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oa The transitional state and the ambivalences of actor training
- Source: Performing Ethos: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance, Volume 6, Issue 1-2, Dec 2015, p. 63 - 79
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- 01 Dec 2015
Abstract
This article investigates the transitional aspect of actor training, especially the role of transitional turmoil as part of an actor’s training process, and the ambivalences that turn up in training situations that seek to create transitions. Drawing on the psychophysical actor training by Jouko Turkka at the Theatre Academy Helsinki in the 1980s and interviews of his former students the author studies the relationship between the aim to foster the appearance of both the transitional and the creative state and deliberate destabilizing acts that lead to apparent violations of the actor students’ integrity. What features of this kind of training can we adopt and what should we delete in our search for modern, ethically sustainable ways of training? At the same time the author has to ask, are the things that destabilize us, possessing the potential to change us, the things that we truly remember?