Feldenkrais for Actors

How to Do Less and Discover More

Victoria Worsley

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781780018386
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

'The Feldenkrais Method is unique... I haven't found any other movement study that opens up such a rich and continuing area of enquiry' John Wright, from his Foreword

Spontaneity, sensitivity, simplicity and flexibility in any situation are just some of the qualities that the Feldenkrais Method has inspired in performers around the world. It uses movement to enable you to feel, adapt and respond in new ways – not just in limited, habitual patterns – thereby increasing your physical, emotional and mental potential.

Written by an experienced actor, theatre-maker and Feldenkrais practitioner, Feldenkrais for Actors leads you through a range of topics where using the Method can help, such as:

• Presence and Posture
• The Role of Tension
• Emotion, Character and Creativity
• Voice and Breath
• Injury and Anxiety

Also included are dozens of exercises and lessons so that you can experience how the Method will help you in practice.

Feldenkrais for Actors is the result of thirty years of study and experience of the Method, and the benefits it can bring. It is invaluable for actors at any stage of their career, as well as for singers, dancers, musicians, martial artists, athletes and more.

'A very readable, very practical book... makes a very passionate, detailed and accessible argument for how and why the Feldenkrais Method can be useful to an actor's continuing creative development' - Theatre, Dance and Performance Training

Part 1

‘When You Know What You Do, You Can Do What You Want’

1a. Knowing What You Do

Patterns and Habits

‘They said they didn’t see me as vulnerable enough to read for the part. It’s ridiculous. Of course I can play a vulnerable character! It’s called acting. That’s my job!’

Maybe. Maybe not.

No one starts as a blank piece of paper on which to write any character, and no one can ever truly become one however hard they try. That is not as controversial as it may initially sound to some. As the renowned teacher Jacques Lecoq said: ‘Of course there is no such thing as absolute and universal neutrality. It is merely a temptation.’¹⁴ We will get to the uses of the study of neutrality (which Lecoq made famous) in Part 3, but first it is important to acknowledge this: we are unique individuals and recognisably so. The mould got broken every time. We each have our own unique expression of an individual genome; we went through a childhood that no one else did; we have had (and continue to have) our own experiences of life; we learnt our own way of standing, turning, bending, reaching, walking, thinking, breathing – no one else does it exactly the same. Not just our genes and structure but our many stories have shaped and continue to shape our very fabric, and to fashion the very specific patterns and habits of doing, responding and being that we all have. We cannot simply strip it all away.

And that is not necessarily a bad thing for actors. In a sense it’s a gift: this is material you can use. Some of the patterns and habits you have will be the reason you get the part as well as the reason you don’t; they might even be the reason that the audience will (or already do!) turn out or switch on in their millions to see you. But, of course, not all patterns: some of them you may wish you could change so that you could do something differently – or just better. Some of them will be getting in the way without you even knowing. Many of your patterns and habits are shiftable, changeable, expandable, variable – you aren’t necessarily stuck with all of them as they are for ever – but if you want to do anything differently you need to know what you are doing in the first place. You will take these patterns and habits of yours onstage, in front of the camera and when you walk through the door for an audition. It’s important to be very clear from the beginning that this is what you are working with, and to appreciate that one thing that can really enhance your acting is to know as much as you can about the very particular patterns and habits that are currently yours. If you don’t, there is less you will be able to do with or about them: your choices will be constrained in ways that you may not even recognise. Becoming aware of your patterns of moving and being at ever-deepening levels and in progressively finer detail, as well as learning to expand and develop them, are skills the Feldenkrais Method enables particularly well. It is a way of becoming freer from the tyranny of habits in a way that, in my experience, works beautifully with Lecoq’s idea of neutrality, not against. These are some significant reasons for an actor to practise the Method and a great place to start.

How Much Do You Know About What You Do?

Take a really simple everyday action like walking. Do you know what you are doing when you walk? It’s actually a huge question as they still (as far as I am aware) haven’t been able to build a robot that can truly walk like a human being because it is so complex. But ask yourself just a bit of it:

What do you do to bring your right leg forward? Do you twist the pelvis? (If so, in what direction?) Does the hip go up/down/neither? Do you bend sideways in the ribs? (If so, to which side?) What does your right shoulder do? Lift/drop? Move forward/backward/neither? Does your lower back lengthen/shorten/neither? How is your breastbone involved? What does your head do? Where do you look with your eyes? What part of your foot (exactly) is the last to leave the floor? How does the weight shift on your other foot? And do you do the same when you bring the other leg through? (Extremely unlikely – but what’s the difference?)

