78 inversely they each detach their real body from its living situation in order to make it breathe, spark, and, if need be, cry in the imaginary” (Merleau-Ponty 2012: 107). This can happen in training and rehearsal where actors pay attention to their own apparatus of perception, and such reflection provides a reference point for creating the world of play (Johnston 2021: 29). This is what we can see in the Viewpoints workshop, as the performers begin playing with their relation to the space, including a chair, and toying with how they interact with the prop or their partner to emote their mental disposition and in turn suggests to the audience where the power lies. Touch Our senses make us responsive beings; the body is a vessel of culture, shaping our sense of self and the way we interact. I agree with Dymoke that touch, a means to connect to the self and others, is relative to the notions of identity, community “and so to self-affirmation and self-belief within a wider cultural construct or belief system” (Dymoke 2014: 214). In performance, touch is used to bring the actor into their imaginary circumstances, to place themselves into an environment in which they can interact and showcase a way of life or being in the world, supported through the mise-en-scène that evokes a more immersed experience sensorially. In opening one’s consciousness, there is a place for imagination. This can be seen in Wangh’s “Image Walks” where the actor is prompted with an environment that stimulates a way in which to interact with the space, as “memories are not encoded only in our brains; they are trapped in our muscles, too” (Wangh 2000: 110). This contact to the world in which the performance is held, begins “by bringing your body to your mind, noticing what is actually happening in your mind and finding a physical form that can embody that energy” (Wangh 2000: 43), creating a powerful tool of communication. Merleau-Ponty explains how “two hands can alternate between the functions of ‘touching’ and ‘touched’” (2012: 95). Therefore, a person can be both the initiator, the subject (active) or the object (passive) of touch, meaning there needs to be a nonverbal communication between the two bodies to understand the circumstances of the story. The body is always perceived through the lens of experience, we question its functionality and its purpose for interaction, through our own sense of body spatiality and what is engrained into society. A “commercial notion of the human being as a slave to sex urges” is explored throughout psychology, religion and art (Paxton and Kilcoyne 1993 in Dymoke 2014: 213). By looking into the psychology of Freud, there is an understanding that “the [sexual] drives are attached to biological processes; they are autoerotic and regulated by an erotogenic zone” (Grosz 1994 in Lannen 2022: 171).
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