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The Bodily Encounter: Towards a Utopian Community through Stage Presence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2025
Abstract
The pursuit of a utopian community through theatre-making involves re-examining the concept of stage presence. This article contributes to the discourse on the nature of stage presence in theatre, proposing a middle ground between the views that stage presence is solely a result of the performer’s quality and that it is an effect that technology can produce. Through a phenomenological lens, the author argues that stage presence is a contingent and relational phenomenon achieved through the bodily communicative process of both the performer and the spectator. Through the exploration of traditional Chinese theatre, this research found that the bodily encounter between the performer and the spectator contributes to stage presence. The article aims to stimulate further discourse on the significance of stage presence in constructing a utopian community.
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- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International Federation for Theatre Research
Footnotes
Research for this article was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Palestinian American Research Center. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Palestinian American Research Center.
References
NOTES
2 Shay Sayre and Cynthia King, Entertainment and Society: Audiences, Trends, and Impacts (California: SAGE Publications, 2003), p. 243.
3 Ben Walmsley, ‘Why People Go to the Theatre: A Qualitative Study of Audience Motivation’, Journal of Customer Behaviour, 10, 4 (2011), pp. 335–51.
4 Rebecca Scollen, ‘On the Record: An Account of Regional Non-theatregoers’ Responses to a Selection of Plays Toured to Northern Australia in 2004–2005’, Australia Drama Studies, 50 (2007), pp. 183–201.
5 Ibid.
6 Rebecca Scollen, ‘Regional Voices Talk Theatre: Audience Development for the Performing Arts’, International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 13, 1 (2008), pp. 45–56, here p. 52.
7 Rebecca Scollen, ‘Talking Theatre Is More than a Test Drive: Two Audience Development Methodologies under Review’, International Journal of Arts Management, 12, 1 (2009), pp. 4–13, here p. 9.
8 Elinor Fuchs, The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theatre after Modernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 32.
9 Erika Fischer-Lichte, ‘Appearing as Embodied Mind: Defining a Weak, a Strong and a Radical Concept of Presence’, in Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks, eds., Archaeologies of Presence: Art, Performance and the Persistence of Being (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 103–18, here pp. 107–8.
10 Loren Kruger, ‘Making Sense of Sensation: Enlightenment, Embodiment, and the End(s) of Modern Drama’, in Ric Knowles, Joanne Tompkins and W. B. Worthen, eds., Modern Drama: Defining the Field (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 80–101, here p. 81. David Savran, ‘The Haunted Houses of Modernity’, in ibid., pp. 117–27, here p. 127.
11 Fuchs, The Death of Character, p. 29.
12 Ibid., p. 32.
13 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). See also Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Spivak Gayatri (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
14 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre (London: Routledge, 2006).
15 Philip Auslander, Presence and Resistance: Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in Contemporary American Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), pp. 95–7.
16 Hui Daqiang and Weng Minhua, Dongya Xiju Hudong Shi 东亚戏剧互动史 (An Interactive History of East Asian Drama) (Shanghai: 上海古籍出版社, 2014), pp. 113–14.
17 Ibid.
18 All translations from Chinese into English are mine unless otherwise indicated. Wang Guowei, Wang Guowei xiqu lunwen ji 王国维戏曲论文集 (Essays of Wang Guowei on xiqu) (Beijing: 中国戏剧出版社, 1984), p. 163.
19 Xijing fu 西京赋 (Essays of Western Capital), a literary work written by Zhang Heng (张衡, 78–139 AD), a distinguished man of letters and famous astronomer of the Eastern Han Dynasty, gives an account of the performance of Huanggong of the East Sea by virtuosic performers of the Eastern Han. Zhang Daxin, Zhongguo xiju jianshi 中国戏剧简史 (A Brief History of Chinese Theatre) (Zhengzhou: 河南大学出版社, 2018), p. 11. Zhang Heng, ‘Xijing fu’, in Faye Fei, ed. and trans., Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance from Confucius to the Present (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 24–5, here pp. 24–5.
