Acting & Actor Training
Performer Training
Category
Performer training assumes skills can be developed to make communication clearer and the experience of performing easier. It often sees the performer practising the integration of voice and body.
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Drawing on a half century of documenting performance across multiple genres, from post-modern dance to physical theater to body work, as well as site-specific performance, with audiovisual examples from some 53 practitioners, including Eugenio Barba, Tim Etchells, Joan Skinner, Kristin Linklater, and Steve Paxton, Peter Hulton’s “A Digital Essay on Performance”considers performance as a body in operation with imagery and attempts to identify some of its foundational features.
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Travis Preston, Dean speaks about innovation and entrepreneurism in training the 21st century actor.
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Sasi speaks on the Singaporean perspective of interculturalism and performer training.
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Dr. Ricard G. Abad and Melissa Vera M. Maramara speak on the impact of interculturalof actor training in the Philippines.
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Dr Tom Cornford speaks about diversity, inclusion, and social justice in contemporary actor training.
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Glenda Linscott speaks about approaches to training actors in contemporary Australia.
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Heather Timms speaks on the bicultural approach of actor training in New Zealand.
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This workshop was an early attempt to develop a form of movement training work for performers that has its underpinning in the principles of the Alexander Technique and the work of Monika Pagneux.
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Lisa Mayo of the Kuna and Rappahannock Nations was a founding member of the Native
American women’s feminist theatre group, Spiderwoman Theater. She was a singer,
actor, and playwright who wrote and performed with Spiderwoman Theater for 35
years.
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Thelma Holt talks about her early career as an actress in the immediate post-war period, changes in the 1950s and 1960s effected by the Royal Court, and her role in developing the fringe theatre scene.
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Brewster on her childhood in Jamaica, training at Rose Bruford and her subsequent career, as well as the difficulties of getting work as a black actress and the experiences of her contemporaries.
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This film covers basic acrobatics.
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This film covers basic acrobatics using furniture and objects.
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This film covers an interview with Andrei Droznin.
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This film covers locomotion techniques.
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This film covers partner work.
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This film covers preparation and stretches for physical activity.
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Pearson takes a group of practitioners through the many exercises that formed the central concerns of Brith Gof. These include physical training, spatial and temporal awareness and group choreography.
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Strindberg Laboratory’s “demonstration project” through California
Arts Council’s “Prison Project” involving people who are about to be released
back into society.
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CoNCrEte (2009)
screendance reveals
how the environment affects our emotions and ever-changing lived
experience.
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This video is documentation taken from a weekly contact jam session with the
actors in the MFA Actor-Training program at UC Irvine. Contact Improvisation is
a large part of the movement arc in the first year of actor training, and jam
sessions are held weekly, integrating all three years of MFA actors.
Someone happened to video this session, and I give a brief description of
our use of contact as a tool for actor training in the
voice-over.
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This video is documentation of an exercise with 3rd year graduate actors at
the UC Irvine Actor-Training program, speaking a monologue while contacting with
a silent partner. At a moment of heightened activity, the silent
partner is removed, and the resulting delivery of the monologue is focused and
intensely communicated.
The athleticism and sensitivity of the contact created a culture of
expressivity. Tenderness as well as rage and challenge emerged in the contact
session and remained present in the solo monologue. So, the complexities of
emotion that were embodied metaphorically and rhythmically in the extreme lifts
and rolls and balances of the partnering could be seen as an emotional
“rehearsal” for the solo performance. But once the partner was removed, the
speaker had to reach out to us, and address each deeply felt idea to the
audience in the room.
No longer in a contact with the literal “other,” we, the audience, now become
the necessary focus.
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This video features snapshots from two different directing workshops conducted
in October 2017 with two groups of directing students at RESAD (Real Escuela
Superior de Arte Dramático de Madrid) in Madrid, Spain. The workshops
focused on strategies of recontextualization of classical works and of
determining directorial point-of-view.
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This video workshop, which took place in Athens in July 2017, is the
result of a process of working on possible ideas for set design for Henrik Ibsen’s
The Lady from the Sea. Athena Stourna shares her intuitions in front of
a model she built for the purposes of this book, shedding light on fundamental
questions that permeate the director-scenographer
collaboration.
