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8 Works 124 Membros 3 Críticas

About the Author

Phillip B. Zarrilli is internationally known for training actors in psychophysical process through Asian martial/mediation arts, and as a director. He is the author of numerous books and essays

Includes the name: Phillip B. Zarilli

Obras por Phillip B. Zarrilli

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male
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director

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Críticas

(Re)Considered is an exceptionally wide-ranging collection of theories on acting, ideas about body and training, and statements about the actor in performance. This second edition includes five new essays and has been fully revised and updated, with discussions by or about major figures who have shaped theories and practices of acting and performance from the late nineteenth century to the present.
 
Assinalado
RKC-Drama | 2 outras críticas | Mar 24, 2011 |
A new incarnation of Phillip Zarrilli’s 1995 text, Acting (Worlds of Performance), resurfaces under a title which suggests that the author has revised and updated his earlier publication. This renaming encourages the presumption that the new text will further enlighten the reader to the study of acting by superseding the first edition. Zarrilli’s latest text is laudable for its practical approach and for its success in bridging the chasm between the theoretical and the practical.

Acclaimed internationally for his work in the training of actors, Zarrilli, now a Professor of performance practice at Oxford University, uses a psychophysical process that combines yoga and the Asian martial art of Kalaripayattu. He uses his expertise in Kathakali dance and techniques, which focus on concentration, discovery, and use of inner energy to augment his teaching practice, for his directing, and for applying his research to practice.
Acting (Re)Considered is organized into three large sections. The first offers three formalistic classifications of the actor’s work from phenomenological, structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives; the second examines acting praxis focusing on the methods of Meyerhold, Barba, Suzuki, and Grotowski and considers each respectively, problematizing the intercultural techniques of these theorists; and the final subdivision of the text presents the reader with a series of essays which converge upon living performers occupied principally from Brechtian, feminist, or postmodern perspectives.
Zarrilli’s text collects twenty-four essays (many are reprinted from articles that first appeared in The Drama Review), nineteen previously appeared in the 1995 text. The text includes articles from Dutch psychologist Elly Konijn on acting and emotion; Eugenio Barba’s distinguished treatise, An Amulet Made of Memory, which reflects “on the significance of exercises for the development of the actor” (xvi); and three new essays that concentrate on the praxis of internationally recognizable performers and or performative ensembles: i.e., Paul Allain’s study of Wlodzimierz Staniewski’s Gardzienice Theatre Association, Ellen Halperin-Royer’s discussion relating to the process the actor undertakes when working with Robert Wilson on Danton’s Death; and lastly, an interview of Anna Deavere Smith by Carol Martin and an essay by Richard Schechner with Martin and Smith discussing the “creative process Deavere Smith uses to develop and enact her critically acclaimed solo performances” (xvii). Both are reprints from The African American Sourcebook. In addition to the new contributions, Zarrilli has revised his lively introduction, Between Theory and Practice, and has expanded the bibliography, which now accounts for new developments in the study of performance and contemporary acting treatises published since 1995.

Zarrilli accomplishes the daunting task of examining and revisiting contemporary theories and practices of acting in the twenty-first century and he considers rapid increases in new methods of performance, such as physical theatre in other non-Western countries. Moreover, he seeks to intellectually engage the assumptions, concepts, values, and practices constituting ways of training actor’s preparation in the new millennium. Zarrilli offers much insight into the discursive practices of the wide array of scholarartists whose writing is assembled within this compendium of essays. The essayists, some of whom are non-Westerners, are also practitioners. Other contributors to the book share their insights on actor training from disciplines other than acting such as, neurological and behavioral psychology, political theory, communications, and culture. Finally, Zarrilli addresses the relationship of other lineages of acting training today, synthesizing the multiplicity of perspectives, and explaining how and why these methods and modalities are significant contributions to the study, practice and scholarship of contemporary acting. The breadth of Zarrilli’s study is valuable for the ways in which it considers contradictory views of acting. This view also invites the reader to see performance as a process but also to see that both society and individuals are performative, a process of living and being that is always unconsumated.

One question I was led to consider with this second edition is why updating the earlier edition was needed. Moreover, I wondered what the value was in reprinting articles about performance that are easily accessible through online journal databases or by subscription. To be sure, Zarrilli contextualizes the essays, adding immediate value to this new collection, and thereby illustrates how the approaches to acting have matured over time. Furthermore, he comments upon those new discoveries, which are oriented to the mind and body, and relates them to the dynamic processes in acting. Conversely, Zarrilli avers that in current actor training the actor’s “body and mind are not being positively disciplined, that is, engaged in the present moment, not toward an end or goal” (183). Hence, he advocates abrogating dependency on the techniques of psychological realism in favor of a psychophysical approach that employs the interdependence of the body-mind relationship. Such an approach, he believes, enables the actor to manifest extraordinary focus and power.

Zarrilli’s world view on acting may be received as anti-American method. As editor of Acting (Re)Considered Zarrilli suggests that this praxis of physical actions rejects regarding physical and mental processes dualistically and which causes students to “often experience a real disjuncture between their minds and their bodies” (13). As a result, actors undergo “great difficulty freeing themselves from the mind to work out from their bodies” (13). Correspondingly, Zarrilli believes that this triggers a mental block that student actors must overcome “before they are free to allow themselves to explore how to discover a psychophysical impulse as a beginning point in action” (13). He calls theater educators to advocate for “the paradigms, discourses, and relationships between the body, mind, and experience in the constitution of meaning, knowledge, ‘self,’ and our daily practice(s) of life – including acting” (13). For Zarrilli the imperative is to refrain from the excessive reliance upon identity of character: the “who am I” which cannot be “divorced from the who we are” (22).

