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  • Psychophysical Acting: An Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski
  • Kevin McFillen
Psychophysical Acting: An Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski. By Phillip B. Zarrilli (DVD-ROM by Peter Hulton). New York: Routledge, 2008; pp. xiii + 255. $39.95 paper.

Phillip Zarrilli's Psychophysical Acting: An Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski provides not only a grounding in Zarrilli's more than three decades of experience with intercultural modes of performance, but also a substantial overview of the history and development of psychophysical acting processes and their application to both actor training and practical production work. Part 1, "What Is the Actor's Work?," begins with a historical overview of the development of the notion of the psychophysical as a means of describing the interaction between body and mind, and in particular Stanislavski's application of the term "to describe an approach to Western acting focused equally on the actor's psychology and physicality applied to textually based character acting" (13). Zarrilli traces the development of this concept of acting as a psychophysical process from the legacy of Stanislavski to his own experience training in various methods of physical performance and martial arts, including kathakali dance-drama, the related Indian martial art of kalarippayattu, the ancient Chinese martial art of Wu-style taiqiquan, and the hatha tradition of yoga, and provides examples of each through the accompanying DVD-ROM by Peter Hulton. In the final chapter of part 1, Zarrilli moves to examining the effects of the psychophysical nature of acting on acting's theoretical underpinnings, exploring acting as the embodiment of an actor's modes of experience, and drawing together the teachings gleaned from his experiences with kathakali, kalarippayattu, taiqiquan, and hatha yoga with critical theories of embodiment and performance as a means of grounding the theories and exercises later described in part 2, "Work on Oneself."

Part 2 begins with an in-depth history and examination of the primary source traditions of kalarippayattu, taiqiquan, and hatha yoga that inform Zarrilli's understanding of the psychophysical process of acting, before moving to a structured program of study in chapter 5, "The Psychophysical Actor's 'I Can.'" This program walks the reader through Zarrilli's primary strategies and exercises for both cultivating greater awareness and attempting to move beyond the experience of the body and mind as separate entities within the moment of performance. While largely theoretical and philosophical in nature, this program serves as a useful model for bridging the gap between the cultural and historical examination of the source traditions behind Zarrilli's work and the "structured improvisations" he describes in the final chapter of part 2, "Exercises for 'Playing' In-between." Zarrilli defines these exercises as "a set of very simple psychophysical tasks organized into increasingly complex rule-based structures played in a workshop setting" (100), and are helpfully supplemented for greater clarity by examples on the accompanying DVD-ROM.

Zarrilli devotes part 3 to five in-depth case studies of productions from his own work as well as the work of related performance groups. First is Zarrilli's The Beckett Project, a series of productions produced as part of a nine-month project applying psychophysical training techniques to the works of Samuel Beckett (124), second is Ota Shogo's production of The Water Station created with the Theatre of Transformation (Tenkei Gekijo) (144), third is Speaking Stones, a piece commissioned from Zarrilli by the Austrian Theatre Asou (174), fourth is Zarrilli's production of Sarah Kane's 4:48 Psychosis, workshopped at the University of Exeter and fully mounted at the Korean National University of Arts in Seoul (189), and last is Zarrilli's production of Martin Crimp's Attempts on Her Life, again workshopped at the University of Exeter before receiving a full production at the Esplanade Theatre Studio in Singapore (201).

Psychophysical Acting is ultimately somewhat limited by its immense scope, seeking to provide the reader with not only the aforementioned background into the history, philosophy, and practice of both psychophysical acting and the source traditions of Zarrilli's work, but with the practical tools and production documentation covered in the latter sections of the book as well. Equally, despite the enormous benefit to the text's accessibility provided...

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