Integrative Alexander Technique Practice for Performing Artists: Onstage Synergy

First published in the UK in 2014 by

Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2014 by

Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,

Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright © 2014 Intellect Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image © Frank Rosenstein, 2014

Cover designer: Stephanie Sarlos

Copy-editor: Michael Eckhardt

Production manager: Jessica Mitchell

Typesetting: John Teehan

ISBN 978-1-78320-218-8

ePDF ISBN 978-1-78320-220-1

ePub ISBN 978-1-78320-219-5

Printed and bound by Hobbs the Printers Ltd, UK

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part One: Performing Artists’ Foundation for Using the Alexander Technique

Chapter 1: An Actor Began This

Chapter 2: How Does the Alexander Technique Work?

Chapter 3: The Design of Our Instrument: An Introduction

Chapter 4: First Experiments in the Alexander Technique

Chapter 5: Concentration Is a Lousy Word for All Performing Artists! (And All People!)

Chapter 6: Congruency: Relax Is a Lousy Word for Performing Artists

Chapter 7: The Omnisensory Experience (Including the Kinesthetic Circus and a Look at Emotions)

Chapter 8: Psychophysical Definitions

Chapter 9: Constructive Planning

Chapter 10: Freedom of Choice

Chapter 11: Integrating the Alexander Technique with Your Technique

Chapter 12: Some Discipline-Specific Notes Regarding Technique

Chapter 13: F.M. Alexander’s Story

Part Two: Alexander Technique Revivification of the Journey of Performing

Chapter 14: The Journey of Performing: Defining Performance Basics with the Alexander Technique

Chapter 15: The Journey of Performing: The Specific Circumstances

Chapter 16: The Journey of Performing: When the Journey Is in a Fictional World

Chapter 17: The Journey of Performing: Beginning, Middle and End

Chapter 18: The Journey of Performing: The Psychophysically Phrased Active Verb

Chapter 19: The Journey of Performing: Coordinating Together (Performer-to-Performer Relationships)

Chapter 20: The Journey of Performing: Coordinating with the Audience

Chapter 21: The Journey of Performing: Stage Readiness (no more 'stage fright'!)

Chapter 22: The Journey of Performing: Constructive Critic and Celebration

Chapter 23: The Journey of Performing: Coordinated Creativity

Part Three: Onstage Synergy

Chapter 24: Onstage Synergy: Template Variations and Studied Rehearsed Plans

Chapter 25: Onstage Synergy: Preparation and Warm-Ups

Chapter 26: Onstage Synergy: Rehearsing

Chapter 27: Onstage Synergy: Performing

Chapter 28: Onstage Synergy

Appendix One: AT Rehearsals Reference Guide

Appendix Two: Finding an Alexander Technique Teacher

Appendix Three: Performance Chroniclers

Appendix Four: Keynote Address, Alexander Technique and Performing Arts Conference

Works Cited

Index

To my daughters,

Alyssa-Lois and Edan-Hoelan,

whose journeys continually inspire me

Celebrating the memory of

Lois H. and Stephen F. Madden and

Marjorie Barstow

Acknowledgements

The first acknowledgment goes to all the performing artists who have helped shape this work – the members of my theater company, Washington Street Players Place in Lincoln, Nebraska; The Performance School artists; and the performing artists of the Alexander Technique Training and Performance Studio; the current students and the alumni of the University of Washington School of Drama’s Professional Actor Training Program; the artists of Lucia Neare’s Theatrical Wonders; and performing artists from Alexander Technique communities worldwide. I am a most appreciative audience and ever grateful for what you share with me.

The University of Washington School of Drama Professional Actor Training Program has been my artistic home since 1986. I am grateful for the collaboration and support of its faculty and staff. I want to especially acknowledge Professor Emeritus Jack Clay, who, unbeknownst to him, was indirectly responsible for my study with Marjorie Barstow, and later invited me to join the faculty of the Professional Actor Training Program; Professors Steve Pearson and Robyn Hunt, for supporting an even more in-depth integration of the Alexander Technique into the program; Professors Sarah Nash Gates, Mark Jenkins and Valerie Curtis-Newton, for their ongoing support; my faculty collaborators, both current and past: Geoffrey Alm, Jeffrey Fracé, Scott Hafso, L. Zane Jones, Judy Shahn, Andrew Tsao, Jeff Caldwell, Judi Dickerson, Max Dixon, Connie Haas, Jon Jory, Betty Moulton and Shanga Parker.

