Being in Playing

Jan Steen is a theatre director, drama teacher, and the director of education at the KASK DRAMA/School of Arts Gent. In 2014, he obtained his doctorate in the arts with a dissertation on the dramaturgy of the actor: Being in Playing. He argues, among other things, that the specific presence of an actor determines the specific result of a role – and by extension of a show. In this lecture, he will talk about the interactions between the literal, real presence of the actor and the fictional, created presence of the role. How does the actor relate to the role? Or more broadly: what is the tensile relationship between ‘the self’ and ‘the other’? How does authenticity interact with alterity?