This is a page where you can get in contact with my journey inside the MFA in Performing Arts/Kandidatuddannelse i Scenekunst at Den Danske Scenekunstskole. I decided to come back to school after almost 10 years of work in the field as an actress, director, and lecturer. I think it's a present that I decided to make myself, as for me studying is a joy and a present for myself. This is a page never ready to be published but is still published. This is a page in constant movement. I write, I cancel, I write again. This is a liquid page in constant flow. Yes, maybe I could say that this page is my flow. One day maybe all of this will be written on paper and stop flowing maybe. Maybe not."
Anna Carla Maria Penati
THE LIQUID ACTOR
PERFORMING AND LIVING IN THE LIQUID MODERNITY
Find complete version here:
https://www.annapenati.com/mfadocumentation.html
Find complete version here:
https://www.annapenati.com/mfadocumentation.html
Copyright HumanLab.studio - Anna Carla Maria Penati in the show Terminus
"
Progress has turned into a sort of endless and uninterrupted game of musical chairs in which a moment of inattention results in irreversible defeat and irrevocable exclusion. Instead of great expectations and sweet dreams "progress" evokes insomnia full of nightmares of being left behind - of missing the train, or falling out of the window of a fast accelerating vehicle."
Zygmunt Bauman "Liquid Time: living in an age of uncertainty", P. 10-11, Polity Edition
Progress has turned into a sort of endless and uninterrupted game of musical chairs in which a moment of inattention results in irreversible defeat and irrevocable exclusion. Instead of great expectations and sweet dreams "progress" evokes insomnia full of nightmares of being left behind - of missing the train, or falling out of the window of a fast accelerating vehicle."
Zygmunt Bauman "Liquid Time: living in an age of uncertainty", P. 10-11, Polity Edition
- HOW IS THE ACTING PROCESS AFFECTED BY THE LIQUID MODERNITY OF OUR TIME? HOW DO THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES AFFECT AN ACTOR'S LIFE ON AND OFF STAGE?
- HOW DOES OUR LIQUID LIFE AFFECT THE THEATRE PEDAGOGY? I EXPLORE THE POTENTIAL OF WAITING ROOMS AND WAITING TIME IN THEATRE PEDAGOGY: FROM ENTERTAINMENT PEDAGOGY TO BOREDOM PEDAGOGY.
- WAITING ROOMS AND WAITING TIME IN PERFORMANCE
Inspired by Zygmunt Bauman's philosophy ("Liquid Modernity", Polity Edition, 2000), I ask myself:
Can we talk about a new shape of actor, which I name the LIQUID ACTOR?
An actor whose thoughts, constantly interrupted by a new notification, always travels into the future in a new project where he is asked to produce a new innovative, experimental shape.
"Fluidity is the quality of liquids and gases. What distinguishes both of them from solids is that they can not sustain a tangential, or shearing, force when at rest and so undergo a continuous change in shape when subjected to such a stress."
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
Extreme flexibility. Flexibility of schedule. Be dynamic, oh yeah.
Travel, move, change. Self-tape workshop.
Don't know how to edit videos? Learn it.
And by the time you have learned it, there will be a new, fundamental skill to learn not be left behind.
So that what you have just done seems already old, expired, ready to be replaced.
The concept of identity has been replaced by the concept of "personal brand". And the more we want to survive in the modern liquid life, the more we need our identity to be vague, flexible, and able to be everything and nothing at the same time: a liquid identity.
Today I'm an actress, but tomorrow I could have to become a mover, a performer, a multimedia artist.
Today I'm European, in a year I could not.
Change. Don't get left behind. Learn how to reinvent yourself.
Produce more, create, and create new forms!
But do we really need to constantly create new forms?
Who are they for?
To art consumers, to art producers or to art sellers?
As an actress my job is to stay in the present moment reacting to what is happening in that moment, in that space where my body is breathing.
On the contrary, in my daily liquid life, I live constantly projected into the future and in another space.
I'm interested in exploring this conflict.
What kind of strategies we, as actors, can implement to live a sustainable artistic and personal life?
How does our training need to be shaped today?
During the production of the show TRIC, I will explore LIQUIDITY ON DIFFERENT LAYERS.
During the production of the show TRIC I will explore LIQUIDITY ON DIFFERENT LAYERS.
IN TERMS OF METHOD:
- I'm exploring a liquid artistic role in which I'm at the same time producer, director, concept creator and actress.
- I'm exploring an extreme relationship between me, as human creator, and the new technologies: the App is leading the creation of the show.
- I'm exploring a liquid concept of characters with moments in which the borderline between character and persona is liquid.
- I'm creating the show with a team dislocated physically in different spaces
IN TERMS OF CONTENTS:
- I'm questioning, challenging, and maybe criticizing the concept of liquid democracy. "In a liquid democracy, citizens are permitted to more directly share their votes and support certain policies rather than having to rely fully on politicians and regional representatives to do so. Using modern technology, today’s citizens can instead be more active in forming the laws that govern them." (source: https://liquid-democracy-journal.org)
- I'm exploring how liquid modernity leads to a crisis of representation. Political representation but also artistic: today, as an actress, I'm very often asked to use my personal stories to become a performer. I feel in the field a growing interest in seeing on stage "not actors" but "real people". If we imagine a future without the representation of professional politicians, can we as well imagine a future without actors representing stories?
POLITICAL LAYER: What is true and what is not. News vs fakenews
LAYER IN THE MIDDLE, in which politic meets theatre: reality vs representation (ordinary people instead of politicians, ordinary people instead of actors???)
ACTING LAYER: overacting, acting and not acting
Sources of references:
-"Liquid Modernity" by Zygmunt Bauman, Polity Edition (2000)
-"Liquid Time: living in an age of uncertainty" by Zygmunt Bauman, Polity Edition (2007)
- "Liquid life" by Zygmunt Bauman, Polity Edition (2005)
- "Non-places" by Marc Auge', Verso books (2009)
- "The Viewpoints Book: A practical guide to viewpoints and composition" by Anne Bogart, Nick Hern Books (2014)
- Active Analysis/L'analisi della piece e del ruolo mediante l'azione, by Marija Knebel'(a cura di Alessio Bergamo), Ubulibri (2009)
- "Vertigo", an exhibition at Aros Museum, Denmark. In particular: the video you find in my video portfolio is by Jeremy Shaw: "Phase-shifting index" (2020)
Thank you for experiencing my final project's documentation.
december 2022
SPACE AND TIME IN THEATRE PEDAGOGY
