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Technique and the Embodied Actor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Barbara Sellers-Young
Barbara Sellers-Young
Affiliation:
Barbara Sellers-Young is Professor of Dramatic Art and Drama at the University of California, Davis
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Extract

A primary theme of twentieth-century theatre has been the actor's body. Numerous directors from Stanislavsky to Anne Bogart have evolved stage theories and related training methods to promote a more expressive body on stage. In her 1995 article ‘Developing a Physical Vocabulary for the Contemporary Actor’, Lea Logic provides an overview of many of these approaches. While acknowledging the contributions of these director-teachers, she suggests, ‘If body shape and movement are to retain and increase their power as the central focus of theatre, actors must learn to maximize the expressive potential of their bodies.’ Quoting Copeau, Chekhov, Stanislavsky or Barba, she maintains the primary problem is an actor's tendency consistently to return to physical choices related to their personality and not necessarily to the role they are playing. She quotes Copeau's description of actors: ‘I always know, in advance what they are going to do. They reduce everything to the level of their habits, their clichés, their affectations. They do not invent anything.’ While Copeau's complaint is not directed at actor teachers, but actors, his words define one of the primary challenges for them, to teach actors to expand their expressive abilities beyond their self image.

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Articles
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Theatre Research International , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , Spring 1999, pp. 89 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1999

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References

Notes

1. Logie, Lea, ‘Developing a Physical Vocabulary for the Contemporary Actor, National Theatre Quarterly, No. 43, 1995, p. 240.Google Scholar

2. Quoted in Logic, ibid., p. 231.

3. Barba, Eugenic, ‘The Fiction of Duality’, New Theatre Quarterly (11 1989), pp. 311–14.Google Scholar

4. Chaikin, Joseph, The Presence of the Actor (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1991), p. 5.Google Scholar

5. Ross, Duncan in Houston, Hollis, The Actor's Instrument: Body, Theory, Stage (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), p. 52.Google Scholar

6. Scheduler, Richard in Zarrilli, Phillip, Acting (Re) Considered (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 15.Google Scholar

7. Todd, Mabel, The Thinking Body (New York: Dance Horizons, 1975).Google Scholar

8. Damasio, Antonio, Descartes's Error (New York: J.P. Putnam Son's, 1994), pp. 223–43.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., p. 90.

10. Juhan, Deanne, Job's Body (New York: Station Hill Press, 1987), p. xxv.Google Scholar

11. Each of these practitioners is discussed in Hanna, Thomas, The Body of Life (New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 1980).Google Scholar

12. Sweigard, Lulu, Human Movement Potential (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 232–60.Google Scholar

13. Achterberg, Jeanne, Imagery in Healing (Boston: Shambhala, 1985).Google Scholar

14. Gardner, Howard, Frames of the Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1983).Google Scholar

15. Keleman, Stanley, Embodying Experience: Forming a Personal Life (Berkeley, CA: Center Press, 1980), p. 47.Google Scholar

16. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980).Google Scholar

17. Johnson, Mark, The Body in the Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 209.Google Scholar

18. Four acting texts incorporate these terms: Benedetti, Robert, The Actor at Work (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1994)Google Scholar; Barton, Robert, Acting Onstage and Off (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993)Google Scholar; Barker, Clive, Theatre Games (London: Methuen, 1977)Google Scholar; Linklater, Kristin, Freeing the Natural Voice (New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1976).Google Scholar

19. Bateson, Mary Catherine, Peripheral Visions (New York: Harper, 1994), pp. 1–15.Google Scholar

20. For a discussion of improvisation in theatre, see Frost, A. and Yarrow, R., Improvisation in Drama (London: Macmillian, 1990).Google Scholar There is a discussion of improvisation, and of the arts in general in Smith, Hazel and Dean, Roger T., Improvisation, Hypermedia and the Arts since 1945 (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997).Google Scholar

21. Increasing their awareness of their body/mind's natural exploratory mode of attention, inquiry and decision, can help actors to investigate the possibilities inherent in the different contractual level of muscles from static to length ened. This information can enhance their ability to recognize and release stress and tension to avoid injury, and develop individual regimes that continue to improve strength, flexibility, endurance, centredness and alignment.

22. A discussion of this state is in Palmer, Wendy, The Intuitive Body (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1994), pp. 87–96.Google Scholar

23. Cynthia Winston, Personal Communication, September 1997.

24. Anonymous actor, Personal Communication, November 1997.

25. Shelia Haas has discussed this in Loehr, J. E. and McLaughlin, P. J., Mentally Tough (New York: M. Evans and Company, 1986), p. 153–4.Google Scholar

26. Feldenkrais, Moshe, Awareness Through Movement (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 100–8.Google Scholar

27. Heller, Joseph, Bodywise (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), p. 118.Google Scholar

28. Leibowitz, Judith and Connington, Bill, The Alexander Technique (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), p. 135.Google Scholar

29. Block, Susana, Orthous, Pedro and Santibanez, Guy in ‘Effector Patterns of Basic Emotions: A Psychological Method for Training Actors’, fournal of Social Biological Structure, 10, 1987, p. 3.Google Scholar

30. Lisa Maxine, Personal Communication, October 1997.

31. Laban, Rudolph, Mastery of Movement on Stage (London: Me Donald and Evans, 1950).Google Scholar

32. Samuels, Mike and Samuels, Nancy, Seeing with the Mind's Eye (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 22.Google Scholar

33. Anonymous actor, Personal Communication, November 1997.

34. A further discussion of this can be found in Yuasa, Yasuo, The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, translated by Nagatomo, Shigenori and Kasulis, Thomas (New York: SUNY Press, 1987).Google Scholar

35. Zarrilli, Phillip, Acting (Re)Considered (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 195.Google Scholar

36. Lea Logie discusses the contemporary history of directors' perspectives on physical training for the actor in ‘Theatrical Movement and the Mind-Body Question’, Theatre Research International, 20 (1995), p. 255–65.

37. Harrop, John, Acting (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. Chaikin, , Presence of the Actor, p. 5.Google Scholar

39. Ibid.