The Actor: Dynamic Body; Expressive Breath

The Actor: Dynamic Body; Expressive Breath

By Lissa Tyler Renaud

Rebecca Guerrero: “Sensing the Centerline”

When an actor makes an especially good impression in a performance, many audience members enjoy trying to capture in words the qualities that made the actor seem special. We might hear it remarked that an actor seemed really “centered,” for example. We often hear that an actor was “in his body.” We hear the comment that someone could always “see what the actor was thinking.” Each of these is a way of articulating seemingly mysterious and elusive elements of what the actor does.

From the actor’s perspective, however, being “centered,” being “in one’s body” and making one’s thoughts visible to the audience are the fundamentals of his job. Being “centered” is not a vague, magical feeling that one is simply lucky to be born with; being “centered” means knowing how to balance one’s skeletal system around the measurable, physical plumb line of the body. Likewise, the other remarks we hear about the effective actor do not describe natural abilities arrived at by chance. Being “in one’s body” means having a heightened awareness of the interior space of the body, and being able to feel the breath moving there. Making one’s thoughts visible means infusing that breath with meaning.

I. Getting “Centered”

Experiencing vertical center: To begin, stand with your feet and knees together, hands hanging loosely at your sides. See how much of your weight you can release into your feet, pressing your weight into the floor. Close your eyes. You will feel your weight shifting again and again, moving through and around a vertical centerline. From the outset, getting centered means knowing you are continually circling the plumb line—the center—in a dynamic relationship with gravity. You are not static, but fluid; you are not a fixed structure, but an ever-changing construction made up of interrelated parts.

Guidelines for left-to-right center, lying down: Next, lie down comfortably on a wood floor, carpet, mat or bath towel. Bend your knees so the soles of your feet are “standing” on the floor. Walk your feet 1-1/2 to 2 feet apart; let the knees lean in on each other, toes straight ahead. Drape your arms easily across your chest, with elbows resting together, forearms and hands hanging freely. Tilt your pelvis gently so your lower back is resting on the floor. Give your weight to the floor. You are in Constructive Rest. There are some useful variations on this position, but I recommend this one for this basic experiment.

Begin to imagine a line along the center of your body, starting at the top of your head. Let this centerline drop all the way into the back of your body—as if a magician were pretending to slice you in half. Let the line have pleasant qualities, though—such as light, warmth, and pleasing colors. Your muscles can let go with images like these—more than they would with images of cutting instruments or anything upsetting or boring.

See your centerline move across the center of your hairline, along the center of your forehead, down your nose, across your lips, chin and throat. Then it moves across the collarbone, down the center of the breastbone, through the center of the navel. Once it crosses the center of the lower abdomen and the pubic bone, you can find it along the line made by your upper legs and knees touching. Then see it drop into the floor.

Move your knees slightly off this centerline; feel how odd it feels now. Move them back onto the centerline; feel the relief, how natural it feels. Do the same with your hips, your ribs and your head. Always look for the sensation that returning to center is like Coming Home. Memorize this sensation.

Checklist for left-to-right/front-to-back center, standing: When you stand again, take a moment to imagine yourself still lying down, returning to the sensations you memorized. Stand with your feet in a strong parallel—toes straight ahead, feet two or three inches apart. Make sure your knees are not locked.

Check that:

the occipital ridge of your skull feels as if it’s rising as chin hangs down freely
your ears line up directly over your shoulder joints
the tip of your nose travels parallel to the ground when you turn your head
the sternum is released, not lifted
the lower ribs in front are hanging freely, not flared forward or tipped up
your shoulder joints are directly over your hips, not rotated one way or the other
the two bones you sit on are pointing at the floor, not the wall in front of you or behind

you

you can trace a straight line from the joint where the upper leg goes into the hip socket, through the middle of the kneecap and through your second toe
your weight is equal on the balls of your feet and your heels

If your body doesn’t hang naturally in this position, it is important to find physical training or activities that encourage you towards these bio-mechanically logical guidelines.

With this awareness of your centerline as a foundation, what follows will more come quickly.

II. Being “In Your Body”

Many people get into a habit of seeing themselves in the third person—watching themselves from the perspective of someone across a room, for example, or through a camera lens outside of themselves. This impulse might translate into someone’s always wondering how others see them, or focusing on trying to look a certain way for others. This is particularly counter-productive for actors, who need to inhabit their characters—or to see a character from the character’s point of view. This point is not to be confused with an actor’s knowing how to pay attention to their part in a larger stage picture, which is a separate and essential skill. But when an actor’s lines ring true, they seem to come from the core of the actor’s body. For this reason, an actor needs to be able to focus his mind’s eye.

Experiment for the mind’s eye: See if you can focus your mind’s eye on the inner surface of your body. What does your skin feel like from the inside? Your joints? Your ribs and pelvis? Then focus on the inner space of the body, sensing that it is 3-dimensional. You are not simply the front surface of your body. Your head has volume; your ribcage goes around to the back and surrounds a space; where you have abdomen in front, you have waist on the sides, and lower back and sacrum in the back—all of which circle an interior space. Your extremities—arms/legs, hands/feet, fingers/toes—are also inwardly spacious.

Now touch the inside of your body with your breath. You can feel your breath pushing up against the inner surface of your body with each inhale. Direct your breath into the top of your skull and feel it rise; feel your head widen between the ears. Feel the ribcage moving, the lungs expanding at the sides and back. Patiently explore your abdomen, pelvis and extremities with the breath. Remember that your entire body expands in size with each breath you take, and then settles again as you use the breath—for lines or for other expressive purposes.

This kind of awareness is called proprioceptive: proprio-, one’s own; -ceptive, receiving—that is, receiving information from your own body rather than from external stimulus. Practice in this anchors an actor’s awareness inwardly, subjectively, on his character’s behalf.

This awareness allows the next step to follow naturally.

III. Making Thought Visible

In heightened conversation, we express our thoughts with our breath even before we say anything. We gasp with pleasure when we open a gift we’d hoped for; we catch our breath in dismay when we discover we’ve lost something precious; we expel breath on a tense sigh when we roll our eyes at yet another scolding for being out late. Each of these breaths has a different duration and quality, and expands the inner space of the body differently.

Experiments for visible thought: Over the next few days, “spy” on yourself as you use your breath to express ten thoughts; write them down. Watch how others do the same; write them down. Practice these until you can repeat them as if you were thinking the thoughts for the first time.

Note: Practice letting the muscles around your eyebrows and eyes respond to your thinking, not the mouth and jaw area.

These physical experience of one’s body become metaphors for the kind of actor you are. Dynamic characters emerge from dynamic bodies; fluid emotions issue forth from fluid centers.

Actors can ”breathe life” into characters when they can expand their own bodies with breath; they can reveal the “inner life” of a character when their inner eye is working in tandem with expressive breathing. For such actors, it’s fun that audiences find what they do mysterious, since they’ve put so much thought and discipline into de-mystifying it for themselves.

Recommended Reading: for I. Bone, Breath and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment, ed. Don Hanlon Johnson; for II. Experiences in Visual Thinking, Robert H. McKim; for III. Stanislavsky on the Art of the Stage, trans. David Magarshack.

Lissa Tyler Renaud, Ph.D. is an award-winning actress, a recognized director, a published writer-scholar, and Program Director/Teacher of the Actors’ Training Project and the Voice Training Project.