Directing Emotion A Practice-Led Investi PDF

Directing Emotion: A Practice-led Investigation into the Challenge of
Emotion in Western Performance
Submitted by Jessica Marie Beck,

to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Performance Practice,
1 September 2011
This thesis is available for library use on the understanding that it is copyright material
and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper
acknowledgement.
I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified
and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a
degree by this or any other University.
Jessica M. Beck
Abstract
The intention of this thesis is to arrive at a better understanding of the nature of

emotion in Western performance using three specific theories/approaches to emotion in
performance – Alba Emoting, Emotional Access Work, and Impulse and Awareness
Work. I utilize these approaches to examine, from the perspective of a director working
with actors, how they can be applied effectively to different dramaturgies and to
discover if these approaches can shed light on the elusive nature of emotion in
performance. In a series of case studies, I apply these methods and/or their core
principles to different dramaturgies, to investigate how each can address the ‘problem‘
of emotion with regard to text, characterization, imagination and the performance itself.
The Introduction highlights some of the problems and challenges around the topic of
emotion in performance and outlines the research project including a discussion about
practice-as-research and methodology.
Chapter One is in three sections. Section One explores the controversy
surrounding Diderot’s Paradoxe and how his polarization of ‘real’ emotion and
‘performed’ emotion has problematically influenced and dominated the discussion of
emotion in Western performance. Section Two outlines the underlying problems of
understanding the nature of emotion in everyday life, primarily the difficulties in
defining emotion and the predominance of Cartesian dualism in Western society. The
third part of the chapter explores the problem of emotion in Western performance, and
how Diderot’s Paradoxe continues to inform the conflicting ideologies of 20th century
theatre practitioners. Chapter Two introduces the theories/approaches to emotion that I
will be using to examine my research questions and is divided into four sections.
Sections one, two and three outline in turn Alba Emoting, Emotional Access Work, and
Impulse and Awareness Work. Chapters Three, Four, and Five discuss the specific case
studies – Excerpts from Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Samuel Beckett’s Play and
Footfalls, and Helena Enright’s Less than a Year.
This thesis is accompanied by five DVDs, which contain rehearsal footage as
well as the actual performances. When appropriate, the reader will be directed to the
DVDs for specific examples of the practice.
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Table of Contents
Abstract ....................................................................................................................................2
Table of Contents...................................................................................................................3
Illustrations and Images .....................................................................................................7
Accompanying Materials ....................................................................................................9
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 11
Introduction......................................................................................................................... 12
The Challenge of ‘Emotion’ in Western Performance ......................................................12
The Research Project..................................................................................................................18
Research Questions Guiding this Study................................................................................20
Practice-as-Research ..................................................................................................................20
The Pilot Study..............................................................................................................................22
Methodology ..................................................................................................................................25
Chapter Preview ...........................................................................................................................26
Chapter One: The Question of Emotion in Western Performance ..................... 30
Section I: Diderot’s Paradoxe ...................................................................................................31
Paradoxe Proposed ...................................................................................................................................33
Paradoxe Pondered...................................................................................................................................36
Section II: The ‘Problem’ of Emotion in Life........................................................................40
The Notion of Emotion............................................................................................................................40
Emotions as Biological Inheritance ...................................................................................................41
Emotions as Social Constructs .............................................................................................................43
Emotion as Perceptions of Bodily Changes....................................................................................44
Emotion as Result of Cognitive Appraisal.......................................................................................46
Distinguishing Between Emotions, Moods, and Feelings ........................................................47
The Mind/Body Split................................................................................................................................47

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Towards a Holistic View of the Mind, Body and Emotions .....................................................48
Section III: Key Theories on Acting and Emotion in the 19th and 20th Centuries....50
What is Acting?...........................................................................................................................................50
Acting Emotions.........................................................................................................................................51
The Style of Involvement .......................................................................................................................51
The Style of Detachment ........................................................................................................................54
The Style of Self-‐Expression .................................................................................................................56
Problems with this Model/Towards a Psychophysical Approach .......................................57
The Psychophysical Process .................................................................................................................58
Françoise Delsarte and the ‘Psychophysical’ ................................................................................60
Section IV: Diderot’s Paradoxe and the Practitioners of the Twentieth Century ...61
Paradoxe and Practitioners of the Twenty-‐first Century .........................................................65
Chapter Two: New approaches to Acting and Emotion in the 20th and 21st
Centuries: Alba Emoting, Emotional Access Work and Impulse and
Awareness ............................................................................................................................ 67
Section I: Alba Emoting ..............................................................................................................67
The Patterns ................................................................................................................................................71
Learning Alba Emoting ...........................................................................................................................75
In Practice.....................................................................................................................................................76
Section Two: Emotional Access Work ...................................................................................77
The Immediate Exercises.......................................................................................................................80
The Contributory Exercises ..................................................................................................................84
In Practice.....................................................................................................................................................85
Section III: Impulse and Awareness Work...........................................................................86
In Practice.....................................................................................................................................................91
Chapter Three: Case Study One - Investigating the Challenge of Emotion in
the Rehearsals and Performance of Excerpts from Chekhov’s Three Sisters. 93
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Section 1: Chekhov’s Three Sisters .........................................................................................93
Chekhov, Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre.................................................................93
Synopsis of Three Sisters ........................................................................................................................97
Section II: Methodology and Preliminary Questions .......................................................98
Section III: Rehearsals ............................................................................................................. 104
Incorporating Alba Emoting .............................................................................................................. 104
Incorporating Emotional Access Work ......................................................................................... 113
Incorporating Impulse and Awareness work ............................................................................ 123
Section IV: Findings .................................................................................................................. 127
Alba Emoting ............................................................................................................................................ 127
Emotional Access Work ....................................................................................................................... 128
Impulse and Awareness Work.......................................................................................................... 129
More Questions ....................................................................................................................................... 130
Chapter Four: Case Study Three: Play and Footfalls by Samuel Beckett........132
Section I: Introduction to the Acting ‘Problem’ of Beckett.......................................... 132
Methodology for Case Study Two: Play and Footfalls............................................................. 135
Section II: Play............................................................................................................................ 135
Rehearsing Play....................................................................................................................................... 137
Alba Emoting ............................................................................................................................................ 137
Impulse and Awareness Work.......................................................................................................... 140
Physical Restrictions............................................................................................................................. 143
In Performance........................................................................................................................................ 145
Findings ...................................................................................................................................................... 147
Section III: Footfalls.................................................................................................................. 151
Rehearing Footfalls ................................................................................................................................ 153
Alba Emoting ............................................................................................................................................ 154

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Physical Restrictions............................................................................................................................. 157
Performance and Findings ................................................................................................................. 159
Section IV: The ‘Affect’ of Beckett’s Plays on the Actor ................................................ 160
Chapter Five: Case Study Three: Less Than a Year by Helena Enright............163
Section I: The Acting ‘Problems’ of Verbatim Theatre.................................................. 163
Section II: Methodology and Set-up of Case Study Three............................................. 170
Less Than a Year by Helena Enright ............................................................................................... 171
Section III: Less Than a Year in Rehearsals and Performance ................................... 176
Alba Emoting ............................................................................................................................................ 177
Impulse and Awareness work .......................................................................................................... 180
In Performance........................................................................................................................................ 182
Section IV: Findings .................................................................................................................. 187
Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................189
Appendices .........................................................................................................................198
Appendix A .................................................................................................................................. 198
Appendix B .................................................................................................................................. 199
Appendix C................................................................................................................................... 202
Appendix D .................................................................................................................................. 203
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................205
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Illustrations and Images
Figure: Page:
1. Frances Buckroyd as Natalya and James Bolt as Smirnov in 23

The Proposal. Photograph by Brian Astbury.
2. The Alba Emoting Effector Patterns. 72
3. Facciponti Bond’s AE Labeling System. 73
4. Beck instructs Alba Emoting. Photograph by Bernard Dubois. 74
5. Alan Cox and Ben Porter in Orwell: A Celebration at Trafalgar 77

Studios. Photograph by Dawn Cruttenden.
6. Astbury using Physical Metaphor with actors Carolina Ortega and 84

Matthew Blake. Photograph by Kezia Cole.
7. Students from the East 15 Contemporary Theatre Practice course 88

working with Ian Morgan. Photograph by Brian Astbury.
8. Matthew Flacks and Andrew Barron in All Alone by 92

Gene David Kirk. Photograph by Jessica Beck.
9. Eric Hetzler as Vershinin and Zofia Sozanska as Masha in 110

Three Sisters. Photograph by Jen Burton.
10. Joe Sellman-Leava as Andrey in Three Sisters. 111

Photograph by Jen Burton.
11. Lai SimSim as Irina and Jeremy West as Tusenbach in 113

Three Sisters. Photograph by Jen Burton.
12. Zofia Sozanska as Olga and Lai SimSim as Irina in Three Sisters. 116
Photograph by Jen Burton.
13. Eric Hetzler as Vershinin, Zofia Sozanska as Masha, and Lai SimSim 122
as Olga in Three Sisters. Photograph by Jen Burton.
14. Lauren Shepherd, Callum Elliott-Archer and Symmonie Preston in 137

Play. Photograph by Ben Borley.
15. Lauren Shepherd in Play. Photograph by Ben Borley. 145
16. Joe Sellman-Leava as the Inquisitor in Play. Photograph by Ben Borley. 150
17. Elizabeth Pennington in Footfalls. Photograph by Ben Borley. 153
18. Elizabeth Pennington in Footfalls. Photograph by Ben Borley. 162
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19. Charlie Coldfield and Helena Enright in Less Than a Year 175
Photograph by Anna Johnson.
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Accompanying Materials
Five accompanying DVDs are affixed to the inside of the back cover of this dissertation.
Listed below are the contents of each DVD, and the page number corresponding to their
place in the dissertation. The footage contains clips from rehearsals, documentation of
performances, and documentation of the academic presentations that accompanied each
case study. It is not necessary for the reader to watch all the footage, however the
chosen clips that may help for further clarification or understanding of the exercises.
DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: Page:
1. The Alba Emoting Patterns 105

2. Sozanska in the Alba Emoting Object Exercise 107
3. Alba Emoting Improvisation 108
4. Sozanska and Hetzler using 3a 110
5. Sellman-Leava Rehearsing 111
6. Astbury’s Physical Exercises 113
7. Sozanska and Lai after Anger/Energy Run 115
8. Lai and West after Physical Exercises 118
9. Hetzler and Sozanska after Physical Exercises 120
10. Physical Metaphor Exercises 120
11. Lai and West after Physical Metaphor 120
12. Hetzler and Sozanska after Physical Metaphor 121
13. Excerpt of Impulse and Awareness Exercise 124
14. Final Group Impulse Run 126
DVD Chapter 3, Disc 2:
15. Case Study 1 – Performance and Presentation 127
DVD Chapter 4:
1. Alba Emoting Mirror Work 138
2. Impulse and Awareness Ball Exercise 141
3. Excerpt from Impulse Run with Alba Emoting 142
4. Shepherd and the Urn 144
5. Alba/Impulse Run in Urns 144
6. Performance of Play – 27 April 2011 145
7. Dress Rehearsal of Play – 30 April 2011 146
8. Excerpt of Anger/Energy Run with Enright and Pennington 155
9. Pennington after Physical Metaphor 156
10. Under-reading with Pennington 158
11. Performance of Footfalls – 27 April 2011 159
12. Case Study 2 – Presentation 160
1. Coldfield in Physical Exercises 179

2. Enright after Physical Exercises 179
3. Coldfield in Impulse Run 181
4. Case Study 3 – Presentation 182
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5. Enright in Dress Rehearsal 182
6. Performance of Less Than a Year – 15 January 2011 183
7. Performance of Less Than a Year – 16 January 2011 184

8. Prologue from 18 January 2011 185
9. Enright from 18 January 2011 185
10. Coldfield and Enright 19 January 2011 187
11. Coldfield and Enright 20 January 2011 187
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Acknowledgements
This PhD would not have been possible without the guidance, support, and participation
of a wide variety of people in my life. From the bottom of my heart I would like to
thank the following people:
For excellent supervision and guidance: Professor Phillip Zarrilli, as well as Bella
Merlin who began the journey with us.
For generously sharing their innovations in actor training: Brian Astbury, Susana Bloch,
Grzegorz Bral, Laura Facciponti Bond and Ian Morgan.
For wonderful technical support: Jon Primrose, Chris Mearing, and Andy Yarwood.
For the friendly and supportive staff: Gayatri Simons, Christopher McCullough, David
Roesner, Peter Thomson, Mick Mangan, Jerri Daboo, Rebecca Loukes and Jane
Milling.
For participating as my guinea pigs/actors: James Bolt, Frances Buckroyd, Charlie

Coldfield, Callum Elliott-Archer, Helena Enright, Eric Hetzler, Lai Sim Sim, Sarah
Pearman, Elizabeth Jane Pennington, Symmonie Preston, Joe Sellman-Leava, Lauren
Margaret Shepherd, Zofia Sozanska, Jeremy West, and Alexander Warner.
Other support: Katrina Shewen, Fin Irwin, David Lockwood, Phil Hewitt, Gene David
Kirk, Trina Fischer and Juan Pablo Kalawski, Siggi Lindal, Rocco Dal Vera, Odette
Guimond, Bernard Dubois, Benjamin Borley, Kezia Cole, Anna Johnson, Maggie-Kate
Coleman, Miriam Ackerman, Joanna Mitchell, Chloe Whipple, Tom Angell, Rocco Dal
Vera and Tom Mansfield.
For amazing PhD-related conversations and book recommendations and support:

Richard Feltham, Lorraine Sutherland, Kelli Melson, Eric Hetzler, Natasha Lushetich,
Jason Price, Effrosyni Mastrokalou, James McLaughlin, Ioannis Souris, Sarah
Goldingay, Sarah Sigal, Sunhee Kim, Duncan Jamieson, Luke Beattie, James Clack,
and Lavinia Plonka.
And especially Helena Enright.
And for outstanding love and moral support: Ed and Marie Beck, Sarah Beck and
Christopher Lacey-Malvern.
Dedicated to Brian Astbury.
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Introduction
The Challenge of ‘Emotion’ in Western Performance
The careers of many a scientist have been devoted to, if not devoured by,
the task of explaining emotions. Unfortunately, one of the most
significant things ever said about emotion may be that everyone knows
what it is until they are asked to define it. – Joseph LeDoux, The
Emotional Brain (1996: 23)
Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux highlights a key problem in the quest for
understanding the nature of ‘emotion’. Despite the fact that the topic of emotion has
been debated and discussed throughout human history, by theologians, philosophers,
and more recently, neuroscientists, many unanswered questions about the nature of
emotion remain. Emotions are a common human experience. Neuroscientist Antonio
Damasio, author of The Feeling of What Happens (1999) states:
Without exception, men and women of all ages, of all cultures, of all
levels of education, and of all walks of economic life have emotions,
are mindful of the emotions of others, cultivate pastimes that
manipulate their emotions, and govern their lives in no small part by
the pursuit of one emotion, happiness, and the avoidance of
unpleasant emotions. (Damasio 1999: 35)
So if emotions are phenomena that are part of our everyday experience, why are they so
difficult to understand and define?
Emotion and theatre are often discussed simultaneously. But again, what is an
emotion? As Francis Sparshott points out in his essay on ‘Emotion and Emotions in
Theatre Dance’ as part of a collection of essays entitled Emotion and the Arts, the
frequency of ‘common usage’ of the word emotion ‘does not guarantee that there is an
identifiable entity or topic that could ground discussion’ (Sparshott 1997: 119).
Sparshott goes further, maintaining:
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The bulk of everyday discussion of the emotions in art and life, as
valuable as it may be, is bedeviled by the assumption that an emotion is
somehow an ontologically established entity. One supposes that there
must be true things to be said about what emotions are, and what
emotions there are, just as one supposes that there must be true things to
be said about what dance is. (ibid.: 123)
In The Science of Acting, Sam Kogan, an acting teacher who trained at the Moscow
Institute of Theatre Arts under Stanislavsky’s student Maria Knebel, recounts his
bemusement when confronted by a student’s question, what is emotion? After scouring
Stanislavsky’s books and finding nothing clear, Kogan resigned himself to creating his
own definition, that ‘emotion is the bio-physiological result of a thought’ (Kogan and
Kogan 2010: 6). Kogan reflects: ‘My experience of the word ‘emotion’ taught me that if
I use a word, the meaning of which you don’t understand, it leaves you with confusion
which creates noise in your head which prevents you from thinking clearly’ (ibid.).
In theatre, emotion can be discussed from two perspectives, that of the audience
and that of the actor. There is the emotion one may feel as an audience member – a
response to a theatrical presentation; perhaps a response of empathy, when relating to
the story being told; anger, in response to issues being raised in the play; or frustration,
when the play is unsatisfactory (those who work in the theatre industry may be
particularly prone to this feeling). This is the affect of a play on the audience. Aristotle
noted the phenomenon of katharsis or ‘cleansing’ that could occur when watching a
tragedy, in which ‘through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of such
emotions’ (Aristotle and Halliwell 2009: location 90). Other conditions that may
contribute to the affect of the play on the audience include all the elements of the
production from sound and lighting choices to the content of the play, to the
performances of the actors.
There is another aspect of emotion and theatre, however, which is the actor’s
task of portraying ‘emotion’ in performance – the affect of emotion on the performer.
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As audience members respond uniquely to any given theatrical performance based on
their own personal life experiences, a director cannot necessarily predict or control the
response that individual audience members will have to a particular play. However, a
director can influence the actor’s performance (and the actor’s work with emotion) in
order to initiate a response from the audience. For that reason, my research will be
focused on how a director can facilitate the actor’s experience with emotion for the
purposes of performance.
The difficulties that arise when discussing the role of emotion in relation to the
actor’s task are many. One is the lack of an agreed definition for the term ‘emotion’.
Without a clear understanding of what emotion is, it is impossible to communicate
effectively about it. The term is usually left undefined and discussed in a vague manner
that opens the argument about how the actor is supposed to interact with emotion. Is the
actor reliving an emotion? Are they pretending to be experiencing an emotion? How can
they really be experiencing emotion if they are not really the character and are not really
having that experience? Should the actor be reliving an emotional experience from their
own lives? All these questions raise further ones, such as, how important is emotion to
the actor’s task? The idea of ‘emotion’ in acting theory has sparked continuous debate
within the acting world for centuries. A review of the historical and recent literature
from theorists to practitioners reveals that ‘emotions’ about ‘emotions’ run high. These
disputes will be discussed further in Chapter One.
In Joseph Roach’s investigation of the correspondence between Western
scientific and medical paradigms and Western acting theory, The Player’s Passion:
Studies in the Science of Acting (1993), Roach highlights the most influential debates
14
about acting theory throughout Western history1. Roach maintains that ‘at the center
of this ongoing controversy stands the question of emotion’ (Roach 1993: 11). Of
course, the ‘question of emotion’ is not one question, but many, that have been
vehemently debated throughout history in various fields. In Roach’s view, the most
prominent question of emotion was posed by the philosopher Denis Diderot (1713 –
1784) in Paradoxe sur le Comedien (1773, published 1830), in which he speculates on
the nature of emotion in performance and endeavors to identify who is the superior
actor, the actor who is sincerely experiencing emotion in performance or the actor who
remains detached from the emotion while performing? Diderot poses the question: ‘If
the actor were feeling [rather than merely playing] the part, wouldn’t it be virtually
impossible for him to act the same part twice in a row with the same passion and the
same success?’ [Gray’s emphasis](Diderot in Gray 2007: 250). Diderot’s paradox
continues to haunt Western acting theory even to this day, which I discuss in more
detail in Chapter One.
In a recent book The Philosophical Actor: A Practical Meditation for Practicing
Theatre Artists (2010), Donna Soto-Morettini closely analyses many common-usage
concepts in acting and ‘folk theory’ regarding performance. Soto-Morettini identifies
two prominent debates relating to emotion and the actor – the first is concerned with
‘the relationship of the actor’s own feelings to the feelings that the actor portrays’
(Soto-Morettini 2010: 13). The second debate focuses on ‘the relationship of the actor’s
own personality of the character the actor portrays’ (ibid.). Aside from investigating
issues of ‘truth’, Soto-Morettini raises some key questions about emotions that are
pertinent to this study, including:
1
The ‘problem of emotion’ as it has been configured in the West does not appear to be a ‘problem’ in
many non-Western cultures and performance traditions. This thesis focuses exclusively on the problem of
emotion in Western acting.
15
Are the feelings actors generate genuine feelings? If so, how does the
actor control these feelings?
How do actors ‘generate’ feelings?’
Is the difference between an actor who is feeling genuine feelings

and an actor with the ability to convince us that his/her feelings are
genuine simply one technique? How does that technique work, and
can it be taught? [original emphasis] (Soto-Morettini 2010: 115)
In this instance, Soto-Morettini is using the terms ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’
interchangeably, though she later marks a distinction between the two terms. She
defines emotions as ‘something that happens first, sometimes below conscious level
[…] and feelings being the more immediately cognitive process that attends the
emotions and consciousness’ (ibid.: 117). Further discussion about the differences
between ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’ will be addressed in chapter one.
Aside from Diderot’s paradox, haunting the discussion of emotion in
performance is the debate about whose emotion the actor should be expressing, the
character’s emotion or their own? Soto-Morettini begs the question ‘if we believe that
good acting involves the expression of emotion, then isn’t it MY emotion that’s being
stirred? And even if I fake it, isn’t it MY fake emotion that I’m portraying?’ [original
emphasis] (Soto-Morettini 2010: 86). This raises further questions, such as whose
emotion is being expressed? —the actor’s emotion or the character’s emotion? Robert
Gordon raises yet another paradox in his book The Purpose of Playing (2006),
explaining that ‘for the actor, the central paradox of acting is always the way in which
her real body is used to represent a virtual body’ (Gordon 2006: 2). A further
consideration is the question of aesthetics. Are we talking about recognizable emotion,
indicated emotion, or affective emotion? The kind of emotion required depends on the
demands and style of the specific play or theatrical piece. For this reason, this research
project will use different kinds of texts, specifically psychological realism, post-
dramatic theatre and documentary theatre.
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In Acting (Re)Considered, Phillip Zarrilli acknowledges that:
Informing any “theory” of acting is a historically and culturally variable

set of assumptions about the body, mind, their relationship, the nature of
the “self,” the “inner” experience of what the actor does—often called
emotion or feeling—and the relationship between the actor and spectator.
(Zarrilli 1995: 635)
It is precisely this ‘inner’ experience, and the actor’s challenge of engaging with
‘emotion’ in rehearsals and performance that I will be investigating in this study.
Finding words to accurately describe the actor’s process is difficult, and when
translating from tacit knowledge to a verbal form, a gap emerges.
My attraction to the subject of emotion in relation to the actor in performance,
began with my first experience of what I would now describe as a ‘psychophysical’
approach to actor training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
(LAMDA) in 2002 with Brian Astbury, whose work will be discussed in detail in
Chapter Two. The word ‘psychophysical’ made its way into acting vocabulary primarily
through Stanislavsky. Bella Merlin, a professional actor and academic, refers to psycho-
physicality as ‘the dialogue between your body and your psyche’ (Merlin 2007a: 21).
Zarrilli deconstructs this term further:
Here, “psycho” does not mark the recent Western invention of

psychologies of the self/individual as in the compound “psychological,”
but rather refers to another meaning of the Greek psyche: the vital
principle—namely, the élan vital or the enlivening quality of the
(actor’s) breath/energy. (Zarrilli 2007: 636)
My previous acting background was in early American versions of Stanislavsky work.
This was almost entirely intellectual except for emotional memory exercises. A lot of
time was spent sitting around the table, discussing character motivation and psychology.
While these discussions were interesting, there was always a gap between those
discussions and the process of ‘acting’ per se. Although I could understand perfectly
what had been discussed, it did not readily help me when it came to the practice of
embodying the text or the role. Through Astbury’s ‘Emotional Access Work’, this ‘gap’
17
disappeared. From my perspective, ‘emotion’ seemed to be the missing link that filled
this gap, and ultimately led to this research project.
The Research Project

In this research project I will examine three approaches that have I begun to
integrate into my professional work – ‘Alba Emoting’ – developed by Chilean
neuroscientist Susana Bloch; ‘Emotional Access Work’ – developed by South African
theatre practitioner Brian Astbury; and ‘Impulse and Awareness Work’ – a theory of my
own in development using the selected principles of the training techniques of the
Polish theatre company Teatr Piesn Kozla (Song of the Goat). All three approaches
engage the physical or physiological aspects of emotion, and resonate with new
information as to how the mind and body function. Susana Bloch’s Alba Emoting is a
tool for actors to effectively induce the physiological changes that occur with an
emotion, devised from extensive and objective scientific research. Working as a
neuroscientist, Bloch and her research team were interested in the physiological changes
that take place when experiencing emotion, such as breath, heart rate, and changes in
muscle tonus. After various scientific experiments, Bloch identified six common
patterns that she considers to be basic emotions – anger, tenderness, fear, eroticism,
sadness and joy. Their research also revealed that if one can learn to activate the
voluntary aspects of the pattern together at the same time – breath, facial expression,
and postural attitude – one can physiologically activate that emotion. In a recent article
on Alba Emoting, I explain:
Although the connection between breathing and emotion is nothing new,

Bloch and her research team are among the first to explore this
relationship in the context of Western science, articulating phenomena
that many performers have been intuitively embodying for centuries.
(Beck 2010: 142)
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Brian Astbury’s ‘Emotional Access Work’ lends itself more directly to a
rehearsal process as a whole. Astbury’s work is based on his theory that our (self)
conscious brain can be problematic in rehearsal and that the creative (sub) conscious
can be accessed through various exercises to overcome the intrusion of self-
consciousness in the actor’s process. Astbury’s techniques were derived from years of
working with actors in training, rehearsals, and performance. Astbury’s exercises draw
upon the work of process-oriented psychologist Arnold Mindell, Alexander Lowen’s
‘Bioenergetics’, Win Wenger’s ‘Image Streaming’, and the theories of neuroscientists
such as Antonio Damasio, Joseph LeDoux, and Michael Gazzaniga. Although many of
his techniques correlate with recent discoveries in neuroscience, this correlation is
mostly theoretical, based on Astbury’s observation and experience of more than twenty
years training actors.
And finally, I will be using a set of techniques that I call ‘impulse and awareness
work’. These are exercises that I use to increase the actors’ awareness of themselves,
their awareness in relation to one another, and to the space and environment. They are
also used to help the actors work off impulses from within, from one another, and the
surrounding environment including the space itself and any aural or visual stimuli. This
work is partly based on selected principles from the training of Teatr Piesn Kozla, a
Polish theatre company founded by Grzegorz Bral and Anna Zubrzycki, both formally
of the Gardzienice Theatre Association. Bral and Zubrzycki often refrain from
discussing ‘emotion’ directly, as Bral find that this can be problematic for a performer:
A performer shouldn’t really name and shouldn’t really use too many
definitions of what he or she does. A performer is somebody who has to
learn to flow – and has to plug into the stream because, if performance is
too analytical, you are already too late. (Zubrzycki and Bral 2010: 255)
In their training, however, they often talk about ‘making room for something to
happen’, which, in my experience from working with Bral, I take that ‘something’ to
mean ‘emotion’.
19
The goal of this research project is to arrive at a better understanding of the
nature of emotion in rehearsals and performance through these three approaches, and to
examine, from the perspective of a director, how they can be applied effectively to
different texts with actors from different backgrounds. In a series of case studies I will
apply these methods and/or their core principles to different dramaturgies, and
investigate how each can be applied to address the challenge of emotion in Western
performance.
Research Questions Guiding this Study

1) What, if anything, can be revealed about the nature of emotion in Western
performance when employing these three theories/approaches to emotion in
practice? Do these discoveries vary when these approaches are put into practice
on different dramaturgies with different demands on the actor?
2) What is the nature of the emotion being expressed? Whose emotion is it? The
actor’s or the character’s? Is there a difference?
3) Can these techniques assist a director in unifying an understanding of emotion
within a diverse cast? How much of the actor’s previous beliefs, training and
acting experiences affect their views on emotion in performance? How do these
previously held views/assumption interact with the three theories used?
And lastly, taking a cue from Soto-Morettini:
4) Are the feelings/emotions that actors generate ‘genuine’? If so, how does the
actor generate, control, and integrate these emotions in performance?
Practice-as-Research
Cartesian dualism may pose a challenge to the understanding of emotion and
acting, but it also affects how we perceive knowledge, as the traditional view places ‘the
mind as the sole locus of certain knowledge’ (Nelson 2009: 115). Robin Nelson points
out that ‘some practice-as-research projects that advance the idea of ‘embodied
20
knowledge’ pose a challenge […] to the privileging of mind over body in Western
intellectual tradition in respect of the locus of knowledge’ (ibid.). Despite this
challenge, practice-as-research is rapidly becoming an accepted form of inquiry within
the academy, though not without difficulty. Robin Nelson notes:
Practice-as-research is not characteristically data-based and the organic

nature of the creative processes means that the laying out of
methodologies in advance seems to beg the question of methodical
process more than it does in scientific research models (Nelson 2009:
113).
Brad Haesman and Daniel Mafe, authors of ‘Acquiring Know-How: Research Training
for Practice-led Researchers’ (2009), maintain that ‘the central problem is one of
research methodology’ (Haesman and Mafe 2009: 211). The type of research used for
this project is qualitative, which ‘often draws on individuals’ experiences of events,
processes and systems’ (McMillan and Weyers 2007: 124). Kathleen McMillan and
Jonathan Weyers maintain:
In an ideal sense, such investigations might be carried out without

preconception by allowing the participant to provide a completely,
unstructured and uninterrupted stream of thoughts with conclusions
drawn following examination of the information obtained. (ibid.)
Carole Gray, in her article ‘Inquiry Through Practice: Developing Appropriate Research
Strategies’ (1996) identifies two important aspects of practice-as-research:
[F]irstly the research which is initiated in practice, where questions,

problems, challenges are identified and formed by the needs of practice
and practitioners; and secondly, that the research strategy is carried out
through practice, using predominately methodologies and specific
methods familiar to us as practitioners. (Gray in Haesman and Mafe
2010: 213)
Chapter One: The Question of Emotion sets out the key questions, problems and
challenges as discussed by theatre practitioners regarding the nature of emotion in
Western performance. My research strategy is to explore these questions, problems and
challenges through rehearsals and performance, which are the ‘specific methods
familiar’ to theatre practitioners. In John Freeman’s book Blood, Sweat & Theory:
21
Research though Practice in Performance (2010), the author remarks that the recent
rise in the number of degrees in practice-as-research ‘is not to suggest that the linking of
research with performance is anything new’ (Freeman 2010: 151). He acknowledges:
The twentieth century saw numerous practitioners whose work was

highly practical in outcome at the same time as the investigative and
research qualities were clear to see…and not just in hindsight. These
researching practitioners – and we can think immediately of luminaries
such as Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Brecht, Grotowski, Barba and Brook –
created a legacy of intelligent and often intellectually vital work that did
much to shape their own time and ours. What differs now is the sheer
scale of practice-based research. (ibid.)
Following in the footsteps of the director/researchers that have come before me, this
study will investigate the ‘problem’ of emotion in Western performance through a
number of case studies.
The Pilot Study

Since practice-as-research, or practice-based research, is a relatively new
phenomenon within the academy, I chose to begin with a ‘pilot study’ to better
understand how to embark on practice-as-research rather than just ‘practice’. In the field
of qualitative research, a pilot study is usually considered ‘a preliminary study, often
conducted on a small scale’ which can give the researcher ‘a chance to work through
[one’s] approach to identify inconsistencies or weaknesses’ (McMillan and Weyers
2010: 127). In 2008 I conducted a pilot study to experiment with a practice-as-research
project. The texts used for this study were two of Chekhov’s one-act farces, The Bear
and The Proposal. Four actors participated in the project: James Bolt, Frances
Buckroyd, Sarah Pearman and Alex Warner. All the participants in this project were
actors who had previously approached me about being involved with the development
of my process and research. All four actors were early in their careers and had all
trained at accredited UK drama schools. The rehearsals and performances took place in
an empty school in Mill Hill East, North London. The project ran over fourteen days
22
and included three performances. Rather than offer a full account of this study, I will
highlight the difficulties and outcomes that informed how I have structured my later
case studies.
Figure 1: Frances Buckroyd as Natalya and James Bolt as Smirnov in The Proposal. Photograph by
Brian Astbury.
The most important developments from the pilot study that changed my
methodology include: 1) my method of gathering qualitative research material from the
participants, 2) the research questions, 3) documentation, 4) the participants, and 5) the
location and context of the projects.
My initial tool for gathering qualitative research from the participants was
through their journals – written responses to questionnaires and continual written
reflection about their experiences with the texts and the exercises. The data I was
gathering was insightful, yet sparse. I was reading their journals throughout the
rehearsal process, and would often have to ask the actors for further clarification about
points that they had made. During a post-show discussion after one of the performances,
23
I was impressed by how articulate the actors were when responding to questions about
the process. It occurred to me that actors are more comfortable talking about their
experiences rather than writing about them. One actor in the pilot study commented that
responding to the journal questions felt like ‘homework.’ For my later case studies, I
decided to conduct interviews with the actors throughout the study. Interviewing is
preferable for two reasons: the actors are more comfortable discussing their experiences
and I can also interject to ask for further clarification if necessary. Actors give clearer
responses to questions and provide more articulate accounts when interviewed rather
than when responding to questions in writing or in journal entries.
The research questions for the original pilot study consisted of my overall
questions for the project, rather than also considering the specific demands and
challenges of the particular dramaturgy. As a result, my focus was on documenting
every exercise or technique, rather than using the exercises or techniques that would be
the most beneficial to the rehearsal process, as I would in a professional setting.
Negotiating the demands of a specific text with the demands of the specific actors
involved is an important aspect of directing. In this case, I was using exercises for the
sake of using exercises in order to document them, rather than responding to the needs
of the actors and the text. Further to this point, the documentation of the project began
to take precedence over the project itself. My anxiety about making certain that every
aspect of the project was ‘captured’ on DVD inhibited my role as a participant-
researcher in the project. For the subsequent case studies, I made two important
changes: 1) I decided that the techniques that I would use would serve the play and the
actors rather than vice versa, and 2) resolved that the camera would be set up in the
corner of the room and forgotten about, or be used by my assistant director, so that my
full attention would be free to focus on working with the actors.
24
Initially, I felt it was important for my research that I use typical working
actors in London, as I would in the ‘real world’. But this came with challenges. Though
the actors were all interested in participating fully in the research project, they were still
‘jobbing actors’ in London. Throughout the fourteen-day process, the equivalent of
nearly two days of rehearsal was lost because the actors had auditions for other projects.
While all the actors were enthusiastic about being involved in the research project, the
reality is that each of the actors had the financial pressure of trying to afford to live in
London, and preferably to earn that money through their acting work. This confirmed
for me that it would be more beneficial to the research to work with actors in a
university setting – actors who had the time to reflect on their experiences more
thoroughly. Also, as practice-based research is meant to be shared and disseminated, the
ideal location for the performances would be within an academic community at the
University of Exeter. By the same token, rather than solely offering a post-show
discussion for the actors and the audience, I realized that it was important to also offer a
context for the research. Every case study, then, would have an accompanying
presentation.
Methodology
The primary objective of my research through practice is to shed light on the
nature of ‘emotion’ in Western performance using the three approaches outlined above
– Alba Emoting, Emotional Access Work, and Impulse and Awareness Work – through
the practical application of these techniques to a rehearsal process using different
dramaturgies; specifically psychological realism, postdramatic theatre2, and Verbatim
Theatre. For this research, the following methodology was proposed.
2
A form of theatre with a ‘profoundly changed mode of theatrical sign usage’ (Lehmann
2006: 17). Hans-Thies Lehmann uses the term ‘postdramatic’ to cover a wide range of new
theatre forms that have emerged since the late 1960s in which the focus of the work is no
longer on the traditional dramatic text. Lehmann goes on to mention how ’authors like
25
Each rehearsal process and performance(s) is to be considered as a ‘case
study’. And each case study is a practical experiment that began with a set of research
questions around the nature of emotion in performance using different dramaturgies for
rehearsal process and performance. The case studies stand alone as individual
experiments with the theories and their relation to the specific dramaturgies of the
particular project. However, there may be some conclusions that result when
considering all three projects as a ‘collective case study’, which could potentially ‘lead
to better understanding, perhaps better theorizing, about a still larger collection of cases’
(Stake 2005: 437). Using qualitative methods such as interviewing and participant-
observation (as I directed each project), I obtained subjective data on the actors’
experiences with the three approaches, the dramaturgy, and their relation to the question
of emotion. As the case studies progressed, their formats developed. Case Study One:
Excerpts from Chekhov’s Three Sisters gave the actors the experience of one
performance; Case Study Two: Beckett’s Footfalls and Play had two performances; and
Case Study Three: Enright’s Less Than a Year had six performances, including a charity
performance at a local theatre. The way in which I integrated the approaches changed in
response to the dramaturgies and the needs of the actors involved. This thesis is
accompanied by four DVDs, which contain rehearsal footage as well as the actual
performances. When necessary, the reader will be directed to the DVDs for specific
examples of the practice.
Chapter Preview
Chapter One: The Challenge of ‘Emotion’ in Western Performance is in three
sections. Section I: Diderot’s Paradoxe explores the controversy surrounding Diderot’s
Samuel Beckett and Heiner Müller avoided the dramatic form […] because of its implied
teleology of history’ (ibid.: 39).
26
Paradoxe and how his polarization of ‘real’ emotion and ‘performed’ emotion has
problematically influenced and dominated the discussion of emotion in performance.
Section II: The ‘Problem of Emotion in Life’ outlines the underlying problems of
understanding the nature of emotion in everyday life, primarily the difficulties in
defining emotion and the predominance of Cartesian dualism in Western society.
Included in this chapter are some of the theories of philosophers, psychologists and
neuroscientists such as Aristotle, William James, Charles Darwin, Robert Solomon,
Paul Ekman, Antonio Damasio, as well as less frequently cited theorists including
Théodule-Augustin Ribot and Candace Pert. The latter part of the chapter explores the
problem of emotion in Western3 performance, and how Diderot’s Paradoxe continues to
inform the conflicting ideologies of 20th century theatre practitioners. The intention here
is to highlight theories of emotion from major Western theatre practitioners including
Konstantin Stanislavsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jerzy Grotowski, Lee Strasberg, and
Bertolt Brecht, as well as less frequently cited practitioners such as Francois Delsarte
and Genevieve Stebbins.
Chapter Two: New Approaches to Acting and Emotion in the 20th and 21st
Centuries introduces the theories/approaches to emotion that I used to examine my
research questions and is divided into three sections. Sections one, two and three outline
Alba Emoting, Emotional Access Work, and Impulse and Awareness Work
respectively.
Chapter Three presents Case Study One: Excerpts from Chekhov’s Three Sisters,
in which I incorporated the work of Alba Emoting, Emotional Access Work and
Impulse and Awareness Work into a rehearsal process on a selection of excerpts from
3
Although I am using the term ‘Western’ performance, this study will not cover the entire gamut of
Western practitioners. Most of the practitioners mentioned in this chapter are from or have been
influenced by the Russian acting tradition (rather than French), as much of the acting training I have
experienced was Russian influenced.
27
Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Chekhov’s writing is often discussed in relation to
emotion in performance. Bella Merlin suggests that Chekhov’s writing, in particular
The Seagull, ‘was the catalyst which provoked Stanislavsky into applying new laws to
the acting process in order that it too might be structured as an art form’ [original
emphasis] (Merlin 1999: 224).
Chapter Four presents Case Study Two: Beckett’s Play and Footfalls, in which I
used Samuel Beckett’s Play and Footfalls. Beckett’s plays are notoriously difficult to
perform, especially his later dramatic works. Challenges to his work include finding the
correct musicality or tempo-rhythm of the text, working with the physical restrictions
and specific instructions put forward by Beckett, and in some cases an absence of
psychological realism, among other things.
Chapter Five presents Case Study Three: Enright’s Less than a Year, in which I
engage with a form of documentary theatre often described as Verbatim Theatre, a form
in which the script is composed of edited transcripts from interviews with real people.
The play used for Case Study Three is Less than a Year by Irish playwright Helena
Enright and was created from the transcripts of interviews with a couple who lost their
eighteen-year-old daughter to cancer.
Finally, the conclusion brings together the findings of all three cases and offers
some potentially useful discoveries to engage with the challenge of emotion. Of course,
as Freeman acknowledges in Blood, Sweat and Theory, ‘any solutions sought and found
are more likely to relate to the specific set of circumstances created by the work in
question than to any globally significant responses’ (Freeman 2010: 59). While what
initially attracted me to Astbury’s work and eventually to this study was ‘emotion’,
since embarking on this research my views on the subject have changed. In retrospect I
believe that what I was drawn to was not necessarily the display of emotion as such, but
rather the fact that the entire organism of the actor was working together as a cohesive
28
entity – psychophysically. My journey to this conclusion will be documented
throughout the dissertation.
29
Chapter One: The Question of Emotion in Western Performance
As Joseph Roach explores in his book The Player’s Passion: Studies in the
Science of Acting, a relationship has always existed between the sciences – biological,
psychological, neurological – and the performing arts. Rightly or wrongly, the ‘question
of emotion’ has been essential to this interdisciplinary relationship and stands at the
forefront of heated theatrical debate. Historically, many directors and actors became
researchers out of necessity, turning to the science of the time to help them discover
better strategies to facilitate better performances from their actors or achieve better
performances from themselves. In Western performance today, the controversy
continues, and many directors and actors hold strong opinions varying from different
ways and means of eliciting emotion in performance to whether or not emotion is
important at all (See Blair 2008; Hornby 1992; Konijn 2000).
The historical (and current) controversy surrounding emotion and its role in
performance indicates that there is a ‘problem of emotion’ in Western performance. Or,
more specifically, quite a few ‘problems’ that can create challenges for both actors and
directors. Given the relationship between life and art, it is likely that these issues stem
from the controversy surrounding emotion in everyday life. After researching the field
of emotion science, I have identified two ‘problems’ that are particularly challenging.
The first is finding an accurate definition of emotion. The term ‘emotion’ is commonly
used in daily conversation, but what actually is it? The second major ‘problem’ is the
prominence of Cartesian dualism in Western society — the mind/body split.
This chapter is divided into four sections. Section I: Diderot’s Paradoxe
examines Diderot’s paradox, which is arguably responsible for placing the ‘question of
emotion’ at the forefront of theatrical debate. Section II: The ‘Problem’ of Emotion in
Life will look at the problems associated with understanding emotion in everyday life,
30
specifically focusing on the difficulties of defining emotion and the challenges that
arise because of the prominence of Cartesian dualism in Western thought. Section III:
Key Theories on Acting and Emotion in the 19th and 20th Centuries will explore some
theories of acting and their relationship with emotion, as well as discussing how certain
theatre practitioners have approached this challenge from the mid-19th century onwards.
The last section, Section IV: Diderot’s Paradoxe and the Practitioners of the 20th
Century, returns to Diderot and how his paradox impacted on the discussion of emotion
in the work of important theatre practitioners.
Section I: Diderot’s Paradoxe

