1 Michelangelo's Sonnet 15, quoted in Blunt, Anthony, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 168Google Scholar.

2 McAuley, Gay, ‘Not Magic but Work: Rehearsal and the Production of Meaning’, Theatre Research International, 33, 3 (2008), pp. 276–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For an in-depth study of the role of space and place in theatre-making see McAuley, Gay, Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Zarrilli, Phillip, ed., Acting (Re)Considered: Theories and Practices (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 8Google Scholar.

5 Philip Auslander, ‘“Just Be Yourself”: Logocentrism and Differance in Performance Theory’, in Zarrilli, Acting (Re)Considered, pp. 59–68.

6 For such an argument see Counsell, Collin, Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Theatre (London: Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar.

7 See Rossmanith, Kate, ‘Making Theatre-Making: Fieldwork, Rehearsal and Performance Preparation’, Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, 9, 1 (2009)Google Scholar, available at http://reconstruction.eserver.org/091/rossmanith.shtml, accessed 29 April 2011.

8 Heidegger, Martin, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in idem, Basic Writings: From ‘Being and Time’ (1927) to the ‘Task of Thinking’ (1964), ed. Krell, David Farrell (London: Routledge, 1977)Google Scholar. In his seminal book Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 3–6, Bert O. States takes Heidegger as a starting point for considering the phenomenological nature of theatre.

9 Such a notion of truth is generally known as the ‘correspondence’ theory of truth. See Young, Julian, Heidegger's Philosophy of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 22–4, 38–41Google Scholar.

10 Interestingly, Campbell, Alyson provides a phenomenological interpretation of Kane's theatre in ‘Experiencing Kane: An Affective Analysis of Sarah Kane's “Experiential” Theatre in Performance’, Australasian Drama Studies, 46 (2005), pp. 80–98Google Scholar.

11 This term is taken from Heidegger's, Martin influential work Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward (London: Blackwell, 1962)Google Scholar.

12 Of course, Gay McAuley is certainly cognizant of the broader context of social and cultural conditions in which performances arise. I am merely using this particular case study as a concrete example of how such truth-revealing might happen in practice. See McAuley, Space in Performance. It is also worth noting that much of the scholarship applying phenomenology to theatre has emphasized the body, influenced by the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. For instance, see Garner, Stanton B., Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994)Google Scholar. My own approach here complements such an approach, though from a Heideggerian perspective, focusing on ‘the meaning of Being’.

13 See Rossmanith, Kate, ‘Traditions and Training in Rehearsal Practice’, Australasian Drama Studies, 53 (2008), pp. 141–52Google Scholar.

14 Aston, Elaine and Harris, Geraldine articulate the importance of embodied knowledge ‘on its own terms’ in the performance process in Performance Practice and Process: Contemporary [Women] Practitioners (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 7–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Aston and Harris point out the limits of theory and the point at which performance itself can go beyond critical thinking. Such thought adds weight to my argument here of the philosophical import of performance in transcending dualism, essentialism and metaphysics.

15 At the time of this rehearsal observation, I was looking for a case study for my PhD as an example of theatrical acting as ‘manual philosophy’ – a practical means of investigating what ‘being-in-the-world’ (taken from Heidegger's phenomenology) means: the relationship between consciousness and objects, other people, temporality, history and the inextricable connection between self and world. Ultimately, I abandoned the case study in my postgraduate work in favour of textual analysis of several influential theories of acting. But upon reflection, and upon reading Gay McAuley's account of Brink's rehearsal, I revisit the thought that this is a small, but significant, example of theatre process as a search for truth. The process was recorded using audiovisual equipment and I have subsequently used this material in teaching undergraduate rehearsal-studies theory. While the video representation of the process fails to encapsulate what it was like to actually be there in the room, it nevertheless has been a useful aid for analysis. See Emerson's, Russell paper on performance documentation which used Brink's process as a case study: ‘Constructing Remnants: Determining Strategies for Effective Performance Documentation’, in Maxwell, Ian, ed., Being There: After. Proceedings of the 2006 Conference of the Australasian Association for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies (Sydney: Australasian Association for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, 2008)Google Scholar, available at http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2550. For an article on the absence of a curtain call in Brink's production in Adelaide see Campbell, Alyson, ‘It Ain't Over Till’, Traffic, 8 (2006), pp. 31–48Google Scholar.

