Movement training for the modern actor

Mark Evans

doi:10.4324/9780203883549

Movement training for the modern actor

Mark Evans

Research output: Book/Report › Book

38 Citations (Scopus)

3110 Downloads (Pure)

Original language	English
Place of Publication	London
Publisher	Routledge
Number of pages	222
ISBN (Print)	9780415963671
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203883549
Publication status	Published - 11 Dec 2010

Publication series

Name	Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
Publisher	Routledge

Bibliographical note

Author's note: The book contains interview material gathered from groups of 10-15 students at four leading UK actor training institutions with reputations for excellence in their fields over a period of two years, as well as with leading movement teachers in the relevant institutions, each of whom represented a strand of theatre movement training practice (Laban, Alexander, Lecoq, etc.). Using a grounded theory approach, I built a critical and theoretical approach to movement training through a rigorous interrogation of the interview material and the historical data. The book is consequently organised into chapters which explore: the history of movement training in relation to twentieth century concepts of the efficient and productive body; the notion of the natural and neutral body and the relevance of these notions to the training of actors in the twentieth century; Foucault’s notion of the docile body, the body inscribed by its training, and the sense in which the actor learns to develop a body socially and professionally recognisable as an actor’s body; and the notion of the unruly body, a concept that opens up ways in which the actor’s body is protean and can be seen as dissolving meanings as well as making them.
There is no other book currently published which tackles the cultural history of movement training for actors in relation to the wider history of movement training, and the intersection of theory and practice in relation to the teaching of movement within the training of professional actors in the UK. The book is extensively used within the field in the UK, and is also acknowledged internationally (it is published in New York). It has been key to defining the field in terms of theory as almost all other books are principally ‘how to’ texts. In relation to the field of movement training for professional actors it has established the historical and theoretical landscape for the field.

Keywords

movement training
performing arts
actor training

Access to Document

10.4324/9780203883549

Evans2008Accepted author manuscript, 1.16 MB

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415963671/

Cite this

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note = "Author's note: The book contains interview material gathered from groups of 10-15 students at four leading UK actor training institutions with reputations for excellence in their fields over a period of two years, as well as with leading movement teachers in the relevant institutions, each of whom represented a strand of theatre movement training practice (Laban, Alexander, Lecoq, etc.). Using a grounded theory approach, I built a critical and theoretical approach to movement training through a rigorous interrogation of the interview material and the historical data. The book is consequently organised into chapters which explore: the history of movement training in relation to twentieth century concepts of the efficient and productive body; the notion of the natural and neutral body and the relevance of these notions to the training of actors in the twentieth century; Foucault{\textquoteright}s notion of the docile body, the body inscribed by its training, and the sense in which the actor learns to develop a body socially and professionally recognisable as an actor{\textquoteright}s body; and the notion of the unruly body, a concept that opens up ways in which the actor{\textquoteright}s body is protean and can be seen as dissolving meanings as well as making them. There is no other book currently published which tackles the cultural history of movement training for actors in relation to the wider history of movement training, and the intersection of theory and practice in relation to the teaching of movement within the training of professional actors in the UK. The book is extensively used within the field in the UK, and is also acknowledged internationally (it is published in New York). It has been key to defining the field in terms of theory as almost all other books are principally {\textquoteleft}how to{\textquoteright} texts. In relation to the field of movement training for professional actors it has established the historical and theoretical landscape for the field.",

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