In his book The Player’s Passion (1993), Joseph Roach follows the close
correlation between acting theory and the scientific understanding of the body
throughout history:
Conceptions of the human body drawn from physiology and psychology

have dominated theories of acting from antiquity to present. The nature
of the body, its structure, its outer dynamics, and its relationship to the
larger world that it inhabits have been the subject of diverse speculation
and debate. At the center of this ongoing controversy stands the question
of emotion. (Roach 1993: 11)
Of course, the ‘question of emotion’ is not one question, but many, that have been
vehemently debated throughout history in various fields. In Roach’s view, the most
prominent ‘question of emotion’ was posed by the philosopher Denis Diderot (1713 –
1784) in Paradoxe sur le Comedien (17734), in which Diderot speculates on the nature
of emotion in performance and endeavors to identify who is the superior actor; the actor
who is sincerely experiencing emotion in performance, or the actor who remains
detached from the emotion while performing. As mentioned in the introduction, Diderot
poses the question: ‘If the actor were feeling [rather than merely playing] the part,
4
Written in 1773, published in 1830.
31
wouldn’t it be virtually impossible for him to act the same part twice in a row with the
same passion and the same success?’ [Gray’s emphasis] (Diderot in Gray5 2007: 250).
Diderot addresses this question in the form of a dialogue between two speakers,
debating the virtues and pitfalls of acting and the role of emotion. His conclusion is that
‘unequal acting’ is the result of actors who ‘play from the heart’ (Diderot and Pollock
1883: 8) and that for a ‘sublime’ actor, ‘tears come from his brain’ (ibid.: 17). For if it
were otherwise, ‘the actor’s condition would be the most unhappy of conditions’
(Diderot in Gray 2007: 253).
Throughout Paradoxe Diderot introduces many original concepts, or at least,
according to Roach, articulates them in ‘modern form’ including: ‘emotion memory,
imagination, creative unconsciousness, ensemble playing, double consciousness,
concentration, public solitude, character body, the score of the role, and spontaneity’
(Roach 1993: 117). Among Diderot’s contributions of note include his call for actors to
maintain consistency in their performances – and emotion, in Diderot’s opinion – is an
obstacle to consistency. By the same token he also underlines the importance of study,
rehearsal and observation, insisting that ‘the actor who performs from reflection, from
study of human nature, from constant imitation of some ideal model, from imagination,
from memory, will be one and the same in all his presentations, always equally perfect’
(Diderot in Gray 2007: 250). He also recognizes the need for actor training, saying that
whomever ‘nature has designed to be an outstanding actor will excel in his art only
when long experience has been acquired, when the tumult of the passions has subsided,
when the head is calm and the spirit is under control’ (ibid.: 258). And finally, almost
conceding his point, but illustrating the importance of an actor’s work on integration
and connection to text, he states that while ‘pure, unadulterated nature alone may have
5
For this section I will be primarily working from John Gray’s 2007 translation of Diderot’s Paradoxe
sur le Comedien, included in his article ‘Diderot, Garrick, and the Art of Acting.’
32
some sublime moments,’ a truly great actor is one who ‘will have felt them, and
consequently conveyed them coolly and objectively’ (ibid.: 256).
Despite illuminating some of the complexities of the acting process, Diderot’s
paradox is often simplified to a firm conclusion which gives actors little choice – either
‘play from the heart’ resulting in ‘unequal acting’ (Diderot and Pollock 1883: 8), or
remain a ‘cool and calm spectator’ with ‘no sensibility whatever’ (Diderot in Gray: 249)
– and as a result limits the investigation of emotion to these two opposing sides. For
Diderot, it is ‘the absolute lack of sensitivity that makes for the best, truly sublime
actors’ (ibid.: 254). Perhaps unwittingly, Diderot shifted the focus of the debate about
acting to emotion, and the discussion continues today. But Diderot was not an actor
himself. Without having the experience of performing - tacit knowledge of the
embodied experience of acting – his argument is flawed. Yet his discourse has had a
major impact on how many theatre practitioners view emotion in performance.
Paradoxe Proposed
Diderot was particularly enamored with the English actor David Garrick (1717 -
1779), who was famous throughout the Western theatre world. Thomas Postlewait
maintains that Garrick ‘served to focus attention on acting as an emblem of a potential
(though not necessary) split between not only character and performer but art and life’
(Postlewait and McConachie 1989: 250). Often referred to as ‘Roscius’6 or ‘David
Shakespeare’, Garrick’s celebrity status gave him numerous opportunities to show off
his talent at private parties, and it was on these occasions that Diderot became
impressed with the English actor’s ability (Gray 2007: 244). In Paradoxe, Diderot cites
this example:
6
Famous Roman actor (126 -62 BC)
33
Garrick pokes his head between two uprights of a door, and in the
space of four to five seconds his face moves from wild ecstasy to
moderate joy, from that joy to calm, from calm to surprise, from surprise
to astonishment, from astonishment to sadness, from sadness to
dejection, from dejection to fear, from fear to horror, from horror to
despair, and ascends again from that last degree to the point where he
began his descent. Is it that he experienced in his soul all those
sensations, and managed to run that entire gamut of emotions in concert
with his face? I don’t believe so. (Diderot in Gray 2007: 262)
According to historian John Gray, Diderot was:
…convinced that [Garrick’s] propensity for acting out instantaneous

emotional changes illustrated beyond doubt his long-held view that a
great actor was one who could simulate any or every mood to order
without upsetting himself in the process. (Gray 2007: 245)
Diderot supposed that in order to do this, the actor must remain unmoved, and Paradoxe
was intended to prove just that.
But Diderot was not the only author to take his inspiration from Garrick, and in
fact, it was the anonymous publication of a pamphlet entitled Garrick or English Actors
in 1769 that prompted Diderot’s own work (Benedetti 2005: 83). The pamphlet, traced
back to Antoine Fabio Sticotti (d. 1772), was actually an embellished translation of
John Hill’s The Actor (1755), which emphasized the importance of emotionality in
performance (Gray 2007: 245;Worthen 1984). Diderot was not a fan of this pamphlet,
and in personal correspondence to his close friend Baron von Grimm, Gray reveals that
Diderot thought the author of the pamphlet was ‘a scoundrel’, but that it motivated him
to write ‘a little piece’ of his own (Gray 2007: 246).
Diderot’s Paradoxe closes with an appeal to his muse, Garrick, to confirm the
philosopher’s view:
I take you as witness, English Roscius, celebrated Garrick, you, who, by

the unanimous consent of all existing nations, are recognized as the
leading actor in their acquaintance, pay homage to the truth: haven’t you
told me, although you have strong feelings, that your acting would be
feeble if, whatever passion or character you had to project, you weren’t
able to evaluate yourself by thought, rather than feelings, even to the
stature of a Homeric ghost with whom you were trying to identify
yourself? When I objected to you that it was not according to yourself
that you were playing, confess how you replied; didn’t you admit that
34
you were keeping yourself well under control, and that you only
appeared so amazingly believable on stage because you were incessantly
showing the audience an imaginary being who was not you? (Diderot in
Gray 2007: 266).
Despite the fact that Diderot was convinced that his work was ‘totally and irrefutably
exemplified by Garrick’s acting’ (Gray 2007: 245), there is no indication that Garrick
ever formally acknowledged his contemporary’s viewpoint. Gray found evidence that
Garrick had been sent a copy of the manuscript by Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard in the
winter of 1776, who asks for Garrick to respond with notes on Diderot’s manuscript ‘as
promised’ (ibid.: 247). In a further letter from the following summer, Suard again
appeals to Garrick, pressing him to reply: ‘Send them [your observations] to me, I beg
you promptly; I am [being] urged to know your opinion on the question’ (qtd. in Gray
2007: 247). Gray found no record of any response on Garrick’s part, though he offers
what may have been Garrick’s ‘refutation of much of Diderot’s thesis’ (Gray 2007:
267). In Paradoxe, Diderot speaks very highly of the actresses La Clairon and
Dumesnil, and it turns out that Garrick was not as much of a fan of their craft as Diderot
supposed. In a personal letter to a friend, Garrick criticizes La Clairon for being too
detached from feeling:
Madm. Clairon is so conscious and certain what she can do, that she
never (I believe) had the feelings of the instant come upon her
unexpectedly.—but I pronounce that the greatest strokes of Genius, have
been unknown to the Actor himself, ‘till Circumstances and the warmth
of the Scene has sprung the Mine as it were, as much to his own
Surprize, as that of the Audience—Thus I make a great difference
between a great Genius, and a good Actor. (qtd. in Gray 2007: 267)
Garrick is also admitting here that a great actor may not know exactly how they achieve
‘the greatest strokes of Genius’. Perhaps Garrick’s reluctance to corroborate Diderot’s
assertion was one of the reasons Paradoxe was not published until 1830, forty-six years
after Diderot’s death.
While Garrick may have abstained from the discussion, Roach’s view on the
importance of Diderot’s question of emotion is justified. Since the publication of

35
Paradoxe, many actors, directors and philosophers have engaged in this dialogue,
even twisting Diderot’s essay to support their own arguments (See Roach 1993; Archer
1888; Coquelin et al. 1915; Strasberg in Diderot and Pollack 1957; and Konijn 2000).
Diderot’s conclusion sparked a debate that continues to dominate Western acting theory
and, as Roach maintains, ‘to this day many acting theorists, knowingly or
unknowingly, formulate their views in response to perspectives introduced in the
Paradoxe’ (Roach 1993: 117). Whether or not the recreation of emotion is the basis of
acting, Diderot’s Paradoxe brought emotion to the forefront of theatrical debate and
created a sharp division—anti-emotionalists vs. emotionalists.
Paradoxe Pondered
It is important to note that Diderot himself was not an actor, and there is no
evidence to suggest that he had the opportunity to experience acting in performance,
which drew criticism from his antagonists, in particular William Archer (1856 – 1924)7.
In the introductory chapter of his 1888 survey of actors called Masks or Faces?, Archer
claims that Diderot ‘founded his doctrine on slender evidence’ (Archer 1888: 2), and
indeed criticizes the philosopher for his lack of professional expertise:
A few anecdotes, of doubtful interpretation, are all that he advances in

support of it, and [Baron von] Grimm expressively tells us that for years
before he formulated his theory he had gone but rarely to the theatre.
‘Able as he was,’ a distinguished actress writes to me, ‘Diderot, both in
his Paradoxe and elsewhere, spoke without that intimate knowledge
which only actors of the highest order can possess.’ (Archer 1888: 2-3)
Archer sets out to disprove Diderot, complaining of his use of ‘false logic’ and ‘empty
paradox-mongering’ (ibid.: 4). Archer – a theatre critic and self-confessed amateur
psychologist – addresses Diderot’s question by interviewing professional actors directly
about their experiences. The responses to Archer’s questionnaire vary greatly of course;
7
For this section I will be primarily working from the 1883 publication of Diderot’s Paradox of Acting,
as this would have been Archer’s reference point.
36
but through his respondents he systematically picks apart Diderot’s argument. Archer
summarizes the points Diderot makes about ‘sensibility’ in order to unravel the paradox.
Archer describes Diderot’s use of ‘sensibility’ as:
i. A tendency to do without study and to rely on momentary

inspiration.
ii. A tendency to become incarnate in your personage, to live
in it and in it alone, to feel all its emotions and endure all
its agonies.
iii. A tendency to somnambulistic absorption in the business
of the scene, making consciousness for the moment one
and indivisible.
iv. A tendency to express your own moral nature, instead of
assuming and exhibiting the character created by the
playwright. (Archer 1888: 35)
These ideas, matched with an additional definition where Diderot refers to ‘sensibility’
as ‘that disposition which accompanies organic weakness […] delicacy of the nerves,
which inclines one to […] loss of self control, to exaggeration, to contempt, to disdain,
to obtuseness to the true, the good, and the beautiful, to injustice, to madness’ (Diderot
and Pollock 1883: 56), completely destroy the paradox for Archer. From this he
surmises that:
Sensibility, then, is a morbid habit of mind and body, which must

interfere, not with acting alone, but with all healthy art whatsoever. […]
Hysteria, surely, is a much apter name for the disease. Substituting this
term, then, we read Diderot’s thesis as follows: -‘The great actor must
not be hysterical.’ Agreed. But where is the paradox? (Archer 1888: 36)
These are just a few examples of the many sharp criticisms of Diderot’s Paradoxe that
Archer offers in Masks or Faces?
Archer declares himself an emotionalist, but it is not a term he chooses lightly.
Archer admits:
After a careful search for less cumbrous expressions, I have been forced
to fall back upon the terms ‘emotionalist’ and ‘anti-emotionalist’ to
indicate the contending parties in this dispute. They are painfully
clumsy; but the choice seemed to lie between them and still clumsier
circumlocutions. (Archer 1888: 11)
37
Archer goes on to discuss his findings and ideas about emotion in much greater detail
than Diderot’s two-character dialogue. Archer describes what he calls ‘simple’ emotions
as those which ‘tend to express themselves directly and unmistakably in changes of the
physical organs’, and include ‘grief and joy (with all their subdivisions), rage, terror,
and shame’ (Archer 1888: 37). ‘Complex’ emotions, on the other hand, do not share
these obvious outward changes, but are instead more ‘attitudes of the mind than
individual emotions’, and Archer mentions some examples such as ‘love and hatred,
jealousy and envy.’ (ibid.: 37). Archer theorizes that the complex emotions can
sometimes express themselves through the form of the simple ones; that love will
manifest itself in any of those emotions from grief to joy, and hatred sometimes through
anger. ‘Thus,’ concludes Archer, ‘the physical effects of the simple emotions may be
regarded as the raw material of expression; whence it follows that the reproduction of
these physical effects must be the very groundwork of the actors art’ (ibid.: 37-38).
Drawing upon examples from history, from the Greeks, to Cicero and Quintilian, all of
whom Archer classes as emotionalists, he enlists their support in his argument for actors
‘feeling’ emotion. However, as Roach points out, Archer seems to be confused in parts,
his ‘vague duality’ alternating ‘between working from the inside out through mental
concentration and from the outside in through physical’ (Roach 1993: 181).
In Paradoxe, Diderot concludes that ‘between him who counterfeits sensibility
and him who feels there will always be the difference between an imitation and a
reality’ (Diderot and Pollack 1883: 99). Archer’s ultimate conclusion is ‘[a]cting is
imitation; when it ceases to be imitation it ceases to be acting and becomes something
else’ [original emphasis] (Archer 1888: 196). Both are alluding to the difference
between emotions ‘onstage’ and emotions in ‘life’.
38
Both philosophers had their champions in the professional acting world. For
Diderot, his main advocate was Constant Coquelin (1841 – 1909). In his essay, Art and
the Actor, Coquelin says of Paradoxe:
I hold this paradox to be literal truth: and I am convinced that one can
only be a great actor on condition of complete self-mastery and ability to
express feelings which are not experienced, which may never be
experienced, which from the nature of things never can be experienced.
(Coquelin et al. 1915: 56)
Coquelin was a firm believer in expressing feelings without experiencing them. It
appears that to the anti-emotionalists, experiencing an emotion in performance is
inherently the same as experiencing an emotion in everyday life, and it is for this idea in
particular that Archer and others vehemently attacked Paradoxe. Coquelin used Diderot
to uphold his views on the actor’s craft as literal art, likening their work to that of a
painter, poet or sculptor. He wanted the actor’s work to be seen as artistic
representation, rather than imitation, asserting that ‘the actor needs not to be actually
moved. It is as unnecessary as it is for a pianist to be in the depths of despair to play the
Funeral March of Chopin’ (ibid.: 60-61).
Archer’s advocate was the actor Henry Irving, for whom experiencing the
emotion was a priority. In an introduction for the 1883 publication of Diderot’s
Paradoxe, for Irving it was clear that the actor ‘who combines the electric force of a
strong personality with a mastery of the resources of his art, must have a greater power
over his audiences than the passionless actor who gives a most artistic simulation of the
emotion he never experiences’ (Irving in Diderot and Pollack 1883: xvii). But the
emotionalists did not believe that an actor should become completely absorbed in their
experience of emotion, as Diderot would have us believe. They recognized the ability to
‘experience’ an emotion, as the character, without becoming hysterical, forgetting
oneself, or indeed going ‘mad’. Irving emphasizes that ‘it is necessary to this art that
the mind should have, as it were, a double consciousness, in which all the emotions
39
proper to the occasion may have full sway, while the actor is all the time on the alert
for every detail of his method’ (ibid.: xv – xvi). What Irving and the emotionalists
understood was dual consciousness, a phenomenon Diderot recognized but believed to
be mutually exclusive with experiencing emotion. Toward the end of Masks or Faces?,
Archer admits ‘the real paradox of acting…resolves itself into the paradox of dual
consciousness’ (Archer 1888: 150).
Section II: The ‘Problem’ of Emotion in Life
The Notion of Emotion
In order to address Diderot’s paradox in the twenty-first century, I will examine
different approaches to emotion in everyday life. First by asking, what is an emotion?
Philosophers have been asking this question for centuries, followed by scientists, then
psychologists and, more recently, neuroscientists. With improving technology to help
understand our functioning brains—positron emission tomography (PET scans),
functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI), and the like, this question of what is an
emotion must be close to being answered. A new field has emerged – affective
neuroscience – the ‘investigation of the neural basis of emotion and mood’ (Bear et al.
2001: 564) – dedicated to understanding the relationship between emotion and the brain.
Surely, there must be a consensus among the experts on what, exactly, an emotion is?
Unfortunately, a unanimous agreement on a definition of emotion has yet to be found.
Defining emotion is difficult; firstly because even today emotion scientists
disagree on a definition, and secondly because different fields of study – such as
philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience – approach the subject of emotion from very
different angles, using different research methodologies and often analyzing isolated
components of emotion. The specificity of individual studies of emotion often results in
40
contradictory information. Neuroscientist Elaine Fox, in her book Emotion Science
(2008), points out ‘there is no general agreement in emotion science on how emotion
should be defined’, nor is there an agreement on ‘basic emotions’, a term Fox
encourages us not to take ‘too literally’ (Fox 2008: 84).
Rather than present a chronological history of emotion theory, it will be clearer
to separate key theorists by the framework that they use to investigate emotion. For a
clear introduction to the current field, Fox divides the study of emotion into four distinct
perspectives that are still considered today8 - researchers who believe that: 1) emotions
are biologically given, 2) emotions are socially constructed, 3) emotions are the result of
bodily changes, and 4) emotions are the result of cognitive appraisal. I am choosing to
highlight four frameworks for investigating emotion that may be useful in this study.
Within each framework I mention the important theorists and their views of emotion,
including ideas on basic emotions and how emotions are induced.
Emotions as Biological Inheritance
The view that emotions are biologically given was first presented by Charles
Darwin in The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1872). His main argument,
based on detailed observations of animal and human behavior, is that emotions are
innate (or inherited genetically) and are a key factor in evolution and the preservation of
species. Darwin asserts ‘the study of the theory of expression confirms to a certain
limited extent the conclusion that man is derived from some lower animal form, and
supports the belief of the specific or sub-specific unity of the several races,’ (Darwin et
al. 1999: 241) and that ‘expression in itself, or the language of the emotions, as it has
sometimes been called, is certainly of importance for the welfare of mankind’ (ibid.).
8
Historical approaches to emotion that are no longer valid, such as the Elizabethan theory of humours or
Descartes’ ‘animal spirits’, will not be discussed. Psychoanalytic views, such as those of Freud and
Lacan, will also not be included here as they do not address the physiology of emotion.
41
Darwin’s radical views that the entirety of the human race share common expressions
of emotion, and that we share many of those same expressions with animals as well,
were both contentious notions for Victorian society, already scandalized by his
publication of Origin of the Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871). Certain
expressions, such as crying and blushing, he found unique to the human race,
suggesting that these were later developments on our evolutionary path. In this
biological approach, emotions are seen as ‘adaptations to significant problems,
especially problems that were common for our ancestors’ (Fox 2008: 4) and their
function allows ‘a range of different processes to be coordinated in order to solve an
immediate and urgent problem’ (ibid.). Darwin’s work has been criticized for being
mostly based on personal observation and several of his theories have turned out to be
false. But the main gist of Darwin’s argument has been supported by the more recent
research of psychologist Paul Ekman.
Ekman originally set out to refute Darwin, hypothesizing that emotions were
culturally created. However, after studying native tribes in Papua New Guinea, Ekman
came to the conclusion that Darwin was correct in his assumption that the expression of
emotions is universal. Ekman views emotion as a:
…process, a particular kind of automatic appraisal influenced by our

evolutionary and personal past, in which we sense that something
important to our welfare is occurring, and a set of physiological changes
and emotional behaviors begins to deal with the situation. (Ekman 2003:
13)
With the biological approach comes the assumption of a set of basic emotions. Again,
these can differ depending on the researcher and there is no agreement on basic
emotions among neuroscientists. Ekman identifies five: anger, fear, happiness, sadness,
and disgust. While Darwin did not produce a definitive list, he also includes tenderness
and eroticism.
42
Emotions as Social Constructs
The view that emotions are socially constructed has been popular primarily with
anthropologists and cultural theorists. Emotions are considered to be ‘the products of a
particular culture and they are produced by that culture in order to help define its values
and assist members of a society to negotiate particular social roles’ (Fox 2008: 4). In
this view, emotions are learned behaviors, unique to different societies. There is
evidence of different cultures having unique emotions particular to their societies. One
example is the Japanese emotion amae, which in Japan is considered to be a basic
emotion and ‘refers to the pleasant feeling that arises from a sense of togetherness,
especially when this emerges from complete dependence on another person’ (ibid.: 6).
A famous proponent of this view of emotions was the anthropologist Margaret Mead.
Her research in Samoa led her to believe that emotional expressions are not universal,
but unique to specific cultures. Ekman, a student of Mead’s, later found her theory to be
incorrect. Ekman found while some cultures may develop additional and unique
expressions or gestures, we all share a set of universal emotions. Ekman views this idea
that emotions are socially constructed as an outdated framework, not because it lacks
validity, but because this assumption can work with the idea that emotions are
biologically given. In the first framework presented, the idea is that emotions are
adaptations that help the organism survive. Adapting emotions to suit cultural situations
is crucial to help organisms survive in their socially constructed world. After a
symposium on ‘Feelings and Emotions’ held in Amsterdam 2004, emotion theorist Nico
Frijda and his associates Anthony S.R. Manstead and Agneta Fischer concluded:
In recent theorizing, the old controversy between a biological and a

cultural view is being abandoned and replaced by the idea that emotions
are both biologically and culturally determined. The debate is shifting
from the question of whether emotions are biological or cultural to that
of the extent which, and the ways in which, biological givens and
cultural influences determine emotions. (Manstead et al. 2004: 465)
43
Culture, however, has a major impact upon gender association with emotion and what
Ekman calls ‘display rules’. Display rules are ‘culture-specific prescriptions about who
can show which emotions, to whom, and when’ (Ekman 1993: 384). Different display
rules may ‘explain how cultural differences may conceal universals in expression’
(ibid.).
Emotion as Perceptions of Bodily Changes
American psychologist William James (1842 – 1910) first introduced the view
of emotions as perception of bodily changes in what became known as the James-Lange
Theory of emotion (Carl Lange, a Danish psychologist, independently posed the same
theory) (Solomon 2003: 65). In his aptly titled essay “What is an Emotion?” [1884],
James states:
My thesis…is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION

of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they
occur IS the emotion. Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry
and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a
rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that
this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not
immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must
first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that
we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we
tremble. [original emphasis] (James in Lange et al. 1922: 13)
Contrary to previous emotion theories, for both James and Lange the physical
manifestations are the cause of emotion; or at least, that is how their theory is largely
interpreted. The James-Lange theory was continually attacked even up until the 1960s,
by scientists such as Walter Cannon (1871 – 1945) in 1927 (See Cannon 1987) and
Stanley Schachter (1922 – 1997) and Jerome Singer (See Schachter and Singer 1962).
Most of the complaints were that ‘the theory neglects the cognitive, behavioral, and
other, more sophisticated aspects of emotion and fails to account for the many subtle
distinctions between similar emotions’ (Solomon 2003: 66). This may be true to a
certain extent – James did not elaborate on his theory further and was widely criticized
44
for his example of the ‘bear in the woods.’ Psychologist Phoebe Ellsworth defends
James, maintaining that in his example of the bear ‘we find the roots of the
oversimplified notion that emotion is nothing but physiological arousal, when all James
meant to say was that bodily feedback was a necessary condition for emotion’ [my
emphasis] (Ellsworth 1994: 228). James states this point more clearly later in his essay
when he writes: ‘emotion disassociated from all bodily feelings is inconceivable’
(James in Lange et al. 1922: 18). Though James does not produce a definitive list of
emotions, he does site a few examples of ‘standard’ emotions, which include surprise,
curiosity, rapture, fear, anger, lust, and greed. He deems these as the names of ‘the
mental states with which a person is possessed’ (ibid.: 12). James continues:
The bodily disturbances are said to be the “manifestation” of these

several emotions, their “expression” or “natural language”; and these
emotions themselves, being so strongly characterized both from within
and without, may be called the “standard emotions”. (ibid.: 12-13)
James’s work has been an important influence on many theatre practitioners
including Stanislavsky, and more recently, British theatre director Katie
Mitchell.
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio is also considered to share this viewpoint and
is often discussed alongside James. However, it should be noted that Damasio is also
firmly in the first camp that asserts that emotions are biologically given. For Damasio,
the biological function of emotion is twofold: the first function being ‘the production of
a specific reaction to the inducing situation’ (Damasio 1999: 53), and the second
function being ‘the regulation of the internal state of the organism such that it can be
prepared for a specific reaction’ (ibid.: 54). Damasio’s somatic-marker theory is an
extension of James’ hypothesis, but further developed. According to Damasio ‘the
process does not stop with the bodily changes that define an emotion’ (ibid.: 132).
Better articulating what Ellsworth believes James was trying to convey, Damasio
explains that ‘the cycle continues, certainly in humans, and its next step is the feeling of
45
the emotion in connection to the object that excited it, the realization of the nexus
between object and emotional body state’ [original emphasis] (ibid.). Damasio divides
emotions into three categories: background emotions, primary emotions, and social
emotions.
Emotion as Result of Cognitive Appraisal
Aristotle also acknowledged the role of emotion in the body. Aristotle,
developed a theory of emotion, as well as a set of principles for rhetoric. Dr. Robert C.
Solomon (1942 – 2007), a leading figure for the International Society for Research on
Emotions (ISRE), finds that Aristotle’s ideas are widely ignored by emotion theorists,
despite his untimely concordance with many contemporary views on the subject
(Solomon 2003: 5)9. In Rhetoric, Aristotle defines emotion as ‘that which leads one’s
condition to become so transformed that his judgment is affected, and which is
accompanied by pleasure and pain’ (Aristotle in Solomon 2003: 6). Here we see early
beginnings of a recurring theme where emotion is pitted against logic, a theme that is
still common in Western society today. ‘Judgment’ is a quality to be valued, and
‘emotion’ a potential impairment. Aristotle also associates the experience of emotion as
either pleasurable, painful, or indeed both (Benedetti 2005: 11). In On the Soul,
Aristotle observes that ‘most of the soul’s conditions—anger, courage, desire, and any
sensation—neither act nor are activated without the body’ (Aristotle in Solomon 2003:
9). It is very important to note that Aristotle acknowledges the importance of the body’s
participation in the experience of emotion, as this idea will be snubbed by later
theorists. He also admits, however, that ‘the act of thinking probably belongs to the
soul alone’ (ibid.). For Aristotle, there are three conditions on the dependence of which
emotion will appear: 1) ‘the individual state of mind’; 2) ‘the object of his feeling’; and
9
Solomon’s book What is an Emotion? includes recent translations from Rhetoric and On the Soul, from
which I will be quoting.
46
3) ‘the circumstances in which the feeling arises’ and further to these, ‘without a
knowledge of all three, it is impossible to arouse emotion’ (Benedetti 2005: 11).
Aristotle identifies ten emotions, some individual and some connected, including anger,
calm, friendship and enmity, fear and confidence, shame, favor, pity, indignation, envy,
and jealousy (ibid.: 10).
Distinguishing Between Emotions, Moods, and Feelings
A tool that may be helpful in the discussion of emotion is to distinguish between
emotions, moods and feelings. While there is no agreement on a definition of emotion,
most theorists generally consider emotions to be ‘discrete and consistent responses to an
internal or external event that has a particular significance for the organism’ [original
emphasis] (Fox 2008: 16). A ‘feeling’ can be broken down into two particular
categories. Bennett and Hacker, in The History of Cognitive Neuroscience, describe
‘feelings’ as a number of phenomena including ‘sensations, tactile perceptions,
appetites and affections’ (Bennett and Hacker 2008: 164). More often, however,
emotion scientists refer to ‘feeling’ as ‘the subjective representations of emotions’ (Fox
2008: 17). Damasio explains ‘the term feeling should be reserved for the private, mental
experience of an emotion, while the term emotion should be used to designate the
collection of responses, many of which are publicly observable’ (Damasio 1999: 42).
The Mind/Body Split
Another major challenge is an ingrained idea in most of Western society that the
mind and body are separate. In Passions of the Soul (1649), Rene Descartes proposes
his influential assertion that: ‘the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from
the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the
latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is’ (Descartes: location 421).
Although this paradigm is slowly shifting, our Cartesian inheritance is still profound,
47
embedded even in our language. Lakoff and Johnson’s book Philosophy in the Flesh:
The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (1999) offers a very detailed
and convincing argument using cognitive science to address and refute the philosophies
that have shaped our society. One of the challenges today is to re-embody the
disembodied mind:
The embodied mind is part of the living body and is dependent on the
body for its existence. The properties of the mind are not purely mental:
They are shaped in crucial ways by the body and brain and how the body
can function in everyday life. (Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 565)
This view challenges Descartes’ claim that the mind and body are separate. In
Descartes’ Error (1994) Damasio states:
Surprising as it may sound, the mind exists in and for an integrated

organism; our minds would not be the way they are if it were not for the
interplay of body and brain during evolution, during individual
development, and the current moment. The mind had to be first about the
body, or it could not have been. (Damasio 1994: xx)
Also, because of our inherited philosophical views, emotion and reason are often pitted
against each other. This view is not only incorrect, but research has shown that emotion
is a required component of decision-making (See Damasio 1994). Again here,
Descartes’ division of mind and body has had an impact. Lakoff and Johnson remark
that ‘these beliefs, in the popular imagination, have led to the dissociation of reason
from emotion and thus to the downplaying of emotional and aesthetic life in our culture’
(Lakoff and Johnson 1999: 401).
Towards a Holistic View of the Mind, Body and Emotions
Neuroscientist Candace B. Pert argues for a biochemical basis for emotion.
Pert’s research discovered small chemical reactions that occur when chains of amino
acids (called neuropeptides) bind with receptors on the surface of cells. These
neuropeptides may actually be a chemical substrate of emotion. Neuropeptides were
originally given the prefix ‘neuro’ because they were first discovered in high
48
concentration in the limbic system of the brain (the traditional ‘seat of emotions’).
Subsequently, however, neuropeptides have now been found throughout the entire
body, including a heavy concentration on the lining of the intestines, which may give
more weight to the expression to ‘gut-feeling’. Studies have even shown that
‘excitement and anger increase gut motility, while contentment decreases it’ (Pert 1997:
188). Since the discovery of neuropeptides outside of the limbic system, Pert believes
that the mind cannot be constricted to the brain and that, in fact, the mind is merely an
exchange of information occurring all throughout the body. Pert uses her research to
argue for a holistic view of mind and body, especially in relation to emotion.
Philosopher Robert Solomon also recognizes the need for a holistic view of
body and mind when discussing emotion. Solomon believes ‘the enormous range of
emotions suggests that no single claim or analysis will suit all emotions, or emotions as
such’ [original emphasis](Solomon 2004: 13). Solomon maintains that every emotion
has five aspects:
1) behavioral (including everything from facial expressions and verbal

expressions (“Damn!”) and reports (“I love you”) to elaborate plans for
action);
2) physiological (hormonal, neurological, neuromuscular);
3) phenomenological (everything from “physical” sensations to ways of
seeing and describing the “objects” of one’s emotions and “meta-
emotions”);
4) cognitive (including appraisals, perceptions, thoughts, and reflections
about one’s emotions); and
5) the social context (from the immediacy of interpersonal interactions to
pervasive cultural considerations).
(ibid.)
This is a more holistic view of emotion than some of the other emotion scientists.
Solomon recognizes that these five aspects are ‘often interwoven (e.g., behavioral and
physiological, phenomenological, cognitive, and cultural), and they should not be
construed as competing conceptions of emotion’ (ibid.). The various views on emotion
presented by emotion theorists in this section may be useful to considering the views of
theatre practitioners on emotion in performance.

