Pierre Bourdieu and actor training: towards decolonising and decentering actor training pedagogies

Abstract

In response to issues with the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of marginalised communities in the texts used for actor training, actor trainers and scholars have theorised and brought to the studio race, gender, crip, or class critical theories to evaluate the social representations that the actors create with their body, voice, and imagination. Such interventions narrow their scope for valid reasons, but problematise actor training studios that involve trainees with multiple and intersecting identities, both dominant and marginalised. This essay argues that Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social power can sustain a holistic and comparative exploration of how actors can mobilise the positive representation of communities with multiple and intersecting marginalised identities. The first part of the essay brings Bourdieu’s concepts habitus, capital, and field to text-based training thinking and constructs a critical framework to assess actor training practices. The second part of the essay uses the framework to theorise the potential of Bertolt Brecht’s Marx-inspired pedagogy of the gestical actor to decolonise and decenter contemporary actor training. The essay finishes with positioning the Bourdieu-inspired framework among contemporary pedagogies that address social inequalities. It invites actor trainers to utilise theoretical models to mobilise social dynamics in training and explore the actors’ unconscious biases.