The Actor Training Studio

Lecture 1: Introduction to the

module, introduction to Keith
Johnstone and... status
 What is the point of this module?

For you to learn about three different

acting practitioners.
For you to increase the tools in your acting
toolkit.
For you to learn about how to present and
teach acting ideas to others in a variety of
ways.
 How does this module work?
1 Hour lecture to everyone then we split
into two groups and do a two hour
practical session.
Practical sessions will be workshops on
practitioners run by the teacher.
Towards the end of the semester you run
a 20-30 minute workshop in pairs.
You then write a 2500 word essay.
 Module Timetable
18/01/17 - Keith Johnstone - HB
25/01/17 - Keith Johnstone - HB
01/02/17 - Keith Johnstone - PC
08/02/17 - Jacques LeCoq - HB
15/02/17 - Jacques LeCoq - HB
22/02/17 - Jacques LeCoq - HB
01/03/17 - Mike Alfreds - PC
08/03/17 - Mike Alfreds - PC
15/03/17 - How to Run a Workshop - HB

22/03/17 - Assessments HB & PC

29/03/17 - Assessments HB & PC
05/04/17 - Essay Tutorials HB & PC
 Assessment
Lecture Demonstration - 70%
The 20 - 30 minute lecture-demonstration, in
order to achieve a typical pass, will need to
articulate an understanding of a specific
practitioner in terms of understanding their
methodologies and their impact on the world of
actor training. It will also need to demonstrate,
through performance, a practice-based
understanding of how these methodologies work
in a particular mode of performance.
 Assessment
2500 word essay (30% of the mark)

Research your chosen practitioner and provide an overview of

a. their approach
b. the context within which it arose
c. its continuing influence.

Include a description of some examples of how their

techniques are used in performance-making. Define key
technical terms that are employed by the practitioner and / or
the people who use it.
 Phil Coggins - Associate Lecturer
Phil will be running three of the sessions as
well as being here for the 3 week
Assessment Period.
Phil is a super cool dude with an impressive
beard.
He has trained as an actor and as a
director and has his own theatre company
based in Buxton called Babbling
Vagabonds. Look them up!
 Books
Three core books for the module. Buy them, go on!

Alfreds, M (2013) Then What Happens: storytelling

and adapting for the theatre.

Lecoq, J., Carasso, J., Lallias, J., & Bradby, D. (2009).

The moving body : teaching creative theatre. Revised
ed. London: Methuen Drama.

Johnstone, K (2007) Impro: improvisation and

theatre Methuen
 Me and Keith
His writing begun to strike a chord with me post-
university once I had experience of the sterility of
some professional rehearsal rooms. (I fell asleep
sometimes as an assistant director).
I was struck at how little fun people seemed to be
having and how un-spontaneous actors were.
I was reminded of a (badly taught) module from
university and went back to his book Impro.
I think the first two chapters of this book are the
finest writing on acting that you will find.
 Me and Keith
Although the principles of his ideas are based in
improvisation, they are easily applicable to text
based work, devising, writing and... life!
I knicked his ideas and they form the basis of
how I tend to direct plays.
Some of you here might hate the idea of
improvisation - give it go and perhaps think about
how you can apply these ideas to other areas.
Maybe your workshop could do this? Hmmm.
 Keith Johnstone
Started off as a teacher working in London but
became a playwright and was involved with
the Royal Court Theatre from the late 1950's.
He was dissatisfied with his writing and came
into his own once the Writers Group and
Actors Studio was set up.
He would train playwrights and actors in his
own unique methods, mostly centred around
improvisation but later working with masks.
 Bill Gaskill on Keith Johnstone
'Keith (...)started to teach his own
particular style of improvisation, much of it
based on fairy stories, word associations,
free associations, intuitive responses, and
later he taught mask work as well. All his
work has been to encourage the
rediscovery of the imaginative response in
the adult; the re-finding of the power of the
child's creativity.'
Johnstone K. (1981). Impro: improvisation and the theatre. Eyre Methuen. p.9.
 Keith's Philosophy
At the centre of his work is the notion that,
as adults, we lose something from
childhood.
Education and everyday experience dulls
us - makes us unspontaneous and, most
importantly, destroys our confidence in our
creativity.
For me, the sentence that sums up the
spirit of his book, Impro is...


'I began to think of

children not as
immature adults, but
of adults as atrophied
children.'
Johnstone K. (1981). Impro: improvisation and the theatre. Eyre Methuen. p.25.
 Hang on, what does atrophied mean?
verb
past tense: atrophied; past participle: atrophied

1.
(of body tissue or an organ) waste away, especially as a result of the
degeneration of cells, or become vestigial during evolution.
"the calf muscles will atrophy"
synonyms: "the body parts which are no longer required gradually
atrophy"

2.
gradually decline in effectiveness or vigour due to underuse or neglect.
"the imagination can atrophy from lack of use"
 More from Keith on this theme
'I'd left school with worse posture, and a worse voice,
with worse movement and far less spontaneity than
when I'd entered it.' (p.16-17)

'As I grew up, everything started getting grey and dull.

