The Expressive Actor

Integrated Voice, Movement and Acting Training

Michael Lugering

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136448997
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Drama

"The study of acting should not begin with an exploration of feeling, perception, imagination, memories, intention, personalization, self-identification... or even performance—but physical action."

Michael Lugering's The Expressive Actor presents a foundational, preparatory training method, using movement to unlock the entire acting process. Its action-based perspective integrates voice, movement and basic acting training into a unified approach.

A wealth of exercises and diagrams guide the reader through this internationally taught program, making it an ideal step-by-step course for both solo and classroom use. Through this course, voice and body training becomes more than a simple skill-building activity – it is the central prerequisite to any actor training.

This new Routledge edition has been fully updated, to include:

• 
  
  

• A revised prologue, further discussing the historical and philosophical grounding of The Lugering Method

• 
  
  

• A new introduction, with particular focus on the integrative nature of the method and how the book should be used.

• 
  
  

• New developments, clarifications, and 12 new exercises.

• 
  
  

• 6 new illustrative diagrams.

Part I Prologue

A Introduction to the method

DOI: 10.4324/9780203125212-2

Premise

Date: 22 December 2009/Tuesday

Event: Public Television Broadcast

Title: Charlie Rose: The Brain Series

Guest: Daniel Wolpert, Cambridge University Neuroscientist

Daniel Wolpert:

I think you have to ask a very fundamental question: Why do we animals have brains? …We have a brain for one reason and one reason only, and that's to produce adapTable and complex movement. There's no other reason to have evolved a brain …. So I'm really a movement chauvinist.

There are many species who live very happy lives on our planet, do very well socially, but they don't need to move. So, the tree is a very nice example. It doesn't require complex movements. It hasn't developed a brain. But the clinching evidence for those who don't believe in this view … is the humble sea squirt. It is a very rudimentary animal, and it has a brain, a spinal cord, and it swims around in its juvenile life. And at some point in its life, it implants itself on a rock and never leaves the rock again. And the first thing it does upon implanting on that rock is to digest its own brain and nervous system for food. So once it doesn't need to move, it doesn't need that brain anymore. So I think … really—the brain is there for movement ….

(Charlie Rose: The Brain Series 2009)

I, like the Cambridge University neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert, am a movement chauvinist. I believe movement can provide a foundation for unlocking the entire acting process.

The central premise of this book is that the study of acting should not begin with an exploration of feeling, perception, imagination, memories, intention, personalization, self-identification, script analysis, character, language, style, the ensemble or even performance—but physical action. It is not that these things are unimportant to the acting process, but as Daniel Wolpert asserts these things are secondary to physical action, arise from physical action and are components of physical action:

So we need to remember that things like sensory processing, the perceptual system, memory, and cognitive processes are all important. But, they can only be important to drive action or suppress future actions. There's no point in laying down memories of childhood or perceiving the color of a rose if it doesn't leave you to do something different with your motor system later in life. So … from an evolutionary point of view, there would be no point in having the thinking processes, if they can't be expressed through action …. We cannot look at memory or perception [or any seemingly mental operation] in isolation from action ….

(Charlie Rose: The Brain Series 2009)

This method seeks to reestablish the body's rightful seat at the Table as the central participant in the actor's quest for the artful re-creation of human experience. The method presented is foundational and preparatory. It explores how meaning and understanding emerge from our sensorial and visceral connections to our bodies. Fundamentally, the method explores physical action as a means of reconnecting the natural links between the mind and the body that are often short-circuited in the “seemingly artificial” process of acting. While the mind and the body are unquestionably inseparable in daily living, the theatrical expression of the thoughts and feelings of characters other than ourselves often presents an insurmounTable disconnect that can divide and separate the mind and body of the actor. The re-establishment of the natural connection between the mind and the body is the central goal of this integrated method of training.

Additionally, this specialized action-based method of training promises to integrate the seemingly disparate disciplines—voice, movement, and acting—in a unified method of study. The exercises are founded on a series of universal principles, which articulate the shared pattern and structure by which all thoughts and feelings find a physical life in the voice and body. These principles encompass specific directives for the integrated development of the actor's physical, vocal, and emotional instrument in the context of physical action. Moving, breathing, sounding, and speaking—all the components that make human expression possible—are not so much nouns or things, but rather, a series of integrated actions occurring simultaneously in the body. Moving is an action. Breathing is an action. Sounding is an action. Speaking is an action. A study of how each of these individual actions integrate in the service of the expression of thought and feeling is a specialized type of acting training in its own right and equally worthy of such a label. I assert that it is possible to develop a type of voice and body training—rooted in physical action—that is in essence a specialized type of actor training. This unique type of action-based training simultaneously prepares the body and voice for the expression of thought and feeling and the creation of meaning and understanding that are essential to the actor's storytelling process. From this perspective, voice and body training is not merely some isolated and arbitrary skill-building activity that is divorced or separated from the creative process, but an integrated component in a comprehensive acting curriculum.

Context

The idea that actor training could begin in the body is not a new or a revolutionary concept. The legacy of this training is echoed in the work of Stanislavski, Rudolf Laban, Michael Chekhov, Jerzi Grotowski, Peter Brook, Richard Schechner, Phillip B. Zarrilli, Anne Bogart, and others. However, despite the many noTable proponents, in certain circles of training there remains a deep-seated resistance to physical methods of preparation. This resistance manifested itself most significantly in psychological realistic approaches to actor training in the United States, but vestiges of this prejudice remain pervasive and have proved difficult to overcome. The origins of this bias are not new, but centuries old—a systemic tendency to celebrate the mind over the body; and ultimately, intellectual methods of actor training over physical methods of actor training.

