Being There: After-Proceedings of the 2006 Conference of the Australasian Association for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies

Live Media and the 'Alive' Actor

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Live Media and the 'Alive' Actor Fewster, Russell David This paper considers the presence of the actor in relation to mediatisation of the theatre space. In particular the kinetic relationship of the performer to real time and simulated real time video projection. This will be based on my recent production of 'The Lost Babylon' by Takeshi Kawamura at the 2006 Adelaide Fringe Festival—an Australian-Japanese co-production combining various acting styles with video projection.

When the Spectator Talks Back: The Development of Practical Wisdom and an ‘ethics of care’ within the Magdalena Talks Back Network

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

When the Spectator Talks Back: The Development of Practical Wisdom and an ‘ethics of care’ within the Magdalena Talks Back Network Kehoul, Gillian During discussions at the Magdalena Australia Festival 2003, a number of local and international participants identified a need to develop support systems for women aiming to create ‘good’ theatre. One result from these discussions was the establishment of a small network of theatre practitioners, playwrights, and academics in Brisbane who called themselves Magdalena Talks Back (M.T.B.). M.T.B. has been meeting every month since the Festival in 2003 to offer interested artists opportunities to discuss work in progress, compare evaluative strategies, and obtain feedback on specific productions. Since the network aims to support the development of good theatre, questions and arguments about what is valuable and valued have been intrinsic parts of these sessions. Indeed, much consideration has been given to what aesthetic values are supported by various practitioners and when, how, and if feedback can be effectively and ethically conveyed by those with differing values. While M.T.B. members constantly reflect upon biases and preferences informing creative processes and funding decisions, many core members also argue that the definition and implementation of a firm yet flexible ethical framework is an essential part of any process designed to develop work on a range of levels. As a member of M.T.B. who usually identifies as a performance theorist rather than a performer, I will explain how the role of spectator/observer requires an active ‘performance’ of an ‘ethics of care’ promoted within these sessions. I then consider how the ethical framework evident in this network connects with contemporary re-workings of Aristotelian arguments about the role of practical wisdom in the development of individuals and communities.

Longing to Belong: Trained Actors’ Attempts to Enter the Profession

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Longing to Belong: Trained Actors’ Attempts to Enter the Profession Moore, Paul My research to date has focused on a sociology of the acting profession within Australia, and particularly on the experience of trained actors entering the profession. Training involves inculcated bodily and cognitive processes that create expectations of future inclusion. This ‘longing to belong’ to the wider profession is very rarely fulfilled following graduation. It is this expectation of inclusion, the memory of emersion in the ‘before’ of performance, that leads to such a heightened sense of exclusion in the actual ‘during’ of the actors career, and often lingers for years before collapsing into a sense of an unfulfilled ‘after’. Combining phenomenological, ethnographic and statistical analysis I will argue that of all those excluded from performance, these souls are placed in the most excruciating position, lingering with a sense of being forever 'partially there'. More positively, I will also detail how producing graduates on masse with expectations that are unlikely to be met, does, from a sociological perspective, create a situation where real change is an ever present possibility as those denied what they feel is their ‘right’ to belong, seize new opportunities to do so.

Overcoming the Metaphysics of Consciousness: Being/Artaud

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Overcoming the Metaphysics of Consciousness: Being/Artaud Johnston, Daniel Waycott Some recent theories of the mind have invoked the theatre as a metaphor to explain consciousness. This paper suggests that there is something irreducible to consciousness and that theatre can be an invaluable tool for exploring such subject matter. Rather than explain the mind through theory, performance practices can use immediate experience to investigate consciousness. Of course, Antonin Artaud’s ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ articulates the hope of apprehending consciousness through immediate experience, overcoming ‘literature’ and the alienating ossification of language. For Artaud, the ‘self’ has always been stolen at birth yet he suggests it can be returned through the theatre. The Theatre of Cruelty is an overcoming of the metaphysical obstructions of ‘being’. Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time also seeks to reveal the concept of 'Being' by destroying the historical misunderstanding of the term. Heidegger' claims that 'Dasein' (Being-there), the human subject, is maintained by a radical continuity with the world in which it exists. Because human subjects are 'absorbed' in the world of practical activity, projects and tasks, they tend to misrecognise themselves as a ‘thing’. But consciousness is not a ‘thing’ like other entities in the world. Such misrecognition is the fundamental error in what Heidegger calls metaphysics. My contention is that the Theatre of Cruelty is Artaud’s attempt at articulating a practical investigation of consciousness, resisting the metaphysical structures of language and logic and calling for the priority of ‘experience’. Cruelty is a return of the pre-theoretical, unspeakable words needed to explore the Being of consciousness. Such is an attempt to overcome the metaphysics of consciousness onstage.

