Redefining the performing arts archive

This paper investigates representations of performance and the role of the archive. Notions of record and archive are critically investigated, raising questions about applying traditional archival definitions to the performing arts. Defining the nature of performances is at the root of all difficulties regarding their representation. Performances are live events, so for many people the idea of recording them for posterity is inappropriate. The challenge of creating and curating representations of an ephemeral art form are explored and performance-specific concepts of record and archive are posited. An open model of archives, encouraging multiple representations and allowing for creative reuse and reinterpretation to keep the spirit of the performance alive, is envisaged as the future of the performing arts archive

Returning to an old question: What do television actors do when they act?

This article argues for acknowledging and exploring actors’ processes in critical considerations of television drama. Theatre Studies boasts a tradition of research privileging the actor, including a century’s worth of actor-training manuals, academic works observing rehearsals and performances, and actor accounts. However, such considerations within Television Studies are relatively nascent. Drawing upon continuing drama as a fertile case study for investigating the specificities of television acting, the article concludes that the only way to understand television acting is through the analysis of insights from actors themselves, in combination with the well-established practices of analysing the textual end-products of television acting

Villain Stardom in Socialist China: Chen Qiang and the Cultural Politics of Affect

Despite playing various kinds of roles across genres from 1949 to 1965, Chen Qiang acquired stardom mainly due to his remarkable screen performance as villainous landlords in socialist China. His villain stardom is an aberrant case, compared to the majority of film stars in Chinese socialist cinema who encouraged identification and emulation and helped propagate socialist ideology to reform Chinese citizens. Paying special attention to socio-historically specific film exhibition practices and the actor's own reflections on his villain performance, this article argues that Chen's stardom functioned as an important affective technology within a wider and complex Communist propaganda enterprise in that it helped cultivate class hatred necessary for the Communist revolution and socialist land reform campaigns. Through this case study, the article suggests that close engagement with both cultural–historical specificities of cinema and recent critical theories of affect open up a space for researching the diversified star phenomena in contemporary China

Continuous time random walk and parametric subordination in fractional diffusion

The well-scaled transition to the diffusion limit in the framework of the theory of continuous-time random walk (CTRW)is presented starting from its representation as an infinite series that points out the subordinated character of the CTRW itself. We treat the CTRW as a combination of a random walk on the axis of physical time with a random walk in space, both walks happening in discrete operational time. In the continuum limit we obtain a generally non-Markovian diffusion process governed by a space-time fractional diffusion equation. The essential assumption is that the probabilities for waiting times and jump-widths behave asymptotically like powers with negative exponents related to the orders of the fractional derivatives. By what we call parametric subordination, applied to a combination of a Markov process with a positively oriented L\'evy process, we generate and display sample paths for some special cases.Comment: 28 pages, 18 figures. Workshop 'In Search of a Theory of Complexity'. Denton, Texas, August 200

Mapping Meisner – how Stanislavski’s system influenced Meisner’s process and why it matters to British Drama School training today

As the Meisner technique has increased in popularity in UK Drama schools over the last decade, it is important to understand its origin and where Meisner drew his own inspiration from during the development of his technique, especially when questioning its place within British conservatoire training. This article will give a brief outline of Meisner’s foundational training, such as the Repetition and Activity exercises, however the main purpose is to highlight the ideas behind the technique. This will include the training Meisner received within the Group Theatre, the inspiration he took from the Russian scholars and the areas of Stanislavsky’s system that were utilised as he developed his technique. The article also acknowledges the argument that the Meisner technique’s introduction outside the US has been subject to aform of misrepresentation as large parts of Meisner’s more analytical training have often not been adequately represented, and in some cases ignored entirely

Katie Mitchell: feminist director as pedagogue

An Actor Prepares relates the reciprocal dialogue between teacher–director and actor to offer a pedagogical enquiry that moves beyond methodology to focus on the learning exchange. In the first decades of the twentieth century teacher–directors, predominantly male, were responsible for developing theatrical pedagogies. In the twenty-first century, it is rare to focus on the director as pedagogue or attend to the complex learning exchange between director and actor. Furthermore, curriculums continue to be dominated by predominantly male lineages. Yet a focus on pedagogical approaches allows us to look behind methodologies, what an actor does, to consider how an actor learns. What might a gendered consideration of rehearsal practices reveal about the particular features of acting pedagogy? How do feminist interventions reconsider aspects of Stanislavski’s approach? I turn to the developed pedagogy of Katie Mitchell to examine her work as a form of écriture féminine which creates a post-Stanislavski schooling for actors. Applying a methodology for observing pedagogic practice in the rehearsal room that has been developed over four years of research I consider her approach, drawing upon two extended interviews, observations across four rehearsal processes and interviews with the actors involved. I reflect on her process through a gendered lens as an evolved form of method of physical action, which I re-orientate as a method of feminist action. The particular features of this pedagogy map Mitchell’s contribution to developing twenty-first century actor training from a feminist position

Transforming Empathy to Empathetic Practice amongst Nursing and Drama Students

Nurses and actors both require the ability to demonstrate empathy in their practice. Mastering communication skills and techniques can inform an empathetic response. This skill is particularly important for nurses working in paediatric palliative and end of life care but there is lack of consensus whether empathy can be taught. The process an actor follows when getting into character incorporates drawing on personal emotive experiences and necessitates being receptive to others on stage in order to ‘journey’ from listening and empathising to actually being a character. We have translated this practice into the way we teach nursing students to communicate empathy