Laban in Actors’ Training: Accessing Self through Movement

Initial argument

In acting, the “look”, the actor’s style of movement and the ability to vary these in the
context of the character and theatrical event in which the acting takes place, are the core
of the actor’s craft. Therefore in his training, an actor needs to learn the characteristics of
his non-verbal, movement self in order to develop the skills to adapt those characteristics
when embodying a role. Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) provides a framework that
invites this kind of learning and skill. This paper offers an account of such an application
and a rationale for its incorporation into actors’ training. LMA provides knowledgeable
access to actors’ own movement repertoire from which they can embody the character
and story in the performance process. Definitions of and symbols for the terminology
used in this paper are included in the appendix, and notation is used at some points in the
text containing examples of the symbolic writing from this system. For a fuller use
overview of the whole system and its symbols, please refer to Peggy Hackney’s book
listed in the References.

Background

Every human being has his own way of moving. This individual movement vocabulary
affirms his way of being in the world; is he strong and upright and broad in the way he
walks or hunched over with his head held low and in front of his torso? When he makes a
gesture with his arm, does his body go with that gesture or not? What dynamic quality
and form make up the non-verbal style of this person? This does not only relate to is
gestural signaling but also to his whole body’s personal patterning: the way one
recognizes him even from quite a distance and, if one knows him well or he is good with
his craft, what mood he is in.

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The way he moves feeds back to his kinesthetic sense of himself and it also
communicates a certain character or mood to anyone who observes him. Thus before he
has even uttered a word he has told both himself and everyone else something about his
“selfness”. This is true for the actor as an individual in his private life as well as for the
characters he will play.

Linguistics suggests that naming an experience may enable grasping the meaning of the
experience carried by that word in a new way. Vigotsky notes that, in learning a new
word,

…the very structure of meaning and its psychological nature also change….It is
not merely the content of a word that changes, but the way in which reality is
generalized and reflected in a word. (Vigotsky 1934 p3)

This naming process puts the phenomena into a language and thus changes both the
understanding of the person naming and the process which is being named In this case
the process in question is movement which is non-verbal and physical. LMA gives a
symbolic and verbal naming system that can bring a person to a clearer understanding of
the language and meaning of movement.

Irmgard Bartenieff, a follower of Laban who moved to NYC in 1938 and introduced his
ideas to the dance and theatre world there, developed four areas of LMA that we
affectionately call BESS. This stands for Body, Effort, Shape and Space to which
Relationship and Phrasing are added among other categories. The movement parameters
that are used depend on the application and context that one is in. This paper concentrates
on BESS because it addresses the needs of this particular self-finding process in the
context of training actors.

The LMA language is taught through movement experience. It is important that

experience, rather than intellectual concept, begins and informs the learning process. The
physical reality of how movement generates different ways of feeling is a powerful

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teacher of the Self that continues throughout one’s life. For instance, if one turns to one’s
neighbor and smiles while making a slow, languorous gesture from the right hand with
delicacy; then makes the same gesture (still with a smile) with a firm, sudden quality
there will be a difference in one’s feeling between the two versions of the gesture. The
neighbor will also observe and possibly feel a different story being told in each of the two
gestures although the physical action – a movement with the hand – is similar in each
case.

The movement qualities in LMA would be called light sustained and symbolized by
in the case of the first gesture and by strong, quick and the symbols in the case
of the second gesture. This language has its own symbolic script, or alphabet, which can
be invested with the experience of the mover in a less labored and culturally biased way
than words like strong or indirect which often carry a judgment in them.

As the four categories of BESS and other vocabularies of this LMA language are learned
through physical experience, the student becomes more fluent in naming the patterns he
sees or that he moves. During this process, he learns that there are some qualities he can
do more easily than others; some combinations of efforts or shape changes that are more
familiar and more easily embodied by his body than others that do not seem to work for
him. They feel awkward or unfamiliar or even puzzling. He begins to realize he has a
way of moving that close friends and family will recognize that is uniquely his and part
of his identity, his self-ness.

