The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition

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The Viewpoints are a set of names given to certain principles of movement through time and space--they constitute a language for talking about what happens on stage. Coupling this with Composition, which is the practice of selecting and arranging the separate components of theatrical language into a cohesive work of art, provides theatre artists with an important new tool for creating and understanding their art form.

Bogart, Anne & Landau, Tina. 2004. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. New York: Theatre Communications Group. ISBN 978-1-5593-6241-2 Primarily intended for the many theatre artists who, in the last several years, have become intrigued with Viewpoints yet have had no single source to refer to in their investigations. It can also be used by anyone with a general interest in collaboration and the creative process, whether in art, business or daily life.A key principle of the Viewpoints practice is horizontalism, [4] a distinct focus on a non-hierarchical organisation of the performance elements, meaning shared engagement with elements like space, body, text, time, shape, and emotion. The practice subsequently constitutes a shared agency of creation amongst performers and creators in working through the individual body and its surrounding material environment as part of a collective ensemble. The Viewpoints thus encourages the performer to incorporate their own bodily impulses and personal experiences in the act of creation. [5] One of the goals of Viewpoints is to use accidents. This means that no matter what choice an actor makes, the ensemble should affirm that choice and incorporate it. For Viewpoints practitioners, there is no right or wrong. This belief opens up an actor’s range of choices, so performances become more dynamic. Duration: How long an event occurs over time; how long a person or a group maintains a particular movement, tempo, gesture, etc. before it changes. The theory and practice of the Six Viewpoints are organized in two parts: The Materials and The Bridge.

Perucci, Tony (19 December 2017). "On Stealing Viewpoints". Performance Research. 22 (5): 121–123 – via Tandfonline. Bogart, Anne. 2001. A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-23832-3. Bogart and her collaborators broke with this form. First, they placed greater emphasis on actors’ observations than on their feelings. Second, they prioritized evocative movement and metaphor over naturalistic storytelling. For Overlie, this shift in attention re-defines art and the role of the artist from a "creator/originator" mindset to what she called the "observer/participant," which centers on "witnessing, and interacting, ... working under the supposition that structure could be discerned rather than imposed". [7] Overlie observed this redefinition of the artist's endeavor to correspond with the artistic shift from modernism to post-modernism. Bartow, Arthur. 2006. The Training of the American Actor. New York: Theatre Communications Group. ISBN 978-1-55936-268-9Lauren says Viewpoints is more than an artistic method; it’s a way of seeing the world. “It’s fun, it’s joyful, and it’s kind of mind-blowing when you realize you can’t do anything wrong,” she said. “Real Viewpoints practice is so delightful, and the answers exist in the other. That’s a really good thing to practice in this world.” We never talk about our feelings,” Lauren said, discussing SITI rehearsals. “Bogart will say that the space isn’t right, or maybe a company member will say that the time or the gesture isn’t right. The Viewpoints are used to clarify the story. The idea is that all these things are integrated.” urn:lcp:viewpointsbookpr0000boga:epub:12af6468-d1b0-4dec-bb87-c0d73bf091c2 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier viewpointsbookpr0000boga Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t4tk1396r Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781559362412 Kinesthetic Response:How performers respond to movement from other people, objects, or design elements.