Jordan College of Fine Arts
Department of Theatre

BITE 2009 Workshop Outline

"One cannot work on oneself... if one is not inside something which is structured and can be repeated, which has a beginning, a middle and an end, something in which every element has its logical place, technically necessary. All this determined from the point of view of that verticality toward the subtle and of its (the subtle) descent toward the density of the body."
(Grotowski 1995:130)

"...taiqi is corporeal reflection on shadow and breath. It stresses clarity in vacancy-movements which are exact, clean and pure, while inseparable and indecipherable"
(Blau, 1982:125)

"A real, well-prepared and perfectly executed pause (long or short) is what we call inner action, since its significance is implied by silence."
(Barba, 1995:80).

Week 1

Days 1-3

Focus on psycho-physical training through form practice, basic principles underlying practice, and the utilization of such principles to acting.

Exercises include: kalarippayattu breath-control exercises, yoga asanas and stretching, opening taiqiquan, and basic kalarippayattu forms: animal poses, steps, combinations. Introduction to body exercise sequences: kalari vanakkam, and quick releases of kicks.

Days 4-5

Continued training and work with structured improvisations.

Week 2

Continued psychophysical training, plus application to performance problems as noted above.

In addition: An additional two hour session can be devoted to viewing videotapes or DVDs of productions with discussion of how the psychophysical techniques, principles, and processes are applied to other dramaturgies than Beckett.

Background

The psychophysical approach to acting outlined here builds most immediately on the visions and key principles and insights of Stanislavski, Grotowski, and Artaud. It was the Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) who, as part of his life-long practical research into the nature and processes of acting first developed a 'psychophysical' approach to Western acting focused equally on the actor's psychology and physicality applied to textually-based character acting. Stanislavski described how the actor's "physical score", once perfected, must go beyond "mechanical execution" to a "deeper" level of experience which "is rounded out with new feeling and ... become[s], one might say, psychophysical in quality" (1961:66). Thus, "in every physical action...there is concealed some inner action, some feelings" (1961:228).

This work explores the 'inner action' of vibration/resonation, not from a psychological/behavioral point of departure, but from a task-based physical point of departure where, following the vision of Artaud, the actor ideally becomes an "athlete of the heart" who creates and enacts a "metaphysics" "at the nerve ends" and "through the skin". Here, the actor gains a "physical understanding of [the embodiment of] images" (1958). Like any good psychophysical process, reaching such a state of psychophysical actualization is only accomplished through long-term training.

Basic principles and practices are introduced, including:

  • Work that begins and ends with the breath
  • Working through the entire body, with emphasis on contact through the feet with the floor
  • Embodying key metaphors for actualization of practice
  • Developing a language of and principles for spatial awareness
  • Developing focus, a state of concentratedness necessary for performance
  • Developing dynamic `energy' for application to performance through modulation

All the above are necessarily developed over the long-term. Hopefully, you will glimpse the possibilities in such training. But it must become both intuitive, and available for application if it is to be useful to the actor.

Summary of key embodied/material metaphors:

  • `the body becomes all eyes' (meyyu kanakkuka, Malayalam folk expression)
  • `standing still while not standing still' (A.C. Scott)
  • working 'on the edge of a breath'...'at the nerve ends' (Herbert Blau and Antonin Artaud)
  • the `flow' of 'water' (energy) through particular parts of the body
  • surfaces/parts of the body as 'alive' to awareness/sight/absorption

Phillip Zarrilli is internationally known for training actors in psychophysical process through Asian martial/meditation arts, and as a director. He runs a private studio (Tyn-y-parc C.V.N. Kalari/Studio) in Wales, and conducts workshops throughout the world-including recent workshops or long-term residences at the Centre of Studies on Jerzy Grotowski (Poland), Seoul International Theatre Festival, International Workshop Festival (London), National Theatre of Greece, Theatre Training Initiative (London), Tainan-Jen Theatre Company (Taiwan), TTRP (Singapore), Gardzienice Theatre Association, and Passe Partout (Netherlands), among many others. His recent productions of Samuel Beckett's plays in Los Angeles (2000), Austria (2001), and Ireland (2004) have won critical acclaim and awards for `best actress' and 'courageous production' in Los Angeles. In 2002 he collaborated with UK-based award-winning playwright, Kaite O'Reilly and Theatre Asou (Austria) on a semi-devised performance, Speaking Stones, that opened in Austria in September, 2002, received its English premiere in Wroclaw, Poland on invitation of the Centre of Studies on Jerzy Grotowski in 2003, and was again performed in Aflenz, Austria in 2004. In 2004 he also directed Ota Shogo's The Water Station for TTRP at The Esplanade Theatres on the Bay in Singapore. During 2005-06 he directed Genet's Die Zofen (The Maids) in Austria, and performances of The Beckett Project were on tour in the U.S. in March and September. In 2007 he directed the Singapore premiere of Martin Crimp's Attempts on Her Life (a TTRP production at Esplanade Theatres on the Bay). He recently directed the critically acclaimed world premiere production of Kaite O'Reilly's The Almond and the Seahorse for Sherman Cymru (Cardiff and UK national tour), and a new translation of Sarah Kane's 4:48 Psychosis at KNUA (Seoul, Korea).

Zarrilli is also noted for his work with Indian dancers/choreographers. In 2000 Walking Naked with bharatanatyam dancer/choreographer, Gitanjali Kolanad, opened in Chennai and toured internationally until 2004 with performances in Mumbai, London, Seoul, New York, Toronto, etc. In 2003 he adapted and directed the seventh century Sanskrit farce for the UK-based bharatanatyam dance/theatre company, Sangalpam, with performances at the Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall (Royal National Theatre, London), and throughout the UK. He is currently completing a new solo piece, The Flowering Tree, with Gitanjali Kolanad, scheduled to officially open in 2006.