There are two immediate problems with teaching this system to students: the first is the
complexity of learning a new language and the second is the difficulty of observing and
analyzing oneself. On the first point, LMA has a large and complex vocabulary, symbols
and concepts and, as in engaging with any language, can be difficult for someone to
learn. Thus it is important that this language is taught through experience first; i.e. one
moves the quality in one’s body then learns the word and symbol LMA gives it
afterwards. In fact the words and symbols are given very little emphasis and students are
encouraged to make up their own ‘alphabet’ to describe the movement qualities they

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experience. On the second point, so much of one’s identity is embedded in how one
moves, the process of actually turning this language on oneself, particularly as one may
still be forming one’s selfness as a maturing person, is challenging. All a teacher can do
is invite this process of self discovery through movement but a student cannot be required
to do so.

There is no judgment about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when exploring the LMA vocabulary.
However there are anatomical principles of alignment, source of breath, condition of
musculature, range of joint action and strength that are essential aspects of movement
training and have a ‘correct’ if not ‘right’ aspect to them. There is a body level concept
called ‘neutral’ that addresses this:

...as an actor it is desirable to develop a dynamic alignment that doesn't

pigeonhole you as one character...Neutral dynamic alignment is not a descriptive
term for "perfect posture". Your dynamic alignment is the shape your body
assumes when you are your best self on a very good day. When you stand in
neutral dynamic alignment, connected to breath, your presence radiates and
observers witness your vital essence. ( Adrian 2008 p65)

This is a functional notion that the actor’s body should be aligned, stripped of personal
habits and ready to take on whatever mannerisms or postures the character may have.
This is not really possible because the body is never a blank canvas. Everyone carries
their own stories that are expressed through their bodies. In working on clear functional
and qualitative movements through the body, the student can access an expressive aspect
of the actor’s physical instrument which is uniquely his yet technically ‘aligned’ as
Adrian describes above.

Irmgard Bartenieff addressed this complex mixture of technical and personal by changing
the name of her movement sequences developed during her physiotherapy practice from
Correctives to Fundamentals. She felt the term Correctives implied there was a wrong to

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be corrected whereas Fundamentals identified basic movement principles which are
elemental structures of body actions that one can explore. Using the LMA system,
training actors need to explore Fundamentals rather than consult Correctives.

The focus here is on the qualitative aspect of the student’s movement pattern: the
postural or gestural habits, where the movement is initiated in the body, how the head is
held and so on, that gives a particular message. The ‘particular message’ needs to be kept
for a specific role, but the actor needs to know about his personal movement repertoire
before he can adapt it to the service of a particular character.

Emotional Reality and Acting

This self knowledge needs to be developed with care; if technique is simply learned
through copying it may fall foul of bad habits and become “untruthful” acting. How often
has one seen performers with good technique and excellent training not hold an
audience’s attention when they are on stage, although they are doing everything they
have been taught? This can happen because the actor has not used his “selfness” in the
work. He has not begun with his own movement in order to change it in service of the
role and the play.

The debate about where to start the work of developing a character is outside the scope of
this paper. There is nothing wrong with beginning from the psychology or narrative of
the character rather than the movement, but at some point the actor’s body and how it
activates itself through the space it occupies will need to change in order to express the
story of someone else. The subject of this paper is not the kind of actor who plays the
same character all the time as some ‘stars’ in our modern theatre world do but rather the
jobbing actor who needs to adapt himself in many ways to the demands of the present
industry.

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The emotional life of the character as well as the personality is expressed, among other
ways, through his body’s movement. John Ramage, actor, director and teacher based in
Scotland, wrote in a recent paper that an actor has only limited means to change his
physical appearance (height, build, features, etc.). He goes on to write;

How that physical being MOVES in the world is another thing. I CAN change
that, with study and practice. Unless I’m playing ME, the character will inevitably
have ways of moving through his world which are different from mine. It’s my
job, therefore, to make decisions about that and, however subtle, change my own
natural movement and gesture patterns to help the audience to believe me. That
means I have a professional duty to know how my body works and moves through
the world in my own REAL life.

