THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT OF MUSICAL THEATRE

UTILIZING THE LINKLATER METHOD OF BREATHING TO CREATE AND RECREATE AUTHENTIC EMOTION

LAURA GULEY

SPRING 2020

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a baccalaureate degree in Musical Theatre with honors in Musical Theatre

Reviewed and approved* by the following:

Raymond Sage Voice for Musical Theatre Thesis Supervisor

Raymond Sage Voice for Musical Theatre Honors Advisor

Susan B. Russell Literature and Criticism, Playwriting, History of Musical Theatre Faculty Reader

* Electronic approvals are on file. i

ABSTRACT

It’s no secret that many actors of any age, background, or level of success can struggle with their mental health. While there are many factors that contribute to this, such as feelings of rejection, and needing to be “good enough”, I believe there is a facet of acting taught in schools that contributes to the mental health struggles actors face. There is a technique of acting taught to students called Method Acting. This technique requires the student to draw on their own personal experiences and memories in order to understand or create a character. This could involve a student exploring negative memories, or living as that character for a period of time, in order to relate to the psyche of the character. However, forcing yourself to reopen healed wounds of heartbreak and grief, or making unhealthy choices for the sake of the character is not always a sustainable method of acting. Therefore, I am proposing that actors and teachers explore a different route to getting into character through breath. The Linklater Technique, created by

Kristin Linklater, is a method of awakening your voice consciousness to explore the breadth of human emotion thorough your own body. The Linklater Technique is built upon the idea that once we free our voice of inhibitions, can we experience the world authentically. I believe that exposing an actor to the way they can use breath to create and recreate authentic emotion, through the Linklater Technique, will exponentially improve an actor’s performance onstage without the cost of declining mental health. ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... vi

Chapter 1 : Beginning ...... 1

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 2 : Survey ...... 4

Survey of Penn State Musical Theatre Majors and How Acting Affects Their Mental Health 4 The Subjects ...... 5 Findings ...... 5 Discussion ...... 13

Chapter 3 : History ...... 16

History of Method Acting ...... 16 Kristin Linklater ...... 18 Foundation and History of the Linklater Technique ...... 19

Chapter 4 : To Start ...... 21

Understanding How the Voice Works ...... 21 Why Do We Have to Retrain our Brain? ...... 23 Preparation ...... 25

Chapter 5 : The Basics ...... 28

Exercise 1: Alignment ...... 28 Exercise 2: The Spine...... 32 Exercise 3: Breath ...... 35 Exercise 4: Finding Center ...... 39

Chapter 6 : Discussion ...... 42

Personal Experience ...... 42 Things to Consider ...... 43

Chapter 7 : Conclusion...... 45

Appendix A ...... 46 iii

Appendix B ...... 47

Survey Questions and Answers ...... 47 Results ...... 50

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 59

iv

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Are you an actor? ...... 5

Figure 2 About how many years have you studied or practiced acting? ...... 5

Figure 3 Would you say that acting affects your mental health? ...... 6

Figure 4 If yes to the previous, would you say that acting affects your mental health positively or negatively? ...... 6

Figure 5 Feeling down, depressed or hopeless ...... 9

Figure 6 Little interest or pleasure in doing things ...... 9

Figure 7 Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed. Or the opposite, being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual .... 10

Figure 8 Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television 10

Figure 9 Feeling tired or having little energy ...... 10

Figure 10 Feeling bad about yourself - or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down ...... 11

Figure 11 On a scale from 1-5, please rate your mental health state while performing or in acting class ...... 11

Figure 12 Do you think that an actor's mental health would improve if they weren't encouraged to reopen old wounds in order to simulate a certain emotion onstage? ...... 13

Figure 13 Anatomy of the larynx...... 23

Figure 14 My voice as it is now...... 26

Figure 15 My voice as I want it to be...... 26

Figure 16 Where the difficulties with my voice are located...... 26

Figure 17 A poem to my voice...... 27

Figure 18 How I imagined the spine...... 29

Figure 19 What the spine actually looks like...... 30

Figure 20 Semi-supine position...... 30

Figure 21 Neutral Spine...... 31

Figure 22 Overextended Spine...... 32 v

Figure 23 Imprinted spine...... 32

vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to Tess Dignan, who introduced me to the Linklater Technique in 2017, and has changed my life exponentially. 1 : Beginning

Introduction

When an actor receives training from a place of higher learning, much of his or her focus is placed on the voice because learning to use it effectively can aid them in finding authentic emotion onstage. The audience’s expectation for a performance is to see a real human being, someone reacting truthfully to their given circumstances. For an actor this is no easy task.