Falling Through Fellatio

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Falling Through Fellatio Stewart, Jeff Time exposed through the body and being present in an act. Either through a specific sex act or witnessing a memorial to genocide in Rwanda or the death of a loved one time looses its linearity and opens to experienced infinity. The waves of tactile reciprocity, visceral presence, grief shift our awareness to that other time intimately entwined with space and lived experience. The paper hopes to be able to begin to describe and discuss these moments.

Performing Victory: The Different Kind of War of Bush 43

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Performing Victory: The Different Kind of War of Bush 43 Morelos, Ronaldo In the pieces to camera that George W. Bush has delivered since 9/11, the ideals of “victory” and “freedom” have driven the arguments for initiating, prolonging and sustaining belligerent action—bello jus—against a number of different targets. The arguments by which the “different kind of war” is conceptualised and justified have their basis upon the acts that are considered to have provoked the need for war, namely the acts of 9/11. This paper examines ways in which the performance of “presidency”—particularly as the “war president”—has generated and maintained the performative conditions of armed conflict, as well as ways in which those performative conditions have been interrupted and eroded over time.

'More Than Common Tall': Measuring up to the 'Real' Rosalind in Australia

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

'More Than Common Tall': Measuring up to the 'Real' Rosalind in Australia Flaherty, Kate There is no record of performance history for 'As You Like It' prior to the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, critical reviews of contemporary productions trade persistently in the notion of a 'real' Rosalind by whose standards all Rosalinds are to be measured. In Australia this phenomenon is further exaggerated by a perceived distance from the authoritative source of the play. Beginning with a study of the nineteenth century Australian performer, Essie Jenyns, this essay explores the peculiar tenacity of the myth of the real Rosalind, and discusses how three modern Australian Rosalinds have, through their habitation of the role, challenged the expectations which usually attend it.

Up and Down Diotima's Staircase: Space and Metaphysics in Symbolist and Expressionist Theatre

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Up and Down Diotima's Staircase: Space and Metaphysics in Symbolist and Expressionist Theatre Monaghan, Paul The Staircase is particularly resonant as a meeting place of metaphysics and theatrical practice. In this paper I use the framework provided by ‘Diotima’s staircase’ – a concept from Plato’s Symposium – to examine the relationship between theatre and metaphysics at the turn into the twentieth century, a time when shifting metaphysical positions both explicitly and implicitly drove Symbolist and Expressionist theatrical experimentation. I argue that this experimentation involved a turning away from Symbolism’s neo-Platonic focus on noumena towards Expressionism’s belief in the value of phenomena, and that this shift was especially evident in the way that Symbolists and Expressionists dealt with the arrangement of bodies, objects and light in space. I focus specifically on the transformation of Symbolism’s use of the staircase as a metaphor in paintings to Expressionism’s use of actual, three-dimensional flights of stairs and multiple-level stage floors in the theatre.

Wagner and the Little Balletmaster That Could

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Wagner and the Little Balletmaster That Could Ginters, Laura Theatre history accounts of the nineteenth-century always throw up the names of two geniuses of the German theatre who made significant reforms to the theatre of their day: Richard Wagner and the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. Richard Wagner wanted to create a new form of music drama, a 'gesamtkunstwerk' (“total art work”) uniting music, poetry, dance, the visual arts in works for which he was solely responsible. Accounts of the emergence of the director in the nineteenth century also regularly begin with the Duke’s resident court theatre troupe which toured widely throughout Europe to great acclaim up to 1890. Long before the Meininger troupe was formed, however, Richard Fricke had been putting together notable productions in Dessau, with singers who could also act, drawing on a system of movement training which he himself had developed—doing, in short, much of what the Duke has been credited with initiating. He’d been doing this for over 20 years, in fact, before Wagner visited Dessau in 1872, looking for soloists for the premiere of his Ring cycle at the new Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Wagner was amazed by the production he saw there—“I have never witnessed a more noble and more perfect theatre performance than this production”—and insisted that Fricke assist him in Bayreuth. He began by claiming that he needed only Fricke’s choreographic skills—”I do not need a ‘stage director’”—but he soon began to rely heavily on Fricke to recommend, recruit and train singers and performers; co-ordinate stage machinery and the performers’ use of it; choreograph scenes; and solve other problems of staging, scenery, props and costumes. The 'lone genius' did require help to realise his work: the contributions of others, and especially his 'ballet master'—actually more of an assistant or co-director—remain undervalued. This paper look behind the scenes at Bayreuth to investigate how performance preparation and rehearsal—essentially collaborative practices—may inflect a notion of individual, directorial ownership of a resulting production. This will allow me to problematise a remarkably persistent 'few great men of history' narrative, identifying other underacknowledged practitioners and their practices, and thereby also to cast new light on early developments in the evolution of the contemporary director. This paper, along with Tim Fitzpatrick's contribution to this collection, was part of a panel on various aspects of the performance preparation process, flowing from a research cluster initiative which has been funded by the Network for Early European Research, and which is seeking ARC funding through the Discovery Grants scheme. This work focusses on attempting to understand what might have been involved in the preparation process before the arrival of the director in the late nineteenth century. The research involves traditional archival work to uncover evidence from company records, analysis of the textual remnants of the predominantly oral process of organising performance, and analysis of oral testimonies of participants.

