Never the Ordinary: Training and Performance in Contemporary Australian Physical Theatre; a Zen Zen Zo Case Study

The past twenty years have seen a substantial rise in physical theatre practice across the United Kingdom, North America and Australia. Despite physical theatre being one of Australia’s most thriving exports in the sphere of performance, little attention has been paid to the work of physical theatre practitioners in Australia, compared to the large focus on their European and North American counterparts. My thesis aims to address this gap by offering a close examination of Brisbane-based physical theatre company Zen Zen Zo, a company claimed to be at the forefront of contemporary theatre and actor training in Australia. My thesis offers a way to understand the complexities of physical theatre practice through an analysis of Zen Zen Zo’s work from training to performance. Based on a participant-observer approach, the first section of my thesis investigates how the company has developed their own style of training and performance that has been forged from other established modes of actor training and performance practice; specifically, the Suzuki Method of Actor Training, the Viewpoints, and butô, producing a recognisable aesthetic in their highly visual and physical performances. Training seeks to create the “extraordinary body” of the performer, one that is physically dynamic and engaging, and able to capture the audience’s attention and captivate them. Further, I argue that this extraordinary body is a philosophical construct underpinned by butô and Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnival theories, and that these ideologies aim to subvert dominant values and hegemonies, and give rise to a body that is transgressive and unsettling. I examine the role of the extraordinary body in the company’s approach to creating work for the stage, of which the Composition method developed by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau forms a significant part. The latter section of the thesis offers an analysis of three of Zen Zen Zo’s most recent performances: The Tempest (2009), Zeitgeist (2010), and Dante’s Inferno: Living Hell (2010). While these performances aim to be visually and physically dynamic, I contend that it is also important to consider how the performances engage with the socio-political issues that the company claims to address. This engagement is essential in order to effectively communicate meaning to an audience, and to achieve the company’s aim of “transforming” their audience by challenging their views of the world. By providing new insights into the field of physical theatre in Australia, which has often been underprivileged in the annals of Western theatre, my work is a valuable contribution to both theatre scholarship and practice