Alexander Technique for Actors: A Practical Course

Penny O'Connor

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781788503853
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

The Alexander Technique has revolutionised the physicality, presence, stature and professional lives of generations of actors. By first asking you to identify your own acquired habits, the technique enables you to find new and beneficial ways of moving, thinking, breathing and performing, freely and without unnecessary tension.

Written by an experienced teacher of the Alexander Technique, this book takes you step by step through a series of eleven guided lessons, and dozens of exercises and assignments. Each explores different elements and principles of the technique, including:

- Training your mind to stay present, and mindful of your environment
- Thinking (but not overthinking!) in new ways
- Observing and developing your natural poise
- Sitting, standing and walking easily and effortlessly
- Breathing and speaking with release and relaxation
- Applying all of your work to characterisation and performance

Lesson Three:
Alexander’s Technique

Alexander’s story and principles

Equipment

• Five litres of water or five kilograms of potatoes

• Space in which to speak and walk

• A long mirror

• A4 paper

• Coloured pens

• A device with internet access

How was the week of experiments in thinking? Please reflect or share in your pair or study group. These thinking experiments are for you to continue to work with throughout the course.

What was your favourite kids’ game? The Farmer’s in His Den? Grandmother’s Footsteps? In a playful way they help improve our coordination and attention. Remember Simon Says? The leader calls out actions preceded by the words ‘Simon says’. If a child obeys a command when these words are omitted, they are eliminated. It demonstrates how our brains create a prediction very quickly. The mind gets caught in a routine and stops paying full attention. (Feel free to play this game if you are in a group to remind yourselves!) In the late 1920s there were experiments made on workers’ productivity in the Western Electric factory in Hawthorne, Chicago. They changed the lighting level in the workspace and productivity went up. They turned it down again, and productivity still went up. It was the change and the attention, rather than the lighting itself, that affected the workforce.¹

How was semi-supine, using spatial awareness as recorded on the audio link on my website, or just guided by your own thoughts? Did you find that, in thinking spatially, you were more present, and as a consequence your physical tensions eased, so that your neck and shoulders freed up, your back felt longer and wider, and your limbs felt connected whilst freer and less held?

Brain Power

When we think about something it affects our brain and our muscles: there is a kinaesthetic connection. An experiment was carried out with three groups over five days to measure brain changes in learning a five-finger exercise on the piano.² The control group was taught the exercise and instructed not to practise. Group One was taught the exercise and instructed to practise every day for two hours. Group Two was taught the exercise and instructed to practise by sitting at the piano for two hours every day but only imagining the movements and the sounds. At the end of five days, the group who had physically practised were much more competent. But those who had imagined it had only to do two hours’ physical practice on day five to level the score with Group One. The motor cortex in the brain had already changed physically to accommodate this new skill and it took only two hours for the muscles to catch up. Needless to say, the control group were not skilled at all. So as you lie in present awareness, spatially aware, asking your neck to be free to let the head release from the spine, and to allow the back to lengthen and widen, and the limbs to be long and connected, you are preparing the way for it to be so.

However, even if your mind wandered and you thought of tense-making things, your spine would still be lengthening infinitesimally and having a rest. Between the vertebrae of your spine are discs, which are rings of cartilage with a nucleus of fluid in the middle. With the weight of the head no longer bearing down, the nuclei plump up – rather like gym balls do when you’ve been sitting on them and then roll off them to stand. So it’s nice to know that, even if all we can manage is to lie there and observe our brain in high-octane charging about, and even if we cannot feel it or are not encouraging it, something is nonetheless changing in us.

So we’ve sorted out the nature of habits and different ways of thinking, and are using semi-supine to help long-term in rebooting the system. Now we are prepped to have an overview of Alexander’s technique to stop himself losing his voice, to understand the development of something he called the Primary Control, and to practise working with this.