I could still remember the amazing intensity of the
world I'd lived in as a child, but I thought the dulling of
perception was an inevitable consequence of age -
just as the lens of the eye is bound gradually to dim. I
didn't understand that clarity is in the mind.' p.13

Johnstone K. (1981). Impro: improvisation and the theatre. Eyre Methuen.

 Have a Read
In this part of the 'Notes of myself' section
of Impro - Johnstone highlights the
influence of an art teacher, Anthony Stirling
who taught him at teacher training college.
Give it a read and think how this example
illustrates Johnstone's philosophy...
Have a chat the person next to you about it
when you're done.
Removing the desire to get things right...
"Like most teachers, I was given the class no one else wanted, Mine was a
mix of twenty-six 'average' eight year-olds, and twenty 'backward' ten year-
olds whom the school had written off as ineducable. Some of the ten-year
olds couldn't write their names after five years of schooling.
I couldn't believe that these children were really dull: it was more likely that
they were putting up a resistance. One astounding thing was the way
cowed and dead-looking children would suddenly brighten up and look
intelligent when they weren't being asked to learn.
One day I took my typewriter and my art books into the class, and said I'd
type out anything they wanted to write about the pictures. As an
afterthought, I said I'd also type out their dreams - and suddenly they were
actually wanting to write."

"The pressure to get things right was coming from the children, not
the teacher."

Johnstone K. (1981). Impro: improvisation and the theatre. Eyre Methuen.

Removing the desire to get things right...

'The first thing I do when I meet a group of

new students is to sit on the floor, I play
low status, and I'll explain that if the
students fail they're to blame me () My
methods are very effective, and other
things being equal, most students will
succeed, but they won't be trying to win
any more.' p.29 (italics mine.)

Johnstone K. (1981). Impro: improvisation and the theatre. Eyre Methuen.

 In his own words...
Johnstone is not just against trying to get
things right but also trying to be 'the best'.

Watch from 04:02

https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz9mo4qW9bc
&feature=youtu.be
Fear rather than a lack of talent
'Many teachers seem to me to be trying to
get their students to conceal fear, which
always leaves some traces - a heaviness,
an extra tension, a lack of spontaneity.'
p.30.
'Instead of seeing people as untalented, we
can see them as phobic, and this
completely changes the teacher's
relationship with them.' p.31.
Johnstone K. (1981). Impro: improvisation and the theatre. Eyre Methuen.
 Don't win...
'I'm teaching spontaneity, and therefore I tell
then [students] that they mustn't try to
control the future, or to 'win'; and that they're
to have an empty head and just watch.
When it's their turn to take part they're to
come out and just do what they're asked to,
and see what happens. It's this decision not
to try and control the future which allows the
students to be spontaneous.' p.32.
 What does Keith's philosophy do?

Takes pressure off the artist.

Frees up the artist's imagination.
Enables spontaneous things to happen.

Acknowledges that many of the so-called-

truths about 'how things work' are actually
artificial and constructed.
 If we've got time...
Johnstone mentions this section of the
1930 silent film Earth as being profoundly
influential on him.
Have a watch and think what it is about
this clip which appealed to him...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-E57e
yjoao
 Johnstone on Intelligence
"The fact that he walks for so long, and that the image is so
beautiful, linked up with my own experience of being alone in the
twilight - the gap between the worlds. Then Vassily walks again,
but after a short time he begins to dance, and the dance is skilled,
and like an act of thanksgiving. The dust swirls around his feet, so
that he's like an Indian god, like Siva - and with the man dancing
alone in the clouds of dust something unlocked in me. In one
moment I knew that the valuing of men by their intelligence is
crazy, that the peasants watching the night sky might feel more
than I feel. that the man who dances might be superior to myself -
word-bound and unable to dance. From then on I noticed how
warped many people of great intelligence are, and I began to
value people for their actions, rather than their thoughts."

Johnstone K. (1981). Impro: improvisation and the theatre. Eyre Methuen. p.16-18.
 Doing.
Johnstone took over the running of the first
inception of the Royal Court Writers Group.
'I said that if it continued as a talking-shop,
then everyone would abandon it, and that
we should agree to discuss nothing that
could be acted out (...) We learned that
things invented on the spur of the moment
could be as good or better than the texts
we laboured over.' p.26.
Johnstone K. (1981). Impro: improvisation and the theatre. Eyre Methuen.
 Doing
'My feeling is that the best argument may
be a testimony to the skill of the presenter,
rather than to the excellence of the
solution advocated. Also the bulk of
discussion time is visibly taken up with
transactions of status which have nothing
to do with the problem to be solved.' p.26

Johnstone K. (1981). Impro: improvisation and the theatre. Eyre Methuen.