Director, Actor, And Body

Theater art is a comprehensive, complex and special creating activity, and itsobjective existence is decided by the vehicle----“performance”. Contrasting to thearts of painting and literature which can leave records for the world, theater art istentative and live, disappearing at the end of the performance with the curtain downand the empty of theater.Roland Barthes claimed:“The erotic function of the theater is not accessory, forthe theater alone of all the figurative arts (cinema, painting) presents the bodies andnot their representation.”(Richard83)2Accordingly, body becomes a perspective tounderstand the theater art: Why does the theater relate to the body? Whose body doesit concerned with? How to use the body to perform? All the questions are taken intoconsiderations in the composition of theater arts, especially, the image creations ofdirectors’performing texts.The procedure of directors’ creating imagery performing texts cannot leave theactors’bodies, thus, the directors have to consider the influence from the live materialsof actors and their feature as a “Trinity”. Since the appearance of directing art, all thedirectors have never stopped the study and reformation to the actors and performance,especially, the actors’“bodies”. In this dissertation, based on the theories andillustrations of “Three Modern Theatrical Systems”,taking advantage of directors’exploration to actors’ bodies, the author contributes to explore the experiments tostimulate the actors’ internal and external acting creations to realize the dream of“holy actors” are analyzed.The explorations of the actors’ bodies from the directors belonging to the ThreeModern Theatrical Systems are developed as four steps. First, Stanislavsky discoveredthe body creating method with the actors, representing the return from “dualismbetween the body and mind” to the body.Actors were not passive any more, but explored the developing direction of modern performing art actively. Second,Brecht directed the actors to across the obstacle of psycho-experience, realizing thefree and“expressing” transformation between roles and actors. Third, Artauddirected the actors to break the shackle of language, making the body have the rightsof personal creation and emotional catharsis. Finally, the followers as Peter Brook andGrotowski found the relationship among Stanislavsky, Brecht and Artaud, and madethe use of the predecessors’ achievements, inventing the “empty space”,“poortheater” and etc. The bodies of actors are relentlessly enlarged by the “empty”stage, and occupy the authority of the stage. Therefore, the severely trained and ruledbodies of actors under the direction of directors realize the free and directperformance. The success of The Conatant Prince acted by RyszardCislak(1937-1990) became the turn and symbol of modern theatrical directing art,consequently, the actors fulfill the complete liberation of bodies with the birth of“holy actors”.Instead of ending the experiments of bodies, a quantity of directors afterGrotowski chose to direct the actors to leave the theater. Thus,“performance” ispulled away from the traditional theater concept, and the theatrical arts enters the eraof “postmodern performance”.Reviewing the developing procedure of bodies’ liberation of directors and actors,the pursuit to “holy actors” is not constructed on the condition of scarifying the inneremotions of the soul, but on the premise of modeling “ideal actors” with the internaland external harmony----simple and pure actors; and it is also not on the condition ofscarifying the creating freedom of actors, but on the premise of making the actorshave the creating ability to fulfill, even surpass the directors’ imaginations under theserious trainings. At the end of the thesis, combing “the performance dilemma” of thetheatre in the present world, the author conducts a reflection on the basis of theexperience to train the actors’ bodies of Stanislavsky, Brecht, Artaud and otherdirectors. Therefore, the relationship between actors’ bodies and directors is like theclose relation between puppet and puppeteer behind the black velvet, integratingdirectors’skills into actors’physical expressions as invisible. Once the thread betweenthem is broken, the creating life of actors will be pushed to “the dangerous edge”.