January 2023.

Rehearsal. I'll start today with an activity transmitted to me by a director: "from 1 to 5: how do you feel?". I didn´t use the description of this exercise at any time in the thesis. I say to the actor by my side:

- The exercise researching, just as the artistic practices exist in a place that has both unrepeatable and ephemeral moments on one hand and a permanent interaction on the other.

This description contains the possibility of feeling the characteristic of an opportune moment that lives “in between” – as a dropdown time suspended in the present – and the repetition of actions that implies absence.

With this study is intended to understand how the perception of qualitative time have changed, and what place occupy, in our daily lives. The characteristics of the experience of qualitative time are based in the classical concepts of kairos and otium. 

The objective is to conceive possibilities to the fruition of Blank Space (qualitative empty time to be filled significantly), through the convergence of: the analyses of the creative processes of Portuguese directors (João Brites, João Mota, Luís Miguel Cintra and Miguel Seabra); autobiographical experiences; and a theoretical construct based on the writings of various authors.

The research questions present in this study are: How is it possible to build a Blank Space in our everyday lives? – and – What tools used in creative theatrical processes can contribute to the experience of qualitative time through the construction of Blank Spaces?

The qualitative time designation contains a specific meaning that encompasses within itself the characteristics of kairos and otium. An otium that claims a contemplative action, emphasizing the dimensions of freedom and choices for personal benefit and prioritizes the particular experience and involvement (Laidlaw, 1968). A kairos that is identified when an action should take place: opportune and special time; and when a constellation of events presents us with a critical moment for which a creative response has to be given – an infinite individual critical instant (Kelman, 1968; Smith, 1969).

The concept of Blank Space is an aggregator of other ideas noted in the discourse of the directors whose creative processes I chose to study. This design eventually became the core of this thesis, as well as all the borderline concepts and practices that arise from it. Within the theoretical knowledge of the concepts associated with time (kairos and otium) are the practices of “emptiness desiring” (Onfray, 2003) that build a space-time for possibility. The instigating interventions of emptiness result from the existence of borderline concepts, that imply certain actions that can be apprehended throw the process of Theater creations, which are: “in between”, “stand by”, silence, solitude, and forgetfulness. At the base of these constructs is the availability for interiority.

The multiple concepts that this study carries had in its base several authors' thinking that allows to establish guidelines for the theoretical construct. Aristotle (2008) and Saint Augustine (1999) had created a relationship with the main concept and the thoughts of Seneca (2004) allow the definition of the experience of qualitative time. It was, nevertheless, in Blanchot (2001, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2011) that it was found what would become the basis of the practice of Blank Space, as well as their borderline concepts because of his close relationship with the idea of emptiness. The constructions of the “self” in Onfray (2003) implicates the concepts of time, kairos, idleness, emptiness, and permitted to build a vehicle of dialogue with other authors. Extracts from Crary (2018) and Han (2016) permitted an intense reflexivity about the modern way of living time.

This study follows the autoethnography method. Within a qualitative approach, autoethnography constitutes a subgenre of ethnography and differs from it by placing the researcher, not only as an observer, but also as an object of investigation. In this method "the writer speaks to himself (auto) as a subject of a broader social and cultural inquiry (ethno), face to face with an innovative and revealing way of writing (graphy)" (Amado, 2014, p. 183). It consists in a research method that constitutes an autobiography writing, in which the researcher, from the systematic description and evaluation of the personal experience, is able to understand it culturally (Adams, Jones, & Ellis, 2016). Chang (2016) describes the triadic model of autoethnography as having: a) a methodological orientation of ethnographic and analytical basis; b) a cultural orientation consisting in an interpretation of: i) memory; ii) the relational aspect (researcher and subjects/research objects; iii) of the observation of social phenomena; c) a content orientation based on reflective autobiography. The empirical construction of this study has the following elements for its implementation: i) Analysis of the artistic processes of creation (theater) observed in directors who value the construction from qualitative times and Blank Spaces (João Brites; João Mota; Luis Miguel Cintra; and Miguel Seabra). This takes form through the analysis of their sayings and writings, first, on the search for a direct speech, throughout documents, interviews, theater programs, or others, that could have information provided directly by the creatives. Then, the indirect discourse was also considered in the direct accompaniment of the creative processes of the directors. ii) Through my experience in workshops of theater and training of actors and internships. Artistic creation processes observed in my professional experiences: as the director of an academic theater group and community theater of adolescents; as a teacher in public and private schools; in individual, couple, family and group artistic education sessions; in various theater work as a director or actress. iv) Activities carried out in the academic sphere, such as the writing and reading seminar, classes, orientation meetings, study groups to which I belong. v) Experiences of personal reflections identified in the relationship between time and the experience of the concepts developed in the thesis in everyday life. All this analysis is done through the use of memory, written evidence and other formats (videos, images, sounds) of previous years, observation in "journal" format, analysis of showroom sheets and exhibitions.

This study permitted the construction of lines of action that allow the presence – and practice – of qualitative time, specifically the Blank Space, namely exploring the possibility of learning behaviors that enable it. Practices that exist in the exercise of theatrical artistic processes and provide this time-space experience, specifically the present in the borderline concepts: interiority, “in between”, silence, solitude, “stand-by” and forgetfulness. What was observed in theatrical practices allowed us to reach conclusions about how the experience of qualitative time (kairos and otium) is still a reality in these processes: the ability to analyze expressions and postures that communicate a certain condition to which the individual transforms and accommodates; an internalizing of actions that are based on concentrated stillness; the familiarization with silence and the interiorization that arises from it; the relevance given to the "now" as representative of a present moment; the existence of a privileged space promoter of error and the time "in between" that characterizes much of the theatrical work; a patience branded by the capacity of enduring and “hold on” the instant needed to meet the comfort of suspension; the existence of a lonely creative being, a solitude that the actor cannot replace, although often this loneliness can be lived in the same physical and emotional place where the other is; a contradictory interdependence in which the presence of an ephemeral action is only possible if constructed within a cycle of repetition. Associated with theatrical practice and artistic education, this study allows a different view of the processes – which, even being an integral part of their genesis – are now proven to promote a distinct temporality. Despite the awareness of systems of acceleration and fragmentation, also happening in this art, it is clear that theater has, in its matrix, the Blank Space itself.

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