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Actor training in the flow state : towards a rhetoric for play in contemporary actor training
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Heath, Thomas (2022) Actor training in the flow state : towards a rhetoric for play in contemporary actor training. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3956975
Abstract
It just felt easy…It's hard to articulate. It's a spiritual energy kind of thing. I don't know how we all connected, but it just happens, so it's hard to explain.
ZR, WAAPA acting student
Acting requires participants to completely immerse themselves in the activity. ZR’s comments above reveal that while actors can identify the sensation of performing well, they struggle to articulate how these experiences occur. Psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi examined activities that demand participants’ full attention and the subsequent sensation of complete immersion they experience. Csíkszentmihályi identified that when participants are completely immersed in an activity, they move into an altered state of being which he labelled flow. He describes flow experience as: “Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one” (Geirland). This research project examines how Csíkszentmihályi’s flow framework might be applied to contemporary conservatoire actor training contexts.
This research uses a practice-based approach to examine the application of flow to acting pedagogy. The inquiry is divided into three phases. Phases one and two examine flow within workshop contexts. Phase one interrogates the connection between ensemble-based impulse practices and group flow. Student actors enrolled in WAAPA’s Diploma of Acting course in 2020 were invited to participant in this phase of research. Phase two explores how eight contemporary actor trainers from conservatoires in Australia and the United Kingdom facilitate the conditions for flow within workshop environments. Informed by the findings of phases one and two, phase three uses a production of Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information to examine how integrating impulse and game into performance structures can create the conditions for student actors to experience flow in performance. 12 students from WAAPA’s Diploma of Acting 2021 cohort were invited to be research participants in phase three.
The findings of this research indicate student actors are more likely to experience flow in process-focused practices that provoke participants’ imagination, rather than result-focused practices that prescribe a desired performance outcome. The findings of this research may assist contemporary actor trainers to foster flow conditions within training environments.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology L Education > LC Special aspects of education P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN2000 Dramatic representation. The Theater |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Acting -- Study and teaching, Concentrated study, Attention, Positive psychology, Creative ability | ||||
Official Date: | November 2022 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Prescott, Paul, 1974- ; Purcell, Stephen, 1981- | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | ii, 213 pages : illustrations | ||||
Language: | eng |
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