That’s just a few questions, I could think of many more. I’m not really expecting you to have that much of an idea unless you happen to be an expert: if you had any answers you did well.

How You Developed Those Patterns

Before we go further, it’s important to unpack a little of the background to the rather bald initial assertions I have made. Important because, as we will see, this is fundamental to the Feldenkrais Method and it’s really very interesting for actors. I don’t want to get bogged down in the detail of the scientific evidence for how we learn, so I am going to stick to what we really need to understand the Method, and to elucidate what you are working with as an actor. I have included references and there is suggested Further Reading (in the Appendix) if you want to explore this area further.

To understand how you acquired the patterns and habits you have, and to appreciate their depth and complexity, we need to go back in time. When you were born your nervous system was not all wired up as it is now. The basic life functions that involve movement were wired up – breathing and circulation of the blood, sucking (milk), digestion, excretion (albeit some of them, like digestion, needed a bit of practice to work well!) – but most musculoskeletal movement was random and you could not control it. It usually takes up to fifteen months of extraordinary learning to be able to move around on the floor, use your hands with basic dexterity, stand and ultimately be mobile on two legs. And the learning goes on for the whole of your life. Compare that to any other creature that is born already wired in such a way that it can run, slide, hop, fly, swim, in a fraction of the time – sometimes pretty much immediately after birth – or it will starve, get left behind or become someone else’s lunch. Human beings have to go through a lengthy process of development. It’s not some pre-programmed process that simply unfolds in us over a specific time frame either. Rather, we develop through our interaction with others and the world: a very complex, personal process within a specific environment.¹⁵ Let’s see an example…

I have one such moment caught very beautifully on camera from a project I did filming babies for the first fifteen months of their lives. In this moment the baby (two months old) is lying on his back on a mat and I have placed a toy strategically on the floor where he can see it, somewhere a little bit away from one side of his head. At this point all this baby can do is wave his arms and legs in a kind of random movement, but he can track with his eyes, focus on things nearby, and turn his head intentionally. The random movement of his arms eventually means that he hits the toy. His attention is caught. He has felt himself touch the toy and out of the corner of his eye has seen the toy wobble. In short, something he has done has made something happen in the world, and he has felt and recognised it. Exciting! He wants to do it again. You can see it. He has turned his head and is looking at the toy and the waving becomes a little more frantic. But he cannot control his arm to make it touch the toy again. Then suddenly, accidentally (but maybe a little less accidentally this time?): bingo. He hits the toy. It wobbles. He is still looking at it. Everything is going manically now because he can’t limit his movements, prioritise or direct them. Everything is engaged, legs, arms, all waving. Once more: bingo. This time the toy falls over. Wow! And again. And again. And gradually you can see how the randomness is becoming a little less random, a little more directed. Head, eye, hand are beginning to coordinate to make something happen that he wants to happen. He is learning. His system is recognising the sensation of those movements, seeking to reproduce the parts of the movement that go towards achieving his intention, and eliminating the parts of the movement that are not effective or useful. Through this process, he begins to learn to direct his hand and arm more and more not just to hit but even to grab the toy. And get it into his mouth! Over the next few weeks he develops and refines. He adds other new skills he is learning with his foot and pelvis that enable him to shift his weight a bit so his arm can reach better or he can reach with both arms. He establishes a useful pattern of rolling, reaching and grabbing that he can repeat and repeat. The more the pattern is repeated, the more it is wired in.¹⁶

This very creative process in a child leads to many repeatable discoveries, and in so doing ‘ripens’ the nervous system; prioritising some connections, pruning away others; developing how the child moves, acts, responds; establishing patterns of movement, expectation and behaviour specific to that child created through its interaction with the world. Renowned developmental expert (and Feldenkrais practitioner) Esther Thelen did some excellent research in this area, and wrote most elegantly about how the child’s abilities and sense of self emerge together through this interaction with the world: a combination of impulse, intention, accident, experiment, improvisation and discovery. Interestingly, Esther Thelen compares this kind of learning to the activity of a jazz performer,¹⁷ but we could equally compare it to that of an actor. I said this description would contain the fundamentals of the Feldenkrais Method – well, there it is right there: that creative process of organic learning that we all engaged in as children (and still do) is at its heart which, in turn, links directly to an actor’s process too.

