Uncanny Actor Training – working with entfremdung (estrangement; depersonalisation; derealisation.)

Psychoanalytic thought suggests that aesthetic experience is associated with Freud’s notion of the uncanny (1919). This state might be thought of as a necessary aspect of both the creation and the reception of the aesthetic object. Availability to this experience requires some type of depersonalisation or estrangement from the self. This estrangement in turn suggests that there might be a duality occurring in the estranged self: an observing, detached self and a participating self; many actors talk of the uncanny notion of being immersed in a performative action while simultaneously having an experience of observing themselves in performance.

I have worked with 2nd year Drama students undertaking an Actor Training module and the paper examines our processual theatre practice and the attempt to allow access to a conscious experience of estrangement (with all the disturbances and difficulties that this might create) as well as the means to record and reflect upon this phenomenological experience.