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Showing posts with label Alexander technique. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alexander technique. Show all posts
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Uranium Madhouse Associate Artist: Ben Miller
Ben Miller is the only AmSAT certified Alexander Technique teacher in Southern California who also holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Performance Pedagogy -- the art of teaching actors. As such, he is uniquely qualified to assist actors in developing their craft and increasing their emotional fluidity. Ben resides and teaches the Alexander Technique in Los Angeles. In addition to his private teaching studio, he has taught the Alexander Technique in New York, London and Berlin. He has taught workshops for the Pasadena Playhouse's resident company, Furious Theatre, as well as The Five Willows in Lincoln, NE. Ben has taught acting and/or the Alexander Technique at the following schools: Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, Los Angeles. Pomona College, Claremont, CA, USC (assisting Babette Markus). Point Park University, Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh, Ben recently served as Associate Producer in charge of casting and assayed the role of Don on the independent full-length feature, "American Macho Buddha" (www.americanmachobuddha.com). He was also the casting director and inhabited the character of Rowan in "The Resurrection Man" (www.resurrectionmanmovie.com). Ben is also a member of Actors Equity Association and Screen Actors Guild. He served on the nominating committee for the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2004 and 2009. Ben currently serves as the Treasurer on the Executive Committee for the American Society of the Alexander Technique (AmSAT).
Ben is an also experienced writer, producer and director.
Welcome Ben!
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
SF Alexander workshop
with Constance Clare-Newman and Amy Likar
Join us for a day of Body Mapping and hands-on Alexander!
We will present detailed slides, and video and of course, handouts.
During presentations, one or both of us will be giving individual hands-on experiential understandings to match up with our intellectual understandings.
If you are a teacher, teaching your students functional anatomy in Alexander lessons clarifies and deepens their understanding and their ability to practice AT skills.
If you are an Alexander student, this workshop will bring a whole new level of awareness into your practice.
Saturday, November 13th from 10-5 at Jeffrey Bihr studio in Rockridge, Oakland
$125, limit of 15 students
Contact Constance for more info or to sign up.
Constance Clare-Newman
Less Effort, More Ease
The Alexander Technique
http://www.constanceclare.com
510-655-2734
Sunday, July 04, 2010
until you've walked a mile in his shoes
We take our ambulatory capacity, that is, our ability to walk, very much for granted. Our ability to change where we stand at will, quite literally, is one thing that separates us and all the other animals from plants. With that ability comes the ability to approach someone for sex, or to attack them, or to just seek a little companionable society. The ability to change our spatial relationships at will is a fundamental feature of all human society. Because of this feature, for example, we can define certain property as ours, and have others evicted from it if we choose. They don't have the right to stand on our property if we don't allow it.
All human relationships come with some notion of how physical space will be occupied together. The famous Seinfeld episode about the "close talker" exemplifies this vividly. A mother and child enter in an embrace that obliterates the space between them readily, but two grown men who are not related to each other may do so only seldom. So where we physically stand in relation to others is inextricably bound up with the nature of our relationship to them
"Until you've walked a mile in his shoes" might be parsed "until you have moved in and out of the various (physical) relationships with others that he typically undertakes." Or, until you have stood in relationship to others in the way that he has. While the last sentence can be understood metaphorically (closeness in the sense of emotional closeness, by the way it is no accident that we use this spatial metaphor to analogize our connections to others), it can also be understood physically, for the reason that I have already articulated: our ties with other people include agreements or contracts, if you will, about how we will occupy space together: what is too close, what is not close enough, under what circumstances these parameters change, etc.
The Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki, whose actor training techniques have enjoyed a vogue in the last decade in this country bordering on the cultish, recognized the primacy of the feet as defining the actor's relationship to the ground and, therefore, to the space around her. His fundamental exercise involves rigorously stomping the ground by isolating the muscles of the legs and abdomen, to "awaken" the lower body of the actor. However, the importance of placement in space is well-understood within the Stanislavsky tradition as well. In A Challenge for the Actor Uta Hagen discusses the concept of "destination" in her chapter entitled "animation". "The reason for movement is destination" she proclaims. The simplest possible gloss of this is that when we move, we have reason to (i.e. not because the script or the director says we move at that point.) Or: when we move, we are going somewhere. Or It is the fact that the beginning of this impulse to move involves a psycho-physical orienting of ourselves towards where we are going and what arrival in that place promises us that gives this somewhere its importance for us as actors. This idea was dramatized in a superb manner in the movie Donnie Darko by the ectoplasmic streams that Donny starts to see emanating from the chests of those around him, as I have written previously.
