The reproduction of acting techniques from theatre practice within the creative domain of the camera: an analysis through Katie Mitchell's "Five Truths"

This thesis aims to examine the formative influence of theatre theories on acting techniques and how these techniques can be re-produced in a cinematographic context through the use of the camera. Within this framework, the transition of fundamental components of performance—namely facial expression and bodily movement—from stage to screen is approached not merely as a formal transfer, but as an aesthetic, theoretical, and technical reconstruction. The adaptation of the actor's physical presence and emotional expression from theatre's live and holistic representation to cinema's framed and fragmented language of narration is analyzed through an interdisciplinary lens. At the center of this study lies Five Truths, a video installation by Katie Mitchell, which serves as a visual laboratory for this transformation. Mitchell reconstructs distinct acting aesthetics within a cinematic framework by interpreting five influential theatre theorists—Konstantin Stanislavski, Bertolt Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, and Antonin Artaud—thus revealing how theatrical techniques can be re-produced using the representational tools of cinema. Mitchell's practice, grounded in theoretical depth, not only demonstrates the influence of theatre on cinema but also makes visible the theoretical dimensions of how acting techniques interact with the camera. In this context, Five Truths is not merely a case study selected for the scope of this thesis; it is also positioned as a foundational epistemological axis of the research. The installation defines the conceptual boundaries of the inquiry and concretizes the aesthetic and technical dynamics through which forms of acting are re-produced via the camera. In doing so, Mitchell's work provides a functional model for analyzing increasingly pronounced aesthetic transitions between theatre and cinema, and serves as a comprehensive visual counterpart to the theoretical structure developed throughout the thesis.