Volume 5 Issue 9                        Jill Place, Publisher                           jill@actingintuitive.com

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Grotowski Part Four: The Pulsing  Plastiques

The BRAND-NEW Sunday Class starts May 6th!
A Special Grotowski Acting Tip: The Plastique-Sensique Box
Jerzy Grotowski Part Four

Dear [[FirstName]]

I'M TAKING THE PLUNGE!  After years of coaching the same way, I felt the need for a change.  Actually, my teaching hasn't changed . . . only its focus.  After years of paying lip service to Grotowski and doing a modified version of Method, I've fused the two, put my own intuitive spin on it, and finally claimed it as my own!  So come Act Intuitive with me! 

I think you'll better understand my new coaching focus by reading the fourth Grotowski article, which you're getting a day early.  Also included in this eZine is a what I now call a "plastique-sensique" exercise that I've been using for years both as an actor and a coach.

And, by the way, DON'T UNSUBSCRIBE JUST BECAUSE THE eZINE COMES SCRAMBLED!   Try as I might, the program I use to publish it just doesn't suit every type of email.   Acting Magic is also available online on my home page, www.actingintuitive.com.  Simply click on the link that says "To read the latest issue, click here" to the left of my picture right under the subscription form.  Thanks in advance for your diligence!

The BRAND NEW Sunday Class
starts May 6th!

Okay, so one of my wonderful students who's dying to come on Sunday finally nailed me down to a date.  If you're lost in large classes and frustrated that your acting skills aren't yet what you want them to be, this is the place for you!  A couple of years ago, I took a class filled with more than 30 actors.  And was appalled that I spent alot of money (almost $60 a class) and alot of time (3 to 4 hours) every week to do a 10-minute scene and be told I wasn't comfortable yet.  "Of course I'm not comfortable," I kept saying, "I haven't acted in twenty-five years".  It wasn't fun or helpful.  And I think I lasted six weeks.

Instead, I never work with more than eight students per class.  I've also been blessed to attract good committed actors who support each other.  And you not only do scenes . . . sometimes more than one if you want . . . every week.  But you also discover the way you work best with my dynamite Act Intuitive training.  A way that gets you noticed and gets you work.  This technique plus the intimate, supportive environment allow you to act better fast.  And, with my intuitive talents, I can spot personal blocks to expression and help you remove them so your skills grow even faster.

There's still room in the Wednesday evening class but it's filling up fast. And the one space in the Saturday class will be snapped up this week.  Then there's the new Sunday class from 12N to 4PM.  So join us!  Oh . . . and did I also mention how reasonable my classes are?To find out more, click here.

BRANDact is also BACK!
Sunday, May 27th
Click here for more details

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The Plastique-Sensique Box

One of the classic things mimes do is explore a box or some sort of container.  So I've been doing this exercise since high-school mime class. I've put a sensory spin on it, however, by encouraging actors to explore the sensory aspects . . . what you hear, see, touch, smell and perhaps taste . . . of whatever container becomes real to them while doing the exercise. One actor actually found herself in a coffin, another in a closet and still another in a huge cardboard box that toppled easily when he pushed it and he subsequently rolled downhill wrapped in it.

So take a few deep breaths and explore the premise that you are contained in something.  Explore it with your entire body, including your back, your torso and your face. Try anything you can think of to push yourself out of the box.  While you do, notice the impulses that arise when each part of your body encounters it.  When you finally succeed in exiting, you find yourself in a slightly larger container . . . another image . . . that you must experience physically, emotionally and sensorially.    When you push out of that, find another image and sensory elements to contain you and so forth.

Continue exploring variations of this exercise for ten minutes..  I use this alot to help actors "push through" any expression difficulties they're having.  I wouldn't recommend doing it by youself, however, if you've ever experienced some sort of trauma connected with being shut up in a small place. 

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Grotowski Part Four:  The Pulsing  Plastiques

This week, I changed the pulse of my teaching. I'm now using my own take on Jerzy Grotowski's exercises plastiques to help strip away tension and allow raw impulse to flow. You may be wondering why, after years of teaching traditional Method relaxation and sense memory, that I'm treading down this new path.

Well, there are two things that have bugged me for years about most acting techniques. The first is that they all argue that their way is the right way . . . and often the only way . . . to release and channel impulse for acting expression. The second is how they deal with relaxation, if at all. And I'm beginning to realize that most great techniques offer good solutions to these two main acting problems. But that their solutions are often simplistic or incomplete.

