The Alexander Technique, T'ai Chi Ch'uan, and Stage Combat: The Integration of Use, Somatics, and Skills in the Teaching of Stage Movement

COMMENTS ON PROCESS The Alexander Technique, T'ai Chi Ch'uan, and Stage Combat: The Integration of Use, Somatics, and Skills in the Teaching of Stage Movement Phyllis G. Richmond and Bill Lengfelder The actor's physical instrument is the body. The actor lives in and through the body, receives stimuli, responds to stimuli, expresses emotions, and performs actions through the body. For realistic theatre, the actor needs to be physically expressive in a naturalistic way to present credible physical responses to emotion. The actor may need to transform physically to inhabit another body with alien physical characteristics: to be lively, sedate, arthritic, a hunchback, a drunk . . . For stylized theatre, the actor might need to perform movement that is athletic or dance-like or larger than life. For particular productions, the actor might need to master specific skills: to tumble, juggle, fall downstairs, duel with swords, dance the Tango . . . Training the physical instrument is an important part of an actor's preparation . Ideally, through movement training the actor should gain a mastery of the psychophysical instrument which facilitates solving physical challenges in production. The actor must ultimately learn how to problem-solve physically. Developing the ability to "think" physically is more important than mastering specific skills in training, for once students understand how to learn, they can learn whatever specific skills they need. Movement training for actors is often separated into three areas: somatics, physical characterization, and skills. We add a fourth category: use, which we consider distinctly different from the other categories. This paper is not about physical characterization but focuses on the teaching of physical thinking through the integration of use and somatics into skills learning and performance . Since current literature on specific approaches to movement pedagogy is limited, we offer our particular synthesis of training techniques as a means of sharing our discoveries with our colleagues and opening up dialogue among movement faculty. 167 168 Richmond /Lengfelder We have developed a three-year movement training for actors that combines complementary attention to use, somatics, and skills through the study of the Alexander Technique, T'ai Chi Ch'uan, and skills including Stage Combat . Phyllis Richmond is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique and a Certified Laban Movement Analyst; Bill Lengfelder is a longtime T'ai Chi Ch'uanist (trained by Ben Lo), a martial artist with four black belts and thirty years experience as a competitive fencer and stage combat specialist. Our concerns in movement, while coming from differing traditions, converge. We have found that use, somatics, and skills together have a synergistic effect leading to more efficient fitness training, improved mastery of skills, and more effective performance. Attention to these three areas forms a logical training progression. We begin with somatics and use, building a foundation for skills. We feel that it is important to develop an awareness of one's own instrument before attempting to acquire physical techniques. Studying somatics develops kinesthetic sensitivity , an understanding of personal movement habits and preferences, a body-level sense of how movement is put together, and an awareness of the mind-body link. The somatics we teach is T'ai Chi Ch'uan. As distinct from the study of somatics, we place the study of self-use. An actor with poor habits of neuromuscular organization expends misdirected energy and attention in unnecessary muscular work which interferes with performance. The actor needs to change old habits of tension and compression for new ones of expansion and ease which facilitate coordination. Attention to the development of good use is fundamental, in our minds, to the appropriate mastery of physical skills. The Alexander Technique focuses on use. Because use is such a critical element in the development of accurate kinesthetic awareness, potent mind-body connection , and technical prowess, our graduate students study the Alexander Technique for three years. The understanding gained through the study of T'ai Chi Ch'uan and the Alexander Technique affects the acquisition of physical skills. In our model, athletic conditioning develops fitness for high-level performance. Skills such as stage combat, mime, circus skills, jazz or tap dance, and so forth make use of athletic conditioning. Specific skills serve specific theatrical demands. Playing Macbeth, for example...