This thesis examines the implementation of an actor-training programme in the context of Spanish drama schools during 2004-2005. Reflecting through the student's practice as well as my own practice as a teacher, actor and director, I investigate how a bodymind training based on martial arts disciplines and designed by Phillip Zarrilli may contribute to understand the theory and the practice of an actor's use of the imagination as Michael Chekhov proposes it. Core questions arise from the evaluation of what is the professional knowledge that the integration of both systems of training brings to the students. The action of research is placed in how the process of learning such competencies take place and become informative of both the research and the acting practice. The concept of acting is being analysed by looking at the significance of the actor's imagination from a phenomenological rather than a psychological perspective. The discussion includes the challenge that developing a new pedagogy in a drama school brings up to a better understanding of contemporary paradigms of theatre practice and education.'Interpretación Gestual' is since 1992 an established branch in the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático de Madrid (RESAD). Acting in physical (gestural) theatre conveys some problematic issues concerning its theory and practice within both professional and pedagogical contexts. Implementing a new and specific teaching programme for the preparation of professional actors in the context of the RESAD urges me to clarify inpractice certain issues about these two different approaches to actor training, as well as their presence in today's education within the curriculum of official drama schools in Spain.

This exegesis examines the proposition that playwriting is an entrepreneurial activity when combined with the role of producer. The thesis demonstrates that, when a playwright combines the two roles and considers the development of a network of relationships in the process, positive steps can be made towards the marketing of a work and the career progression of the playwright. The issues of marketing and career progression are considered in a regional context. The thesis comprises the creation of a full-length theatrical work through the MA (Research) Program at Queensland University of Technology and an analysis of that journey in the context of regional theatre practice in Queensland. Nicolas Bourriaud’s theory of the Relational Aesthetic is used as a way of charting my practice and of examining how this approach might be appropriate to theatre-making in regional Australia. The paper establishes strategies by which the playwright, when also undertaking the role of producer, might manage the complex set of circumstances and interactions between the work, the community and the industry. Using practice-led research methodologies, the exegesis examines the process of the creation of a new play, Sinking, and explores, through the use of an autobiographical case study, what the process has meant to the author’s development as a playwright over a fifteen month period. The paper uses a network map to explore the interactions created through a rehearsed reading of the first draft of the play in October 2006 and, in doing so, demonstrates how a close engagement with the community formed the basis of the entrepreneurial strategy. The exegesis demonstrates that Bourriaud’s work connects very closely with the author’s practice and examines how the approach might be useful for other regional arts practitioners, particularly those in the early stages of their careers. The research aims to identify how the creation of the play, and the subsequent interactions generated within a regional community, can lead to opportunities to create connections both within the author’s place of residence and in broader theatre industry contexts, nationally and internationally, in order to provide commercial and professional outcomes.

Detta är en kvalitativ studie med ett hermeneutiskt anslag skrivet ur en dramalärares synvinkel om praktisk kunskap inom estetiska ämnen på gymnasiet. Metoden kallas ”Södertörns-modellen”, en professionell induktiv metod baserad på en fenomenologisk introspektion som hänvisas till som handlingssituationen. De öppna frågorna gäller didaktik och frågor om skillnaden mellan estetisk och konstnärlig i ett pedagogiskt sammanhang. Inlärningen undersöks utifrån en verklig situation med hänvisning till Viola Spolins improvisationsmetoder och särskilt koncentrationspunkten (POC), där studenten är sido-coachad. Tekniken är alienation som beskrivs uti-från ett teaterperspektiv. Genom stöd av teaterpraxis och filosofer som John Dewey, Hans-Georg Gadamer och Susanne Langer, kunskapsteori, metodik för teori och praktik, vägs samman för att beskriva och analysera hur lärandet sker. Ett kritiskt tolkningsutrymme med hänvisning till Platon och Sokrates blir logiken av en hermeneutisk öppenhet. Metoden som sådan bygger på ett dialektiskt förhållande, vilken var grunden för hur både lärandet i handlingssituationen och forskningens framskridande. För att ge svar på vilken kunskap som beskrivs i den svenska sko-lans styrdokument har begreppen för kunskap granskats genom en innehållsanalys. Det finns en dialog mellan teori och praktik för att ta reda på om det finns någon skillnad mellan estetisk och konstnärlig kunskap, där Aristoteles spelar en roll, när ett nytt förslag med estetiska ämnen som åter obligatoriska i gymnasieskolan inom kort introduceras. / This is a qualitative study with a hermeneutical approach written from a drama teacher's point of view on practical knowledge in aesthetic subjects in a secondary school. The method is referred to as “the model of Södertörn”, a professional inductive method based on a phenomenological introspective referred to as the situation of action. The open questions concern didactics and questions about the difference between aesthetic and artistic in a pedagogical context. The learning is examined based on an actual situation with reference to Viola Spolin’s methods of improvisation and point of concentration (POC), where the student is side–coached. The technique is alienation as described from a theatre perspective. Through the support of the theatre practice and philosophers such as John Dewey, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Susanne Langer, knowledge theory, methodology of the theory of practice are weighed together to describe and analyse how the learning occurs. A critical interpretation space with reference to Plato and Socrates becomes the logic of hermeneutic openness. The method as such is built on a dialectic relationship were the basis for how both learning and the research took place. In order to provide answers to what knowledge is, described as in the Swedish schools governing documents, the concepts of knowledge has been reviewed through a content analysis. There is a dialogue between theory and practice to find out, if there is any difference between aesthetic and artistic knowledge, where Aristotle play a role, when a new proposal for introducing aesthetic subjects as mandatory in secondary school makes a new entrance.