TY - CHAP
T1 - Losing the plot
T2 - Inappropriate fictions and the art of the theatre
AU - Chamberlain, Franc
PY - 2016/11
Y1 - 2016/11
N2 - Beginning with a description of two Moscow Art Theatre actors, M. Chekhov and E. Vakhtangov, playing a theatre training game that gets out of hand this article explores some risks of players losing themselves in the flow of the game if there isn't a simultaneous awareness that the game is a game. This potential paradox is avoided by noting the difference between a pragmatic focus on the game's action from any concern with the ontological status of the game. This is discussed with reference to Polanyi's distinction between focal and subsidiary awareness and Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow. Drawing on personal, embodied, experiences there is an attempt to re-imagine the situation in which Chekhov and Vakhtangov find themselves and ask questions about the relationship between actor and character and what it means to be 'possessed' by a character. Other types of possession, by ideas and stories, are then discussed before a conclusion which asserts the importance of playfulness in theatre and in life.
AB - Beginning with a description of two Moscow Art Theatre actors, M. Chekhov and E. Vakhtangov, playing a theatre training game that gets out of hand this article explores some risks of players losing themselves in the flow of the game if there isn't a simultaneous awareness that the game is a game. This potential paradox is avoided by noting the difference between a pragmatic focus on the game's action from any concern with the ontological status of the game. This is discussed with reference to Polanyi's distinction between focal and subsidiary awareness and Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow. Drawing on personal, embodied, experiences there is an attempt to re-imagine the situation in which Chekhov and Vakhtangov find themselves and ask questions about the relationship between actor and character and what it means to be 'possessed' by a character. Other types of possession, by ideas and stories, are then discussed before a conclusion which asserts the importance of playfulness in theatre and in life.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85018671738&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1163/9789004334748_004
DO - 10.1163/9789004334748_004
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85018671738
SN - 9789004328754
T3 - Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
SP - 38
EP - 49
BT - Presence of the Body
A2 - Hofmann, Gert
A2 - Zorić, Snježana
PB - Brill
ER -