In the approach that I teach, we search for a need for the actor to embody and pursue in a scene, which then prompts her to seek certain outcomes that promise to gratify this single need, both in immediate and in long-term ways. What it is essential to keep in mind is that these outcomes nearly always involve changes in the physical proximity to other characters or to things. As actors, we are very focused on what we are saying, our lines, and the temptation is to think of where we are standing or sitting or lying down in the scene as "the place where we say these particular lines." So while we put a lot thought into understanding the relationship between what we are saying and what we need, it's easy to forget to consider the relationship between where we are standing (or sitting, or lying down...) and what we need. The failure to come to this can devolve into actors devolving into very animated talking heads. In real conversations, we have a particular physical outcome in view, and if that outcome involves movement, then we prepare ourselves physically for that movement, or to respond to some expected or feared movement. The awareness of the destination of the expected movement invites a partial orientation toward the destination in question, even as we may continue to interact with another character, and be partially oriented towards him or her.
Consider, as we did two days ago, Blanche's first appearance inStreetcar. I (Blanche) have to ask the two strangers on the steps for information about my sister and for assistance accessing the house, but after my long journey from Laurel lugging a trunk with everything I own in the world, the destination of the Stella's apartment, where I might hope to catch a few moments alone to have a few quick drinks to relieve my stress and anxiety and compose myself, is very "hot". So hot that Williams makes it clear that once I access the apartment, I cannot avoid offending Eunice in hustling her back out of the apartment. So in the scene with the two women, once it becomes clear where Stella lives, I will be physically preparing to go there, even as continue to engage with them. This is the real importance of the concept of destination: even as we engage in dialogue, our bodies must remain alive to the movement that the situation may call for, either because a window of opportunity opens, or some threat or danger makes itself manifest that we need to act to squash.
I can remember one of my mentors at the Yale School of Drama, Evan Yionoulis, talking about whether certain actors she had encountered "had destination." It's now clear to me that what she meant was not only that the when they moved, they knew where they were going, but also that as they spoke, they were physically alive to the possible movements which could at any time become necessary given the situation (necessity being the mother of invention, don't forget!)
For an actor to "have destination", she needs to understand these things. This is the cognitive side of "having destination": she needs to be mentally alert to the physical ramifications of the development of the scene. However, there is a physical side to this as well. To truly "have destination", impulse needs to be free to flow from the Pilates core of the actor, where the need lives, down through the hips and all the way down into the legs to the feet. Well, that's easy, right? Not so fast. When we are acting, we are aware of being watched and judged, and therefore, tension can be introduced into our bodies because of this awareness. We can easily carry this tension in our legs, and, even more probably, in our hips. There is so much shame in our society around the things we do with our hips (have sex and rid ourselves of bodily waste) that tension in this area is extremely common. An Aexander technique teacher I encountered told me of a student of hers who proclaimed "Life is a butt-clenching experience!" There are few more humiliating scenarios than one involving incontinence. Tension in the pelvis are well-nigh universal. Such tensions obstruct constipate, if you will) the flow of need-driven "energy" into the legs. Without this energy, the actor's lower body ca easily check out. Tension in the various joins of the legs can compound this problem. The actor can develop a tendency to grip the floor with the feet, which can lead to becoming rooted to the spot and making movement require more effort than it would if the actor were poised to move.
Ultimately, we want to play both ends against the middle. We want the cognitive awareness of the possibilities for movement to merge with habituated physical freedom in the pelvis and legs, so that the distinction between body and mind virtually disappears. I tell students often that acting is a body-mind trick. It's a particular combination of physical and mental engagement on the one hand, and physical and mental receptiveness and relaxation on the other.
Talk about walking a fine line. And in someone else's shoes, to boot (heh!). It's no mean feat (sorry, I can't stop!), but one worth striving for.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Introductory Alexander Technique class- Bay Area
From Constance Clare-Newman:
Hello students, friends, colleagues,
Please pass this along to anyone who you know would benefit!
Thanks!
Move into the spring with balance and ease!
Introductory Alexander Technique Class
This six-week class will meet Thursday mornings, 10:30am-12pm, February 25-April 8. (skipping March 25th)
Includes 6 group sessions plus one private lesson. Cost is $250.
Learn basic functional anatomy as it relates to posture and movement.
Understand how your state of mind affects your muscles and postural state.
Discover the unconscious habits that interfere with your good posture, free movement, and even mood.
Explore changing these habits in class and practicing better posture, less effort in activities and poise of your mind/body self.
Classes include mindful movement and breath explorations, practice in activities from your daily routine and individual hands-on guidance. Students leave each class feeling relaxed and revitalized. Each week offers a new practice to explore and skills you can use immediately.
This practical weekly group experience includes a private lesson in which you receive a personalized evaluation of your postural and movement patterns, and new ways to un-do them.