Renaissance in the Regions: The HotHouse Theatre Artistic Directorate

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Renaissance in the Regions: The HotHouse Theatre Artistic Directorate Hooper, Guy In its nine year life to date HotHouse Theatre has become one of the leading regional theatres in Australia with a varied program of work, consistently high audience numbers, well-developed management practices, and a steadily expanding range of activities. The launch of HotHouse Theatre in Albury/Wodonga in 1997 marks, however, not so much the nascence of a new company, but rather the rebirth of an existing company in a fundamentally restructured form. This paper examines the unique structure that governs the Artistic Direction of HotHouse Theatre; a structure that was developed as a response to a crisis in the life the Murray River Performing Group, a regional theatre company which after 17 years of existence, found itself confronting declining artistic standards, shrinking audience numbers, cuts in funding, and an inability to source the necessary leadership to deal with these issues. Instituted in 1997, the HotHouse Theatre Artistic Directorate is a body of leading theatre professionals who provide the strategic and artistic vision that would conventionally be the duty of a solo artistic director. This paper will outline the factors leading to the institution of the HotHouse Theatre Directorate, provide an overview of its operating procedures and practices and attempt to assess the critical elements of its success, through the reflections of key-players involved in setting up, serving on and implementing the vision of the Artistic Directorate. It is hoped that the paper will serve as the starting point for a broader discussion on the issues of current theatre company management and regional theatre in Australia. Please download the powerpoint presentation to accompany the written paper.

The Theatre of the Athletic Nude: The teaching and study of anatomy at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1873-1940

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The Theatre of the Athletic Nude: The teaching and study of anatomy at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1873-1940 Marshall, Jonathan Physicians Paul Richer, Henry Meige and Mathias Duval were colleagues of French neurologist, J.-M. Charcot. In 1873-1940 they consolidated within their teaching at the École des Beaux-Arts a model of aesthetics based on a dynamic construction of the human body in movement. The theatrical spectatorship of the athletic nude was marshalled in the service of medicine, aesthetics, and social and racial health. Associated with the new sciences of physiology and neurology, Richer, Meige and Duval restored to academic art its modernity by marrying anatomical dissection with those new medical disciplines whose focus was the body in action. This revived the artist’s “maternal language” of the performing body, found at the ancient Greek Olympics or amongst the strongmen of the fairground. This produced a distinctly modern, neo-Classical aesthetic; a progressive, realist iconography of the masculine athletic subject in performance. The modern sports stadium acted as a theatrical locus for the teaching and promulgation of healthy, embodied, Republican aesthetics.

Stanislavski’s Rehearsal Processes Re-Viewed

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Stanislavski’s Rehearsal Processes Re-Viewed Martin, Jacqueline A Stanislavski Symposium was held in Stockholm in 1986, where some of the last surviving actors and directors who had been trained by Stanislavski himself discussed and worked ‘on the floor’ with over 300 Swedish actors and directors from all over the country. My paper is concerned with re-viewing the documentation of this Symposium, mostly as presented in a report, which I co-authored whilst a PhD candidate at the University of Stockholm. Further documentation of this embodied practice is available at the Swedish Theatre Museum and the Archive for Sound and Moving Images in Stockholm, where actors from Stanislavski’s Moscow Arts Theatre spoke about and demonstrated the rehearsal methods they had experienced with him. The use of anecdotal evidence from actors who actually shared the rehearsal room with Stanislavski has the potential to modify our perceptions of what might have been involved in Stanislavski’s processes – processes which have hitherto been disseminated only indirectly, particularly in North America. The implications of this material will lead to a new understanding of Stanislavski’s rehearsal processes and acting methodology, which is now emerging from Russian sources.

