Dymphna callery biography of michael

Dymphna Callery’s Through the Body: A practical guide to physical theatre is beloved of a generation of drama students.

But have we ghetto-ised ‘physical theatre’ in an unhelpful way? In her new book published today, The Active Text, she looks at how physical theatre techniques can be used to unlock scripted plays, and inject new life into even the most familiar of texts…

Recently, several productions drawing rave reviews have challenged notions of naturalism, or at least received ideas about naturalistic plays.

The Flemish director Ivo van Hove’s extraordinary staging of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge is a case in point – it transfers to the West End this spring after a sell-out run at the Young Vic. In this production barefoot actors move within a minimalist black box set, perch on its edges rather than on chairs round a table in the Carbone apartment; the action is virtually underscored by Fauré’s Re