Arthur Lessac's Embodied Actor Training

Melissa Hurt

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317914594
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Categoria: Teatro

Arthur Lessac's Embodied Actor Training situates the work of renowned voice and movement trainer Arthur Lessac in the context of contemporary actor training.

Supported by the work of Constantin Stanislavsky and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theories of embodiment, the book explores Lessac's practice in terms of embodied acting, a key subject in contemporary performance. In doing so, the author explains how the actor can come to experience both skill and expression as a subjective whole through active meditation and spatial attunement.

As well as feeding this psychophysical approach into a wider discussion of embodiment, the book provides concrete examples of how the practice can be put into effect. Using insights gleaned from interviews conducted with Lessac and his Master Teachers, the author enlightens our own understanding of Lessac's practices.

Three valuable appendices enhance the reader's experience. These include:

a biographical timeline of Lessac's life and career

sample curricula and a lesson plan for teachers at university level

explorations for personal discovery

Melissa Hurt is a Lessac Certified Trainer and has taught acting and Lessac's voice, speech, and movement work at colleges across the United States. She has a PhD from the University of Oregon and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Chapter 1

Arthur Lessac’s Kinesensics and Embodied Actor Training

I never thought to trust my body as it moved—i.e. its breathing, posture, movement through space, connection with others. I always thought my mind was supposed to learn movement and then coerce my body into imitating my teachers.

(Hurt, 2008)

My actor training began when I was fifteen years old with a teacher who passionately taught tenets of Uta Hagan’s acting approach, adapted from famed acting researcher and practitioner Constantin Stanislavsky. My coursework consisted of psychological understandings of character, determining character objectives and tactics, and using tools like emotion memory and sense memory to discover what I felt was “truthful” acting. I continued actor training in college and dove deeper into Stanislavsky’s ideas of developing a character using psychological and emotional resources. I felt I had to understand character on an intellectual level first and then somehow embody what I thought through action in the studied scene. I did written work—pages of scene and character analyses, character biographies, and personal journals revealing my emotional connections to the character—and received high marks for my thoroughness. I performed scenes with this catalog of information reeling through my mind and, because I pursued objectives and changed tactics, I scored well on my assignments. Whenever my teachers talked about the body, it was regarded as something to be used to portray character—an instrument that needed to be conditioned, flexible and somehow responsive to my decisions for action. As I reveal in the opening quote, it never occurred to me to approach acting on a nonintellectual level. This resulted in a disconnection between my cognitive understandings of the process and my physical portrayal of the character—i.e., the acting!Moreover, because I did so well in my acting studies with this divided approach, I did not understand the idea of actor training that developed the bodymind as a foundation from which to begin. It was not until I began study of Arthur Lessac’s voice, speech and body work that I discovered a new way to explore acting.

Arthur Lessac was an American developer of a voice, speech and movement practice known as “kinesensic training.” Lessac’s work relies on what he calls “the feeling process,” in which the performer senses the vibrations of tone, muscular flexibility of the cheeks, and consonant contact as they resonate against her bones. Lessac states that his training “is based on recognition and consequent control of physical behavior patterns naturally produced when the body as a whole is functioning most efficiently” (1969: 119). Lessac coined the term “kinesensic” for his practice and defines it as “an intrinsic sensing process in which energy qualities are physically felt and perceived, then tuned and used for creative expression” (1996: 3). When asked how he created the word “kinesensic,” Lessac revealed his process:

I always knew that there were words within words. I see that I had been working with kinesthetics, kinesics, kinetics—and they are all “kine.” So, “kine” means motion. Everything I was doing was motion, even of the speech and voice. To get to the very essence of any of our work means to feel it and to feel it differently than others think they’ve accomplished in feeling. In fact, many people think they are feeling when they are doing it through the thought process. I see “essence,” which means get to the very bottom of it. Then you’ve got the word “sense” [which] means “feeling”! So I’ve got something that uses nothing but motion and something that gets to the very essence and core. So, there is “kinesens” and “sic” means to get back to it as often as possible. So, “kinesensic”!

