"Empty Space" - Physical Drama Practice And Research

With the increase in the communication of theater between European and China in recent years,“Physical Theater” is becoming increasingly an important drama genre for Chinese dramatists.Physical Theater emerged in the 1950 s and began to prevail in Europe and the United States in the 60 s and 70 s.Compare with the traditional realistic drama,Physical Theater is completely different in the form of performance and the training approaches.Physical Theater breaks the rule of “The Fourth Wall” in order to maximize the stage performance and makes the impact between performance and the audiences become more directly.Because of its concise stage style and narrative method,effectively stimulate the imagination of the audience.The emergence of physical theater not only predicts the boundary of the performing arts,stage arts,film and television arts and dance art are blurred,but also indicates that the new era has a new definition and requirement of traditional actors.Thus,in few years ago,the author began to study the Modern Physical Theater,which was represented by French physique master,Jacques Le Cork,and combined with the author’s own “physical theater workshop”.The author tries to use this combination to analyze and summarize the physical theater actor training methods and the role and significance of modern drama pedagogy.The thesis can be divided into five chapters,the main contents are as follows:The introduction examines the definition of Physical Theater and the reason why it is necessary to study Physical Theater.It also describes the practical purpose and significance of Physical Theater with the author’s own experience in studying Physical Theater in many years.The first chapter is an overview of the modern Physical Theater,introducing the various origins of the modern Physical Theater and the iconic characters of the modern Physical Theater briefly,specifically the famous French drama master,Jacques Lecour and his “Modern Physical Theater”.The second chapter describes the “reception aesthetics” of the physical theater.The illustration combines with the creation of the drama “Frog”,“The True Story of Q”,and the two aspects of “Theatrical Assumptions”,“Defamiliarization Effect”.The third chapter explores the training of physical drama.The main contents and concepts of physical theater performer training elaborates in five sections: the unity of body and mind,the voice of performers,the energy of body actors,and the imagination and the training of mimes.The fourth chapter discusses the role and influence of performance theater theory and training methods on contemporary Chinese theater pedagogy through four aspects and summarizes the significance of physical theater in Chinese theater pedagogy.Because the development of the film industry constituted a huge threat to the survival of Chinese traditional theater.The traditional realistic drama that created the illusion of life was on the wane.The traditional realism drama featuring illusions of reality is no longer the “protagonist” of the theater stage.At the same time,there are various new genres of drama begin to flourish.Among them,the Physical Theater is affirmed by the audiences because of the strong dramatic vitality.The training of actors developed in the 20 th century is based on the human body,which means contemporary theater needs new style of actors.At the same time,the theatrical ideas and training methods of the physical theatre drama also put forward requirements for the current Chinese drama education,and its old drama system is facing a revolution.