The Alexander Technique and Dramatic Art
A great many stage and cinema actors have benefited
from applying the principles of the Alexander Technique.
There is nothing surprising in this since everything
started with Alexander’s own loss of voice at
the beginning of a promising stage career. Alexander
became able to resume his recitals having enabled himself
with the help of his technique to regain his stage voice
and improve it till further.
The Alexander Technique seeks to achieve very fine
body readjustments, which the actor can work on refining
outside the Alexander lessons in the course of his/her
daily activities, in rehearsals and progressively, during
the acting performance itself. Alexander himself experienced
that defects through misuse which is routinely not perceptible
can become alarmingly magnified if subjected to more
intense activity.
These readjustments seek to help the actor free himself
from unwanted tensions, to become able to sense more
accurately the real state of his body and become able
to give to it the desired shape without harm.
The lightened body, through the lengthening and broadening
effects achieved by the Alexander Technique, will also
accommodate a voice that is sustained by unimpeded breathing.
The fearful feelings which constrict the throat have
less reason to surface in a body sensitive to its own
points of reference and fully confident within them.
The actor will be ready to respond to imagined situations.
The body will not be subjected to needless tension and
anxiety. It will be able to find the necessary time
to produce its responses.
The Alexander Technique brings the actor into contact
with a very particular psycho-physical process of far-reaching
re-coordination, demanding in terms of time and the
number of repetitions required. However, the resulting
improvement in self-perception will make him much more
sensitive to himself and more consistent in his acting,
now with more stable internal points of reference, like
a home base from which he can reshape himself, during
a pause or on completion of a role.
The essence of the Alexander Technique involves learning
to suspend the desire to do something, such as speaking,
in order to allow the whole body to rediscover a balanced
and neutral coordination, and to decide subsequently
to speak, as would be the case in this instance, or
to do something else, without letting the habitual tensions
re-asset themselves at the moment of speaking. What
is required therefore is to create the necessary conditions
to relegate all habits and notions concerning an action
that habitually have a negative effect on its performance.
All this corresponds to the desire of the actor: to
be the character he is playing, nothing more and nothing
less; but to retain sufficient self-awareness in order
to avoid being taken over completely by that, albeit
imagined, character.
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