Anthropology of acting as an exploration of personal experience: The process of creating the dramatic character

Abstract

The work is carried out to analyze the relationship of acting as mimesis and acting as an expression. Performing arts to the twentieth century were relied on performance as mimesis, regarding the practice of mimicking and generating (pre)configured content of the external world. Mimetic acting was relied on the interpretation of the character and the given expression that was created an interpreter from the actor. Acting discipline in the second half of the twentieth century was based on the expressive artistic procedure. Unlike acting as mimesis, expressive acting examines the biological and cultural human behavior in a concrete situation: the actor becomes the creator of theatrical situations. Reference frames of the process of performing in the theater with the external position and the ideal of the mimetic performance, move to the inner, immanent, creating expressive dramatic character and dramatic situations, which are realized in the moment of performance. Theatre anthropology, using the expressive style of acting as an object of research, studyes human behavior within the theater laws and conditions. On this line of experiments and analysis of nature of performing arts, arises laboratory theatre of Grotowski and theatre anthropology of Barba. Based on their research, in the paper were analyzed and placed the possible processes of searching for the dramatic character. As essential elements of the process of creating the dramatic character are set: violence, artificiality, state of trance, body of artists, scenic bios, the relationship with the audience and the reflexive rationalization of the artistic act.

Keywords

• acting
• theater
• performing arts
• theatre anthropology
• acting as an expression
• acting as mimesis
• dramatic character
• theatrical laboratory