In other words, I have to know and understand MY reality in order to effectively

make the changes necessary to portray SOMEONE ELSE’S reality. I need,
therefore, to understand my own body’s limitations as well as its versatility. If
you like – my body’s accessible physical vocabulary. (Ramage 2009)

Ramage then reflects on the emotional aspect of acting work and considers the possibility
of actors becoming fluent in the language of their emotions – even to the extent of going
into therapy if that seems appropriate.

It follows then that, if I am to portray the character’s EMOTIONAL journey in a

believable way, I need to understand how that character feels and recognize the
difference between their emotional reality and what mine might be within the
given circumstances of the play. I need to have an easy and practiced knowledge
of my own emotional vocabulary.

The more I understand my emotional reality, its limitations and versatility, the
more effective I’ll be as an actor. Hence, my belief that all actors should consider
therapy. That is not the same as saying that all actors NEED therapy – though, in
my experience, some do! (Ramage 2009)

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This paper aims to maintain focus on the connection between movement and emotional
expressivity as a use of the self without going into the debate about therapy. However
those teaching movement need to have clear opinions about this issue.

Elsewhere Ramage uses the word “truth” for “real” pointing out that “truthful acting” is
when we believe in the emotional life of the moment that the actor is portraying. This line
of thought comes back to the theme of movement as a primary means of expressing
emotion and therefore central to an actor’s use of himself in his craft.

The body can provide a direct route to the emotions…In every physical action,
unless it is purely mechanical, there is concealed some inner action, some feeling.
(Constantine Stanislavski 1961 p228)

In English the word “emotion” carries this idea: the travelling out of motion. E-motion, as
the Association of Dance Movement Psychotherapists titled their newsletter in order to
highlight the overlap between movement and emotion. Emotion is expressed through the
quality of movement; the how, not the what, of the body’s action. The text only gives part
of the story; the words “I love you” carry very different meanings depending on how they
are said: those words said with a sneer and a turn away of the body expresses the opposite
of the same words said with a hand softly caressing the face of the person being
addressed.

This is where Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) comes in as it describes the how of what
the body does. In the first example above, the LMA terms could be; “He turned quickly
and indirectly away from her with a free flow gesture of his hand while saying the words”
as opposed to “He kept his direct focus on her face while running his fingers down the
side of her face with lightness and sustainment.”

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This may seem a bit laborious and if this were a scene being rehearsed, the director
would probably use images and other kinds of descriptive words: “He makes a dismissive
gesture with his hand” or “He gazed lovingly into her eyes while stroking her cheek”.

Language can help the actor’s exploration of his work; the language of movement invites
that exploration to be a personal one in the way Ramage argues for above. In order to
illustrate this point, here is an example of a student’s journey of self-discovery. .He was a
very beautiful young man who had an ease and grace in his movement that belied his lack
of confidence. In classes he was often quite belligerent as he was a good athlete
(swimming and track) and did not see why he should have to bother with movement
classes. He was unaware of who he was in movement terms. In working on a scene with
colleagues, he had little ability to play a role with any “truth” (Ramage 2009); he seemed
to rely on his good looks and some intuitive talent to get himself through the assigned
work. The roles he rehearsed all came out flat, wooden and two dimensional with little
sense of relationship with the other person(s) on stage. He seemed to be playing to
himself rather than paying any attention to anyone else.

In LMA terms, he came from a weight flow base line, usually free flow with strength
(dream state) alternating with sustainment and bound flow(mobile state). In shape quality
he tended to widen and narrow in his Shape Quality which took him into the horizontal
plane and a large kinesphere in his use of Space. He usually initiated his gestures from
mid limb joints and he used a lot of carving in his Mode of Shape Change. His alignment
was good, though he had a slight arch in his lower back. Overall he gave the impression
of laid-back elegance; sweeping through his environment like a good looking but self-
absorbed man.

