Abstract
Performing Impermanence and Emptiness: a Training in Dissolution (PIPE) proposes and examines a psychophysical training for professional actors that is founded on correlations between principles of Etienne Decroux’s Corporeal Mime and Buddha Dharma.The research starts from the hypothesis that performative pathways imbued with the discriminating awareness of the nature of impermanence, and emptiness as taught by the Mahayana Tibetan Buddhist tradition founded by Je Tsongkhapa could enable actors to break barriers created by their pre-conceptions.
Methodologically, PIPE is situated in Practice-as-Research, embodied research and first-person accounts. A three-cycle investigative process was developed, with two highly experienced performers, over a 16-month period, with the objective to enable the performers to develop an awareness of impermanence and emptiness, without the need for previous Buddhist knowledge or practice.
During the practical research, a third Dharmic concept emerged as central to the inquiry. Interconnectedness reveals the nature of emptiness from a conventional reality perspective, while the absence of inherent existence constitutes the ultimate reality of phenomena. Interconnectedness informed a practice of embracing and responding to the effects of various life-contexts, both personal and political, surrounding the research. Interconnectedness also contributed to the polyphonic creation of meaning during the research.
This thesis, with accompanying video essays, describes the embodied actor training practice, which emerged through the research, and analyses that training and verifies its contributions and use for actors. It discusses: the role of awareness and experiential displacement of habitual perception of internal and external phenomena in enabling actors to find internal pathways to expression; dissolution as a creative strategy; PIPE as a source of resilience and strength in the face of life contexts (which included a far-right government in Brazil and the COVID-19 pandemic crisis); and interconnectedness as a source for context, and for the polyphonic creation of meaning.
| Date of Award | 26 Sept 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
| Supervisor | Eric Hetzler (Main Supervisor) |