3. Alexander

Perhaps no area of training benefits more from a diversity of approaches than the attempt to link the body to the mind and get away from the concept of rational thought as the source of creativity. The National Theatre School in Montreal is one of the oldest and most highly regarded training programs in Canada. Its sole purpose is to prepare people for the professional theatre. As the Alexander and Tai Chi instructor, Steven Glassman is completely dedicated to the idea that the mind and the body are one. And that a personal spirituality cannot be divorced from the craft of the actor because the choices you make as a person affect your work as an actor. It is therefore natural to equate the spiritual journey to the training journey. According to him:

Self-awareness is at the heart of almost any spiritual discipline and it is also at the heart of acting because you can't really develop the quality of listening, whether it is to your own intuition or to, on a physical level, another actor on-stage or your audience . . . if there isn't a sense of being connected to yourself and a sense of being centred. I would say that at the National Theatre School the first year is very much geared to exploration, opening up, taking risks . . . and self-awareness is the alpha and omega of it all.(11)

[page 31] While he feels his work has a spiritual component, it is not religious or even tied to a particular philosophy. Alexander, for example, developed his technique for very practical reasons -- he had vocal problems. He came to believe that bad physical and mental habits were inhibiting his voice production. According to Glen Park in his book The Art of Changing, the Alexander Technique is a way of learning to use your mind and body well. It is a way of bringing the whole person into balance.(12)

Glassman's own spiritual work has taken him to Java and he also credited the time he spent in a Gurdjieff community as being seminal to his growth as a teacher because of its emphasis on discipline being the path to knowledge. For him, the Alexander technique was a simple and practical way to utilize those ideas.

It is the conflict between doing the task well and the desire to succeed that is often troublesome to western students who have been raised on the idea of "no pain, no gain". Their societal conditioning leads them to desire an end before they have even begun. This desire for result and the traps of old habits were the inspiration for F.M. Alexander to develop the technique that bears his name. To Steven Glassman at the National Theatre School, "it is the glue that holds the training together,"(13) because of its emphasis on dealing with your own personal stress that can be applied to any class. "It becomes a way of dealing specifically with their bodies when a director says, 'just relax.'"(14) Freeing the body also allows for a freeing of the mind that allows for release and development of the imagination. There is a shift from thinking about trying, to a concentration on the process. In a parallel to the Buddhist concept of freedom from emotions Alexander said:

Knowing how to stop demands a technique of inhibition in which refusal to give consent to habitual (subconscious) reaction is the basic means for change. [page 32] It is the only reliable means by which man can overcome the effects of emotional 'gusts' which show themselves in prejudices, jealousy, greed, envy, hatred and the like . . .(15)

Glassman believes that his students are aware that the Alexander technique is about how you live your life; that it is about having a greater sense of exploration. This work provides a link between all the elements of the training because it is a way of working from your centre and staying connected to your body even in moments of stress.

Spirituality is about living your life as fully as you can and finding out what is essential, having a certain peacefulness inside which comes from self-awareness; you know who you are and what your capacities are. Having the courage to deal with your weaknesses and your fears is really a lot about acting. You have to have the courage.

Perhaps nowhere is the link between spirituality and Alexander technique more eloquently stated than in Glen Park's book The Art of Changing. The entire second half of the work focuses on maintaining an energy flow in balance and harmony. Park makes no apologies for his views that Alexander is a technique that has benefits for the whole person and not just for the body. For him it is more than a system of relaxation and body alignment. The world is, he says, "an energy dance, a dance of Shiva," and man is energy, therefore the Alexander technique can be a way of channelling that energy.(16) His work has led him to the building blocks of both life and art. Of his students he says:

They notice changes of a fundamental kind taking place. These changes are difficult to put into words because they are about an aspect of life we don't often talk about. In a sense they are not about an aspect of life at all, but about the source of it.(17)

[page 33] Students delve into a refined state of self-awareness where they can listen to themselves as if for the first time and without judgement about what is good or bad about their emotional responses to what they see. They can begin to make choices. If the information that influences these choices is the fiction of the play then it is easy to see why this technique has been so universally accepted in conservatory training programs.

What struck me most about Glen Park's book was not its thesis but the fact that it is a required text for first year students in Britain's largest University conservatory theatre training program, Manchester Metropolitan University. The students begin their studies with a clear textual link between spiritual growth and acting training. In my correspondence with Niamh Dowling, the program's Head, she had described the school as having a somewhat "holistic" view of actor training and pointed to The Art of Changing as a source.(18)

Dowling started the movement class I attended with an Alexander based relaxation/meditation session in which partners alternately assisted each other to relax by laying their hands on the part of the body in focus at the moment. The main point of the exercise seemed to be to make a firm connection from the sacrum to the occipital bone. One of the partners lay on the floor in a semi-supine position with their feet flat on the floor and their knees up. They were then encouraged to establish a flow of energy from their head to their pelvis through the spine. Once the flow was established they started to move around this axis of unity with the aid of creative visualisation and the constant contact of the partner.