20 Zhang Daxin, Zhongguo xiju jianshi 中国戏剧简史 (A Brief History of Chinese Theatre) (Zhengzhou: 河南大学出版社, 2018), p. 45.
21 A Jia, ‘Truth in Life and Truth in Art’, in Fei, Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance from Confucius to the Present, pp. 146–53, here p. 149.
22 Hui Daqiang and Weng Minhua, Dongya Xiju Hudong Shi, p. 117.
23 Lan Fan, Zhongxi xiju bijiao lun 中西戏剧比较论 (A Comparative Study of Chinese and Western Dramas) (Shanghai: 学林出版社, 2008), p. 311.
24 Pan Zhiheng, ‘Xiandu 仙度’, in Pan Zhiheng quhua 潘之恒曲 话 (Pan Zhiheng on xiqu), ed. Wang Xiaoyi 汪效倚 (Beijing: 中国戏剧出版社, 1988), p. 42, here p. 42.
25 Square brackets in original; Fei provides an alternative translation in square brackets.
26 Pan Zhiheng, ‘Pan Zhiheng on Acting’, in Fei, Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance from Confucius to the Present, pp. 58–60, here pp. 59–60.
27 The Chinese characters of Pan’s writing are 光耀已及于远. Pan, ‘Xiandu’, p. 42.
28 Ibid.
29 Liu Yu, ‘Prohibit Popular Entertainment’, in Fei, Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance from Confucius to the Present, p. 27, here p. 27.
30 Jill Dolan, ‘Performance, Utopia, and the “Utopian Performative”’, Theatre Journal, 53, 3 (2001), pp. 455–79, here p. 455.
31 Jill Dolan, ‘Utopia in Performance’, Theatre Research International, 31, 2 (2006), pp. 163–73; Dolan, ‘Performance, Utopia, and the “Utopian Performative”’.
32 Jennifer Parker-Starbuck and Roberta Mock, ‘Researching the Body in/as Performance’, in Baz Kershaw and Helen Nicholson, eds., Research Methods in Theatre and Performance (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), pp. 210–35, here p. 212.
33 In her analysis of Janet Cardiff’s works, Josette Féral states that ‘presence is more strongly felt when there is … an absence of presence’. Josette Féral, ‘How to Define Presence Effects: The Work of Janet Cardiff’, in Giannachi, Kaye and Shanks, Archaeologies of Presence, pp. 29–49, here p. 32.
34 Fischer-Lichte, ‘Appearing as Embodied Mind’, p. 107.
35 Ibid., pp. 108–10.
36 Elinor Fuchs, ‘Presence and the Revenge of Writing: Re-thinking Theatre after Derrida’, Performing Arts Journal, 9, 2–3 (1985), pp. 163–73, here p. 166.
37 Ibid.
38 Roy Connolly and Richard Ralley, ‘Something Real Is Needed: Constructing and Dismantling Presence’, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 30, 2 (2010), pp. 203–18, here p. 211.