Coaches as Phenomenologists: Para-Ethnographic Work in Sport

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Coaches as Phenomenologists: Para-Ethnographic Work in Sport Downey, Greg If performance studies is to explore sports from the perspective of athletes, coaches form a potential pool of allies as they are engaged in their own ‘para-ethnographic’ studies of athletes’ performance. This paper examines developmental coaching, that is, the teaching of skills, as a form of applied phenomenology, drawing on examples from the author’s fieldwork on capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian dance and martial art. In particular, the paper explores an instructor’s intervention when the author was trying to learn to plantar bananeira (‘to plant a banana tree’), the capoeira version of a handstand. The intervention had several stages, all revealing an acute perception of how the learning experience was structured: the coach pantomimed incorrect practice to increase the author’s self awareness, diagnosed what part of the skill I might be able to learn next, and created a tailored exercise to shift the author’s perceptions. Studying this sort of coach-athlete interaction helps us to better understand performance traditions, but it also poses a series of challenges in terms of shifting our scale, recognising that we will not produce certain forms of theoretical narrative, and taking phenomenological analysis seriously.

Evolution, Mutation and Hybridity in Bio-Performance Practice: Wet Biology and Hybrid Arts in the Performance/Installation 'BioHome—The Chromosome Knitting Project'

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Evolution, Mutation and Hybridity in Bio-Performance Practice: Wet Biology and Hybrid Arts in the Performance/Installation 'BioHome—The Chromosome Knitting Project' Fargher, Catherine In this paper I explore the influence of ‘Wet Biology’ practices on the development of my durational performance work 'BioHome: the Chromosome Knitting Project' at research, rehearsal, performance and documentation stages. This work is being developed as part of my Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong where a performance of the full work took place in August 2006. This will be an annotation of methodology and grounded theory, as a result of my experience working with contemporary bio-ethics, Wet Biology and bio-art practices, and the emergence of a new form, ‘bio-performance’. Especially in the stages of research and rehearsal, the influence of the scientific practice has radically hybridized and mutated my performance form and content. This paper documents my experience working with contemporary Wet Biology techniques including DNA extraction, cell culturing and genetic modification of organisms during the research and development stages of the performance and how the influence of the scientific practices and notions of hybridity, evolution and mutation have influenced the form, content and processes of my work. The key topics I investigate for the purposes of this paper include: •That the message does respond to the medium – new biotechnologies can inform creative processes. •That the biological metaphors of evolution, hybridity and mutation are relevant to the development of hybrid performance works.

Repositioning the Interface for Cross-Cultural Reception of Indigenous Australian Theatre

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Repositioning the Interface for Cross-Cultural Reception of Indigenous Australian Theatre Casey, Maryrose Representations and practices of identity on the street and on the stage are always marked and read on many levels within the tension between self claimed concepts and understandings of identity and imposed external concepts of that identity. These concepts provide the basis for definitions of cultural practice and cultural production that establish hierarchies of authenticity, including and excluding work. Over the last few decades there have been many transitions in the framing of ‘other’ cultures and their artistic work ranging from multiculturalism through critical frames such as postcolonialism and interculturalism. However these different critical and social positions operate from the same basic power position, effectively operating from the same implicit and in practice almost a priori premises about contemporary cultural practices. Paralleling these critical movements has been the establishment of international conventions aimed at protecting and preserving cultural heritages in a myriad of forms. This paper examines the current frames of reception of Indigenous Australian theatre performance and the possible alternatives as a potential basis for a broader and more meaningful way to frame Indigenous theatre work

New Audiences' Reception of Plays: Before, During and After

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

New Audiences' Reception of Plays: Before, During and After Scollen, Rebecca This paper provides insight into the reception of non-theatregoers to a selection of plays performed in Queensland and the Northern Territory in 2004 and 2005. This data was collected and analysed as part of a three-year regional audience development project: Talking Theatre: An audience development programme for regional Queensland and the Northern Territory (2004-2006). The research was funded by the Australian Research Council, N.A.R.P.A.C.A. , Arts Queensland, Arts Northern Territory, and the Queensland University of Technology. 'Talking Theatre' sought to build new audiences both in the short and long terms for performing arts centres (P.A.C.s) participating in the project. The research endeavoured to develop a profile of non-theatregoers in regional areas, to understand their reasons for non-attendance, and to discover their reactions to live performances, and to the PACs which presented them.

During and Enduring: Forced Entertainment's 'Bloody Mess' and the Manipulation of Time in Performance

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

During and Enduring: Forced Entertainment's 'Bloody Mess' and the Manipulation of Time in Performance Hadley, Bree Time is the medium that brings act, actor and audience together in the fleeting moment of performance, and the timebound interaction of bodies here, now, together is believed by Blau, Phelan and others to be a basic ontological characteristic of performance. In this paper, I investigate the ways in which a performance’s treatment of time is tied to its aesthetic and political impact. After a brief analysis of philosophical and performative approaches to time, I examine the experience produced by performances that do something strange to time – repeat, stretch, shrink, fracture and reframe a series of acts in time, prising performers and spectators out of the standard progression of things. I focus on Forced Entertainment’s manipulation of time in Bloody Mess, a piece in which different trajectories of thought and action from the ten performers proliferate, mutate and collide, perpetually deferring the coherent personal, social and political narratives they desire.

