Body image and somatic learning: cultivating bodymind in actor learning at UVPA theatre program in Sri Lanka

This paper was presented at the FIRT/IFTR International Federation for Theatre Research Annual Conference, Santiago 2012, CHILE, July 22th - 28th, 2012.

This paper presents a way of Cultivating embodied knowing in acting through body-image (Scheilder 1970, Tiemersma 1989). Building upon the notion that the body-image is a mode of pre-existing knowledge of the body (Merleau-Ponty 1962), this research seeks to provide an epistemic pathway to actor knowing by sensing and performing “postural bodily-images” in actor training research conducted at the theatre and drama department, University of the Visual and Performing Arts (UVPA) Colombo, Sri Lanka. Recent studies in soma-aesthetics and dance studies have suggested that performer’s sensuous and proprioceptive faculties can be heightened through the practice of somatic activities (Shusterman 2000, 2004, Rouhiainan 2008, Parviainan 1998, Sheets-Johnston 1966). Consequently, ethical and emotional relationships between self and other bodies are also being enriched. Pursuing bodily-image as a somatic action (Noë 2004) and performing those bodily-images via varied postural modules, student actors have shown the ability to tap into their “primordial bodies” and cultivate somatic awareness of the self and other bodies. Consequently this paper incorporates an ethno-phenomenological approach to validate the claim that actor’s body is the “primary mode of knowing” in actor learning.

['International Federation for Theatre Research Annual Conference (2012 : Santiago, Chile.)']