I would also like to thank the Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center located at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL), for providing a refuge to begin writing this manuscript.

Thanks also to Professor Sidney Friedman, who invited me to participate in a workshop with Marjorie Barstow by simply saying, ‘I think you might like it’.

I am grateful to Matt Goodrich for what he describes as ‘various editorial roles’. His contribution to preparing the manuscript for publication exhibits the same commitment to the extraordinary that infuses his piano performance.

Thank you as well to Jessica Mitchell of Intellect Books for her guidance in bringing this book to publication.

Introduction

‘That is so nineteenth century!’ I recently had the opportunity to take an excellent acting class from a very good teacher. Yet I left amazed and somewhat dismayed because the language of the teacher and my mostly younger fellow participants perpetuated a way of talking that has been proven false for over a century. It is neither true nor possible to ‘get out of your head’ or only ‘get in your body’.

We are whole. We are whole. WE ARE WHOLE!

It is well past time to cooperate with human design in a way that insists on nourishing our integrated self. The work of my teacher Marjorie Barstow (1899–1995), the first graduate of F.M. Alexander’s first teacher training course, is the foundation of the material in this book. Building upon her insights, I have continued to pursue a way of teaching performers (and others) how to function always whole. The Alexander Technique has the ability both to nourish the integrated self and to create the conditions in which artistry flourishes.

Who this book is for

It is, firstly, for anyone who skillfully engages with an audience.

It is written as a performing artist-specific introduction to the practice of integrating the Alexander Technique into the performance process.

Because all professional communicators share the actor’s central function – intentional communication with an audience – this book also guides directors, musicians, dancers, professional speakers, teachers and performance artists in integrating the Alexander Technique into each of their specific forms. Activity suggestions in each chapter target performers of all kinds.

Alexander Technique instructors who teach performing artists can use the book as a guide, whereas performing arts teachers and coaches will find it a useful companion to their work.

It also can be used to accompany a course of study in the Alexander Technique.

My perspective

I write as a teacher and coach, speaking directly to anyone who wants to experiment with the ideas I offer.

A key to my perspective is that from the moment Marjorie Barstow introduced me to the Alexander Technique, I learned it by applying it to my acting exercises, scenes and monologues. At the time, I didn’t know that many others learned the Alexander Technique through a set of certain procedures. In fact, it wasn’t until about five years into my study that I realized not everyone directly applied the process to their art form. I learned to integrate the Alexander Technique into performance from my first lesson. This book and its discussions proceed from this model. (For anyone unacquainted with Marjorie Barstow, information and videos about her work are available on the website www.marjoriebarstow.com.)

Organization of the information

The book is designed as a step-by-step guide. It can be a companion to Alexander Technique classes, workshops and lessons, or a guide to self-study. Resources for finding Alexander Technique teachers are offered in Appendix Two.

There are three sections: Section One is a performing artist-specific introduction to the Alexander Technique; Section Two maps the journey of performance using an Alexander Technique-informed approach to Performance Skills; Section Three weaves the threads together to create Onstage Synergy, providing a guide to integrating the Alexander Technique directly into your rehearsals and performances.

An additional word about Section Two: acting techniques and processes provide the structure for examining issues of performance. For actors, this section re-examines acting techniques from the perspective of human coordination. For many other performing artists, this is new information, and is a much-needed, more detailed look at the skills of artistic communication than may have been previously considered. This is relevant in the study of the Alexander Technique, because lacking understanding of these skills causes much undue, ineffective effort onstage. The book reframes the ideas for actors while introducing these professional communication skills to non-actors in ways directly relevant to individual art forms. It guides all performing artists in many ways to integrate coordination and their work in the present moment onstage.

The choice to publish without illustrations and photographs is deliberate. The Alexander Technique is about movement, and my experience of photographs in other texts is that they tend to create static misimpressions. Your interaction with the ideas and processes creates the dynamic impressions you need.