But all in good time.

To go back to where we were: this process of development defines us as astonishing learners and extremely adaptable to our surroundings, but that brings with it difficulties as well as advantages. Shout at this same child when he reaches for the toy and he will flinch. His stomach muscles will contract, his arms will be thrown outwards, he will go into the ‘startle response’ or ‘Moro reflex’, which is one of the few things deeply wired in from the start.¹⁸ Do that every time he goes to reach for the toy and it will begin to affect his pattern of reaching. Very likely he will no longer want to reach for the toy at all. But if he does, that glorious, pleasurable, lengthening movement he was developing is likely to be compromised by the anticipation of danger. As he starts to lengthen to reach for the toy, his system will be contradicting the movement already by contracting in fearful anticipation. What happens if this becomes wired in? It is likely to become an unconscious part of his pattern of reaching unless he has enough other kinds of experience to teach him something different again.¹⁹ Moshe Feldenkrais called it ‘cross-motivation’,²⁰ and we will come back to it. But learning can be affected in many ways. What if there was no toy there and nothing to catch his interest? What if he was kept for very long periods of time in a buggy or a bouncy chair? What if he had to compete for that toy with other children all the time? His sensory-motor learning might well be different again.

And in this way we are the sum of our learning. Watch two children over time and you will see how differently they shape up: what space they are in; what is around them; what they are allowed to do; the family or people they are interacting with; those people’s involvement, lack of involvement, expectations, warmth, coldness, desires, interests; what the results of the child’s explorations and attempts are; how safe the child is to try things out or not to – it all has its effect on what and how they learn in complicated, profound and detailed ways, that layer up and integrate and are not easily teased apart, analysed or simply codified. This is how we piece together and wire-in our first ways of operating in the world. And we don’t stop learning at fifteen months. We go on all our life learning different skills; not learning others; giving things up; discovering others; getting frightened or nervous in some areas of life or developing confidence in others; rushing excitedly into some activities, shunning others; wanting to be seen in one way and not another, to be acceptable to this group and not seen as part of that; experiencing trauma, difficulty, upset, comfort and pleasure in different degrees and ways; learning, relearning. All of it creates patterns of behaviour that are held in our nervous system and show up in the base level of tension (tonus), timing and organisation of our skeletal neuromuscular system, i.e. the way we stand, breathe, shake hands, reach, laugh, walk, sit. And when you come into the room, onstage or on to set, you bring all that with you whether you like it or not. Because you are a human being. And that is fine. But you are not and never will be a blank sheet of paper on which to draw a character – and nor do you need to be. The really important question is, ‘How much do you actually know about what you are bringing with you? Do you know what you do?’ Because if you don’t know much, what kind of choice can you make about it? How can you improve your skills or start to work with what you could do differently?

Do You Really Know What You Do?

Of course, all of us know something of this, and you more than most probably because (I assume if you are reading this) you are an actor or have an interest in acting, and it is an actor’s job to embody someone else with their different patterns and habits. Besides, even a child knows it’s fun to point out or copy someone else because they do something in a different way; every teenager knows there is a cool way and a less cool way to walk. But look again at the baby’s behaviour: we often forget or don’t really appreciate just how deep that goes, just how complex and layered it is, the amount of tiny detail involved, how little we are aware of our own patterns and just what they say about us.

It still surprises me how many young actors turn up at drama school and are shocked at how much time movement classes take up. I also notice how often experienced actors lose their curiosity about themselves and are happy to ignore movement work other than some fitness training, and only rediscover it if they get injured or develop chronic pain. Indeed, if you are an experienced actor you may be thinking that the Feldenkrais Method isn’t for you, that you know enough about yourself and your patterns of movement already. But, with respect, no one does. There is too much to know. You may have worked long enough to have got into some ruts, which means you may need this work as much or more than a student. This is a question you can answer to great advantage whatever age you are and however experienced, because we can learn at deeper levels throughout our lives. We can always improve. You can take that as depressing or exciting. As a Feldenkrais practitioner, I find it exhilarating and fascinating because if you know what you do, you can do what you want. Well, maybe not entirely, but if you don’t know what you do, you can’t make much of a start. Or at least we can say: the more you know what you do, the more you increase your possibilities.

The Stories Our Patterns Tell

It’s especially important for actors ...