How Do Actors Manifest Their Training

Explain how actors manifest their training on the stage. In your answer refer to your study and exploration of the approaches to acting and performance of TWO of the practitioners and texts set for study.

Approaches to acting explores not only the practitioners but also the world in which their audiences are living. Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal’s The Theatre of the Oppressed grew out of the chaos and oppression in Brazil in the 1950’s-70’s. The aesthetics of his approach to acting came from his philosophy and belief in humanity’s ability to change through theatre. The Theatre of the Oppressed is therefore a theatre of liberation and the actors and non-actors are trained in a specific way to realise Boal’s theatrical forms. He
As suggested in the title “the exercises and games detailed are mostly suitable for both the trained and untrained performers – it is fundamental to Boal’s work that anyone can act…” In this book Boal discusses that an actor can be empowered by de-mechanising the patterns of the actor’s physical and emotional habitual behaviour. Through muscular, sensory, memory, imagination and emotion exercises the actor can become aware of these functions and then is able to be ‘re-tuned’. Each exercise is a physical reflection on one’s self. Significant in Boal’s games are exercises around trusting and responding to the senses. They support the need to feel what we touch, see what we look at and listen to what we hear. The heightening of the senses also heightens the actor’s capacity to perceive and respond to political and social injustice. He also discusses the dynamising and the memory of the senses as a way for the actor to connect to the issue they are portraying to their audience. In class we workshopped countless exercises including The Sound of the Seven Doorways. In this exercise there were two groups of ‘doors’ created by a couple holding hands above their head. Each ‘doorway’ would make a distinct noise to attract a person walking with their eyes closed. They attempt to pass through all doors and when they have, a cheering sound is made. This awakens the senses to the blind person for now they have to
For acting to begin, one must have an audience, and to sustain acting, an awareness of the invisible body is required.” The Suzuki Method of Actor Training is a collection of exercises that cultivates understanding of these fundamentals by attempting to disorient the centre of gravity, disrupt the breath and challenge the limits of physical and emotional experience. The actor must learn how to manage these tools efficiently and collectively in order to complete the exercises. Goals for his actor training include; understand the different ways in which the feet contact the floor, be constantly focused and aware, when stomping, send the energy through the floor into to the ground, not onto it and keep the upper body free, but strong. The actor should learn how to access all of the energy, power, and grace within their physical selves. He likens the actor to “a spinning top that appears most calm and still when going at top speed.” There are many exercised Suzuki invented to teach these to his actors and we workshopped some in class. Stomping in Shakuhachi was the first exercise we did; stomping to an up-tempo beat for three minutes focusing on pressing the energy into the ground. At the end of the three minutes, we all collapsed to the ground, allowing for the rest of the energy to pass to the ground. From this we were taught focus and concentration and we learnt about the Grammar