Playing with Alexander’s Habit

Imitating Alexander’s Use

Use a line or two of text that you know well. Stand up and present this. If you are working in a group, do it all together at the same time. Now stand deliberately with the legs braced, the back arched and the chest raised, then tip the face up and pull the chin in, taking the head back and down. You will find the neck is tightened and the larynx depressed – very Edwardian. Now suck in some breath before you start and speak the text again. How was that? You may feel it was not so comfortable, the voice slightly caught, or maybe you will feel it to be rather like the way you do it already? Now let all that go and speak the text again. Did you notice there was more breath, more resonance, that you were less held, with more movement and ease throughout your body?

When we stop doing something, it’s rather like thinking of space: we’re not ‘doing’ anything, our brain stops end-gaining and we use ourselves more easily. Rather like coming out of character. We stop being Ophelia or Hamlet, and find ourselves back with ourselves very easily. We don’t have to ‘do’ that. I just gave you the instructions that introduced you crudely to Alexander’s habit of speaking as he describes it in Chapter One of his book The Use of the Self.³ If you enjoy reading, find a copy and read his story from the horse’s mouth, as it were. It shows you the tortuous route of his investigations into the vocal habit that was causing him to lose his voice, and how he eventually managed to inhibit the neural pathways and liberate himself. Of course, it’s easier to liberate ourselves from someone else’s use patterns than our own. Let’s play with his technique so we can apply it to our own use patterns. This is an overview, my best attempt at summarising his method. We will be taking it apart and playing with different aspects of it throughout this course, so by the end of these eleven weeks you will have a better understanding and be able to apply the work more easily to yourself.

We’ve already established how important thinking is. How thinking about doing a five-finger exercise is almost as good as carrying it out. Alexander discovered that if he did nothing but think his neck free to let his head rise forward and up, in such a way that his back could lengthen and widen and his knees release – so they were not braced back and towards each other but released forward and away from each other – it brought him out of his holding pattern. He stopped pulling his head back and down, depressing his larynx and audibly sucking in the air, and he stopped arching or narrowing his back and bracing his legs, which was shortening his stature. He called these messages from the brain to the various parts of the body ‘orders’ or ‘directions’. Just like actors being directed onstage, he was directing the play of himself. And we know that a good director does not get up onstage and show the actors how to do it, but simply guides them, allowing the actors to respond. So when Alexander had an impulse to speak, he refused and instead gave himself direction.

Directing Yourself

Alexander’s Directions

Okay, your turn – have a go. Have the text in your mind, but instead of speaking, direct yourself: think these messages from the brain to the parts involved. Rather like baking a cake: for it to rise well, we have to follow the order of the recipe. So here they are in order:

‘Allow the neck to be free,
so that the head can go forward and up in such a way that the back lengthens and widens and the knees go forward and away.’

When Alexander felt this was happening, he would then speak the text. So when you believe you are able to maintain these directions, speak your text. Did you manage to maintain ease of balance of your head, the length and width of your back? Are your legs braced or free? How do you know? Are you trusting those dodgy feelings?

Whilst, with practice, Alexander could maintain the directions as he stood preparing to speak, he eventually realised that, despite his best endeavours and feeling everything was okay, at the critical moment he went to speak the old neural pathways kicked in: he pulled his head back and down, depressed his larynx, sucked in his breath and shortened his stature as before. So he had to trick his brain to continue with the alternative way he had created. He gave himself an alternative action. He gave himself a ploy whereby he didn’t have to speak, but instead could take another action – such as raising his arm. The other action has to be a real one: imagining eating a strawberry ice cream, for example, won’t do.

Alexander’s Inhibition

1. Decide on a line or two of text and speak it.

2. Having spoken it once to remind yourself, now think of the directions: I’m allowing the neck to be free, to let the head go forward and up, to let the back lengthen and widen, and the knees to go forward and away,’ and continue to think of them as you speak the line of text.

3. Think the directions again, and just as you are about to speak the line of text, don’t! Change your mind. Just stand there thinking the directions.

4. Continue to think the directions, and just as you are about to speak the line of text, don’t! Change your mind again and instead take a step backwards.