Consider how you might react to the punch line of a joke you’ve heard before. Although you might have found it hilarious the first time, your reaction to the second telling might typically be more subdued and less spontaneous. The ability to react every time as if it were the first time even though you know the “punch line” is an essential part of becoming a skilled actor. Most people could easily force a laugh the second or third time they’ve heard the same joke, but how does one facilitate an authentic reaction when the emotions are much more heightened, such as feeling heartbreak, anger or passion?

Growing up doing theatre and being surrounded by theatre people, my leaning towards strong and intense emotion was not only cultivated, but encouraged. A realization that feeling strong emotions and crying is OK amongst actors was met with opposing advice on how to exist in mainstream society, where these behaviors are repressed. Theatre people are often accused of being “overly sensitive” or “melodramatic”. Add to this the fact that I am a female, with the feminine stereotypes of being “emotional” or “weak”, and you get someone who constantly feels they have to monitor their behavior and come up with calculated, smart things to say. Instead of responding with my first instinct, I stop, analyze the situation, and react accordingly. In some situations, it’s probably not best to react with our survival instincts. I’m not encouraging that we 2 go punching anyone who makes us mad! But, it is important to acknowledge how that situation made us feel, and translate it into a more effective way of communicating. The idea of creating negative habits in order to “fit in” is not a new one, but it is still a problem that takes us away from what makes us uniquely human. One of my professors, Susan Schulman said, “What makes theatre ‘real’ is not the sets or the language or the costumes, it’s the ability of an actor to react authentically to a situation presented at hand.” But, if we, as humans, are out of the practice of reacting instinctively, and allowing ourselves to feel intense emotion in life, how can actors be expected to recreate that emotion in a unnatural way, i.e. when give dialogue and are performing in front of an audience?

A popular mode of training called the Method, encourages actors to find a deeper connection to a character within themselves by acting as that character both onstage and off. A popular joke between theatre people when given a dramatic action or scene, is to reference that extreme Method acting is the only way you can authentically create the scene. For example, we might joke that the answer to understanding Tom’s decision to walk out on his family The Glass

Menagerie, is for that actor to just “Method Act it!”, meaning he would repeat Tom’s actions to his own family in order to personally connect with the character. However, while the Method can teach an actor how to discover themselves within the character, it doesn’t necessarily teach how to separate the two at the end of a show. This comes with the emotions that the character, and therefore the actor, experiences during the show. I believe that by solely using this method of acting, we create habits that prevent us from separating negative and positive scenarios crafted by the imagination, therefore negatively impacting our mental health. When I found myself in a situation in class where I was experiencing an intense emotion, unrelated to a character, I was told to draw attention to where I physically felt that in my body, to what movement or words 3 provoked it and to allow myself to fully feel the emotion. Then, the idea was, recreating those emotions onstage required my imagination to relive what provoked them. As a young actor, this translated into “Reopen and pour salt into the most traumatic scars I have. This will make me cry, making the audience cry and then I’ll be a good actor.” I used to consider this synthetic method of acting as “real”. Being genuinely affected by the scene around me, instead of crying because I thought of a puppy dying, or staring into the lights without blinking until my eyes started to water, was unattainable to me.

Even after training in the theatre for 13 years, I have struggled finding a way that is consistent in allowing me to reach the emotional vulnerability required of me in certain scenes, while still keeping the state of my mental health above water. It wasn’t until my freshman year of college at Penn State that I was introduced to the Linklater Method by Professor Tess Dignan.

From then on I have found the most success with this method personally, and have grown a strong passion for spreading this alternate way of thinking among my peers. I believe this method can be used alongside of acting training that will allow actors to develop a way to create and recreate authentic emotion.

4 : Survey

Survey of Penn State Musical Theatre Majors and How Acting Affects Their Mental Health

In a survey of current and graduated Penn State Musical Theatre Majors, I attempted to discern if certain methods of acting had a positive or negative impact on their mental health. The idea for the study stemmed from personal experience with being in an unhealthy headspace during acting, and a desire to know if I was alone in these struggles. For this study, I defined mental health as “a person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well- being”.

