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Across the Australian higher education landscape, fault lines are emerging between institutions that are questioning the viability and sustainability of the conservatoire, and academic staff who are committed to maintaining excellence in actor training (Moor, 2020). The COVID-induced digital pivot has led to greater flexibility in teaching modes and heavier reliance on independent practice (Pike et al., 2020), leading to a destabilisation and recalibration of the power dynamics of actor/director and student/teacher (Neideck et al., 2021). As the cultural and creative industries seek stability in the wake of the powerful aftershocks of #MeToo, there has been a rush to develop policies aimed at reducing abuses of power and encouraging healthy and productive ways of being in the workplace (Park & Neideck, 2020). In the fast-paced, embodied, and emotionally vulnerable environment of the actor's studio however, the distribution and dissemination of formal guidelines regarding behavioural norms is often perceived as counterproductive, or as frustrating to individual creativity. This paper outlines ways in which Appreciative Inquiry is employed in collaboration with forms of embodied placemaking facilitated by senior artists in QUT's actor training program. These strategies are used to model respectful relationships; to empower cohorts of student actors to negotiate boundaries of consent and outline their own behavioural expectations; and to enable academics to provide continuity of care in uncertain times. Observations will be made regarding the ways in which these rituals of practice and living policies shift and change over time, constituting not "a legal document", but "a cultural document" (Fischer & Myers, 2019). These strategies enable ensembles to self-regulate and are used to navigate the tricky intermediate space between the conservatoire and industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thread of my argument is wound between two basic determinations of human life: that to survive we must both be able to adapt and yet also to spontaneously perform actions without thinking. Thus conceived, habit is a polar phenomenon, with 'bad' habits (mechanical repetition) at one pole and 'good' habits (informed choices) at the other. Far from considering habit as a mechanically repeated action, I maintain it is the form taken by embodied knowledge. Habit is what we perform, and the more we learn, the richer our performance. We are dealing with a form of knowing that is evidenced through expert performance rather than verbal discussion – in this sense, it is tacit. The acquisition of tacit knowledge (the mastery of a skill) takes place in four stages: from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to unconscious competence. Put another way, we begin by not knowing that we do not know, and upon realizing that we do not know, we embark on a course of learning during which time we know that we know, finally reaching a stage when we know more than we can tell. The three sections of this article offer different routes into understanding the interrelation between habit, training and performance. The first deals with repetition and creation in actor training. This leads to a discussion of awareness, a crucially important faculty that characterizes the mental state of the performer in performance. A discussion of the neuroscientific literature reveals how perception, action and memory are functionally and intricately intertwined through sensori-motor loops. This faculty could be summed up in one word: noticing. All of this leads to the conclusion that habit can only be seen as negative if considered as a response or performance that is unchanging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers actor training in The Viewpoints as a site for the creation of alternative communities and practices beyond the 'utopia of rules' that regulates neoliberal culture. I trace what originator Mary Overlie calls Viewpoints' 'infectiousness' through the culminating 'laboratory' for Viewpoints study, The Original Anarchist. Overlie's figure of 'The Viewpoints Original Anarchist' trains the actor through what James Scott calls 'anarchist calisthenics' and 'the anarchist squint'. Exemplary of the overall approach of The Viewpoints, The Original Anarchist laboratory trains the performer to discover a collaborative, even deferential relationship to the theatrical materials of Space, Shape, Time, Emotion, Movement and Story 'on the horizontal'. The Original Anarchist laboratory is rooted firmly in the here and now of attunement, in which the actor's secret is a practice of what Harney and Moten call 'study' prepares the actor for the 'end' of Viewpoints training – to ask the question, 'What is theatre made of?' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can actor training be seen as a utopic enterprise? In her groundbreaking work, Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan posits theatre as a 'placeholder for social change' by virtue of 'its openness to human interactions [and] exchange (Dolan: 63)'. Actor training bears the same potential, insofar as it invites intersectionality and eclipses geographic and cultural borders. It affords promise for a more equitable, inclusive, and diverse world. As such, actor training engenders hope. Relying on ethnographic fieldwork from my research as a Fulbright Scholar, I present New Zealand's national drama school as a case study for a utopic model. Named Toi Whakaari, the Te Reo term for 'performing arts,' I was in residence at the school from January to July of 2019, where I experienced the acting programme and its staff and students firsthand. My findings demonstrate how Toi Whakaari's blending of Western and Māori praxis contextualizes a uniquely progressive and student-centered learning environment that embraces cultural difference towards engendering artistic and personal empowerment. The acting programme's decolonized curriculum balances skills training and cultural diversity, whereby students and staff jointly posit and practice social change. It is emblematic of Dolan's performative contextualization of utopia and therefore answers this article's straightforward question in the affirmative: actor training can indeed be seen as utopic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]