NYID Workshop: Physical Performance in Space, The

Australasian Drama Studies, Oct 2008 by de Miranda, Maria Brigida

In September 1999 I moved from Brasilia, Brazil, to Melbourne, Australia, in order to start doctoral research on physical training for actors. For the following months I attended theatre and circus performances and workshops and interviewed a number of directors who had done or were doing innovative work in the field of physical theatre or physical training for actors. My objective was to give myself a general overview of the field of Melbourne's theatrical practices before establishing my object of research. The interviews were my first contact with these practitioners and David Pledger, artistic director of the Melbourne-based group Not Yet It's Difficult or NYID, was one of them. Pledger not only received me for an interview at the NYID space but he also invited me to observe an actor-fraining workshop that was about to begin. The workshop 'Physical Performance in Space: Dynamics of Focus, Concentration and Energy' focused on the physical training of actors. By that time, I had a feeling that the NYID workshop was going to be an interesting point of contact with the format and strategies of actor training in Australia. However, I had not envisaged how the workshop would raise crucial questions regarding the actors' corporeality, regimented physicality and the assimilation of culturally remote practices and beliefs into actor-training regimes.

The company NYID was founded in 1995 by Pledger, Peter Eckersall (dramaturg) and Paul Jackson (technical manager and lighting designer). Since then the company has also collaborated with numerous artists on specific projects. NYID's theatrical productions became well known for their use of non-traditional theatre spaces and media technologies.1 Their productions are described as 'hybrid performance and multimedia art works' which explore an 'intertextual, montage-like approach to theatrical representation'.2 Their preferences for outdoor and alternative spaces and their search for theatricality are embedded in their belief that theatre is always political. According to Eckersall, NYID 'relates arts practice to cultural activism'.3 Many of its productions have won awards and have been performed internationally, but the core of the company seems to have many branches of activity in addition to the theatrical productions. Pledger has led various investigative workshops and collaborative international projects, such as the 'Journey to Con-fusion', a three-year collaborative research project (1999-2002) with the Japanese company Gekidan Kaitaisha. Parallel to that, key members of the company have been engaged in panels and roundtable discussions on theatre practice, some of which were organised by Eckersall, who has also published transcriptions of the discussions, descriptions and critical analyses of NYED's practices.4 These actions give visibility to the company's past and ongoing process of creation: however, they may also signify another level of action: the production of various discourses about the company's own practice, including discourses on actor training and actors' corporeality.

The importance placed on the actor's body is nevertheless the foremost characteristic of NYID productions. Its research focuses on the actor's physicality as a means of conveying theatrical narratives and of re-defining the space. Indeed, NYID proposes a 'visceral and intensive use of bodies in performance'.5 This places the company in the slippery category of 'physical theatre', a term that is accepted by the company but which is also highly problematised by its members.6 NYID is interested in displaying specific bodies in their theatrical pieces. These are bodies that have undergone an actor-training process which borrows exercises and concepts from various cultural traditions but, as this article argues, it is a process which is ultimately a training regime elaborated and led by Pledger through his work with NYID.

The workshop proposal

The workshop 'Physical Performance in Space: Dynamics of Focus, Concentration and Energy' aimed to develop the performers' awareness of their 'centre of energy' by executing specific exercises and, in doing so, to realise the possibilities of each participant's body and voice as a solo performer and as part of a group. Finally, the performers were to apply the necessary level of energy to transform the actual space into a performance space. As explained in the workshop's proposal brochure:

The workshop will offer a series of physical, vocal and spatial exercises designed to develop the potential of the performer. Emphasis is on the presence of the performer with regard to focus, concentration and application of energy ... A primary objective will be to develop a group sensibility based on a collective impetus to move and speak. This sensibility will then be used in dialogic and conversational physical environments to articulate and transmit the participants' awareness to any shift of energy in the performing space.

The workshop took place in Melbourne, from 11 to 22 October 1999. Each session lasted three hours and the workshop had a total of thirty hours of training. Fifteen participants, most of them in their early twenties, attended the workshop that was held in a school gymnasium, as well as in the streets and on the beach at Port Melbourne. The results of the workshop were performed in the Third National Circus and Physical Theatre Conference.7 I attended the workshop as an observer taking notes and pictures, not making any comments during the sessions. A second version of this workshop took place from 7 to 16 February 2000, and it had basically the same structure but its result was not performed to an external authence. This time, I attended the workshop as a participant. Thus, both experiences - as an observer and as a participant - inform my understanding and comments on the method that was presented.