Abstract Ph.D. Thesis School of Education, The University of Queensland Ira Hal Seidenstein What is the nature of embodied practice, creativity and integral learning in Professional Learning for Acting (PLA) in Australia? An overall purpose of the research and thesis is to bring illumination to a lively heterodoxy in PLA. Heterodoxy is Pierre Bourdieu‘s definition of new or alternative influences in a field. The heterodoxy in PLA now has a rich body of techniques, principles, and knowledge to revitalize the field and environment of PLA. The research and thesis encounter the complexity of Professional Learning in Acting to understand the potential of new paradigms. To locate the context of the research, Bourdieu‘s Social Theory of Education related to his definition of culture and fields as dependent on doxa - and legitimacy - have provided the semiotics for the research. The body of the research and data collection was via ethnography and a primary practice of participant-observation. An inter-connected trilogy of topics was selected as priority issues in the field of PLA. The trilogy is: Embodied Practice, Creativity, and Integral Learning. The three areas have been often developed separately, initially stemming from theorist-practitioners Konstantin Stanislavsky and Jacques Copeau in the early twentieth-century. Since that time, biomechanical research and understanding in the scope of creativity to the mind-body continuum has blossomed in other fields. Yet the frameworks for dialogue with issues related to social theory in education are based on utilitarian, industrial, didactic, and Cartesian semiotics, so that little discussion integrates the complexity of, for example, the trilogy focus of the research. Marranca, founder and editor of Performing Arts Journal since 1976, has critiqued performing arts education where PLA is located. A central criticism she offers is this, ―At its core theatre study lacks sustained intellectual rigor and breadth‖ (Marranca, 1995, p. 1). This concern for the intellectual encounter may be engaged through Embodied Practices, Creativity, and Integral Learning. Some recent developments into complex encounters includes research into Vygotsky‘s value for adult education and creativity (John-Steiner & Moran, 2002), and research into consciousness paradigms for PLA reveal new potentialities into PLA (Meyer-Dinkgrafë, 2001; Yarrow 2002). Complexity science can be used to iii create such paradigms in PLA or in Education (Davis, 2004; Davis, Sumara, & Luce-Kapler, 2000; Morowitz, 2002; Wolfram, 2002) There is a body of research, techniques and knowledge that brings together East and West theatre and acting practices. This body of information is generally outside the perimeter of curriculum in Professional Learning for Acting. The knowledge has been gathered by the luminaries of acting, yet it is rarely allowed legitimacy in academia, in practice. The East-West practices may allow for greater embodied learning as they make use of integral body-mind practices. The research had quite physical, active levels of participation-observation components in the three Case Studies that dealt with a nationally accredited course in acting, an independent actor/artist in the process of creating a performance, and an established professional acting company. The participant-observation took place within ten theatre productions, extensive physical, and vocal training, performances, and touring.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/254276 |
| Creators | Ira Seidenstein |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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