49
Section III: Key Theories on Acting and Emotion in the 19th and 20th Centuries
What is Acting?
Describing exactly what acting is, or what an actor does, in concrete terms, is
very difficult. An inherent conflict exists between the embodied experience of acting
and the translation of that experience into words. The tacit knowledge that an actor has
of their process cannot be easily transformed into written or verbal knowledge. This
contributes to the propagated ‘myth’ of acting, especially among the public. Acting
theorist Richard Hornby describes acting as ‘the least understood of the arts’ (Hornby
1983: 19). He elaborates on this by pointing out:
[A]lthough an educated layman is likely to have a fairly accurate idea of how a

painter paints, a novelist writes, or a musician rehearses, he will probably not
have the slightest idea of how a trained actor prepares a role. (ibid.)
Even within the theatre industry debate rages about how an actor should work on a role.
Much of this debate develops out of misunderstandings or different views on what an
actor actually does. Historically, actors have been considered to be ‘dissemblers’, and
words to describe what an actor does in performance have included ‘pretend’ and
‘represent’. Bruce McConachie questions the difference between Western performance
and reality: ‘[n]o one would call a sports event an “illusion,” but theatre artists and the
theatergoing public sometimes refer to events as illusory and even unreal’ (McConachie
2007: 566). He notes that while ‘the actors and machinery of the production may be real
enough, […] the fictional world onstage somehow trumps the fact of material actors
doing real things with other people and objects’ (ibid.). Finding words to accurately
describe the actor’s process is difficult, and when translating from tacit knowledge to a
verbal form, there is a lacuna, or gap. Given McConachie’s observation and the
previous discussion of the problems that come with Cartesian dualism, the view of
acting that this research will use is that of director/practitioner Phillip Zarrilli.
According to Zarrilli:
50
…acting should not be viewed as embodying a representation of a role
or character, but rather as a dynamic, lived experience in which the actor
is responsive to the demands of the particular moment within a specific
(theatrical) environment. (Zarrilli 2007: 638)
Acting Emotions
An important factor when considering emotion in performance after a discussion
of emotion science is highlighted in Rhonda Blair’s The Actor, Image, and Action:
Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience (2008). Blair points out that ‘“[e]motion” for
Stanislavsky is what Damasio, Bloch, and others would call “feeling” within the
contemporary neurocognitive paradigm’ (Blair 2008: 48). Dutch psychologist Elly
Konijn, in her book, Acting Emotions: Shaping Emotions on Stage (2000) classifies
three predominant viewpoints of acting and emotion that have influenced Western
theatre practice. Konijn classifies the three acting styles as 1) the style of involvement,
2) style of detachment, and 3) the style of self-expression (Konijn 2000: 36). As with
the frameworks for emotion science that Fox pointed out, these classifications are useful
for this study.
The Style of Involvement
In Konijn’s first classification, the style of involvement, ‘the emotions portrayed
on stage must seem as ‘real’ as possible’ (ibid.). Practitioners that Konijn includes in
this style are Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938) and Lee Strasberg (1901-1982). In
Konijn’s view, in this style ‘the emphasis is seemingly placed on the private emotions
of the actor, but actually the emphasis is placed on the character-emotions. The actor’s
private emotions are in the service of the character’ (ibid.: 38). Konijn continues:
The starting point for the emotions in the performance are those of the
character, as presented in the dramatic text. The private emotions of the
actor are used to shape the inner model, forming a basis for the character
in performance. Shaping the inner model must meet the criteria of
‘truthfulness’, emotions must be recognizable as they appear in daily life.
Therefore the actor fills the model with his own emotional memories and
experiences. Moreover, the style of involvement presumes that private
emotions will be relived time and again in performance. (ibid.)
51
Stanislavsky pioneered the development of the rehearsal process and provided a
framework for training actors that has particularly influenced most, if not all, acting
theories in Western society. To improve his actor training system, Stanislavsky pulled
from the work of psychologists Théodule-Augustin Ribot, William James, and even
explored Yoga. Stanislavsky discusses emotion frequently, though never defines it, and
often uses the words ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’ interchangeably. However, in An Actor’s
Work, Stanislavsky does make a distinction between what he describes as ‘actor’s
emotion’ and ‘genuine emotion, or genuine, artistic experiencing’ (Stanislavsky and
Benedetti 2008a: 31). In his view, ‘actor’s emotion’ is ‘an artificial stimulation of the
periphery of the body’ (ibid.), a staple of Coquelin’s School of Representation that
Stanislavsky detested. It is in this section that Stanislavsky introduces his idea of ‘I am
being’:
That is what we call in our terminology, the state of “I am being”. Its

secret is the fact that the orderly logic of physical actions and feelings led
you to the truth, the truth evoked belief and together they created “I am
being”. And what is “I am being”? That means, I am, I live, I feel, I think
as one with the role. (ibid.: 186)
The importance of this idea for Stanislavsky, is that ‘“I am being” leads to emotion, to
feeling, to experiencing’ (ibid.). Stanislavsky’s system arose from essentially pioneering
the development of rehearsal processes. In his view:
If emotion immediately responds to the call, that is an enormous piece of

luck. Then everything falls into place spontaneously, in a natural way. A
representation surfaces, an appraisal on it is formed, and the two together
activate the will. In other words, all the psychological inner drives start
to work because of feeling (ibid.: 279-280)
This description implies a ‘psychophysical’ connection, and throughout Stanislavsky’s
system he uses different techniques to achieve this integration. However, many
American acting teachers discuss techniques that are either ‘inside out’ or ‘outside in’.
This binary, however, does not fully account for the dynamics of psychophysical
processes. Stanislavsky was continually revising his system throughout his lifetime.
52
Problematic English translations10, as well as the subtle differences in meanings of
words across languages, have led to huge misunderstandings and misinterpretations of
the Stanislavsky system.
One technique that Stanislavsky experimented with was called ‘affective
memory’, a term he acquired from psychologist Théodule-Augustin Ribot (1893-1891),
in his study The Psychology of the Emotions (1897). In a chapter entitled ‘The Memory
of Feelings’, Ribot maintains ‘the impressions of smell and taste, our visceral
sensations, our pleasant and painful states, our emotions and passions, like the
perceptions of sight and hearing, can leave memories behind them’ (Ribot 1911: 141).
His research was questioning whether or not these perceptions, images, and sensations
‘of emotions formally experienced, [can] be revived in the consciousness
spontaneously, or at will, independently of any actual occurrence which might provoke
them?’ (ibid.). Ribot asked participants to recall a specific case in which they
experienced a specific emotion (such as anger or fear) and categorized the results into
three groups: intellectual memory, affective memory, and objective memory. Those
who could ‘recall the circumstances plus the revived condition of feeling’ experienced
‘true “affective memory”’ [original emphasis] (ibid.: 153). It is this technique that
Konijn is referring to, when she discusses Stanislavsky’s use of an actor’s ‘private
emotions’.
One of the most prominent misinterpretations of Stanislavsky’s system was the
appropriation of his name for Lee Strasberg’s Method. Strasberg never met
Stanislavsky, but was introduced to the system through the teachings of Richard
Boleslavsky. Strasberg preferred the term emotional memory to affective memory, but
used both. One of Strasberg’s students, Edward Dwight Easty, in his book On Method
10
For a thorough account of the problems with the translations of Stanislavsky’s work, see Carnicke’s
Stanislavsky in Focus (1998), Chapter 4: The Publication Maze.
53
Acting (1966), considers ‘[b]eing able to express emotion with verisimilitude is for
most actors the crux of their analysis and work on a role’ (Easty 1966: 51). Easty
defines affective memory as ‘the conscious creation of remembered emotions which
have occurred in the actor’s own past life and their application to the character being
portrayed on the stage’ [original emphasis] (ibid.: 52). According to Easty, in Method
Acting:
The actor has to use his own feelings, not somebody else’s; he has to use
his body, not another body. The most and the best that he can do is to
train his emotions to respond accordingly with the character’s emotions.
[original emphasis] (ibid.: 53)
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, author of Approaches to Acting: Past and Present (2006)
points out that in these cases:
The spectator is confronted with an emotion that outwardly might fit the
situation of a specific scene in the play. However, what the spectator is
not aware of is that the emotions do not originate in the sequence of
causal conditions in the play, but from potentially ‘arbitrary’,
unsequenced, unrelated, individual substitutes.
(Meyer-Dinkgräfe 2001: 50)
The Style of Detachment
In Konijn’s view, the style of detachment ‘rejects the principle of identification
of the actor with the character during performance’ (Konijn 2000: 39). Theatre
practitioners that Konijn puts in this category include Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and
Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940). In this style, ‘the emotions of the characters are
‘shown’ or ‘demonstrated’ in a reproducible form, referring to emotions as they occur in
reality, but not identical to them’ (ibid.). A question that arises from this statement,
especially in relation to the style of involvement, is this: are these emotions considered
to be ‘shown’ or ‘demonstrated’ because they are not psychologically experienced by
the actor? Or rather, because they are not the actor’s ‘private emotions’? Konijn
continues:
54
Brecht’s emphatic rejection of the overlap of actor’s emotions with
character-emotions in performance was a reaction against the central role
that emotions play in Stanislavsky’s style of involvement. Brecht finds
Stanislavsky naïve in this respect. With Brecht, actors not only present
characters, but also explicitly present ‘themselves’, their actual beings on
stage and have opinions about the characters. By letting go of the
demand for identification or involvement and by rejecting the effort to
create the illusion of reality on the stage, the style of detachment is
clearly parallel to Diderot’s standpoint on acting. (ibid.: 39)
Brecht is explicit in his rejection of this type of acting/emotional involvement:
For the actor it is difficult and taxing to conjure up particular inner

moods or emotions night after night; it is simpler to exhibit the outer
signs which accompany these emotions and identify them. In this case,
however, there is not the same automatic transfer of emotions to the
spectator, the same emotional infection. The alienation effect intervenes,
not in the form of absence of emotion, but in the form of emotions which
need not correspond to those of the character portrayed. On seeing worry
the spectator may feel a sensation of joy; on seeing anger, one of disgust.
When we speak of exhibiting outer signs of emotion we do not mean
such an exhibition and such a choice of signs that the emotional
transference does in fact take place because the actor has managed to
infect himself with the emotions portrayed, by exhibiting the outer signs;
thus, by letting his voice rise, holding his breath and tightening his neck
muscles so that the blood shoots to his head, the actor can easily conjure
up a rage. In such a case of course the effect does not occur. (Brecht
1964: 94)
What Brecht is describing here may in fact be a different way of accessing emotion, or
rather, accessing emotion that is not the actor’s ‘own, private’ emotion. In an essay
entitled ‘The Alienation Effect’ Brecht calls for emotion to be expressed through
gesture:
[F]eeling, when it is called for, should be brought out; that is, it should
become gesture. The actor must find a sensuous outward expression for
the emotions of his role—an action, wherever possible, which reveals
what is going on inside. The emotion concerned must come out, must be
set free, so that it can be given shape and greatness. [original emphasis]
(Brecht 1974: 310)
From this description, it can be inferred that Konijn considers the involvement style of
using ‘private’ emotions, as emotions that are only experienced in the mind? Konijn
also includes Meyerhold in this category, once a member of the Moscow Art Theatre,
55
who left and created his own acting technique called Biomechanics. In many ways
Meyerhold is in agreement with Brecht:
The essence of human relationships is determined by gestures, poses,

glances and silences. Words alone cannot say everything. Hence there
must be a pattern of movement on the stage to transform the spectator
into a vigilant observer, to furnish him with that material which the two
people in conversation yielded to the third, the material which helps him
grasp the true feelings of the characters. (Meyerhold and Braun 1998:
56)
When discussing the acting methods that proceeded Biomechanics (Stanislavsky’s
included), Meyerhold states:
[T]he actor has always been so overwhelmed by his emotions that he has
been unable to answer either for his movements or his voice. He has had
no control over himself and hence been in no state to ensure success or
failure. Only a few exceptionally great actors have succeeded
instinctively in finding the correct method, that is, the method of
building a role not from inside outwards, but vice versa. By approaching
their role from the outside, they succeeded in developing stupendous
technical mastery. (ibid.)
Here Meyerhold very clearly specifies an ‘outward in’ approach, and promotes
‘technical mastery’. A benefit to this approach, in Konijn’s view, is that
‘[r]epeatability is guaranteed in the style of detachment by placing emphasis on
technical mastery over the portrayal of emotions, situations, and motives’ (Konijn 2000:
39).
The Style of Self-Expression
The third classification is the style of self-expression, in which ‘the expression
of the actor’s own authentic emotions is key’ (Konijn 2000: 41) Konijn includes
practitioners such as Jerzy Grotowski (1933-1999), Eugenio Barba (b. 1936) and Peter
Brook (b. 1925). In the category style of self-expression, Konijn explains:
The emotions the characters portray in performance are the emotions of

the actors themselves and must be as spontaneous and true as possible.
Improvisation is of paramount importance in these presentations – not as
a studio/rehearsal technique as with Stanislavsky and Strasberg – but as a
component of live performance with an audience. (ibid.)
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Grotowski rarely spoke about emotion directly. However, in a recent publication of
‘A Reply to Stanislavsky’ (2008), Grotowski more openly discusses emotion in relation
to Stanislavsky. In Grotowski’s view, Stanislavsky was misled in his search for
emotion:
[Stanislavsky] searched for that famous “emotional recall.” He still

thought that a return to memories of various emotions meant basically
the possibility of returning to the emotions themselves. He was mistaken
here, in believing that emotions are subject to the will. But in life one can
verify that emotions are independent from the will. (Grotowski and
Salata 2008: 33)
However, Grotowski hails Stanislavsky’s later work, specifically the Method of
Physical Actions, as a ‘revelation’, maintaining ‘[e]motions are independent from our
will, and exactly because of this Stanislavsky in his last period of activity preferred to
put the accent in the work on what is subject to our will’ [my emphasis] (ibid.: 33).
Problems with this Model/Towards a Psychophysical Approach
Konijn’s model is consistent with commonly held views of approaches to
emotion in performance, but is also limiting. Similar to some of the problems related to
emotion science, dividing approaches to acting in these three categories can be
problematic, and in many ways this classification system is blending acting processes
with aesthetics. In today’s industry a contemporary actor may be performing with a
company such as Teatr Piesn Kozla, and also performing in Mother Courage at the
National, or in a play by Chekhov at the Donmar in the same year. What these
categories also do not necessarily help us understand is how the emotion is activated.
The style of involvement emphasizes emotional recall, but Stanislavsky’s system was
not limited to this technique. In which category would Konijn place Stanislavsky’s later
techniques of Method of Physical Actions/Active Analysis?11 However, this breakdown
11
For a detailed account of the differences between these techniques see Carnicke’s ‘Stanislavsky and
Politics’ 2010.
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does accurately reflect how acting emotions are still commonly viewed. As Soto-
Morettini points out, ‘[w]e play ‘out of ourselves’ or we play ‘character’. And these two
‘traditions’ have inspired much debate among theorists’ (Soto-Morettini 2010: 45). The
way in which Konijn sets out her categories does not allow for proper consideration of
psychophysical processes. In which category, for example, would Michael Chekhov’s
work be included? Chekhov maintains that the actor ‘must consider his body as an
instrument for expressing creative ideas on the stage, must strive for the attainment of
complete harmony between […] body and psychology’ (Chekhov 2002: 1). This idea of
a psychophysical connection does not easily fit into Konijn’s model.
The Psychophysical Process
Ribot’s impact on Stanislavsky is profound despite that fact that Ribot is a
highly neglected emotion theorist in Western culture. A contemporary of James, his
1897 publication The Psychology of the Emotions builds on the theories of scientists
(predominantly James and Lange but also others such as Darwin), adding his own
research to further explore the nature of emotion. Roach admits that Ribot’s ‘service as
a disseminator of the James-Lange theory has been overlooked’ (Roach 1993: 192).
With regard to emotion, Ribot’s view is thus: ‘there would be a great advantage in
eliminating from the question every notion of cause and effect, every relation of
causality, and in substituting for the dualistic position a unitary or monastic one’ (Ribot
1911: 112). For Ribot, the occurrence of emotion cannot be observed as a linear
sequence of events, rather it is a simultaneous process happening in the body and mind
as a whole. Subsequently, Ribot was one of the first psychologists to use the term
‘psychophysiological’ (which Stanislavsky would later apply to the actor’s process as
‘psychophysical’). He goes on:
No state of consciousness can be dissociated from its physical

conditions: they constitute a natural whole, which must be studied as
such. Every kind of emotion ought to be considered in this way: all that
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is objectively expressed subjectively by correlative states of
consciousness, classed by external observation according to their
qualities. (ibid.)
Ribot also recognized the problem of emotion as it is described through language. He
preferred the use of the term ‘emotion’ over ‘passion’ because ‘it has the advantage of
emphasising the motor element included in every emotion’ (ibid.: 92), but warns that
the term is only ‘a generic expression’ used to ‘designate the chief manifestations of the
affective life’ (ibid.: 20). Relating to his assertion of the unity between states of
consciousness and the physical, he reminds us that they exist only ‘in connection with
each other and being inseparable except as abstract concepts’ [my emphasis] (ibid:.
112). It is language that severs the connection. Ribot offers a list of ‘primitive’ emotions
that he defines as those which are ‘not reducible to other emotions’ (ibid.: 13) including
fear, anger, affection, the self-feeling or egoistic emotion, and sexual emotion. He does
not include joy or grief (ibid.: 15).
It is not entirely clear why Ribot’s theories are so little known or referred to,
though Sharon M. Carnicke, a Stanislavsky expert, suggests that in countries such as the
United States, the popularity of Freudian psychology may have overshadowed Ribot’s
theories (Carnicke 1998: 131). In Russia, however, the opposite occurred, particularly
due to the fact that, in contrast to Freud, ‘Ribot’s espousal of the physical
methodologies made him acceptable in post-revolutionary Russia […] where Marxist
materialism became the approved philosophical standard’ (ibid.). All of Ribot’s major
works were translated into Russian, and Stanislavsky ‘owned six of them replete with
marginal notes’ (ibid.: 132). The original English translations of Stanislavsky’s books
by Elizabeth Hapgood include no mention of Ribot, though his name does appear in the
German translations (ibid.: 72).
Stanislavsky was most influenced by Ribot in two particular areas: ‘affective
memory’ which was mentioned previously and the notion of the ‘psychophysical’. The
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first area is the idea that emotion is ‘a monistic phenomenon, a total psychophysical
event with no causal relationship between mind and body’ (ibid.: 139). Stanislavsky
developed his system in order for the actor to ‘work’ on themselves and develop a
‘psychophysical’ relationship between body and mind, asserting that ‘in every action
there is something psychological, and in the psychological, something physical’
(Stanislavsky in Carnicke 1998: 139). Unfortunately, as with my experience of actor
training in the United States, the wider public is mostly unaware of Stanislavsky’s view
of unity between body and mind. Meyer- Dinkgräfe points out:
Ultimately, for the older Stanislavsky, mind (psychotechnique) and body

(method of physical actions) work together as a unified whole. However,
his followers focused on one or the other, either preferring to work with
the mind or with the body. It is only late in the twentieth century that the
notion of bodymind began to take hold in approaches to acting, mainly
influenced by non-Western acting paradigms. (Meyer- Dinkgräfe 2006:
47)
Meyer- Dinkgräfe is incorrect to presume that all Stanislavsky’s followers focused on
mind or body rather than a unified whole – students such as Michael Chekhov,
Meyerhold, and Maria Knebel – were all working with the understanding of the
psychophysical relationship. However, Meyer- Dinkgräfe’s observation is an accurate
description of many of the ‘Stanislavsky’ teachers I encountered in the United States. I
generally agree with the observation that ‘non-Western acting paradigms’ have
influenced ideas of the unified mind and body in acting in the late twentieth-century (as
far as the theatre industry), however, many years prior these ‘non-Western acting
paradigms’ were influences on practitioners such as Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Brecht
and Grotowski, as well as the American Delsartean, Genevieve Stebbins.
Françoise Delsarte and the ‘Psychophysical’
The term ‘psychophysical’, as used in relation to the actor’s process, is often
credited to Stanislavsky. Although he developed the concept independently through his
study of Ribot, he was not the first Western theatre practitioner to coin the phrase or the
60
first to use its philosophy. The term initially appeared in print in 1892, in a book
called Dynamic Breathing and Harmonic Gymnastics: A Complete System of Psychical,
Aesthetic and Physical Culture by Genevieve Stebbins, a prominent American
Delsartean and actress (Ruyter 1999: 62). Stebbins defines ‘psycho-physical culture’ as:
A completely rounded system for the development of body, brain and

soul; a system of training which shall bring this grand trilogy of the
human microcosm into one continuous, interacting unison, so that
nothing shall be useless, nothing thoughtless, and consequently, nothing
that is vital is wasted. (Stebbins 1892: 57)
Stebbins’ training and philosophy was based on the teachings of the French actor and
singer, Françoise Delsarte (1811-1871). Dissatisfied with actor training in Paris,
Delsarte searched for concrete principles from nature that could be applied to acting
technique (Delsarte 1892: 391), aiming to ‘discover and then teach what he came to
believe were the scientific principles of expression in the arts’ (Ruyter 1999: 8). Rather
than using the word ‘emotion’, Delsarte uses ‘gesture’ instead, defining it as ‘the direct
agent of the heart […] the fit manifestation of feeling’ (Delsarte 1892: 466). Delsarte’s
Law of Correspondence actually anticipated Ribot’s discussion of the psychophysical,
stating that the ‘position or movement of the body as a whole, or its parts, is an integral,
two-way connection with states of mind, feelings, and intentions’ (Ruyter 1999: 77).
Today, Delsarte is a name known primarily to mimes and dancers. Little of his system
remains in a clear or understandable form.
Section IV: Diderot’s Paradoxe and the Practitioners of the Twentieth Century
Having kept an annotated copy of Diderot’s Paradoxe in Russian, Stanislavsky
was familiar with Diderot’s investigation and believed that the philosopher was
genuinely misunderstood:
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[Diderot] says that you cannot experience the same feelings as you do
in life, he says that… you can live with actual born again feeling, he says
what we say, that you can live with affected feelings. Diderot was not
understood, in the same way that Tolstoy’s wonderful book is not
understood. (Stanislavsky in Whyman 2008: 46)
Despite his appreciation for Diderot, however, Stanislavsky was not an advocate of
Coquelin and his school of representational acting. In An Actor’s Work, Torstov,
Stanislavsky’s fictional alter ego, offers scathing criticism, disregarding their ideology
as that which creates ‘theatrically beautiful, or picture-postcard feelings,’ but ultimately,
‘when it comes to the expression of deep passions, it is either too showy or too
superficial’ (Stanislavski and Benedetti 2008: 26). In Coquelin’s school of
representation, the actor strives to create emotions that belong to a higher art form,
rejecting a naturalistic interpretation of emotions that one would experience in life.
Coquelin remarked that ‘emotion sobs and stammers, alters and breaks the voice,’
(Coquelin et al. 1915: 61) complaining that the actor ‘would cease to be audible. The
natural effect of passion is to destroy all self government; we lose our heads, and how
can we be expected to do well rather than ill, when we cease to know what we are
doing?’ (ibid.). While Coquelin advocated a technique that would eliminate the
necessity of experiencing emotions, Stanislavsky spent his career searching for
technique to support the actor’s exploration of emotion, not replace it. In response to
Coquelin’s theory, Stanislavsky insists ‘the subtlety and depth of human feelings will
not yield to mere technique’ (Stanislavski 2008: 26). Rose Whyman, a Stanislavsky
scholar with access to his office in Moscow, found that Stanislavsky’s notated copy of
Paradoxe ‘indicates that he continued to work with it after the revolution’ (Whyman
2008: 46).
Strasberg also had strong opinions on Diderot. In an introduction to a reprinting
of both Diderot’s Paradox of Acting and Archer’s Masks or Faces?, Strasberg describes
Diderot’s paradox as thus: ‘to move the audience the actor must himself remain
62
unmoved’ (Strasberg in Diderot and Pollock 1957), simplifying the duologue to a
statement that opposes the aims of the American Method. Like many before him,
Strasberg uses Diderot’s writings in such a way as to support his own views. Evoking
Diderot’s earlier writings and comments, Strasberg claims that at one time the
philosopher had held an emotionalist point of view to such a degree that even some of
his students ‘have doubted that the Paradox is actually his’ (ibid.). Strasberg cites a
personal letter, written by Diderot to the actress Mlle. Jodin, in which he insists:
An actor who has only sense and judgment is cold; one who has only
verve and sensibility is crazy. It is a particular combination of good
sense and warmth which creates the sublime person; and the stage as in
life he who shows more than he feels makes one laugh instead of
affecting one. Therefore never try to go beyond the feeling that you have;
try to find the true point. (qtd. in Diderot and Pollack, 1957: xi).
Strasberg, like Stanislavsky, also implies that Diderot was misunderstood, that Diderot
‘obviously’ knew more than his followers who took Paradoxe literally. Strasberg even
goes so far as to suggest that perhaps Diderot’s attack on emotional actors was a result
of his unsuccessful career as a playwright: ‘[Diderot’s] caustic remarks on the character
of his contemporary actors certainly indicate disappointment and bitterness’ (ibid.: xi).
But after consulting Felix Vexler’s Studies in Diderot’s Esthetic Naturalism, Strasberg
changes his perspective on Diderot midway through his introduction, insisting that
Paradoxe is actually Diderot’s ‘challenge to the actor to recognize the high nature of his
art, a plea that the discipline and control the flow of his imagination and feeling’ (ibid.
xii) and for the actor ‘to recognize his responsibility to the play and playwright, to the
“whole” of the theatre’ (ibid.).
In The End of Acting, Richard Hornby makes an interesting point about
Strasberg’s understanding of Diderot and an unacknowledged shift in twentieth century
thinking. From a modern perspective, since both Diderot and Coquelin are classed as
anti-emotionalists, they are often considered to be externalists. Before the twentieth
century, however, ‘dualists in acting theory tended to identify emotion with the actor’s
63
body; reason was inside, emotions outside’ (Hornby 1992: 111). Strasberg, however,
‘associated emotion with the actor’s mind’ (ibid.) and seized Diderot’s internalism to
support his opposing side, reversing ‘the traditional polarity’ (ibid.). Hornby also makes
an important comparison between Coquelin and Strasberg:
Coquelin, who insisted that the actor should feel nothing, and Strasberg,
who insisted on intense emotion, both erroneously believed that the
actor’s artistic creation takes place entirely inside a conscious, fully
developed concept, a “knowing that,” which is then merely realized
outwardly. There is no place in such a model for the outside to affect the
inside. Artistic creation flows in one direction only, from within to
without…The actor has indeed become a ghost in the machine. (ibid.:
115)
Stanislavsky, however, recognized the tendency for the ‘outside’ to affect the ‘inside’,
and for the purposes of his investigations into emotion was a student of science as well.
Among the many works he consulted included the writings of psychologists Alfred
Binet (1857-1911), James, and Ribot. All three had opinions on Diderot’s Paradoxe
and/or Archer’s rebuttal.
Binet conducted a survey of his own, interviewing nine professional French
actors—including Coquelin—whose testimonies refuted what Binet considered to be
Diderot’s ‘best argument’—the idea that ‘it is not possible for actors to observe
themselves and experience emotion sincerely’ (Whyman 2008: 46). Binet found that, on
the contrary, professional actors were able to experience emotion when performing and
still be observant of the task at hand. As for Diderot’s concern of losing oneself in a
role, Binet writes that ‘clearly exceptional circumstances are needed for the actor
wholly to forget his personality’ (Binet in McGuinness 2000: 106). In an article entitled
Reflexions sur le Paradoxe de Diderot (1897), Binet published his findings and
dismissed Diderot’s theory.
Although James and Ribot never commented on Diderot directly, they were
aware of William Archer’s survey of actors. Despite declaring himself an emotionalist,
Archer does offer accounts from actors on both sides of the argument, mentioning
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Coquelin, among others, who claim to feel no emotion. In response to Archer’s
findings, James concedes that this ‘discrepancy amongst actors’ is possibly because:
The visceral and organic part of the expression can be suppressed in

some men, but not in others, and on this it is probably that the chief part
of the felt emotion depends. Coquelin and the other actors who are
inwardly cold are probably able to affect the dissociation in a complete
way. [original emphasis] (James in Lange et al. 1922: 116)
Ribot, however, was not satisfied with James’ answer, insisting that he should have
referred to research with hypnotized subjects which demonstrated that when ‘their limbs
are placed in the attitude of prayer, anger, menace, or affection (which amounts to a
suggestion conveyed by the muscular sense), the corresponding emotion is produced’
(Ribot 1911: 97). Archer’s survey was conducted around the time that Ribot and James
were researching and formalizing their own theories on emotion, but before their ideas
had permeated into acting theory directly.
Paradoxe and Practitioners of the Twenty-first Century
The purpose of offering this rather lengthy discussion of Diderot’s Paradoxe, is
to demonstrate how one philosopher’s theory (developed as an outside observer rather
than from the experience of performance) has profoundly impacted on how the role of
emotion in Western performance is perceived. Following on from Roach’s thesis that
acting theory takes its cue from science, many discoveries in biology, particularly in the
field of neuroscience, are beginning to challenge and change old paradigms in acting
theory that held particular sway throughout the twentieth century, including Diderot’s
paradox. Psychologist Elly A. Konijn draws upon Paradoxe to support her theory of
task-based emotions, while theatre practitioner and academic Rhonda Blair calls for a
reconsideration of Paradoxe to ‘finally and definitely set aside the tired acting binary of
‘inside out’ vs. ‘outside in.’’ (Blair 2008: 14). Other practitioners, though not
referencing Diderot directly, are investigating the question of emotion for themselves
working with researchers from other fields, such as director Phelim McDermott and
65
psychologist Arnold Mindell; director Mick Gordon and neuropsychologist Paul
Broks; and director Katie Mitchell, who received a NESTA grant to experiment with the
research of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio.
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Chapter Two: New approaches to Acting and Emotion in the 20th and
21st Centuries: Alba Emoting, Emotional Access Work and Impulse
and Awareness
The three theories or approaches to emotion that I will be using in this research
project include Alba Emoting – developed by neuroscientist Susana Bloch; Emotional
Access Work – developed by theatre practitioner Brian Astbury; and Impulse and
Awareness Work – a theory of my own in development using some of the principles of
the training techniques of Teatr Piesn Kozla. This chapter is divided into three sections.
The first section discusses Alba Emoting, a technique developed by Dr. Susana Bloch.
Bloch is a neuroscientist, not a director, who in her research on emotion, has worked
closely with theatre practitioners on a continual basis. With the technique of Alba
Emoting, one can voluntarily trigger the physiological changes that occur in emotion in
life. Bloch’s research is falsifiable, based on empirical evidence. While the use of Alba
Emoting in a rehearsal process is subjective and can vary, the patterns are developed
from solid research. Section II discusses ‘Emotional Access Work’ as developed by
theatre practitioner Brian Astbury. Astbury has devised his own theory of emotion,
much in the same way as Stanislavsky, through years of experimentation with actors
and researching in other subject fields. His theories are unfalsifiable, based on years of
experimentation followed by successful results. His notions are those of a master
teacher. Section III discusses ‘impulse and awareness work’, a theory of my own that is
still in development, and is informed by the principles of the training of the Polish
theatre company Teatr Piesn Kozla (Song of the Goat) and the work of Grotowski.
Section I: Alba Emoting

This is Alba Emoting. A story of a love affair between breathing and emotion. -
Susana Bloch (Bloch 2008a)
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Alba Emoting is a development from the BOS method, a scientifically devised
technique of physiologically activating emotion, developed by scientists Susanna Bloch,
Pedro Orthous and Guy Santibañez-H. Inspired by the James-Lange Theory of Emotion,
the research team, based in Chile in the 1970s, set out to examine the physiological
changes that occur during everyday emotion by monitoring respiratory movements,
heart rate, arterial pressure and changes in muscular tonus in subjects who were reliving
emotional experiences from their lives under hypnosis. The scientists also studied these
physiological changes in actors, drawing upon intense emotional memories. The
research suggested ‘the existence of a unique association between particular bodily
changes and a corresponding subjective experience’ [original emphasis] (Bloch and
Lemignan 1992: 32). The team went on to identify six ‘basic’ emotions originally
labeled as happiness/laughter, sadness/crying, fear/anxiety, anger/aggression,
sex/eroticism, and tenderness. Bloch considers ‘basic emotions’ to be innate, emotions
that are necessary for survival are found in other mammals, as originally suggested by
Darwin. More recently, the patterns are known as joy, sadness, fear, anger, eroticism (or
sexual love), and tenderness (or tender love). While joy, sadness, fear and anger are
recognized as basic emotions by many other emotion theorists, tenderness and eroticism
are usually not. Darwin considered both tenderness and eroticism as basic emotions, and
Ribot also included tenderness.
Each emotion has a distinct pattern of physiological changes. Bloch and her
colleagues noted that while many of these changes occurring were controlled by
involuntary physiological mechanisms, others were not. Those changes that could be
controlled voluntarily included changes in breath, facial musculature and postural
attitude. By having the subjects voluntarily replicate the respiratory-postural-facial
configuration of a certain emotion, the natural physiological changes that normally
accompany the specific emotion would occur, without out the subject having to
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experience the subjective side of the emotion. The scientists also created a seventh
pattern, which they called ‘step out’ – a pattern that incorporates minimal, if any,
elements of the six patterns. Subjects instructed to reproduce ‘emotional effector
patterns’ (combination of the breath, facial expression and postural attitude) would
experience the emotion intended, but would immediately be able to ‘neutralize the
biochemical arousal using the step out pattern’ (Rix 2001: 207). It occurred to Bloch
that this discovery would be particularly valuable to a specific group of practitioners –
actors.
Bloch continued to develop the BOS method with theatre director Horacio
Manoz Orellana and actors from the Teater Klanen in Denmark. It was during this
period of research that Bloch developed her own system for teaching their method,
which she calls Alba Emoting (partly for ‘alba’ meaning ‘dawn’ in Spanish, and partly
for a production of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba with the Teater Klanen) (Rix
2001: 209). (The English word ‘emoting’ has negative connotations in the theatre world
and the American teachers of Alba Emoting are currently in discussion with Bloch
about changing the name to ‘Alba Technique’.) In Alba Emoting, it is said that one is
working with ‘pure’ emotions, but ‘pure’ in the Spanish sense of the word meaning
‘single’ or not mixed. The aim of Bloch’s system was to teach actors to physiologically
trigger emotions, but equally give them a tool to deactivate the emotion in the form of
‘step out’ as well. Having identified the respiratory-postural-facial configurations of the
six emotions, Bloch intentionally created the ‘step-out’ technique (that bore no
resemblance to the other identifiable emotion patterns) as a way to neutralize the
induced effects. Bloch and her team define emotion as:
A complex and dynamic functional state of the entire organism, triggered

by an external or internal stimulus, integrated in the central nervous and
neuroendocrine systems, involving simultaneously a particular group of
effector organs (visceral, humoral, neuromuscular) and a subjective
experience (feeling). [original emphasis] (Bloch and Lemignan 1992: 32)
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Bloch goes on to describe emotions as being ‘phasic’ (momentary at higher levels) or
‘tonic’ (lower levels over a period of time). For example, the ‘phasic’ fear could be
shock, and ‘tonic’ fear, anxiety. The intensity of the emotional effector pattern is also a
factor to consider; low-level joy may be just the beginning of a titter, while a higher
level is uncontrollable belly laughter. Despite various publications, Alba Emoting is still
in the process of becoming more widely known and practiced. Bloch and her team
began publishing articles about their research in scientific journals (see Bloch et al.
1987; Bloch et al. 1992), and eventually in theatre journals (See Bloch 1993;Rix 1993).
Bloch recently published a book in English, The Alba of Emotions: Managing Emotions
through Breathing (2006) and a translation of her newest book Surfeando al Ola
Emocional: Reconozca las emociones basicas y comprenda sus emociones mixtas
(2008b) (Surfing the Emotional Wave: Recognize basic emotions and understand your
mixed emotions) should become available in English in 2012.
Alba Emoting has been subject to criticism. Elly Konijn maintains Bloch’s
research ‘failed to consider that physiological phenomena measured in actors might be
related to things other than the presumed arousal of character related emotions’ (Konijn
2000: 107), which Konijn considers to be essential in her own theory of task-based
emotions. Rhonda Blair, an actor and academic researching the relationship between
acting and cognitive neuroscience, criticizes Konijn’s study for not addressing ‘the
psychophysiology of emotions as Bloch does’ or ‘neurocognitive processes out of
which feelings and actions arise’ (Blair 2008: 49). Paul Ekman, the psychologist who
specializes in facial expressions, agrees in general with Bloch’s findings, and his own
unpublished research found that ‘when subjects make facial expressions respiration falls
into place’ (Ekman in Bloch et al. 1988: 202). But he does have disagreements ‘in
regard to their [Bloch et al.’s] choice of emotions and the specification of the particular
facial expressions which characterize each emotion’ (ibid.). Other common criticisms
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include objection to the commercial trademark on Alba Emoting, the existence of a
self-monitored certification process, and the use of ‘real’ emotions in performance.
While Bloch’s research focused on the physiological changes that occur in everyday
human emotion, she makes a clear distinction between emotion in life and emotion in
performance. Bloch defines acting behavior as ‘behavior produced at will by an actor in
order to transmit gnostic and emotional information to an audience by word, gesture and
posture within an artistic framework’ (Bloch et al. 1987: 1). Emotion in performance
shares similarities with everyday emotion in its physiological components and effects
on an observer, but crucial differences exist in the stimuli that trigger them and the
accompanying subjective cognitive processes. For these reasons, Bloch believes that in
order to ‘appear “natural” or “true” on the stage, actors do not need to “feel” the
emotion they are playing but must produce the correct effector-expressive output of the
emotional behavior’ (ibid.: 15), which is consequently in keeping with Diderot’s
conclusion. Blair states:
The idea that emotions can exist apart from conscious content might be
difficult for actors to grasp at first, but this is fundamental to understanding
the current science, which defines emotions as body states, while feelings
are consciously registered ‘interpretations’ of these body states. (Blair 2008:
47)
This clear distinction between ‘feeling’ and ‘emotion’ is potentially useful when
working with actors. However, while the foundations of Alba Emoting are grounded in
concrete scientific research, using the technique in practice (in direct application to a
rehearsal process or indeed to a theatrical text) is more subjective and open to
interpretation.
The Patterns
While the principles behind Bloch’s research have remained constant, some of
the semantics have changed. The six patterns are now labeled anger, fear, sadness, joy,
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tenderness and sexual love. As previously mentioned, Bloch sets forth three steps for
achieving physiologically activated emotion: 1) breath; 2) facial expression; and 3)
postural attitude. See Figure 2 for a breakdown of the emotional effector patterns.
Figure 2: The Alba Emoting Effector Patterns

Neutral Breath Breathing Pattern: An inhalation through the nose and exhalation through the
mouth on an even count.
Facial Expression: The eyes are focused on the horizon, the lips are slightly apart
and the face is relaxed.
Postural Attitude: Muscles relaxed and balancing on skeletal system.
Tenderness Breathing Pattern: A gentle inhalation and exhalation through the nose. The
exhale is slightly longer than the inhale and there may be a slight hold before
beginning the next breathing cycle.
Facial Expression: The mouth forms a slight smile, gently engaging with the eyes.
Postural Attitude: Relaxed, muscle tension released, and once into the pattern
there will be a small head tilt to the side.
Anger Breathing Pattern: Sharp, even inhalations and exhalations through the nose,
though the length may vary.
Facial Expression: The mouth is closed, the teeth are aligned and the eyes narrow
from the bottom lids.
Postural Attitude: Tense with a forward motion.
Eroticism* (or *There are two forms of this pattern, active and receptive
Sexual Love) Breathing Pattern: An inhalation and exhalation through the mouth, starting on an
even count, though at higher levels the pattern does not conform to strict rhythms.
Facial Expression: (Receptive) - The eyes are semi-closed as if “looking through
the lashes.” The eyes have a soft focus; the mouth is open with the corners of the
mouth pulling up into a slight smile and the head tilts back. (Active) - The head is
more upright, the eyes more focused, and the lower jaw moves forward.
Postural Attitude: Relaxed and open in the receptive form, and while still relaxed
in the active form, it has a more forward motion.
Fear Breathing Pattern: A quick, shallow inhale through the mouth using chest
breathing, occasionally taking in additional shallow inhales through the mouth
when necessary. There is no specific exhalation.
Facial Expression: Eyes are wide open, pushing out and forward to increase
peripheral vision, and the eyes dart around. The chin is slightly lowered to protect
the neck, the jaw is dropped and the mouth forms an “O” shape.
Postural Attitude: Tense with a backward motion.
Joy Breathing Pattern: A light quick inhalation through the nose, and stepped
exhalation through the mouth, until all the air is fully expelled. Reaching this point
of “below empty”, should activate saccades, involuntary muscle movement in the
lower abdomen.
Facial Expression: The mouth opens wide, with corners of the mouth pulling up
into a broad smile that engages the eyes.
Postural Attitude: Relaxed and loose.
Sadness Breathing Pattern: A series of short inhalations through the nose, and a long
exhalation through the mouth until “below empty.” Once the air is completely
expelled saccades should begin, resulting in a slight hold at the bottom of the breath
before starting the next cycle of inhalations.
Facial Expression: A downward glance with the eyes. The brow pulls up and
together in the center of the forehead between the eyebrows, and the mouth is
slightly open with the corners of the mouth pulling down, which may cause a quiver
of the bottom lip.
Postural Attitude: Relaxed but collapsed.
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Laura Facciponti Bond (a certified Alba Emoting instructor and professor at
the University of North Carolina, Ashville) has also created a specific system of
numbering each of the patterns to aid in teaching (see figure 3). In her years of teaching
Alba Emoting, Bond found that students were continually frustrated with the ‘limitation
of syntax’, many feeling that ‘the process towards induction was blocked by the word
association with each pattern’. As I have trained with Bond more than any other
instructor, and assisted on her workshops, I use her system and will explain the patterns
in this way:
Figure 3: Facciponti Bond’s AE Labeling System
1 1a Tender Love
Nose
1b Anger
0 Breathing
Breath 2 2a Sexual Love

