Even for the editor of a book called Movement for Actors, Nicole Potter seems especially on the move. Between the theater classes she teaches at Marymount Manhattan College, a role in the upcoming movie The Sweet Life, and various stage projects, she is making personal appearances to promote Movement for Actors. We recently caught up with Nicole to talk about actor training, Method acting, and how acting is like baseball and ice-skating.
Allworth Press: UK-trained actors are often praised as being more versatile than their American counterparts. Is movement training lacking in US theater programs?
Nicole Potter: There is such an incredible amount of acting training available in the US, and the rigor of differing programs and teachers varies wildly. The real debate about the difference between British and American training always comes back to the
"inside out" or "outside in" debate; that is, do you train actors in diction, voice, deportment, dance, etc., and let them craft a role based on these external skills, or do you ask them to transform themselves through a use of consciousness, sense, and
memory, a la Strasberg's interpretation of Stanislavski? Part VI of Movement for Actors, Outside In and Inside Out, contains a couple of inspired explorations of this debate ("Synergizing Internal and External Acting " by Jill Mackavey, and "The Actor as Athlete of the Emotions. . ." by Michele Minnick and Paula Murray Cole).
Certainly in the twentieth century it was traditional for American acting mentors either to hold up English training as the paradigm of a disciplined, skill-oriented approach, or to vilify it as mechanically exacting but essentially soulless. The second opinion was probably the more generally accepted one for most of the century, but that has changed somewhat as American performance forms have become less naturalistic. Nowadays, the best theatrical training in both countries is probably equivalent in terms of exposing students to interior methods and exterior methods. More and more American theater programs include movement courses. Preparation in Suzuki, or Meyerhold, or another specific, rigorous physical technique is appreciated as necessary for plays that are not necessarily going to be linear, slice of life productions. But perhaps the most exciting thing, to me, is that both instructors and students are realizing more and more that having physical skills and a physical approach to performing frees the imagination, the soul, the body, and the emotions,whether one is working on Shakespeare, Inge, Richard Foreman, or a movie of the week.
AP: What about actors who say, "I don't need to move well. I'm better suited to film and TV work"?
Nicole: I was just reading a new book that a soap opera casting director is writing about auditioning for TV. And in the book he says when you audition for TV you should be careful not to move too much, you shouldn't busy yourself with lots of props, you shouldn't choreograph yourself. Well, of course, that's true, because when you're doing an on-camera audition you have to be pretty still, or else you will be out of camera range. But this is so misleading. The fact that the videocamera requires limited motion does not mean that the actor doesn't need to know how to use his body. If you do not have good body awareness, such as that provided by Feldenkrais method, or Alexander technique, or other body basics discussed in Movement for Actors, how can you have any control over your presence? How can you ensure that your nearly motionless body gives eloquent expression to the character, unless you feel comfortable with your physicality? In Movement for Actors, Mary Fleischer has a really wonderful paean to the uses of stillness in theater ("Theatrical Stillness"), and this usage is not possible without training and awareness. I like to ask young actors to remember what a visual medium film is. Think about it, how does an actor let you in on who his character is in a film? Usually what makes a character memorable is the way she holds a glass, the way he scrambles eggs for his girlfriend, the way she enters a room when she is depressed, the way she picks up broken shards after a disaster. An actor lacking an attunement to movement will not be able to make the most of these critical, wordless moments. Erika Batdorf offers specific advice for the application of movement training to on-camera work in Part VII of Movement for Actors, "Mind- Body Juggling for the Camera."
AP: You write in your book's introduction of Method training hampering your sense of inspiration as a young actor. Do you think Method prevents American actors from developing proper stage movement skills?
Nicole: I think Method can hamper young actors, although it is often young actors’ interpretation of what method is: the teacher usually isn't trying to shut the student down. There are two or three strange things that happen that may block a young actor.
One, good acting looks like it is really easy. I mean, so do good ice-skating and good baseball playing, but at least in those things we as viewers understand that there are extraordinary skills underlying those "effortless" performances. Acting, unless it is paired with martial arts or tap dancing, for example, looks like it’s just a bunch of people behaving like people, and what could be so hard about that? So, when young actors don't "get it" right away, they often get bummed out and frustrated. They don't allow themselves the learning curve that they would in any other subject, and that tends to shut them down. Also, Method acting, which emphasizes working from the inside, may feel very small, it may feel to the actor like nothing is happening (and it may be that nothing is happening yet), which will probably make him work harder to make something happening. As a result, the teacher may accuse the young actor of pushing, or not being truthful, or not working from self. So the young actor starts to wonder, what is truthful? And anything that is outside of the actor's experience starts to feel false. How can he be a king; he's never been a king in real life. Anything that is big, or filled with feeling, starts to feel like it is a lie. So, basically anything that is transformative starts to seem artificial, bogus, fake. Result? Limited, colorless, unhappy actor. The good news is. . . It's usually a phase.
AP: Alexander Technique, physical improv, clown work, Biomechanics . . . You cover more than twenty movement disciplines in your book. Is your goal for the actor to find one approach that works and stick with it?
Nicole: This really depends on the age and skill level of the actor. One of the reasons I included all of these disciplines in the book is that I have a cursory knowledge of most of them, and I wish that I had more technical proficiency in more of them. I really wish I had expertise to analyze the use of body, effort, shape, and space that Barbara Adrian displays in "An Introduction to Laban Movement Analysis." I get really excited when I read about the resurgence of Biomechanics training, which Marianne Kubik discusses in the first essay in Part I. I guess I hope that young people will read the book, get fired up about a particular training form, and run out and immerse themselves in it. I say that because in the beginning you probably do need to immerse yourself in one form of training; otherwise you will be too confused. Clearly, I don't have a religious commitment to any one discipline; it's just that I feel that, if as a young person I had had more knowledge of what was out there, I could have made informed training choices, I would have more skills now. For older actors, teachers, and directors, I think the book is interesting because it shows all the places in which these different movement approaches intersect and complement each other (as well as the places in which they differ). A person who already has some basic training or some experience teaching or directing others can expand skills just by following the exercises in the book. Certainly anyone can get a taste of Awareness through Movement by following theexercises in Alan Questel's "The Feldenkrais Method"; and any director faced with the challenge of directing Molière could use Rod McLucas' exercises ("Some Rehearsal Notes for Molière and Restoration Comedy") to explore the deportment of the characters.
AP: Library Journal says Movement for Actors should be a part of all theater collections. Is the book intended as a text for acting classes or recreational reading for theater people?
Nicole: I think it will be a great asset to theater classes; perhaps more as reading for movement classes, history of theater classes, and performance studies classes than for acting classes, although I've been told that it is already required reading for several acting classes that are based in Michael Chekhov technique and Dell'Arte technique (Floyd Rumohr's "Michael Chekhov, Psychological Gesture, and the Thinking Heart," and Joan Schirle's "Movement Training: Dell'Arte International"). A few years ago, I started reading The Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods by Richard Brestoff. It was partially recreational reading, and partially to re-inspire myself as a teacher. Shortly thereafter I discovered 20th Century Acting Training, edited by Alison Hodge. These books look at and summarize acting techniques and teachers of modern times. I found them fascinating, enjoyable to read, and really inspiring. But I realized there was no compendium book like this that dealt specifically with the myriad of physical techniques that are available to the actor. There really are far fewer books about movement in print than there are about acting, and those that exist cover only one discipline. In addition many (not all) of these books are either very dry, very amorphous, or else filled with technical exercises put out a book that is entertaining, inspiring, and that is filled with doable, playable exercises. That's what a book for performers should be.