5. Continue to think the directions, and just as you are about to speak the line of text, don’t! Make a choice – to stand still, to walk backwards or to speak. Play with these choices a few times.

Getting the idea? All very well, but the audience wouldn’t be too pleased if, when they were expecting ‘The raven himself is hoarse…’ Lady Macbeth chose to walk off the stage or just stood there not doing anything. So here is the next stage:

6. Continue to think the directions, and just as you are about to speak the line of text, don’t! Ask yourself if you are free to walk backwards – and if you are free to walk backwards, then you are free to speak the line of text.

Repeat this a few times, until you become familiar with it. Here are the abbreviated instructions:

Directions, about to speak, STOP, free to walk backwards? Yes! Then speak…

Record the exercise and watch it back.

If you are in a live study group, have one half do the exercise whilst the other watches, then swap. Perhaps have someone from the watching half lead the exercise. This works for a pair too. Have the appointed leader give the instructions, and let the hands clap as a stimulus to speak. I love watching a group do this – it looks like a strange fringe-theatre event at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe!

Did that have an effect on the voice, on the breath, on the stature, on how you said the line? Sometimes when people begin a new use they forget the line – it was learned under different kinaesthetic circumstances (the old habit) so the memory for a moment is lost.

By inhibiting your reaction to the stimulus to speak and giving yourself a free choice – in the present moment and not end-gaining – the old neural pathway is aborted and, after some practice and repetition, a new association is built up so that the new neural pathway can continue to be applied whilst speaking.

‘Two roads diverged in a wood and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.’

Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken’⁴

If this is as clear as mud we will, as I wrote earlier, be spending the next few weeks unpicking it, carrying out experiments to help you understand and find your own way out of old use patterns that no longer serve you as a performer. Inhibition and direction are keys to the work.

‘As long as he inhibits the sending of the old messages the old lines of communication are not used, and as he becomes more and more versed in the procedures of the technique the tendency to make use of them decreases, as does his dependence upon his feeling of rightness associated with them.’ F. M. Alexander⁵

Heads Up

For Alexander, the dynamic relationship between the head, neck and back was very important. He called it the Primary Control. He developed the idea that, no matter what the habitual use pattern, if the neck was freed to allow the head to find its intrinsic balance, the habitual pattern would be eliminated throughout the system. There is no scientific evidence for this as yet, although there are ongoing investigations into it. But I would say we can agree that we are a whole system and that one part always affects another. So let us explore the head–neck–back relationship and see if it helps you as actors to speak well and clearly, as you make full use of the breathing mechanisms, free the jaw and make the most of the resonant space of the oral cavity and pharynx. Alexander used to pull his head back and down, hence his particular direction for the head to go forward and up. Pulling the head into the spine will distort it. Arching the back to stick the chest up will compromise the ribs and the diaphragm. Bracing the legs will pull on the diaphragm.

Let me ask you first, how much does your head weigh? Say you were playing the executioner who chops off the head of Anne Boleyn in a film and raising it by the hair to prove it was severed, what weight would you need to convey? Find five litres of water, or five kilograms of potatoes, put them...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Introduction: Beginners, Please!
• Lesson One: The Power of Habit
• Lesson Two: It’s the Thought That Counts
• Lesson Three: Alexander’s Technique
• Lesson Four: Walk Tall!
• Lesson Five: Eloquence with Elegance
• Lesson Six: The Tottering Biped Speaks!
• Lesson Seven: The Balancing Act Continues
• Lesson Eight: Let the Breath Move You
• Lesson Nine: Effortless Movement
• Lesson Ten: The Transformational Vortex and Other Acting Fun
• Lesson Eleven: That’s a Wrap! Time for the After-show Party...
• Acknowledgements
• Notes and References
• Appendices
• A. Audio Script for Lying in Semi-supine
• B. Drawing of the Outline of the Body
• C. The Moon Like a Bone in the Sky: A Happening
• D. Answers to the Body Mapping Quiz
• E. The Alexander Principles
• F. Some Alexander Organisations and Websites
• List of Exercises
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information