A Practice of Faith: Actors and Rehearsal (A Tragedy in One Act)

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A Practice of Faith: Actors and Rehearsal (A Tragedy in One Act) Moore, Paul; Rossmanith, Kate An Australian actor completes actor training, leaves drama school, and accepts low-skilled, casual employment while he begins auditioning for performance roles. Finally he lands a role in a theatre production. What does this 'landing a role' mean for him? What does it mean to win a job and become a legitimate player in the theatre scene? What does it mean to enter rehearsals—to be in the enviable position of rehearsing? Drawing on a sociological analysis of actors entering the industry, as Well as fieldwork studies of actors in rehearsal, this paper seeks to account for the place 'rehearsal' has in the life of a jobbing actor. Presented in the form of a playscript, it charts the story of Peter (a median actor), his girlfriend, and his agent, as Peter struggles to win, and eventually loses, a role in a theatre production.

The Theatre Programme: A Public Discourse at a Staging of Maxwell Anderson's 'Anne of the Thousand Days'

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The Theatre Programme: A Public Discourse at a Staging of Maxwell Anderson's 'Anne of the Thousand Days' Heim, Caroline The term ’public discourses’ describes a range of texts or signifiers that inform the conditions of audience reception. Public discourses include myriad written, visual, spatial, auditory and sensory texts experienced by an audience at a particular theatrical event. Ric Knowles first introduced this term in 'Reading the Material Theatre'. Whereas Knowles was interested in how public discourses modified the conditions of reception, my broader research is to explore how these public discourses become texts in themselves. This paper will discuss one public discourse, the theatre programme, as it related to a staging of Maxwell Anderson’s Anne of the Thousand Days at the Brisbane Powerhouse in June 2006. The significance of the programme was explored at symposiums held after the performances. Audiences generally view programmes before a performance and after a performance and its significance as a written text changes. The program became a sign vehicle that worked to expound and explicate the meaning of the play for the audience. This public discourse became a significant written text contributing to the textual whole of the theatrical event.

The Redfern Riots: Performing the Politics of Space

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The Redfern Riots: Performing the Politics of Space Newman-Storen, Renee This paper approaches the 2004 Redfern ‘riots’ a performance event that is both indicative of, and constituted through, specific socio-historical formations. Central to the discussion are issues relating to the intersection of agency, the politics of space and he mediatised representation of the ‘riots’. As a core narrative, the paper explore how these media representations construct the ‘criminal’ body in the context of the ‘riots’, and how a piece of street graffiti can be read as a liminal enactment of memorialisation and the search for agency.

Stage Directions and Spatial Mapping on the Elizabethan Stage

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Stage Directions and Spatial Mapping on the Elizabethan Stage Fitzpatrick, Tim This paper will discuss initial work that points to a degree of directionality in some Elizabethan stage directions: they are not merely telling the actors to enter and exit the stage, but may in addition be indicating more specific points of entry and exit which relate to the spatial geography of the fictional world in its onstage and offstage components. It seems that ‘comes in’ and ‘goes out’ does not merely mean ‘comes onstage’ and ‘goes offstage’; and ‘comes out’ and ‘goes in’ does not just mean ‘comes out of’ or ‘goes into’ the tiring house. This research suggests that playwrights were writing themselves into practical production processes by inscribing important logistical information in their texts: my previous work has focussed on analysis of spatial indications in the dialogue, and this work on stage directions corroborates that. This analysis has broader implications for an understanding of how rehearsal might have been organised, and of the role the playwrights might have played, through their texts, in that process. This paper, along with that by Laura Ginters also included in this collection, was part of a panel on various aspects of the performance preparation process, flowing from a research cluster initiative which has been funded by the Network for Early European Research, and which is seeking A.R.C. funding through the Discovery Grants scheme. This work focusses on attempting to understand what might have been involved in the preparation process before the arrival of the director in the late nineteenth century. The research involves traditional archival work to uncover evidence from company records, analysis of the textual remnants of the predominantly oral process of organising performance, and analysis of oral testimonies of participants.

