This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Acting (Actors’) Technique, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is filled with concepts that will help you explore what you’ve been doing technically and posturally as you act, so that acting is easier and kinder to the body.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
The topics are: What the Alexander Technique Offers Actors; Going for It; Breathing and Shoulders; Posture; Legs (pelvis and hip joints, the standing dance, and the knees); Direction (how to have a lengthening spine); Inhibition (letting go of bad habits); The Jaw; Guided Whole Body Release; Acting in Opposition to the Other Actors and Audience; Harsh Postures and the Body’s Use in Acting; As a Gift (acting with love); and Faith in Your Future as a Successful Actor.
I’m a classically trained certified Alexander Technique teacher. This means I spent most of my three year training experientially changing my postural habits in everything from walking, to weightlifting, to playing the classical guitar. But I also have done a tremendous amount of emotional and spiritual work, and I bring this heightened self-awareness to this ebook on acting and the actor. This means I go very deeply into what is good posture and what is good body use, and I explore the relationship of the actor to the other actors and the audience.
In this ebook I talk about not sacrificing your body in an emotionally intense performance, and/or when you have to play a role that distorts your body’s posture. It is possible to play a hunched over elderly person, and not cause pain, strain, and injury to the musculature and the joints.
Psychologically, I believe any performance should be given as a gift to the audience, to the actor, and to the other participating actors. Without this, you usually have a flat egotistical performance, and I address this in this ebook.
The actor needs to come to a role capable of physically and emotionally starting in neutral. This means that posturally he or she is capable of leaving behind their own habitual ways of moving and being. And if he or she has the acting, psychological, and Alexander Technique tools to do this, then the actor will have the ability to fully become the character he or she is playing without sacrificing the body.
There is also another topic I bring up in this ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Acting (Actors’) Technique, and that is faith in your future as an actor. If you do not have faith that you will become a successful actor, then this colors every role you play. This means that every time you act, if you do not believe you will have a successful future in acting, then this is part of the underlying unconscious that affects every role you play.
Imagine going through the intense training to become an extraordinary actor with the underlying faith that you will make it, then every role will be a role you are 100% committed to doing your best and with the highest energy. You simply cannot commit truly to acting, if you believe there is not enough work out there. It is never about how much work there is out there. The actors who succeed do the work with absolute faith in their success.