Mouth
(Neutral &
Balancing) Breathing
2b Fear
3 3a Joy
Nose &
Mouth
3b Sadness
Breathing
Alba Emoting has a specific certification process based on the total number of training
hours accumulated and skill, with 6 certification levels (only Bloch and Pedro Sándor
have a Certification Level 6). In three years of training, I have worked with seven
certified Alba Emoting instructors, including Bloch, and am a fully certified instructor
myself. I currently hold a Certification Level 4.
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Figure 4: Beck instructs Alba Emoting. Photograph by Bernard Dubois.
Bond has also conducted training workshops that combine learning Alba Emoting
with the Feldenkrais Method, a form of somatic education developed by Moshe
Feldenkrais (1904 – 1984). With regard to emotion, Feldenkrais maintains:
I may feel joyful, angry, afraid, disgusted. Everyone can, on seeing me,
recognize the feeling I experience. Which comes first: the motor pattern
or the feeling? I would like to stress the idea that they are basically the
same thing. We cannot become conscious of a feeling before it is
expressed by a motor mobilization, and therefore there is no feeling so
long as there is no body attitude. [original emphasis] (Feldenkrais 2010:
94)
The first workshop of this kind was co-run with Lavinia Plonka (a mime and actor who
studied with Grotowski and Lecaq, and now a highly respected Feldenkrais practitioner)
in Mexico in 2007, and subsequently more intensives of this nature have taken place in
Montréal, Canada in 2008 and 2009 in conjunction with another Feldenkrais
practitioner (and Alba Emoting CL3) Odette Guimond. This pairing of Alba Emoting
and the Feldenkrais Method is significant. Yvan Joly, an internationally renowned
Feldenkrais trainer and psychologist, defines somatic education as ‘the field of practice
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and knowledge belonging to a variety of methods that are interested in learning an
awareness of the living body (the soma) moving in the environment’ [original emphasis,
my translation] (Joly 2008: 33). After participating in two of the Montréal workshops,
Joly considers Alba Emoting to be a form of somatic education. In a testimonial about
the workshops Joly states:
For movement, The Feldenkrais Method promotes ideas like

reversibility, awareness, intentionality, degrees of freedom, availability
to move in any direction, availability to change the direction without
preparation, finding neutral […] Alba Emoting proposes exactly the
same ideas specifically applied to the realm of emotional movements.
(Joly 2009)
The combination of these two methods is attracting a variety of participants in addition
to actors, such as Feldenkrais practitioners, psychologists and ontological coaches. In
South America, however, Alba Emoting is a popular tool in itself, being utilized in such
varied fields as education, family therapy, psychotherapy, management and
communication (Bloch 2009).
Learning Alba Emoting
When learning Alba Emoting, one can expect to go through three stages. The
first stage is considered to be ‘robotic’, and that is the phase when one is first learning
the patterns. In this initial learning period, the subjects are encouraged to explore
activating the breath, facial expressions and postural attitude in a non-subtle way, so as
to begin to identify, control and feel the voluntary components of the effector patterns.
The second stage is ‘induction’, which is the time when the Alba pattern’s trigger one’s
own emotion. This is considered to be the ‘magic moment’ in Alba Emoting and is what
leads to the third and final stage, which is ‘integration’. After an actor has learned the
patterns to a high standard, they can activate the patterns in a very subtle way, almost
without thinking, which is preferable for performance (Rix 2001).
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In Practice
Because of the extensive training required in order for actors to fully grasp and
understand the Alba Emoting patterns, I have not used the training directly in
professional setting. However, I have used my knowledge of the technique in order to
address specific problems that actors may have. In 2009 I was asked to consult on a
production of Orwell: A Celebration at London’s Trafalgar Studios, working
specifically on an excerpt from George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Love torture
scene. Every time the character portraying O’Brien raised his hand, the character of
Winston would have to wince in intense pain until the torture was over. With my
knowledge of Alba Emoting, I was able to suggest to the actor playing Winston
different breathing patterns and postural attitudes to assist his portrayal. The actor
playing Winston thus gained a reliable physical tool to achieve the heightened state
required of the play, night after night. Similarly, when teaching at East 15 Acting
School, I was working with a young actor who had to become very angry in a scene.
Every time he attempted the scene he was unintentionally mixing in elements of sadness
(when inadvertent mixing of the emotions occurs in Alba Emoting it is called an
‘entanglement’). I simply asked him to release the tension in his brow, and his
performance immediately improved. Neither of these actors had any knowledge of Alba
Emoting, nor did they need to. With this research project, however, I trained the actors
in the technique in order to engage in a more thorough inquiry of Alba Emoting.
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Figure 5: Alan Cox and Ben Porter in Orwell: A Celebration at Trafalgar Studios, 2009. Photograph
by Dawn Cruttenden
Section Two: Emotional Access Work

Emotion is a physical force – an energy field – which is communicated,
transmitted through the air. – Brian Astbury (Trusting the Actor 2011: location
1681)
‘Emotional Access Work’ is the name given to a system of rehearsal exercises
developed by South African theatre practitioner Brian Astbury. Astbury was married to
actress Yvonne Bryceland, and together they ran The Space Theatre in Capetown, South
Africa, along with the playwright Athol Fugard in the 1970s. Astbury’s Emotional
Access Work is based on his theory that our conscious brain can be problematic in
rehearsal and that the creative (sub- or pre-) conscious brain can be accessed through
various exercises to overcome the intrusion of self-consciousness in the actor’s process.
Freud originated discussions about the ‘subconscious’, but, as New Scientist writer Kate
Douglas points out in her article ‘The Other You’, ‘many neurobiologists avoid the
word “subconscious”, preferring “non-conscious”, “pre-conscious” or “unconscious” to
describe thought processes that happen outside consciousness’ (Douglas 2007: 42).
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Astbury uses ‘preconscious’ as defined by Stanislas Dehaene and his colleagues as
defined in their article entitled ‘Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a
testable taxonomy’ (2006). Dehaene et al, assert:
We propose to call preconscious (or potentially conscious, or P-

conscious) a neural process that potentially carries enough activation for
conscious access, but is temporarily buffered in a non-conscious store
because of a lack of top-down attentional amplification. […] As shown
by the attentional blink and inattentional blindness paradigms, even
strong visual stimuli can remain temporarily preconscious. They are
potentially accessible (if they quickly gain access to conscious report if
they were attended), but they are not consciously accessed at that
moment. (Dehaene et al. 2006: 207)
Astbury believes that, for an actor, accessing preconscious thought, rather than relying
on ‘thinking’ is extremely important. He explains:
[W]hat I mean by ‘thought’ or ‘thinking’ in this context is conscious

thought. The majority of this thinking is sub- or preconscious. That’s
good thinking. […] The kind where we sit and consciously think, ‘Now
I’ll do this,’ or ‘Now I’ll do that’ is ‘conscious thought’ and, as I
frequently tell my actors ‘Conscious thinking is seriously bad for an
actor.’ (Astbury 2011: location 1104)
Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, in their book The Way We Think: Conceptual
Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (2002), remark on this distinction
between conscious and preconscious thought, maintaining that ‘even after training, the
mind seems to have only feeble abilities to represent itself consciously what the
unconscious mind does easily’ (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 18).
Working as an acting teacher in institutions such as Mountview, The London
Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), and East 15, Astbury has been
developing his system over the last twenty-some years. According to Astbury:
The methods I have evolved over the past two decades all have their
roots in the practical struggle, with many young actors, to find ways to
utilise the power of the subconscious without paralysing it with
conscious thought; to free intuition to do its proper work; to shift
emotional and physical blockages which stand in the way of
performance; to learn to trust this ‘being’ which is, after all, an essential
part of ourselves, the part that for every moment of our lives keeps us
alive and functioning properly. (Astbury 2011: location 193-199)
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By ‘this being’, Astbury is referring to ourselves, or more specifically, our pre-
conscious selves free of conscious-controlling thought. Astbury’s techniques derived
from years of working with actors in training, rehearsals, and performance. When he
began teaching at LAMDA, Astbury noticed that young actors had particular trouble
approaching emotion:
Very early on I started to identify the moment when an actor is

confronted by an emotion – and the consequences of this problem:
tightened jaws, shallow breathing, losing lines, bodily tensions. I began
to look for exercises to help actors push past these blockages. (Astbury,
2011: location 415)
Astbury’s theory is that our natural ‘defences’ (or ‘blockages’ as described above) can
interfere with the actor at work. He refers to most of his exercises as ‘Left-Brain
Disabling Devices’, which attempt to overcome left-brain analytical dominance with
right-brain creativity. Neurologists have discovered that uncreative people ‘have
marked hemispheric dominance, with the left hemisphere suppressing creative states
and processes. By contrast, creative people are said to have less hemispheric
dominance’ (York 2004: 6). However, Astbury’s casual use of discussing split-brain
theory is used purely for ease of discussion in the rehearsal room. In actual fact, the two
hemispheres of the brain cannot be simplified this way. Chris McManus, author of
Right Hand, Left Hand insists:
However tempting it is to talk of right and left hemispheres in isolation,

they are actually two half-brains, designed to work together as a smooth,
single, integrated whole in one entire, complete brain. The left
hemisphere knows how to handle logic and the right hemisphere knows
about the world. Put the two together and one gets a powerful thinking
machine. Use either on its own and the result can be bizarre or absurd.
(McManus 2002: 183-184)
Astbury’s exercises draw upon the work of psychologist Arnold Mindell, Alexander
Lowen’s ‘Bioenergetics’, Win Wenger’s ‘Imaging Streaming’, and the theories of
neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio, Joseph LeDoux, and Michael Gazzaniga.
Although many of Astbury’s techniques resonate with recent discoveries in

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neuroscience, this correlation is mostly theoretical, and based primarily on Astbury’s
observation and experience of more than twenty years training actors.
According to Astbury, when working with actors it is only once the emotional
connections have been properly made and integrated that it becomes easier for the actor
to move into ‘the moment’. Astbury’s aims include: freeing the mind and body from
conscious control and allowing the actor to connect with a proper emotion, experience
that emotion, and then integrate the experience without conscious thought. For clarity, I
will divide Astbury’s work into two different categories: immediate and contributory.
The immediate exercises release blocks and establish a psychophysical connection
between the actor and the text, and are more directly related to rehearsing the specific
text. The contributory exercises also help release blocks within the actor, but are
additional means of preparation not necessarily connected to the text. The immediate
exercises include under-reading, anger/energy runs, physical exercises and physical
metaphor. The contributory exercises include image streaming, EMDR (Eye Movement
Desensitization and Reprocessing), dreaming bodywork and primal integrative
breathing. There techniques will be discussed in further detail in the following sections.
The Immediate Exercises
Under-reading
Astbury uses a process called ‘under-reading’, an integral component to
Emotional Access Work, to which Astbury was introduced by director Tessa
Schneiderman. The actors are read their lines by other actors or stage managers offstage
in a continuous, constant stream. Instead of the actor being tethered to a script in their
hand and reading lines by means of a ‘left-brain’ activity—which interprets, analyzes
and tells the conscious mind how words should be expressed—they receive the
information aurally. This activity sufficiently occupies their ‘conscious brain’ enough to
allow the ‘pre-conscious brain’ the freedom to make multiple subconscious decisions in
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fractions of milliseconds. During the rehearsal period, it is also an inadvertent way of
allowing the actors try the text in a variety of ways without conscious decision-making.
On a very practical level, under-reading removes the block of the actor holding/reading
off a script, which frees the actor to move and to more efficiently communicate with
their acting partners, at an earlier point in the rehearsal room. Meyerhold was also very
opposed to actors reading off a page. He states:
When actors scan the lines with their eyes, they unwittingly begin to
declaim, as is natural for people who are reading a text. I want to snatch
the parts from the hands of the actors as quickly as possible and therefore
I hurry to move on to the staging of the scenes. I would even have the
actors speak with the aid of a prompter than follow the parts with their
eyes. (Meyerhold in Gladov 2004: 132)
Even as early as 1928, in John Dolman’s The Art of Play Production, Dolman
recognizes ‘two distinct methods of memorization’ (Dolman Jr. 1928: 245). Dolman
explains:
By the one method the act of memorizing is made a purely mechanical

process having no relation to the study of meaning; the two things are, so
to speak, carried on independently by two separate portions of the mind.
By the other method the words, actions, and meanings are memorized
coordinately, and all associations built up from the start. (ibid.: 245-246)
Under-reading allows the actors to learn the text ‘on their feet’, as it were, and thus the
‘words, actions, and meanings’ are therefore ‘memorized coordinately.’ Under-reading
is also an essential component for many of Astbury’s other exercises.
Anger/Energy Runs
Anger, or energy runs as they are sometimes referred to, begin with the actor
approaching the text with extreme anger. This anger is unrelated to the context of the
play. Anger runs take place with under-reading. According to Astbury, the anger runs
(as well as the physical exercises) were developed in order to ‘serve one major purpose:
to create a wave of emotion. On this the character can surf with the actor. It doesn’t
matter if the character’s emotion is not anger. Once the wave is in motion it can take
any form it wishes’ (Astbury 2011: location 2657). Anger runs may turn into energy
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runs, where if the anger shifts into another emotion, the actor should ‘surf it’, rather
then staying with anger for the sake of the exercise.
Physical Exercises
Astbury also uses a variety of physical exercises that appear to allow for what he calls
‘imprinting’ emotion and establishing an ‘emotional muscle memory’. These exercises are
conducted while the actors are being under-read, and they include pushing against the wall,
squatting as if sitting on a chair against the wall, lying on their backs with legs vertical and
toes pulling down, sit-ups, press-ups, Grotowski’s ‘The Cat’ - stretching back while on the
knees, or any other exercise that requires energy. The point is to busy the defense
mechanisms and distract the conscious thinking brain so that the actor can make an emotional
connection with the material that is being absorbed by the brain aurally, as the text is being
under-read. These physical exercises tire the actor, and as we know from everyday life it is
when we are tired that we are most vulnerable to emotion. This principle holds the same for
the physical work of Grotowski. In Shomit Mitter’s book Systems of Rehearsal: Stanislavsky,
Brecht, Grotowski and Brook, he says about Grotowski’s work, ‘Often sequences of such
exercises are performed without interruption on the basis of the assumption that fatigue can
break down the resistance of the actor more effectively than conscious contrivance’ (Mitter
1992: 96). Astbury, somewhat facetiously calls these physical exercises ‘left-brain disabling
devices’.
In practice, the physical exercises enable the body and mind, or the voice and body,
to work together. If you can allow the text, while you’re speaking it, to be affected by your
physical state – sit-ups, pushing against the wall, etc – then in turn, when you speak the text
your body will respond accordingly. It is a process of building up a kind of muscle memory.
The following is a passage about Meyerhold working with Stanislavsky, which sums up very
well what Astbury is trying to achieve with his exercises:
Stanislavsky especially tormented me when I was rehearsing Baron

Tuzenbach in Three Sisters [1901]. For a long time I couldn’t get it right.
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The task seemed to be so simple: to come out, go up to the piano, sit
down, and begin to speak. But no sooner had I started when Stanislavsky
would send me back again. In those moments I almost hated him. It must
have been ten times that we began again with my entrance. At first I
didn’t understand what he wanted from me. Now it is clear. Each time I
would come out, strike a pose and begin to recite the text. Finally
Stanislavsky climbed up on the stage, threw a piece of paper on the floor
and asked me to break up my text in the following way: after having said
three lines, I would see the paper, pick it up, continue to speak, then
unfold it and speak further. Everything immediately fell into place. The
oratory disappeared as if by magic. The natural gesture of picking up and
unfolding / the paper helped me to saturate with life what had seemed to
be a “soliloquy”: “When I studied at the military school…”
Another time Stanislavsky demanded tension and inner energy from me,
but I was as cold as a dog’s nose. Then he gave me a sealed bottle of
wine, telling me to open it with the corkscrew and at the same time say
my lines. The physical difficulty of opening the bottle and the energy
needed for doing it immediately awoke me. That was a purely pedagogic,
technical device, which I often use now. You’ve probably noticed.
Pavlov should have been told about that. He would have been interested.
If just once you can get something right in rehearsal, then it will always
go right because of conditioned reflex. (Meyerhold in Gladov 2004, 149-
150)
Astbury’s physical exercises operate in much the same way.
Physical Metaphor
Astbury’s physical metaphor operates on the same principle as the physical
exercises but is slightly more sophisticated in the exercise’s relation to the text. There
are still physical exercises, but this time the exercise are a metaphorical physicalization
of the character’s experience. An example, which will be described in more detail in
Chapter Three, would be restraining the actor who plays Masha in Chekov’s Three
Sisters as she says good-bye to Vershinin; or the character of Duckling in Timberlake
Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, speaking her ‘If you live’ speech while attempting
to lift a limp actor to his feet. This is a creative aspect to Astbury’s work that challenges
the director to find physical exercises that operate as a metaphorical bridge between the
actor and the character.
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Figure 6: Astbury using Physical Metaphor with actor Carolina Ortega (being restrained) and
actor Matthew Blake (under-reading). Photograph by Kezia Cole.
The Contributory Exercises
Image Streaming
Image streaming is a unique combination of highly creative visualization and
analytical thinking skills that allows the development of a strong connection between
the conscious and unconscious mind, producing an ongoing sense of expanding
creativity and enhanced intuition. The actor finds a quiet place and closes their eyes,
focusing on the first image they see in the mind’s eye. While describing what they see
to another person, or by recording what is said, they follow the stream of images. This
can be done in relation to the character the actor is playing. The actor should try not to
consciously interfere – but allow the images to come appear naturally and organically
(something that can be difficult). With image streaming, an actor can discover images
from your own subconscious and these images stay stronger in the mind’s eye than
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choosing images from a book. Many actors are surprised how vivid the images – and
even sensory experiences – from an image stream can be. Astbury describes image
streaming as ‘a very powerful tool for giving a character access to the actor’s
imagination’ [my emphasis] (Astbury 2011: 1593), or to put another way, a tool for
giving the actor access to their preconscious imagination.
Preconscious Integration Devices
Image Streaming (See Wenger and Poe 1996), EMDR (See Shapiro 2001) and
Dreaming Bodywork (See Mindell 1985) are all techniques that, in the context of
Astbury’s work, I will call ‘preconscious integration devices’ that come from therapies.
The latter two techniques are aimed at enabling the mind to deal with entrenched
trauma—which has resulted in habituated physical and mental patterns—by releasing
these patterns and integrating them through metaphor and getting past useless defenses.
Primal Integrative Breathing is a method of circular breathing which enables the body to
deal with entrenched defenses which are no longer of any use, most of which are based
on early memories which for some people are the result of birth trauma and therefore
not understood by the conscious body defense systems—coming as they do from a
period when infants had neither words nor concepts in which to describe its feelings.
Primal Integrative Breathing is aimed at releasing emotion, muscular tension and voice
through breath. While I have experienced all of Astbury’s techniques in training, I did
not use EMDR, Dreaming Bodywork, or Primal Integrative Breathing for this research
project.
In Practice
I trained with Brian Astbury over three years, both at LAMDA and East 15
Acting School. At East 15, when playing Lynnette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme in Stephan
Sondheim’s Assassins, there was a scene, where, with the actor playing Sarah Jane
Moore, we had to become excited/angry to the point where we began to shoot wildly at
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a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. As we neared the performance date, we were
struggling with the energy required for that moment. The solution was to do an
anger/energy run with tennis balls at hand to throw at the wall at the points where we
would be shooting the gun. The energy and physical engagement we found in that
rehearsal stayed with us throughout the run of performances. Without trying to ‘force it’
the emotion required in that moment had become a muscle memory.
Astbury describes his techniques as ‘emotional access work’, however I believe
this title does a disservice to the exercises, because the exercises do more than just
access emotion. From my experiences, both participating as an actor and from using
these techniques as a director, the exercises have more to do with accessing a different
level of attention, awareness and energy, which culminate in integration. Toward the
end of Astbury’s book, he states: ‘[i]t’s all about energy. Set energy in motion and
things happen. The text, and what lives beneath its surface, will give that energy
direction and focus’ (Astbury 2011: location 2653-2660). ‘Energy work’ is perhaps a
more accurate description. Through Astbury’s exercises the entire organism begins to
work as a cohesive unit/whole, ready to respond fully to the theatrical situation.
Unfortunately, far too many training systems tend to encourage the use
of the conscious left brain and ignore the wonders of the right. The
result: dull, restricted, out-of-the-moment acting, able to deliver only one
thought process at that time, not the multi-leveled complexity of the most
ordinary of us human beings. (ibid.: location 1381)
Rehearsal footage of Astbury’s exercises can be found in the case study chapters.
Section III: Impulse and Awareness Work
While training at East 15 Acting School in 2004, I was first exposed to the ideas
of Grotowski through Ian Morgan, now with Teatr Piesn Kozla in Wraclaw, Poland.
Grotowski considered his training to be a via negativa, ‘not a collection of skills but an
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eradication of blocks’ (Grotowski and Brook 1968: 17). Morgan introduced our
course to Grotowski’s exercises plastiques, a physical training intended to lead to
spontaneous flow from one’s natural body rhythm. The work was exhausting, but
produced within us, as actors, a state of intense focus. Much as Astbury’s work uses
physical exhaustion to disrupt the conscious controlling left hemisphere, and
Grotowski’s exercises work similarly. Discussing the exercises plastiques in an
interview with Richard Schechner, Grotowski stated:
There are certain points of fatigue which break the control of the mind, a
control that blocks us. When we find the courage to do things that are
impossible, we make the discovery that our body does not block us. We
do the impossible and the division within us between conception and the
body’s ability disappears. (Wolford and Schechner 1997: 42)
It was observing this very phenomenon when using this work that caused me to
experiment with the exercises plastiques and text. I started with an amalgamation of
Astbury’s use of under-reading and Grotowski’s plastiques and rivers, which I call an
‘impulse run.’ Using this work in conjunction with text helps to block conscious
thought and impulse runs and the physical exercises help the actor to access a state in
which they can allow preconscious decisions that have already been made to surface—a
paradoxical combination of relaxation and concentration.
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Figure 7: Students from the East 15 Contemporary Theatre Practice course working with Ian
Morgan in 2004. Photograph by Brian Astbury.
Since that time I have experienced the training of Teatr Piesn Kozla (Song of the Goat),
and have been experimenting with using selected principles from the training of the
Polish theatre company founded by Grzegorz Bral and Anna Zubrzycki, both formerly
of the Gardzienice Theatre Association. The company has developed its own training.
The major principle guiding their work is learning by experiencing coordination,
harmony, polyphony, rhythm, dramaturgy, acrobatics, and singing body. Their training
is cumulative physical group training intended to maximize spontaneity, impulse, peak
physical ability and ensemble work. Bral, when describing the training, points out:
First of all, you have to understand that they way we work is not the way
people would normally work with a text – not through psychological
analysis, not through memory, not through an emotional analysis of the
text. (Zubrzycki and Bral 2010: 251)
Unlike Astbury and Bloch, Bral and Zubrzycki rarely use the term ‘emotion’ directly
when working with actors. Rather, the training is intended to ‘make room for something
to happen’, though the implication after several first-hand experiences working with the
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company, is that the ‘something’ is in fact ‘emotion’. Part of the ethos of their training
is not to discuss or analyze what is happening within the actor. This is especially a
challenge of writing about practice. In reference to this difficulty, Bral states:
My fellow practitioners understand this, because it comes with the

understanding of practice: if you name something, if you give a simple
definition to something, you stop the process. You close the experience.
(ibid.: 254-255)
Although I have participated in several intensive trainings with Teatr Piesn Kozla, I am
not fully trained in their techniques as I am with the others. Also, the ethos of the
company discourages imitation. Instead Bral insists that what is important is for
practitioners to grasp the principles of the training, and to use them in your own way,
rather than repeating the exact exercises of the company. The most important principle
from Teatr Piesn Kozla is that of coordination, which Zubrzycki defines as ‘the
interdependency and interrelatedness of all of the tools that an actor has’ (ibid.: 250).
The ‘tools’ to which Zubzrycki is referring include: ‘the tone of your voice, of your
body, of their relation one to the other; you have your imagination, sensitivity, feelings,
senses; you have text, you have melody, you have rhythms’ (ibid.: 259). One of the
obstacles to achieving this coordination is our cultural view of a split between mind and
body. The Teatr Piesn Kozla training has been developed to overcome this division.
Bral maintains:
Coordination is the one thing that we can deal with. There is always a
direct flow between how we think, what we say, and what we do. But, in
the culture we live in – whatever the culture we live in – we learn to
divide ourselves. […] We are very disconnected from our impulses, from
the flow, from the true feelings that we have. (ibid.: 259)
It is with this in mind that I started experimented with my own exercises that enhance
an actor’s coordination. The exercises always vary, developing from the specific
demands of any given dramaturgy that I work with.
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Impulse and Awareness Work
The exercises are used to increase the actors’ awareness of themselves, their
awareness in relation to one another, and in relation to the space. They are also used to
help the actors to work off impulses from within, from one another, and the surrounding
environment including the space itself and any aural or visual stimuli. These exercises
vary in relation to the actor’s task for a specific performance, and will be discussed
specifically regarding their use throughout the dissertation in reference to each case
study. Lorna Marshall, an acting teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
(RADA) has developed her own exercises that work on a similar level. In her book The
Body Speaks: Performance and Expression, Marshall describes an actor’s task:
As well as sensing what needs to happen at any moment, you must be

able to avoid the automatic and habitual management of impulse. You
are able to follow any impulse immediately into direct and complete
manifestation without hesitation, fear or judgment. (Marshall 2001: 33)
Developing this ability to ‘sense’ and ‘follow’ impulses is the aim of this work. Bral
points out another ‘problem’ with discussing practice:
If you name something an ‘impulse’, you’ve actually lost it. If you focus
on something that is an impulse, in that very moment you’ve lost it. So,
in order to follow something that you call ‘impulse’, you must, in a way,
not recognize it. (Zubryzcki and Bral 2010: 255)
When I use impulse and awareness exercises within a rehearsal context, I try and refrain
from too much discussion. Instead, I build up the exercises over time so that the actors
have continual experiences with the work, and can develop their own sense of what is
useful and what is not throughout the process. ‘Impulse runs’ allow actors to explore the
text in an abstract way, free from any contextual restrictions of the script. One can begin
to develop a kinesthetic sense of space, spontaneity and response to space, sounds and
energy from the other actors, and that of themselves. Like Astbury’s physical metaphor,
these exercises are not do not follow a set of concrete rules, but must be determined by
the particular text on which one is working.
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In Practice
Using impulse and awareness work in practice, I once directed a challenging
play called All Alone by Gene David Kirk. The play was arguably set inside the mind of
a schizophrenic paedophile or internet predator. There were two men, Man A and Man
B, possibly the two sides of one person. They never interacted directly (with text), but
would often pick up each other’s sentences, rude nursery rhymes, etc. The energy and
rhythms were very important to the piece. The actors and I started developing ‘impulse
runs’ using a starting point of the plastiques, to work up a sweat and a focus. I then
added under-reading of the text. The under-reading in combination of the physical
workout offered the actors the freedom to explore the text outside of the context of the
play, or rather, explore the text in relation to the energy of the other actor. All Alone
garnered a shared best actor award between the two actors – The Micheál Mac
Liammóir Award for Best Male Performance when it played at the Project Arts Centre,
Dublin, for the Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival in 2006. I also received the
New York International Fringe Festival Excellence Award for Outstanding Direction,
when All Alone appeared at the SoHo Playhouse, NYC, in 2007. From my experience
and perspective as a director on the project, the success of the production was a result of
the way in which we approached the rehearsal process. For the most recent review of
All Alone, see Appendix A.
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Figure 8: Matthew Flacks and Andrew Barron in All Alone by Gene David Kirk (NYC production).
Photograph by Jessica Beck.
For a more thorough examination of these techniques, I am including this work
in the research project. As this is the newest technique to my repertoire, and one that has
not been passed down directly from an outside source, it is difficult to describe the work
more fully at this point. My understanding of the impulse and awareness work develops
further throughout the research and will be explained in more detail in the case studies.
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Chapter Three: Case Study One - Investigating the Challenge of
Emotion in the Rehearsals and Performance of Excerpts from
Chekhov’s Three Sisters
This chapter presents the first of three case studies. Each case study is conducted
with the intention of gaining a clearer insight into the nature of emotion in Western
performance. Case Study One is an investigation of the challenge of emotion through
the rehearsals and performance of excerpts from Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. In an
attempt to address my research questions, I incorporated the work of Alba Emoting,
Emotional Access Work and Impulse and Awareness Work into a rehearsal process on a
selection of excerpts from Chekhov’s Three Sisters, using the English version adapted
by Irish playwright Brian Friel. This chapter is divided into four sections. Section I:
Chekhov’s Three Sisters explores the reasons for choosing Chekhov’s play. Section II:
Methodology and Preliminary Questions specifically addresses the set up of the case
study, including the methodology, and the actors’ preliminary views on emotion.
Section III: Rehearsals focuses on the rehearsal process and performance of the first
case study, while Section IV: Findings offers some concluding thoughts on the project.
Section 1: Chekhov’s Three Sisters
Chekhov, Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860 – 1904) was writing plays at a time when actor
training, and theatre itself, were both on the brink of becoming revolutionized, not only
in Russia, but also simultaneously across Europe and America. Coinciding with the
emergence of Naturalism was the recognition of the importance of actor training and the
need for more rigorous rehearsal processes. Theatre historian Rose Whyman points out:
As Chekhov’s work as a playwright was beginning to become known

towards the end of the 1880s, the main repertoire continued to be the
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classics, comedies and melodrama but there was a growing recognition
for theatrical reform. (Whyman 2011: 34)
This ‘theatrical reform’ was taking shape in the form of Naturalism. Chekhov’s plays
are often considered to be examples of Naturalism, though more specifically Whyman
maintains that Chekhov’s plays are ‘part of a movement in ‘New Drama’, the
transitional stage from nineteenth century drama to modernism’ (ibid.: 35). Whyman
describes ‘Naturalist writers’ as those ‘[i]nfluenced by Darwinism [who] opposed
romanticism and attempted to portray scientifically the underlying forces determining
people’s behaviour, that is, heredity or environmental factors’ (ibid.). In The Wadsworth
Anthology of Drama, W.B. Worthen considers Naturalism (and Realism) to be ‘the first
dramatic modes to consider themselves not as expressing the dominant political and
ideological order, but as criticizing the values and institutions of middle-class society’
(Worthen 2004: 535). For Whyman, however, the plays of Chekhov ‘are “naturalist” to
the extent that they question how social environment contributes to the individual’s
development’ (Whyman 2011: 37), although she admits that ‘Chekhov himself rejected
being categorized as a naturalist writer and positioned himself as a realist’ (ibid.).
Vsevolod Meyerhold, one of the original actors in Stanislavsky’s company at the
Moscow Art Theatre (MAT), and a director in his own right, also rejected the idea that
Chekhov’s plays were naturalistic, insisting that ‘Chekhov’s art demands a theatre of
mood’ (Meyerhold in Braun 1998: 32). When describing the MAT’s original production
of Chekhov’s play The Seagull, Meyerhold maintains:
The atmosphere was created, not by the mise en scène, not by the
crickets, not by the thunder of horses’ hooves on the bridge, but by the
sheer musicality of the actors who grasped the rhythm of Chekhov’s
poetry and succeeded in casting a sheen of moonlight over their
creations. (ibid.)
Meyerhold is pointing out that the writing, and the actors’ responses to it, rather than
the naturalistic conventions added by Stanislavsky, were the key to the production’s
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success, while simultaneously nodding to the artistry of Chekhov’s writing. As
Whyman points out:
While Chekhov’s writing has affinities with the aims of naturalist

writers, and is realist to the extent that his models were from life, in his
own time, his work was described as ‘poetic realism’, indicating that his
writing was informed by a unique artistic vision. (Whyman 2011: 37)
It is worth noting the distinction that while many of the elements of Chekhov’s writing
are realistic, there is still a heightened-poetic element apparent in his work.
As the style of theatre was shifting, so were the demands upon the actor; this
was a period when the concept of psychological realism in acting was beginning to
form, predominantly in the work of Stanislavsky. Peta Tait, in Performing Emotions:
Gender, Bodies, Spaces, in Chekhov's Drama and Stanislavski's Theatre, notes that
‘Chekhov’s major plays were written around the time that the Moscow Art Theatre
(MAT) rejected nineteenth century declamatory delivery with its stylised and
exaggerated gestures, its emotional hyperbole’ (Tait 2002: 89). Previously, playwrights
had been working with stock characters and archetypes. Chekhov, though still using
‘vestiges of these types’ introduced a new complexity and depth to his characters which,
according to Richard Hornby, leaves his characters slightly ‘odd, askew’ (Hornby 2009:
114). Equally, in regard to the emotions of the characters, there were stock physical
actions that were ‘clearly demonstrated, even ‘telegraphed’ to the audience through
external ‘signs’.’ (Allen 2000: 6). Whyman believes that:
Chekhov’s theatre writing forced reconsiderations of what ‘drama’ is as

well as new ideas about acting. One of his methods was to take
conventional forms and subvert them, aiming to challenge the audience’s
expectations. (Whyman 2011: 34)
Audiences were accustomed to receiving certain emotional ‘signals’. According to Tait,
Chekhov ‘rejected a theatre in which there was a prolonged, emotive delivery for more
transitory, flashes of emotion’ (Tait 2002: 109). Both Chekhov, through his writing, and
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Stanislavsky, through his productions, were challenging existing notions of the
traditional theatre of the period. Chekhov was quoted as exclaiming:
Where – in streets and houses – do you see people tearing about, leaping
up and down, and clutching their heads? Suffering should be expressed
as it is expressed in life – i.e. not with your arms and legs, but by the
tone of voice, or a glance: not by gesticulating, but by grace. Subtle inner
feelings, natural in educated people, must be subtly expressed in an
external form. You will say – stage conditions. But no conditions justify
lies. (Chekhov in Allen 2000: 7)
Hornby suggests that Chekhov’s insistence of the importance of these ‘subtle inner
feelings’ creates another challenge for actors as ‘characters tend not to say what they
mean, but talk about the weather, the landscape, a book they are reading’ (Hornby 2009:
113). Tait agrees, and insists that Chekhov’s plays
…flaunted a traditional dramatic convention of having characters say

what they mean by suggesting that what the character says is not
necessarily what he or she means. Acting takes place in the space
between the character’s dialogue and intended meaning, and that can
change in numerous ways according to the emotional emphasis of the
delivery of the theatre text. (Tait 2002: 108)
This proved a challenge for ‘actors of the old school’ as Worthern notes, ‘because the
characters did not conform to traditional types and the action seemed so indirect and
inconsequential, lacking familiar dramatic rhythms and climaxes’ (Worthen 2004: 539).
Actor and scholar Bella Merlin even suggests that Chekhov’s writing, in particular The
Seagull, ‘was the catalyst which provoked Stanislavsky into applying new laws to the
acting process in order that it too might be structured as an art form’ (Merlin 1999:
224). Stanislavsky and his acting company had to find a new approach to this new kind
of play.
It is well documented, however, that Chekhov and Stanislavsky disagreed quite
frequently on the interpretation of Chekhov’s plays. Ivan Bunin, a close friend of
Chekhov recalls a conversation where Chekhov stated: ‘You tell me that people cry at
my plays…But you are not the only one who does…After all, I did not write them to
make people cry; it was Stanislavsky who made them so worthy of pity’ (Bunin and
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Marullo 2007: 48). In his memoir, My Life in Art, Stanislavsky mentions that
Chekhov considered Three Sisters to be a ‘cheerful comedy, a farce’, while
Stanislavsky believed it to be a ‘serious drama about Russian life’ (Stanislavsky and
Benedetti 2008b: 374). Whether or not Chekhov was making that statement ironically is
unclear. However, with this particular case study, the important factor in choosing to
use excerpts from Chekhov’s Three Sisters, is that the play is well written and offers
psychologically realistic, rounded and complex characters in emotional situations. The
two case studies that follow this one engage more directly with the demands of the
specific scripts.
Synopsis of Three Sisters
Chekhov began writing Three Sisters in 1899 and the play was first produced at
the MAT in 1901. The play is about the Prozorov children—three sisters Olga, Masha
and Irina, and their brother Andrey. As a family, they were moved from Moscow to a
rural town. With their father’s recent death, it is unlikely that the family will be able to
return to Moscow. Gradually, their way of life begins to crumble. Andrey marries a
local girl, Natasha, who the sisters do not care for, and Natasha becomes the mistress of
their family home. Irina begins the play full of hope, dreaming of falling in love, but
becomes disillusioned with her life and job at the post office. Masha is in an unhappy
marriage with Kulygin, her former teacher, and ends up having an affair with Lieutenant
Colonol Vershinin. Olga, an unmarried schoolteacher, resigns herself to remaining a
spinster. Andrey, also unhappy, must face his failures in life (becoming neither a
professor or a musician) and the fact that Natasha is having an affair and it may even be
likely that their children are not his. The family is thrown into further turmoil when it is
revealed that military will be leaving the town taking Vershinin, and the only social life
for the sisters, with it. Baron Tusenbach, in love with Irina, resigns from the military to
stay with her (although Irina has consented to marry the Baron, she does not love him),
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but is killed in a duel. Three Sisters contains many difficult emotional situations,
making the text ideal for exploration work of the three techniques being examined in
this case study.
Section II: Methodology and Preliminary Questions
Five actors participated in the first case study. They ranged in age from 20-44,
and their acting experiences varied from education to professional. The actors included:
Eric Hetzler, an American actor with the most professional experience, who had
recently completed his PhD at the University of Exeter; Jeremy West, also American,
and also with extensive professional acting experience who was completing his MFA in
Staging Shakespeare; Zofia Sozanska, a Polish national in her mid-20s, who had just
completed the MA in Theatre Practice and had trained with Phillip Zarrilli. Lai SimSim,
from Hong Kong, who was also training on the MA in Theatre Practice; and Joe
Sellman-Leava, from the UK, who was in the last year of his undergraduate degree in
Drama. Aside from Hetzler, who once played Kulygin in a professional production of
Three Sisters, none of the other actors had previous experience with Chekhov.
Before beginning the rehearsal process, I started by interviewing each actor
about their views on emotion. I asked the following questions:
1. How do you define ‘emotion’ in relationship to performance? How do you
define ‘emotion’ in relationship to everyday life? Would you say there are
differences, and if so, what are they?
2. How do you usually work on ‘emotion’ in the rehearsal process?
3. In your opinion, how important in ‘emotion’ to a) the rehearsal process and b)
the performance?
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4. In your own process as a performer, in order to access ‘emotion’ do you use a)
past experiences, b) imagination, c) physiological triggers or d) other. Do you
use any of these approaches in combination? Please explain.
5. What is the biggest obstacle for you when exploring ‘emotion’ in the rehearsal
process or in performance?
The answers that I received from the five individuals illustrated five very
different perspectives. This was probably due to the extensive diversity of cultural
backgrounds, training backgrounds, and acting experience. The following is a short
excerpt from each interview:
Hetzler: Emotion is a very loaded term. If I start with talking about emotion in
life, it’s a response to the things that happen. It’s a very instantaneous
response to something that’s just occurred…it can be joyful, it can be
sad, it can be…anything like that, and I think in performance I would
define it very similarly, because emotion is a response to the thing that
happens. […] It’s simply the response…it’s just what comes out based
on the stimulus that you’re given. So that’s how I would describe it in
both…I don’t really see any difference. (Hetzler 2009b)
West: Emotion in performance is a by-product of conflicting intentions, or not

necessarily conflicting. Sometimes I suppose, intentions that are working
together, which you might see in a romantic situation on stage, would be,
the intentions are actually working together. But nonetheless, two
intentions together, and the emotion is the by-product of those intentions.
[…] In life, I don’t really think it’s that different. I would imagine that I
might define it in the same way. Emotion in life is, more of a driving
force, I suppose, because in performance we know the action from the
text before we go into this environment and pretend we don’t know
what’s coming but we do. (West 2009b)
Sozanska: Emotion is […] I could call it as an “inner flame”. Maybe I’m being too
poetic, but there is something burning inside that guides you, how to
react on certain circumstances. So that’s helped me to define emotions,
helped me to define where I am, in here, now, in the moment. So let’s
say if something happened, if something was burning so, by my reaction,
the building of the tension, my heart beating, and the cognitive process,
the way how I perceive what happened, that is emotion…my relation to
what’s going on outside…or inside as well. (Sozanska 2009a)
Lai: I found emotion in life enriched the emotions in performance, but they
are not exactly the same thing. In my performance, the emotions are
more controlled and refined. […] not just random things that you can
express just whatever you want. But in life you can have lots of emotion
coming out. In life [the emotion] is more free. (Lai 2009b)
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Sellman-Leava:
I think that the main difference would be that like, obviously, in life you
experience [emotions] spontaneously […] and they can be unexpected so
you can just feel them, and the difficulty in performance is trying to
show that emotion. (Sellman-Leava 2009b)
Between the five actors, three had definite ideas about emotion, equating ‘emotion’ with
a response (to a situation), a by-product (of conflicting or coinciding intentions), and an
inner flame. The latter two avoided offering a concrete definition, but noted the
distinction between emotion in life and in performance, mainly that in life emotion is
spontaneous and ‘more free’.
The interviews also revealed that the biggest obstacles that these actors faced
previously, when working on emotion in performance, included: 1) worrying about
whether or not what they were presenting was cliché; 2) finding it difficult to follow a
director’s instructions regarding certain emotions; 3) self-consciousness; 4) the extra
emotions or nerves associated with performing in front of an audience; 5) learning to
trust the company (in terms of being vulnerable around others); and 6) getting ‘off
book’ or learning the lines. The techniques that the actors preferred to use when
approaching emotion included: 1) imagination; 2) imagination in order to create a past
history; 3) work with the body to create rhythms; 4) butoh-like techniques; and 5) and a
variety of techniques depending on the type of dramaturgy or style of play. For the most
part though, none of the actors had a fixed technique for approaching emotion in
rehearsal or performance, but rather used a combination of approaches. West made the
following observation, saying ‘I don’t consider myself a Strasberg actor, a Meisner
actor, a Stanislavsky actor, a Uta Hagen actor…I am an actor who utilizes different
things, whatever the moment needs’ (West 2009a). Hetzler, when asked about his
approach to emotion in rehearsal, responded that he doesn’t have one, explaining:
…the emotion is the character’s response to the situation, and my job as