Class sessions are 90 minutes; private sessions are 50 minutes. Class size is limited to 6 students.
Classes are held in Rockridge, Oakland. 2 blocks from BART and just off Hwy 24.
Call or e-mail Constance for more info, or to register, 510-655-2734
Constance Clare-Newman
http://www.constanceclare.com
510-655-2734
Less Effort, More Ease
The Alexander Technique
constance@constanceclare.com
Check out Constance's great guest post on this blog here.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Guest Post: Tension—not too much, not too little
When I teach the Alexander Technique to an actor, the student and I choose which aspect of the work to focus on. The most common starting point is teaching the student how to come to a balanced neutral. Not too much tension, and not too little. Just the right amount of tension creates a lively, dynamic state of being.
Cultivating this dynamic neutral usually means that the student needs to “relax” some parts of herself and enliven other parts. Most people have habits and patterns of posture, movement, gesture, breath and voice that are out of balance.
As the student and I explore the student’s “postural set” we find out where the bones are mis-aligned and where the muscles, tendons and ligaments can release out of either tightening or collapsing. We look in the mirror to see the postural set and how it changes with my hands-on guidance. As muscles release into length and lively tone, the bones find a more efficient balance. It’s typical for students to feel “weird” or like they are almost falling forward when they come out of their habitual postural pattern. Often when I ask about that feeling, it’s a “good weird” or a “floaty falling” sensation.
The use of hands is one way that an Alexander lesson is different from other methods or techniques in actor training. As the student learns to refine her kinesthetic and proprioceptive senses, she is able to work with the principles on her own. But at first the teacher’s hands help the student understand the teacher’s verbal guidance, and help her actually experience her own proprioceptive sensations.
As students progress, we work on releasing excess tension in action. Here’s a typical example:
Mark is learning a role that requires anger and upset. As Mark goes over his lines for the first time in his Alexander lesson, he pushes his face forward and contracts his jaw and neck muscles. He is over-acting because he is over-efforting. His lines are strong enough; he doesn’t need the extra tension. The tension causes his voice to rise. The tension in his face and jaw make his expression look forced.
I suggest that he try the lines while staying in a more neutral state, as I use my hands to help him notice what he is doing muscularly with his neck and jaw. I suggest that he let the lines evoke some of that anger in him, but not force it.
This time, Mark’s voice is fuller, he becomes more intimidating as he retains his stature and his strength without contracting. Dynamic tension is there, but it is there in the right amount.
Another common Alexander lesson is in the realm of excess preparation before an activity. Before speaking or moving, actors will often “prepare” themselves by contracting and “getting ready”—thereby coming out of their neutral state.
Marla is working on a new monologue. Marla begins from a dynamic neutral state of being ready for action, but whenever Marla starts to speak, the area just under her skull at the top of her neck contracts. As I work with Marla, I put my hands gently on the back of her neck, where most people have excess tension. My hands helps her to notice when the muscles contract. Marla practices not tensing as she begins to speak. She continues to notice the area under her skull and can begin feel it tense even when my hands are not there.
I have her practice speaking without any concern for what her words mean. She counts to ten. Marla needs to soften and slow down so much that she feels like she is slurring, but we get her to make sounds without activating those necks muscles. I then have her practice normal conversation. She slows down to about 70% of her normal speaking pace, and I encourage her to allow her skull to be mobile as her neck remains free of extra tension as she speaks. When her neck muscles are too tense, her skull won’t move. When she has released some of the tension, she lets her head move freely.
When we progress to speaking her lines, Marla once again goes back to tensing her neck. And now she adds a new habit—she takes a short, quick breath each time she begins.
We go back to not-tensing, and not-preparing, and this time we bring in not-gasping before the speaking. Because we’ve now been working on releasing tension while speaking, working with the breath is easier. As Marla practices not adding the extra effort of the quick intake, she continues to allow her head to float easily, her neck muscles to be long and lively, her jaw to be easy and mobile. It is a lot to think about! Changing ingrained habits takes time, but more than that, it takes awareness and clarity of intention.
Marla now can speak her lines without excess tension, and her whole state of being shows the change. Her voice is clear and not rushed or raised. The lack of excess tension and effort shows in her spontaneous choice to move with her lines, which excites her. With more openness, she feels a fuller expression and more freedom as she explores her role.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
the actor and GTD
In my travels through the twittersphere (I just made that up!), I kept seeing this acronym pop up: GTD. I had no idea what it meant. I imagined it was some type of software that required special skills to operate. Well, I was wrong. GTD stands for Getting Things Done. It's an approach to, well, getting things done. The core principle is summarized by wikipedia:
GTD rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them externally. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.