39 Fischer-Lichte, ‘Appearing as Embodied Mind’, p. 112.
40 Ibid., p. 114.
41 Ibid., p. 115, capitals in the original.
42 Connolly and Ralley, ‘Something Real Is Needed’, p. 214.
43 Ibid., p. 215.
44 Phillip Zarrilli, ‘Toward a Phenomenological Model of the Actor's Embodied Modes of Experience’, Theatre Journal, 56, 4 (2004), pp. 653–66; Phillip Zarrilli, ‘“… Presence …” as a Question and Emergent Possibility: A Case Study from the Performer's Perspective’, in G. Giannachi, N. Kaye and M. Shanks, eds., Archaeologies of Presence (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 119–52; Phillip Zarrilli, ‘The Actor's Work on Attention, Awareness, and Active Imagination: Between Phenomenology, Cognitive Science, and Practices of Acting’, in M. Bleeker, J. F. Sherman and E. Nedelkopoulou, eds., Performance and Phenomenology: Traditions and Transformations (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 75–96; Bert O. States, Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Bert O. States, ‘The Actor's Presence: Three Phenomenal Modes’, in P. B. Zarrilli, ed., Acting (re) Considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 23–39; Bert O. States, ‘The Phenomenological Attitude’, in J. G. Reinelt and J. R. Roach, eds., Critical Theory and Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), pp. 26–36; Alice Rayner, To Act, To Do, To Perform: Drama and the Phenomenology of Action (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994); Stanton Garner, Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994).
45 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 30.
46 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Prospectus of His Work’, trans. Arleen B. Dallery, in James M. Edie, ed., The Primacy of Perception (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp. 3–11, here pp. 3–4.
47 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 372.
48 Ibid., p. 13.
49 Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 402.
50 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 379–80.
51 Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology, p. 402.
52 Patrick Tucker, Secrets of Screen Acting (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 18.
53 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 146.
54 Suzanne Jaeger, ‘Embodiment and Presence: The Ontology of Presence Reconsidered’, in David Krasner and David Z. Saltz, eds., Staging Philosophy: Intersections of Theater, Performance, and Philosophy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), pp. 122–41, here p. 127.
55 Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Florence: Taylor and Francis, 1999), pp. 54–5.
56 Ibid., p. 61.
57 Ibid., p. 159.
58 Phelan, Unmarked, p. 146.
56 Jaeger, ‘Embodiment and Presence’, p. 123.
60 Ibid., p. 131.
61 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 4.
62 Taylor Carman, ‘Between Empiricism and Intellectualism’, in Rosalyn Diprose and Jack Reynolds, eds., Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2008), pp. 44–56, here p. 45.
63 David R. Cerbone, ‘Perception’, in Diprose and Reynolds, Merleau-Ponty, pp. 121–31, here pp. 128–9.
64 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 334.
65 Ibid.
66 Jaeger, ‘Embodiment and Presence’, p. 122.
67 Ted Toadvine, ‘Phenomenology and “Hyper-reflection”’, in Diprose and Reynolds, Merleau-Ponty, pp. 17–29, here p. 20.
68 Jane Goodall, Stage Presence (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 74. Goodall makes a reference to the English actor David Garrick (1717–79), whose statement was ‘one of the first references to electricity as a way of describing the powers of the actor’.
69 Ibid., p. 82.
70 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 368.
71 Shogo Tanaka, ‘Intercorporeality as a Theory of Social Cognition’, Theory & Psychology, 25, 4 (2015), pp. 455–72, here p. 462. See also Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 173.
72 Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, trans. Saskya Iris Jain (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 35.
73 E. Barba and N. Savarese, A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer, trans. R. Fowler (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 176.
74 Ibid., p. 184.
75 Liu Huifen, Gujin xitai yishu yu xiju biaoyan meixue 古今戲台藝術與戲曲表演美學 (Taipei: 文史哲出版社, 2001), p. 114.
76 Gai Jiaotian, Fenmo chunqiu: Gai jiaotian wutai yishu jingyan 粉墨春秋: 盖叫天舞台艺术经验 (Shanghai: 上海文艺出版社, 2011), p. 60.
77 Ibid., p. 62.
78 Ibid.
79 Gai, Fenmo chunqiu, p. 233.
80 Liu, Gujin xitai yishu yu xiju biaoyan meixue, p. 118.
81 Tadashi Suzuki and Kazuko Matsuoka, ‘Culture Is the Body!’, Performing Arts Journal, 8, 2 (1984), pp. 28–35.
82 Tadashi Suzuki, Culture Is the Body: The Theatre Writings of Tadashi Suzuki, trans. Kameron H. Steele (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2015), p. 175.