The cover image is from Suite For Strangers (Café Suite), University of Washington School of Drama. Directed and original choreography by Robyn Hunt; set design by Andrew Layton; costume design by Rachel Canning; lighting design by Jeremy Winchester; additional choreography provided by Peter Kyle with Steve Pearson as sound engineer. The actor is Masha Borovikova.

How to use this book actively

I teach. It will quickly become apparent that this book is a series of teaching chapters. Together they tell a story of meeting the Alexander Technique, re-examining performance through its lens, and integrating the Alexander Technique and Performance Skills through Onstage Synergy.

Some people who read this book are already acquainted with the Alexander Technique, while others are taking classes, workshops or lessons as they read, or are exploring this territory on their own. Since learning the Alexander Technique is an iterative process, I have included suggestions for practice following each chapter. For Parts One and Two, each chapter includes Performance Practices and Alexander Technique Rehearsals (AT Rehearsals); Part Three includes Onstage Synergy Practices. If you decide to carry out these active explorations, you might keep a journal to record your impressions throughout the study.

Performance Practices

These activities following chapters are specifically related to the content of the chapter.

AT Rehearsals

This series of explorations invites you to use the Alexander Technique in actions that touch on many of the behaviors involved in the skills of performing arts, as well as those used in life (e.g. you move, you breathe, you imagine, you make sound, you make choices). The rehearsals are designed to encourage an exploration of the wide variety of things that we do, enabling us to build the ‘all together one after the other’ (Alexander 1984: 29) whole-self integration required for Onstage Synergy.

Onstage Synergy

The explorations in Part Three empower you to take charge of integrating the Alexander Technique with your particular performing art.

Performers’ Chronicles

Performers who have learned integrative Alexander Technique ‘speak’ in sidebars throughout the book. They are all artists who have been my students. I began looking at how to integrate the Alexander Technique into my work as an actor and director while studying with Marjorie Barstow in Lincoln, Nebraska. At the same time that I was developing new works with my theater company, Washington Street Players Place, I was deeply investigating how to integrate the Alexander Technique with every aspect of acting and directing. The members of the company were my first set of willing explorer-performers. When I moved to Seattle, I cofounded the Performance School, a Seattle-based center for the study of the Alexander Technique; my primary class was ‘Performance’, which blended teaching acting and the Alexander Technique. I was hired to teach the Alexander Technique for the University of Washington School of Drama’s Professional Actor Training Program, and this has led to more than twenty-five years teaching incredibly talented young people how to integrate the Alexander Technique with theater. When musicians and dancers found their way to my private studio, integrating the Alexander Technique and Performance Skills with their performing arts became important and necessary in our work together.

All of which is to say that the work represented in this book came about in partnership with hundreds of performing artists. I am enriched and continually inspired by their love for what the performing arts bring to our world. I respect their discipline and support their quest for the next level of mastery. I am grateful to them, and consider myself one of the luckiest audience members in the world because I get to see a lot of great performances!

Some of these artists have allowed me to share their stories of moments they integrated the Alexander Technique into some aspect of their work. Most of the stories are written by the performers themselves. A few of the stories are about someone the writer taught or coached. The Performers’ Chronicles offer first-person narratives to reveal the many-faceted ways each performer uniquely incorporates the offered ideas into their work. I have regularized the wording that means ‘to use the Alexander Technique’.

For Alexander Technique teachers

My keynote address from the Alexander Technique and Performing Arts Conference in Melbourne in 2012 provides a succinct summary of my point of view. If it would be helpful to you as a starting point, I have included it in Appendix Four. This book can serve as a guide to integrating the Alexander Technique with the work of any performers studying with you. I believe that the journey I lead performers on in this book also will lead Alexander Technique teachers in the ways and means of what is sometimes called ‘application work’, including non-performing-related tasks. It is my experience that it is possible to learn the Alexander Technique solely in relationship to the moment-to-moment pursuits of our lives.

For performing arts teachers

For performing arts teachers, this book guides you through a process that enhances what you are teaching, explaining how the Alexander Technique relates to performance education. Although the word choices may be different, the goals are the same.

