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Theatrical Movement and the Mind-Body Question

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Lea Logie
Lea Logie
Affiliation:
Lea Logie tutors in the Theatre and Drama Studies Department at Murdoch, particularly in the area of Asian-Western cross-cultural performance.
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Extract

Performers in the second half of this century face an intensified confontation with physical expression in theatre. The question of how, or even whether, movement can express the ‘inner life’ of an actor/character is always present in the work of groups or individuals who wish to design innovative and physicalized performances.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1995 , pp. 255 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1995

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References

Notes

1. Rudlin, John, Jacques Copeau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 46.Google Scholar

2. Laban, Rudolf, The Mastery of Movement (Boston: MacDonald and Evans, 1971).Google Scholar

3. Grotowski, Jerzy, Towards a Poor Theatre (London: Methuen, 1968).Google Scholar

4. Stanislavsky, Konstantin, Building a Character (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979), p. 64.Google Scholar

5. Jaques-Dalcroze, Emile, Rhythm, Music and Education, (Bucks., England: Dalcroze Society, 1921).Google Scholar

6. Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, p. 16.

7. Feldshuh, David, ‘Zen and the Actor’. The Drama Review, 20 (1976) p. 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. For example, , Stanislavsky, Creating a Role (New York: Theater Arts, 1961), p. 49.Google Scholar

9. This is, of course, dangerous in performance, as opposed to preparation, as the actor must carefully limit the degree of sensation experienced, if control is to be maintained. This caution is signalled by many: see, for example, Stanislavsky, Building a Character, p. 73.

10. It is, however, the method which is used in traditional Asian theatre with great success. The success is not because these other cultures are not concerned about this same rhythm issue; for they are. I would suggest it is more a question of training the body in the physical ‘text’ to the degree where every fraction of a second of rhythm is automatic.

11. Barba, Eugenio and Savarese, Nicola, A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 20;Google Scholar Stanislavsky, Building a Character, p. 39.

12. Barba & Savarese, A Dictionary…, p. 55.

13. Ibid.

14. Nor was the idea of the body as a reflection of inner life original to this age. It is at least as old as Leonardo da Vinci's call for a depiction of ‘movements of the mind’ in Renaissance portraiture.

15. The James-Lange theory of emotion (Lange, Carl and James, William, The Emotions, Knight, Dunlap, ed., (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1922)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, claimed that the manifestation of the emotion is the emotion—emotion has no other existence apart from bodily manifestations: it is because I weep and I am sad, or because I run that I feel afraid. Thus anger, for example, is not a description of a mental state, but of clenched teeth and bulging veins (William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt, 1890).

16. Shawn, Ted, Every Little Movement (Dance Horizons, 1954), p. 57.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., p. 58.

18. Lewes, George Henry, The Physiology of Common Life, (New York: Appleton, 1959), Vol. 2, p. 351.Google Scholar

19. George Henry Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind (Boston: Osgood, 1874), p. 390.

20. G.H. Lewes, On Actors and the Art of Acting (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1875), p. 50.

21. Ibid., p. 115;

22. Stanislavsky, Creating a Role, p. 54.

23. , Stanislavsky, An Actor Prepares (New York: Theater Arts Books, 1936), p. 131.Google Scholar

24. Stanislavsky, Creating a Role, p. 105.

25. Barba, Eugenio, ‘The Dilated Body’. New Theatre Quarterly, 1, 24 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. Stanislavsky, An Actor Prepares, p. 212.

27. Stanislavsky, Creating a Role, p. 229.

28. Ibid., p. 227.

29. Ibid., p. 225.

30. Chekhov, Michael, To The Actor (New York: Harper and Row, 1953), p. 1.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 5.

32. Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, p. 16.

33. Ibid., p. 185.

34. There is certainly a link here between this activity and Stanislavsky teaching his actors to activate a life of sensation and imagery by ‘doing the actions’.

35. Amankulor, J.N., ‘Divination Consultation: Objective Drama at UC Irvine’. The Drama Review, 35, 1 (1991): p. 155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Shawn, Every Little Movement, p. 24.

37. Laban, Rudolf, The Mastery of Movement on the Stage (London: MacDonald and Evans, 1950), p. 98.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., p. 121.

39. Laban, Rudolf, Laban Art of Movement Guild Magazine, November 1957, 6.Google Scholar

40. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Rhythm, Music and Education, ‘Foreword’.

41. Ibid., p. 63.

42. Gard, Roger Martin du, Conespondance (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), Vol. 11, p. 688.Google Scholar

43. Grotowski, as translated in Kumiega, Jennifer, The Theatre of Grotowski (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. Stanislavsky, Building a Character, p. 40.

45. ‘Here N means the actor, whose functions is two-fold. As Al he is a conscious, organizing intelligence, assigning the task to be performed. As A2 he is also the body or instrument performing the task assigned’. See Edward, Braun, ed., Meyerhold on Theatre (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979), p. 165.Google Scholar