(9 March 2008)

Kinesensic training involves ongoing discovery of the significant core of sensation of the voice and body as they synergize. The body determines meaning from these perceptions and the actor develops her voice and movement with them and not by copying someone else.

Lessac’s voice and speech work consists of three energies felt in the oral cavity: consonants, tone, and structural vowels. Consonant energy “sharpens the perception and expression of the individual qualities of the consonants by an association of the physical sensations of each one with a different instrument of the orchestra” (1969: 120). The actor develops the quality of her consonants by feeling the inherent musicality of them that she discovers within, thus, investing her creative spirit in her skill acquisition. Lessac brings the actor to feel the musicality of her speech by incorporating a musical metaphor for the consonants in which he names each consonant sound with a musical instrument. Master Teacher Deborah Kinghorn explains, “The musical metaphor gives us a point of reference for the differences between consonants: not all drums sound alike, strings have different qualities. Our exploration is to find those nuances and distinctions within ourselves, first by connecting with musicality, then developing that musicality within ourselves” (20 May 2013). Tonal energy “is the physical perception and control of sound waves through vibratory sensations rather than through the manipulation of the breath stream” (Lessac, 1969: 120). The actor develops her vocal tone through experimenting with the quality of vocal vibration and sensation on the bony surfaces of her oral cavity, namely the upper gum ridge and hard palate, and beyond into the forehead and cranium. Lessac teaches, “They can and should be felt as vibrations transmitted through the hard palate, the nasal bone, the sinuses, and the forehead” (ibid.: 120). Structural energy “is the perception of certain muscle sensations and the kinesthetic memory of these sensations to establish a flexible, yet specific, form for the oral cavity, which is the vocal sound box” (ibid.: 119). The actor attunes with the movement of her cheek muscles and, with the soft palate, they create what Lessac calls the “reverse megaphone.” Structural energy creates eleven diluted vowels and vowel diphthongs that have a specific lip opening shape and/or size.

Lessac’s explorations involve what he calls “intrinsic active meditation” through which the actor maintains ongoing awareness of the inner happenings of a voice, speech, or movement exploration. The actor becomes aware of her body’s tactile and kinesthetic sensations while psychophysically learning how to enrich vocal tone, resonance and articulation with optimal breathing, posture and attention to the body’s inherent rhythms for movement.

Lessac dedicated his life to vocal and physical development. Born in 1909 in Palestine, Arthur came to America in 1911 with his parents, who soon divorced and left him as an orphan.¹ Lessac began singing professionally and teaching in 1928 after graduating from high school in New York City. After teaching voice for several years, Lessac received an invitation to audition for the Eastman School of Music in Rochester from a school representative who was in New York City recruiting young talent in 1931. Lessac earned a small voice scholarship and gained his first professional training in breath control, musical rhythm, and operatic singing.

Lessac attended the Eastman School of Music from 1932 to 1935. Lessac Certified Trainer Sean Turner reports that there were numerous significant events at this time that changed Arthur’s life:

First, while at Eastman, Arthur was able to study with Professor Bernard Kwartin, who was a famous specialist in methods of voice pedagogy, including experimenting with feeling the correct sound rather than hearing it, which is noted in Kwartin’s (1941) book Fundamentals of Vocal Art. Second, during his third year at Eastman, Arthur was having difficulties with his “upper register” and repeatedly complained to the Dutch Maestro Adelin Fermin, asking for help. After numerous requests and complaints from [Lessac], Fermin, who was known for working with singers at the Metropolitan Opera at the time, finally relented, and agreed to work with [Lessac]. After meeting with [Lessac] and listening to him sing, he gave [Lessac] the following advice: “Arthur, one morning you are going to wake up and it will be there,” which signified the end of the teaching session and the extent of the help he was prepared to give [Lessac] … The inability of his Master voice teacher to “teach” him made [Lessac] question the extent by which the school had anything left to offer him. Third, as he would eventually discover his own upper register while singing in a hotel later that year, he began to realize that he was able to teach himself, both of which [events] helped influence his decision to not return to the school after his third year.

