An Actor Remembers: Memory's Role in the Training of the United States
An Actor Remembers: Memory’s Role in the Training of the United States Actor by Devin E. Malcolm B.A. in The Human Drama, Juniata College, 1997 M.A. in Theatre, Villanova University, 2002 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre History and Performance Studies University of Pittsburgh 2012 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences This dissertation was presented by Devin E. Malcolm It was defended on November, 5th 2012 and approved by Kathleen George, PhD, Theatre Arts Bruce McConachie, PhD, Theatre Arts Edouard Machery, PhD, History and Philosophy of Science Dissertation Advisor: Attilio Favorini, PhD, Theatre Arts ii Copyright © by Devin E. Malcolm 2012 iii AN ACTOR REMEMBERS: MEMORY’S ROLE IN THE TRAINING OF THE UNITED STATES ACTOR Devin E. Malcolm, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2012 This dissertation examines the different ways actor training techniques in the United States have conceived of and utilized the actor’s memory as a means of inspiring the actor’s performance. The training techniques examined are those devised and taught by Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Joseph Chaikin, Stephen Wangh and Anne Bogart and Tina Landau. As I shall illustrate, memory is not the unified phenomenon that we often think and experience it to be. The most current research supports the hypothesis that the human memory is composed of five distinctly different, yet interrelated systems. Of these five my research focuses on three: episodic, semantic, and procedural.
[Show full text]