Zarrilli’s book is organized into three parts: theories of acting, the body and training, and the actor in performance. In the four essays in part one, “Theories and Meditations on Acting,” readers are given the opportunity to retreat from the consideration of acting theories and practices and to reflect “more generally” (7). This section includes essays by Bert States and Phillip Auslander (among others), both of whom raise questions about acting theory. Regrettably, the article by States is a philosophical perspective that merely discusses the homogeneity between the spectator and the performer. His essay fails to speak to technique and is not particularly useful to this text. Each author in this section looks more specifically at the performances of specific actors as well as the methods of Stanislavsky and other well-known Western practitioners. Two additional essays by Michael Kirby and Elly Konijn inspire the reader to retrace the connection between acting and emotion. The article by Kirby, like States’, lacks any meaningful discussion about the systematic procedures of acting and I found his prose less than engaging. However, editor Zarrilli is successfully able to reexamine acting using a psychophysical vista in lieu of a psychological overview when he draws from Phillip Auslander’s article, “Just Be Yourself.” This essay is concerned with logocentrism and difference in performance theory. There Auslander critiques several acting theories that depend upon Western assumptions. He argues that there are different ways that the actor creates a universal self and he thereby ascribes to the belief that the actor cannot privilege the self over the role despite the tenets of Stanislavsky and later those of Brecht and Grotowski. Although no attempt is made to discredit these antecedent theories, Auslander cautions one to “recognize that they are subject to the limits of the metaphysical assumptions of which they are based” (58) and implores the reader to realize that, “like metaphysics, they demand that we speak of acting in terms of presence” (58) and that this reference to the creation of “self” is derived from the “play of difference which makes up theoretical discourse” (58).

Part two of Acting (Re)Considered is composed of ten selected works representing an overarching theme that “the actor’s body has always been ‘there’ as the sole means of expression in live performance” (85). Here Zarrilli takes time to illuminate the archetypes of Eastern and Western cultures and to discuss the ethnology of traditional non-Western modes of acting as “a form of embodiment based on indigenous paradigms of the body (including voicing), the body-mind relationship, and consciousness or awareness” (85). These essays coalesce in a discussion centering on psychophysical techniques, with each summarizing the basic techniques and findings of each author’s long-term research and practice. Topical areas of inquiry include actor training in the neutral mask, Balinese ritual, the practices of Objective Drama pioneered by Grotowski, the physical training techniques of Barba (to include the use of acrobatics and kathakali), Meyerhold’s Biomechanics, Decroux’s mime and the culture of the body as taught through the methods of Suzuki. In this section it is Zarrilli’s objective to illustrate that “most self-conscious systems of preparation or training have evolved under some form of patronage which frees the actor from the necessity of responding to changeable popular tastes to concentrate on developing a particular body for a particular craft and style of acing” (85). He concludes that this compendium of essays support the fact that acting, no matter what the expectations are that societies have upon actors bodies demand that “humans develop knowledge about themselves” (87) and that “the techniques which constitute a particular technology of the body cannot be divorced from the discourses and assumptions which inform how that set of techniques is understood and/or represented” (87).

The final part of Zarrilli’s text is his most pragmatic. This section entitled, “(Re)Considering the Actor in Performance,” is a series of ten essays that discuss “the strategies, techniques, theories, ideas and approaches that particular actors or groups of actors have developed for performance” (241). Zarrilli introduces this section by citing the nexus of techniques as originating first as forms of experimentation that eventually lead to discoveries that resulted in the advancement of acting through the development of new methods. Two examples Zarrilli provides are the Group Theatre and Lee Strassberg at the Actor’s Studio. He buttresses his argument by referring to Richard Hornby’s The End of Acting: A Radical View (1992) in which Hornby, speaking directly to American actors and acting teachers calls for “the overthrow of a Strasbergian-based self-absorbed, classroom-based method of training, and concludes that it should be used only as a special technique for film acting” (242). To further his point of view Zarrilli discusses performance as a form of insurgency. The essays in this section contextualize his assertions and to a larger extent call for the need to “reconsider” the continuance of approaches to acting. Furthermore he argues these approaches must be considered interculturally as we negotiate new paths to pursue in actor training. Zarrilli concludes his introduction in the third section of his text by stating that “it is encouraging that many of the ‘old’ prejudices and stereotypes about actors and acting continue to be challenged in professional and educational settings today, and that the place and role of discourse, analysis, and debate about acting and its paradigms is, if anything, louder today than ever before” (247).

Acting (Re)Considered is a valuable text that lays a foundation for challenging the status quo. Its logically precise articulation of the various strains of acting methods positions this book as an invaluable and provocative resource for students seriously engaged in the study of acting, as well as for contemporary performance theorists and theatre educators who continue to investigate the dynamic changes in the field of acting and performance.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
perfectganesh | 2 outras críticas | Oct 24, 2006 |
from Amazon.com: Fully revised and updated, Acting (Re)Considered is an exceptionally wide-ranging collection of theories on acting, ideas about body and training, and statements about the actor in performance. Included are discussions on acting by or about major figures that have shaped theories and practices of acting and performance from the late nineteenth century to the present. The essays--by directors, historians, actor trainers and actors--bridge the gap between theories and practices of acting, and between East and West.
About the Author: Philip B. Zarrilli is internationally known for training actors in psychophysical process through Asian martial/mediation arts, and as a director.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
mmckay | 2 outras críticas | May 9, 2006 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
8
Membros
124
Popularidade
#161,165
Avaliação
½ 4.5
Críticas
3
ISBN
29
Línguas
1

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