Constructive conscious kindness

In a recent workshop in Osaka, it occurred to me that using the Alexander Technique is an exercise in kindness to myself because it prompts me to choose to use my full resources in whatever I am doing. This thought created my current one-line description of the Alexander Technique:

The Alexander Technique is constructive, conscious kindness to ourselves, cooperating with our design and supporting our desires and our dreams.

Part One

Performing Artists’ Foundation for Using the Alexander Technique

Chapter 1

An Actor Began This

Imagine that you are an actor having trouble with your voice. You consult all the voice and speech teachers and medical people you know, and still the trouble persists. Then imagine that an important theater invites you to perform your one-person show on its stage... in two weeks. What do you do?

What Australian actor F. Matthias (F.M.) Alexander (1869–1955) did was to consult his doctor. The doctor told him not to speak until the performance two weeks later. F.M. did as he was told and began his evening of solo Shakespeare in full voice. Sometime during the performance, he lost his voice and apparently ‘croaked’ his way to the finish.

He returned to his doctor, who couldn’t explain what had happened. Alexander asked, ‘Is it not fair, then, to conclude that it was something I was doing that evening in using my voice that was the cause of the trouble?’ (Alexander 1984: 8). After all, he had had his voice at the beginning of the performance, just not at the end. The doctor agreed, yet wasn’t able to give Alexander any more guidance.

Although this was bad news for Alexander, it would become good news for us, as it sent him on a journey of discovery that resulted in what we now call the Alexander Technique. Fairly early in this extended exploration (which is thought to have taken seven to nine years), Alexander’s voice improved. However, he continued to investigate, as it became evident that his work offered more than voice improvement. While he was discovering more effectiveness in his own behaviors, his friends noticed how he was changing and wanted him to share what he was doing. And so he experimented with teaching others what he was himself learning.

Alexander’s initial experiments revolved around the act of communicating. He wanted a process he could use on his own while acting. He had little use for a passive technique that could be done to him, nor anything utilized separately from his acting process. He needed something that would work in action. This quality of the Alexander Technique – that it can be used while you are in action or activity – sets it apart from many other psychophysical techniques, particularly for those of us who are professional communicators.

What does it do for performers?

Michel Saint-Denis is the acting teacher probably responsible for the inclusion of the Alexander Technique in many acting training courses. He designed the programs at RADA, Juilliard and the Comédie-Française. In his book Training for the Theatre, he says:

‘The Alexander Technique, invented by F. Matthias Alexander and described in his book The Use of the Self, is a method by which the student can free himself of postural bad habits and become aware of the meeting point of his body and mind. At the same time the Technique corrects the alignment of his body and his coordination in general’.

(Saint-Denis 1982: 105)

Performers have been advocates for the Alexander Technique throughout its history. Anecdotes about its effectiveness come from all the performing arts. When a physician who was also a professional musician came to my studio in pain from how he was playing, his first words were ‘I don’t believe in all this hooey hooey stuff, but my musician friends say that this works, so show me’. Some months later, he reported that he had said to a fellow surgeon who complained of back pain during a long surgery, ‘I told you to study the Alexander Technique. My back doesn’t hurt’.

In an interview with Jean-Louis Rodrigue, Trisha Brown said, ‘The Alexander Technique helps to integrate the individual dancer plus all the systems that he or she has been exposed to’ (quoted in Rodrigue 1986: 5). Evangeline Benedetti, former cellist of the New York Philharmonic, said in an article for Direction magazine, ‘The Alexander Technique has become an integral part of my playing and performing. My playing has become easier, my movements more graceful, the ability to express myself musically has become more immediate and supple’ (Benedetti 1991: 305). Performers know that something about this process works!

Performer’s Chronicle

I was a guest pianist in a singing class at the University and you asked if I’d like a turn as well. I definitely felt a change, but what was more profound was I heard a difference in the sound of my playing, actually hearing the arm weight rest into the piano bed and the resulting warmer, richer sound we all strive for. (J.C.)

