Towards Embodied Performance

Directing and the Art of Composition

Towards Embodied Performance invites directors and other generative performance makers to experiment with making their own original, visually stunning, sonically immersive, and physically rigorous embodied performance.

Towards Embodied Performance invites directors and other generative performance makers to experiment with making their own original, visually stunning, sonically immersive, and physically rigorous embodied performance.

Through historical context, the author’s 30-plus years of experience, and original interviews with leading theatre artists, this book sets the stage for a new generation of artists building boundary-breaking work. Directors are often categorized into one of only two frameworks: the Stanislavskian director, whose method is based on text analysis and character wants and needs, and the “auteur” director, whose work might focus on visual spectacle at the expense of text or character objectives. This book argues that the director of embodied performance fuses these two approaches, acting as the author of the event. In Part I, readers will explore the core elements of embodied performance – space, time, body, language, and action – through a lens that bridges traditional directing methodology with experimental, devised, collaborative theatre-making. Part II provides examples of this embodied practice by multi-disciplinary artists in visual and sound installation, video and film, dance-theatre, and new music/opera, including such artists as Shirin Neshat, James Turrell, Bill T. Jones, Janet Cardiff, Okwui Okpokwasili, William Kentridge, and Heather Christian. Part III suggests creative prompts and exercises for performance makers to engage the visual, physical, textual, and sonic in compositional storytelling on stage.

Towards Embodied Performance is an invaluable resource for theatre directors, devisers, and generative artists at all levels from students to teachers, from early-career to mid-career artists. Directors, actors, choreographers, designers, composers, writers, scholars, and engaged audience members can all use this text to explore collaboratively created performance that invites its audience into the ripest version of the present moment.

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