(2009: 21–22)

Lessac left Eastman to pursue his professional career (14 December 2008).

In 1937, Lessac snuck into an audition of the Labor Stage Theatre’s production of Pins and Needles, a show produced by members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Lessac was hired as a singer in the ensemble, but the director fired him when he discovered he was not a union member. However, Lessac’s work with the production did not end. An old acquaintance affiliated with the production told the director that Lessac would be a valuable addition to the group and the director hired Lessac to be part of the teaching staff. His work in this production launched his career in the professional theatre as a voice trainer. Lessac remembers giving the singers “ideas about sensation” to keep their voices healthy and clear (10 September 2007). Lessac’s next Broadway show came in 1939 with From Vienna by the Refugee Artists Group, a company of Austrian actors. The show’s previous vocal coach left out of frustration from working with the actors’ inability to speak intelligible English. Lessac, always embracing a challenge, took the job six weeks prior to opening night. He taught the actors how to articulate their English by humming on their sustainable consonants more fully. The show was well received and reviewers particularly noted Lessac’s work, thus earning him prestige in the area of “accent reduction.” Famed New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson wrote, “They speak [English] more carefully than a good many actors for whom English is the native language” (2 July 1939: X1). Lessac remembered that “he had to feel his way to making discoveries, which led to a certain type of problem solving that would eventually lay the foundation for [his] books” (Turner, 2009: 29).

Lessac earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Voice-Speech Clinical Therapy from New York University in 1941. Lessac opened the National Academy of Vocal Arts (NAVA) in 1944 and hired a teaching staff to help him offer courses in singing, radio technique, special speech and voice study for actors, public speaking, and accent reduction, as well as specific educational programs in performance, from pre-school to junior division, elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels, all of which incorporated performing, coaching, orchestra, dance, music, acting and individual instruction (Turner, 2009: 31). Sometime around 1949, NAVA ended when the building that Lessac leased for his school was torn down.² Lessac taught at the Stella Adler School of Theatre for one year in 1951 and began a twenty-year career teaching sermonics at the Jewish Theological Seminary the same year. Lessac was in charge of teaching the students seeking ordination how to deliver sermons with good speech, voice and enthusiasm. Instead of simply reading the sermons from the weekly scrolls, Lessac taught them how to commune with the text and move the audience through their vocal delivery. These lessons inspired the students not to imitate an admired rabbi and orator in their school, but to find the passion within themselves and communicate it through their individual relationship with the text. Through his teachings of the feeling process and communing with text and spirit, students discovered their individuality in expressing their sermons.

Lessac’s teaching evolved over time to not only working with actors and singers, but also with speech and voice therapy patients at Bellevue Hospital and St. Vincent Hospital where he used his feeling process. Lessac earned his Master of Arts degree in Voice-Speech Clinical Therapy from New York University in 1952 and continued working with Bellevue Hospital and St. Vincent Hospital patients throughout the 1950s. Lessac established a large clientele working on a range of voice and speech issues. Lessac continually problem-solved with each of his students, finding ways to help their voices through the feeling of sensation.

At the urging of one of his students, Lessac wrote and self-published 600 copies of The Use and Training of the Human Voice in 1960 for use by his students, colleagues and others interested within his field. In 1962 Lessac became the preeminent voice teacher in New York City when Elia Kazan and Robert Whitehead appointed him as head voice teacher for the Lincoln Center Repertory Company. Lessac spent one year with the company. Lessac shares his frustration with the company’s idea of actor training in a 1969 article entitled “A New Definition of Dramatic Training”: “As head of the division of voice and speech, I was considerably inhibited by the realization that my classes met with official approval just as long as I stayed close to the technical training of voice and speech and did not venture into its involvement with acting techniques … I found myself teaching within very narrow boundaries” (117). Lessac began teaching summer intensive workshops lasting two weeks in New York City in 1965. Demand for Lessac’s book grew and he released a second edition of his book in 1967 with a preface by Broadway actress Irene Dailey. He lengthened his summer intensives to six weeks long that year. Lessac took his work outside of New York and brought a summer intensive to Ohio University in 1969.³

