Good Acting: A Tragedy in Higher Education : Stanislavski and Habitus: Why we need a new technique. (A Play for Reading in Two Acts)

Orkut, Onur and Ashwin, Paul (2025) Good Acting: A Tragedy in Higher Education : Stanislavski and Habitus: Why we need a new technique. (A Play for Reading in Two Acts). PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Prologue (Abstract): A university room with timeless, muscular furniture, a fireplace and thousands of books. Murmuring conversations off-stage. Occasionally laughter and distinguishable words like “ethnography” “epistemology” “ontology”. A large, ornate clock ticks steadily. Schubert’s second impromptu in E flat major plays on a gramophone. Perpetua moto of scurrying triplets starkly contrasts the room. Two professors: Professor 1: (outraged) A theatre play!? Professor 2: Just read the abstract! P1: P2: As academic writing? Please! P1: (In a huff) Fine! (reads out in perfect Received Pronunciation, perhaps as a notion of educatedness). “This thesis examines the acting curriculum of drama schools from a Bourdieusian perspective via Stanislavski’s trilogy of acting books. It aims to apply the concept of ‘habitus’ to the curriculum and coins the term “curricular habitus” used first by Asghar and Shehzad (Asghar & Shehzad, 2018) but remains undefined in their paper and also for higher education. It differentiates curricular habitus from internalized dispositions of a discipline or profession on individuals (disciplinary and professional habitus) (Lambrecht, 2018; Bendix, 2020; Allison, 2017) or the habitus of an institution (institutional habitus) (byrd, 2018; Celik, 2020; Wright, 2008). Curricular habitus is the habitus of the curriculum, with its history, background, key texts, key informants, teaching, learning and assessment practices and dispositions, and treats curriculum as the owner of the habitus, a character, independent of but created, influenced and reproduced by those who engage with it, in return inculcating itself on them as disciplinary, institutional or professional habitus. Curricular habitus of acting offers a plausible explanation of the mechanisms of domination of the elite in acting vis à-vis actor training in Federation of Drama Schools where Stanislavski’s texts, and definition of acting remain the foundations of the acting discipline just as much it does in the profession. It further analyses the relationship between the 1 profession of acting and its training in higher education (De Bernard, et al., 2023) and attempts to provide alternative definitions of acting, in an attempt to find ways of mitigating the effects of class differences. The thesis aims to redefine acting, not as art created by the actor but as a socio-cultural temporal object created by the spectator. By doing so, and utilising findings in emerging cognitive science it redirects the actor training’s attention from the actor (Blair, 2008) to the spectator in line (McConahie, 2008) subverting the curriculum away from its habitual position. It also exposes the place of actor training and its teaching practices within the neo-liberal landscape of higher education in the UK as a mismatch.” What a load of pretentious, non-scientific - - - P2: P1: (interrupts) Carry on! “It is written in play form to capture the narrative results and the hermeneutic, qualitative content analysis (Krippendorff, 2019) to not find but create data, interpreting and re-articulating curricular texts and more importantly simulating interviews. The play is an object of knowledge an research, placing the author in the centre of the reproduction of the curricular habitus of acting (as an actor, spectator and teacher) and thus engaging with autophenomenography” (Strand & Rinehimer, 2018); (Allen‐Collinson, 2011); (Gruppetta, 2004).” Please, spare me! (Professor 1 goes to a record player and turns up Schubert’s impromptu in Eb. BLACKOUT)