‘Post-Dramatic’ Stress: Negotiating vulnerability for performance

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

‘Post-Dramatic’ Stress: Negotiating vulnerability for performance Seton, Mark The greatest accolade given to actors is that of bravery rather than technical competency. We admire actors who ‘lose themselves’ in a role or who ‘expose’ themselves through their vulnerable portrayals. Yet at what cost? Some actors move from role to role with apparent ease while others seem to ‘live out’ their latest roles often prolonging addictive and potentially destructive habits. Schechner observed “the cool-down ought to be investigated from the point of view of both performers and spectators”. From my participant-observation of sites of actor training, I have witnessed advice in dealing with vulnerability, in the aftermath of performance, that suggests that actors either “develop the heart of a dove and the hide of a rhinoceros” or just “get over it!”. I discuss the lack of preparation for performers to negotiate what I have coined, evocatively and provocatively, ‘post-dramatic’ stress. I review the limited research that has sought to highlight the neglect of actors’ wellbeing in training and performance contexts and, subsequently, I proffer some options for negotiating this vulnerability. I argue we can teach and learn ways in which vulnerability can become a transformative process rather than something that has to be either defended against or denied.

Taking Ethnographic Film Back

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Taking Ethnographic Film Back Sweeney, Dominique This presentation invites questions about the way performance objects manifest cosmological unity. “[T]he framework of the crosses is the bone, ornad, of the ancestor-dancer, while the wool is the flesh of the ancestor-dancer’s body” (Kleinert and Neale 2000: 348). These words from David Mowarljarlai tell the Ngarinyin conception of the objects known throughout the Kimberley as 'balmarra'. Bundled together with other performance objects across Australia under the generic term “thread crosses”, 'balmarra' vary drastically in shape and scale, meaning and context. For corroboree composer Alan Griffiths his 'balmarra' manifest star constellations, places and people. They are specific and remain constant. In the film "Dance Time at Kalumburu" (Lucich 1965) a 'balmarra' carried by two men changes its meaning from being at one time a boat to then being the rainbow snake—'ungud'. This is done by the different way it is manipulated by the performers. Here is a clear example of the object itself holding no inherent meaning but being a theatrical device which is controlled by the performers intentions. The way Alan Griffiths uses objects in his corroborees is not as representations but as manifestations of ever-present aspects of existence. The performers enable the experience of those manifestations through an artistic process. For those who appreciate their meaning these 'balmarra' are sung and danced into a living 'Ngarranggarni' (dreamings) through the act of performance.

The New Woman in the New World: Ibsen in Australia 1889-1891

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The New Woman in the New World: Ibsen in Australia 1889-1891 Hoare, Eileen In 1889, when Janet Achurch brought 'A Doll’s House' by Henrik Ibsen to Australian and New Zealand audiences for the first time, there was an expectation that this play would send shock waves throughout the Antipodes as it had in Europe and England. Initially the reviewers were highly critical of Ibsen for writing such a play, and for constructing characters with no redeeming features, in particular the “Old Man”, as Torvald Helmer was increasingly referred to by contrast with Nora, who was seen as a model for the “New Woman.” Achurch introduced her signature role of Nora and the controversial play 'A Doll’s House' to audiences in all the capitals of the colonies and major country towns of Australia and major cities and towns of New Zealand. That the play was performed in some of the remotest areas of Australia and New Zealand is testament to the remarkable energy and versatility of Achurch and her husband, Charles Charrington. Their experience in stock companies in England fuelled their ambitions. The frequency of performances of this play in this two-year period allows for a comparative study between the emotional and antagonistic initial responses to the play mainly from critics looking to be entertained and a growing intelligence and understanding, even preference for this new drama. Eileen Hoare passed away in early 2008 as this manuscript was moving through the peer-reviewing process. The paper is presented here as it was submitted by Eileen, with some minor emendations, in recognition of her warmth for her colleagues, passion for her research and contribution to the discipline over the years.

'Eftermaele': That Which Remains After the Event. a Panel Discussion concerning the use of video in the Documentation of Live Performance

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

'Eftermaele': That Which Remains After the Event. a Panel Discussion concerning the use of video in the Documentation of Live Performance McAuley, Gay An introduction to a panel discussion on the video documentation of live performance. This brief paper is to be read as an introduction to the contributions to this collection by Russell Emerson and Dominique Sweeney. These papers are based on presentations made at a panel convened, curated and moderated by Gay McAuley at the conference.

Meta-Performativity: Being in Shakespeare’s Moment

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Meta-Performativity: Being in Shakespeare’s Moment Kennedy, Flloyd In the dramatic performance of text, linguistic performativity is inherent within the utterances provided by the playwright for the character, to be used as if they were in normal use in the world of the play. The actor, however, is required to speak memorised lines many times as if the spoken language just happened to occur in that instant, in response to the need to express a specific thought. When performing Shakespearean drama, codes of linguistic performativity must be balanced with those of the verse and the heightened language as well as the needs of public performance – or the demands of the film set. Often, a second level of ‘para’-performativity overlays the text as it is spoken by the actor, and the utterance resounds with the acts of remembering and/or quoting (the memorised lines). I propose that when the illusion of ‘honesty’ is achieved without reducing the language to a contemporised ‘naturalness’, it owes its existence to a second order, or ‘meta’-performative quality adhering in the voice.

