Description
‘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.
Contents:
Training Utopias: Editorial
Felipe Cervera, Elizabeth De Roza & Michael Earley
On Profound Loss and Emptiness: A personal reflection on the life of Steve Allison
Richard Gough
Decolonizing Performance Pedagogy. A position paper from Bangalore, South India
Shabari Rao
This is Not a Manifesto
Electa Woodbridge Behrens
Parliament of Practices. No-topian tactics for praxical dialogue
Adriana La Selva, Marije Nie, Andrea Maciel & Patrick Campbell
Untraining the Bauhaus. A non-linear workflow for the new (post-hu)man
Moritz Frischkorn & Thomas Pearce
Resisting to Dystopias of Bodily Control. Dance training and anorexia/bulimia
Cecília de Lima
Utopia in Actor Training. The possibilities of an intercultural curriculum
Peter Zazzali
Earthing the Laboratory. Speculations for doctoral training
Ben Spatz
Training Artists in Times of Crisis
Laura Bissell, Gary Gardiner, Sarah Hopfinger & Rachel O’Neill
Circus Training in the Time of Coronavirus
Ilaria Bessone
Communicative Utopias. Training English-speaking subjects in US-occupied Philippines
Jr. Oscar Tantoco Serquiña
Stop. Rewind. Replay.: Performance, police training and mental health crisis response
Natalie Alvarez
Between Craft and Metaphysics. Ideals and idealizations of ‘work-on-oneself’ at Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre
Duncan Jamieson
The Viewpoints and the Secret of the Original Anarchist: Mary Overlie and the Undercommons
Tony Perucci
Dark Utopia. Or sleeping through Marten Spångberg’s Natten
Jonas Rutgeerts
Utopian Training. The secrets, ‘schools’ and continents of Edward Gordon Craig and Eugenio Barba
Richard Gough
Magic Circles. Tabletop role-playing games as queer utopian method
Felix Rose Kawitzky
A Non-optimized Utopia. Johannes Paul Raether’s education of desire
Franziska Bork Petersen
Exercising Freedom. An Arendtian clown training utopia
Göze Saner
The Legacy of Kristin Linklater. The loss of a renowned innovator within voice practice
Joan Mills & Kristin Linklater
The Actor as Observer-Participant. Mary Overlie, The Six Viewpoints, three memories
Tony Perucci
Tempered by Breath. A tribute to Phillip Zarrilli
Richard Gough
Reviews:
On Shared Resources: Performance studies publications from a pandemic
Anna Jayne Kimmel
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
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
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
