Abstract
Every night thousands of actors step on stage before an audience. Every year an even greater number sign up for acting classes at private studios, art schools, universities, and colleges. All hope to thrill an audience and, not insignificantly, put food on the table. From each teacher or colleague they seek techniques that will make their work more powerful and striking to spectators, directors, and casting agents. Wherever theatre books are sold, the shelves are chockablock full of texts touting the latest fashion in acting, promising readers that the secrets to a successful career can be found in their pages. In the United States, most strive to make it on Broadway or in regional theatres, some are happy to work Off-Broadway or Off-Off-Broadway, and then there are those who eschew the traditional and dedicate their talents to avant-garde or community-based performances. There are two things they all have in common, regardless of origin, talent, drive, and personal contacts: they are alive and have bodies.
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Notes
See Helga Noice and Tony Noice. “Two Approaches to Learning a Theatrical Script.” Memory. 4, no. 1 (1996): 1–17;
Helga Noice and Tony Noice. “Long Term Retention of Theatrical Roles.” Memory. 7, no. 3 (1997): 357–382.
Stuart Jefferies. “Inside the Mind of an Actor (Literally).” The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/24/fiona-shaw-neuroscience. November 24, 2009
Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 148–149.
Hans-Thies Lehmann. Postdramatic Theatre, Trans. Karen Jurs-Munby (London: Routledge, 2006), 27.
Esther Thelen and Linda B. Smith. A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 136–140.
For more on the way the brain compensates for the loss of certain functions see V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999).
Metaphor, as conceived here, is grounded in the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. They argue that metaphors are based on physical experiences and therefore are embodied. For a full discussion of this theory, see Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987).
Lakoff and Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Philosophy and Metaphors We Live By (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
Oksana Karneva ed. Kontstantin Stanislavsky: Selected Works (Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1984), 133–134.
Konstantin Stanislavski. An Actor’s Work on a Role. Trans. Jean Bendetti (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 47.
Edward Braun ed. and trans. Meyerhold on Theatre (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969), 52.
Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text, Trans. Stephen Hearh (Hammersmith: Fontana Press, 1977), 181.
Bertolt Brecht. Brecht on Theatre. Trans. John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), 247.
See John Lutterbie, “Gestus and Acting Style in The Good Person of Szechwan: A Case Study.” Gestus. June 1986.
The photo by Eli Lotar entitled “Abattoir,” can be found in Documents 6 (1929): 328; or on some browsers by searching: “eli lotar” abbatoir images.
For a discussion of Artaud’s concerns about language, see John Lutterbie. Hearing Voices: Modern Drama and the Problem of Subjectivity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 33–37.
Antonin Artaud. The Theatre and Its Double. Trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 51
There has been a critique of Artaud’s reading of Balinese performance. His cultural biases—his Western predilections and his ignorance of Balinese culture—lead to serious misunderstandings of the dances he saw. This does not, however, undermine the conclusions he draws about Western acting or the significance of his vision of theatre. See Tsu-Chung Su, “The Occidental Theatre and Its Other: The Use and Abuse of the Oriental Theatre in Antonin Artaud.” NTU Studies in Language and Literature. 1, No. 22 (December 2009): 1–30.
Thomas Richards. At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions, (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 123.
Jerzy Grotowski. Toward a Poor Theatre. Ed. Eugenio Barba (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), 119.
Jacques Lecoq, Jean-Gabriel Carasso and Jean-Claude Lallias. The Moving Body: Teaching Creative Theatre. Trans. David Bradby (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 46.
Jacques Lecoq, Theatre of Movement and Gesture. Ed. David Bradby (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 5.
Michael Chekhov. To the Actor (New York, Evanston and London: Harper and Row, 1953), 94.
Michael Chekhov. On the Technique of Acting (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 59.
Robert H. Hethmon ed. Strasberg at The Actors Studio (New York: Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 1995), 48.
For Meisner’s opinions on Strasberg, Stella Adler and the Group Theatre see Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on Acting (New York: Random House, 1987), 182–184.
Antonio R. Damasio. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York, San Diego and London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999), 282.
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© 2011 John Lutterbie
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Lutterbie, J. (2011). The Language of Acting. In: Toward a General Theory of Acting. Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119468_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119468_2
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