Toward an intersubjective ethics of acting and actor training
pp. 113-124
in: Paul Macneill (ed), Ethics and the arts, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
Using a recently created performance ("Told by the Wind") as a case-study, this chapter addresses the "ethical" implications of intersubjectivity in acting and performance from the author's dual perspectives as an artist who makes theatre and as a theorist who reflects on the work he creates. The essay reviews phenomenological approaches to intersubjectivity, how ethical issues have been raised in relation to theatre and the practices of making theatre, and the question of what "ethics' is possible in a postmodern, intercultural, globalised world. Utilising Emmanual Levinas' radical assertion that "First philosophy is an ethics' and Merleau-Ponty's notion of the lived body, the essay articulates some of the opportunities offered by acting for examining the ethical implications of intersubjectivity in practice and performance.
