Tapra 2014 Brochure

Programme in 2015, is a certified practitioner of the Alba Emoting Method and teaches directing at Canterbury Christ Church University. Publications include: Theatre, Performance and ‘The Century of the Brain’: The Influences of Cognitive Neuroscience on Professional Theatre Practice’ in Medicine, Health and the Arts: Approaches to Medical Humanities, Routledge, pp. 186 – 205 (2014) and ‘Alba Emoting and Emotional Melody: Surfing the Emotional Wave in Cachagua, Chile’ in Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Vol. 1(2), pp. 141-156 (2010).

Christina Kapadocha Actor training and the camera: the documentation of a somatic approach to acting In this paper/practice demonstration I will disclose the formulation of a somatic approach to psychophysical actor training as documented by the use of camera. I engage with a holistic process that prepares the actor for all the kinds of performance expression taking as foundation the cultivation of an integrated embodied perception and experience. I do so by applying a somatic approach to movement education into the actor training process. The development of my practice emerges from my current Practice as Research project at RCSSD titled: Being an actor, becoming a trainer: the transition from subjective to inter-subjective experience in a somatic acting process. The practice is underpinned by Linda Hartley’s IBMT (Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy) somatic approach (Hartley 1995), which is developed along the lines of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s somatic technique of Body-Mind Centering.

Through the use of the camera in the room of ‘self-exploration’ and the work with ‘others’, I will discuss the development of an actor training process in the reversed ‘intersubjective’ experience through which the actor becomes the trainer.I concentrate on the use of somatic metaphor in kinaesthetic exercises that re-approach the experience of kinaesthetic empathy in the actor-trainer relationship, coming up with the notion of embodied logos. I finally raise issues in the documentation process, including the resistance to the presence of the camera in group environments, such as in workshops and classrooms.

Christina Kapadocha is an actor, somatic educator (IBMT) and practice-based PhD candidate at RCSSD. Her research explores the formulation of a somatic approach to psychophysical actor training. Greek National Theatre Drama School and E15 Acting School alumni, Christina teaches somatics and actor training, she directs workshops and performs in London. She has also trained and performed in Bali (ISI) and Moscow (GITIS).

65