Känsla för skådespelarkonst : mot en förståelse av tysta kunskaper och görandets fenomenologi

• Main Author: Enström, Ann
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper 2016
• Subjects: Gender; theatre; acting; performance; performativity; emotion; feeling; affect; mood; atmosphere; body; sensibility; senses; sensuous; situated; tacit knowledge; doing; act; action; kinesthesia; hermeneutics; phenomenology; intentionality; ontology; becoming; expression; intensity; rhythm; response; touch; flow; devotion; vulnerability
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-120380; http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:isbn:978-91-85920-93-8

The primary argument in this thesis is that the common assumption that an actor has emotion inside him- or herself which can be evoked and projected outwards is an outdated misconception. A proposition is made to replace this possessive acting model, which underpins the realist tradition and is based on the popularized aspects of Stanislavsky’s system for actor training, by a situational acting model. This new model is founded on the idea that emotion is something that actors “do”. Furthermore, a theory of this situational model is advanced where the actor is seen to perform emotion in an interplay with action in three different ways: in the world symbolically as an expression, of the world phenomenologically as in-sensing or out-sensing, and with the world as a becoming – which opens the actor up to greater forces of nature and society.                                      The material in this thesis has been focused on from both a contextualizing and a theoretic perspective. The contextualizing perspective places the actor’s doing of emotions in a historical context. The theoretic aspect concentrates on how performing emotions is realized in practice, and it proceeds from an analysis of two contemporary Swedish examples: the actresses Lena Endre in the role of Lady Macbeth at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm in a production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth from 2006, and Mia Skäringer in her stage show Horny as Hell and Really Holy from 2010. In exploring this material, a combination of Paul Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of suspicion” and Paul Stoller’s ”sensuous scholarship” is applied.           A synthetic theoretical approach is employed that is set on a phenomenological foundation in combination with theories of emotion and affect as well as gender theory and theatre theory. The discussion is informed by Michael Polanyi to gain an understanding of tacit knowledge and the role of kinesthesia; by Simone de Beauvoir to establish a perspective on the body as a situation; by Sara Ahmed to see the potential for a cultural politics of emotion and a queer view of intentionality; and by Maurice Merleau-Ponty to propose a way of looking at the human being as being of the world as opposed to in the world. Interpretations of a few of Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s concepts such as rhizome, becoming, and body without organs, are added to this list in order to provide a background for what the third way of doing emotion is about.