Confirmation of Focus

We decided that the focus will be the effects of Kalaripayattu itself and not the languages that can be used to discourse the effects of Kalaripayattu. This is so as to stay focussed on one area which I felt I had more interests in. It is also because it's an area that helps people understand the significance of Zarilli's work in incorporating Kalaripayattu into actor training.

At the same time, I established that I don't want to assess the effectiveness of the technique but rather just state the effects. I felt that to come up with a judgment on effectiveness needs alot more time and a sizeable sample group of people who have been trained in Zarilli's technique. This makes it impossible to achieve with our current constrains. Furthermore, assessing the effectiveness of something requires a measure of sorts of effectiveness. As such, the optimal state for performance might already have a different measure under a cultural understanding, a contemporary theatre understanding and a pschological and biological understanding.

However, deciding just to discuss the effects in different forms of discourse brings about this question: Why do we NEED all these forms of discourse? How does that contribute to academia? Firstly, my personal experience in voice class yielded that I benefitted from knowing both biological facts about vocal cords and metaphorical language used to evoke images during the training process. In other words, I am an example of someone that benefits from a pedagogy that uses different forms of discourse to reach the students. Secondly, looking at this practice from view points of different fields help people with different backgrounds understand the importance of his work. Thirdly, it helps break down the existing separation between arts and science. By using different forms of epistemology to understand his work, it debunks the thought that Zarrilli's work is mysticism and has no real physical benefit on the actor. Fourthly, the most accepted understanding of the body is that of biology and modern medicine. By using the most up-to-date knowledge of the body to understand the effects of a traditional practice, it not only serves to communicate to the modern audience better, it addresses the issue of its relevance to modern actors.

I made it clear that I didn't wanna debate the use of different epistemologies in the paper but will state my reasons for doing so in the introduction section. There, I'll do a brief lit review to demonstrate reasons why I think its beneficial to use different forms of discourse.

I established that I will only use interviewees that have trained under Zarilli's technique rather than people who trained in just Kalaripayattu, to make things more relevant. At the same time, I'll try to experience Kalaripayattu first-hand myself and document my findings....

Other than logistical stuff... we didn't really talk much. I was just left with the parting shot that I should think about the necessity of the demystification of Zarilli's language in his approach.

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3rd Meeting with Dr Hwang

In our discussion, I established that the way I'm going to talk about Kalaripayattu is through the case study approach. From looking specifically at Kalaripayattu, I'll see if I can draw out any patterns that maybe generalised with the use of martial arts in drama practice.

We also talked about the idea of space and how it affects the practice of Kalaripayattu itself, since Kalari is actually a Malayalam word for a type of construction where the practitioners practise in. Dr Hwang talked about how consciousness does not exist in a vacuum but always exists as a response to something else.

I was reminded how in social sciences the position of the researcher is very important and we do not assume the "transparent objective researcher" as in the other sciences. Hence, my position has to be decided before I can delve further into the topic.

I iterated that I have an interest in bridging knowledge that are traditionally seen as separate and that is a probably reason why I wanted biology in the scope of my paper. It had helped me when I assimilated different sources of information into one concept when I trained in voice production so I wanted to do the same for an actor training approach.

I was left with this question at the end of the meeting: In your paper, do you want to talk about the effects of Kalaripayattu to the psychophysical approach, or the effects of the language?

Lessons???

Kalaripayattu Group in S'pore

My Thesis Schedule

1st Rambling

This blog is set up so that Dr Hwang and I can track the progress made on my honours thesis. It will be a space where I'll wonder aloud and sound out my ideas.

In our meeting, I confessed that I felt "guilt" for bringing the scientific perspective to Zarrilli's practice because it reminded me about the prevalent sentiments towards theatre during Stanislavsky's and Meyerhold's time. Things that were not immediately scientifically justifiable then was either seen as useless or seen as a threat.

Though I don't see things that way, I was concerned that the research may end up looking like it privileges the scientific language over the metaphorical language commonly used in theatre and in Zarilli's practice.

Recalling my time spent in Voice Production class with Ms Nora Samosir, I felt it was beneficial to my training to be trained in the metaphorical language but at the same time read up on medical books on "scientific" knowledge of the vocal cords.

We also discussed how we should be wary about the traditional east-west dichotomy with our discussion. There is a linguistic tendency for me to refer to modern medicine as "western" medicine. I guess it's because I see it as compared to TCM which is "eastern". At the same time, I also felt that I have to be careful of the Art-Science dichotomy, paying special attention to the fact that Physics was at one point, Natural Philosophy.

So we established that it was interesting to look at the topic, treating the "scientific" language and the "metaphoric" language as 2 modes of discourse to consider the idea of consciousness and attention.

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