Exploring Bodily Reactions: Embodied Pedagogy as an Alternative for Conventional Paradigms of Acting in Youth Theatre Education

Abstract

For me, it seems obvious that in the youth theatre education of today, there is a need for embodied alternatives for conventional paradigms of acting, such as the predominance of delivering the lines and concentrating on the supposed feelings of the character, perceived through analysis of the play. To seek alternatives means challenging dominant discourses around youth theatre education as well as acting in general. Contemporary forms of performance such as process drama and devising have proved to be remarkable options for conventional theatre making, but they need to be reinforced by embodied, workable, and ethically sustainable methods of acting/actor training—that is, realization of embodied pedagogy within the practice of acting in youth theatre performances. What should this kind of embodied acting pedagogy look like? In which terms could it operate? In this article, I shall discuss embodiment in student actors’ methods of acting at an upper secondary school level, and present one application of embodied acting pedagogy for youth theatre education. I have gathered source material from seventeen-year-old students’ accounts of a one-week workshop actualizing embodied acting pedagogy. These materials clearly indicate that even a comparably short period of training can shift the actors’ focus into the body, specifically on experiencing and exploring bodily reactions. Simultaneously, the actors’ focus turns to the here-and-now, which emphasizes the nature of theatre as an art of the moment.

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