‘Habitational action’: beyond inner and outer action

In Training for Performance: A Meta-Disciplinary Account, John Matthews argues for a move beyond the dominance of psychophysical discourse in actor training. Psychophysicality, in discourse if not in practice, is an important battle that has been won. The work of Phillip Zarrilli in particular has been crucial in articulating a terminology about an intuitive certainty that twentieth-century practitioners like Stanislavski, Copeau, and Grotowski have explored in various ways. Unlike Matthews, however, this article argues that a shift beyond the prevalence of psychophysical discourse can still be rooted in the practice of exercises and other formative strategies. The article takes its cue from a practice-as-research laboratory investigation on the training–performance continuum the author has been pursuing since 2003. A milestone development has led to the identification of 'habitational action' as a term that allows actor and performer processes to be discussed without a priori restrictions of inner/outer problematics. The article first outlines the research practice that led to 'habitational action', followed by an explanation of the term and a discussion of some implications. To achieve a broader understanding, 'habitational action' is then situated by means of a close reading of Zarrilli's term 'inhabiting' and Lorna Marshall's account of 'habits'.