He tended not to use the space efforts of focus, direct or indirect, and this may have
accounted for the sense that he was in his own dream world, unrelated to other people.
The space effort is the quality with which we visually take in and engage with those
around us: do we have a single point of focus (direct ,uni-focus) or an overview of all the
points of foci? (indirect or multi-focus) His eye contact was appropriate; he held a kind of

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neutral gaze if he was talking to someone, but there was no active use of the LMA
dynamic of direct/indirect which gave the impression that he was not actually focusing
on, or interacting with the other person. He could access the quality of time quite easily,
though quickness was not as comfortable for him as the sustainment which added to his
disengaged presence. He seemed to have a resistance to the space effort; both direct and
indirect were difficult for him. He could imitate the movement but did not want to
capture the quality of really focusing on something outside of himself. If he played being
furious, one had the impression of a flailing whirlwind rather than someone affecting or
being affected by the given circumstances of other people around him

His mode of shape change however, was very interactive with his environment as he
tended to use carving and his versatile body moved easily through three dimensional and
diagonal configurations. The quality of his mode of shape change very much took in the
world around him; molding and sculpting the air with articulate hands and a very mobile
body. His gesture system was usually quite complicated, with his hands forming the
large kineshpere around him in interesting ways. There was, at times, a danger that one
looked at his gestures and body moving rather than listening to what he said.

During one class, in which he had decided to participate fully, he began by exploring the
horizontal plane with free flow movements but quickly became boredThis could have
been because those qualities were very much his own; so familiar and automatic for him
that there was nothing further to explore. The class that day was introducing the effort
elements of time and space; the alert state which is the opposite of his dream state
preference. He was further encouraged to use directional movement. He did not want to
participate in the partner exercises of pointing at each other with direct quick strong
(Laban named this combination of three efforts a punch) movements and after trying a
few improvisations became upset. He asked to try it again with more people standing
around him and varied his movement qualities from remote (a combination of flow and
space efforts) to alert (a combination of time and space efforts) states. He also tried to
use the directional mode of shape change rather than his preferred carving mode of shape

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change. It seemed to be distressing for him to point at someone rather than carve around
his private kinesphere.

Sometime later the student confessed that he felt very exposed in that movement
improvisation: he had remembered being taunted by his older brother and some friends as
a child. His defense against this threatening situation was to retreat into himself and wait
until his mother came to his rescue. There may have been other incidents where he
adopted this passive reaction to a threatening situation and this pattern may give some
clue as to why his use of the space effort was less available to him. With practice,
reflection about the why and how of his earlier experience and the beginnings of enjoying
a focused exchange with others, he widened his repertoire in both space effort and shape
which also gave him access to other combinations and therefore expressions of mood for
the characters he played.

Although it is usually impossible to ascertain why someone has the particular movement
preferences they do, there are often emotional reasons for these preferences as in his
story. Sometimes the history is buried in the unconscious and only comes to light through
an improvisation, as in this case, or through studying a role or other events that occur.
Whatever way it happens, the theatre performer uses himself physically and emotionally
in order to take himself and the audience on the journey of the play.

Juliet Chambers, movement teacher on the acting course at East 15 Acting School in
London, has her students write about their emotional experiences from LMA work in
their journals. Here is an example from one such journal:

Wringing (a combination of strong, sustained and indirect efforts) was the most
distressing action for me as it made me feel the same pain as when I lost my
nan.....later I did find myself creating a totally imaginary world from this feeling"
(anonymous, third year journals 2009)

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Not all students would be able to do this mental, emotional work stimulated by a
movement experience and none should be forced to do so. Many will not do it, simply
copying movements they have been asked to do without investing them with the vitality
that will bring their Self into it. However the overlapping role that emotions play in the
actor’s personal and performing lives is important and can be addressed in many ways; it
is suggested that in training movement work can be one way to do this.

