Theatre Topics

Theatre Topics 12.1 (2002) 35-48

The Alexander Technique:
An Acting Approach

Sarah A. Barker

You first search out the point of tension. Next you try to relieve it and finally you build a basis for freedom from it in an appropriate supposition. (Stanislavski 273)

In the past thirty years of actor training the Alexander Technique has come to be considered a standard component in programs throughout the United States. In the search to achieve Stanislavski's freedom from tension, schools recruit specialists in Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, and other self-use techniques to teach actors movement. Many theatre educators assume that the individual actor's personal exploration of self-use techniques will naturally and automatically improve the actor's performance on stage. However, the frequent complaint in the halls of our universities is that the powerful and personal experiences of the movement classroom do not transfer. As a theatre practitioner and Alexander Technique teacher I have tackled this problem and found a successful way to focus the movement training on the performance, creating training experiences that directly work with performance.

The History

In the summer of 1971 Jack Clay, chair of the Theatre Department of Southern Methodist University and head of the acting program, responded to a national groundswell of interest in the physical training of actors by assembling a group of specialists to create the International Movement Institute. The two- month institute included approaches as personal as Charlotte Selver's sensory awareness training and as theatrical as B.H. Barry's Stage Fight. Many of the techniques studied were not new themselves: Tai Chi Chuan and Kathakali from ancient traditions, Alexander Technique from the turn of the twentieth century. The use of these techniques in American actor training programs, however, was a very recent development. The clearest innovation was the inclusion of self-use techniques, like the Alexander Technique, to train actors.

Following the Movement Institute, a 1972 special issue of The Drama Review,Acting: Some New Approaches, introduced many self-use techniques including the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, Selver, Tai Chi, and Todd. In his article, "Self-use in Actor Training," Clay argues for "a whole new area of training, organic self-use"(16). Along with other Stanislavki "methodists" (as he described them), Clay had encountered fundamental problems for the actor that had not been addressed in training. He writes: [End Page 35]

These [problems] dealt with what is usually called voice and body work. The fact is, in our basic "method" training, which is essentially education in responding, it was not always possible to get the actor to react openly, freely, and expressively to imaginary stimuli. Blocking the way for many actors were the eccentricities of their own habitual behavior, movement and speech. (Clay 16)

Self-use techniques attempt to answer Clay's troubling and true observations; they develop awareness in the student of the effect of the mind on the body and of the body on the mind. Furthermore, the study of self-use techniques leads to a new conception of the self in which the body and mind are inseparable. Today two other terms are used to refer to these techniques: psycho-physical (Alexander's term) and psychophysiological (Zarrilli's term). Psycho-physical training develops skills of focus on and control of internal conscious experiences of physical motion, balance, breath, and ease. Emphasis is on self-discovery and attaining a state of readiness and availability in the individual. The present day objective remains the same as in 1972 and was reiterated as recently as January 2001 by Kristin Linklater: "I believe basic training frees an actor from the confines of habit, which is always a diminishing, reductive force" (qtd. in Diamond 34). Phillip Zarrilli articulates the performance goal: "Psychophysical techniques, that is, techniques which equally engaged the actor's mind (psycho) and body (physical) in a 'total' intensive engagement in the moment" (74). Many educators hope that by attending courses or workshops in self-use techniques, acting students can eliminate "the eccentricities of . . . behavior" and unlock the "ability to express a creative image" (Clay 16). Undeniably, many of us...