the actor is to be a vehicle for that character, and so any response should
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be a truthful one, based on the stimulus I’m given as that character in
that moment. (Hetzler 2009b)
For Hetzler, the experience rehearsing with the other actors, in combination with the
script, should be sufficient for eliciting any required emotion for performance.
In question 4, I mentioned the use of ‘past experiences’, to which most of the
actors had a negative response for a number of reasons. West felt negatively about the
‘emotional hangover’ that could occur from using emotion from a past experience in his
own life, explaining:
I prefer to stay away from that, just because, in my experience, often

times that residual emotion will go off stage with you, and I prefer to
leave my emotion onstage with the character—or the character’s emotion
I should say—I like to be able to walk off stage, drop it, so that I can
come into the next scene fresh, for whatever the moment is. (West
2009b)
For Sellman-Leava, the youngest actor in the group, finding an appropriate memory
from his own past experience proved difficult:
I used to try and…try by thinking of something sad…which is difficult

because I don’t have that much in my life which makes me like, that
bad…and also, I think it just gets in the way…cause you effectively have
to stop what you’re doing on stage to think, to dig up something from the
past, and then make yourself cry and I just don’t think that’s practical.
(Sellman-Leava 2009b)
Similar to Sellman-Leava, both Hetlzer and Lai also mentioned the problem of
disconnecting from one’s scene partner in order to connect with a past experience.
There is a whole other bunch of people on stage with you, who are
depending on you to respond when we need you to respond and to keep
the energy flowing in the scene as a group or as a pair, and if you “check
out” because you have to, you know, be emotionally ready, well then
you’re not contributing to the work. You’re not a part of this group on
stage. As an actor you can actually feel the energy go, because suddenly
there’s a hole over there…[the actor is] deep inside their own self.
(Hetzler 2009b)
For Lai, the remembering of a past memory could inform her choices, but should not be
used directly:
And for the past experience I try not to use so much…because again, I
think a lot, just about myself, my experience, and then […] I’m not the
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character at all if I’m feeling this way. But I think the past experience
will help me to understand, like common sense. I understand, for
example, if [the character] has a quarrel with her mother….I have a
quarrel with my mother as well, and I understand what feeling it is, but I
won’t recall the whole of my experience of quarrelling with my mother
to replace…the rehearsals. (Lai 2009b)
I mention these reflections because in comparison to any technique suggested, the use
of past memory triggered noticeably passionate responses from all but one actor,
Sozanska, who has never used the technique and preferred imagination or physical
work.
My specific research questions for this project are the same as those guiding the
overall research project which are: What, if anything, can be revealed about the nature
of emotion in Western performance when employing these three theories/approaches to
emotion in practice? Do these discoveries vary when these approaches are put into
practice on different dramaturgies with different demands on the actor? What is the
nature of the emotion being expressed? Whose emotion is it? The actor’s or the
character’s? Is there a difference? Can these techniques assist a director in unifying an
understanding of emotion within a diverse cast? How much of the actor’s previous
beliefs, training and acting experiences affect their views on emotion in performance.
How do these previously held views/assumption interact with the three theories used?
Are the feelings/emotions that actors generate ‘genuine’? If so, how does the actor
generate, control, and integrate these emotions in performance? And specifically in
relation to the first case study, how can I, as a director, incorporate these methods into
an effective rehearsal process and what role in that process do they serve?
I selected seven scenes, though only five scenes were selected for the
performance in order to keep the total running time at 30 minutes. The excerpts
included:
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1) From Act II: the scene between Masha and Vershinin, when he confesses his
love for her and the affair really begins. With Sozanska as Masha and Hetlzer as
Vershinin.
2) From Act III: the scene between Irina and Olga (and Masha), when Irina
complains about her boredom and anger with life and Olga admits she would
marry any man. With Lai as Irina and Sozanska as Masha.
3) From Act III: a continuation from the previous scene, when Masha confesses her
love for Vershinin to her sisters. With Sozanska as Masha and Lai as Irina.
4) From Act III: a continuation from the two previous scenes, in which the Baron
enters looking for Irina. With West as the Baron, Lai as Irina, and Sozanska as
Olga.
5) From Act IV: Andrey’s monologue to his deaf servant Ferapont, pushing a child
in a pram while discussing his views on life and his relationship with Natasha.
With Sellman-Leava as Andrey.
6) From Act IV: the scene between Irina and the Baron, in which Tusanbach wants
some indication of her love for him, which she cannot give. He goes off to fight
a duel with Solyony in which he will lose his life. With West as the Baron and
Lai as Irina.
7) From Act IV: the scene between Masha and Vershinin, in which they have to
say goodbye. With Sozanska as Masha, Hetzler as Vershinin and Lai as Olga.
Throughout the chapter there will be opportunities to watch these scenes in rehearsal
and performance. When appropriate, the reader will be directed to the corresponding
DVD.
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Section III: Rehearsals
Once the initial interviews were conducted, the rehearsal process began. The
rehearsal process ran over the course of three weeks, totaling around 75 hours. The
different techniques overlapped throughout the process, though for clarity I will discuss
each strand of work - Alba Emoting, Emotional Access Work, and Impulse and
Awareness Work – separately.
Incorporating Alba Emoting
I began by introducing the Alba patterns first for two reasons: 1) the patterns are
specific and have a basis in physiology, rather than psychology (for example, rather
than having to depend on an individual’s unique and subjective idea of what ‘sadness’
may be, Alba offered concrete physiological steps); and 2) perhaps through them we
could create a common vocabulary. In order to use Alba Emoting in the rehearsal
process, it was first necessary to teach the actors the emotional effector patterns. Unlike
with the other techniques, the early ‘training’ process of Alba Emoting is completely
independent from the rehearsals of the text. After the initial interviews with the actors, I
began by teaching the Alba Emoting patterns over a period of six hours. This started
with the introduction of ‘neutral breath’ and the step-out technique, which, as
mentioned in Chapter 2, are the ‘safeguards’ for the Alba Emoting technique. The
neutral breath pattern in Alba Emoting is devoid of any of the same elements as the
emotional effector patterns, and thus acts as a method of ‘clearing’ any unwanted
emotion. Again, the six emotional effector patterns are tenderness (1a), anger (1b),
eroticism (2a), fear (2b), joy (3a), and sadness (3b). I prefer to use the number/letter
system that Alba Emoting instructor Laura Facciponti Bond created, rather than
referring to the patterns by name. To see an example of each pattern, please go to:
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• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 1. The Alba Emoting Patterns (Duration:
00:01:58)
The actors’ initial experience with the emotional effector patterns is very
important as this allows them to recognize each pattern for themselves. My own
experiences when learning Alba Emoting were in workshops where the technique was
integrated with the Feldenkrais Method, and my process when teaching Alba Emoting
has been influenced accordingly. By introducing the patterns when the actors are lying
on the floor, they have the opportunity to explore the patterns, in their own space,
without the immediate self-conscious pressure of being observed. Once I introduced the
breathing pattern, I asked them to observe within themselves, or sense, whether or not
any other muscles wanted to move in accordance with the breathing pattern. This is an
opportunity for the actor to recognize what the pattern may be, to have a somatic
experience. Slowly then, I introduced the other elements of the pattern, such as the
facial expression and postural attitude. Often I find it necessary to repeat or rephrase
instructions if I see an actor using completely different muscles in the face, or if an actor
is seriously misinterpreting the instructions. However, I do not make corrections at this
early stage, as I want the actor to discover on their own their relationship with each
emotional effector pattern. After exploring the patterns on the floor, I then had the
actors explore the patterns in a sitting position as well. (When I say ‘explore’ the
patterns, I was continually repeating the instructions so they did not have to rely on
memory). I have found that actors may be able to better recognize or connect with the
emotional effector patterns in different positions. I wanted the actors to have the
experience of each pattern, both lying down on the floor and in a sitting position, before
we came together to discuss what each emotional effector pattern may be.
As explained previously, I do not name the pattern until the actors have
experienced it several times. Certain patterns are obvious to the actors from the first
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encounter, while others can be more elusive, and that difference is down to each
individual. For this case study, it was only after I taught each pattern separately, and
then reviewed all six, did we discuss what each emotional effector pattern might be.
When discussing patter 3a (sadness), Hetzler had the following response:
I knew this one would be coming. And it’s something I’ve been thinking
about a lot. I started thinking about when was the last time I actually
cried. And it’s more than 30 years since […] So I was actually terrified,
because I don’t know if I even remember how, what will happen?
Especially if you’re working with emotion memory, God knows what
would’ve happened. So there was a little bit of trepidation, and as soon
as you mentioned the three inhalations I thought “oh shit, there it is”.
(Beck et al. 2009e)
However, for Hetzler, using the Alba Emoting pattern proved to be a safe way explore
tears:
For me, knowing that there was a pattern involved, made me feel safer.
It doesn’t feel like this personal emotional release that you get from that
situation. It’s more like, “okay, I’m just breathing a pattern, purely
psychophysical, and I can do this.” (ibid.)
I did not want the actors to focus on achieving an end-goal, such as laughter or tears
simply because I use the terminology ‘joy’ or ‘sadness’, but rather, to focus on the
somatic experience of each pattern in that moment. For this reason I refer to the
emotions as simply patterns rather than by name. In some cases, as with Hetzler, this
training is enabling the actor to reconnect or rediscover the dialogue between body and
mind through the emotional effector patterns without the psychological implications of
exploring ‘sadness’.
I had the actors revisit the Alba Emoting patterns at the start of each rehearsal.
Developing coordination between the three elements of each pattern—breathing pattern,
facial expression, and postural attitude—can take time. Differentiating muscles and
components of the patterns from one another can also takes time and practice. We
repeated the patterns every day at the start of rehearsal to reinforce the breath and
muscle coordination, until the actors’ were proficient in each pattern. Sometimes new
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positions may ‘unlock’ integration with the pattern. Sometimes words or objects also
help this integration. For Sozanska, her first induction with pattern 3a (joy) came only
after exploring the pattern with an object, in this case, a sock. Sozanska reflected:
I remember the object. It felt very good. Suddenly this pattern was alive,
it wasn’t just a pattern […] it was so real for me. I didn’t need any
context to play with the object, the context it just appear [sic]. And my
laugh, my 3a [joy], or 2b [fear], was much more authentic, I could relate
to something. (Sozanska 2009c)
To watch a clip of Sozanska in the object exercise, please see:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 2. Sozanska in Alba Emoting Object Exercise

(Duration: 00:00:22)
Once the actors were comfortable enough with the three aspects of each pattern,
we began ‘sharing’ patterns. Sitting in chairs across from each other, the actors would
begin a pattern, and then begin to ‘mirror’ each other. They could begin to see in each
other the ways in which they may or may not be mixing emotional effector patterns. As
the actors developed a stronger coordination with the patterns, we were able to share
more often, having the actors interact with each other using opposing patterns. After this
point I begin to incorporate text from the play. This enabled the actors to experience
how the breathing/posture/facial expressions can affect the text.
Once the actors were experienced enough with sharing, objects, and text, they
were ready for what Bond refers to as ‘Alba opera’ – an improvisation using the
patterns, objects, and text. There is usually a fixed guide – for example, the actor is
limited to a particular piece of text, or the patterns are called out for the actor. I take this
one step further and combine it with the impulse and awareness work, which will be
discussed further in the Impulse and Awareness section. The Alba improvisation
exercise proved to be important for the actors who were still struggling with the
physical coordination of the three components. West found the process more organic,
commenting after the exercise that ‘it was actually a lot easier for me to go further into
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some of the patterns. […] SimSim [Lai] and I were in one pattern, and her change into
another pattern prompted my change, which then prompted another’ (Beck et al.
2009d). Lai reported that within the Alba improvisation exercise she was surprised at
how changing between the Alba Emoting patterns triggered lines and images from the
text, rather than vice versa which is more typical an experience:
That one was very very interesting. The experience was so…how should
I describe it?…from the patterns. For example, you just name a pattern,
we did it, then images, or text, from Three Sisters comes up suddenly. So
it’s not, start from the text and then we have the emotion and da da da da,
it’s from the emotion. There are things coming automatically. […] It just
so surprised me, why I come up with this text, with this certain patterns
or emotion? [sic] (Lai 2009d)
For an example of the Alba improvisation exercise, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 3. Alba Emoting Improvisation (Duration:

00:00:58)
In two cases the experience of Alba Emoting changed the actors previously held
views on emotion, with West and Sellman-Leava. In an interview, West reflected:
I’m surprised that so much of the emotion we feel in life, on stage, is

physiological versus this other ethereal sort of placement that we never
know exactly where it is. Because people talk about love being in your
heart, fear in your stomach, whatever, people say “oh, that really got me
in the gut”, or whatever. It’s just amazing to think how much of it is
actually in the face and in the breath. (West 2009c)
Though the introduction of Alba Emoting caused a shift in West’s views on emotion, he
was still unsure of the technique as an actor’s tool midway through the process:
While I can greatly respect it as a scientific truth, the human physiology,

how much of it is useful or needed for the individual actor as a pre-
performative training method? I’m still discovering for myself. So I do
sort of dissect the two areas. One may have me completely convinced,
but the other one is still…I do have some reservations to be perfectly
honest. Not because I don’t think it’s not effective, obviously, but for me
as an individual actor, I have some reservations about is this going to be
more effective than other training methods that I’ve studied before.
(ibid.)
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There was an initial sense from a few members in the group that the techniques I was
exposing them to were somehow in ‘competition’ with the techniques and tools they
used previously. This was not my intention, and as the rehearsal process progressed
these attitudes began to shift.
Aside from the general training of Alba Emoting, the technique was applied to
the rehearsal process and/or performance in four distinct ways. One approach was to
integrate the use of the Alba Emoting patterns into the impulse runs, which will be
discussed in more detail in the section on impulse and awareness work. The other three
uses included direct placement in the script for performance, using the Alba Emoting
patterns as specific vocabulary for a common understanding, and for the actors’ own
preparation for performance.
The following is an example of how I used the Alba Emoting technique in a
direct, prescriptive way when working on the scene between Masha and Vershinin in
Act II. The scene starts mid-sentence, as the couple return to the house from an event.
Because the actors needed the appropriate energy, I had them begin with the pattern of
3a (joy). In his follow up interview after the performance, Hetzler reported this as a
useful application of the technique:
The Alba, it helped with the initial energy of the scene, doing the 3a,
because I think there is always that tension of trying to jump right into a
scene that is that heightened without having anything before that. If you
are doing the whole play, you’ve worked to that scene, and your mind
and body are ready, from the character’s perspective to go to this next
level, because you’ve had the initial entrance, and the meeting of Masha,
[…] so, having the 3a was I think very helpful just getting us up, so that
we could get on our feet and do the scene with the level of intensity that
was required for the two of them, having come all the way from where
ever it was, and they are alone for the first time, and they are really
excited about it. (Hetzler 2009a)
To watch a clip of Sozanska and Hetzler using Alba Emoting to begin the scene in
rehearsal, please go to:
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• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 4. Sozanska and Hetzler using 3a (Duration:
00:00:37)
Figure 9: Eric Hetzler and Zofia Sozanska. Photograph by Jen Burton.
Alba Emoting was also used as a specific vocabulary, particularly with Sellman-
Leava, who was playing Andrey. Sellman-Leava had a tendency to play his monologue
with an overriding presence of 3a (sadness), which was not entirely intentional. I used
the Alba Emoting patterns to increase his awareness of the emotions he was displaying.
By becoming more aware of what he was doing, Sellman-Leava was then in a position
to consciously change the emotions he was displaying. In Sellman-Leava’s follow-up
interview, he maintained:
…you [Beck] were able to say to me for example, what pattern are you
predominantly using? And that was a better way, for me […] because I
think if you would’ve said to me, and we hadn’t done any Alba work,
“you’re too sad for the whole thing”, that would have been true, but it
wouldn’t have been as easy to kind of rectify it. […] because with Alba,
I was able to know where physiologically I was going wrong, rather than
“okay, I’m too sad, I need to think…” (Sellman-Leava 2009a)
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This was a surprising discovery for me. I had not realized just how useful Alba
Emoting could be for the actor to specifically address the physiological components of a
pattern, rather than have to rethink their views on the portrayal of a character. To watch
a clip of Sellman-Leava working on Andrey’s monologue, please see:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 5. Sellman-Leava Rehearsing (Duration:

00.05.27)
Figure 10: Joe Sellman-Leava as Andrey. Photograph by Jen Burton.
I also encouraged the actors to experiment with Alba Emoting in their
performance, if they were comfortable using the technique. West became more
confident with Alba Emoting as the rehearsal process continued. The following is
West’s account of how he was able to use the Alba Emoting patterns in the
performance:
I experimented a bit with the Alba patterns, but not to the full effect,
partially because of the way it was staged, I didn’t want to be sitting on
the side and start going into a pattern which might possibly pull focus
from the performance that was going on stage. So what I was doing,
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essentially I was toning down everything and almost internalizing it…
the facial expressions – I was using 3b [sadness] – and the facial
expressions I was using were probably not drastic enough that it could
have been seen, perhaps, by someone from the outside, but there was
enough for the physiological triggers, I think, to allow me to go to a
certain preparatory state. Again, not using the full pattern, I wasn’t
attempting to put myself fully in that emotive state, but hinting at it, so
that when I walked on stage I almost had a charge of that emotion, so I
could very easily go into it, as opposed to walking on in a neutral state
and then having this limited time within the text to go from neutral to
this position. It was difficult because of that constraint, had I been able to
be offstage, I think, separate from the audience I might have been able to
fully do this with the patterns. But I found, and experimenting with the
patterns, mostly breathing, just as I begin to feel the pattern take a certain
hold, and then have a reaction, I would then clear the pattern with neutral
breath, and then immediately go back into the breathing pattern, so that
was almost, in my mind, almost constantly sort of pushing myself to the
edge of that and pulling myself back. So that my hope, and what I think,
was the achieved goal, was to place myself emotionally as if a very
precariously placed vase on the edge of a table where the scene and the
scene partner are responsible to cause the jarring that will knock the vase
onto the floor to break. I didn’t want to be broken before I walked into
the scene, I wanted the Baron to be so easily affected by Irina that this is
what I experimented with, and it seemed to work, it seemed to put me
into this position, again, of being precariously perched so that when she
would say those words I was allowed, as the scene partner, to actually be
affected by them much quicker and much deeper than had I walked on
just in a neutral state. (West 2009a)
West’s account is significant because he was able to incorporate Alba Emoting into the
preparation of his performance, even with the staging constraints of the performance
setting.
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Figure 11: Lai SimSim and Jeremy West. Photograph by Jen Burton.
Incorporating Emotional Access Work
As mentioned previously in Chapter 2, the contributory exercises in Astbury’s
Emotional Access Work, operate together in a series of stages: 1) under-reading the
scene, 2) anger run, 3) energy run, 4) physical exercises 5) return to the scene with
under-reading. We did this with each scene. For an example of some of these stages,
please see:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 6. Astbury’s Physical Exercises (Duration:

00:01:18)
When moving through the physical exercises the scene is under-read repeatedly.
However, it is then my responsibility to orchestrate the under-reading. That is to say, if I
observe the actor beginning to have a connection with the text, I will have the under-
reader repeat that line continuously so that the actor can explore or deepen that
connection. When I perceive that this connection has been explored adequately, I have
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the under-reader move on with the text. The exercises are usually brought to an end
when the actor has peaked. This is not an exact science, but rather based on my intuition
from my experience training with Astbury. As a caveat I should mention that I do not
always get the timing right; however, there does seem to be a natural crescendo. After
this crescendo, I bring the actors down to a whisper, cease the physical exercises and
allow the scene to wind down to a natural close.
I used this process for most of the scenes and monologues with the exception of
the scenes between Irina and Olga, and Olga and Masha from Act III. When it came to
working with Sozanska and Lai, there was no need to move beyond the energy run into
the physical exercises. When they started the energy run, they were immediately
making connections to each other and the text, responding with their whole selves.
Perhaps this was due to the fact that both actors shared a common actor training and had
worked together previously. In this instance, it was not necessary to push them further
at this stage. After the energy run, both actors responded positively to the experience,
citing two distinct aspects of the work. Sozanska reported on her surprise of the choices
that she made in the energy run:
It’s so unexpectable [sic]…so out of any…some phrase, or some

reaction, I would never consider, I would never plan it. She surprised me
so many times, it’s like being in a real story, I mean it.[…] It’s so… you
really want to react. (Beck et al. 2009f)
Lai was interested in the textual discoveries that she made about the characters through
the physical exploration:
But what we did just now, I found the relationship as sisters, much more
complicated than I did when I just read the script. Because when I read
it, it’s supposed to be, lots of love, […] but when I read it there wasn’t
hatred and jealousy, and I think with the anger put on that, I think it’s so
cruel, it sounds so nice “oh darling”, but it’s not, it’s exactly the
opposite, “I really hate you.” (ibid.)
Sozanska also made some discoveries about the character of Olga and her relationship
with Irina. In Act III, when Irina is describing herself as becoming ‘thin and ugly and
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old’ (Friel 2000: 63), Sozanska reflected, ‘when I’m Olga, I think [Irina’s] talking
about me. When she’s talking about who she will become, it’s me, it’s me’ (ibid.). The
experience also changed her initial impression of the character of Olga:
For me, as Olga, Olga is very supple, [but] actually Olga is very fragile
at that moment, and before I look at Olga as someone very tough and
cold, and maybe she’s hiding something inside, the disappointment, or
bitterness, but here, she is so fragile, exposed to every word that [Irina]
say[s]. (ibid.)
To watch the scene between Sozanska and Lai after the anger/energy run, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 7. Sozanska and Lai after Anger/Energy Run

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Figure 12: Zofia Sozanska as Olga and Lai SimSim as Irina. Photograph by Jen Burton.
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It is discoveries like these that the actors find when exploring the text on their
feet, that interests me most as a director. Many of the exercises from Astbury’s
Emotional Access Work, as well as the impulse runs in the Impulse and Awareness
Work, can be used similarly to Stanislavsky’s active analysis. In the drafts section of An
Actor’s Work on a Role, Stanislavsky discusses the discoveries that he and another actor
made while exploring a scene on their feet using active analysis. Stanislavsky reflects:
We needed logic and sequence in our actions and feelings, we had to

discover the truth in the [sic], create belief, the “I am being”, etc. But, to
do that, we didn’t sit at the table, with our heads in a book, we didn’t
divide the play into bits, pencil in hand, we got up on stage and did
things, looked into the facts, into our own nature to find what was
helpful. (Stanislavsky and Benedetti 2010: 68)
This may come as a surprise to those who associate Stanislavsky’s work with that of
sitting around a table, ‘dividing the play into bits’. He continues:
In other words, we did not analyse our actions coldly, with our heads,
theoretically but approached them practically, using life, human
experience, habits, our artistic and other kinds of flair, intuition, the
subconscious, etc. We looked for what we needed to fulfil physical and
other kinds of actions. Nature came to our aid and guided us. Look into
this process and you will find it was an inner and outer analysis of
ourselves as human beings in the life of the role. This process is nothing
like the cold, cerebral study of a role which actors usually take at the
beginning stages of work. [original emphasis] (ibid.).
While Stanislavsky is specifically discussing his technique of active analysis, there are
similarities between his work and Astbury’s in this way.
The next scene to be rehearsed in this way was the scene between Irina and the
Baron before he leaves to have a duel with Solyony. West and Lai responded positively
to the experience. According to West:
I was quite surprised actually, how quickly, and how easily accessible
everything was after we’d done the [physical exercises]. Yeah, I was
quite surprised how sort of everything was on the surface and you could
really… it’s like you are still in control, at least I never felt like there was
a moment where I was being led by my emotions, I was able to choose
the direction I wanted to go with the text, and how I interpreted the text,
at least at this particular phase in rehearsal, but everything seemed to be
sort of on the surface and it was like guiding a ship in the water, where
you don’t need much, you don’t have to force anything, you don’t have
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to push. […] It was freeing, because I could really listen to what my
scene partner was giving me to react to, and trying to really be focused in
the moment without having to think about technical stuff. (Beck et al.
2009g)
For an example of the final run of this scene after the exercises, please see:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 8. Lai and West after Physical Exercises

With the scene between Masha and Vershinin, the differences in the actors’
previous training backgrounds and philosophies came to a point of tension. Sozanska
found her first experience with the physical exercises useful:
I think that the exercises are very powerful. […] because on one side, it’s
activating my body, [….] I feel like I’m engaging fully with what I’m
doing. But also, it breaks that psychological barrier, by actually relating
to the pain, to the tension in my body. […] It’s excellent for an actor.
(Beck et al. 2009a)
Hetzler, however, disagreed:
On the one hand I see the usefulness if you are dealing with actors who
don’t have a sense of letting go, breaking through that psychological
barrier that we sometimes set for ourselves, especially on something as
intimate as this. […] For me personally, I don’t have that need anymore,
I’m not worried about it because I just get there. (ibid.)
Sozanska challenged Hetzler on his immediate dismissal of the physical exercises,
asking ‘Don’t you think that it helps you explore wider possibilities for you and the
character? And you act as you wouldn’t act with your experience. It’s like playing with
possibilities’ (ibid.). But Hetzler insisted:
The possibilities are always there, and this is what I’m saying now, is
that I’ve reached a point where I am free to go and do whatever happens.
That kind of, self-censorship I had when I started has gone away over the
years. Where I can come in and go and do it. I really don’t think about it
anymore. I do almost no homework. (ibid.)
This was Hetzler’s initial impression of the physical exercises, which only changed
slightly by the end of the process. It was in this moment that I perceived that these
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exercises could be regarded as an affront to an actor’s existing process. Hetzler then
raised a very important concern:
The thing that concerns me is, yeah, you get these really cool things that
happen, but they are so fleeting, because they happen with so much
physical intensity and emotional intensity, my concern for the actor
trying to find them again. Because you’re going to go away, and then
come back again, and there’s been this moment, and everyone wants it,
and go “Oh my God”, and you yourself might go “that was just an
amazing breakthrough”, but now you’ve got to bring it back. And in
performance, we’re never going to do that. […] I just wonder if there’s a
fear that comes from “can I get this again?” (ibid.)
I responded to Hetzler by explaining my view of the physical exercises, that they are ‘an
abstract exploration of all of the stuff that feeds into the complex natures of some of
what’s going on in the relationships between characters. The idea is not to look for it
again’ (ibid.) That is the answer that Astbury offers when asked the same question, and
an answer that I understood from my experience as an actor working with these
techniques. However, in this case I realized how ambiguous that response can be for an
actor, especially in contrast to the very specific vocabulary of the Alba Emoting
technique. Hetzler did admit that ‘possibly what could have damaged [him] going into
this’ (ibid.), was his internal ‘gaze’. He explained: ‘I found myself, throughout all of
this, examining it. Examining my reactions to it and having that extra set of eyes going
“oh, that’s really cool, let’s explore that the more”’ (ibid.) In a later interview Sozanska,
commented on the experience of the exercises with Hetzler:
He hold back, I felt he hold back a lot [sic]. He didn’t choose to go with
me, and that was, wow, a big discovery. And even now when I’m doing
with Eric the impulse run, it’s the same [sic]. [...] When I was playing
with SimSim [Lai], this energy would be shared. It would come from us
rather than just from me. (Sozanska 2009b)
From my perspective as a director, I would agree with Sozanska’s observation. If I
sense that an actor is ‘resisting’ the exercises (i.e. trying to control their delivery of the
text), whether consciously or unconsciously, I do not ‘push’ them further with the
physical exercises. Usually, and in the case of Hetzler, they begin to relax as the
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rehearsal process continues. To watch the scene between Hetzler and Sozanska after
the exercises please go to:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 9. Hetzler and Sozanska after Physical Exercises

In the second week, I began using Astbury’s physical metaphor, which works
similarly to the physical exercises, but using a physical representation of the character’s
experience. To watch a brief example of these exercises go to:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 10. Physical Metaphor Exercises (Duration:

00:01:50)
For the scene from Act III between Irina and the Baron (which was not included in the
actual performance), West was instructed to physically try and hold on to Lai, while she
was instructed to escape. West reported that:
…just repeating a certain line or a certain word, just physically holding

[Lai], it became exhausting for me […] so there is all this kind of
frustration and such being built up emotionally. […] I think perhaps it’s
applied well [here] because of their extreme difference in their
relationship. Irina is not in love with him and he is 100% in love with
her, and so that kind of contrast I think lends itself well to that sort of
physical exertion and pulling away. (West 2009d)
The idea behind the physical metaphor exercise is that the experience and memory of
that experience will be useful or inform the performance of the scene. Lai found:
…in that last run, I still had the memory, every line, every sentence that
he said it’s like he was binding me. And [I was] trying to escape […]
“What should I do?” He’s coming closer and it’s so frustrating, and I
suppose it is frustrating for Irina as well. (Beck et al. 2009c)
To watch the run to which Lai is referring, please see:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 11. Lai and West after Physical Metaphor
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In the final scene, when Masha must say goodbye to Vershinin, Sozanska was
restrained by other members of the group, but given the objective to try and get to
Hetzler, who was standing just out of her reach. Sozanska found the exercise to be
‘strong’ (Sozanska 2009c), and added ‘I think they can be strong for anyone who will
open to them [the exercises]’ (ibid.). But when discussing the exercise further, Sozanska
raised an important point. For Sozanska:
…it was such an intensive experience, that I couldn’t really connect it to

Masha. Actually, it was so strong that I […] forgot about Masha. Even I
would repeat the sentence. It’s so real, that situation, and the adrenaline
and the tension, so that, I feel like me. (ibid.)
This was a potential insight into the question of whether or not the ‘emotion’ involved
belongs to the actor or the character, which will be discussed in more detail in Section
IV. To watch the scene between Hetzler and Sozanska after the exercise go to:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 12. Hetzler and Sozanska after Physical

Metaphor (Duration: 00:03:54)
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Figure 13: Eric Hetzler, Zofia Sozanska as Masha and Lai SimSim as Olga. Photograph by Jen
Burton.
Another Astbury technique that I used in the rehearsal process was image
streaming, which made little impact on the group in regard to emotion. However, Lai’s
image stream is worth mentioning because she addresses an important point. Lai’s
image stream about Irina was very dark, including a gruesome wedding ceremony in
which Irina begins to remove her own fingers, and Lai admitted: ‘I’m surprised myself
with how I connect to this character. And definitely I found it related to me, and why I
have this connection’ (Lai 2009c). Lai then referred to past memories and how
sometimes a director would ask her how she connected to a character and ‘found it a bit
weird to share’ (ibid.) because the connection was ‘private’ (ibid.). With image
streaming, however Lai felt comfortable sharing her experience because:
…it’s just my imagination. It’s my imagination in this way, and it’s so

strong, and I find it really helps me to understand [Irina] as well. Because
the image for me, of the cupcake, of the wedding, the finger, pulling off
the fingers, is so strong, and actually when I rehearse these things keep
coming up. (ibid.)
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Sozanska, who has had training in butoh, was interested in exploring ‘what would
happen if [you] took the images and did a butoh-like exercise’ (Sozanska 2009b),
finding the exercise ‘excellent to catch some images to play with’ (ibid.). However,
Sozanska did note a difficulty with the technique reporting, ‘I felt very limited to what I
could say because of my language limitation’ (ibid.). As Sozanska’s first language is
Polish, there were some images that she could not accurately describe in English, so in
order to overcome this she would simplify the description. I suggested that if she
wanted to explore the technique further, she should record herself in her original
language, and then listen to what she discovers, rather than translating into English for
the sake of the actor writing down her image stream.
The technique of under-reading was used in conjunction with the physical
exercises and physical metaphor, but stirred strong responses from the actors as a
technique unto itself. Hetzler found under-reading to be a way of ‘short-circuiting a
week of rehearsal’ (Beck et al. 2009a), and expanded further in an interview that ‘you
have both of your hands, which is fantastic. What you can’t do any other way’ (Hetzler
2009c). Sozanska reported that ‘under reading helped me to connect better with my
partner. It takes the weight from thinking about the lines and how I should say
something’ (Sozanska 2009b). West reflected that under-reading allowed him to
…explore emotional relationship and scene partner connection, which I

greatly enjoy, being in the moment and being able to take whatever wave
of emotion, or impulse, or connections, that you have with your scene
partner, however valid they are for the scene, that we have these
workshops where you can just go with it, and someone else is feeding
you the lines, so it’s very freeing. And it allows you to discover things
about relationships, for me, I should say, it allows me to discover things
about a relationship and scene play and possible options for
performance. (West 2009c)
Incorporating Impulse and Awareness work
The aim of using the Impulse and Awareness work in rehearsals for excerpts
from Three Sisters, was to develop a stronger connection between the actors who were
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scene partners, in order to develop a ‘trust’ with one another, so that they were
comfortable and attuned to respond to their emotional impulses in performance. The
impulse and awareness sessions were specifically placed throughout the rehearsal
process in order to gradually build up to an ‘impulse run’, which also incorporates
under-reading and the Alba Emoting patterns. The first few exercises initially focused
on the actors’ attention, first on their own internal energy, the relationship with their
scene partner, and then opened out to include their awareness of the space. I each
instance I guided the actors through each exercise. For a transcript of an early impulse
run, please see Appendix B. Hetzler described an early impulse exercise as ‘really
intense’ (Beck et al. 2009b). He continued:
It starts out simple with breathing, and mirroring, and exercises we’ve all
done – part of acting 101 – but when you get in sync like that, and I think
the lack of eye contact […] you focus in even more, and I think you get a
much deeper connection. Because then when you do start to make
contact it’s almost impossible to break unless you have a really good
reason to. (ibid.)
To watch an excerpt of the exercise to which Hetzler is referring, please see:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 13. Excerpt of Impulse and Awareness Exercise

The impulse and awareness exercises can also serve as a form of active analysis. In this
particular exploration West had the following experience:
In some of the quicker moments, […] the quick impulses that [Lai]
would have, would naturally make me want to withdraw, instead of
responding back, I think because of where I’m discovering that the
character is in his relationship to her, but I almost get the feeling that he
has the kind of admiration for her that she could yell at him and beat him
in the face and do whatever she wanted to, and he would just stand there
and take it because he loves her so much. (ibid.)
West’s observation, in conjunction with the impulse work, prompted a similar
revelation about the play for Hetzler:
I think is something in the way the Chekhov wrote the men in this play,
because they are, for all of Vershinin’s love for [Masha], he still, until
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she does something, is kind of stuck. And then poor Andrey here… so
there is that kind of backing off. I felt that a lot too, until we started
getting a little deeper into it, and then we were a lot more in sync. (ibid.)
Hetzler refers to ‘poor Andrey’ because in the impulse work Sellman-Leava had to
work on his own, with an imaginary partner, and then tried to connect with the other
actors who were working in partners. I asked him what the experience was like, and he
responded, ‘difficult, because I was sort of having a connection to one person and then
have to go to another. And it was the two girls, it wasn’t the men really. I didn’t feel
connected to them, sorry.’ (ibid.). The impulse and awareness work was contributing to
the actors’ understanding of the relationships between their characters in the play.
Sozanska reflected that ‘when [Sellman-Leava] started crying I really felt like [his]
sister… all this love story developing, [referring to her relationship with Vershinin] but
my brother is crying’ (ibid.). At which point, Hetzler added:
The funny thing was, I couldn’t get mad at him, and I couldn’t get mad
at [Sozanska], so I had to walk away and kind of just stay with [her],
keep my connection, but thinking “God, that’s sad.” [Sellman-Leava]
looked really pathetic. (ibid.)
The impulse and awareness work was developed over the course of the rehearsal
process, and the actors grew stronger as a company, responding to one another, as the
process further developed. Sozanska commented that
…within the repetition it was more interesting as it become more

complex and we were more engaged in what we are doing and somehow
free ourselves and what we are doing, as a group. So I could see, and I
could sense the development of our group. (Sozanska 2009c)
Lai also noted a development in the group dynamic:
We’re getting together. There’s understanding, but we haven’t talked

about it. […] When I pose a question there will be an answer from
someone, for example my question is one action, or one gesture, or one
text [sic]. And I will get response from the other actors, which is
corresponding, really answering “answering”. That is very strong.
Particularly in the group impulse run. Before that day, I feel not so
together. (Lai 2009d)
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The impulse and awareness exercises were building to an impulse run, in which the
Alba Emoting patterns could be used and the actors’ lines were under-read. As impulses
can be emotions, the actor could choose the patterns because the patterns engage both
body and mind, they are not limited to being ‘conscious’ decisions, as they become
organic experiences. I will also include sounds or music from the text. In the case of
Three Sisters, I used The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II, as this piece of music is
featured in the play, as well as the sound of shots firing (from the duel between Solyony
and the Baron), as additional stimulus. Sozanska described the final group impulse run
as ‘excellent’ (Sozanska 2009c), maintaining:
I think we reached the highest level that we could reach as this group. I
think it was good, it was very playful. There is lots of playfulness, which
is always good, because then you search for more, and to give yourself
more opportunity. […] being with the group, it’s so supportive at the
same time because you get so much energy from them, so much
inspiration. You can come back to a pattern, I would come back to the
pattern, an Alba pattern, like the 3b [sadness] or 3a [joy], but it is not the
only way I would let my engine run and run, it rather would be the
connection with the partners which is great, always great. (ibid.)
To watch the final group impulse run, please see:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 1: 14. Final Group Impulse Run (Duration:

00:53:08)
However, Sozanska cited an important concern:
…it was so strong, the exercise, such intuitive work that [it] might be a
problem to come back to that experience. I don’t remember so much.
There are flashes, and my memory in some general feeling, but I even
don’t want to analyze the experience, it is just an experience. I’d like to
believe that it is somewhere in my body memory which will maybe help
me to play Masha. […] is it real that we have this body memory? It’s an
open question. By doing this kind of work can we go and play the scene,
such a realistic play like Chekhov, there’s so much psychology there.[…]
(ibid.)
Sozanska’s question will be discussed further throughout the dissertation. Hetzler found
the impulse work to be ‘very helpful’ (Hetzler 2009a), reporting that ‘it got me more
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physically engaged sooner’ (ibid.). The impulse work did not appeal to West, in
particular, who posed another important question about the character and the actor:
Where is the separation? Are we talking about impulse of character or

are we talking about impulse of the actor, because this dichotomy is
always in existence on stage. We want to try as much as we can to be the
character in the scene. (West 2009d)
This is related to Sozanska’s earlier question about whether the ‘emotion’ in the
physical exercises belongs to her, or the character.
Section IV: Findings
The performance took place on September 25th, 2009 in Thornlea Studio 1 at the
University of Exeter, and was accompanied by a short presentation about the rehearsal
process and the techniques used. To watch the full performance and presentation, please
go to:
• DVD Chapter 3, Disc 2: 15. Case Study 1 - Performance and

