Movement

Onstage and Off

Robert Barton, Barbara Sellers-Young

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317440918
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Darstellende Kunst

Movement: Onstage and Off is the complete guide for actors to the most effective techniques for developing a fully expressive body. It is a comprehensive compilation of established fundamentals, a handbook for movement centered personal growth and a guide to helping actors and teachers make informed decisions for advanced study.

This book includes:

• fundamental healing/conditioning processes
• essential techniques required for versatile performance
• specialized skills
• various training approaches and ways to frame the actor's movement training.

Using imitation exercises to sharpen awareness, accessible language and adaptable material for solo and group work, the authors aim to empower actors of all levels to unleash their extraordinary potential.

Chapter 1 Body Ownership
What You Already Know
Your Body Recipe
Body Awareness Checklist
Physical Life Project
Pressure and Fear
Applying Body Awareness
Warming Up
Changing Images
When and Where to Warm Up
Offstage Adaptations
Summary
Exercises:
1.1 My Body History 2
1.2 My Movement Profile 2
1.3 Tracking the Blocks 3
1.4 Keeping the Good Stuff 4
1.5 Making Your List, Checking It Twice 8
1.6 Imitation 9
1.7 Your Own Pressure/Fear Analysis 14
1.8 Body Memory 23
Figures:
1.1 Your body under pressure 12
1.2 Your body on fear 13
1.3 Breathing 14

CHAPTER 1 Body Ownership
Analyzing individual movement histories and tendencies for deeper self-knowledge

You are your instrument. You need to know all about how your body works, your habits, your distinct ways of being. You need to know all about yourself before you can become someone else.

Angelina Jolie, actor

What You Already Know

In opening this book, you may be starting your movement training, but not your knowledge, which is already considerable. Unlike your voice, which is hiding inside a cave, your body is that cave and it is quite visible, so photos, video and mirrors have shown you your movement instrument. You may not know how to move like an older person, a Restoration dandy or a dancing fool, but you already have some idea how you navigate in the world. You know something about your height, weight, strength, motor skills, your waist and hat size, energy level, sleep needs and perhaps your body fat ratio, cardiovascular fitness, muscle tone and pain threshold. You have some qualitative sense of yourself as a dancer, athlete or mechanic. You know something about your habitual smile, frown or look of surprise. Our task will be to increase the range and sophistication of your body awareness, but take comfort in the fact that you are starting with knowledge that can be built upon.

The process we will pursue in this book is that followed by anyone who decides to make a change in her life and then succeeds. Someone who decides to get healthy focuses on the physical or the psychological self. Those who do well in fitness or therapy 1) start off gaining self-knowledge and acceptance, 2) move into correcting problems and then 3) work toward advanced skills and growth, constantly expanding their options. You are going to become an actor who uses her body better, onstage and off.

Begin by taking the time to recognize your own physical past. Feedback has shaped your self-concept, whether that feedback was accurate or not. Your physical history has been captured in photo albums, home videos and growth charts. It may even be represented by various boxes of clothing in the attic, but it is time to organize it in order to move forward.

Exercise 1.1 My Body History

1. EARLY FEEDBACK—Can you remember the first time anyone said anything to you about your movement? Was it being told to sit still, to hurry up, to stop fidgeting? How did you figure out which physical impulses would not necessarily be accepted? What positive feedback did you receive? What did you decide to try again because it seemed to go over well?
2. CONSISTENT FEEDBACK—What have been the most consistent responses to physical choices you have gotten over the years? Positive or negative, what has come up most often? Try closing your eyes and going back year-by-year through your life. It is valuable to bring back all the feedback received most frequently because some of it may have really left its mark.
3. TRYING TO CHANGE—Did you ever consciously try to change your body? When and why? Were you imitating or modeling yourself on someone else? What made you try? Did you succeed or give up? Did you try more than once?
4. INDIRECT FEEDBACK—Were there times when others didn’t address your body or movement directly, but you suspect that was what got to them? Like being told not to be so hyper when you didn’t feel hyper but must have seemed that way? Or being told to stop being serious when you thought you were just being neutral? When have you been misunderstood or misjudged because of your physical self rather than your real thoughts or behavior?
5. ACTING NOTES—If you’ve been involved with theatre for a while, what are your movement notes (from your director, teacher, coach, scene partner or even your family) most of the time? Be sure to establish both what you feel is good about your movement and what needs work.

