinary explorations. Her essay also makes clear how classical
cognitivism begins to “unravel” at this point.
Jude James’s “Beyond Convention: Border Crossing From the Social
Body to the Porous Body: The Porus Body as Ontological Site – Interface
for A-Located Realities” situates the body as the “narrator” in theatre
making, and see that body as a complex matrix, enfolded in and expressive
of its environment.
Per Brask’s “Acting and Archetypes,” suggests an approach to actor
training that uses archetypes to help students to “see through” character.
William Weiss’s “How do you apply ‘spirituality’ in theatre training?”
argues that theatre in itself is no more spiritual than any other pursuit and
that as “a model of world making” it is the opposite of spirit, but that
“[a]ny theatre exercise that seeks to neutralize our body in order to make it
an instrument for playing characters different from our selves could
advance our spiritual understanding.”
Jade Rosina McCutcheon’s “Post Human Interactivity on the Global
Stage: The Culture of Simulation” problematizes concepts of “self” and
“acting” in view of “the experience of playing selves in various cyber-
contexts.”
Jerri Daboo’s “The Altering I/Eye: Consciousness, ‘Self,’ and the New
Paradigm in Acting” uses insights from quantum physics and Buddhist
psychology in order to put forward an approach to acting in which “the
inner and the outer cannot be separated.”
Craig Turner’s “The Association Process in Stanislavski’s ‘Threshold
of the Subconscious’” applies trance techniques from neuro-linguistic
programming in order to help the actor more effectively and more deeply
make the shift from normal self-awareness.
Susan Mower’s “Etienne Decroux: A Corporeal Consciousness”
illustrates how the corporeal mime’s extra-daily behavior brings into being
an alteration in consciousness that leads to a theatre “of the invisible made
visible.”
All the pieces collected here, then, reveal a concern with consciousness
and the theatre, the ways that performance can be a spiritual practice, a
means of reaching higher levels of consciousness, as well as the ways the
Performing Consciousness ix
theatre may have healing effects on audiences by engaging them in wider
and deeper levels of imagination, the levels where dualities disappear.
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