An Actor Adrift (Performance Books) by Lorna Marshall

by Yoshi Oida

An Actor Adrift is the remarkable account of Japanese actor director Yoshi Oida, who in 1968 left Japan and joined Peter Brook's international theatre company in Paris. Since then he has become a leading member and trainer in the company. In this book, part personal story and part a workbook for actors and directors wishing to understand and employ Peter Brook's techniques, Oida describes the formation and early training of Brook's company and provides an account of the first decade of work. It provides a fascinating account of the company's first public performance - The Conference of the Birds in Iran, of the extraordinary explorative journey that followed through Africa, of work in America and of the return to work in France. While he relates productions of The Ik, The Conference of the Birds, The Mahabharata, Orghast and Timon of Athens, he interweaves his vivid personal experience as an actor in whom Eastern and Western culture and practices come together.

Genres: Theatre

Paperback Bunko

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

The Japanese actor, director and teacher, Yoshi Oida, has created his own acting style, after years of performance with the theatre icon Peter Brook. As part of Brook`s International Theatre Group, Yoshi Oida performed on various stages all over the world. Several years ago he began directing plays himself using a unique combination of Eastern and Western approaches to theatre.

Reviews

[Hannah Wengård · Rating 5 out of 5]

How this man explains acting, views the world and describes cultural meetings.. It drives me more than anything and is what I want cultural exchange to be. <3YOSHI<3

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

wonderful

[Andrew Cockcroft-Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much more than just observations of Brook. Yoshi is the holy man of theatre, the wandering warrior.

[Algernon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yoshi Oida has contributed two of my favorite books about the craft of acting, The Invisible Actor and An Actor's Tricks, so I had been looking forward to reading this for a long time, knowing it was more of a personal memoir of his years working with Peter Brook and since.

The book is at its strongest recounting Oida's initial contact with Peter Brook, and his departure from Japan to work with Brook's international company in Paris just as the 1968 uprising was taking place. From the beginning, Oida-san recounts his struggle to figure out his contribution, as a Japanese actor who began working in western-style acting before investigating traditional Japanese performance. These chapters include his travels with Brook to pre-revolutionary Iran, across Africa, and to New York. In telling his story, he recounts working practically with the theories Brook developed in The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate. These chapters are excellent, consistently linking Oida's personal struggles with his artistic work.

The book begins to lose steam in chapter seven, when Oida enters a period of clerical training in Shingon Buddhism, where he seems impressed by pseudo-science such as photographs of people's energy leaving their fingers, and where the connection between his spiritual investigations and creativity gets noisier. The final chapters rapidly summarize events and, while explaining his ambivalence about acting and directing, never explains how he began teaching his well-known theatre workshops.

[Spiegel · Rating 4 out of 5]

O autor relata sua trajetória no teatro, tendo emigrado do Japão para a Europa. Uma leitura fascinante para leigos como eu.