Anne Bogart: Viewpoints

Anne Bogart

For many years now I have been enamored by the creative methods laid out by Robert LePage. His and improvisational directing and performance creation styles have inspired me continuously through out my education, performance and directing experiences.

It makes sense to me then that I have recently found myself more and more interested in Anne Bogart and her development of the 'Viewpoints' technique.

Viewpoints was developed and evolved by Bogart at the Saratoga International Theatre Institute from a process pioneered by Mary Overlie called the Six Viewpoints. These systems are deconstructive in nature and guide the performer in first dissecting and then reconstructing their understanding of Space, Story, Shape, Time, Emotion and Movement as it relates to the development of their performance.

Their are so many connections and synergies between these techniques and those of LePage and even John Flax, another of my inspirational guides, that my head is spinning as I try to integrate my understanding of Viewpoints into my own concepts of performance processes.

I find myself considering the implications Isadora brings to the Viewpoints method. My current investigations seem to directly speak to Space and the question: How can Isadora can provide a performers body with something to listen too within the performance Space? And even more intriguingly to me: How can Isadora provide the performance Space with an ability to listen to the performer?

Space, in the context of Viewpoints, refers to the architecture/spacial relationship to objects and floor pattern a performer exists within while performing.

I am currently adding a few of her books to my reading list:

• Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. 2005. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. New York: Theatre Communications Group. ISBN 1-55936-241-3.
• Dixon, Michael Bigelow and Joel A. Smith, eds. 1995. Anne Bogart:Viewpoints. Career Development Ser. Lyme, NH: Smith and Kraus. ISBN 1 880399 94 6.