Abstract
This essay explores the pedagogy of play as it applies to The Actor, a course I teach at the University of Otago in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The Actor focusses in large part on the exploration of Active Analysis and leads on from an earlier-level course on improvisation. Both courses delve into and foster a sense of play and playfulness in the student actors, and both are informed by play theory - which also aligns with the work on the Meisner technique that I teach alongside Active Analysis. Improvisation is the through-line that drives this work, and playfulness is its beating heart. Freedom to play comes from serious attention to how that playfulness is framed: in the case of Active Analysis framing is born out of a clear-cut consideration of many core aspects of Stanislavsky's System. It also originates from attention to one's acting partner/s that is developed from Meisnerian training and Johnstonian improvisation techniques. Applying this practice results in a 'porous and slippery boundary', as Richard Schechner puts it, between the fictional, simulated world and the actual offers bodying forth from the actor, thus creating play's long-established liminal space between the real and the represented. Because The Actor is taught in Aotearoa/New Zealand, certain local concepts - some from the Māori world - are applied to inflect the pedagogy. Although framed in Aotearoa's specific contexts these ideas have the potential for a more far-reaching application.