Presentation (Duration: 01:14:59)
My conclusions on the first case study are explained in regard to the questions raised by
each technique, followed by additional questions that developed from the research that
informed the second case study.
Alba Emoting
The actors were able to grasp the Alba Emoting patterns reasonably well
considering the limited time we had in which I could teach them. However, some of the
actors were still at a point where they have to consciously focus on the Alba patterns,
which limited the extent to which the technique could be applied practically to the
performance. In time, the patterns will eventually become integrated and will not
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require the actors to ‘think’ so much. But until that point, how useful is Alba in the
rehearsal process? As a director, it becomes a question of whether you take the time
necessary to train the actors you are using to a proficient level of Alba Emoting, work
with a company that is already trained in Alba, or simply use the knowledge of Alba to
help actors with particular moments by suggesting the appropriate breathing pattern,
facial expressions, or postural attitude to achieve a desired effect. Hetzler posed this
question in his concluding interview:
There is the “Well, do you teach [Alba Emoting] to them as a process as

you’re going, so every day you do maybe an hour or half hour of that, or,
if someone just has a block do you give them a breathing pattern? And in
some respects it might work really well from the beginning, because
when you are doing a sort of impulse runs after you’ve worked on the
text for a bit, and suddenly you’ve got this other grounding in these
patterns where they might recognize something occurring. (Hetzler
2009a)
To explore this question further in the second case study, I chose two plays. Based on
the requirements of the selected plays, one cast had extensive Alba Emoting training
over the period of four weeks, while the other only had an introduction to the technique.
Emotional Access Work
Overall, the actors responded positively to the emotional access work. With the
physical exercises, however, Hetzler reflected that, in his case, ‘some of [the exercises]
came too soon, because we hadn’t done enough text work to know who these people
were yet’ (ibid.) and suggested keeping the exercises, ‘but [to] maybe bring them in a
little later’ (ibid.) This was in contrast to Sellman-Leava, the youngest member of the
group, who found the emotional access work to be:
…the most useful out of all of [the techniques], just because I’ve never
worked that way and I think they are a really useful ways to connect with
text immediately. […] Astbury’s work, you know, it was straight away
from day one, we were able to just get, I don’t mean results as in, to
shortcut to something, because that’s certainly not what happened, but,
we were able to find something immediately that would have normally
taken weeks of rehearsal. (Sellman-Leava 2009a)
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It occurred to me that perhaps by immediately using the Astbury work, there is a
danger of making an assumption that the actors automatically need it, rather than
specifically using the work to address the demands of the text and the needs of the actor.
As a director, I use Astbury’s work to explore exciting possibilities of how the actors
can play with the text. However, the way in which Astbury as named his exercises,
especially in the case of ‘left-brain disabling devices’ may impact on how an actor
receives the work. The title implies that there is a ‘problem’ that needs to be dealt with.
The most important concern raised in regard to Astbury’s emotional awareness work
was the question: is it repeatable? Can the emotional experiences that surfaced in
rehearsal be incorporated into performance for each performance required? These
questions will be considered in the third case study.
The impulse runs were yielding fascinating discoveries and beautiful acting
moments, but these became lost when returning to rehearsals the following day. There
would be a gap, or a warm-up time for the actors to re-adjust to the stage space that was
to be used in the performance, from the freedom of using the entire studio. In retrospect,
rather than finishing each day with an impulse run, I should have returned to each scene
in its performance context. This would have been useful in order to bridge the gap
between the abstract explorations found in the impulse runs and the reality of the space
in performance context. This was reflected in the feedback from the actors as well. Lai
observed how ‘when we come to the performance setting I found […] a gap between the
work, the abstract work, and the performance’ (Lai 2009a). Other questions raised
included the distinction between ‘character’ and ‘actor’, with regard to impulses, as well
as emotion, which will be explored further in the following case studies.
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More Questions
Not all of my research questions could be answered through the first case study
on its own. However, the question about whether or not these techniques can assist a
director in unifying a common understanding of emotion within a diverse cast did yield
an answer: they did not. In this case study, the question itself was irrelevant. Despite
differing views on ‘emotion’ we were still able to achieve a cohesive working
relationship. But it had nothing to do with a shared understanding of emotion. Their
individual opinions on emotion played no part whatsoever in terms of how we related as
a company, or to the text. The question should be altered to ask: how can these
techniques assist a director in unifying a common working practice within diverse cast?
And further to that, is a definition for emotion even necessary if it does not affect the
rehearsal process?
There were several challenges in using excerpts from a play, rather than a
complete production. One was stylistic – the actors wore blacks rather than period
costumes, and we used a non-realistic set, which resulted in an ambiguity in the style of
the performance. Had we been beholden to produce the play in its entirety, there would
have been more period constraints, unless as a director I chose to take the play out of its
original historical context. In the instance, I did not make a specific directorial choice.
In this way I was not working with these excerpts of Three Sisters in the same way that
I would work on a script in the professional world. I decided that for the second case
study the actors should work on a play in a definite performance context without
ambiguity. Related to this, the actors should explore a full character journey, rather than
a fragmented one from lifted scenes. Lai commented on this as being a concern:
We’re not doing the whole play. So when it comes to the whole play, to
create the character, would […] with the work so far, there are so many
opportunities for exploration, then how we get them to one person who is
consistent, […] a character, full and complete, in a whole play? (Lai
2009d)
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Taking all these concerns into consideration led me to the conclusion that the
demands of the text and the needs of the actor should lead the rehearsal process entirely,
rather the techniques themselves. For the second case study, I chose to use two short
plays, in precise performance context: Play and Footfalls by Samuel Beckett.
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Chapter Four: Case Study Three: Play and Footfalls by Samuel
Beckett
This chapter presents the second case study, an investigation into the challenge
of emotion in performance through Samuel Beckett’s Play and Footfalls. Phillip
Zarrilli, a director and author of Psychophysical Acting, has done extensive work on
Beckett’s plays. Zarrilli writes:
What Beckett’s plays demand of the actor is not the creation of

characters nor the realization of conventional dramatic action as it
happens (unthinkingly) in the moment. Beckett makes special demands
on the actor—an attentiveness to an indeterminate necessary—actions
and words whose meanings cannot be foreclosed. (Zarrilli 2009: 115)
The purpose of this case study is to discover if any of the approaches to emotion
that I have chosen to research may be useful to the performer in achieving this
‘attentiveness’ and addressing the challenges of performing Beckett. This chapter is
divided into four sections. Section I: Introduction to the Acting ‘Problem’ of Beckett
explores the acting challenges of Beckett’s work and the methodology for the second
case study. Section II: Play specifically addresses Play, from rehearsals and
performance and subsequent findings. Section III: Footfalls focuses on the same for
Footfalls. Section IV: Summary offers some concluding thoughts on the ‘affect’ of
Beckett’s plays on the actor.
Section I: Introduction to the Acting ‘Problem’ of Beckett
The plays of Samuel Beckett (1906 – 1989) are notoriously difficult to perform,
especially his later dramatic works. Jonathan Kalb, in his book Beckett in Performance
insists that ‘[Beckett’s] dramas are not about experiences; they are those experiences
themselves’ [original emphasis](Kalb 1989: 3-4). The short plays I chose to work with
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are two of Beckett’s later pieces Play and Footfalls. Specific challenges to these texts
include the absence of psychological realism, working with the physical
restrictions/instructions put forward by Beckett, and finding the correct
musicality/tempo-rhythm of the text.
One of the primary challenges for many actors approaching Beckett is that his
characters are not necessarily driven by psychological motivations. Irina Jun, a Polish
actor who worked with director Antoni Livera on several Beckett plays, stated in an
interview that ‘Beckett should not be approached psychologically’ (Ben-Zvi 1990: 48)
explaining that ‘the actor is not expected to feel what he plays but to perform very
accurately what he is supposed to do’ (ibid.). Zarrilli, in his article “Acting at the nerve
ends’: Beckett, Blau, and the Necessary’, discusses some of the problems that arise
when working on Beckett: ‘[f]or students primarily trained in an American,
Stanislavkian-based realist approach to character acting, it is extraordinarily difficult to
“let go” of the seeming necessity of reaching conclusions about the subtext of each
action so that it is played motivationally’ (Zarrilli 1997: 106).
It is reported by many actors who worked with Beckett that he himself had little
concern for given circumstances, subtext or character motivations which were typical of
many naturalistic plays of the time. Nancy Illig, a German actress who appeared in
Play, recalls a rehearsal with Beckett where a cast member tried to elicit some
background information:
The actor of the Man desperately threw this question out into the
darkness of the auditorium: “Why am I dead?” The author seemed
startled. He made various suggestions. Maybe because of a traffic
accident? Or suicide? But mightn’t he have died a natural death in bed?
Obviously this question was not a relevant one for Beckett. […] The
only thing important to Beckett was the situation: we were all three dead.
(Ben-Zvi 1990: 24)
For actors who rely on delving into the psychological motivations of their
characters Beckett can be extremely frustrating.
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However, there is another way to look at this ‘problem’. As Kalb points out,
‘because Beckett is so reluctant to discuss the psychological motivations of his
characters […] his actors must work from external considerations inward’ [original
emphasis](Kalb 1989: 42-43). Kalb goes on to compare this phenomenon with the
James-Lange Theory of Emotion, where maintains that the physical changes can lead to
psychological ones:
The actor of a late role inhabits a given space, adopts a specific

physical attitude, as a self-sufficient activity because, for Beckett, that
physical predicament is the figure’s complete ontological condition.
Any psychological condition develops from the physical one – e.g.
kneeling but not sitting behind a cutaway urn and waiting for a
spotlight to prompt you to speech, or sitting on a high stool with your
head strapped to a backrest and completely masked except for your
mouth – and speech emanates from these bodily conditions, is a
vocalized aspect of them. (ibid.)
The physical ‘restrictions’ that Beckett puts forth in his scripts may actually help the
actors connect to the roles psychophysically. Another challenge, related to the physical
restrictions on movement, is how to keep the actor engaged with text. Zarrilli maintains
that ‘behind that apparent “inaction” is the blazing “flame” of an active, inner, vibratory
perceptivity’ (Zarrilli 1995: 197). The physical restrictions in Play and Footfalls will be
addressed in more detail later in the chapter.
Another potential obstacle to Beckett’s work is finding the appropriate
musicality or tempo-rhythm for each particular play. Many actors and directors who
have worked on Beckett discuss this element of his work. In an interview with Linda
Ben-Zvi, Billie Whitelaw, a renowned Beckettian actress emphasizes the importance of
finding the right score: ‘with these plays the music and tempos are essential. If you get
them right, everything else falls into place’ (Ben-Zvi 1990: 6). Irina Jun compares
Beckett’s plays to musical compositions, and also stresses that ‘an actor therefore has
to know and understand the work’s musical structure. It even seems to me that quite
often it is the way the text sounds that is more important than what it actually says or
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means’ (ibid.: 48). Delphine Seyrig, a French actress, finds that the tempo Beckett sets
helps unravel the ‘abstract’ nature of his plays reporting that ‘when you work with
Beckett, you find yourself regretting not having this almost musical education. It’s a
concrete, real kind of work that is quite distinct from the question of interpretation’
(ibid: 20). Finding the appropriate tempo-rhythm is potentially very challenging.
Methodology for Case Study Two: Play and Footfalls
As with my other research projects, this case study will make no universal
claims about the nature of emotion in performance; rather, it is an attempt to arrive at
better understanding of how the director might approach the question and nature of
emotion in a specific Beckett text in rehearsals and in performance. The methodology
used in this case study is qualitative, based on interviews with the actors, and
observations and reflections throughout the rehearsal process and performances of
Beckett’s Play and Footfalls. Unlike the first case study, which involved melding Alba
Emoting, Emotional Access Work and Impulse and Awareness Work into a complete
rehearsal process to elicit ‘emotion’, the techniques in this case study were primarily
reductive, experimenting with how they might be used to aid the actor working on
Beckett’s plays which are often described as ‘colorless.’ Also, I wanted to explore how
Beckett’s very specific instructions may affect the actor on a psychophysical level. For
that reason, unlike the first case study, I did not impose a process as such. For this
specific case study, I kept a running assessment of the problems/challenges that the
actors encountered in rehearsal, and then used the techniques in an attempt to overcome
them.
Section II: Play

Beckett’s Play was written between 1962 and 1963 in English, with its first
performance in German at the Ulmer Theatre in 1963. In Play, Beckett has three actors
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encased up to their necks in urns recounting their different sides of an extra-marital
affair from beyond the grave. There are three identified characters: w1, w2 and M.,
which presumably stand for Woman 1, Woman 2 and Man. There is also a spotlight,
which is often considered to be another role sometimes referred to as the ‘Inquisitor’ or
‘Interrogator’. Through the text it is implied that Woman 1 is Man’s wife, and Woman
2, his mistress. The three characters, in broken thoughts, recount their experiences with
the affair.
One of the most noticeably difficult tasks for the performers is that Beckett calls
for a ‘rapid tempo throughout’ (Beckett 2006: 307) as well as a repeat of the entire play,
with several options for variations including further increasing the tempo and the
addition of a breathless quality to the voices. His instructions to the actors performing
the roles consist of ‘faces impassive throughout’ (ibid.) with the further instruction that
their voices should be ‘toneless except where an expression is indicated’ (ibid.). There
are only three places in the script where Beckett does indicate expression, which include
the directions ‘vehement’, ‘hopefully’ (ibid.: 316), and ‘wild laughter’ (ibid.: 317).
Throughout the play Beckett indicates five different levels of volume on a scale from A
to E; A being ‘normal voice’ and E being completely ‘unintelligible’ (ibid.: 307).
Volume level C, which is in the middle of the range he describes as ‘faint’ and ‘largely
unintelligible’ (ibid.). In addition to these demands, Beckett is clear that the actors
speech is ‘provoked by a spotlight projected on faces alone’ (ibid.) and that the actors’
‘response to the light is immediate.’ (ibid.) He calls for a ‘single mobile spot’ that
‘should swivel at maximum speed from one face to another’ (ibid.: 318), expressive of a
‘unique inquisitor,’ rather than assigning a separate fixed spotlight to each individual
face. And last but not least, the actors should be encased in urns about a yard high,
either standing below stage level if trap doors are available, or kneeling throughout.
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Beckett adds, ‘[t]he sitting posture results in urns of unacceptable bulk and is not to be
considered.’ (ibid.: 319).
Rehearsing Play
The actors for this project included Symmonie Preston as Woman 1, an
American MFA student of the Staging Shakespeare course; Lauren Shepherd as Woman
2, a Canadian also studying Shakespeare; Callum Elliott-Archer, a British third year
undergraduate studying drama; and Joe Sellman-Leava as the Inquisitor, also a third
year undergraduate who participated in the first case study as Andrey in Three Sisters.
None of the actors involved had any previous experience with Beckett.
Figure 14: Lauren Shepherd, Callum Elliott-Archer, and Symmonie Preston in Play. Photograph by
Ben Borley.
Alba Emoting
The second case study took place over four weeks. This allowed more time for
intensive Alba Emoting training for the actors involved in Play. As Beckett insists that
the three actors’ faces should remain ‘impassive throughout’ (Beckett 2006: 307), my
decision to train the actors in Alba Emoting for this process was twofold. Firstly by
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increasing their awareness of the facial-postural-respiratory effector patterns, I hoped
the actors would be able to use Alba Emoting to eliminate any unwanted patterns that
might emerge when rehearsing Beckett’s text. Secondly, I suspected that specific
understanding of the breathing patterns could also be useful in the repeat of Play, in
which Beckett asks for a ‘breathless quality in voices from beginning of Repeat 1 and
increasing to end of play’ (ibid.: 320). Therefore the rehearsals for Play began with an
intensive week of Alba Emoting training. It was important that the actors had an in-
depth understanding of the technique, in order to apply the technique effectively to the
text. At the end of each day in this first week, we read through the text. The actors
would attempt to read the text ‘tonelessly’ as Beckett prescribes.
One of the first indicators that Alba Emoting would be an important tool in the
realization of Play, was at the beginning of the second week when we started doing
‘mirror-work’ with the Alba Emoting patterns. After the initial learning stage of Alba
Emoting, working in front of a mirror can be very useful for the actors, allowing them
to ‘see’ the patterns manifestations for themselves. To watch an example of the ‘mirror-
work’ please see:
• DVD Chapter 4: 1. Alba Emoting Mirror Work (Duration: 00:00:36)
I asked the actors to speak some of their text in different Alba Emoting patterns, in
which they could observe the pattern in themselves. For example, Shepherd observed
that when she laughed, she was mixing the 3a (joy) pattern with 2b (fear). I then asked
them to speak the text ‘tonelessly’ as they had been throughout the week. The actors
were surprised to discover how ‘emotive’ their attempt at ‘impassive’ and ‘toneless’ had
been. Then I asked them to speak the chorus using the ‘neutral’ pattern. Preston
observed ‘neutral is so very far away from what we’re doing when we’re doing it’
(Beck et al. 2010a) and noticed:
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[T]here’s definitely some 3b [sadness] coming in when we lower our
volume […] When we lower the volume, we lower our gaze, we all tend
to drop our shoulders a little bit more on the second time when we lower
our volume. […] And it does then start affecting the speech pattern as
well. (ibid.)
The most common patterns to mix in with their ‘neutral’ text were anger, fear, and
sadness. Some elements of the patterns were a result of the psychology inherent in the
text, and others a result of the pace of the text. Sellman-Leava, who was an observer in
this process, remarked that once the actors had gone through this process:
You could see the difference. A huge difference. […] And you were all
very present […] as performers, but there was a real distance that wasn’t
there before. It was like the words were just coming out, they were just
flowing. […] but … In the neutral the second time, after having gone
through the other patterns. […] It was almost like there was a separation,
but you were engaged as performers. You could see that it helped. (ibid.)
Alba Emoting, in the case of rehearsing Play, became a kind of via negativa.
Grotowski’s concept of via negativa is a ‘technique of elimination’, which rids ‘the
organism of its resistance to the psychophysical process of playing a role’ (Slowiak and
Cuesta 2007: 20). In this case, Alba Emoting was used to rid the organism of the
unwanted physiological traces of the emotional effector patterns. In Shepherd’s final
interview, she maintained:
[A]ll the alba emoting that we did, made me more aware of things that I
was […] layering on to something that wasn't there, just by my natural
body movements […]that gave me the tool to recognize that I was doing
something. (Shepherd 2010a)
The actors were effectively able to use the technique to remove any unwanted
physiological components of emotional effector patterns.
I used very little of Astbury’s Emotional Access Work for the rehearsal process
of Play, as the other techniques were more pertinent to the actors’ needs in the
timeframe that we had. In this instance, I did not feel that under-reading would be
helpful for embodying the text, given the technical demands of delivery of the text,
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which includes repetitions and cut offs. I did use the sequence of physical exercises on
a section of the script in the second week of rehearsal. Interestingly, in contrast to
Preston’s remark about the group impulse work, Preston pointed out that the physical
exercises allowed for an important ‘disconnection’, a contrast to how the physical
exercises operated in the first case study. When describing the exercise from
Bioenergetics in which the actors put their feet in the air and pull their toes down,
Preston remarked:
[The exercises] allowed us, for the first time, to sort of disconnect from
the personal relationships between those people, and the back story of
those people, and to have it become about the words – although the
feelings will always be there, there was a certain amount of release that I
think is key to doing these three people. And after that I think there was a
marked difference in our approach. And I do think it was because we
were able to make that disconnection through the process of going
through that. And it was crucial to the success of the piece. (Preston
2010)
The second week was focused primarily on Impulse and Awareness Work. In
Play, the actors would have to respond to external stimuli, the spotlight of the
Inquisitor, changes in lighting, changes in volume, and rhythm, so the impulse and
awareness exercises reflected these demands. Included in the text is a ‘chorus’ in which
Beckett indicates very specific overlapping rhythms (for an example see Appendix C).
Because Beckett indicates five different levels of volume in the text (on a scale from A
to E, A being loudest), the actors had to build a sense of coherency with one another.
One exercise had the actors on the floor with their eyes closed. Speaking the text from
the chorus, the actors had to adjust their volume in accordance with a change in the
overhead lights (as, in the script, the intensity of the Inquisitor’s light changes with the
intensity of the volume of the actors). The purpose was to develop and attune their
awareness of each other’s volume and respond to the changes in lighting; skills they
would need for the performance of Play.

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The most important impulse work was a set of exercises developed to assist
the actors with the challenge of working together as a company, and the order of the
lines. The technical requirements of Play almost demand that the actors, as well as the
Inquisitor, learn the entirety of the script, which is why I chose to use an actor to operate
the spotlight, rather than a technician. I started with a ball game, in which Sellman-
Leava (the Inquisitor) would throw the ball to the actor who was supposed to speak, and
the actor could not speak until he or she caught the ball. If a mistake was made in the
order of the text, the actor would throw the ball back to Sellman-Leava, rather than
speak. The point of this exercise was to help the actors learn their lines, and the order of
things, while working together as a company of four. It was also intended to condition
the actors to respond to the Inquisitor, rather than pre-empt their speech. Again, Beckett
insists that ‘their speech is provoked by a spotlight projected on faces alone’ (Beckett
2006: 307) and ‘the response to light is immediate’ (ibid.). For an example of this
exercise please see:
• DVD Chapter 4: 2. Impulse and Awareness Ball Exercise (Duration:

00:00:40)
For the most part, the actors found this exercise essential to the rehearsal
process. Elliott-Archer commented that unlike a typical rehearsal, where a mistake
would just be noted, the ball game was useful for highlighting problems:
[W]ith the ball it’s such a big gesture, you have thrown it to the wrong
person, you have taken a big break. This person has got the wrong thing,
so they throw it back and it’s like […] “okay, we need to work on this
particular section.” (Elliott-Archer 2010b)
Preston actually acknowledged that this exercise contributed to the actors’ task of
‘maintaining that score, and that pace, and showing you where it is that you may not
know exactly how long your rest is’ (Preston 2010). This exercise, however, requires a
different kind of concentration, and Shepherd found the ball game extremely frustrating.
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Although Shepherd was the first actor to be off book, and arguably knew her lines
more thoroughly than the rest at an early stage, she found it very difficult to cope with
this exercise, maintaining:
I really dislike that activity. I can understand its benefits, I can see its
benefits, but because I personally, just…I know my entire body tenses
up, I consciously am working against it, trying to make myself calm,
relaxed and open for everyone else and receptive to everyone else, that I
can’t pay attention to the actual activity of what we should be doing. So
I’m not making any connections because I’m so conscious of not
seeming closed off, because that doesn’t help anyone else. So I end up
focusing on making sure that everyone else is getting what they need,
and I’m not going to get what I need because the activity doesn’t quite
work for me. (Shepherd 2010b)
I suggested that Shepherd should try and use either neutral breath from Alba Emoting,
or the tenderness pattern, which lowers the heart rate. As the rehearsal process
continued, Shepherd became more confident and comfortable with the exercise. Other
uses of impulse work included impulse runs in which Sellman-Leava used a flashlight
to signal the speech of each actor, and also impulse runs that incorporated Alba
Emoting. Commenting on the impulse work overall, Preston identified two areas in
particular in which the group work contributed:
I think it helped to cement us more as a group, [and] to create some of

those relationships between husband and wife and lover, to sort of just
have that since we are all trained in such a psychological fashion. It’s
something that we could relate to easily and, therefore, then work
together. (Preston 2010)
While I had anticipated that the impulse and awareness could build a group relationship,
I had not suspected that the impulse/alba runs would contribute to filling in the
psychological ‘gaps’ that Beckett leaves for his actors. To watch an excerpt of one of
the impulse runs, using the Alba Emoting patterns, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 4: 3. Excerpt from Impulse Run with Alba Emoting

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Physical Restrictions
Beckett asks that the actors either stand or kneel within their urns. As a
company, we chose to have the actors kneeling. From the beginning of the rehearsal
process, even before the actors were off book, we would rehearse with them in a
kneeling position. We used music stands to hold their scripts, and pillows or yoga
blocks to support their knees. I would always alternate between running the play with
the actors kneeling or on their feet to alleviate the physical strain as much as possible.
The urns that the actors would be using for the performance were ready to use in
rehearsal by the third week. Elliott-Archer reported:
[R]ehearsing in [the urn] was incredibly difficult. […] You could feel the
time, and you could feel your knees, and you’re constantly trying to
work out where the best position is […] But when we did the […] actual
performance, I was kind of focused on other things […] I barely even
noticed that I was on my knees. Whether that is because of the audience,
or the fact that […] you’ve got to be focused and you've got to be
present. So during the performance it was absolutely fine. I could have
stayed in there for a lot longer. During rehearsals it was very difficult to
keep up the stamina. (Elliott-Archer 2010a)
It was also at this point in the process that we discovered the ‘fear’ that actors can
experience from the demands placed on them by Beckett’s text. In Psychophysical
Acting, Zarrilli shares an account from Jenny Karminer, an actor who had worked with
Zarrilli on The Beckett Project, specifically Play:
Throughout the rehearsal and performance of Play, my experiences

ranged from elation to sheer terror to claustrophobia to utterly
inexplainable [sic] emptiness…The terror I felt while in the urn was
virtually all-consuming. One night I wanted to get out so bad I thought I
would have to scream and stop the show, but somehow I just kept going:
I opened my mouth and the right words poured out. Every night I lived
in fear of forgetting my lines, and I dropped sweat as the light was on
Karen or Jeff, paralyzed with panic. (Karminer in Zarrilli 2009: 143)
Shepherd’s experience with the urn was similar to that of Karminer. Shepherd was
unable to complete a performance in the urn for four days of rehearsal, describing the
experience of being in the urn as ‘hot and claustrophobic’ (Shepherd 2010a). At first
Shepherd attributed this difficulty to illness, having experienced flu-like symptoms. The
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Inquisitor’s light would shine on Shepherd and she would freeze, (in the pattern of
fear from an Alba Emoting perspective), and then stop the run and abandon the urn. The
first time this occurred, we finished rehearsal for the day. For an example of this, please
see:
• DVD Chapter 4: 4. Shepherd and the Urn (Duration: 00:00:36)
When Shepherd was unable to complete a run the following day as well, I needed to
take action to resolve the issue.
Firstly, we had a half hour of ‘fooling around’ in the urns, taking silly pictures
of the actors. Sellman-Leava and I also took our turns spending time in the urns as well.
I usually try to avoid psychologically manipulative directing tactics, but in this case I
needed Shepherd to spend time in the urn in a relaxed state. When we returned to do a
proper run of the play, I thought we had achieved success. Towards the end of that run,
however, Shepherd froze once again. To try and assist Shepherd in her task of
performance I decided to use the techniques in order to address this problem, and I
asked the actors to do an Alba/Impulse run while in the urns. Because the impulse runs
last longer than a performance, Shepherd was in the urn for a period of forty-five
minutes (the running time of Play in performance is approximately fifteen minutes). To
watch an example of an Alba/Impulse run in the urns, please see:
• DVD Chapter 4: 5. Alba/Impulse Run in Urns (Duration: 00:01:01)
After four days of unsuccessful attempts of running the play straight through,
and two days before the first performance, Shepherd was finally able to remain in her
urn for the duration of the play. Shepherd later described her relationship with her urn
as developing ‘from hatred to love’ (Shepherd 2010a) and added ‘the more and more I
think about it, the more and more […] I'm convincing myself that I gave myself the flu,
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because I was having issues’ (ibid.). For Shepherd, the Alba/Impulse run was the
single most important part of the process:
I honestly don't think I would've been able to do it properly as much as I

have the heart to do it properly if I hadn't had that run. It was really
important for me because I was having such trouble. It was really
helpful. (ibid.)
Figure 15: Lauren Shepherd in Play. Photograph by Ben Borley.
In Performance
Play had two performances, the first on Tuesday, April 27th and the second on
Friday, April 30th 2010, as part of the academic presentation. To watch the Tuesday
performance, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 4: 6. Performance of Play - 27 April 2010 (Duration:

00:12:46)
The actors were nervous for their first performance in front of an audience and
consequently started the play too fast, at speed required for the second half of the play.
As a result, there was a slight hitch in the first half, when Preston paused in the light,
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and Sellman-Leava, as the Inquisitor, moved to another actor. Reflecting on the
experience, Preston remarked:
It was so fast, that when we got to the point where I had the problem, I
literally had not yet taken the breath, because the lines… there’s usually
a significantly longer amount of time, so I went to breathe in and I
wasn’t done breathing, and the camera was on me, the light was on me.
And then it went away, and I was desperate to get it back because of all
the parts that we could skip, that was one that was actually fairly…there
was a good deal of exposition in that particular line. (Preston 2010)
Luckily, the actors were able to regain their composure and carry on. Now aware of a
tendency to ‘rush’ in the presence of an audience, the actors were more readily prepared
for Friday’s performance. Preston pointed out the stress that can occur from being in the
urn:
When it goes wrong, there is a little bit of panic that sets in from being in
that position, where you can’t bring your shoulders back and you can’t –
where you’re sort of breathing in a [more] shallow place than you
normally would. (Preston 2010)
With this in mind, all three of the actors consciously used Alba Emoting patterns,
whether neutral breath or tenderness, to keep themselves calm and focused while in
their urns as the audience took their seats. The performance on Friday ran smoothly.
Unfortunately, due to operator error, the Friday night performance was not recorded. To
watch Friday’s dress rehearsal, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 4: 7. Dress Rehearsal of Play - 30 April 2011 (Duration:

00:12:46)
All of the actors involved in Play commented on physiological changes that
occurred in the performances. The following are a few of the actors’ accounts:
Preston: It felt like my heart was in my throat and it was racing, racing, racing. I
think we all felt the racing quality of it, and we were consciously trying
to slow it down, and it wasn’t until we got halfway through section 5 that
we were able to successfully do that. (Preston 2010)
Elliott-Archer: It was a little bit nerve-wracking actually. […] It’s safe to say that like
for the first half of the first round, I was, my heart was going, and I tried
to, you know…I relaxed into it and I calmed down and focused on the
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light, but it was a bit nerve-wracking. I thought it went really well
though. (Elliott-Archer 2010a)
Shepherd: [W]e came in and got and in our urns and everything, and people started
coming in and I was fine, and then the lights went out. And all of a
sudden like, my heart just… It was absolutely an unreal experience […] I
felt like my body was pulsating, like my heart was going to come out of
my chest. And somehow, I think it was to do with the adrenaline, we
were all so ridiculously fast. […] and so you are thinking a mile a
minute, and your lips are going a mile a minute, and […] I actually felt
like I was moving forward and you're completely stationary. It was just
strange. It was a very strange feeling. (Shepherd 2010a)
This led me to consider the affects of performance conditions on the performers
themselves, which will be discussed in more detail in the conclusion. But the actors also
experienced a ‘buzz’ (Elliott-Archer 2010a) from performing Play. Sellman-Leava
described this feeling as ‘a nice sense of achievement. I think because it's such an
exercise in presence, I feel there is more of a shared experience than probably a lot of
other shows that I've done’ (Sellman-Leava 2010). Elliott-Archer remarked ‘Getting it
right was extremely satisfying. And getting it wrong was seriously frustrating’ (Elliott-
Archer 2010a). As Shepherd pointed out, ‘It's an incredible play of multitasking’
(Shepherd 2010a).
Findings
Alba Emoting was extremely useful in rehearsing Play for several reasons.
Because Alba Emoting essentially isolates concrete physical elements of emotional
patterns, the actors were able to differentiate between patterns and able recognize when
unwanted patterns were mixing in unintentionally. The actors could observe in
themselves when certain elements of patterns such as fear, anger and sadness were
sneaking into their ‘impassive’ faces, or even affecting their breathing. With this new
awareness, the actors could deliberately eliminate those tendencies. This also helped
prevent them from being swayed by the emotion implicit in their lines of text. Preston
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reflected, ‘In terms of the delivery overall, I don’t know if I could do [Play] without
having done the Alba and do it as successfully’ (Preston 2010). Preston also noted:
I think it’s also been very helpful in terms of when you’re in it, doing it,
having done the Alba, to then notice more, “my brow was doing
something” or “my eyes aren’t on the horizon”, it becomes much more
obvious to the performer that that’s what they’re doing. (ibid.)
In this way, as with the first case study, Alba Emoting supplied us with an instant and
concrete vocabulary.
The biggest surprise about using Alba Emoting in relation specifically to
Beckett’s work is how it was used in another way—to keep the actors ‘present’ or
‘calm’. Sellman-Leava, who had the very difficult task of controlling the swiveling
spotlight, often used the Alba pattern ‘neutral breath’, which is a seventh pattern created
to neutralize the effects of the other six. He used neutral breath to keep focused and
relaxed, especially on occasions where he would make a mistake. Neutral breath
allowed him to stay present and prevent any emotional patterns resulting from
frustration or disappointment to interfere with continuing the difficult task at hand.
Sellman-Leava recounted:
Neutral breath has been really useful […] in terms of being present
enough to essentially be another performer with the three that speak, […]
to be present enough that there’s a connection when you move the light,
because there’s an impulse – it’s the impulse for them to speak, so it’s
not just moving the light when they speak, it’s actually – there’s a
connection. Neutral breath is really useful because it allows me to be
present. It helps me concentrate. If I get off track, or panic, if I go into
[…] 2b [fear] then it helps bring [me] back. (Sellman-Leava 2010)
Preston used very low-level 2a (eroticism) when the spotlight was off her in order to
release tension in the jaw, so she could enunciate at rapid speed, and to more
importantly to be able to take in enough breath before it was her time to speak.
I absolutely, when I’m doing it well, and I’m able to maintain the score
properly, I am breathing in 2a in between, in order to get enough air. It’s
imperative. Otherwise, if I don’t do that, you are going to see a lot of 1b
or 3b creeping in, you’re going to see - the jaw tightens quite a bit and
you’re going to get a lot more anger, a lot more…I don’t get much 2b,
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other than […] when it went horribly – fear, total fear. Panic, panic,
panic. (Preston 2010)
What also helped Shepherd achieve with her ‘urn issues’ was employing Alba Emoting
as a technique to control the involuntary physiological reactions that she was having to
the confinement of the urn and the fear of failure. Rather than simply apply the neutral
breath pattern from Alba Emoting, Shepherd actually began to use the 1a (tenderness)
pattern in order to decrease her heart rate. Elliott-Archer also employed the neutral
breath pattern in performance, commenting for Play, an actor must ‘remain absolutely
calm and just trust that when you open your mouth something’s going to come out’
(Elliott-Archer 2010a).
The group impulse and awareness work proved very important in developing a
group trust and connection as well as preparing the actors for the task of performance
through practice and repetition, especially for Sellman-Leava, who remarked:
[O]ne of the best things about last night is that we were really together as
a company. There was, I think, a mistake, or one or two mistakes, though
what was really nice, even though none of us are looking at each other
[…] there was a really nice sense, a real connection between the four of
us. There was no sense of like, “I'm really lost.” There was no […] deer
in headlights moment […] There was no panicking. […] we know if
there’s been a mistake but we also know how to move on, and recover it,
and not overcompensate for it, but just keep going. So that was really
nice, to know that that’s possible, that sort of connection is possible even
if you're not all sharing the same space as we are not, even if we’re not
all moving, we are all static, and not even looking directly at each other
but there still is that energetic connection. (Sellman-Leava 2010)
Elliott-Archer also attributed this ‘energetic connection’ to the impulse and awareness
work:
I think that really showed yesterday, all the work that we been doing,
you know with Joe and the ball, and sort of knowing who is next and sort
of like being able to string a few lines together, rely on a few things has
really really paid off. (Elliott-Archer 2010a)
Regarding the final performance, Sellman-Leava added, ‘last night we were able to stay
on the same track, and that's a place that we've got to through all of the group work that
we been doing’ (Sellman-Leava 2010).

