Taking Clive Seriously For a Moment

Dick McCaw

(2007)

Dick McCaw (2007) Taking Clive Seriously For a Moment. New Theatre Quarterly, 23 (). pp. 337-351. ISSN 0266-464X

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Abstract

Dick McCaw was a friend and colleague of Clive Barker's for many years, notably during Clive's chairmanship of the International Workshop Festival, which McCaw created and directed to answer the continuing training and development needs of professionals working in the performing arts. In this article, he assesses the roots from which Barker's Theatre Games derives its continuing influence, and offers a critique of its vulnerabilities, interwoven with personal reflections on his association with its author. He discusses our greater understanding of the workings of the brain since the advent of fMRI imaging, and how this affects Clive's metaphor of the roles of the ‘back’ and ‘front’ brain in controlling and integrating the actor's motivation and movement, relating this to other ways in which Clive's proudly autodidactic methods often reached towards the right solutions through unscientific methodology. He looks also at Clive's use of the teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais, and of his intuitive and successful use of Feldenkrais techniques in regaining momentum following his first stroke. Dick McCaw, whose DVD celebrating Clive's theatre games workshops and their background, Theatre Jazz, was issued by Arts Archives, Exeter, in 2005, is currently teaching at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Information about this Version

This is a Draft version
This version's date is: 2007
This item is peer reviewed

Link to this Version

https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/bca3fcdc-9f56-08ca-c387-a59c2ee72d70/1/

Item TypeJournal Article
TitleTaking Clive Seriously For a Moment
AuthorsMcCaw, Dick
DepartmentsFaculty of Arts\Drama and Theatre

Identifiers

doi10.1017/S0266464X07000267

Deposited by () on 29-Mar-2010 in Royal Holloway Research Online.Last modified on 04-Jan-2011

Notes

(C) 2007 Cambridge University Press, whose permission to mount this version for private study and research is acknowledged.  The repository version is the author's final draft.

References

Barker, Clive 'The Dilemma of the Professional in University Drama' in Theatre Quarterly, TQ 4.16 (1974) - Theatre Games (Methuen, London, 1977)

Cole , Jonathan Pride and a Daily Marathon (Duckworth, London, 1991) Etchells, Tim Certain Fragments, (Routledge, London and New York, 1999)

Feldenkrais, Moshe Body and Mature Behaviour (Frog, Ltd Berkeley, California, 2005 [First published 1949])

Ginsburg, Carl Foreword to Body and Mature Behaviour, pp.xxiii - xiv Gregory, Richard L. (Ed.) The Oxford Companion to The Mind, (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1987)

Grotowski, Jerzy Toward a Poor Theatre, (Methuen, London, 1991) - ‘Exercises’ (first published in Dialog, No 12, December 1979. Translation by James Slowiak

Hanna, Thomas ‘What is Somatics?’ in Bone, Breath, Gesture, (Ed. Hanlon Johnson, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 1995)

McCaw, Dick (Ed.) Theatre Jazz (Arts Archives, Exeter, 2005) - (Ed.) Space Improvisation Creativity (Art Archives, Exeter, 2005) , Jonathan Pride and a Daily Marathon (Duckworth, London, 1991)

Spark, Muriel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976)

Todd, Mabel The Thinking Body, (Dance Horizon Books, Highstown, NJ, 1968 [First published 1937])

Zinder, David Body Voice Imagination (Routledge, London and New York, 2002)


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