Movement Training for the Modern Actor (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)

223 Pages·2008·1.85 MB·English

by  Mark Evans

Movement Training for the
Modern Actor
Routledge Advances in
Theatre and Performance Studies
1. Theatre and Postcolonial Desires 10. Movement Training for
Awam Amkpa the Modern Actor
Mark Evans
2. Brecht and Critical Theory
Dialectics and Contemporary Aesthetics
Sean Carney
3. Science and the Stanislavsky
Tradition of Acting
Jonathan Pitches
4. Performance and Cognition
Theatre Studies after the Cognitive Turn
Edited by Bruce McConachie and
F. Elizabeth Hart
5. Theatre and Performance in
Digital Culture
From Simulation to Embeddedness
Matthew Causey
6. The Politics of New Media Theatre
Life®™
Gabriella Giannachi
7. Ritual and Event
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Mark Franko
8. Memory, Allegory, and Testimony
in South American Theater
Upstaging Dictatorship
Ana Elena Puga
9. Crossing Cultural Borders
Through the Actor’s Work
Foreign Bodies of Knowledge
Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento
Movement Training for the
Modern Actor
Mark Evans

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First published 2009
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Evans, Mark.
Movement training for the modern actor / by Mark Evans.
p. cm.—(Routledge advances in theatre and performance studies ; 10)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Movement (Acting) I. Title.
PN2071.M6E93 2009
792.02'8—dc22
2008047301

Extracts from Iris Young’s “Throwing Like Girl” published in Donn Welton’s edited
collection, Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader, Blackwell 1998 printed by permis-
sion of Wiley-Blackwell.
Extracts from Jean Marie Pradier’s “Towards a Biological Theory of the Body in Perfor-
mance” from the New Theatre Quarterly, 1990, Volume VI, No. 2 reprinted by permis-
sion of Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-203-88354-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–96367–2 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–88354–3 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–96367–1 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–88354–9 (ebk)
For Vanessa Oakes

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Movement Training for Actors 1
1 Educating Effi cient Labor for the Acting Profession 14
2 The ‘Neutral’ Body, the ‘Natural’ Body and
Movement Training for Actors 69
3 Movement Training for Actors and the Docile Body 120
4 Movement Training and the Unruly Body 143
Conclusion: Movement Training for Actors:
Overview and Projection 176
Bibliography 187
Index 207

Acknowledgments
This book grew out of a doctoral research project which was itself the
result of twenty fi ve years of studying and teaching movement and theatre.
It would not have been possible without the inspiration of my own teachers:
Jacques Lecoq, Philippe Gaulier, Monika Pagneux and Desmond Jones,
and the fascination with movement that they passed on to their students.
The period of doctoral research was supervised by Bob Bennett, David
French and the late Clive Barker, and I am deeply indebted to them for their
patience, enthusiasm, support and advice. I would also like to acknowl-
edge the generous support offered to this project by the movement tutors
and students at the Drama Schools and training establishments surveyed.
Their contribution to this project has been invaluable, and their passion
and commitment to the fi eld of movement training was a large part of what
attracted me to this project in the fi rst place. I am particularly indebted
to Wendy Allnutt, Niamh Dowling, Vanessa Ewan, and Shona Morris for
their time, their enthusiasm for the project, and the wealth of insight and
experience that they gave me access to. I am very grateful to them, and
to the Drama Schools who participated in this study (Central School of
Speech and Drama, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Manchester
Metropolitan University School of Theatre, and Rose Bruford College), for

their permission to use interview material in this book. My colleagues and
students in the Performing Arts department at Coventry University have
patiently endured my absences for research and writing, which have been
generously supported at various stages through funding from the Coventry
School of Art and Design.
Finally I would like to thank Vanessa Oakes for her endless patience and
generous support over what must have seemed like an age of writing and a
mountain of books. This book is dedicated to her, with love and admiration.