The Actor as Conduit: Connecting to Sacred Text View Digital Media

Workshop Presentation
Candace Vance  

How do we view ourselves as participators in religious practice? Is it possible that our spiritual identities have been subverted by those in religious authority, potentially working toward their own agenda(s)? Might there be answers in Sacred Texts? Might we bring our artistry to our religious identities, and might that pursuit, in fact, be of benefit to our greater faith communities? Might the actor act as a conduit--a contemporary, living body and voice--for Sacred Texts? This interactive session centers around these questions. Using actor techniques typically used in playing Heightened Text, we experiment with getting inside, underneath, and behind Sacred writings from several World Religions. We practice using imagery that lives inside our twenty-first century selves to connect to the Sacred texts, and speak them aloud. The workshop culminates with a discussion of our findings.