‘Experimenting with the Globe’: the reconstructed Bankside Theatre as a research instrument in research through practice in performance (PaR), movement pattern analysis (MPA) and Shakespeare studies

The starting point for this research undertaking was my observation that the New Globe can be seen to represent rather more than a reconstructed Shakespearean theatre space. The thesis sets out to make the apparently controversial case for the New Globe as a research “mechanism”, meant, according to its constructors, to provide the physical and organisational conditions of producing new knowledge in terms of both artistic practice and play interpretation. Such an attempt takes us, as researchers, through a number of bodies of discourse, including those specific to Shakespeare Studies and Performance Studies; each of these bodies of writing, I proceed to demonstrate, is characterised not only by a degree of disagreement as to what constitutes “performance”, but equally by a number of omissions. The recently popular field of (performance) practice as research (PaR), meanwhile, seems to me to yield more questions than answers.

In order to be able to pursue the original, stated purpose of the Globe of 'understanding Shakespeare through performance', I attempt to clarify and, when they are missing, construct, the necessary conceptualisations. A re-evaluation of the phenomenological basis of theatre performance within the event time is used to facilitate theorisations of expert performance practice, including the core concept of the actor’s performance mastery itself. In the course of these adjustments, I come to the conclusion that the received practice of the discourse-based understanding of, and argumentation about, real-time theatre performance (including the dramatic text or script) may be inadequate. Consequently, I develop a set of research methods which I propose as an alternative to discourse-based approaches and present an extended example of its application.

The key contribution of the thesis to established knowledge is the recognition of the mutually catalytic function of Globe type projects and PaR concerning their conceptualisations of the performance phenomenon as well as their research methods. The traditionally textual basis and concerns of Shakespeare Studies may also be re-evaluated to reflect these changes. I propose a new modelling of the actor's processes in action through a proposed adaptation of Laban Movement Analysis for theatre, and digital humanities (in particular, 3D virtual real time interactive modelling) and their interactions. What also becomes possible, on the basis of these sorts of shifts, is the development of new, expert training and performance methods, as well as new teaching methods in the university context.