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This video is from a workshop which brought together performer Miranda
Manasiadis and choreographer Malia Johnston. The workshop took place at Footnote
Dance and Deirdre Tarrant Studios.
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This workshop took place at East Hampton, NY, in October 2016, part of an
attempt to address different ways of looking at the character of Blanche du
Bois.
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A documentation of a five-day workshop, with Zygmunt Molik leading a group of participants at the historical site of the Brzezinka farm, where most of Grotowski’s paratheatrical work took place.
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This film, shot in the early part of the 1990s by leading Polish film-maker Jacek Petrycki, shows Gardzienice on the road in the Carpathian mountains in the Ukraine, rehearsing and training.
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Walking Gusto Productions
explores the marginalised and disempowered female voices of South Africa by
using the body as a “site of resistance”
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A workshop concentrating on the structured approach that is the basis of ImageWork training, leading the participants from simple forms of improvised physical expression to complex forms.
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Yoga postures (Asanas) seen in the videos with their Sanskrit
names.
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Zarrilli’s Psychophysical Acting methodology focuses on the relationship between the actor-as-doer and what the actor does. It (re)examines in practice and theory a psychophysical approach to acting.
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The third episode of After My Life in Art, originally broadcast by The Culture Channel, Russia
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The fourth episode of After My Life in Art, originally broadcast by The Culture Channel, Russia
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The fifth episode of After My Life in Art, originally broadcast by The Culture Channel, Russia
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Gardzienice’s physical and vocal training hinges on two main ideas: mutuality and musicality. It usually begins with song, perhaps discovered on a rural expedition or taken from ancient Greek music.
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Part of an overall documentary series about Russian Theatre in the 1920s, Meyerhold
Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde uses archive material to demonstrate acting
techniques.
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This video captures a typical progression in Levinsky’s teaching of biomechanics, from work with sticks to footwork, balance and simple twirling skills, culminating in a demonstration of solo études.
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Part three covers Chekhov during WW1; the First Studio of The Moscow Art Theatre; Chekhov's marriage to Olga Chekova; his nervous breakdown and mental illness; and his own Studio.
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Part four covers the end of the Civil War; Chekhov’s new marriage; the start of his theory of Psychological Gesture; Erik XIV, directed by Vakhtangov; and Inspector General, directed by Stanislavsky.
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In this demonstration-performance, Odin Teatret’s Iben Nagel Rasmussen shows and explains her working practice, from her training methods through to performance.
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This workshop has a strong focus on voice work. It takes place on Dartmoor, in an ancient stone circle, a village hall and a garden, and illustrates Suryodarmo’s individual movement practice.
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These six videos document research in solo physical training developed by Massimiliano Balduzzi over more than fifteen years, and include work on exercise sequences.
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This film explores the main themes which led to the founding of The Moscow Art
Theatre and the formation of Stanislavsky’s system of acting.
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This film documents the work of Iben Nagel Rasmussen (Odin Teatret) with her
international group The Bridge of Winds during a two-week closed work session held
in December 2011.
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An explanation of how performances are created at Odin Teatret. It describes the stages in the work, presenting the different phases of the process in which text, actor and director interact.
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By providing unprecedented access to the work of Grotowski’s women collaborators, this film, featuring Rena Mirecka, offers a more inclusive assessment of Grotowski’s enduring legacy.
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A performance that describes the vicissitudes of the voice of an actor and the stratagems she invents to ‘interpret’ a text. In theatre, actors need to create a labyrinth of rules to follow or refuse.
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The Neutral Mask workshop Houben led for the International Workshop Festival in Edinburgh was the only one of this kind he ever attempted. It was an experiment.
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A performance-demonstration about the difference between theatre and dance. European culture suffers from the division between theatre and dance. They are, in fact, a single world.
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Katherina Seyferth’s training methodology includes yoga-based movement and plastiques, as well as exercises focusing on the passage from stillness to movement and accessing one's organic drive.
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An audio-visual introduction to the Routledge Voice Studies collection Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond (2021).