I spent years thinking that tension was "bad". And if we actors just got rid of it we'd all act just great. But, in reality, relaxation is a much more complex issue. Grotowski said, "one cannot be completely relaxed . . . because to be totally relaxed is to be a limp rag". And, according to Stephen Wangh in An Acrobat of the Heart, "tension . . . is a means by which the body (literally) holds on to its emotional life." I can't tell you how many of my students who, after a few minutes of deep breathing and stretching, have dissolved in tears or giggled uncontrollably. Sometimes thinking of tension as a "problem" puts this wonderful spontaneity farther out of reach.

Having continual tension, however, can also stop physical, vocal and emotional expression cold. I don't know about you, but I remember with horror my early wooden actor days. So learning how to relax is a good thing. But it shouldn't be taught divorced from the impulse it provokes. When you do relax, then, take the time to notice the thoughts and emotions that arise. As Wangh says, "the purpose of 'relaxation' is not to become a 'wet rag', but to be able to choose how and when your acting energies flow."

The plastiques are ideal to provoke relaxation and energy flow simultaneously. When I first learned them, they seemed like the isolation exercises we did in gym . . . exploring the many ways each body part from head to toe could move and articulate. After you practice this structured type of moving, you then allow the plastiques you move you. I tell my students to give their bodies what they want . . . to move whatever body part needs to move in whatever way it wants. Actors will then flutter an arm, kick a leg, rotate a hip or flicker an eye. I then encourage them to move fast or slow or big or small, dwell on one body part for awhile or move rapidly from one body part to another. At all times the focus is on allowing the impulses and images that arise from one plastique to lead you to another like a flowing river. Wangh says that "plastiques are, containers, forms that both evoke and contain emotional life."

Wangh also said that plastiques function in two ways simultaneously, as an emotional container and also as "initiators . . . a method by which you can enlist your voluntary muscle system to turn on or to alter your image and emotional life." I find that, when actors practice this plastique river, images spontaneously arise that are not only emotionally profound but specific to enriching their particular acting lives. For example, just yesterday in class, one actor found herself in her childhood room playing with a Barbie doll. Holding the doll and stroking her hair brought laughter followed my tears. Another found himself on the beach sifting sand again and again between his fingers. And yet another felt the need to vocalize and, in doing so, connected with the vocal power that had eluded him for so long.

My actors, several of whom have been practicing sense memory for some time, are concerned that plastiques would not provide them with the concentrated focus that sense memory provokes. Yet Wangh disagrees, saying that a plastique " . . . is in many ways the same work you call emotional memory and sense memory work." I think this is very true. Working in this way has the additional benefit of organically discovering sensory elements that might be missed with traditional sense memory. Once you find them, like the Barbie doll above, you can use sense memory structure to explore the individual object in more depth. And refine its focus so that a single action evokes a powerful emotion. Just sensing a door jamb of my youth on the tips of my fingers sends me to sobbing. So I obviously haven't abandoned sense memory as a tool. I've merely reenergized, refocused and taken it one step further. Stanislavski himself once said that his technique should be allowed to continually evolve.

 Grotowski's work also continually evolved and modified existing acting forms. Instead of, "relaxing in a chair," Wangh said, "we do it with our bodies active because memories are not encoded only in our brains; they are trapped in our muscles, too. By working with your arms [or with any other part of your body], you reconnect with a part of that memory, not as a past event, but as a living action."

Reconnecting with memory as a living action. Unlocking the potential hidden in the muscle. These are much more complex concepts than remembered emotion, whose path to expression may isolate or enervate the actor. Or than personalizations or as-ifs, which are intellectual choices that lead to often iffy emotional ends. None of these are wrong, but each may reveal only part of the picture. Emotions often occurs in layers . . . skittish laughter veiling deep sorrow, for example . . . and we must allow all these layers to manifest for true expression. I chuckle when fledgling actors tell me that they feel they should cry at this point in the script. I tell them that they shouldn't "script" it but instead trust that the appropriate emotion will spontaneously appear if only they allow it. Also, emotions rarely arise without an object or person at which they're directed. We can't act emotions. They arise instead from images . . . images that can be evoked using plastiques.

You may have been wondering what all these physical histrionics have to do with small and super-natural film acting. Realizing a way to work within the full potential of your emotional life is the same whether working large or small. And the more you confront this potential the easier it will become. Wangh says, "the task is finding strong emotional life with which to fill our powerful and expressive bodies . . . rather than cutting back on the power of our physical expression to fit within our shrunken sense of truth." Once full expression is achieved, it's much easier to make actions smaller while still retaining intensity. And this intensity is the stuff of great acting whether you're projecting on a platform to 2,000 or emoting in extreme closeup.

In the Next Issue:  Voice Work

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