As Ramage comments,
There is, of course, a deep connection between emotion and physiology. Where is
a particular emotion experienced in physical terms? Study and good practice
teaches us the answer to such questions. (Ramage 2009)

There is now a lot of research (Damasio 1999, Fonagy 2002) on how human brain works
and changes with emotional experience so Ramage’s comment about emotion and
physiology is very timely. There is more research that needs to be done in the area of
performance training but these speculations, like those about movement and drama as
therapy, are outside the scope of this paper. However, they are areas that overlap with our
subject because the actor’s SELF is a complex, moving and dynamic organism being
trained as a dynamic performing artist.

In the introduction to his chapter, “Movement and the Body”, Laban describes what he
sees as the choices we make in terms of how we move and that

…we can become conscious of our choice, and can investigate why we so choose.

A little further on Laban continues;

the variety of human character derives from the multitude of possible attitudes
toward the motion factors, and certain tendencies herein can become habitual with
the individual. It is of great importance for the actor-dancer to recognize that such

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 habitual inner attitudes are the basic indications of what we call character and
temperament. (Laban, 1960 p4).

Training for the actor requires this complex processes of learning one’s own habits,
relating them to those of a character and reflecting on the meaning of those non-verbal
habits.

Between the framework and the role lies the artist

There is a constructive tension between these two identities in a role: that of the character
and that of the actor. The actor goes on a personal journey in order to give us, the
audience, the character’s journey in the context of the play. A large part of this work can
be approached through movement; the physical way the actor communicates non-verbally
with the world around him. If he knows his own style and preferences in non-verbal,
qualitative terms, he can explore ways of becoming the character through movement that
leads to emotions, images and all the other aspects used in this work.

The following is an example of an actress cast in the part of Titania from Midsummer
Night’s Dream. The actress is small and slim with a quick, darting quality in her gestures
and gaze; often giving the impression of a cheerful sparrow. In LMA terms, preferences
for quick time, light weight and direct focus with a vertical erect orientation or pin body
attitude. She gets what clues she can from the text: this is a queen, “Proud Titania”, with
many servants who obey her command. The actress decides she would like to try moving
with more free flow, shape flow, to fill a larger kinesphere than she would ordinarily use
and to adopt a more stable, body attitude. As she improvises with these qualities, perhaps
moving to music that has them, the image of a swan comes to her mind. Holding that
image, she plays with turning from her head and walking with sustainment, indirect focus
and strong weight. The result is someone of more status, gravitas and authority than the
quick darting characteristics of the actress’s personal movement vocabulary.

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In practice some time is spent getting the actress to embody the chosen qualities so that
her body becomes used to, and can explore, this different movement vocabulary.
Everyday actions that the character might do – in this case, walk, sit, be carried, fanned or
entertained – are practiced until they feel usual. Then she would be asked to forget the
analyzed information and play the character with text or rehearse the scene; my hope is
that the body will retain this other movement language and inform the actress’s work as
she develops through the rehearsal process. The body does not usually forget its
movement experience if that experience is properly integrated into the physical life of the
person.

By naming, therefore recognizing, the qualities she wanted to explore and perhaps adopt,
this actress could specifically refer to her kinesthetic, movement knowledge of the
qualities she wanted to change rather than depend on someone else’s demonstration that
she would copy. She could discover from her self’s movement repertoire her relationship
to this royal character; how different it was and perhaps why she, as a person who had not
had a court full of people to order around, did not use the large, flowing kinesphere that
she decided Titania would. Obviously not all queens are necessarily going to have a
large kinesphere (in fact the present Queen Elizabeth of England doesn’t!) but this kind
of work invites the detail and specificity of one individual finding their particular
movement journey into another’s. The images and stories, stimulated by the body’s
movement, that come into one person’s mind will be different to another’s. It is this
specific exploration from the movement of the self that invites the detail and artistic
analysis necessary for embodying a role.

The LMA framework also gives the actor a way of ‘collecting’ observations for the
character. This same actress may decide to look at footage of an actual queen or of an
actress playing a queen on film or stage as part of her research. She will have a way of
noting how these people move and what gives them the authoritative quality that she as
the actress lacks. Is it the way this person turns, never to be pulled or jerked into action as
if everything has to come to her? (indirect, bound flow in LMA terms) Is it a small
kinesphere that never varies or adapts to the environment? Is it a vertical body attitude

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that gives a sense of status no matter where she is? Whatever the qualities, the actress
observing them can experiment accurately from her own observation and kinesthetic
understanding of the movement persona she sees rather than through imitation. She may
not use the LMA words or symbols, but having learned it in her body, her observing
skills will be informed by that physical experience.