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Figure 16: Joe Sellman-Leava as The Inquisitor in Play. Photograph by Ben Borley.
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Section III: Footfalls
Footfalls was written in 1975 and first performed at the Royal Court in 1976.
The play features the character of May, who paces in a dim corridor of light, and
Woman’s Voice, which comes from ‘dark upstage’ (Beckett 2006: 399). The
implications from the text indicate that the voice is possibly the voice of May’s mother.
Beckett gives very precise instructions as to how May should pace as she converses
with the Woman’s Voice:
Strip: downstage, parallel with front, length nine steps, width one metre, a little off
centre audience right.
L ____r l r l r l r l r __ R
 l r l r l r l r l
Pacing: starting with right foot (r), from right (R) to left (L), with left foot (l) from L to
R.
Turn: rightabout at L, leftabout at R.
Steps: clearly audible rhythmic tread.
(ibid.: 399)
As the play progresses, May’s posture goes lower and lower, and the lights grow
dimmer and dimmer. Billie Whitelaw, who originated the role of May, describes
playing the role as ‘physically excruciating’ (Ben-Zvi 1990: 9) saying ‘as one gets
lower and lower, to stand in that position becomes almost intolerable; it is almost as if
one is curling round slowly within, into oneself, until finally one disappears, spiraling
inward, inward’ (ibid.). In Beckett’s notes from the Royal Court production that he
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directed, he writes, ‘the walking should be like a metronome, one length must be
measured in exactly nine seconds’ (Brater 1987: 71). In the text, Beckett advises that
the actors’ voices should be ‘both low and slow throughout’ (Beckett 2006: 399).
Whitelaw’s advice to students working with Beckett begins with discussing ‘the
courage it takes to go slow, not afraid of being achingly boring, reciting like a
metronome, if need be’ (Ben-Zvi 1990: 10). Another challenge with this piece is
working out what the story is about—while the storyline of Play is relatively clear,
Footfalls is intentionally ambiguous. While in rehearsals for the Royal Court production
of Footfalls, Whitelaw asked Beckett if May were dead. His only answer for her was:
‘Let’s just say you’re not really there.’ (qtd. in Brater 1987: 60).
The actors involved in Footfalls included Elizabeth Pennington, from the UK,
who had just completed two years training with Phillip Zarrilli on the MFA in Theatre
Practice, and Helena Enright, an Irish actor/director/writer whose training consisted of
practical experience, both professional and amateur, in Limerick, Ireland. Pennington
played the character of May, and Enright played Woman’s Voice. Pennington had some
previous experience with Beckett on her course, as did Enright during her MA in Cork
when Zarrilli ran guest workshops. For both of them, this would be their first experience
performing Beckett’s work.
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Figure 17: Elizabeth Pennington in Footfalls. Photograph by Ben Borley.
Rehearing Footfalls
In comparison to the rehearsal process of Play, rehearsing Footfalls was
relatively simple. The first task when rehearsing Footfalls was to mark out the path that
Pennington would walk. Following Beckett’s prescriptive directions was more difficult
than we had initially thought. May’s continuous pacing consists of nine steps, ending in
a rightabout turn at Left or a leftabout turn at Right (what Woman’s Voice refers to as
the ‘wheel’) and should result in a ‘clearly audible rhythmic tread’ (Beckett 2006: 399).
While Beckett leaves extremely specific instructions, he can still be unclear. We had to
take his Left and Right to mean Stage Left and Stage Right in order to adhere to all the
directions throughout the play. This is the opposite side of the stage from the Royal
Court production that was directed by Beckett himself. Beckett actually changed the
direction of his turns in his own production, and in many cases took liberties with his
own instructions.
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Alba Emoting
While both the actors were given basic training in Alba Emoting, the technique
was not as essential to this rehearsal process as it was for Play. Enright reported that the
Alba Emoting patterns helped with ‘identifying certain emotions in this story that aren’t
necessarily psychologically obvious’ (Enright 2010). Enright employed a low level 2a
(eroticism) and 1a (tenderness) mix to help her find the voice of the mother and to also
strengthen her relationship to the character of May:
Like for example, tilting my head back, which is 2a, which is kind of
pleasure and eroticism, gave that sense of me being kind of… And
mixing it with a bit of 1a, tenderness, and tilting the head, and having it
back enabled me to put a strain on the voice, but also evoked a kind of
tender feeling. That tenderness. Because I was, I sort of tell the story first
[…] and that helped me kind of with that mother-daughter relationship.
Because we don't have a direct relationship on stage, it kind of helped
with that. (Enright 2010)
Pennington did not use the patterns in her performance, reporting that ‘for me, the Alba
was, it was there but it wasn't there’ (Pennington 2010a). However, there was a
recognition of components of the patterns that were occurring naturally within
Pennington’s performance:
Sometimes I would identify certain, you know, directions of the eyes, or

direction of lips, things like that, and I would wonder, because I was
automatically doing it when speaking certain lines, I would think about
why it was doing it. So that was interesting. (ibid.)
Though Alba Emoting was not as prominent in this rehearsal process, the technique did
inform our vocabulary, just as it had for Play and Three Sisters.
The Emotional Access Work was used regularly in this process. The anger and
energy runs between Enright and Pennington offered an exploration into the
complicated relationship that the character of May and her mother might have had.
Enright found the anger and energy runs ‘quite useful, just in terms of unlocking, or not
in a psychological way, just in terms of getting [the text] into the body and just letting it
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be free’ (Enright 2010). In a similar vein, Pennington found that the exercises
prevented her from falling into a strictly monotone delivery of the text:
[The physical exercises] made [the text] come out differently by using
different areas of the body or different psychologies behind it. So it was
good not to get stuck too early on, because even in the first read-throughs
I heard that, you know I was using the same intonations and things.
(Pennington 2010a)
The exercises also contributed to the actors’ sense of the story. At a certain point in one
of the anger runs, Pennington was stationary against the wall and Enright stormed up to
her counting (which are the lines from the text). Enright remarked that it ‘felt as if I was
trapping [Pennington] there, and that those steps, counting them, was trapping [her]’
(Beck et al. 2010b). To watch the moment Enright is describing please go to:
• DVD Chapter 4: 8. Excerpt of Anger/Energy Run with Enright and

Pennington (Duration: 00:00:35)
Another insight that Enright discovered came at the end of the physical exercises when
the actors were asked to ‘whisper’ their text.
It was nice to play with the different feelings that were coming out from
the text, that wouldn’t necessarily be there if you just kept reading it. In
the whisper one, when I was on my side, I got very much a [sense of]
tenderness, mixed with a kind of sadness. It was kind of an…almost
wanting to reach out to [Pennington]. (ibid.)
Enright also found the experience of the ‘legs in the air’ exercises, as the first step
towards discovering the placement of her voice for the role:
I found the stress in my voice when my legs were up in the air, and I
thought of, kind of, the age of the woman and how […] how it affects the
voice, the exertion of just living when you’re ninety years of age, if
you’re bedridden. (ibid.)
We also used Alba Emoting to help find a good placement for Enright’s voice.
I also used a Physical Metaphor exercise in which, Enright was limp, as a
lifeless body, while Pennington attempted to keep her upright, metaphorically trying to
keep the mother alive. Pennington described the experience to Enright, saying ‘It was
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like you died, and I was just trying to keep you going. I didn’t know what else to do.
By the end I just wanted to hold you’ (Beck et al. 2010c). After the exercise of lifting
Enright was complete, I asked Pennington to simply repeat her text, just in a sitting
position. Pennington commented that ‘I just let the words drop through me. Like I
didn’t try to put anything on them. […] It was the most powerful one for me’ (ibid.). To
watch the run of Pennington’s speech to which she is referring, go to:
• DVD Chapter 4: 9. Pennington After Physical Metaphor (Duration:

00:01:13)
In her final interview, Pennington pointed out an aspect of using the emotional
access work that I had not previously considered:
The [emotional access work] […] was a great way to break the ice with
me and Helena working together, and starting to have a dynamic onstage,
even though we don't speak to each other, I was very very aware of her
and the words that she was saying, and I felt very comfortable working
with her the whole way through, and yourself [Beck] […] And I think
doing those initial workshops break those boundaries down, get you
looking at the text without the pressure of having to say the lines from
memory. (Pennington 2010a)
Similar to the group impulse work used in Play, the shared experience of the sequence
of physical exercises contributed greatly to the development of the working relationship
between Enright, Pennington and myself.
As the text of Footfalls is already full of vivid imagery, I decided to use image
streaming. Despite Beckett’s aversion to offering psychological motivations or
background details about the characters, Enright highlighted a point that I believe to be
true for many of the actors involved in this case study, maintaining ‘for me it's
important even if there isn't a story to understand the story […] I have to find some
meaning somewhere,’ (Enright 2010), and added that this is true for her even when ‘it's
not necessarily that the characters psychologically driven’ (ibid.). Image streaming
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assisted the actors in gaining a sense of story, and for Enright the exercise added a
‘depth’ (ibid.) to her experience of the characters:
Well I got images initially of a bedroom, which is kind of light, a very

dark gray area, with light coming through, and I think that was directly
influenced from the text. And gave that kind of sense of the mother being
in the bed, like, to kind of care for her. But there was also a sense of kind
of a hauntedness [sic], that there were kind of things left untouched. […]
I saw a wedding ring on the dressing table, there were kind of cobwebs,
which these two people, or one of them, or both, could be ghosts. There
was a ghostly feel. (Enright 2010)
Pennington used images from the exercise to help her better understand and relate to her
character:
[T]he image of her walking outside her mother's bedroom, the pacing in
the corridor I think is quite an easy one to accept, it feels like the mother
potentially could be in the bedroom very ill, on her deathbed. Or she
could have died, and the daughter is still going. Or she's picking up this
routine despite the mother being gone, she doesn't know what else to do
because she's always been contained in this little house. And that's not to
add too much psychology to it, because it's quite an abstract situation
anyway, but there is a humanness to it that you can understand and relate
to. (Pennington 2010a)
Image streaming enabled the actors to connect to the story through a familiar process of
relating to characters and their situations, which was important to them even though
those connections may not be apparent to the audience once in performance.
Physical Restrictions
Footfalls requires the actor playing May to undertake a prescribed and measured
journey back and forth in a dim corridor of light. Given this, under-reading, just on its
own as a technique, was useful in that it allowed Pennington to begin rehearsing ‘on her
feet’ from the first rehearsal. Pennington described the use of under-reading as ‘just
fantastic’ (Pennington 2010a), for both learning lines and allowing freedom to explore
May’s walk from the beginning of the rehearsal process. To watch a clip of under
reading being used in this way, please go to:
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• DVD Chapter 4: 10. Under-reading with Pennington (Duration:
00:01:13)
I have not outlined a specific section addressing the use of impulse and
awareness work for this process, because the exercises in the particular case were more
subtle than previously and were linked extensively to the demands of Beckett’s script.
The actors had to develop an awareness and connection with each other in relation to
the conditions of the performance space. We were fortunate to have the both the
performance space and Beckett’s prescriptive lighting state set more than a week before
the actual performance. This allowed the actors to develop a connection with each other
and the space, as it would be in performance, very early on in the rehearsal process. In
one exercise, I used a metronome to regulate tempo as the pace of the play slowed
down. But for the most part, the actors developing their awareness under the
performance conditions of Footfalls was one of the most important tools. In
Pennington’s case, just experiencing the prescribed footfalls produced a psychophysical
effect on her. The physical pacing caused Pennington to feel what she described as
‘sadness’ and in some cases ‘fear’.
I get tears every time I do it, and it's not that I'm crying, but there is
something coming out to me. […] for me, it's this containment, you
know, because you are holding your body so tight, and the shifting of
focus is very simple, and the eyes don't blink very much, and
everything's just under the surface, and you are so controlled, the
emotion has to come out somewhere, and I think it comes out of the
eyes. And also because you are not really lit, it's almost like it's safe to
squeeze it out. (Pennington 2010a)
The actors also had to adapt to the physical distance between them, as Enright had to be
in upstage darkness. The distance between the two performers in those performance
conditions also had a profound impact on Pennington:
[T]he mother's words are most poignant for me. When I'm just standing
there listening to the voice, I feel I'm listening to her talk about me, and
then the conversation, I feel like I'm interacting with her at that point.
That's the most emotional section for me. (ibid.)
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Performance and Findings
Footfalls had two performances, the first on Tuesday April 27th, and the second
on Friday April 30th 2010. To watch the Tuesday performances please go to:
• DVD Chapter 4: 11. Performance of Footfalls - 27 April 2010 (Duration:

00: 33:58)
Both performances ran smoothly, although Enright made a small line mistake in the first
performance, which she described as ‘quite scary’ (Enright 2010). Enright explained:
[B]ecause, I didn't look at Liz, so I'm relying an awful lot on aural

[senses], to hear the steps. […] So as she's walking, I'm conscious of her
walking, and I was coming back having to say steps in time with her,
count the steps, and my brain just went into “will you never have done
revolving at all”, and as I said it I had a momentary “no!” […] it was like
so important not to drop focus. (Enright 2010)
Enright also discussed the challenge of playing Woman’s Voice as ‘very intense’
(ibid.), adding:
[T]here is a pressure once you kind of find that voice to be able to

maintain that voice throughout the piece. Because when you go silent
again, there is a fear sometimes that that voice won't come out again.
(ibid.)
Enright was able to effectively keep ‘the voice’ that we had found in rehearsal for the
performance, using the head tilt and deep breathing that she found useful with Alba
Emoting.
Pennington felt that both the performances went well from her perspective,
which I agree with. Pennington further reflected:
[W]ith the audience came a level of focus which I was pleased was there,
because it's not always there, you can be ready to perform but then
something kind of pulls you out of it, so last night it was good. It
worked. And I didn't really notice people shifting, so I must have been,
in the zone. (Pennington 2010a)
All of the actors involved in this case study achieved a level of focus or being ‘in the
zone’ in their performances. Elliott-Archer, also had a similar experience to Pennington:
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[I]t's kind of strange like you have to get into a certain kind of focused
Zen in which like, it is focusing about the timing and the musicality and
the rhythm, the diction, your enunciation of it, and you know, you barely
recognize the words that you’re saying. (Elliott-Archer 2010a)
After the second performances of Play and Footfalls, I gave a presentation on the
rehearsal process. To watch the presentation after the performances, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 4: 12. Case Study 2 - Presentation (Duration: 00:37:33)
The findings for the process of Footfalls are not as clear as those for Play.
Before the performance, but a week after working with the lighting, Pennington
remarked:
I feel like following Beckett to the word, not trying to put anything else
on to it, it’s actually all there for me. […] I feel like I’m just channeling
it. I’m not trying to do anything with it, I’m just trying to keep my voice
low, keep the pace slow, remember where the pauses are, and when I do,
it works. Sometimes if the pauses aren’t long enough it’s not as
powerful. So I feel really proud of it but I don’t feel like I have a right to
be proud of it, because I don’t feel like it’s necessarily my doing. I feel
like the writing’s really strong. And I didn’t really see that before.
(Pennington 2010b)
I am in agreement with Pennington here. While we found some of the techniques very
useful to the process of realizing a production of Footfalls, simply following Beckett’s
instructions for the lighting, the rhythm of the text, and the movement of the pacing,
were the most important factors for the success of the performances.
Section IV: The ‘Affect’ of Beckett’s Plays on the Actor
Phillip Zarrilli, in his book Psychophysical Acting, insists ‘Beckett appears to
require the actor to overtly do less; however, what Beckett demands is that the actor
does more’ (Zarrilli 2009: 123). I found this to be especially true for the actors involved
in this case study. Previously, I was trying to examine ‘emotion’ in rehearsals and
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performance independently of any ‘emotion’ that the actor may have to the rehearsal
process or the performance itself. This project has revealed that these phenomena are
more interlinked than I had considered. In his article ‘Playing Play’, W. B. Worthen
comments that ‘Beckett casts his actors as automata, sharply limiting the bodily
expression that locates the actor’s authorizing “presence” within the performance. […]
instead of affirming a Stanislavskian “I am,” their performance nearly reduces them to
“not I.”’ (Worthen 1985: 406). When asked if the experience of performing Beckett had
affected the actors as individuals, Elliott-Archer responded:
It does have a phys - an emotional response. And when you kneel and it's
like, it's time, and that light comes on […]. You can feel the light on your
shoulders, and the light sitting on there, it’s very intense. (Elliott-Archer
2010a)
It is interesting to note here that Elliott-Archer began to say ‘physical’ response, and
then chose the word ‘emotional’. The words that appeared most frequently in the actors’
testimonies included ‘intensity’, ‘fear’ and ‘exhaustion’. As Pennington reflected:
[W]hen you finish, you are exhausted. You don't realize how tired you
are when you are out there because of the adrenaline, but there is an
energy that keeps you going, and the need to keep walking as well is
quite useful. But when you stop, I mean, I think holding the body as tight
as I do, whether it is conscious or not, because like, I can't let it go,
because it doesn't have the same impact on the voice or the emotion I
feel, so it's draining when you stop. But I think because it is so
monotonous and lonely and isolated and contained, it feels like there is
an emptiness inside you. (Pennington 2010a)
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Figure 18: Elizabeth Pennington in Footfalls. Photograph by Ben Borley.
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Chapter Five: Case Study Three: Less Than a Year by Helena
Enright
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the rehearsal process and performances
of Less Than a Year by Helena Enright. This research project is the third of three case
studies intended to gain a clearer insight into the nature of emotion in Western
performance, specifically in relation to a particular dramaturgy. In this project, I
incorporated Alba Emoting, Emotional Access Work and Impulse and Awareness Work
throughout the rehearsal process on a documentary play, specifically using a Verbatim
text. The play used in this case study is Less than a Year by Irish playwright Helena
Enright and was created from the transcript of an interview with a couple who lost their
teenage daughter to cancer. Section I: The Acting ‘Problems’ of Verbatim Theatre
discusses the acting problems that arise from working with this particular kind of text.
The second section addresses the set-up and methodology while Section III: Less Than
a Year in Rehearsals and Performance analyses the rehearsal process and
performances. The final section offers concluding thoughts on the case study.
Section I: The Acting ‘Problems’ of Verbatim Theatre
The term Verbatim Theatre is attributed to Derek Paget (1987). After a
discussion with playwright Rony Robinson, Paget defines Verbatim Theatre as ‘a form
of theatre firmly predicated upon the taping and subsequent transcription of interviews
with ‘ordinary’ people’ (Paget 1987: 317). More recently, Hammond and Stewart in
Verbatim Verbatim (2008) clarify that ‘the term verbatim refers to the origins of the text
spoken in the play’ (Hammond and Steward 2008: 9). Elaborating further on Paget’s
original definition, they add:
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The words of real people are recorded or transcribed by a dramatist
during an interview or research process, or are appropriated from
existing records such as the transcripts of an official enquiry. They are
then edited, arranged or recontextualized to form a dramatic
presentation, in which actors take on the characters of the real
individuals whose words are being used. (ibid.)
In some cases, the actors involved are actually part of the process of
interviewing the 'real' subjects, while other times the interviews are conducted solely by
the writer or director, or a combination of both. Current practitioners often associated
with Verbatim Theatre include: Robin Soans (author of Life After Scandal [2007],
Talking to Terrorists [2005], The Arab-Israeli Cookbook [2004]), David Hare (The
Permanent Way [2003]), Alecky Blythe (The Girlfriend Experience [2008], Come Out
Eli [2004]), Anna Deavere Smith (Twilight [1992], Fires in the Mirror [1992]), Emily
Mann (Anulla Allen [1997], Execution of Justice [1986]), Jessica Blank and Eric Jenson
(The Exonerated [2005]) as well as directors Max Stafford-Clark (Out of Joint) and
Nicholas Kent (Tricycle Theatre).
Verbatim Theatre is a form of documentary theatre. One of the practitioners
often associated with developing an early documentary form is Erwin Piscator. In an
essay on ‘Objective Acting’, Piscator observes that this new theatre ‘required a new
actor’ (Piscator 1974: 304). He continues:
I could no longer use the classic declamatory actor—in love with his
voice and uninterested in what he said, but only in how he said it.
Neither could I accept the Chekhovian actor, hypnotizing himself behind
the “fourth wall.” (ibid.)
While Verbatim Theatre differs slightly from the form from which it developed,
Piscator’s observation is still relevant. A recurring theme in the literature surrounding
Verbatim Theatre is the challenges that it presents to the performer.
Few sources specifically focus on the challenges of acting Verbatim Theatre,
with the exception of a few reflections by actor Bella Merlin who performed in Hare's
The Permanent Way (2007, 2008) and several interviews in Playing for Real: Actors on
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Playing Real People (Cantrell and Luckhurst 2010). However, within the budding
literature on Verbatim Theatre in general, many clues and observations about the
potential challenges of performance have emerged. Several points that I have identified
include: 1) A different structure or ‘shape’ than traditional plays; 2) Direct address with
the audience; 3) Requires ‘not-acting’ rather than ‘acting’; 4) Performances can be
creatively restrictive; 5) Use of vernacular speech, rhythms, ‘ums’ and ‘errs’ 6) Finding
the ‘essence’ of the character rather than mimicking; and 7) Use of emotion in the
performance. In addition to these technical challenges are the added ethical
implications/responsibility of the actor playing a ‘real person.’ While I will attempt to
discuss each of these challenges individually, it must be noted that many of these issues
are intertwined.
Robin Soans, an actor as well as a Verbatim playwright, describes Verbatim
Theatre as ‘a particularly nerve-wracking form of theatre for the actors’ (Soans in
Hammond and Stewart 2008: 21). After working as an actor on Waiting Room Germany
(1995) at the Royal Court, Soans’ observations on the differences between acting in
Verbatim and non-Verbatim plays are as follows:
Most performances have a geographical as well as an emotional and

psychological shape: ‘This is where I amble to the sideboard, laugh in a
cavalier fashion, and pour myself a brandy.’ There was none of that here.
In Waiting Room Germany we spent most of the time sitting on chairs at
the front of the stage talking to the audience. (ibid.)
With Verbatim Theatre having a particularly unique (or even being devoid of)
'geographical, emotional and psychological shape', many actors find the genre
particularly difficult, especially the convention of direct address with the audience.
Soans concludes that in Verbatim Theatre, ‘the principal skill required of the actor
remains that of a storyteller, and his or her key relationship is with the audience’ (ibid.).
In Playing for Real: Actors on Playing Real People, Diane Fletcher, who played
Claire Short in Called into Account (2007), describes the experience as ‘terrifying’
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(Cantrell and Luckhurst 2010: 71) and maintains that this kind of work requires an
incredible amount of concentration: ‘[i]f you let your concentration waver at all, you
were lost and you couldn't act your way out of it. You couldn't invent; you mustn't
invent.' (ibid.) Chipo Chung, an actor in Talking to Terrorists (2005), explains that one
of the challenges of using direct address (as opposed to conventional 'fourth wall'
drama) is that 'as you're not acting opposite someone, you don't have their energy to use
in a dramatic exchange' (ibid.: 57-58). Finding and maintaining the energy, focus and
discipline required for Verbatim Theatre is similar, as Soans points out, to the task of a
storyteller. According to storyteller Michael Parent, the storyteller 'remains a vehicle for
the story and the audience remains a depository for it, and the storyteller in particular
must not allow his/her artistry or ego to get in the way of it' (qtd. in Wilson 2006: 84).
Among Verbatim Theatre practitioners, there is an emerging debate about the
actor’s task. Nicholas Kent insists that ‘for actors it’s not like being in an ordinary play’
(Kent in Hammond and Stewart 2008: 155) and this is commonly reported throughout
the literature. Kent attributes this difference to the content of the work, as most
Verbatim plays tend to tackle a specific event, social or political phenomenon, or
moment in history:
[The actors] know they’re taking part in something that is to some extent
‘history’, so they come with such a commitment to the truth and the
project that the minute anyone sees anyone else acting, everyone knows
– so no one acts; it’s like there’s an unwritten pledge that in no way will
anyone do anything for effect. So the atmosphere is very restrained.
(ibid.: 155-156).
In Kent’s observations, two points stand out in particular; a distinction between acting
and 'not' acting, and the idea that performances must be 'restrained'.
This idea of ‘restraint’ is discussed frequently by actors involved in Verbatim
Theatre. Chung describes documentary theatre as a form that 'calls for more restraint in
one's acting’ and refers to Talking to Terrorists as ‘in many ways the most restrictive
play I have ever been in’ (Cantrell and Luckhurst 2010: 57). According to Chung:
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…the less outward theatricality you display, the more you serve the
representation of the person you are playing. It is harder work, less fun
than fiction definitely, and very exacting. There's a very high level of
focus and concentration (ibid.: 58).
Actor Alwyne Taylor, who appeared in When Can I Have a Banana Again (1982) at the
Derby Playhouse, warns:
You can give too much to a speech. People say something very serious
and moving – they’re not crying! They might be crying inside. But it’s
meant – it comes from the gut. You give too much and the audience
doesn’t have to work, or has to shy back…There’s an awful lot to
learn…particularly how to underplay. [original emphasis] (qtd in Paget
1987: 332)
The other idea that recurs in actors’ experiences with Verbatim is the idea that 'less is
more'. Chung, under the direction of Max Stafford-Clark, reveals 'the general acting
note was less, less, less, to make it as super-real as possible. There was no room for
thespian enthusiasm and largesse' (Cantrell and Luckhurst 2010: 58). Merlin’s
observation of her colleagues in The Permanent Way (also directed by Stafford-Clark)
was that ‘the more simple the acting style and the less cluttered the physical vocabulary
or the vocal colouring, the more deeply moving the performances could be’ (Merlin
2007b: 48). This raises the question then of how difficult is it for an actor to do ‘less’,
to adopt a ‘simple’ acting style, and, paradoxically, ‘not’ act?
Another challenge with Verbatim Theatre is the language that is used in the
texts. Unlike a wholly imagined play where a playwright is dictating the rhythm of the
piece, in a Verbatim text (although edited and crafted by a writer) the language and
rhythm are dictated by the interviewees whose testimonies have provided the source
material. Robinson believes ‘there has to be in the process for actors a realization of the
differentness of the material’ (qtd in Paget 1987: 330) and it is necessary for the actors
to have ‘recognition that the way in which people talk, the repetitiveness, the stumbling,
the oddity, is something that if they want to get…to make the verbatim stuff work on
stage, they’ve got to acknowledge’ (ibid.) Different Verbatim practitioners address this
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problem in different ways. Alecky Blythe, founder of the theatre company Recorded
Delivery, also believes that ‘it is the actor’s instinct to perform: to heighten, to try to
make their lines ‘more interesting’ in an effort to project their character and make the
person they are playing seem real.' (Blythe in Hammond and Stewart 2008: 81-82). To
overcome this tendency, Blythe uses the recorded testimonies in performance so that
the actors are actually listening to the real person through a headset as they deliver the
text in performance. For Blythe, relying on the actor's 'instinct to perform' when
working with everyday speech 'is not the best approach, because everyday speech is
often more mundane and ‘everyday’ than anyone dares to invent. This is what gives it
the ring of truth’ (ibid.: 82). Soans purposefully chooses to retain many of the ‘ums and
ers, the stutters and repetitions' (Soans in Hammond and Stewart 2008: 41) in the play
to ‘highlight’ when ‘interviewees becomes very emotional’ (ibid.), a potentially useful
clue for actors trying to navigate his scripts.
Yet another challenge that arises from this type of work is ‘impersonation’,
which according to Paget ‘is very far from the aims of Verbatim Theatre’ (Paget 1987:
330). Many practitioners claim that mimicry is not part of the process. Stafford-Clark
insists that ‘you’re not doing impersonations of these people, but you are trying to
capture their spirit in some way’ (Hare & Stafford-Clark in Hammond and Stewart
2008: 65). Paul Makeham, an actor in the Australian production of Aftershocks, is clear
that the actors involved made ‘no attempt to mimic the story-tellers – the actors’ job
here is more to demonstrate than to impersonate' (Makeham 2005: 77). How then, is the
actor supposed to achieve this?
Anna Deavere Smith believes she can ‘learn to know who somebody is, not from
what they tell me, but from how they tell me’ (qtd. in Martin 2002: 338). Smith
prepares for her performances by rehearsing with the original recordings from the
interviews although she does not use the recordings in performance as Blythe does.
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Through repetition she maintains that the words ‘make an impression on [her] body
and eventually on [her] psyche’ (ibid.). Her ultimate goal is to ‘become possessed, so to
speak, of the person’ (ibid.).
Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen have found a similar power in the actual words
without using the audio recordings to aid the actors. While working on The Exonerated,
they witnessed a strange phenomenon:
...the actors started to “channel” the real people whose words they were
reading. […] We were shocked to find that, even without any outside
input, the actors spoke and looked and moved almost exactly like the
exonerated folks whose words they were reading. Different actors read
the roles each day, the actors themselves as diverse in looks and
mannerisms as you could imagine. But as soon as they picked up the
pages and started reading, they all talked and moved just like Kerry or
Robert or Brad. The first couple days, we ascribed this phenomenon to
chance. But as we saw it happen over and over, without any special
effort on the part of the actors, we realized it was coming out of the
words. (Blank and Jensen 2005: 187-188)
It was this discovery that made the authors acknowledge ‘just how much our
psychology is contained in our speech’ (ibid.: 188).
The question of emotion in Verbatim Theatre also appears frequently in the
literature. Merlin, when writing about her experience playing the Second Bereaved
Mother in Hare's The Permanent Way maintains ‘the challenge to us as actors […] was
to present the “emotion recalled in tranquility” without the playing style seeming
inappropriately effortless or internally unconnected’ (Merlin 2007b: 46). Taylor’s
observation is consistent with Merlin’s idea of 'emotion recalled in tranquility', insisting
that ‘when people get upset in an interview, it’s not adrenalin-upset, like actors – it’s
emotional memory' (qtd in Paget 1987: 332). It is interesting that Taylor uses a
reference to actors when discussing ‘adrenalin-upset’, another implication that in
relation to this work the emotion can easily be overplayed. Chung, based on her
experiences in both Talking to Terrorists and Fallujah (2007), notes how 'in
documentary in general, you have to use a much more controlled emotional spectrum’
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(Cantrell and Luckhurst 2010: 58). Her observation suggests that when working with
this type of text actors must recognize a different kind of ‘emotion’ and the idea that it
needs to be ‘controlled’. Merlin also makes another intriguing observation of her
experience performing:
I, as an independent individual, had to 'get out of the way' of the

character's words; there was no room for my own emotional response.
To replicate technically my observation of the mother's breakdown –
when to hesitate, when to falter, when to crack my voice – was the
required acting strategy. Any emotion, any tears, had to be her emotions,
her tears, and not my pity suffered on her behalf: it was a subtle, but
significant nuance. [original emphasis] (Merlin 2008: 134)
Merlin here is implying that working on a Verbatim text required a different use of
‘emotion’ than her experience of working on other play texts. Later in the article she
even describes her acting as ‘Brechtian’ (ibid.). Does Verbatim Theatre require a certain
‘distancing’ from the performer that other genres do not? This case study will attempt to
address some of these issues.
Section II: Methodology and Set-up of Case Study Three
Aside from shedding light on my primary research questions about the nature of
‘emotion’ in performance, this specific case study also attempts to answer some
secondary questions based on the experiences of the particular actors involved, i.e. how
they interact with excerpts from a particular text, and their experiences with three
particular techniques as introduced to them by a particular director/researcher. The
research questions guiding this particular case study include the following: What do
these three theories/training techniques reveal about the nature of emotion in Western
performance when put into practice specifically on a Verbatim text in relation to its
demands on the actor? How do these revelations compare to the other dramaturgies in
the previous case studies? And how can these techniques be used to aid the actors as
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they face the challenges presented to them by Verbatim Theatre, not only in rehearsal,
but also over the course of a run of six performances?
Again, as with my other research projects, this case study will make no
universal claims about the nature of emotion in performance; rather, it is an attempt to
arrive at a better understanding of how the director might approach the question and
nature of emotion in a specific Verbatim text in rehearsals and in performance. The
methodology used in this case study is qualitative, based on interviews with the actors,
and our observations of the rehearsal process and performance, which will be filmed
and documented, and evaluated and reflected upon throughout the process and the
performances. In the first case study, I used excerpts from Three Sisters by Chekhov.
While a useful study for my research, having the actors only work on sections of the
script made it difficult to calculate how these techniques would work on a full character
journey. In the second study, I used two short plays (Beckett's Footfalls and Play) in
their entirety rather than excerpts to build on from the first research project. In this third
case study there are six performances of the play. The aim of this was to allow the
actors to have the experience of exploring what happens to the 'emotion' over the course
of a run of performances as well as performing in different performance spaces.
Less Than a Year by Helena Enright
The play Less Than a Year by Helena Enright was written for Enright’s master’s
degree in Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Cork in 2005. The play was
created from the transcripts of recorded interviews conducted by Enright in 2004 with
an Irish couple whose teenage daughter died of cancer. While ‘[t]he play centres on the
true story of a young teenager who died of a form of cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma’,
Enright reminds us that ‘[t]he story is told in the words of the parents and is their
version of what happened from the time of their daughter’s diagnosis to her death’ [my
emphasis] (Enright 2005: 49). I point this out because in the theatre industry there has
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been much debate about the idea of ‘truth’ in Verbatim Theatre. From my perspective,
Verbatim Theatre allows the audience to take the place of the interviewer and listen to
the stories presented, as they were told to the original interviewer. As for truth, the
‘truth’ present in Verbatim Theatre is that the words spoken really were
spoken…whether or not the ‘real’ person being interviewed is telling the ‘truth’ is
another matter.
In her article ‘‘Letting it breathe’: Writing and performing the words of others’
(2011), Enright maintains that the actor’s ‘primary task [is] to embody the words
previously spoken by real people so that they [can] speak to [the audience] without
losing their original significance and intent.’ [original emphasis] (Enright 2011a: 187).
In order to help the actors achieve this, Enright transcribes the interviews as
meticulously as possible:
I listen carefully to the words the person speaks paying particular

attention to their phrasing – their ‘punctuation’ of their words. I treat this
punctuation like a form of musical notation in order to indicate on paper
to the actors a sense of the rhythm of the person’s speech. This often
requires my listening to the recordings several times in order to
determine how I can best illustrate this rhythm on paper. (ibid.: 186)
Enright’s careful notation is exemplified in an excerpt of the text from Less Than a
Year:
Mother So we went home anyway,

weeks were passing by anyway
and Emma wasn’t gettin any better.
She was starting to get weak at this stage and she had a little job.
She was after doin fifth year, and she had a little job in a bakery
and she said Mammy I’m giving that job up
and she was sitting on the couch
and this is about eight weeks later.
I said look it I’m not happy.
The lump is not goin (I said to myself)
and girls from work were giving me all stuff to rub on it.
So anyway am, I rang the local surgery
and I said did you ever get any results back
from Wexford hospital about Emma,
that swelling she had.
And they said no they never heard a word.
That was on a Monday.
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I rang again on the Tuesday
and I said I’m getting worried about this.
This is not goin and it’s starting now to change completely
from a soft lump to a hard lump and she’s in pain.
What in the name of God am I goin to do?
They said that they would ring up Wexford hospital.
On the 13th of June, twelve o clock
he (Father) rang me at work to see what the story was.
Father She’s told me there’s something serious.

We have to go to the hospital
and make an appointment.
And we are to go as soon as
we get the appointment.
This excerpt also highlights the challenges of the venacular, including awkard phrasing
and repetitions.
Less Than a Year was first produced professionally by Island Theatre Company
in Limerick in 2006 with actors Seamus Moran and Joan Sheehy as the parents. Moran
describes his experience working on the play as ‘a fascinating process because people
don’t, [sic] their speech patterns are totally erratic. That’s been very difficult to master
and to learn […] everybody’s speech patterns are unique to themselves’ (qtd. in Enright
2011: 189). Sheehy, who played Mother, described her experience as ‘one of the
toughest […] if not the toughest challenge I have faced as an actor in over twenty years’
(ibid.). Though Sheehy added:
The language gives you everything you need to tell the story and find the
character […] the rhythms of speech, the repetition, the oddness of
expression is so rich and particular that you have to immerse yourself in
that and run with it and not impose a character or style of performance.
More than anything I’ve ever done I had to trust the language and kill
my instincts to embellish or act or strive for significant or emotional
moments. (ibid.)
The purpose of this case study is to establish whether or not any of these techniques can
aid the actors in their task of performance, while still respecting this notion of ‘trusting
the language’.
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The actors involved in this case study were Charlie Coldfield, a professional
actor based in the South West of England, playing Father, and the playwright, Helena
Enright, playing the role of the Mother. Enright had previous experience with Verbatim
Theatre, acting in a production of Walking Away (2006), a testimony piece about
domestic violence also written by Enright. This was Coldfield’s first experience with
Verbatim Theatre.
I should note that as a playwright, Enright chooses to describe her writing as
‘theatre of testimony’ rather than Verbatim Theatre. Enright offers two reasons for this,
maintaining that ‘firstly, the term provides more of a sense of where, how and why the
words originated and secondly, that the term allows for more creative space with regard
to interpretation’ (Enright 2011b: 33). Although Enright makes this distinction for her
work, Less Than a Year would also be considered a Verbatim text.
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Figure 19: Charlie Coldfield and Helena Enright in Less Than a Year. Photograph by Anna Johnson.
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Section III: Less Than a Year in Rehearsals and Performance
Due to scheduling requirements, the rehearsal process for this case study was
relatively short, lasting just over two weeks. Our first step was a close and careful read-
through of the script. Aside from a prologue in which the actors introduce and offer
context about the story they will be telling, Less Than a Year is an hour-long section of
an interview with the Irish couple. I chose to divide the play into sections to give the
actors ‘anchor points’ and to assist the actors with the ‘shape’ of the play. Because the
script is taken from the transcript of an actual interview, the parents did not follow a
strictly linear narrative. The parents jump back and forth in the timeline, as well as go
off on tangents as memories and moments occur to them. By sectioning the play, and
adding subtle blocking in-between each section, the actors had a more solid structure to
rely on than what is offered by the text.
The vernacular speech, governed by the idiosyncrasies of the individuals who
offered their testimony rather than the dictated rhythm of the playwright, made this
material incredibly difficult for the actors to learn. The mother’s speech is littered with
‘so anyways’, ‘in the meantime’, ‘and I said’ and ‘then he said’ and so forth. Her turns
of phrase are more often than not, unusual and in some places awkward. The script is
also full of repetition of similar phrasing, false stops and starts, self-correction, ‘ams’,
‘uhs’. But in some places, this jumbled information transforms in to poetic rhythms. An
example would be the Mother saying:
Mother: I came home anyway and I got alright.

