ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how an experienced acting instructor, Professor D, repeatedly deployed metacomments to frame his students' observation of performance. A professional fight choreographer and actor, Professor D has taught university-level acting courses for a decade. His teaching practice is shaped by a regional theatre career, a BFA in Acting from a leading US conservatory, an MFA in Performance Pedagogy and, at the time of the study, two years of doctoral study in theatre and performance studies. Professor D used metacomments to establish two overlapping frames of performance learning activity. Metacomments offer acting teachers a way to animate an observational frame of activity that can support students in mindfully observing coaching sessions, which leads students to reify performance concepts and promotes the transfer of performance knowledge. Actor coaching involves a familiar event structure in which an instructor contingently intervenes into an actor's performance to clarify intentions, relationships and, in general, improve practice as a means to train the actor.
