Critical Acting Pedagogy

Lisa Peck is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Practice at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include actor training, theatre-making pedagogies, women in theatre, critical pedagogies, and site-based performance. Evi Stamatiou is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader of the MA/MFA Acting for Stage and Screen at the University of East London. She is a practitioner-researcher of actor training with two decades of international experience as an actor and creative.

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Josette Bushell-Mingo

Introduction

Lisa Peck and Evi Stamatiou

PART ONE: Intersectional Methodologies and Critical Acting Pedagogies

1 Oppression and the Actor: Locating Freire’s Pedagogy in the Training Space

Peter Zazzali

2 Playing with Difference in Actor Training: A Method to Transform Policy into Pedagogy

Kristine Landon-Smith and Chris Hay

3 Cultivating the Reflexive Practitioner in the Performance Studio: An Intersectional Approach

Valerie Clayman Pye

4 Critiquing from the Centre: Challenging Breath Pedagogies within Dominant British-centric Voice Training

Denis Cryer-Lennon

5 Training Actors’ Voices and Decolonising Curriculum: Shifting Epistemologies

Stan Brown and Tara Mcallister-Viel

PART TWO: Approaches to Scene Study as Cultural Intersectionality

6 Reconsidering the Link between Text, Technique and Teaching in Actor Training

Sherrill Gow

7 Liberating Casting and Training Practices for Mixed-Asian Students

Amy Rebecca King and Robert Torigoe

8 Liminal Casting: Self-Inquisitive Scene Study in Actor Training

Evi Stamatiou

PART THREE: Structural Intersectionality in Values and Assessment

9 We Can Imagine You Here: Acknowledging the Need and Setting the Stage for Multi-layered Institutional Adaptation at Yale University’s School of Drama

Jennifer Smolos Steele

10 Complex Movements for Change: A Case Study

Niamh Dowling

11 Developing a Social Justice PWI Acting Studio through

Equitable Assessments

Elizabeth M. Cizmar

12 Singing Pedagogy for Actors: Questioning Quality

Electa Behrens and Oystein Elle

PART FOUR: Interpersonal Intersectionality: Learning Edges

13 Developing the Actor Trainer: Welcome, Trust, and Critical Exchange

Jessica Hartley

14 Scaffolding Consent and Intimacy in the Acting Classroom: Bridging the Gap between Learning and Doing

Joelle Ré Arp-Dunham

15 A Neurocosmopolitan Approach to Actor Training: Learning from Neurodivergent Ways-of-doing

Zoë Glen

Afterword by Amy Mihyang Ginther