Cuerpo, experiencia y performance actoral como vías de conocimiento.

Abstract

The research presented here aims to legitimize the value of practice in the performing arts as a means of knowledge. To this end, it draws on theoretical foundations from various disciplinary fields that concur in identifying the body, experience, and performance practice as paths to experiential, enactive, and situated knowledge—that is, knowledge acquired in relationship, in a framework. The concern that motivated this research is strongly linked to the author's professional experience as an actress and dancer. Taking these practices as a starting point was a methodological decision. From a perspective of contemporary theater, which embraces methodological procedures of actor-driven dramaturgy, one can consider acting as a form of knowledge. We are speaking of a theater where the actor's corporeality is their very identity, where the actor identifies themselves in the materiality and phenomenon of the stage, and where the sense of truth lies in their existence itself and in the execution of the act, not in previously conceived ideas. We are talking about a theater situated at the level of experience and event, which embraces improvisation as a working methodology for an actor who positions himself as a creator, not a performer. In this theater, the action performed by the actor/actress is thought. Based on this premise, it could be said that cognition is the process of knowledge in action. Acting is doing, acting is thinking, and acting is knowing in relation to others within a system that constitutes itself and refers to itself, that becomes and transforms, that performs.