Rethinking performing practice as research in the performing arts

Abstract

This article considers performance practice as a legitimate and productive form of knowledge generation, framing it within a model of Practice-as-Research (P-as-R). The article develops an epistemological inquiry into the professional knowledge of actors as embodied, situated, and experiential knowledge, through the critical and practical integration of two different approaches to acting: Michael Chekhov and Phillip Zarrilli. To this end, it reconsiders Chekhov’s techniques of the «imaginary» and Zarrilli’s training of the «bodymind» as methodological tools that articulate processes of self-knowledge and knowledge production in the education and practice of acting, going beyond the artistic outcomes or technical improvement that typically characterize a positivist approach. The aim is to broaden the vision of acting, to stimulate new performance models, and to expand the paradigms of theatre practice. In this sense, P-as-R enables a rhizomatic model of inquiry, where artistic thought unfolds from practice and is articulated within it, questioning established frameworks of what it means to «know» and to «know how to act».