Underpinning this biased view are three traditional and controversial scientific and philosophical beliefs about the mind and the body:

“My body is not me.”—the tendency to view our bodies as an object, something separate from and other than the person we think of as our self. In this view, the true nature or essence of a person exists solely because of mental activity. The body is viewed merely as a physical container that houses or holds the true spirit of a person. The process of self-identification and the concept of personhood exist without reference to physical experience.

The spotlight of human consciousness

Without question the mind and body are an indissoluble unit. However, the nature of human consciousness, human communication, and indeed, actor training often require that we direct our awareness towards one aspect of our integrated mind/body experience at a time. It is difficult for the conscious mind to be in two places at once. Consequently, some training approaches focus the spotlight on the mind—mental methods of acting training; and other training approaches focus the spotlight on the body—physical methods of acting training. Regardless, of where the “spotlight of human consciousness” might be focused in training, it is important to recognize that the mind and body are always functioning together as one. Without question, in the rehearsal room the actor needs the resources of both the mind and the body to create a meaningful artistic experience for the spectator.

“My emotions and feelings are mental events.”—the tendency to view our emotions and feelings exclusively as isolated intellectual constructions, while overlooking the rich, full-bodied physical experience that make emotion and feeling possible.

“My emotions and feelings are irrational.”—the tendency to view our emotions and feelings as interfering with the thinking process; rather than as foundational co-participants in the meaning-making, reasoning, and understanding process.

The result of these views is a swift theoretical undercurrent that reinforces the notion that the most valuable methods of acting training are intellectual and not physical—or as commonly stated internal and not external. There is, however, compelling contemporary scientific and philosophical research that questions these traditional views of the mind and body. I suggest that if these advances are fully digested they will lead to a reexamination and a radical new validation of physical methods of acting training.

I will step aside at this point and allow the words of two contemporary thinkers—the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and the philosopher Mark Johnson to articulate a challenging alternative view, which underpins the philosophical foundation of this method:

“My mind and body are one”

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio:

The human brain and the rest of the body constitute an indissociable organism … The organism interacts with the environment as an ensemble: the interaction is neither of the body alone nor the brain alone.

(1994, xx–xxi)

Philosopher Mark Johnson:

There is no radical mind/body separation. A person is not a mind and a body. There are not two “things” somehow mysteriously yoked together. What we call a “person” is a certain kind of bodily organism that has a brain operating within its body, a body that is continually interacting with aspects of its environment (material and social) in an ever-changing process of experience.

(2007, 11)

“My emotions and feelings are an integrated mental and physical experience”

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio:

The essence of feeling may not be an elusive mental quality attached to an object, but the direct perception of a specific landscape: that of the body.

(1994, xviii)

Philosopher Mark Johnson:

… feeling is our felt awareness of something going on in our body.

(2007, 65)

There wouldn't be an emotion without a brain, a body and flesh and blood ….

(2007, 67)

Emotions are not merely cognitive structures, they are not merely brain processes, and they are not merely bodily responses. Rather emotions encompass all of these dimensions and more.

(2007, 62)

“My emotions and feelings assist me in reasoning and thinking”

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio:

I … propose that reasoning may not be as pure as most of us think it is or wish it were, that emotions and feelings may not be intruders into the bastion of reason at all … At their best, feelings point us in the proper direction, where we may put the instruments of logic to good use.

(1994, xvi–xvii)

Clearly, I never wished to set emotion against reason, but rather see emotion at least assisting with reason and at best holding a dialogue with it … I view emotion as delivering cognitive information via feeling …

(1994, xiii)

Philosopher Mark Johnson:

There is no cognition without emotion, even though we are often unaware of the emotional aspects of our thinking.

(2007, 9)

The embodied mind

Ideas similar to those of Damasio and Johnson abound in contemporary neurological and cognitive science, philosophy, evolutionary epistemology, artificial intelligence, robotics, linguistics, and other disciplines. All around us, the traditional tendency to separate the integrated action of the mind and body is being challenged in what may be the most significant scientific and philosophical phenomena of our time—embodied cognition. Embodied cognition is a revolutionary way of thinking about human reasoning, which suggests that the content of the human mind—ideas, meaning, understanding, precepts, and principles—are shaped and developed through physical experience (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [refereed], 8 July 2005).

Mark Johnson speaks of the embodied mind as follows:

Meanings emerge, “from the bottom up” through increasingly complex levels of organic activity; they are not constructs of a disembodied mind.

(2007, 10)

News of these ideas is beginning to trickle down into practical discussions about acting training. A new understanding of the important role the body plays in the feeling and thinking process is raising complex questions about how actors have studied in the past, while posing new opportunities for the future. We may soon arrive at a clearer place, where we can finally wal...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• PART I Prologue
• A Introduction to the method
• B Overview of the method
• C Introduction to the actor
• PART II Principles of expressive action
• 1 Expressive action
• 2 First and second functions
• 3 Physical properties
• PART III Principles of integration
• 4 Integration
• PART IV Stacking
• 5 Introduction to stacking
• 6 Moving
• 7 Breathing
• 8 Sounding
• 9 Speaking
• 10 Extending the barre
• PART V Technique
• 11 Preliminaries
• 12 Voice and body exercises
• 13 Language and character exercises
• Epilogue
• Appendix I: Expressive continuum
• Appendix II: Actions
• Bibliography
• Index