Text was added to movement to integrate their voice work into their bodywork. The class then continued with the other partner repeating the process. Eventually the partners evolved a self-taught ritual form that contained just enough risk in the range of movement that concentration was required. When previously learned text was introduced old vocal patterns were broken by the unique physical relationship brought about by the repetition of the form. By the end of the class it was a complete integration of the body, the voice, and the actor that had [page 34] incorporated elements of meditative breathing, the discipline of Tai Chi, and Alexander's rejection of old habits.

Much of today's actor training needs to focus on this inner state because by the time students reach a conservatory school in their early twenties they have been conditioned by society to distrust structure and belief systems. Brian Doubt, former instructor at Canada's National Theatre School and currently on the faculty of Concordia University, put the challenge facing acting teachers this way:

Students come to class 'in their heads', with a certain intellectual preoccupation. So one of the challenges is to get them to make a connection between the mind, the body and the emotions. This intellectual preoccupation makes itself manifest by students' behaviour: cynical, not trusting, not comfortable, not aware of physical idiosyncrasies, unsure of their emotional life and with a separate body and mind.(19)

It is this separation of mind and body that perhaps provides the chief rationale for incorporating spiritual discipline and methods into actor training. The goal is to ground actors in their bodies and to the earth for without a strong sense of centre we have no base from which to travel. Without a strong sense of self there can be no starting point for training because knowledge of the flow of energy within our bodies is essential in order to expand our emotional depth or the range of our movement without a crippling waste of effort.

4. Sharing Circles

Regardless of how much we focus on and nurture the individual artist in training, Theatre is a collaborative art form. I would argue and I think that the majority of persons reading this paper would support my contention that a safe and familiar environment contributes to better work. We need only look at the work of the world's repertory companies as well as those smaller companies whose members study and work together for years to see [page 35] the benefit of a group of artists maturing together. Yet in our studios and rehearsal halls where time is often as short as a few weeks how do we create that feeling of community? For this I will humbly offer my own solution.

My solution is to start classes and rehearsals each term with a Sharing Circle. By definition it is self-explanatory. The class sits in a circle and on succeeding days begin to introduce themselves to the group. Turns are taken and "the floor" given by means of the possession of a symbolic object. The First Nations people of my home province would use a 'Healing Stick.' While some teachers might use a crystal, I prefer to use a Nerf soccer ball. I start with simple non-threatening things, e.g. describe three things about yourselves. This culminates on the third day with intimate family stories of an event that transformed your life. By 'forcing them to both share by talking and share by listening, I am able to create a sense of bonding that jump-starts their sense of both safety and imaginative freedom. It is something they do together that others have not. They are closer and less inhibited around each other for having done it.

I used this method without giving it a name for years until one of my students started referring to it as a Sharing Circle. A prime example of what I am talking about occurred recently at the start of a special summer course. It was special in that two-thirds of the class were Aboriginal students and the remainder were Hutterites. (If you are not familiar with this group they are communal farmers of German background: as an oversimplification, think mechanised Amish.) The work we did in the circle at the beginning of the course allowed us all to achieve common ground. Both communities have surprising similarities in sense of isolation, larger families and a strong faith in God to name just a few.

Conclusion

Actors need to have available all the possibilities of human character starting with their own. We train in order to make ourselves more aware actors. Since the actor's instrument is himself we must first become more aware human beings. We do not need to teach actors that their work must have the control of reason or rational thought -- they come with that naturally. They know that whatever their intuition, [page 36] their work must submit to the form of the role they are preparing. However, in training, where no opening night lies in wait, they need help to get in touch with an inner life.

There are limits to what can be achieved by rational thought. "In the process of approaching reality we inevitably reach a stage which is beyond thought, where mere intellection becomes helpless and we can only intuitively experience it."(20) Actors must have faith in their own intuition and talent. Without it they will lack the courage to create.

Endnotes

1. Joseph Chaiken, The Presence of the Actor (New York: Atheneum, 1980) 66-67.

2. Chung-yuan Chang, Creativity and Taoism (New York: Julian, 1963) 102.

3. Chung-yuan 21

4. Glen Park, The Art of Changing (Bath UK: Ashgrove Press, 1989) 226.

5. Smukler, Personal interview, 2 June 1993.

6. Smukler.

7. Daisetz Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, Bollingen Ser. 64. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1959) 105.

8. Patricia Roy, Personal interview, 17 May 1994.

9. Roy.

10. Smukler.

11. Steven Glassman, Personal interview, 12 May 1994.

12. Park 241.

13. Glassman.

14. Glassman.

15. F. M. Alexander.

16. Park 196.

17. Park 196.

18. Niamh Dowling, Personal interview, 17 May 1994.

19. Brain Doubt, Personal interview, 13 May 1994.

20. Chung-yuan 102.