As Peggy Hackney states,

There is a tendency in our movement training to encourage ourselves and our

students to imitate an outward form rather than making the movement live
comfortably from within. (Hackney 1998 p. 24)

The framework of LMA gives the performer the wherewithal to find how a role can be
inhabited “comfortably from within.” (Hackney 24)

Robin Wilson, writer and director, points out that this is the artistic nub of the actor’s
preparation and building of a character.

An actor has to know his own movement in order to begin the journey of
adapting, moulding, suppressing, changing it into that of the character. He can’t
just replace his way of moving with that of the character: once he knows his
movement, which the Laban system can help him to do, he must use his creativity
to develop the imagined physicality of the character. (Robin Wilson, 2009)

Another words, there is an important process that needs to happen between the actor, with
LMA as a tool, and the character to which he is aspiring. One could say LMA supplies
the science and the actor supplies the creative and artistic use of that system to develop
his interpretation; his artistic rendition, of the role. He may begin in any number of ways:
perhaps an image, a suggestion from the Director or with LMA; then his movement, his
body and his creative process takes him into establishing the character in his body

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through which he can bring the audience into the story of the play. He may use various
movement techniques to help in this process: if he knows that he tends to walk very
vertically except for his head which juts out a bit, he may experiment with leading from a
different body part or with having his movement centre somewhere else. (1953 Michael
Chekhov) . However he does it, at some point the actor must use his physical, moving
self to play the character and that, like many others, is a creative process for the
performing artist.

In a recent book, Dr. Katya Bloom, a colleague who teaches LMA work at RADA (Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art) in London recorded this example of using LMA as a tool for
scene preparation:

Students were asked to devise a physical preparation based on Laban’s

vocabulary which enabled them to embody their characters’ states of mind before
presenting a scene. Two students devised the following warm-up for playing the
physically and emotionally vulnerable Laura and the confident Jim, (the
‘gentleman caller’), in Tennessee Williams’, Glass Menagerie. For Laura: the
actress started lying down, curling on her side in a foetal position, sensing within
herself an anxious internal ‘wringing’ sensation, while imagining that all around
her she perceived unidentifiable sounds, which cause her attention to ‘flick’ from
one place to another. She then stood and walked in the space. Though she no
longer thought about these images, she was still affected by the preparation.

As Jim, the actor also chose to begin close to the floor by pressing his hands very
deliberately against it, then pressing other body parts just as deliberately – his
head, pelvis, ribs with the intention of ‘gaining strength in every part of my
body’. He did this with his eyes closed. When he opened his eyes he told himself
‘I own all that I can see’, and that he was ‘loved even by the air I breathe’. After
sensing each other in the space, the two actors were ready to engage in the scene.
(Bloom 2006)

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In 2004 the author did a project with Judith Steel, a colleague from the USA, looking at
uses of LMA in training acting students. Funded by Palatine, an organization that
supports projects of this nature in UK higher education, the project included making a
DVD of proceedings and writing several papers from which this example is taken. Part of
the project was to develop coaching techniques for second year students in their
Shakespeare roles. LMA provided a way of asking questions which helped the students
explore the non-verbal language and character of their roles:

If your character goes through a transformation within the play, how do you physically
track those changes? What baseline does your character move from? What stays the
same? What is different?

How can you get your core to be active and support the text you need to say but at the
same time be clearly ill and suffering?

