DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/GA1R-7R92
Defense Date
2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Media, Art, and Text
First Advisor
Grace Gipson
Second Advisor
Shermaine Jones
Third Advisor
Kimberly Brown
Fourth Advisor
Tawnya Pettiford-Wates
Abstract
While blackface is considered the first proper form of American theater, I want to consider how the auction of enslaved Africans functioned as the original form of American theater. The auction block acted as a kind of interactive performance in which enslaved bodies were surveilled and evaluated as a kind of spectacle. In many ways, the auction block inaugurated White viewing practices of the Black body that reverberated in the day-to-day practices of slavery and subsequent visual media like the refashioning of blackface minstrel tropes within contemporary entertainment (plays, television, film). In Imagine Being Free: Decolonizing Actor Training in University and Conservatory Programs, I assert that the auction of enslaved Africans curated viewing practices on the part of whites that now serve as guiding principles in contemporary acting technique programs throughout the U.S.
In this project, I demonstrate how the anti-Black ancestry of American theater, exhibited in the auction block, blackface minstrelsy, and current viewing practices of Black performers, has had a lasting influence on MFA, BFA, and conservatory acting technique programs. The questions animating this dissertation are “How has American theater’s relationship with racist viewing practices of Black folk created a curated, and intentional space of anti-Blackness within the pedagogy of technical acting training?” And “What steps can be taken to amend these bias practices?” I argue that these programs replicate how Black bodies were displayed on the auction block. Additionally, these programs take their cues from earlier Black minstrel performances. In this project, I look at three main actor training techniques: 1) Voice for the Actor, 2) Character Analysis, and 3) Speech and Dialect, to demonstrate their reliance on white normativity in their training techniques.
Character Analysis teaches the actor how to analyze characters beyond the depth of the text. The students should understand their character and how their experiences influence their acting choices. Speech and Dialect training uses the international phonetic alphabet to teach actors more flexibility in their performances by switching between accents for a desired character sound. And, Voice for the Actor, teaches actors to care for their voices and create the clearest sound from their vocal cords. These practices are considered integral parts of any acting training technique program, but current teaching practices are all premised on variants of white normative speech. Character Analysis’ attributes desired preferred characteristics with qualities of white characters. Speech and Dialect uses “neutral American,” a sound indicative of white men from northeast Ohio, as the sound standard for all actors. Finally, Voice for the Actor’s desire to have a clear sound is often replaced with a desire to have a sound mirroring mirrored after upper-middle class white Americans.
These three areas of study are considered the most imperative for acting training students, yet the pedagogical design of these practices proves reliant on archaic and anti-Black viewing practices. I argue that these techniques are anti-Black and dependent on white normativity. My project introduces equitable and liberatory training practices, such as implementing the creation of a personal international phonetic alphabet chart for each student, addressing the use of white normativity in character analysis, and expanding conventional vocal qualities which define the elements of a “free and natural voice” (Linklater, 3) by analyzing the perceived condition of sound in performance. Acting technique programs need to understand that the painful and dangerous perceptions of Blacks perpetuated throughout our entertainment media is not just attributed to the choices of mainstream media, but the disempowering nature of our programs. Acting technique training must imagine itself in the midst of liberation and be free from images of captivity. We must begin to build new pedagogical practices that can meet actors where they are because where they are will always be enough.
My research is deeply informed by and indebted to: Thomas F. Defrantz and Anita Gonzalez’s Black Performance Theory (2014), Patricia Fletchers Classically Speaking (2013), Kristin Linklater’s Freeing the Natural Voice (1976), Uta Hagen’s Respect for acting (1973), Sharell Luckett and Tia M. Shaffer’s Black Acting Methods (2016), Joy Degruy’s Post Traumatic Slave Syndromen (2005), Anne C Bailey’s The Weeping Time (2017), Donald Boogle’s Black Beginnings: From Uncle Tom to Birth of a Nation, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: an interpretation of Blacks in American Films (1973) and the International Phonetic Alphabet Chart (1886). These texts offer theoretical frameworks and methodological grounding that inspire how my project intersects performance, theater, and Black history.
The theories used throughout my project are Afrofuturism and Black Performance Theory supported by Black Feminist literature. Afrofuturism is an active methodology that believes in the fundamentals of imagination and works to create possibilities in Black folks present and future. Afrofuturism functions to explore how African Americans view themselves (Strait,12), while simultaneously using history and fantasy to connect Black folk to their ancestry and carry them towards untapped explorations of liberation. Black Performance Theory reexamines Blackness through performance. It explores how performance can further interrogate Black identities by looking through immigration, migration, nonlinearity, violence, spirit, and imagination. Additionally, I will utilize auto-ethnographic investigations, calling on my personal experiences as a professional actor and a student actor.
The theater theorists used in my project are Uta Hagen, Constantin Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, Cristal Chanell Truscott’s SoulWork and Tawnya Pettiford-Wates’ Ritual Poetic Drama. Uta Hagen as a theater theorist focuses on emotional memory, sense memory, the five senses, substitution and identity. Constantin Stanislavski’s methodology focuses on the importance of imagination, attention, actor transformation and the practice of emotional memory. Cristal Chanelle Truscott’s SoulWork recognizes soul as a practice revolving around collaboration. Soul integrates the collective whole and demands practitioners to identify the cultural nuances of self. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates’ Ritual Poetic Drama (RPD) works as a “tool for artists to access their own individual creative content, potency and power as artists” (Wates, 107). Wates explores how the traditional Western classical training of actors, particularly Black actors, affects the internal development of Black artists and creates deficits in their relationship with themselves. Because classical acting training focuses so heavily on traditional Western methodologies, non-white actors are often left severely disconnected from their cultural ethos. Student actors dedicate two, three, or four years to submerging themselves in Western traditions, and by the time they emerge, they have the potential of losing their traditional performance practices.
My work will not create style-specific methodologies but rather neutralize acting theory technique so that it functions as a platform for actors to explore with the intent of curiosity, instead of an exploration that demands essential change. Moreover, my project argues for an actor-centered training program that prioritizes the autonomy, creativity, and innovation of the actor in their training.
Rights
© Hope Ruffin Ward
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
4-28-2025