ABSTRACT
In contemporary European music theatre, we very often find mixed casts of different professions and/or performers on stage that defy established professional boundaries: actors who sing, musicians who are theatrical performers, dancers who speak, or composers who perform. These new kinds of performers entail different, often highly personal performance practices, work processes and different self-images. This chapter examines three examples of European music theatre practitioners and focuses on the possibilities that arise from different performance practices for the interplay of voice, body, and embodiment on stage. It discusses two heuristic types, the ‘additive’ and the ‘fusion’ model, that can help to describe the many ways of how performers interact and how bodies and voices are related on stage. It shows how these constellations themselves become constitutive for the meaning-building process of the pieces.