This last question outlined a large problem for a young actor playing the French
King in the first part of All’s Well that Ends Well. The student actor tended to use
his weight very passively in his portrayal of the sick King sitting in a wheel chair.
The director wanted a vital, kingly character even if he was ill; the problem
seemed to be how to get the actor to actively play an old, sickly king without
losing performing energy or the authority of his character. Another aspect of this
was the student’s own movement preferences: as a tall (6’3”) willowy young man
often operating at a low energy level he had a very concave body attitude and a
sustained, uni-focused (direct) effort preference. Using his sustainment as a
bridge, so to speak, to verticality and multi- focused (indirect or flexible)
attention, he found a way to attain and renew an active relationship to being
vertical in his sitting and to being inclusive in his spatial attitude (multi-focused).
This physical experience gave him a clear sense of how the king could be regal
which he then took into his enactment of royalty diminished by illness. Having
established a physical movement presence he overlaid it with the emotive quality
required.

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Future considerations:

It may be interesting to do more technology-based research into how the LMA material
can be used in the search for self, preparation for performance, expansion of range and
other issues that come up in the working process for actors. As technology improves,
motion capture instruments and other movement recording devices can give us more
information about the physiological as well as the psychological processes involved in a
training as complex as that of the actor. The hope is that. movement analysts, teachers
and engineers can work together to refine their knowledge, skills and techniques in
movement training.

In terms of applied present knowledge and practice, there is now a growing group of
performers, directors, choreographers and teachers from the theatre community who are
writing about LMA as developed in the USA to address its use in this field. The Laban
Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in NYC has recently launched a Journal for this
growing field titledJournal of Laban Movement Studies whose most recent issue
concentrates on LMA in theatre studies. There is also a group of subscribers to the CMA
list serve actively engaged with this subject. In Britain, many acting schools (RADA, the
Drama Centre, Rose Bruford, Central and East 15 in England and Queen Margaret
University in Scotland) use Laban in some form in their training practice.

Conclusion:
This paper demonstrates how LMA could be used in the movement training of actors;
showing its effectiveness and its potential for further development. Any actor is a unique
individual whose “self” is evidenced, changed, expressed through his movement in
service of bringing a character alive to an audience through a play. This paper has
focused on a specific kind of stage acting; but the author believes that parallel processes
can be found in any performing art. Even in clowning and farce, where one could argue
the SELF of the performer is hidden behind many layers of technique and style, or other
art forms such as opera, dance or playing a musical instrument, there is a truth that can
only come from the SELF and that SELF can be evidenced in movement.

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Or, to conclude in the words of Juliet Chambers’ students:

LMA gives me ownership of my material – I don’t have to rely on the “magic of

the moment” of a particular tutor or director. I don’t have to be dependent on
someone else.

I have myself with it. (first year student journals 2008 - 2009)

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References:

Adrian, B. 2008 Actor Training the Laban Way: An Integrated Approach to Voice
Speech and Movement. New York. Allworth Press

Bloom, K. 2006 Movement and Psychoanalysis London: Karnac

Chambers, J. first year journals from East 15 acting program unpublished 2008-2009

Chekhov, M (1953) To the Actor: On the Technique of Acting New York. Harper and
Row

Damasio, A (1999) The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of
Consciousness. New York. Harcourt Brace

Fonagy,P Gergely, G Target (2002) Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the

Development of the Self (with G. Gergely, E. Jurist and M. Target London: Other Press),

Hackney, P.J. 1998 Making Connections: Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff
Fundamentals Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach

Laban, R. ed. Ullman,L. 1960 The Mastery of Movement London: MacDonald & Evans

Penfield, K. Steel, J (2004) “Application of Laban Movement Analysis to a Movement for Actors
Training Programme: Excerpts from a Teaching Collaboration.” PALATINE. DVD available
from Palatine or authors. [http://www.palatine.ac.uk/development-awards/384/]

Ramage, R unpublished paper 2009

Stanislavsky, Constantin.(1961) Creating a Role. Trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood.

New York: Theatre Arts Books

Vigotsky, L Thought and Language Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press 1962

Wilson, R unpublished conversation 2009

Useful websites:

www.admp.co.uk website of the Association of Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK

www.limsonline.org website of the Laban Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies
www.palatine.ac.uk website of Palatine Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for
Dance, Drama and Music.

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