'The Presence of Design': The Sets and Costumes are There, too

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

'The Presence of Design': The Sets and Costumes are There, too Heckenberg, Miranda We tend to focus on the actor and the audience when we think of being there. However, the design (the space, imagery, costumes and style) dictates the conditions in which the actors and audience engage. This paper will look at ways that design achieves presence in performance: a being there that is often overlooked because we only consider ‘presence’ as the domain of ‘consciousness’. Design is activated by the ‘nowness’ of performance but in different ways than a ‘site’ or pre-existing ‘space’, because we must consider what doing ‘design’ implies. The designer is involved in a complicated creative and interpretive process—the before—the making of set models and costume drawings and the actual consciousness of the collaboration between designer, director and actors. I will argue that the limited ways in which design has been written about reflects a general lack of understanding of how designers work and the ways that design shape the kinds of being there that occur in performance. This paper will build on material from my ‘ethnographic’ research of stage design processes to present some new ways to engage with designers and design. This paper was awarded one of three prizes, donated by the University's Dean of Graduate Studies, for outstanding presentations by post-graduate students at the conference.

Performing Confessions: Making Sense Afterwards of Field Immersion

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Performing Confessions: Making Sense Afterwards of Field Immersion Rossmanith, Kate “You have to create a fiction about yourself to make sense to people. I never lied; but I had to tell a story.” Joanne Good, a 42-year-old anthropology postgraduate, spent seven years in a rural Indonesian village conducting fieldwork. Now she is back, but she cannot put the pieces together. Based on research for a documentary, and drawing on lengthy interviews with Joanne, this paper charts her changing relationship to her fieldwork. The discipline of ethnography – central to many performance studies projects – insists of the coeval experience of fieldwork as the source of ethnographic knowledge (Conquergood 1991: 182). However, experiences of temporality are ongoing as the researcher returns ‘home’ to write about the field experience. This paper explores Joanne’s struggle to weave together – and tell stories from – a chronology based on chaotic field-notes that don’t add up. At the same time it considers the ways in which anthropologists have negotiated the post-fieldwork phase of research.

Constructing remnants: Determining strategies for Performance Documentation

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Constructing remnants: Determining strategies for Performance Documentation Emerson, Russell This paper address methodolgoical issues involved in the video documentation of live performance, using, as a case study, a recording the author made of Brink Theatre’s 2005 production of Sarah Kane’s '4.48 Psychosis' in the Queen’s Theatre, Adelaide. The paper explains his goals in the documentation process and comment on the inadequacies of video by providing the meta-data required to enable a viewer to understand the spatial and performance-related information represented within the video recording. It also considers feedback from the director and an academic user of the recording. Please read the introduction by Gay McAuley, included in this collection, as a context for this paper.

La Boite Theatre 1925-2003: Before, During and After its Transformational Journey from Amateur to Professional Status

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

La Boite Theatre 1925-2003: Before, During and After its Transformational Journey from Amateur to Professional Status Comans, Christine La Boite Theatre, the oldest theatre company in Brisbane and the second oldest in Australia, has not only survived for over eighty years in an unbroken line of theatrical activity but has successfully negotiated the difficult transitions in status from an amateur group to a ‘pro-am’ theatre to a prospering professional company. How it managed such a transformation is the subject of this paper, based on my recent doctoral study of La Boite’s history. The paper focuses on a set of findings that emerged in response to the thesis question. Backgrounding the findings is the story of how I ‘controlled’ and gave shape and meaning to what appeared initially to be an unwieldy, long and messy history. The findings converge around key ‘manifestations’ of effective artistic and organisational leadership identified in my research as crucial to the company’s successful journey to professional status.

Dance, Mimesis, consciousness and the Imagination

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Dance, Mimesis, consciousness and the Imagination Sellers-Young, Barbara One of the primary assumptions of dance studies is that dance as an art only exists in the moment of movement and as a result it is transmitted, in a form of mimesis, directly from the body of the teacher to that of the student. Historically, prior to the advent of mirrored studios, television, video and the internet, this was true. However dancers throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century have moved to studying dance via different mediated environments: first the mirror . . . then the screen. This essay asks a series of questions concerning the kinesthetic experience of the dancer whose training is increasingly influenced by technology. What is the impact of these spatial and technological developments on a dancers’ conscious awareness or their kinesthetic interpretation of self? Has the experience of the dancing self moved from the cultural to the virtual? If so, how has Marleau-Ponty’s version of the ‘lived’ body been transformed by the body/mind’s engagement with technology? Are dance cultures being defined by their locality or by their evolution over the internet?

