The Physical Actor is a comprehensive book of exercises for actors. It is carefully designed for the development of a strong and flexible physical body able to move with ease through space and interact instinctively on-stage. Annie Loui draws on her training with Etienne Decroux, Carolyn Carlson, and Jerzy Grotowski to bring Contact Improvisation into the theatrical sphere. She explains how it can be used to develop alert and embodied listening skills in the actor, and how to apply it to working with texts on stage.
This book will guide the reader through a full course of movement skills, including:
Partnering skills
Spatial awareness for groups and individuals
Fine motor control through mime
Heightened co-ordination and sustained motion
New for this edition are additional partnering exercises, in-depth applications of contact improvisation to monologues and scenes, and a chapter on devising physical theatre performances.
Foreword
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
1. WARM-UP AND ALIGNMENT
What we do and how we approach it
Warm-up sequence
2. SPACE
Spatial exercises
3. MIME
Alignment
Isolations
Direct application: improvisation
Mime illusions: articulated action
Slow motion
4. PARTNERING
The arc and the exercises
group 1: weight and counterbalance
group 2: weight support (skeleton)
group 3: floor support
group 4: lifts
5. CONTACT IMPROVISATION: practice and scene study
Preliminary improvisation
Contact improvisation
Contact improvisation with text
Contact Improvisation with a scene
6. CONTACT INTO REALISM
Contemporary comedy in contact
Contemporary comedy: out of contact into realism
Monologues in contact
Monologues: out of contact into realism
7. DEVISING
Movement theater creation
Preliminary Exercises
Structural elements
The guidelines
Critique
Devising with a group- CounterBalance Theater examples
Index
