'What is to count as knowledge': The evolving Directing program at the National Institute of Dramatic Art

Abstract

At the 2010 Australasian Association for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies (ADSA) Conference, held at the Australian National University, staff and students from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) presented some of their work for the first time. Their very attendance at the conference was a sign that NIDA was reaching out to the Theatre Studies Academy.2 It reflected the view on the part of some departments within NIDA, if not from the institution as a whole, that they do have a relationship with and a place within the Academy. At the 2010 conference, Karen Vickery, then Head of Performance Practices, gave a paper, and Egil Kipste, Head of Directing, led a session with three of the six students enrolled in the Graduate Diploma of Dramatic Art (Directing), demonstrating his particular application of the late Stanislavskian theory of Active Analysis (AA). Given that Sharon Carnicke, whose work is the most comprehensive articulation of that theory, had been the keynote speaker earlier that day, there was a - partly implicit - suggestion that the NIDA-led session was a practical demonstration of the theory-driven world which Carnicke represented.3