Because the hospital had finished, the chemotherapy was over,
and Emma was in remission.
At each rehearsal we used under-reading so that the actors would be able to absorb the
text aurally. The reader will recall that under-reading is where, instead of having a
script in the actors’ hands, the lines are fed to them by another reader, allowing them
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freedom to begin to connect physically with their partner and the text. However, at the
end of each rehearsal we would return to the script to read through the material. In this
way the actors were learning the lines in two ways. Enright, whose character had a
significant majority of the text found the under-reading very useful ‘to allow [Enright]
to get up straight away and to move around with [the text], and just play with it and get
a sense of it’ (Coldfield and Enright 2011). Although she also added that she ‘needed to
go back to the script at times to actually map the journey’ (ibid.), so the combination of
both processes of reading and under-reading was crucial.
Alba Emoting
The rehearsal process began with basic Alba Emoting training, although from
the outset I did not plan to use Alba Emoting as rigorously as I had in the previous case
studies. Much of the literature surrounding Verbatim Theatre calls for ‘emotion recalled
in tranquility’ (Merlin 2007b: 46), so therefore, I felt a basic Alba Emoting training
would suffice. I did not plan to have the actors actively use the technique on stage;
instead I wanted them to use Alba Emoting so they could recognize the patterns in
themselves. Enright found the patterns useful for ‘allowing the sadness to happen at
times’ (Coldfield and Enright 2011). Enright explained:
I found with the Alba, it was – not if I knew there was a sad part coming
up – sometimes in just, in that moment, it was useful to just kind of
collapse the shoulders and expel the air and allow myself to do that.
(ibid.)
Coldfield used Alba Emoting in order to set himself ‘in a frame of mind’ (ibid.). As
with the previous case studies, Alba Emoting continued to inform our vocabulary
throughout the process.
Based on my previous directing experiences, I had suspected that Astbury’s
Emotional Access Work might be the predominent tool that I would use in rehearsals
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for Less Than a Year. The two techniques that proved to be the most useful were
under-reading and Astbury’s physical exercises. We did find early on that when simply
reading the text, there was a tendency for the actors to find a very slow, worthy rhythm,
almost a one-toned sadness. Coldfield commented on this distinction:
I thought it was really useful for not getting stuck in a rut of saying
things in a certain way. I think that really came out in the difference of
how it sounded when we under-read in comparison to when we were just
reading it off the page which we did a couple of times.
(Coldfield and Enright 2011)
When we replaced the scripts with under-reading, the natural storytelling was able to
come through. This technique also proved useful for the actors absorbing the text.
Enright, who had a majority of text in the play later remarked, ‘if I hadn’t had it up on
its feet in those two weeks, and had the script with me all the time, it would have been a
lot more difficult for me to come off book so quickly’ (ibid.).
Astbury’s physical exercises are intended to help remove any blocks, but also
physically engage the body and open up possibilities as to how the scene could be
played. Astbury affectionately calls these exercises ‘Left-Brain Disabling Devices’.
This is a reference to split brain theory, but Astbury only uses it as handy rehearsal
room terminology, as the brain is more complicated than that. As he says in his book,
Trusting the Actor, ‘[b]oth areas of the brain need to work in balance with each other.
Unfortunately, far too many training systems tend to encourage the use of the conscious
left-brain and ignore the wonders of the right (Astbury 2011: location 1379). His work
is aimed at trying to bypass the conscious controlling self through physical exercises
that often lead to a form of emotional release, which both Enright and Coldfield
experienced in this rehearsal process in the form of crying/sobbing, similar to grief. The
actor’s experiences were triggered through a combination of physical responses and
repetition of sections of the text—something that came as a surprise both of them.
Coldfield recounts his experience with the physical exercises:
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I think I obviously broke quite quick, cause […] you know, that sort of
physical grueling element, you know, versus the fact that you suddenly
just, you can’t, you know, you can’t control it. And I think I said earlier
when crying, you feel out of control but not in a way that you feel like
vulnerable, like we didn’t feel vulnerable, you know. You could just get
up and walk out and you know […] you totally feel like you’re your own
boss still, but at the same time you feel out of control but happy to be out
of control because, because that’s just the state you’re in. (Coldfield and
Enright 2011)
Coldfield is referring here to the fact that once the physical exercises had finished and
rehearsal had ended, no residual emotion remained. To watch a clip of Coldfield during
the physical exercises, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 1: 1. Coldfield in Physical Exercises (Duration:

00:00:34)
Enright also had a very strong physiological response to the text and the
exercises, specifically working on a section describing a trip that the family took to the
shrine at Lourdes in France. Again, we went through all the steps from an anger run
through the physical exercises, and ended with Enright sitting up and simply telling the
story. During the physical exercises, especially when her legs were up in the air, and
later when Enright was on her side whispering the text, Enright experienced what she
described as ‘convulsions’ (Beck et al. 2011). After the physical exercises, Enright
encountered an emotional connection with the speech about Lourdes. To watch a clip of
Enright after the physical exercises, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 1: 2. Enright after Physical Exercises (Duration:

00:01:31)
The following is Enright’s reflection on the experience:
[W]hen I was actually lying down there, in it […] I was hysterical, I was
sobbing, I was going through it. I wasn’t going through it like [the
parents] did, but that’s the intensity of the feeling. But when I sat up and
tried to tell [the story], it was as if that power was behind it, and I knew I
could go there. But that’s what wasn’t the purpose, the purpose was to
tell you, so it was interesting. Because I actually felt as if I…not as if I
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had that experience, but I had the emotion of that experience, if that
makes sense, to back up the telling of it. So it did feel connected. (ibid.)
Enright made a substantial point, that in this case, the emotional access work allowed
her to directly and physiologically connect with ‘the emotion of the experience’ that the
parents had when they traveled to Lourdes. The experience of the exercises added a
‘power’ that informed the telling of the story. At the end of the discussion, Enright
turned to me and said, ‘Jess, I did not ever think that you would ever get that out of me.
Nobody, no other director, has got that level out of me before. Ever.’ (ibid.). The
physical exercises can be very powerful for the actor in rehearsal, and equally powerful
for those watching the exercises. But as Hetzler queried in the first case study, are these
performances repeatable? This will be discussed in the section on the performances.
Impulse and Awareness work
For this case study, the impulse and awareness exercises were very subtle, and
mostly consisted of ‘impulse runs’ in which the actors could be ‘on their feet’ and tell
the story without the performance restrictions. In the actual performance, the actors
were mostly seated and speaking directly to the audience. In the impulse runs the actors
were free to speak to each other, or themselves, and could move around the space and
use the Alba Emoting patterns if they so chose. In one impulse run I joined in, sitting on
the sofa to act as a point of focus for their story-telling. Enright appreciated the impulse
work as a means of getting energy into the body and the text ‘because it’s very hard
when you’re just sitting here, not to let the voice sink. […] You’ve got to keep still, and
the energy about it and its quite difficult. […] those exercises are quite useful’
(Coldfield and Enright 2011). Coldfield found the exercises to ‘a good way of finding
things […] relating to some of the words that you’re saying. Suddenly [the words] ring
true, and you’re trying it all different ways (ibid.). In one impulse run, Coldfield had a
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particularly strong connection with a section of the script in which he describes going
to the pub with his daughter. To watch a clip of this section, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 1: 3. Coldfield in Impulse Run (Duration:

00:00:53)
Coldfield reflected:
I remember being in that position, and it, and it, sort of making sense,
[…] something in the sort of intimacy of it, I suppose. Yeah. It does put
you in mood…in the mood for things…and you know, if you experiment
with something like, you suddenly find, “ooh”, that’s the tone, the
rhythm. (ibid.)
Enright pointed out a potential ethical dilemma. During the impulse runs, we were using
the text, and at certain points the actors were speaking text that was actually spoken by
the daughter, Emma. At one point towards the end of the play, the character of Mother,
repeating the words of her dying daughter, says ‘Mammy, this is not my home.’ Enright
reported that using this text in the impulse work felt ‘strange’ (ibid.), reporting:
[I]t really struck me, especially when I was saying lines that the mother
was saying the daughter had said. That when we were playing with these
lines, within the safety net of the studio, the rehearsal space, it just felt a
bit odd, it jarred with me. It didn’t mean that I didn’t play with it,
because […] anytime we played with [the lines] I wasn’t being
disrespectful in a sense, even if I was like shouting something that she
might have been saying, you know, about dying, or “I’m not in my own
bed.” But it just jarred with me a little bit. (ibid.)
There was a morbid feeling when Enright mentioned this, but ultimately she concluded
that, as we were using the exercises in order to enhance the performances in the play, it
was not a high priority ethical concern. Enright concluded:
I think in the safety [of the rehearsal room] and that because what we
were trying to do was tell the story as best as possible, and sort of, you
know, as honestly as possible, you need to be able to have that space to
go there and find different things in the physicality, and absorb it that
way […] I really do. I like that kind of work. (ibid.)
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As this did ‘jar’ with Enright, I have not included a clip of this moment, but will add
that I also believe that we were respectful of the original material in the public showing
of it.
In Performance
We had six performances of Less Than a Year between the 15th and 20th of
January, 2011. Five performances were held at the University of Exeter and one
performance took place at The Bike Shed Theatre in Exeter. The first performance on
Saturday January 15th was accompanied by a formal presentation. To watch the
presentation please go to:
• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 1: 4. Case Study 3 - Presentation (Duration:

00:26:16)
This was the first time the actors had the experience of performing in front of an
audience, and Enright described the performance as ‘pretty scary’ (Coldfield & Enright
2011), but also ‘electric’ (ibid.). In the dress rehearsal before the performance, I asked
the actors to ‘mark’ through it, meaning for them not to give full performances, but just
go lightly through the text and blocking. Instead, the actors gave a strong performance
in which Enright had a very strong emotional connection with a particular section of the
script describing the first time the daughter wore a wig. To watch a clip of this moment,
please go to:
• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 1: 5. Enright in Dress Rehearsal (Duration:

00:00:48)
Enright reflected:
[E]ven though we were just supposed to mark it...again, the impulse to

tell the story comes out. And I just kind of went with it, and got quite
emotional in places I hadn’t expected to…and then I didn’t expect to
then leave those places out in the actual performance. (Coldfield &
Enright 2011)
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As Enright mentioned, this section of the script was unintentionally left out of the actual
Saturday performance. While Enright was aware that a few sections of the text had been
missed, it was not until after the performance that she realized it those sections left out
were the very same sections that she experienced a strong emotional connection in the
dress rehearsal. I can only speculate as to why this occurred. Working from Astbury’s
theory of defenses, Astbury maintains ‘your defences are endlessly cunning in their
protection, their desire to keep you from the experience of pain, or anger, or fear, or any
one of the multitude of feelings that makes us human beings’ (Astbury 2011: location
2859 – 2866). It is possible that because Enright had experienced a strong emotional
connection to that particular section of text only a few hours before the performance,
Enright’s defenses, operating below her conscious awareness, prohibited her from
experiencing that feeling again so soon.
Reflecting on performing in front of an audience for the first time, Enright
remarked:
[T]hat was quite terrifying doing it in front of the audience having, there
was no way you could call for line, no nothing. […] And even though I
had forgotten those lines and different things, it was quite a confidence
builder that we could get ourselves out of it, not lose connection, and get
through to the end. […] and once that was done it was like ‘phew’.
(Coldfield & Enright 2011)
Enright also added, ‘There certainly was a buzz – I could feel a very intense listening
from the audience that I haven’t felt – didn’t feel in other performances’ (ibid.) To
watch the first performance, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 1: 6. Performance of Less Than a Year - 15

January 2011 (Duration: 01:06:35)
The performance at the Bike Shed Theatre was held on January 16th as a
fundraiser for the Bone Cancer Research Trust, the charity that is supported by the
mother who shared her story. To watch the charity performance, please go to:
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• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 2: 7. Performance of Less Than a Year - 16
January 2011 (Duration: 01:11:28)
In a five-star review, a critic from UK Theatre Web described the play as ‘stunningly
effective’. (To read the full review, please see Appendix D). From my perspective, this
was one of the best of the six performances, as the actors were nearly word perfect in
regard to the text. The actors also coped well with performing the play in a new space.
Enright maintained:
I was very aware of the technical elements in the theatre. But I just got
on with telling the story, I just thought “oh, we’ve got to go through this
and tell them, it’s their first time hearing it” […] and trust it and yeah,
and I did feel then that kind of electric kind of sense to it. […] And I
think I was buzzing on a bit of a confidence from that performance the
day before, knowing that I’d messed up in a couple of places, got us out
even though I did miss some elements of the script, but, they still got it,
we still told the story, the essence of the story was fine so I thought no
matter what happens I can do that I can get out of it fine. So yeah, it did
have that kind of adrenaline pumping through it. (ibid.)
The adrenaline that Enright mentions carried through to the next performance, on
Monday January 17th when Less Than a Year returned to the studio space in Thornlea at
the University of Exeter. Enright added that she and Coldfield were, ‘still on a bit of a
high from the night before’ (ibid.) Coldfield’s experience of this performance is as
follows:
I thought Monday went well, I thought it was a good one. I thought it

had, that maybe we’d reached it, that there was almost like a slight, it
wasn’t a dip, but like a plateau from Sunday, so, you know, it was a
combination of energy and a growing confidence, and so I thought it was
a very, kind of slick, you know, performance […] The emotion was still
there and I thought it was quite affecting for the audience. (ibid.)
In essence, the first three performances were all highly commendable, from my point of
view as a director. It was not until the fourth performance that the actors experienced an
unpleasant performance.
The performance on Tuesday, January 18th is what I would describe as ‘the
second night slump’. A familiar concept to those working in the theatre industry, this
occurs when the first performance of a play goes very well and is full of energy, and
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then in the second performance a distinct dip occurs in both energy and concentration.
Although this was our fourth performance, it was our second consecutive performance
in the same space. The actors began to stumble from the prologue. To watch a clip of
this, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 2: 8. Prologue from 18 January 2011 (Duration:

00:01:47)
Coldfield recounted that he ‘got spooked from the beginning in the prologue and I don’t
know why’ (ibid.). Describing the experience, Coldfield stated:
I just paused in the middle of a sentence, which was really weird, and I,
and my mind just went completely blank… it was probably for hardly
any amount of time…but…and I don’t know why I did it, but I felt really
spooked and I then I felt really uncomfortable. […] after that I really
didn’t make any mistakes, but just the way I said things and things were
off […] I didn’t feel connected to it at all really. I mean a little bit at the
end I felt connected. But then it was almost like…you know, you worry,
you try to take the connection you have and then force it through and you
can’t. (ibid.)
This problematic start had repercussions throughout the performance, at one point even
causing Enright to ‘dry up’ or forget where she was in the script. To watch a clip of this
moment, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 2: 9. Enright from 18 January 2011 (Duration:

00:01:39)
Enright recalled:
I don’t know what happened. I think when I went blank, and cause I, I
just went completely blank on that point, and thought …I just, and
panicked…there was a washing machine going on inside like…I just
couldn’t…and I kind of knew where I was, but I just, just lost it. […]
And I knew I had to talk about the doctor and the bone marrow but […]
it was terrifying, absolutely terrifying. (ibid.)
Once Enright recovered, both actors admitted to ‘overcompensating’. The audience still
responded positively to the performance, but for Coldfield, Enright and myself, the
performance clearly lacked the energy and engagement that we had experienced over
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the first three performances. When it came to the final scenes, both actors were
consciously searching for the emotional moments. Enright described her experience of
the end of the play as feeling ‘fake’ (ibid.). I gave Enright and Coldfield the advice that
Astbury often gives his actors, which is not to look for the emotion; do not expect it. In
his book, Astbury describes an actor who faced the same challenge to which he
responded ‘stop expecting the speech to work, to stop trying to orchestrate the emotion.
“Let it surprise you.” (Astbury 2011: location 2403). Elaborating further on this
phenomenon, Astbury states:
It’s the same old story: start to think consciously and everything
vanishes. Being “in the moment” means being in a semi-trance. Any
conscious decision hauls you out of this state. While in that blessed state
the pre-conscious brain just purrs ahead making its lightning-fast
decisions before the spoil-sport conscious brain and its defences can
sabotage them. (Astbury 2011: location 2403)
Of course, achieving this state is not always easy. Fortunately, the Tuesday performance
was the only time Enright and Coldfield encountered this problem. It was also an
important experience, and Enright added:
[I]n a way, it was good to have that experience as well, because it’s like
“whoa, whoa” […] and going back into Wednesday made us much more
determined to trust it, and attack it, and for me, it was about making sure
I had the energy to do it. Because I think, for me, I felt my voice very
strange on the Tuesday night. My voice felt disconnected from me. It
went back to that ‘worthy’ kind of voice that I had when we did that
reading of it. […] So it was like “okay, let’s get this energy behind the
words again and back in to that.” (Coldfield and Enright 2011)
The performance on Wednesday January 19th was a welcomed return for the
actors. As Enright reported:
Wednesday night’s felt really nice. […] I was delighted. I was happy
because I cried. And it’s funny, I didn’t ever feel…I felt more in a state
when I hadn’t cried, or connected, because it’s not a…it’s not an
upsetting cry. It’s probably more upsetting for the people watching it.
We are performing, we’re aware of that, we…they’re aware that we’re
performing, but I think [the audience] are not expecting to be moved as
much as they are, and that’s where it gets them. (ibid.)
Coldfield commented on the emotion that came through his performance as well:
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I think because [the emotion], because it catches you, you don’t plan it,
you don’t plan where it catches you…in the middle of a sentence…on a
couple of them it just caught me and it just took me time…there was
silence…and I just….because I couldn’t carry on speaking, because I had
to just, allow it out and then get back into it. (ibid.)
To watch a clip of both Coldfield and Enright connecting to emotion in this
performance, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 2: 10. Coldfield and Enright 19 January 2011

The final performance took place on Thursday, January 20th 2011. The actors
completed what I considered to be a very connected and engaging performance.
However, the absence of tears in the penultimate scene made both actors question their
performances after the show. Enright commented:
I felt very connected to most of it. Just that little bit at the end […] I
don’t know….and it’s cause the tears hadn’t come and I found myself
judging myself going…why aren’t they coming? Why aren’t they
coming? […] And as the lines were coming out, “but [the tears] are not
here, they’re not here.” (ibid.)
Coldfield interrupted, ‘But it still felt like a good performance’ (ibid.) to which Enright
agreed. In the case of the final performance, Enright’s conscious search for the emotion
did not interfere with a believable and engaged telling of the story, perhaps because she
did not force the tears, but rather, was aware of their absence without interfering. To
watch a clip of the penultimate seen from the final performance, please go to:
• DVD Chapter 5, Disc 2: 11. Coldfield and Enright 20 January 2011

Section IV: Findings
Many of the findings from the third case study have been mentioned throughout
the chapter, with the most effective technique for this production being the emotional
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access work. But this case study, especially with a run of multiple performances, has
raised more questions. From my perspective as the director, I felt that five out of the six
performances were connected and energized. Only in four out of those five
performances did the actors experience the physiological affect of tears. This is not a
problem for me, as I believe that if the performances are connected an actor does not
have to cry in order to move an audience. But the final performance raised a question
for Enright:
I started to wonder, if we are to tell [the story] as honestly as possible, if

it’s feasible that we might cry at different points during [the play] and
the emotion can get us, [then] what happened when the emotion doesn’t
get us? If I was to force a cry last night, which I could have, then that’s
not really as honest in telling it. (Coldfield and Enright 2011)
Enright was right not to ‘force’ tears on the last night, but she did not need to, as the
play worked well regardless. This leads me to conclude that the energy and focus are
more important than the experience of emotion itself, and that only when the energy
and focus are maintained can the emotion come through in performance.
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Conclusion
Diderot concluded that ‘on the stage, with what we call sensibility, soul, passion,
one may give one or two tirades well and miss the rest’ (Diderot and Pollack 1883: 95),
viewing emotion as an enemy of the actor. After conducting three case studies
investigating the nature of emotion in Western performance, I do not agree. Due to the
nature of this practice-as-research project, I cannot make any universal claims about the
nature of emotion in Western performance. What I can do, however, is offer the
findings of my research in relation to the context of the particular case studies with the
particular actors involved.
The research questions guiding this study were as follows:
1) What, if anything, can be revealed about the nature of emotion in Western
practice? Do these discoveries vary when these approaches are put into practice
on different dramaturgies with different demands on the actor?
2) What is the nature of the emotion being expressed? Whose emotion is it? The
actor’s or the characters? Is there a difference?
3) Can these techniques assist a director in unifying an understanding of emotion
acting experiences affect their views on emotion in performance. How do these
4) Are the feelings/emotions that actors generate ‘genuine’? If so, how does the
actor generate, control, and integrate these emotions during performance?
As I began to work through these questions, I realized that in order to arrive at the
answer to the fundamental question about the nature of emotion in performance, it is
clearer to work through the questions in the reverse order.
189
Are the feelings/emotions that the actors generate ‘genuine’?
Drawing from my experience with the case studies, I have found that yes, the
feelings/emotions that actors generated during performance were ‘genuine’. As a
technique in its own right, Alba Emoting has been tested and proven to trigger the
physiological changes that occur during an emotion. In Three Sisters, Hetzler and
Sozanska used pattern 3a (joy) to achieve laughter. When the actors engaged in the
pattern, involuntary muscles in the abdomen were triggered. So when the actors were
engaged in the emotional effector patterns, they were experiencing ‘genuine’
physiological changes. I also found this to be true for the Emotional Access Work. In
Less Than a Year, both Coldfield and Enright were actually crying. The actors were
experiencing ‘genuine’ physiological changes such as tears, sniffling, and redness
appearing in the face. This was also true of Pennington in Footfalls. I am highlighting
crying here, not to favor one particular emotion over another, but because it is one of
the easier emotions in which one can perceive the physiological changes from an
outside perspective.
How does the actor generate, control, and integrate these emotions in
performance?
This question can be answered differently for each of the approaches. With the
Alba Emoting patterns, an actor can generate the particular desired emotion using the
correct configuration of the breathing-facial-postural elements of the emotional effector
pattern. This can be used in rehearsal to simply develop awareness – as with Sellman-
Leava in Three Sisters; to remove unwanted emotion – as with the cast of Play; or used
directly in performance – as with Hetzler and Sozanska in Three Sisters. In each of
these cases, the emotions were controlled by the actors regulating the intensity of the
patterns, or by choosing to employ neutral breath to clear them. Integration in
performance can happen a number of ways. 1) The patterns can be used directly as they
190
were in the case of Hetzler and Sozanska; 2) The patterns can be used in immediate
preparation for performance, an example being West’s use of the pattern 3b (sadness)
just before his scene in Three Sisters; or 3) The patterns can be used to calm nerves or
keep focus, and the patterns were used in this way by every cast member in Play.
With Astbury’s Emotional Awareness Work, his goal is for the actor to have a
connection, or emotional experience with the text, in rehearsal. This is achieved
through various physical exercises as discussed throughout the dissertation. When it
comes to integrating these emotions into performance, the actor must trust that these
emotional connections will automatically integrate into their performance, and must not
try and force the emotion. This may sound unreliable, especially when moving from a
very clear system of accessing emotion such as Alba Emoting. In practice, however,
Astbury’s techniques appear to achieve his goals effectively. In Less Than a Year, it
was when Enright consciously tried to cry, that the emotion did not surface. When
Enright trusted that the emotion would appear, it did.
With regard to the Impulse and Awareness work, the exercises, in rehearsal, are
intended to develop of kinesthetic sense of self and environment, to prepare the actor to
be able to spontaneously respond to impulses from within themselves and the theatrical
environment. The physical engagement, fatigue and surrounding stimuli such as the
other actors, rhythms and sounds, allow the actor to generate emotion in response to the
immediate situation. Integration occurs through continuous training and repetition,
which was the case with the cast of Play.
Can these techniques assist a director in unifying an understanding of emotion

acting experiences affect their views on emotion in performance? How do these
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These questions are more difficult to answer. In each case study, the actors
involved had very different views on emotion prior to the rehearsal process. By the end
of each rehearsal process, the actors were mostly in agreement, specifically viewing the
experience of emotion in performance as more of physical/physiological process than a
psychological one. The introduction of the Alba Emoting training may have
inadvertently led them to this new way of thinking about emotion. The Alba Emoting
training offered the actors an immediate somatic experience with emotion, as well as a
concrete vocabulary. This instant vocabulary of the emotional effector patterns was one
way in which the actors and I unified our understanding of emotion. Alba Emoting
removes the subjective discussions about emotion and replaces those discussions with
precise breathing-facial-postural components that can be isolated and altered if
necessary.
The actors’ diverse views on emotion, from their previous experiences and
trainings, were reflected in their initial interviews, but did not seem to affect how they
responded to the approaches that I introduced into the rehearsal process. Interestingly,
the North American actors tended to regard emotion as more of a psychological
phenomenon; the actors who trained with Phillip Zarrilli regarded emotion as a type of
energy; and the British actors regarded emotion as a phenomenon that may or may not
occur in performance (but that they hoped would occur). However, their views
presented no conflict within the rehearsal process. Their opinions on the topic of
emotion proved irrelevant to the working process in rehearsal.
What is the nature of the emotion being expressed? Whose emotion is it? The
actor’s or the character’s? Is there a difference?
From my observations and interviews with the actors, the nature of the emotion
expressed in performance was ‘genuine’ emotion, which the actors experienced on a
psychophysical level as a result of specific rehearsal processes and in the context of a

192
performance situation. At no time throughout the rehearsal process did any of the
actors mention using their own ‘private’ emotions. This raises the classic question of
whose emotion is it? Psychologist Paul Ekman’s research may be able to resolve this
paradox. Ekman outlines nine paths for ‘accessing or turning on our emotions’ (Ekman
2003: 37). The first path is through our automatic-appraising mechanisms, which can
make a ‘decision or evaluation that brings forth emotion [which] is extremely fast and
outside of awareness’ (ibid.: 21). Automatic-appraising mechanisms, which Ekman
abbreviates as autoappraisers, are ‘on alert for two kinds of triggers’ (ibid.: 23), the
first of which are ‘events that are important to the welfare or survival of all human
beings’ (ibid.), and the second are ‘variations on those themes that develop in each
person’s experiences’ (ibid.: 24). This pathway to emotion is most familiar to our
human experience. Ekman points out that ‘[w]hile emotions are most often triggered by
automatic appraisers, that is not the only way in which they can begin’ [my emphasis]
(ibid.: 31). Ekman’s pathways include: 1) the automatic-appraising mechanisms, 2)
reflective appraisal that then click on autoappraisers, 3) memory of a past emotional
experience, 4) imagination, 5) talking about a past emotional event, 6) empathy, 7)
others instructing us about what to be emotional about, 8) violation of social norms, and
9) voluntarily assuming the appearance of emotion. From this list, we can consider the
historical views of theatre practitioners through a cognitive lens, and how they were
possibly accessing these other pathways to emotion with their techniques. Stanislavsky
experimented with the memory of a past emotional experience, imagination, empathy
and voluntarily assuming the appearance of emotion. Both Brecht and Meyerhold
rejected the memory of a past emotional experience and empathy, but embraced the
path of voluntarily assuming the appearance of emotion. As a result of my research, I
would also add a tenth category to Ekman’s list: that emotions can be triggered by
193
responses to physical exercises, exertion or exhaustion (as we have seen with
Astbury’s physical exercises, but also true for the work of Grotowski).
Because these other pathways are less common to every human experience, it is
easy to see how this question of whose emotion is it – the actor’s, or the character’s? –
began to emerge. Is there a difference between the two? Yes, in the stimuli that trigger
them. The actor, using their whole self as a vehicle for performance, is generating
emotion through a different pathway and in a different context than they would be when
experiencing emotion in their own lives.
What, if anything, can be revealed about the nature of emotion in Western

practice?
After working on these three case studies, I am convinced that the actor can
experience ‘genuine’ emotion in performance without having to use their own private
emotional experience. Not one of the actors I worked with mentioned using their ‘own’
or ‘private’ emotions in performance, which perhaps was due to the methods I chose to
employ. While the actors’ bodies were experiencing patterns of emotional behavior,
they were psychophysiologically focused on the task at hand – the performance. After
one of the performances of Less Than a Year when Enright experienced tears, an
audience member refrained from approaching her immediately afterwards. Enright
remarked on the experience:
Somebody commented to me after a performance where I had cried and

got quite emotional that they weren’t sure what state I’d be in to talk to
them afterwards. I was fine the minute I’d finished […] Cause it wasn’t a
weeping or wailing for yourself […] and yet it wasn’t that detached that
it was so technical either. (Coldfield and Enright 2011).
I also found that it is not necessary for the actor to psychologically ‘become’ the
character. Again, drawing from Less Than a Year, Enright and Coldfield were aware
194
that they were not the couple that lost their daughter to cancer. They were equally
aware that they were in a performance. As Enright commented:
I would never say that I believed it was my daughter that I was talking
about that I was crying, and I wasn’t. To do that I think would be
disrespectful to the piece and to the story and to the real people […] and
I just tried to tell the story each night as honestly as I could in that
particular moment…in that zone. (Coldfield and Enright 2011)
Brecht would agree with Enright on this point:
At no moment must [the actor] go so far as to be wholly transformed into

the character played. The verdict: ‘he didn’t act Lear, he was Lear’
would be annihilating blow to him. He has just to show the character, or
rather he has to do more than just get into it; this does not mean that if he
is playing passionate parts he must himself remain cold. It is only that
his feelings must not at bottom be those of the character, so that the
audience’s may not be at bottom be those of the character either. The
audience must have complete freedom here. [my emphasis] (Brecht
1964: 193-194)
The idea of conceptual blending may be useful here. As an audience member, we can
watch a play and follow (or perhaps) be moved by the story and at the same time be
conscious of the fact that there are actors on the stage in front of us. In The Way We
Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities, Fauconnier and
Turner maintain ‘[d]ramatic performances are deliberate blends of a living person with
an identity’ (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 266). They go on:
In principle, actors are linked to characters by virtue of performing in the

real world actions that share physical properties with actions performed
by the characters in a represented world. […] While we perceive a single
scene, we are simultaneously aware of the actor moving and talking on a
stage in front of an audience, and of the corresponding character moving
and talking within the represented story world. (ibid.)
When children are playing, they are able to simultaneously exist in their ‘play acting’ as
well as commentate on the circumstances. Actors have this same ability.
The idea of a ‘character’s’ emotion is related. From the practice discussed here,
especially after Less Than a Year, I would conclude that the notion of ‘character’—
except when reading a play—is not useful in the rehearsal room. The actor is using
195
oneself to psychophysically realize a role. The idea of a ‘character’ existing
simultaneously is confusing. During the first case study, West made the comment:
…it begins to get to an ethereal point, I’m not quite comfortable, as if the
character exists in the ether, and just needs to possess my body. But what
I will say - because the character is going to be slightly different for
everybody - so what I will say is that I have discovered some
possibilities for the way that I, given my physiology and emotional
capabilities could possibly play this character. (West 2009c)
From the practice undertaken in this research project, it is more useful to consider the
‘character’ as a meeting of the particular actor and the text in a theatrical moment.
Which is why there are so many wonderful options.
Do these discoveries vary when used put into practice on different dramaturgies
with different demands on the actor?
After working on three very different dramaturgies, I found ‘emotion’ integral to
every script, in one way or another. What initially attracted me to Astbury’s work and
eventually to this study was ‘emotion’ (or so I thought). After this study, my views have
changed. In retrospect I believe that what I was drawn to was not necessarily the display
of emotion, but the fact that the entire organism of the actor was working in sync –
psychophysically. Based on my experiences, I consider emotion to be a by-product of
psychophysical connection—of the body/mind working together. This is a result of the
actors’ full engagement with the text in the theatrical moment—a quality and
connection that are necessary for any performer in any style. It is important for an actor
to become familiar with themselves. Emotion is important to investigate because – like
it or not – our capacity for emotional response is often governed by invisible shackles of
our culture. Our personal experience of emotion may be limited because of display rules
– both cultural and gender based.
196
If, as theatre makers, we desire to create work that is both ‘affective’ and
‘effective’, we are charged with a greater task: exploring not what it means to be
human, but what it is to be human. In this pursuit of understanding we are both ill-
equipped and yet, at the same time, our best resource. ‘Ill-equipped’ in the sense that we
must overcome our engrained habitual ways of thinking and experiencing as well as
overcoming the divide between mind and body. As Moshe Feldenkrais maintains, ‘We
have no real basis for thinking of the duality except the habit of thought’ (Feldenkrais
2010: 95). We are our own ‘best resource’ in that we have all the innate knowledge
within ourselves, and it is available to us if we can begin to recognize that knowledge
and cultivate it. I close with a quotation from the actor Henry Irving, from his preface to
Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le Comedien in 1883:
Perhaps it will always be an open question how far sensibility and art can
be fused in the same mind. Every actor has his secret. He might write
volumes of explanation, and the matter would still remain a paradox to
many. It is often said that actors should not shed tears, that real tears are
bad art. This is not so. If tears be produced at the actor’s will and under
his control, they are true art; and happy is the actor who numbers them
amongst his gifts. The exaltation of sensibility in art may be difficult to
define, but it is none the less real to all who have felt its power.
(Irving in Diderot and Pollack 1883 xix - xx)
197
Appendices
Appendix A
Review for All Alone from nytheatre.com review archive
By: Robert Weinstein (August 15, 2007)
The chat room in Theatre503 and Post Script Theatre's production of All Alone is a dark
and dirty place, a place where debauched minds throw on false personalities to lure
innocent people out of their isolation and commit despicable acts of violence and
cruelty. These reprehensible acts and impulses transform the chat room from a place to
connect into a landscape of perversion where the worst of human nature can take root
and flourish. The events depicted in the show are not always easy to watch or
comfortable to experience, but All Alone is a forceful, confusing, and infuriating piece
of theatre that deserves to be seen for the risks it dares to take and for the ones it fails to
achieve.
All Alone tells the story of two men and an incredibly disturbing chat room session.
Man A begins the show straddling what turns out to be a dead woman. He wears white
underwear, masturbates frequently, and enjoys creating violent variations on nursery
rhymes. Man B starts the show in underwear, too, but his are black and far more stylish.
He brushes his teeth for close to 15 minutes and when he finally rinsed, I wondered
what deteriorating effect it had on his enamel. While never implicitly stated, both men
are actually two sides of the same person, with Man A acting as a kind of Id and Man B
the Ego. Man A seems to provide the impulse for Man B's actions (Man B gets the
actual chatting duties) and the results of Man B's actions provide reactions in Man A
which provide more impulses. The roles reverse from time to time but this circular
relationship propels the piece forward and seems to push the boundaries of their
collective perversion toward points of no return.
And where is the Superego during all of this? That particular personality part lies dead
on the stage: desecrated, danced with, and spat on.
Gene David Kirk's script is full of inventive wordplay and rhythmic shifts. Jessica
Beck's direction allows her actors—Andrew Barron, Matthew Flacks and Maggie-Kate
Coleman—the freedom necessary to experience the effects of their characters' basest
instincts and the freedom to delve into what the show's postcard describes as "the
deepest horror of consciousness." But the freedom and exploration come at a price: All
sense of character disappears periodically, as do the sense of space and time. Characters
sometimes act but fail to react, or seem to react to unknown stimulus. And the relentless
pace rarely stops to let any of the characters and the production breathe. The result
threatens and sometimes succeeds in distancing the audience right out of
comprehension.
All Alone is a powerful and unflinching look at the truly ugly aspects of loneliness and
isolation. But as I walked away from the theatre, I wished that Beck had forced more
focus onto the proceedings and allowed the more humane aspects of the characters, the
hopeful selves that became these damaged creatures, to have their say.
http://www.nytheatre.com/showpage.aspx?s=9 [accessed May 13, 2011]

198
Appendix B
Included here is a transcript of how I guided an early impulse and awareness exercise.
These instructions were given over the course of 32 minutes. (Transcript from
September 12, 2009)
Beck:
So in the space, with your partner, stand about 6-8 feet apart.
And Joe, you’re going to have an imaginary partner, but you are also going to
try to keep an awareness of everyone else in the space.
Don’t make eye contact, but see if you can take in your whole partner, without
eye contact.
Just pay attention to your breathing, and the breathing of your partner. Or your
imaginary partner.
Now see if you can sync your breathing, so that you’re breathing in the same
rhythm.
And just start to notice anything that may be happening with your partner. Any
gentle swaying?
And just very slowly, start to mirror each other.
And imagine you’re invisible partner, but also keeping awareness of others in
the room, Joe.
And gently start to respond to any impulse that you may notice. And as you are
still mirroring your partner, it should be difficult to tell which partner initiated
the impulse.
And begin shifting weight from one foot to the other. Start to get in sync with
what you do.
Just explore making a connection with your partner, still without eye contact.
Then now allow yourself to be bolder with the movements, and if you fall out of
sync you can always re-sync.
And Joe, you can now let your imaginary partner disappear, and open your
awareness completely to the others in the room. Now they are not going to be
aware of few, but see if you can pick up on some of their movements, their
breathing.
Now, you no longer have to mirror your partner, but begin to move in
relationship to your partner, to what they are doing, which could be mirroring or
could be completely different. But you’re still moving with a bond.
199
And Joe, how can you connect with them, not by moving into their space, but by
picking up on their energy? Let their movements provoke your movements.
And just for yourself, see if any of these particular movements invoke a word, or
a line from the play, just for yourself.
Now gently start to move away from your partner, but see if you can keep the
connection.
And begin to move away from each other in the room, to walk around the room,
though keeping the connection.
And [Joe], you are free to shadow anyone.
Observe the connection. Does anything summon a word or line from the play? If
so, you can use it for yourself whenever you have an impulse to.
And beginning to move at more of a pace, with a sense of urgency, though

keeping that contact with your partner, Or trying to make contact Joe, if you
don’t have one.
And whether you come together or separate, try to keep the connection.
And if you ever feel that you’ve lost the connection to your partner, you can
come back together and re-establish it.
If you haven’t already, you are now welcome to make eye contact [with your
partner]. But try to keep that total awareness of them, without looking at them,
as well.
And [Joe], you can make eye contact with someone perhaps, and maybe entice
them away from their partner. Without being intrusive, see if you can seek a
connection. Perhaps someone will break a connection to form one with you. Or
perhaps they will maintain the connection and form a new one with you.
While maintaining that connection, start to open your awareness to the other
people in the room. Do any of their movements stir an impulse within you?
If at any time you need to vocalize, you can. Are there any words or phrases that
come to mind? Any lines? You may use them.
And we’re now to build up a little more of a pace, so that when there are
moments of stillness, they are definite choices.
And now if there’s ever a moment where you feel you have something to say to
the other person, you can use that line, that phrase, that word.
It could be said with a whisper, it could be said with the eyes.
(I start playing music on the CD player)
200
Now you also have the music, for your impulses to work off of.
Begin to use your text when you need to.
Don’t be afraid to speak to each other.
Find one of your lines and say something to that person. Regardless of the line.
Continue to explore the connection.
(music ends.)
And then slowly find a connection with your partner, wherever they are.
Move closer to them.
And sync your breathing.
And then slowly find your own space.
And then just relax.
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Appendix C
CHORUS:
w1 Yes strange darkness best and the darker the worse

w2 Yes perhaps a shade gone I suppose some might say
M Yes please one assumed all out all the pain
w1 till all dark then all well for the time but it will come
w2 poor thing a shade gone just a shade in the head
M all as if never been it will come [Hiccup.] pardon
w1 the time will come the thing is there you’ll see it

w2 [Laugh - - - - - - - - ] just a shade but I doubt it
M no sense in this oh I know none the less
w1 get off me keep off me all dark all still

w2 I doubt it not really I’m all right still all right
M one assumed peace I mean not merely all over
w1 all over wiped out—

w2 do my best all I can—
M but as if never been—
(Beckett 2006: 319)
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Appendix D
Review of Less Than a Year

Date Reviewed: 16th January 2011
Rating: *****
By Robert Isles
Helena Enright's enthralling Theatre of Testimony piece directed by Jessica Beck
This is not the sort of theatre that falls into the category of "light entertainment", in fact
arguably it is not entertainment at all but nor does it seek to educate, well not explicitly.
What is does do, is deliver a story that will touch pretty well every member of the
audience in one way or another, promote discussion of what is often seen as the
undiscussable and, in my opinion, help people (or prepare people) to face similar life
challenges.
If that sounds a bit of a wild claim let me explain... this is a Theatre of Testimony piece,
by which we mean that the words the actors speak are those of a real life couple
describing the worst of all possible things, the slow painful death of a daughter.
Unlike documentary the flow of the story is not interrupted by "interpretation" or other
views, nor is this really a re-enactment ... it is just the re-animation of the raw and
powerful words and emotions of an ordinary couple describing how they failed to cope
with their daughter's condition and how they were failed, repeatedly and almost
unbelievably badly, by much of the medical profession.
What I found most moving in this piece, written by Helena Enright from discussions
and interviews with the family, is that while they didn't direct blame anywhere they
were angry with the way they were failed, and in the way that they themselves failed
their own daughter. The father and mother are played by Charlie Coldfield and Helena
Enright and we see them, in their own words delivered falteringly and completely
believably, through the 10 months from their daughter becoming ill to her death. Jessica
Beck's direction has a light touch allowing the story to be told without distraction (a
distinct improvement over TV docu-style!) and allowing the emotions to be felt without
the story becoming depressing or maudlin.
This is not a sob-fest, it is not even a depressing piece, somehow, out of this terrible
situation the sheer normality and simplicity of these people's emotions makes it a
fascinating and compelling story to watch. Indeed it is that very normality and the
matter-of-fact delivery that makes the real emotions around the death itself so
stunningly effective - the emotional journey of these people is so powerfully depicted
by their attempts to be strong that the few times that we see them crack produce a
completely unforced sympathetic response from the audience.
My own father's death from sarcoma (not bone in his case) and my mother's attempt to
give him (and us) one last holiday which resulted in an air ambulance trip home and his
death shortly afterwards meant that this piece spoke very deeply to me ... but listening
to the audience afterwards it was clear that everyone felt some connection with the
203
piece ... cancer will hit one in three, no family won’t have had to go through
something that this story touches on, even if the sufferer survives ....
This is a short run of a powerful piece and I for one am very glad I had a chance to see
it ...
http://www.uktw.co.uk/index.php?pg=7&story=E8831295220073
[Accessed 18 January 2011]
(Lehmann 2006)
204
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Directing Emotion: A Practice-led Investigation into the Challenge of

Emotion in Western Performance

Submitted by Jessica Marie Beck,

The intention of this thesis is to arrive at a better understanding of the nature of

Table of Contents...................................................................................................................3

Illustrations and Images .....................................................................................................7

Accompanying Materials ....................................................................................................9

The Challenge of ‘Emotion’ in Western Performance ......................................................12

The Research Project..................................................................................................................18

Research Questions Guiding this Study................................................................................20

The Pilot Study..............................................................................................................................22

Chapter Preview ...........................................................................................................................26

Section I: Diderot’s Paradoxe ...................................................................................................31

Paradoxe Proposed ...................................................................................................................................33

Section II: The ‘Problem’ of Emotion in Life........................................................................40

The Notion of Emotion............................................................................................................................40

Emotions as Biological Inheritance ...................................................................................................41

Emotions as Social Constructs .............................................................................................................43

Emotion as Perceptions of Bodily Changes....................................................................................44

Emotion as Result of Cognitive Appraisal.......................................................................................46

Distinguishing Between Emotions, Moods, and Feelings ........................................................47

The Mind/Body Split................................................................................................................................47

What is Acting?...........................................................................................................................................50

The Style of Involvement .......................................................................................................................51

The Style of Detachment ........................................................................................................................54

The Style of Self-­‐Expression .................................................................................................................56

Problems with this Model/Towards a Psychophysical Approach .......................................57

The Psychophysical Process .................................................................................................................58

Françoise Delsarte and the ‘Psychophysical’ ................................................................................60

Paradoxe and Practitioners of the Twenty-­‐first Century .........................................................65

Centuries: Alba Emoting, Emotional Access Work and Impulse and

Section I: Alba Emoting ..............................................................................................................67

The Patterns ................................................................................................................................................71

Learning Alba Emoting ...........................................................................................................................75

Section Two: Emotional Access Work ...................................................................................77

The Immediate Exercises.......................................................................................................................80

The Contributory Exercises ..................................................................................................................84

Section III: Impulse and Awareness Work...........................................................................86

Chekhov, Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre.................................................................93

Synopsis of Three Sisters ........................................................................................................................97

Section II: Methodology and Preliminary Questions .......................................................98

Section III: Rehearsals ............................................................................................................. 104

Incorporating Alba Emoting .............................................................................................................. 104

Incorporating Emotional Access Work ......................................................................................... 113

Incorporating Impulse and Awareness work ............................................................................ 123

Section IV: Findings .................................................................................................................. 127

Alba Emoting ............................................................................................................................................ 127

Emotional Access Work ....................................................................................................................... 128

Impulse and Awareness Work.......................................................................................................... 129

More Questions ....................................................................................................................................... 130

Methodology for Case Study Two: Play and Footfalls............................................................. 135

Section II: Play............................................................................................................................ 135

Rehearsing Play....................................................................................................................................... 137

Alba Emoting ............................................................................................................................................ 137

Emotional Access Work ....................................................................................................................... 139

Impulse and Awareness Work.......................................................................................................... 140

Physical Restrictions............................................................................................................................. 143

Findings ...................................................................................................................................................... 147

Section III: Footfalls.................................................................................................................. 151

Rehearing Footfalls ................................................................................................................................ 153

Alba Emoting ............................................................................................................................................ 154

Emotional Access Work ....................................................................................................................... 154

Performance and Findings ................................................................................................................. 159

The Style of Self-‐Expression .................................................................................................................56

Paradoxe and Practitioners of the Twenty-‐first Century .........................................................65