16 Kane, Sarah, 4.48 Psychosis (London: Methuen, 2000), pp. 4, 9, 20, 23Google Scholar.

17 Director of the Royal Court production of the play, James Macdonald, notes that 4.48 Psychosis is open and in need of exploration when he says, ‘it seemed crucial to workshop the play, to be sure of basic things like how many actors to use, and equally to have clues so as to start working with the designer’. Macdonald, James, ‘Finding a Physical Language: Directing for the Nineties Generation’, New Theatre Quarterly, 24 (2) (May 2008), pp. 141–57, here p. 142Google Scholar.

18 From a phenomenological perspective, of course, consciousness is not an internal state separate from the external world, but rather deeply intertwined with and revealing of the world itself. James Macdonald notes an affinity with Antonin Artaud's attempts to produce writing and theatre ‘which reflected directly what was happening inside his head’, ‘Conversation with James Macdonald’, in ‘Love Me or Kill Me’: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 123.

19 Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis, p. 3.

20 Dramaturg Maja Zade, quoted in Steve Earnest, ponders the philosophical nature of Kane's work, noting that ‘she raises huge philosophical issues which maybe . . . appeal to Germans’, in Steve Earnest, ‘Sarah Kane's Plays at the Shaubühne: An interview with Maja Zade, Dramaturg, Shaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin’, Western European Stages, 17, 3 (Fall 2005), pp. 140–3, here p. 141.

21 McAuley, ‘Not Magic but Work’, p. 277.

22 Such a non-naturalistic interpretation and resisting of allocating parts was present even in the premier production at the Royal Court Theatre. See James MacDonald, ‘Finding a Physical Language’, p. 152.

23 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’.

24 Such a notion of truth revelation in the production of Kane's plays is not limited to Brink's workshop. James Macdonald says, ‘Certainly what interests me from my own experience of being in a rehearsal room with actors is to see how little you can do and make the most possible truth’. Macdonald, ‘Finding a Physical Language’, p. 155. Another director of Kane's plays, Christian Benedetti says of his process, ‘My only responsibility as a director is that of telling the truth’. Graubard, Allan, ‘Interview with Christian Benedetti’, Western European Stages, 16, 2 (Spring 2004), pp. 39–41, here p. 41Google Scholar.

25 See Julian Young's discussion of disinterestedness in Heidegger's Philosophy of Art, pp. 9–14.

26 Such an attunement between the actors is not unique to Brink's rehearsal of 4.48 Psychosis. In a Berlin production, Maja Zade notes both the ‘basis of trust that we knew we needed for something like this’ and the deeply personal investment in the process of the cast. ‘Sarah Kane's Plays at the Shaubühne’, p. 142.

27 McAuley, ‘Not Magic but Work’, p. 276.

28 For this kind of discourse analysis see Kate Rossmanith, ‘Making Theatre-Making’.

29 James Macdonald uses the same terminology when referring to the first London production: ‘We spent a long time excavating meaning section by section and line by line’. ‘Conversation with James Macdonald’, in Love Me or Kill Me, p. 123. Daniel Evans, an actor in the same production, agrees with interviewer Graham Saunders who comments, ‘It seems like the rehearsals were a real exploration. No one, including the director seemed to come with an agenda’. ‘Conversation with Daniel Evans’, in Love me or Kill me, p. 174.

30 McAuley, ‘Not Magic but Work’, p. 279.

31 In his ‘Afterword’ to Love Me or Kill Me, p. 190, Edward Bond writes, ‘We can no longer personalize the ultimate. No God, gods or spirits have watched over the twentieth century. The heaps of bodies are not martyred, they are the refuse of science and fanaticism. Could they be martyrs of reason? Not if drama is dead’. Furthermore, he argues that the theatrical trickery of the present age disallows actors to ‘create their own epiphany’ (Love Me or Kill Me, p. 191). Such a declaration seems to be calling for theatre to return to truthfulness, however painful or confrontational.