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Documenting a three-day work session introducing participants to key aspects of the training Rasmussen developed with her group, The Bridge of Winds, culminating in a Montage of Actions and Songs.
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Yoga and Actor Training offers a practical introduction to, as well as a
discursive overview of, the ways yoga practice can be used in contemporary actor
training. Approaches explored in this series of audio-visually recorded
workshops with student actors lay down some of the foundational correspondences
in the relationship between yoga and actor training. Together with contextual
essays, the videos are designed to support and encourage further collaboration
between the two disciplines.
Audio
In this episode, Susanna reflects upon her thinking and experiences working with movement and dance in community, education and interdisciplinary performance contexts. Through exploring her ways of working, she shares insight into her processes of identifying and dismantling access barriers she experiences in her professional practice. Underpinned by her question of “what is moving me in the space”, she considers ways of transforming access barriers; her Stimming performance research project, the dialogue of the body with the environment and her future research interests. Throughout the episode, Susanna highlights the importance of asking questions and acknowledging needs.
Audio
In this episode, Manisha discusses her interests in supporting dancers with their mental health and wider considerations of mental health within the dance sector, more generally. Through situating thinking around her current PhD research, Manisha shares her thinking around barriers around mental health in dance, the application of research findings to sport and dance settings and the importance of context when considering such application. She highlights the importance of cross-discipline research in widening awareness and learning around mental health and reflects upon her position as a researcher in being situated across disciplines. Throughout the episode, Manisha advocates the need for mental health to be a priority and for there to be greater emphasis on the role the dance sector can have on a dancer’s engagement with dance itself.
Commentary
by Peter Hulton
Drawing on a half century of documenting performance across multiple genres, from post-modern dance to physical theater to body work, as well as site-specific performance, with audiovisual examples from some 53 practitioners, including Eugenio Barba, Tim Etchells, Joan Skinner, Kristin Linklater, and Steve Paxton, Peter Hulton’s “A Digital Essay on Performance”considers performance as a body in operation with imagery and attempts to identify some of its foundational features.
Commentary
by Peter Zazzali
A six-part series featuring conversations with some of the foremost trainers across
four continents on subjects ranging from the cultural and political to
the professional and pedagogical.
Commentary
by Annie Loui
Contact improvisation is a form of dance improvisation based on energy and weight
exchange, incorporating elements of aikido, jitterbugging, child’s play, and
tumbling
Commentary
by Maria Shevtsova
Analysis of Dodin's as influenced by Chekhov and growing uncertainty of early 20th century Russian society.
Commentary
by Avra Sidiropoulou
Directions for Directing: Theatre and Method lays out contemporary concepts of directing practice and examines specific techniques of approaching scripts, actors, and the stage. Addressed to both young and experienced directors but also to the broader community of theatre practitioners, scholars, and dedicated theatre goers, the book sheds light on the director’s multiplicity of roles throughout the life of a play — from the moment of its conception to opening night — and explores the director’s processes of inspiration, interpretation, communication, and leadership. From organizing auditions and making casting choices to decoding complex dramaturgical texts and motivating actors, Directions for Directing offers practical advice and features detailed Workbook sections on how to navigate such a fascinating discipline. A companion website explores the work of international practitioners of different backgrounds who operate within various institutions, companies, and budgets, providing readers with a wide range of perspectives and methodologies.
Commentary
by Ben Spatz
Ben Spatz describes the ‘exercise-actions’ and movement sequences of Balduzzi’s demonstration, and situates his process in terms of European and Balinese traditions of physical training.
Commentary
by Maria Shevtsova
An examination of the five complex novels behind Dodin's ‘theatre of prose’.
Practitioner
Iben Nagel Rasmussen is an actor, director, teacher and writer born in Denmark. She has been a member of Odin Teatret since 1966 and conducts independent research as leader of ‘The Bridge of Winds’.
Practitioner
Phillip Zarrilli, Professor of Drama at Exeter University, is internationally known for training actors using a psychophysical process combining yoga and the Asian martial arts, and as a director.
Related Items
Practitioner
Jerzy Grotowski was one of the major theatre directors of the twentieth century. He extended what theatrical activity comprises by focussing on acting, space, and the actor–audience relationship.
