Demystifying an Appropriate Use of a Performer’s ‘Energy’ Where the Performer’s Body Becomes ‘Real’

Abstract

This thesis investigates the meaning of a performer’s energy taking into an account of the full bodily engagement as the flow of energy and/or psychophysical readiness focusing specifically on the significance of qualitative bodily transformation. In this contemporary era, the dominance of performer training and its approaches to acting/training has very frequently meant that how to play a character in a textual based approach by emphasizing on interpreting and impersonating the role as real as possible. In this sense, as a performer trainer, from my observation and research findings shows that it is common for the term energy is not to be motivated by what a performer’s body needs within a specific moment in specific performance which they are working on. To address the problematic issues, this thesis begins by interrogating the practical meaning of transformation with addressing the principle and process of movement by means of the flow of energy on stage. For a performer, inhabiting/integrating his/her body and mind as oneness and/or unity means s/he sincerely encounter, confront, and therefore listen to his/her body in here and now. Because since the performer’s physical appearance completely defined his/her psychological state, no one can play either the past or the future in the moment. In this manner, an appropriate use of energy synonymous with the flow of energy correspondence with the given time and space in which the performer’s body informs and initiates movement as necessary action. To be precise, the performer’s bodily movement either visible or invisible in a sense of training and rehearsal is perceived as attaining or achieving psychophysical involvement as the full body engagement which enable to make the event happen in the right moment. Here, this thesis argues that the significance of a performer’s inner intensity reminds us of the necessity of qualitative transformation on which the performer could discover his/her own mode of awareness as well as a way his/her body function in the given circumstance. From this point of view, this research finding would advocates that the performer’s body maintains in the field of energy flow where his/her conscious effort and/or mindfulness disappear. The performer’s movement is a manifestation of the whole bodily engagement by means of being as real in that moment rather than representing reality.