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Portrait of an Actor, Watching antiphonal feedback to the Living Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

Extract

This is a recording. A man comes out on stage, stands down-center and begins to breathe. He stands there for a long time. His head is tilted slightly up, his eyes seeming to fix on a point in the balcony. His shoulders are down and his chest is not blown up, but his elbows ride high to the rear as if to suggest a soldier at attention. He wears a white sleeveless undershirt and untapered dungarees. And he doesn't move. Once or twice he wobbles an inch. Perhaps he does this deliberately: homing, by approximation, on the dead center of his gravity. For the rest, the only movement you see on stage is the occasional rippling and stretching of his undershirt across the bellows of his breath. No one can say this man's presence is sympathetic; and no one can say it is hostile.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 The Drama Review

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