Lessac’s career shifted to academia in 1969 when Alfred Brooks at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Binghamton hired him with immediate tenure to develop the undergraduate and MFA acting programs while teaching his work. It was at SUNY that Lessac developed his movement-based work and wrote Body Wisdom: The Use and Training of the Human Body (1978). Lessac taught at SUNY until 1981 when he was forced into retirement. He remembers, “I didn’t leave and they didn’t ask me to leave … I think this was the New York state ruling that after 70 you could not teach … you had to retire. And when I was 70, I was really 40, you know? So all of a sudden I have to leave” (9 March 2008).⁴ Lessac continued developing his work every time he taught and never called his work a “method” or “system.” Lessac called it “our work,” which encompasses his spirit of sharing the work to all people, including disadvantaged groups at varying times in America throughout the twentieth century.⁵ To this day, practitioners and certified trainers simply call it “the work” because it is a practice that one tends to each day. Lessac revised The Use and Training of the Human Voice into a third edition in 1996, in which he included some of his movement-based work. Lessac made an important shift in the third edition when he changed his term for the main components of his work from “actions” to “energies” to encompass the spirit of the work as an energy one feels in ways that are larger than a series of actions one does. He continued teaching his voice, speech, and movement work in his summer intensives until 2000 at the age of 91. Lessac taught until his death in 2011 at the age of 101.5 years old.⁶

In Lessac training, an actor employs the feeling process to trust in natural uses of the body and voice, as opposed to imitating an imagined standard:

The artist must have the knowing and the feeling of how the body’s systems work and how its creative instrumentalities function. He or she can have the technical knowledge of [the] fundamentals [of inner intelligence and experience] but can understand them organically and vitally only by physically experiencing the feeling while at the very same time behaviorally feeling the experience.

(1996: 1)

Lessac’s concept of “organic” means that the actor has discovered her body’s functioning based on a self-reflective process, not based on a standard established by the teacher that the actor would try to imitate. Instead, the trainer teaches the markers of the voice, speech, and body discipline and bears witness to the actor’s self-discovery so the actor eventually self-teaches by identifying the qualities of the work and re-creating them afresh. The actor finds herself involved through her tactile and kinesthetic senses when she experiences the feeling of her voice, speech, and body in movement. Her tactile sense awakens her to the quality of what she feels and where she feels it. Her kinesthetic sense attunes her to the balance and rhythm of her vocal and physical movements. This felt sense of rhythm brings the actor to accomplishing musicality in her speaking. Moreover, the actor becomes more self-aware and grounded throughout her training because of her continual focus on how she feels what she does.

Lessac advocates a holistic incorporation of the actor’s voice, body, and creative spirit. He guides the actor towards more sensitive attention to the feeling of the voice and body as she works with awareness. This not only includes the physical feeling of the voice’s vibrations in the oral cavity, face and cranium or the body’s rhythms, but also the emotional feelings that come and contribute to a deeper connection to self, language, text, and one’s surroundings. If she comes to negative emotions, it is best she acknowledge that they hinder her process; they are toxins. Therefore, she should focus on the work to tune into what feels good and she will find that her vocal and physical sensations will eliminate the toxins. When the actor pursues kinesensic training, she lets her perceptual awareness guide her through the inherent wisdom of ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Arthur Lessac’s Kinesensics and Embodied Actor Training
• 2 Getting to Know You
• 3 Braiding Perceptions Through Heightened Self-Awareness
• 4 The Actor’s Relationship with Space
• 5 Spontaneously Free
• Afterword
• Appendix A: Select Timeline of Arthur Lessac’s Life and Career
• Appendix B: Sample Curriculum
• Appendix C: Explorations for Personal Discovery
• Bibliography
• Index