My personal story

In graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis, my first experience of the multifaceted usefulness of the Alexander Technique occurred when I played Cordelia in a university production of King Lear, with Morris Carnovsky as Lear. Carnovsky was one of the original members of the Group Theatre, had played Lear all over the world and was an alumnus of Washington University. Given this amazing opportunity, I worked diligently to prepare for the role. Performing with Carnovsky was as powerful an experience as I had imagined, and I was proud of my work and grateful for having played Cordelia.

A few months after the show closed, Marjorie Barstow came to the university to teach a workshop. I asked her to help me with one of Cordelia’s monologues – the recognition speech. In the play, when I began this monologue, I moved my hand toward Carnovsky, who as Lear was sleeping in front of me:

Oh my dear Father, restoration hang 25

Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss

Repair those violent harms that my two sisters

Have in thy reverence made!

I had always wanted my hand to move toward his face in a way that carried all of Cordelia’s love with it. And I could never quite get my hand to do what I wanted – no matter what I said to myself, it looked stiff. As Marjorie Barstow helped me to use the Alexander Technique to speak the monologue, my hand did what I had always wanted it to do. (This is the increase in physical range/flexibility Saint-Denis refers to.)

I continued to speak:

Had you not been their father, these white flakes 29

Had challenged pity of them.

Suddenly my voice was responding to my ideas about the text and its expression. I had done okay with this while performing the role, and now my voice was working more than okay. (This is Saint-Denis’s increase in vocal range/flexibility.)

Was this a face 30

To be opposed against the warring winds?

To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder?

Suddenly I realized that some of the words meant something more, something different than what I had thought. I was experiencing more of what Cordelia was doing with her words and actions. (This is an instance of ‘the meeting place between mind and body’.)

In the most terrible and nimble stroke 34

Of quick, cross lightning? To watch – poor perdu! –

With this thin helm?

(Shakespeare 1974 IV, vii)

At this point, I was so overwhelmed that I could not continue. I had had strong acting moments before, but how they happened was always a bit of a mystery. This was no mystery – I consciously used the Alexander Technique, and all that I had done on the role and this monologue was working beautifully. Moreover, I was also expanding my understanding and expression in real time.

The experiences that created my career choice

My ‘Cordelia experience’ verified for me that the Alexander Technique was incredibly useful in doing work I cared about. Due to the circumstances surrounding the production of King Lear, I had worked on the role for six months, pouring every ounce of what I knew into this preparation. With the Alexander Technique, my ability to carry out the results of my research and rehearsal increased exponentially. While I felt some sorrow that I had not known how to do this during production, my overwhelming experience was joy at finding a technique that – at last – helped me integrate all my tools toward my desired end.

Since ‘having a day job’ is a reality for most young performing artists, my elation in discovering the Alexander Technique grew into a decision to learn how to teach it. I described this choice to people this way: ‘Actors work so hard to do something that they care about. They deserve to know this work’.

In an interview with Marjorie Barstow for the ‘Nebraska Oral History Project’ – which I had access to because my theater company created a play based on the histories – she was asked how she had decided to study and teach the Alexander Technique. I was fascinated to learn that her initial motivation was similar to mine – though her art form was dance:

‘I got involved in it just because I was interested in the fact that many people in the performing arts – after they have studied a fairly long time, it seemed to me – in those days they did not continue to improve the way they should for the amount of time they spent and I was trying to answer that question. And I couldn’t. I could never answer because it never seemed logical to me. I figured that the more a person studied there ought to be a little more improvement that I could see. And when I came across the Alexander work I felt, Well maybe this is something I’d like to know about’.

(DePutron & Barstow 1980)

I remained artistic director for Washington Street Players Place, a small theater company in Lincoln, Nebraska, throughout my studies with Barstow. We had weekly workshops in which my focus was the application of the Alexander Technique to theater techniques of all kinds. Theater artists need a wide range of skills: I loved to dance and had taken dancing classes throughout my childhood. As a theater student, I took more dance classes, as well as singing lessons and vocal training of all kinds. Due to personal friendships in undergraduate school at Penn State University, I spent a lot of time with musicians, took music history courses so as to become more fluent in their language, and attended many recitals. Unknowingly, I was building the background, skills and language I would need to work with performing artists of all kinds.

