Rebecca Reeves

Abstract

This research focuses on acting practices for contemporary realism in devising processes, examining the role of acting and exploring strategies for creating a character in devised performance.

Through considering the nature of the actor’s work the research examines how the play between fiction and authenticity in contemporary styles relates to conventional strategies for creating characterisation. Recent applications of Stanislavsky’s and Michael Chekhov’s techniques are used to trace the development of a British realist aesthetic and Lehman’s definition of the postdramatic paradigm for performance is examined and problematised in order to address the following question:

Have strategies for realist characterisation ceased to be effective (or affective) within a postdramatic paradigm, or can they enable an ‘aesthetic of risk’ that confronts the spectator with the possibility of reality?

Profile

Since completing her MA Text and Performance Studies in 2002 Rebecca has taught Drama and Theatre Studies at both primary and secondary level and as part of adult education.

Her research interests centre on actor training, rehearsal and performance strategies for the actor and the role of the director in devising processes. She is particularly interested in adaption in devising and the relationship between contemporary performance practices and the critical contexts of postmodernism and postdramatic theatre.

Rebecca is a recipient of an AHRC studentship.