Embodying, imagining, and performing displacement and trauma in central Europe today

Published version deposited following SHERPA/RoMEO guidelines. Copyright CUP. Definitive version available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0266464X08000031This article provides an illustrated description and analysis of Speaking Stones - a collaborative performance commissioned by Theatre Asou of Graz, Austria, with UK playwright Kaite O'Reilly and director Phillip Zarrilli as a response to the increasingly xenophobic and reactionary realities of the politics of central Europe. The account interrogates the question, the dramaturgical possibilities, and the performative premise which guided the creation of Speaking Stones. Phillip Zarrilli is internationally known for training actors through Asian martial arts and yoga, and as a director. In 2008 he is directing the premiere of Kaite O'Reilly's The Almond and the Seahorse for Sherman-Cymru Theatre and the Korean premiere of Sarah Kane's 4:48 Psychosis. He is also Professor of Performance Practice at the University of Exeter

Where the Hand [Is]...

Reproduced with permission of the publisher. © 1987 University of Hawai'i Press

Interpreting the Image of the Human Body in Premodern India

This paper sets out two main arguments. In part one, a description of the adherents of the various intellectual disciplines and religious faiths in premodern India is given, each having developed distinct and different imagined bodies; for example, the body described in Tantric circles had little or nothing in common with the body described in medical circles. In part two, an account is given of the encounter between Ayurvedic anatomy and early colonial European anatomy which led initially to attempts at synthesis; these gave way to an abandonment of the syncretist vision of the body and the acceptance of an epistemological suspension of judgment, in which radically different body conceptualizations are simultaneously held in unacknowledged cognitive dissonance

Psychophysical Approaches and Practices in India: Embodying Processes and States of 'Being-Doing': the traditions and practice of psychophysical performance in Kerala, India

Published version deposited following SHERPA/RoMEO guidelines. Copyright CUP. Definitive version available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0266464X11000455This essay articulates a South Asian understanding of embodied psychophysical practices and processes with a specific focus on Kerala, India. In addition to consulting relevant Indian texts and contemporary scholarly accounts, it is based upon extensive ethnographic research and practice conducted with actors, dancers, yoga practitioners, and martial artists in Kerala between 1976 and 2003. During 2003 the author conducted extensive interviews with kutiyattam and kathakali actors about how they understand, talk about, and teach acting within their lineage of teaching/performance

Three bodies of practice in a traditional south Indian martial art

This paper describes three interconnected conceptions of the body in kaarippayau, the martial tradition of Kerala, south India. It traces continuities and discontinuities among concepts and practices recorded in classic source texts and contemporary martial practice for each of the three 'bodies of practice'. The first is the fluid body of humors and saps. The second is the body as superstructure composed of bones, muscles, and vital spots (marma-s), which supports the fluid body. The concepts and practices of the first two bodies are based on the regional tradition of Ayurveda. They constitute the external physical body (sthla-sarra). The third, subtle or interior body (sk ma-sarra) is thought to be encased within the physical body. It provides an experiential map of practice and is the basis for higher stages of meditation. The long-term practice of the martial art (1) makes the body fluid so that healthful congruence of the humors occurs, (2) establishes an intuitive and practical knowledge of vital points (marma) useful in fighting (praygam) and in treating injuries, and (3) purifies the subtle body and awakens the internal vital energy (pra-vyu) that is manifest as the power (sakti) of the master in combat or medical practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the interrelationship between these three concepts of the body in the accomplished practice of the martial practitioner.martial arts Kerala Ayurveda