The Physical Actor (2^nd Ed.) Contact Improvisation from Studio to Stage

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

Annie Loui works as a director/choreographer, and is the Artistic Director of Counter-Balance Theater. Her original physical theater pieces have been seen in France, Monaco, West Germany, Italy, and the United States. She runs the Movement Program for MFA Actor Training at the University of California, Irvine.