Eleonora Fabiao
Performance Studies, NYU
Email: ef383@nyu.edu

SCENIC APPARITION

Abstract:
The objective of this essay is to bring together and relate concepts, experiences and testimonies in order to reflect on the specificities of the performer's apparition through an investigation about the scenic body and the scenic state - the psychophysical state performers enter while on stage. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the flesh will be presented and discussed. Selected notes - rehearsal, teaching and reading notes - and excerpts from interviews with performers - Denise Stoklos (Brazilian performer), Carmelita Tropicana (Cuban-American performer), Marina Salomon (Brazilian dancer), Fred Newman and Honora Fergusson (American actors, both members of the Mabou Mines Theater Company) - compose this study-in-progress.
There is also a linguistic research being developed on these pages; I am concerned with introducing and exploring a glossary of words and expressions related to the performer's activity. The necessity of a continuous linguistic revision both reflects and generates, in a subtle but emphatic way, the permanent reinvention of the performer's art.