 Phillip Zarrilli
Psychophysical Training of the Actor: Making the body all eyes
May 3 to 7, 2009
objectifs
“MAKING THE BODY ALL EYES”
Body, breath, activation and performance
This workshop introduces participants to a psychophysical paradigm and approach to awakening the actor’s bodymind for performance. It focuses on developing the contemporary actor’s interiority, i.e., how the performer discovers, awakens, shapes, understands, and deploys ‘energy’, awareness, focus/concentration, and feeling to the ‘matter’ of performance—the impulses, structure, contours, and texture of the tasks or actions that constitute a specific performance score shaped by particular dramaturgies.
The workshop begins with pre-performative psychophysical training to prepare and awaken the bodymind through Asian martial/meditation arts--Chinese taiqiquan, Indian yoga, and the closely related martial art, kalarippayattu. Bodymind connections are practically elabored through the exercises as are a sense of activation through breath in movement, the development of focus/concentration, circulation of energy through the body and awakening the bodymind to partners, ensemble, and the performance environment. Over long-term practice, the body ‘becomes all eyes’, i.e. it develops an intuitive awareness in/for performance.
The first three days concentrate on basic psychophysical training through repetition of exercises and introduction of principles. We then apply a few of the elements and principles to structured improvisations that bridge the work to performance.
During the final part of the workshop, participants apply the principles of training to the specific performance problems of Japanese playwright/director Ota Shogo’s striking non-verbal psychophysical score for performers, THE WATER STATION. This part of the workshop allows participants to engage fully with how the elements and principles of training are applied to an “interior score” within a specific performance structure.
program
The psychophysical approach to performance outlined here builds most immediately on the key insights of Stanislavski, Grotowski, and Artaud. 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 performer ideally becomes an “athlete of the heart” who creates and enacts a “metaphysics” “at the nerve ends” and “through the skin”. Here, the performer gains a “physical understanding of [the embodiment of] images” (1958).
Day 1: Introduction to training and principles
Preliminary training session 1
Preliminary training session 2
Day 2: Preliminary training session 3
Preliminary training and application to structured improvisations
session 1
Day 3: Preliminary training session 4
Preliminary training and application to structured improvisations
session 2
Day 4: Preliminary training session 5
Preliminary training and application to Ota Shogo’s THE WATER
STATION session 1
Day 5: Preliminary training and application to Ota Shogo’s THE WATER
STATION session 2
Preliminary training and application to Ota Shogo’s THE WATER
STATION session 3
biography
Phillip Zarrilli is internationally known for training actors, dancers, and performers in psychophysical process through Asian martial/meditation arts, and as a director. He runs a studio in Wales, and conducts workshops throughout the world—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, etc. His recent productions of Samuel Beckett’s plays in Los Angeles (2000), Austria (2001), Ireland (2004) and the US (2006, 2007, 2009) 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 Speaking Stones, later performed in Wroclaw, Poland on invitation of the Grotowski Centre (2003), and Aflenz, Austria (2004). Other productions include: Ota Shogo’s The Water Station for TTRP at The Esplanade Theatres on the Bay (Singapore, 2004); Genet’s Die Zofen (The Maids) in Austria 2005); the Singapore premiere of Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life (a TTRP roduction at Esplanade Theatres on the Bay, 2007); a new translation of Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis at KNUA (Seoul, Korea, 2008); and the critically acclaimed world premiere production of Kaite O’Reilly’s The Almond and the Seahorse for Sherman Cymru (Cardiff and UK national tour, 2008).
Zarrilli’s most recent production, TOLD BY THE WIND, is a collaboration with playwright Kaite O’Reilly and dancer/choreographer Jo Shapland. Funded by the ACW and AHRC, TOLD is inspired by Japanese noh. Stories are evoked and told by embodied silences. Identity, memory and remembrance haunt transformation. Informal showings: at Tyn y parc Studio, and at the Escrita na Paisagem Festival de Performance e Artes da Terra (Evora, Portugal) in July/August, 2009. Premiere (Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff) and tour: from 29 January, 2010.
Zarrilli is also noted for his work with Indian dancers/choreographers. In 2000 he co-created Walking Naked with bharatanatyam dancer/choreographer, Gitanjali Kolanad (Chennai, international tour through 2004: 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. In 2006 he co-created The Flowering Tree, with Gitanjali Kolanad. Zarrilli is current collaborating with Stella Subbiah and Sangalpam on “sweet…dry…bitter…plaintive” to premiere in 2010.
Zarrilli teaches psychophysical process for MA/MFA Theatre Practice students University of Exeter, U.K. Books include Acting (Re)Considered, When the Body Becomes All Eyes, Kathakali Dance-Drama, and Martial Arts in Actor Training, and Psychophysical Acting: an intercultural approach after Stanisalvski (Foreword by Eugenio Barba with DVD-ROM, 2009). |
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practical info
Psychophysical Training of the Actor: Making the body all eyes
May 3 to 7, 2010
10am to 5pm monday to friday
30h / 280€
Studio Philippe Genty, Paris 11ème
RESERVE ONLINE
Conference / Demonstration
Sunday, May 2 at 2pm
Free Admission
Studio Philippe Genty, Paris 11ème
RESERVE ONLINE
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