Performance Research Volume 25 Issue 8

‘Training Utopias’ reflects on where the ideals of performance training have been subsumed in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. This is not a historical survey of training practices, but a look at the here and now of practice and praxis in different parts of the world and in different circumstances. The sudden arrival in our midst of COVID-19 has been a shock to the system. The ways that training of performers have been curtailed and our radically shifting distance from one another and audience is sounded here. The various writers included reflect, in part, on personal responses to training and loss during this pandemic—a phenomenon that is likely to continue through 2021 and possibly beyond. Etched in all the articles is the notion that utopias and communities of practice are all artificial constructs undermined over time and through dystopian unravellings.

 

READ THE EDITORIAL AND ARTICLE ABSTRACTS online

 

 

Contents:

Training Utopias: Editorial

Felipe Cervera, Elizabeth De Roza & Michael Earley

Pages: 1-4

 

On Profound Loss and Emptiness: A personal reflection on the life of Steve Allison

Richard Gough

Pages: 5-8

 

Decolonizing Performance Pedagogy. A position paper from Bangalore, South India

Shabari Rao

Pages: 9-10

 

This is Not a Manifesto

Electa Woodbridge Behrens

Pages: 11-14

 

Parliament of Practices. No-topian tactics for praxical dialogue

Adriana La Selva, Marije Nie, Andrea Maciel & Patrick Campbell

Pages: 15-17

 

Untraining the Bauhaus. A non-linear workflow for the new (post-hu)man

Moritz Frischkorn & Thomas Pearce

Pages: 18-21

 

Resisting to Dystopias of Bodily Control. Dance training and anorexia/bulimia

Cecília de Lima

Pages: 22-4

 

Utopia in Actor Training. The possibilities of an intercultural curriculum

Peter Zazzali

Pages: 25-32

 

Earthing the Laboratory. Speculations for doctoral training

Ben Spatz

Pages: 33-41

 

Training Artists in Times of Crisis

Laura Bissell, Gary Gardiner, Sarah Hopfinger & Rachel O’Neill

Pages: 42-50

 

Circus Training in the Time of Coronavirus

Ilaria Bessone

Pages: 51-9

 

Communicative Utopias. Training English-speaking subjects in US-occupied Philippines

Jr. Oscar Tantoco Serquiña

Pages: 60-8

 

Stop. Rewind. Replay.: Performance, police training and mental health crisis response

Natalie Alvarez

Pages: 69-75

 

Between Craft and Metaphysics. Ideals and idealizations of ‘work-on-oneself’ at Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre

Duncan Jamieson

Pages: 76-91

 

The Viewpoints and the Secret of the Original Anarchist: Mary Overlie and the Undercommons

Tony Perucci

Pages: 92-101

 

Dark Utopia. Or sleeping through Marten Spångberg’s Natten

Jonas Rutgeerts

Pages: 102-8

 

Utopian Training. The secrets, ‘schools’ and continents of Edward Gordon Craig and Eugenio Barba

Richard Gough

Pages: 109-28

 

Magic Circles. Tabletop role-playing games as queer utopian method

Felix Rose Kawitzky

Pages: 129-36

 

A Non-optimized Utopia. Johannes Paul Raether’s education of desire

Franziska Bork Petersen

Pages: 137-45

 

Exercising Freedom. An Arendtian clown training utopia

Göze Saner

Pages: 146-54

 

The Legacy of Kristin Linklater. The loss of a renowned innovator within voice practice

Joan Mills & Kristin Linklater

Pages: 155-60

 

The Actor as Observer-Participant. Mary Overlie, The Six Viewpoints, three memories

Tony Perucci

Pages: 161-65

 

Tempered by Breath. A tribute to Phillip Zarrilli

Richard Gough

Pages: 166-72

 

Reviews:

On Shared Resources: Performance studies publications from a pandemic

Anna Jayne Kimmel

Pages: 173-4

 

The Bodies of Others: Drag dances and their afterlives by Selby Wynn Schwartz Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019; 285 pp.

Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes

Pages: 174-5

 

Training Beyond

‘Curating the End of the World’ (Part I and Part II) by New York Live Arts

Google Arts & Culture, 2020, Organized by Reynaldo Anderson, Tiffany E. Barber and Stacey Robinson with the Black Speculative Arts Movement

Thomas F. Defrantz

Pages: 176-7

 

The Task at Hand: Learning to unlearn in the politics of presence

¡Presente!: The politics of presence by Diana Taylor Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020; 329 pp.

Angel A Marino

Pages: 177-8