Abstract
This study examines how participants’ bodily orientations organize transitions from preparation to performance during rehearsals for a Japanese theater production. Drawing on video-based conversation analysis, it shows that actors’ entry into performance as characters is collaboratively accomplished through embodied conduct involving both actors and the director. The director’s shifts in posture and visual orientation make her directorial way of seeing publicly intelligible and contribute to reconfiguring the participation frame for performance. At the same time, the intelligibility of this directorial way of seeing depends on how these bodily shifts are situated within the unfolding interaction. Performance as a creative activity is interactionally made possible through the coordinated embodied conduct of multiple participants.