ABSTRACT
Can an actor deliberately generate an atmosphere? Should we consider an atmosphere a medium? How can we know an atmosphere? In this chapter I pose these questions in relation to the craft of performance through the ethnographic lens of working with experimental theatre makers. Shaping an atmosphere is central to the actor’s work and as such offers insight into how we know atmospheres. In this chapter, my ethnographic treatise of the actor’s work on vibrational song and Taijiquan suggests that attentional practices, the airs, grounds and other constituents of the places we move through and live in are partners in the generation of atmospheres. I argue that it is one’s participation in the very creation of those atmospheres that enables knowledge of them.
