Working with George on the waves and the concepts of gravity, accumulation or  suspension and momentum i noticed the following in my body:

• My body felt freer. 
• I noticed a tingling sensation on my skin. I noticed this most during accumulation/containment/ radiation aspect of the waves. I felt a lot more awakened.
• In relating this acting/scenes each state of the waves gave me a different feeling. something different to fight for. the same applies to push/pull/reach and throw. flowing through each aspect, it felt like that the energy only dissipated when i started getting self conscious. But as far as i was in the moment, the energy kept evolving from one to the other and my breath was flowing without my conscious thought. the movements inspired an objective or made an objective feel stronger.
• I should also state that the addition of text brought back some old habits ( tense shoulders, shallow breath, tension in the throat). Nonetheless i would like to work on these exercises further to the point were i don't have these habits or rather worry about them.
• With the constructive rest, i feel that my back and spine feel much more open when i do it. and it feels like i am sinking into the floor and my spine feels lighter. 

To be available...

This past Wednesday, I was surprised by myself. During our session with George Drance, I found myself pliable, in body and mind. Arriving to quite a weird but enjoyable state of mind. 

How did this happen?, I've been asking myself all week. 

The study of gravity, momentum and suspension, were a way for me to find out how much I was committing to my body, how much I was trusting my body. If I didn't, when I thought about suspension instead of letting it be, I wouldn't feel anything. Instead, when I trusted that my body knew what it was doing, I would be surprised with gravity, momentum, and suspension. Which filled me with energy to continue with the rest of the exercises. 

When experimenting with the waves, I was already mindset on letting whatever had to happen just happen. The energy coming from the floor through my whole body I feel was a way to dispose the body to receive and give without thinking about it. I feel I can apply that feeling to my scene work, because it makes me trust my reactions and not think about them. It makes the receiving of energy necessary for the giving of energy. Meaning, that whatever happens has to come from something. The same can be said about the experimentation with pull, push, reach and throw. When doing the movements with lines, I just used the text as a pretext, without expecting anything from myself or from the character. That availability of my mind, helped me play and discover new things about Medea. I think that if I had done the exercises making myself find something or thinking about how Medea is supposed to be, I wouldn't have discovered anything because I would not accept any energies coming at me that were different to what I had had rehearsed before. This relates to my experience in Andrea's class, accepting my feelings when reading the poem, to look at them with curiosity rather than avoid them. 

When I read Chapter 8 from 'The Actor's Secret', I understood that what was allowing me to experience all this was presence, being at the moment, available to the space, as the space was available for me. The string exercise, in which we looked around and went through all the strings, were a way to experience the 50-50 awareness Polatin talks about. We had to be aware of our own strings, but also, of the rest of the class. I think that helps us a lot, not only for scene work, but also for our dynamic as an ensemble. Being connected only with our inner world is not useful when we have to, throw the ball during Andrea's class, for example. Or even when we are sitting down observing a scene, keeping and ensemble mentality, 50-50 awareness (with what we are feeling and what is happening onstage) will make us stronger as an ensemble and learn more about other's work. 

AT and George Drance

(or the the Gift of the Magis...lol jk)

The work we did with George this past week was very informing. As an actor who allows the head to do all the work in performance I was finally beginning to feel what it would be if the impulse actually came up through my spine/entire body. That being said, it’s horrifying and scary because it requires completely letting go and a giving over to the energy in the space. What I found most fascinating was the idea that I can use the energy around me to fuel me- I don’t need to manufacture it to make something happen. Allowing gravity to lead me to momentum, living in the moments of suspension, and then trusting to let it go when it has passed left me with a sense of ease and freedom I so rarely feel in my work. And again it is something I don’t have to muscle but rather just recognize its availability for my use at all times. I felt this the most when we were in the text circle. The idea of receiving text from someone and allowing it to move me to speak is literally what the basis of acting is, and yet it is very, very difficult for me. I couldn’t really give myself over (which was frustrating) but I saw it happening in other people and felt the transfer of energy from one person to the next.

