Constellation and Purpose (University = Universalization?)
The overall purpose of the study is to create material by which the professional relation between actor and director can be analyzed.
Clearly, there is no way to universalize from this very specific constellation presented here: Sarah and I are close friends; we got to know each other in 2008, when we were hired as director and actress in the same theatre.
Back then we worked together once, making a piece that we are both still fond of.
Despite the specificity of our constellation - especially when it comes to the level of pre-existent trust - there are factors that might nevertheless be extractable for the sake of their "structural truth". Namely our generational position, somewhere halfway between the aesthetic paradigm of "Regie-Theater" and an emerging cohort of theatremakers articulating legitimate doubts around monopolized authorship / the mandate of the director.
This in-between status of ours might mirror itself in our phantasmatic rehearsals as well as in the modes of real interaction when making the „documentation“ of it. In our present artistic dialogue.
Whilst there is an emerging sensitivity that aims at establishing the rehearsal situation as a safe space - where director and actor actively maintain each other´s comfort zones - we are as much part of an older conception; where consensus is reached by means of mutual transgressions.
Within this generational-political situatedness of our own practice, the study tries to cast light on the bigger research questions of my project: what are models of consent within the actor-director-relation? How do they work? Which of them are ethically sustainable? Which of them aesthetically?
In an upcoming essay to be written after this study, I will try to unpack more precisely what I understand by the concepts that make for these questions. Namely "transgression" will have to be looked at in a historical, political, aesthetical and ethical perspective. But also what theatre it is, in which the actor-director-relation is of that importance, should be clarified.
In the course and in the interest of the study, Sarah and I attempt to reduce our private communication for the coming 4 weeks; i.e. to one weekly phone date on sundays.
Interpersonal irritations shall, if possible, not be discussed, but worked out in and through the work.
Given and imagined circumstances. (The set-up)
Today, on the 2nd of June 2020, my collaborator Sarah Sandeh and I start the first practical study of my research project.
It´s a fictional rehearsal, of which only the documentation will be available.
The documentation consists of daily video diary entries by my collaborator and me, assuming the roles of "actress" and "director" in alignment with our actual professions.
The format of diary entries is losely connected to the format of a roman-catholic confession booth and the way it has been appropriated during the making of Lars von Trier´s Dogville by documentary film maker Sami Saif.
In the fiction Sarah and I enter the booth one after the other at the end of each rehearsal day.
In the fiction our video entries are also private to ourselves, whilst in reality we have an online work flow allowing us to see each other´s daily "confessions".
Whilst our backgrounds are made to look like the same booth, in reality, we´re recording in two different locations (north of Denmark, south of Germany). The program we´re using to record is the photo-booth-app on our computers.
The fictional world outside of the booth is a hybrid of theatre and film production circumstances. We imagine the text we´re working on to be produced in a setting similar to the one of Lars von Trier´s Dogville and Manderlay; that is to say: a Brechtian, anti-illusionist approach to set-design in combination with acting techniques from the tradition of realism.
The text we´re working on is Tennessee William´s "A streetcar named desire".
Whilst the imagined circumstance is a filmization of the play, the process being documented is the one of a four weeks-rehearsal. We´re borrowing from a luxurious convention of old day´s Hollywood movie making, where the script was rehearsed extensively before the film was shot.
My collaborator Sarah is casted for the part of the protagonist Blanche (, which, in the world of Dogville and Manderlay would be: Grace.)
If the diary entries make it necessary to mention fictional colleagues, we use the first names of the cast of Elia Kazan´s film adaptation of the play in 1951.
Stella - Kim
Mitch - Karl
Steve - Rudy
Pablo - Nick
Eunice - Peg
Stanley - Marlon
The actor of the Young Collector is called Martin.
Constellation and Purpose (University = Universalization?)
The overall purpose of the study is to create material by which the professional relation between actor and director can be analyzed.
Clearly, there is no way to universalize from this very specific constellation presented here: Sarah and I are close friends; we got to know each other in 2008, when we were hired as director and actress in the same theatre.
Back then we worked together once, making a piece that we are both still fond of.
Despite the specificity of our constellation - especially when it comes to the level of pre-existent trust - there are factors that might nevertheless be extractable for the sake of their "structural truth". Namely our generational position, somewhere halfway between the aesthetic paradigm of "Regie-Theater" and an emerging cohort of theatremakers articulating legitimate doubts around monopolized authorship / the mandate of the director.
This in-between status of ours might mirror itself in our phantasmatic rehearsals as well as in the modes of real interaction when making the „documentation“ of it. In our present artistic dialogue.
Whilst there is an emerging sensitivity that aims at establishing the rehearsal situation as a safe space - where director and actor actively maintain each other´s comfort zones - we are as much part of an older conception; where consensus is reached by means of mutual transgressions.
Within this generational-political situatedness of our own practice, the study tries to cast light on the bigger research questions of my project: what are models of consent within the actor-director-relation? How do they work? Which of them are ethically sustainable? Which of them aesthetically?
In an upcoming essay to be written after this study, I will try to unpack more precisely what I understand by the concepts that make for these questions. Namely "transgression" will have to be looked at in a historical, political, aesthetical and ethical perspective. But also what theatre it is, in which the actor-director-relation is of that importance, should be clarified.
In the course and in the interest of the study, Sarah and I attempt to reduce our private communication for the coming 4 weeks; i.e. to one weekly phone date on sundays.
Interpersonal irritations shall, if possible, not be discussed, but worked out in and through the work.
The Informed Consent - an interesting document on the tipping point between formality and the very content of the research; halfway between the actual work contract and a possible symbolic one.
The Informed Consent - an interesting document on the tipping point between formality and the very content of the research; halfway between the actual work contract and a possible symbolic one.