When I read this, it resonated immediately. One of the most important things I have ever done was a year of private lessons in the Alexander Technique. I worked with this remarkable instructor. She noticed my occasional "absent-minded professor" tendencies, and suggested that I get a planner to carry with me, so that I could record things I needed to do as they arose. She explained that this would reduce the mental strain involved in my day-to-day existence. I took her advice, and found she was right. Things were much easier when I knew that I had recorded things. I knew I had the information SOMEWHERE, so there was no pressure to keep it all in my head. I felt free to be more present.
Another example: when I am watching students do a scene in class, and I write down notes as I do. Sometimes, I will notice something very minor: a slight error in the lines spoken, or some of the actor's hair getting in her face. The hair is actually kind of important, because if it continues to distract me as I watch the actor, I am less effective as an instructor. Also, if the student is not made aware of the issue, she will eventually get up in front of people when the scene is presented at the end of the class with her hair getting in her face a bit, and this will distract everyone trying to watch her work. It's not significant in terms of her craft as an actor, but it does constitute an intrusion of sorts. I used to find myself having little debates with myself about whether to write such things down. After all, while I was writing this down, I would not be watching the actors, and so I would be missing out on some other possibly much more significant part of her work or her partner's work. But I have learned that no matter how minor the issue, the best thing to do is to write it down immediately. By writing it down, I let the issue go, for the moment at least. This frees me to return with a clear mind to what is happening in the scene. If I don't write the issue down, then it will continue to nag at me, and I will be less fully available to what I am looking at. And if I do write it down, I can address it once the scene is over, and hopefully it won't be there to distract me the next to time through.
A third example from my own experience: I try to keep the production of content for this blog pretty steady. However, I never know when ideas for posts are going to come to me, and I also never know I am going to get to the actual writing. But as soon as an idea occurs to me, I go to my blogger dashboard and I create a new post. Possibly it will just be a title or a title and a link, but then I have a placeholder for it. I can come back and actually write the piece when I am ready to do so. I can come back to it whenever I need to. And my unconscious knows that too. It knows it can let go of that issue for the moment, and move onto new things, which will, we hope, lead to new ideas being generated.
What does this have to do with the actor? Well, in the approach that I present in the class, the process begins with a careful, thorough study of the text, to attempt to glean as much information as possible about the character from what the writer has provided. There is a framework for organizing this information as it is collected, called the "Who-am-I" or the Five Questions. Interestingly, this is very close to the first phase of the GTD work sequence. According to wikipedia:
The notion of stress-free productivity starts with off-loading what needs to get done from one's head, capturing everything that is necessary to track, remember, or take action on, into what Allen calls a bucket: a physical inbox, an email inbox, a tape recorder, a notebook, a PDA, a desktop, etc. The idea is to get everything out of one's head and into a collection device, ready for processing. All buckets should be emptied (processed) at least once per week.
Allen doesn't advocate any preferred collection method, leaving the choice to the individual. He only insists upon the importance of emptying the "buckets" regularly. Any storage space (physical inbox, email inbox, tape recorder, notebook, PDA, etc.) that is processed regularly by the individual is acceptable.
It's of course essential that the actor actually WRITE DOWN the information that she is gleaning from the text. No matter how much I stress that, though, both explicitly and by example, it's often difficult to see the importance of doing that up front. It's only later in the process that assuming that "Yeah, I read the play, I know what happens, I don't need to write it out" has consequences, and the need for discipline and exhaustiveness at this phase is made indisputably clear.
The benefits of writing down the information are manifold: first of all, by engaging in the physical act of writing, the body is engaged, and this begins the process of transforming textual information into experience grasped in a bodily, physical way. Once it is written, the actor can look at it, and this may trigger valuable questions or intuitions. That particular bit of information is then out of her head, and she is then fully receptive to other pieces of information. She can move through all of the scattered information in the text that may be relevant in a somewhat linear way, dealing with one issue at a time, and placing it in a "bucket" where it can be found easily later.
The hardest part of all of this, probably, is the fact that you don't necessarily see the payback right away. But it is precisely this recognition, that learning to act well involves sustained work over time, which doesn't always immediately result in a payoff, that is the beginning of the actor taking command of her own working process.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Great LA Alexander teachers
A student of mine pointed to me to the website of these two Alexander teachers, Jean-Louis Rodrigue and Kristof Konrad. They have a high-profile clientele (most recently Josh Brolin for his work on Oliver Stone's "W."). My guess is they aren't cheap, but probably worth the investment if you have the cash.
The Alexander technique is one of the most important things an actor can study. I recommend it as highly as I recommend my class. There aren't too many things I say that about.
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