What I notice most about my body after constructive rest is that I am open. I feel as though my skin is a few inches from my muscles, my muscles are a few inches from my bones, and my bones are a few inches from each other. I’ve recognized that this feeling of primary control makes me really uncomfortable and puts me in a bad mood- I’m guessing because it is a state of pure vulnerability and openness. But how lovely it will be when I can live on stage in that state and actually allow the Magis work to happen; for the waves to enter and affect me. With my body available to receiving I think I will actually be able to fall into gravity, trust the momentum, and live in the suspension.  Sherrington said “every thought manifests as bodily reality”. Without the opening up of my body in AT I can’t say I ever allowed that to actually happen for me on stage. Exploring this in scene classes has literally blown my mind and thrown me off balance. I drop lines, I forget what I’m doing…but I’m learning to trust that it is becoming more organic and real, as opposed to manufactured and put on. Connecting all we are learning in AT, as well as voice, to our scene classes has begun to feel like I’m going through a second puberty. It’s so hard but it is helpful to constantly have this body awareness on my mind since it IS the work we do on stage. The question of “what am I doing to cause the problem?” has become vague, but I wonder if “the more I learn the less I know” idea is coming into play. The more I focus on inhibiting falling back onto my spine when I feel something uncomfortable, i.e. real, the more I feel grounded in AT, but the less I'm in control and therefore the less I FEEL I know. 

Reactions to Magis Training with George Drance

I enjoyed working with George because even though we were repeating some exercises we had learned in the first few days of class, the language he used helped me see the work from a different perspective. I made some new discoveries in the breaking down of the physicality, but what was most impactful for me was how he unified a lot of the work we are doing in all our classes and related it to our work as actors.

This is something that is so crucial in our learning. So often when I tell people outside the theater world about the work I do in school, I hear “what does that have to do with acting?” And sometimes, that voice will start yapping at me while I’m in the middle of a seemingly eternal class. Thankfully, over the years I’ve learned to acknowledge these doubtful thoughts, let them go, develop trust in the work, and believe that it is working, even though my results-oriented brain doesn’t realize it.

Anyways, this thought came to me when we were doing the swinging and blue wave exercises to experience gravity, momentum and suspension, and George reminded us to be honest with ourselves about when we were forcing it (controlled swinging, taking extra steps) versus when we were simply allowing the moment to come and go in its natural rhythm. JUST LIKE ON STAGE. He reminded us that all of the body-mind awareness we are training is part of our conditioning. When you learn to be honest with your own instrument and stay true to when your impulses begin and end, then you can be honest with your scene partner, and by extension, with the audience. I was really able to feel the difference from the doing the blue wave at the beginning of the class, and repeating it again at the end of our exploration. My body was more available, alert and free.

Another exercise that we had already done but sunk in more during this class was using the energy of push, pull, reach and throw to enliven a monologue or scene and connect the intention to my body. Afterwards, however, I had some questions… I can understand how every intention/verb fits into the push and pull categories because these are very similar to the Threaten and Seduce verbs James talks about. But what about reach and throw? Can anyone share some examples (of past scene work we’ve done, or in a known play/film) where the reach and throw actions were used?

Are we all met? Feedback on Magis Waves and Text Work

This week in our MFA Columbia University program for actors we will have George Drance coming in as a guest. We will build on our Alexander technique warm up and move into a physical and vocal training developed by Magis Theatre Company (magistheatre.org). One of the things that Magis strives to do is find the connections between disparate techniques rather than honing in on the differences. Here is a little about George:

GEORGE DRANCE has performed and directed in over twenty countries on five continents. New York credits include The Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival, The Metropolitan Opera, La MaMa’s resident company the Great Jones Rep and Ralph Lee’s Mettawee River Theatre Company. With La MaMa, he has toured throughout Europe and Asia, working on several of Ellen Stewart’s original pieces and performing in the Andrei Serban/Elizabeth Swados’ epic Fragments of a Greek Trilogy. Regional credits include The American Repertory Theatre, The New Rep, ImprovBoston, and The Stonington Opera House. He earned his BA from Marquette University and his MFA from Columbia. He has been a guest artist and lecturer at Columbia University, Cornell University, Marquette University, Marymount Manhattan College, Hebrew Union College, and Boston College. He has been on the faculty of the Marist International Center in Nairobi, Kenya, at Red Cloud High School on the Oglala Sioux Reservation. Film credits include Solidarity and The Light of Eons. He currently serves as Artist-in-residence at Fordham University Lincoln Center.

With our first blog entry, we will give feedback about how the Magis exercises, particularly this company's use of images like the red and blue waves helped open up Alexander concepts such as gravity, anti-gravity, suspension, support, inhibition and use.