While my home base has always been the theater, my experience coaching other performing artists dates back to my first Alexander Technique studies. At Washington University in St. Louis, I began working with a small group of musicians at about the same time I started to learn the Alexander Technique. I wasn’t teaching them the Alexander Technique per se, but rather Performance Skills – acting skills for musicians. We all realized that they needed more information about how to relate to an audience. Their lack of knowledge often showed up as discomfort that limited their technique and ultimately affected their enjoyment of performing. As they learned new ways to think about performance and being with their audience, they played more consistently at their optimal musical level. They and their audience also had a better experience! This showed me that coordination in non-theater performers was affected by an understanding of performer/audience communication skills – or a lack thereof.

The simple start

The Alexander Technique provides us with keys to cooperating with our magnificent design, beginning with a constructive process for cooperating with the relationship between head and spine that is inherent in vertebrate coordination. The next chapter introduces the processes that ameliorate your ability to perform as you desire. These simple ideas, which begin with talking about head and spine in movement, create conditions in you that have profound implications for your work.

Chapter One – An Actor Began This

Performance Practice – Key Learning

F.M. Alexander’s journey that led to what we now call the Alexander Technique began with a desire to do something in his life – he wanted to recite Shakespeare. One of my practices at the start of every class and workshop is to renew my desire to use this psychophysical process, and also to ask my students to consider what desires have led them to the class. The desire to do something is the first step in the Alexander Technique. You may desire to keep a journal to record your Performance Practice explorations.

One

Identify situations in which you might choose to use the Alexander Technique. (e.g. actors might use the Alexander Technique for a particular warm-up exercise; musicians might use the Alexander Technique to play scales; dancers might use the Alexander Technique when doing pliés, etc.). Consider skills you want to build, as well as others that somehow aren’t working for you. You might also have ideas or performance concepts you want to explore – focus, preparation and so forth.

Two

How do these choices relate to your goals/dreams/ideals as a performer? As a human being?

A joy of this work is that using it constantly affirms the necessity and value – to self, others and the world – of respecting your own desire and will. If we ignore our desires, we go out of coordination. As we use the Alexander Technique, respecting our intentions, we maximize our possibilities.

Alexander Technique (AT) Rehearsal One

Wonder

The way we learn the Alexander Technique is through practice. Performing artists understand this. In the next chapter, I lead you through an introduction to the Alexander Technique. Following each subsequent chapter, I offer a way to rehearse using the Alexander Technique to perform something. I pick simple tasks applicable to all disciplines of performing, as well as to daily life. The tasks eventually create a short scenario. This is intended as a playful way to continue developing your ability to COORDINATE. AT Rehearsals – with the repetition of all the steps each time you add a new one – are ‘deliberate practice’: ‘The core assumption of deliberate practice is that expert performance is acquired gradually and that effective improvement of performance requires the opportunity to find suitable training tasks that the performer can master sequentially’ (Ericsson 2006: 692).For now, you can simply wonder what gifts the Alexander Technique might offer you for your performing life.

Rehearse as often as you like.

Chapter 2

How Does the Alexander Technique Work?

The discovery F.M. made while investigating how he was hurting his voice turned out to be something essential in all vertebrate coordination: the relationship between our head and spine in movement governs the quality of our overall coordination. When excessive work enters into this relationship, causing the head to pull down toward the body, this pressure throws the whole coordination out of optimal function. We are not talking about the everyday action of moving your head about, but rather a kind of pressure that compresses the spine and surrounding parts. This unnecessary exertion limits breathing, hinders the movement of the limbs, impedes potential action and may cause pain – all of which limits all aspects of our self-expression.

Think about a large pillow. Imagine standing it on its side, then pushing down on top of it. The compression causes the pillow to push out in different directions. We are of course more complex than the pillow, but what happens to us is essentially the same. Excessive pressure at the top of our system – in the relationship between our head and spine – causes all of our parts to be pushed out in different directions. This makes it impossible for them to function optimally. Such interference can present a multitude of looks – it might look like a slump, like ‘sitting up straight’ or like someone’s idea of ‘cool’.

Now, return to your imagined pillow. If you keep pushing down on top of it while also trying to smooth out the resulting lumps, you simply create other lumps. The force of the downward push has to