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Space and Actor Formation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2011

ANDREW FILMER  and
KATE ROSSMANITH
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Abstract

The profound spatial turn experienced by the humanities and social sciences over recent decades has prompted a re-examination of how space and place inform our understandings of theatre and performance. In this article we investigate the ways in which the theatrical labour that occurs within rehearsal and backstage spaces involves not only the making of theatrical performance but also the making of theatrical performers. Drawing on fieldwork-based research, and exploring the concepts of orientational metaphor, tactical inhabitation and training zones, we argue that performers’ use and inhabitation of rehearsal and backstage spaces is a key means through which they are formed as professional artists.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , October 2011 , pp. 228 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2011

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References

NOTES

2 In the Company of Actors, dir. Ian Darling, DVD, Shark Island Films, 2007.

3 McAuley, Gay, ‘The Emerging Field of Rehearsal Studies’, About Performance, 6 (2006), pp. 7–13, here p. 7Google Scholar.

4 See Malpas, Jeffrey, Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Casey, and Malpas's, dialogue in Philosophy & Geography, 4, 2 (2001), pp. 225–38Google Scholar. See also Massey, Doreen, For Space (London: Sage, 2005)Google Scholar.

5 Casey, Edward S., Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. xviiGoogle Scholar.

6 Casey, Edward S., The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 337Google Scholar.

7 Ingold, Tim, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Casey, The Fate of Place, p. 242.

9 Casey, Getting Back into Place, p. xiii.

10 See, for instance, Carlson, Marvin, Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture (New York: Cornell University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Tompkins, Joanne, ‘Space and the Geographies of Theatre: Introduction’, Modern Drama, 46, 4 (Winter 2003), pp. 537–41Google Scholar; and Knowles, Ric, Reading the Material Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. McAuley, Gay, Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 71Google Scholar.

11 Casey, Edward S., ‘Between Geography and Philosophy: What Does It Mean to Be in the Place-World?’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91, 4 (2001), pp. 683–93, here p. 684CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 For Bourdieu, a ‘habitus’ is a set of corporealized dispositions that, over time, lodges itself into people, ‘a system of lasting and transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions and makes possible the achievement of infinitely diversified tasks’. Bourdieu, Pierre and Wacquant, Loic, An Invitation to a Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 18Google Scholar.

13 Casey, ‘Between Geography and Philosophy’, p. 687. Italics in original.

14 Ibid., p. 686.

15 Ibid., p. 687.

16 See Neil Leach, ‘Belonging: Towards a Theory of Identification with Place’, Perspectiva (2002), pp. 126–33, here p. 130.

17 Following Casey, we use Bourdieu's ‘habitus’ to understand ‘habitation’, but we simultaneously draw on Bourdieu's notion of ‘field’ in order to reflect on the ways in which actors are positioned – and position themselves – within a larger context of theatrical labour. See Bourdieu and Wacquant, An Invitation to a Reflexive Sociology.

18 Pearson, Mike, In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006), p. 221Google Scholar. Italics in original.

19 In 1980, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson showed how metaphor is not a characteristic of language alone, and that it is pervasive in thought and action. They wrote of ‘orientational metaphors’ that ‘give a concept a spatial orientation’. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark, Metaphors We Live by (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 14Google Scholar.

20 Cole, Susan Letzler, Directors in Rehearsal: A Hidden World (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 3Google Scholar.

21 The two productions we specifically draw on here were documented by Kate Rossmanith: The Season at Sarsaparilla by Patrick White, directed by Mary-Anne Gifford at New Theatre (July–August 1997), and My Night with Reg by Kevin Elyot, directed by Tony Knight at Newtown Theatre (January–February 1998). The theorizing of rehearsal in this article is also based more generally on further rehearsal processes documented by Kate Rossmanith in Sydney over the decade, including The Rameau Project, devised by Nigel Kellaway as part of the Opera Project, rehearsed and developed in July 2006, and performed at CarriageWorks (August–September 2009); and Deeply Offensive and Utterly Untrue, devised by version 1.0 and performed at CarriageWorks (August–September 2007).

22 Auslander, Philip, ‘Just Be Your Self: Logocentrism and Difference in Performance Theory’, in Zarrilli, Phillip, ed., Acting (Re)Considered: Theories and Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 57–68, here p. 60Google Scholar.

23 For discussion about such discourse in rehearsal, see Rossmanith, Kate, ‘“When the Grinding Starts”: Negotiating Touch in Rehearsal’, SCAN: Journal of Media Arts Culture, 5, 3 (2008)Google Scholar, available at http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=123.

24 For a discussion on the distinction between practitioners’ use of a ‘discourse within a practice’ versus a ‘discourse about a practice’ see Rossmanith, Kate, ‘Traditions and Training in Rehearsal Practice’, Australasian Drama Studies, 53 (2008), pp. 141–52Google Scholar. See also Kate Rossmanith, ‘Spending Two Weeks Mucking around: The Messy Relationship between Discourse, Practice and Experience in version 1.0's Deeply Offensive Devising Process’, About Performance, special issue, 10, 1 (2011) (forthcoming).

25 Cole, Directors in Rehearsal, p. 20.

26 Blau, Herbert, ‘A Subtext Based on Nothing’, Tulane Drama Review, 8, 2 (1963), pp. 122–32, here p. 126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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29 Appadurai, Arjun, ‘Topographies of the Self: Praise and Emotion in Hindu India’, in Lila, Abu-Lughod and Lutz, Catherine A., eds., Language and the Politics of Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 92–112, here p. 93Google Scholar.

30 Cole, Directors in Rehearsal, p. 3.

31 By using ‘tactical inhabitation’, we build on Michel De Certeau's famous figure of the ‘tactician’ who moves in ways that are never completely determined by organizing bodies, and we combine it with Casey's concept, via Bourdieu, of ‘inhabitation’ in order to foreground the tactical, embodied holding of place. See Certeau, Michel De, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

32 Knowles, Reading the Material Theatre, pp. 61–2.

33 Carlson, Places of Performance, p. 135.

34 The musical we refer to here was documented by Andrew Filmer: C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, adapted and dramatized by David Parker, directed by Nadia Tass and produced by Malcolm C. Cooke and Associates. The production premiered at the Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne, in 2002, with the final Sydney season at the Lyric Theatre, Pyrmont, running from December 2003 until February 2004.

35 The term ‘plot’ was used by cast and crew to refer to the sequence of actions and duties each individual was required to execute before, during and after each performance.

36 Lefebvre, Henri, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, trans. Elden, Stuart and Moore, Gerald (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), p. 39Google Scholar.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 For a discussion of the term ‘place-ballet’ see Seamon, David, A Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest and Encounter (London: Croom Helm, 1979)Google Scholar.

40 Joseph Connell, interview with Andrew Filmer, Sydney, 23 January 2004.

41 Hare, David, Acting Up (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), p. 119Google Scholar.

42 Brian Parker, interview with Andrew Filmer, Sydney, 14 January 2004.

43 Dennis Olsen, interview with Andrew Filmer, Sydney, 16 January 2004.

44 Ingold, Tim and Hallam, Elizabeth, ‘Creativity and Cultural Improvisation’, in Hallam, E. and Ingold, T., eds., Creativity and Cultural Improvisation (Oxford: Berg, 2007), pp. 1–24, here p. 5Google Scholar.

45 Ibid.

46 Harrison, Paul, ‘Making Sense: Embodiment and the Sensibilities of the Everyday’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18, 4 (2000), pp. 497–517, here pp. 503–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Italics in original.

47 See McAuley, Space in Performance, p. 71.