The theatre as a metaphor is applied in contemporary humanities quite frequently. Anthropologists, sociologists, historians, etc., use it to explain and analyse specific models of situations and actions. The most frequent is the metaphor of ‘the actor playing a role’. The question is whether this metaphor reflects the real state of research in the theatre and theatre studies. In the lecture Martina Musilová introduced some contemporary concepts of theatre acting: Brechtian epic acting which includes dramaturgy, Stanislavski’s acting of experiencing, acting in performative art that crosses the line between the art and everyday reality, Vyskočil’s triadic concept of authorial (devised) acting (actor-directorinner spectator), and acting based on improvisation.
Martina Musilová graduated in theatre studies from the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, Prague, where she successfully defended her thesis in 2007 (published in 2011 under the title Fauefekt. Vlivy Brechtova epického divadla a zcizujícího efektu v českém moderním herectví). During her university studies she attended Professor Ivan Vyskočil’s lectures on Dialogical Acting with the Inner Partner at AMU’s Theatre Faculty in Prague. Since 1999 she has been a teacher assistant in this course. Since 2009 she has lectured at the Department of Theatre Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno, from 2013 to 2019 at the Department of Theory and Criticism, and since 2019 at the Department of Authorial (Devised) Creativity and Pedagogy at AMU’s Theatre Faculty in Prague. Since 2020 she has been the head of the Institute for Research into and Study of Authorial (Devised) Acting at AMU’s Theatre Faculty in Prague. She specializes in the history and theory of acting and the theatricality of public events.
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