Digital perspectives for actor training

Abstract

This article explores how actor training, and physical actor training especially, can shift fromthe well-established historical norm of live workshop interaction to embrace online possibilities.It briefl y examines some of the contextual issues around institutional approaches to training, includingstudents’ expectations, and charts some digital innovations in the fi eld. It then traces theauthor’s own evolutionary history of publishing using analogue and then digital tools, from drawings,through CD-ROMs and DVDs to online materials. This has culminated in the publicationpre-pandemic, though anticipating subsequent shifts online, of ‘Physical Actor training – an onlineA-Z’ (PATAZ), for Methuen Drama Bloomsbury. PATAZ is introduced as a case study, showing howthe project team developed fi lm material as a means to articulate key aspects of training practice;for example by showing the learning and training process, for presenting voice work and for actors’explorations of space and movement. The article describes how the project’s fi lms were augmentedwith various digital tools, such as on-screen animation and it introduces some of the rangeof approaches in fi lming and editing that were adopted to differentiate each term. It concludesby suggesting that we are only at the beginning of a digital revolution regards actor training,its documentation and analysis and related publishing practices.