Tempting the miracle : sacred theatre, or exploring Suzuki/Viewpoints and composition in directing John Pielmeier's Agnes of God : an auto/ethnographic memoir
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Meeting name
Sponsors
Date
Journal Title
Format
Thesis
Subject
Abstract
In December of 2008, I directed John Pielmeier's Agnes of God as part of the University of Missouri-Columbia's academic year season. I took this opportunity to seize the moment and, through intense actor training and an auteur directorial approach, develop a performative manifesto that sought no less than the revitalization of the live theatrical event within the cultural economy. The production asked, and attempted to answer the following: What is the sacred?; What is its relationship to theatre and performance?, Can it be conjured in theatrical time and space?, If so, how?, and finally: What is the experience that sacred theatre can deliver to performers and spectators alike? For my Agnes of God collaborators and me, this involved a full-scale "theatreing of the sacred," an extra-ordinary event tempted - through tenacity, diligence, and a belief in the miraculous - via Tadashi Suzuki's Method of Actor Training and Anne Bogart's Viewpoints training and Composition method of performance-making. This dissertation, conceived as a piece of performative auto/ethnographic writing, explores the accidents and unpredictabilities that made the production process so wonder-full and, in endeavoring to evoke what it names, so tempts the reader's active, subjective and vulnerable participation.
Table of Contents
PubMed ID
Degree
Ph. D.
Thesis Department
Rights
OpenAccess.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.