Standing in Space: The Six Viewpoints Theory and Practice by Mary Overlie

Paperback. 2016.

Imagine performance being a long string of pearls. Each pearl represents an aspect of theater: the blocking, the timing, the costumes, the theater itself, the movements and gestures of the actors and dancers. Then the string breaks. The pearls scatter and bounce everywhere, even over all boundaries of our imaginations and expectations of cause and effect. This is the process contained in the Six Viewpoints.

The Six Viewpoints is based in hyper awareness of details and interactions, rather than grand fixed plan. The Six Viewpoints training prepares the individual director, choreographer, actor and dancer to perceive and interact with theater as an independent responsive agent.

The Six Viewpoints training deconstruction brings the artist uniquely close to action in the fullest sense of the word. The Viewpoints book “Standing in Space” is a theory and practice manual based on the author’s childhood question, “What are dance and theater made of?” At the time, Overlie was seeking a technical language to discuss the artistic forms similar to the specific language used to describe painting. While dancing and working in New York when she was young, Overlie developed a comprehensive language and simultaneously uncovered a philosophical depth to performance when laid bare by her deconstruction. She continued work on the project through the several major artistic and social changes of the 1960s and 70s, until in the 90s she finally completed an entire structure of theory and practice. While the manuscript took over two more decades to complete, the worldwide theatre and dance community has embraced her work in ever-widening circles. The Viewpoints have been seminal to hundreds of individual artistic careers most notably those of Moises Kaufman, Anne Bogart, and Tina Landou of the US.