Issue 3, July 1999
What practice? Whose practice?
Hanne M. de Bruin
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. The location of practice
3. Praxis and flexibility
4. Praxis and theatre's ambiguous reality status
5. Theatre and academic practice
References
Cite as: Bruin, Hanne M. de, 'What practice? Whose practice?'. Oideion; Performing arts online, issue 3 (July 1999),
<http://www.iias.nl/oideion/journal/issue03/bruin/index-a.html>
Abstract
The essay explores the possibilities and problems of the application of a 'practice approach' to the live performing arts of Asia in order to enhance our understanding of the complex operation of these arts and their embedding into the lived-in world. It argues that the focus on practice influences the
kind of data we choose to collect, the analytical categories we decide to work with, the emphasis we place on each of these categories and their relationships, as well as our definition of and location of practice within the current theoretical models of language and culture. The way in which our emphasis on a particular analytical category or agent informs our concept of practice is illustrated by the example of professional performers of a South Indian theatre form. As the result of the social and economic contexts in which their theatre developed, the praxis of these performers is inherently flexible and oriented at the maximization of their own interests.
The essay proceeds to discuss theatre praxis in relationship to theatre's ambiguous 'reality status'. This status evolves from the complex relationship between the theatrical event and the world - a relationship that tends to be perceived differently in rural South India and in the West. Such differences in perception, which are informed by the different aims and practices underlying the professions of South Indian performers and Western researchers, create differences in appreciation of experiential data generated by theatrical events. Consequently, a practice approach to the live performing arts of Asia is confronted with the formidable challenge of processing and externalizing data, which in their 'original' setting are embodied and internalized, and in translating them from one culture to the other.