The questions coming up in subsequent exercises are tough ones. All we ask is that you give your best possible conjecture, maybe even a guess. Your answers will get better every time you return and ask the questions.

Exercise 1.2 My Movement Profile

Describe your body as if it has a personality or nature of its own. Come at it from the following angles:

1. EYE/AGILITY—Can you mimic others easily? Can you see something and re-create it? Are you facile with dance moves and good with sports, usually only having to be shown the maneuvers once? Was physical expression encouraged in your home? Do you enjoy cutting loose outdoors or at parties? Or is that something you normally avoid or ignore?
2. CIRCUMSTANCES—How does your physical life change with your current state? Does your way of carrying yourself and contact with others alter depending on the kind of day you are having? Can others catch this? How radically and in what way?
3. MASKING—What tricks have you learned to cover up how you’re really feeling? How do you try to conceal with your physical presentation? Are you good at being poker faced or covering up anger? Under what circumstances do you always give yourself away?
4. INFLUENCES—If you have a rural or big city background, can people tell that? Can they tell what kind of a place you came from even if they can’t identify it?
5. HERITAGE—Does your family’s past/history influence your movement? How do its national origins, race, religion, affiliations, cultural background or socio-economic class enter into the way you carry yourself? Do you control these influences?
6. CHRONOLOGY—How old are you? How old are you physically? Do you always get carded or conversely mistaken for someone more mature? Is your movement an accurate reflection of your chronological age? Of your spiritual age?
7. STRANGER ON FILM—When you see yourself on video, what surprises you? How are you different than what you expected? How does it violate or reinforce your self-concept?
8. AN ACTING BODY—Are you aware of differences from your private and even your public self, when you act? Not conscious characterization decisions, but rather unconscious alteration in your physical life when you hit the stage? Do you suddenly have trouble knowing what to do with your hands or conversely begin to gesture far more than in offstage life? How do you feel different?

Jot down the answers that seem to have validity. Be prepared to demonstrate in class how you are in each of the circumstances above. Trust yourself to sense which influences are strong.

The next step is to go back over your movement history and profile and confront what may be influencing you but should not. Was there behavior that was required in your upbringing that now tends to inhibit you in performance?

Exercise 1.3 Tracking the Blocks

1. STILL WITH ME—Make a list from the categories in Exercises 1.1 and 1.2 of those influences you feel are still strongly with you. If nothing comes to mind, you may want to start with a simple list of rewarded and punished behavior in your home, neighborhood, school or organizations of which you were a member and see where movement comes up.
2. IN THE WAY—Decide which ones may be getting in your way. Circle them, remember them and be alert for the next situation in which you might want to stop and free yourself. We will be offering suggestions for achieving that freedom later in the chapter.
3. OH, YEAH—Be alert for other influences that did not come up right away, but may pop into your memory now that the subject is there. Keep your list where you can add and review.

Note: Don’t try to place blame. People who influenced you to move or not move one way or another probably had no idea you would want to be an actor someday and were mostly (even if ignorantly) trying to help you get on in life.

While sweeping the past, it is too easy to throw out everything, so take a moment to validate what is working and why. What has contributed to your physical strengths? Honor the parts of your movement tendencies that work for you.

Exercise 1.4 Keeping the Good Stuff

1. STILL WITH ME—Make a list of positive influences still strongly with you.
2. WANT THIS—Decide w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• CHAPTER 1 Body Ownership: Analyzing individual movement histories and tendencies for deeper self-knowledge
• CHAPTER 2 Healing Your Body: Understanding physical structure as a path for making mindful movement choices
• CHAPTER 3 Movement Masters: Examining the leading innovators and disciplines in actor movement training
• CHAPTER 4 Evolving Movement: Developing psychophysical movement methods suited to all theatre forms
• CHAPTER 5 Character Creation: Exploring physical action in the development of a character
• CHAPTER 6 Acting Spaces: Negotiating stage spaces for movement mastery
• CHAPTER 7 Acting Styles: Using information from the worlds of nonrealistic plays to develop believable style characterizations
• CHAPTER 8 Movement Future: Continuing to grow as a performer
• Appendix A: Finding Fitness
• Appendix B: Heart Rates
• Index