The Performance of War Images

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The Performance of War Images Broinowski, Adam This paper addresses the use of the body in post-9/11 performances of Japanese performance company Gekidan Kaitaisha in correlation with the continuing War on Terror campaign, and the ‘culture of protest’ in theatrical performance. It focuses on the performative effect of certain images and events during the on-going War on Terror, and the way the use of a burqa, US military footage, and choreographic impact in Kaitaisha has responded/coincided with/signaled events. How do Kaitaisha go beyond the effect of the (un)spectacular image? What particular alternatives do their performances reflect?

"Unassumable Responsibility": Watching Mike Parr

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

"Unassumable Responsibility": Watching Mike Parr Burvill, Tom This ‘paper’ is a short personal piece of writing—an interior monologue really—about “being there” at Mike Parr’s "Punch Holes in the Body Politic" at Artspace in Sydney. I wrote this initially at the time and have added to it some what for this occasion but my aim was to record my contradictory experience—thoughts, puzzlings—of attending this show, which of course (as it turned out) was based on ethically compromising the spectator if at all possible by almost forcing them to hurt Mike. I had sent students along and had tried to prepare them as far as I could, but I did not know in detail until after my own experience just what it was that Mike Parr had prepared and indeed even then how much of that which was prepared didn't seem to work, at least as intended. This phenomenon in itself offers distinctive spectatorial challenges. Perhaps Mike’s ideal spectator isn’t an ethical one. I have tried in this writing to record my own process of trying to separate the accidental from the essential, the puzzling but maybe significant from the fuck-ups, while trying to be both an ethical and as much as possible the interactive spectator Mike apparently wanted. We are all ethical spectators aren't we? We don't participate in the festival of cruelty taking place on our TV screens. We offer an informed critique and then retire to our offices and living rooms. But isn't restricting oneself to spectatorship precisely an unethical activity in the age of compassion fatigue and distant suffering? How can aesthetic activity offer a useful perspective on these dynamics of state power and the production of a "mass mediated machining synonymous with distress and despair" (Guattari)? This panel aimed to interrogate these dynamics through an analysis of a diverse range of performance works in which the possibility of the ethical response is directly broached or even structurally implicated in the work itself. We asked whether this is efficacious or what if any ethical functions can performance play in the contemporary political moment? The panel comprised 6 presentations each exploring the work of a particular group and the ways in which the work in question negotiated serious political, social, performative or ethical questions. Each panellist presented examples of work that troubled traditional notions of ethics and morality and also challenged spectators as well as the meaning and function of spectatorship in the current environment. Questions we addressed included: what does the spectator do? How is his/her role different from that of the television viewer who witnesses distant suffering unfolding on the screen each night? Should the spectator respond both inside and beyond the performance space? If so what might an ‘appropriate’ response be?

'Bodily': Conjunction and Fermentation

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

'Bodily': Conjunction and Fermentation Needham, Tessa 'This cult of thinness has burrowed its way into my body. Into our bodies. It’s a way of life. The head knows we shouldn’t, but the heart has no choice . . . This is our contradiction'. This paper looks at the “before, during and after” of my 2006 Ph.D. performance 'Bodily', which explores the multiplicity of attitudes towards female beauty and body image in contemporary society. It traces the development of the performance, the experience during the show, and a discussion and evaluation of the receptions to the performance and its research outcomes. The focus of this paper is on how the theory and practice components of my project complement each other, emphasising the line of development from research and construction to performance and evaluation. It therefore investigates how I am integrating the experience of 'Bodily' with my theoretical research. Note that there is a video file that may be down-loaded here to accompany the paper.

Necklace Theory

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Necklace Theory Durban, Kim In this paper I will describe the stages involved in preparing the performance season of my major project for my Master of Dramatic Art (Direction). The key issues I raise are: the set-up of the research environment; issues of interpretation; te process of creating research; the 'necklace theory; supervisionl and what actually happened.

Being Political in German Theatre and Performance: Anna Langhoff and Christoph Schingensief

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Being Political in German Theatre and Performance: Anna Langhoff and Christoph Schingensief Varney, Denise Anna Langhoff and Christoph Schlingensief are two contemporary theatre makers who sit at opposite ends of the dramatic/postdramatic theatre divide. In that both artists see themselves as critics of western neoliberalism, their different approaches to theatre and performance invite a comparative study of ‘being political’. Langhoff’s neorealist plays and Schlingensief’s performance events both demonstrate the limits of liberal society’s capacity to deal with complex social problems. But how effective is each after the event? The paper uses Han Thiess Lehmann’s study of postdramatic theatre to compare the two performance styles.