In order to discover if fellow actors within the same school experience a negative relationship with acting and their mental health, research was conducted over a four-week period. The research took the form of a Google Forms survey complete with a variety of questions such as multiple choice, open ended and Likert Scale questions. This survey was taken by 29 participants. A survey was selected as the primary research method because it allowed the researcher to reach a large spectrum of people, it was anonymous and was an easy way to collect and organize the data necessary. The survey was sent out over a four week period, and the data was compiled into various charts and graphs.

The survey consisted of 17 questions and was structured towards determining if actors did struggle with their mental health and where those struggles may be stemming from.

Specifically, if it was due to the method of acting taught, or other anxieties that come with performance art such as dealing with rejection, comparing yourself to others or not feeling good enough. 5 The Subjects

A total of 29 participants took the survey over the four-week period. In order to get responses from subjects that I knew shared similar acting training and experiences, the survey was posted in Facebook groups containing current students and graduates of the Penn State

Musical Theatre BFA program. 100% of the participants were actors, and the majority (65.5%) of them have studied acting for 10-15 years. All of the subjects and their recorded answers were anonymous.

Figure 1 Are you an actor?

Figure 2 About how many years have you studied or practiced acting?

Findings

In the study, preliminary questions were asked about the subjects, such as if they were an actor and how long they have studied acting. Following those questions, the subjects were asked 6 if they thought acting affected their mental health, to which a majority of participants answered,

“Yes” (82.8%). Then, they were asked if they thought that acting affected their mental health positively, negatively, both or either, to which the majority of the participants answered, “Both”

(65.6%). In terms of proving my hypothesis correct, I was surprised at the answer to the second question. However, upon realizing that “acting” was a very broad term, and had many different facets that could have an positive and negative effect on someone, I realized I needed to get more specific with my questions.

Figure 3 Would you say that acting affects your mental health?

Figure 4 If yes to the previous, would you say that acting affects your mental health positively or negatively?

Therefore, a short, anonymous response question was added that gave much more insight into how the participants thought acting affected their mental health. This question was phrased,

“Why do you think [Acting] affects your mental health?” Some of the responses support my hypothesis that using a method that asks the actor to use their own person and experiences to 7 create a character have a negative effect on their mental health, while some responses said their mental health was affected negatively due to other variables in theatre, and some said acting affected their mental health in a positive way instead of negative. Listed here are several responses that do or do not support my hypothesis. All of the responses, along with the entirety of the survey can be found in Appendix B.

Response 1: “We’re the people that dare to go back to places some people

wish to never visit again. We are the researchers of the behavior and the

mind.”

Response 2: “Playing roles with circumstances that are similar to my own,

or crafting “as if’s” that may hit close to home, can bring up past and

current life experiences that make me scared, sad, etc. I have to constantly

be aware of my limits and know what is off limits. … On the flip side,

when onstage, I am filled with a rush of adrenaline and endorphins that

positively impact my life in the moment.”

Response 3: “Because when acting we have to jump into the mind of a

made up human- who, depending on the circumstances, could live a very

unhealthy lifestyle, which can then spill over into real life.”

8 Response 4: “It’s literally training your body to feel emotions at certain

times, and it’s not always easiest to hop right on out of. Also it effects my

mental health if I feel like I’m doing bad work.”

Response 5: “Acting tests your self-confidence and questions your every

move more than other professions/lifestyles. In some ways it’s a blessing

to be reliant on self-assurance and self-confidence, but the constant test

and longing for assurance from others can be toxic.”

Response 6: “Because I find it incredibly therapeutic and it helps me both

escape and be more vulnerable at the same time.”

Response 7: “The stress and anxiety of rejection and not be “good

enough” and constantly comparing to others affect it negatively. However

on the flip side, the theatre is also a release from all the stresses of

constant “real” life.”

Many of these responses show a relationship between using personal experiences to relate to a character and a negative effect on the subject’s mental health. Additionally, some responses show how other parts of acting and performing can negatively impact their psyche, such as the “anxiety and stress of rejection”, and how the “constant… longing for assurance can be toxic.”. However, for the purpose of this study, I am considering those feelings and experiences to be valid, and 9 absolutely add to the difficulty of acting, but do not discuss a solution to those problems. Another observation is that the majority of subjects add, that while aspects of acting may have a negative effect, it also adds an equally important positive element to their mental health.

The next series of questions in the survey were given as an attempt to gage where the subjects landed on the scale of severity of depression. The questions came from the PHQ-9 which is a questionnaire used my medical professionals to objectify the degree of depression severity. The overwhelming response to these questions were that the majority of subjects did not experience symptoms of depression. See

Figures 5-8 below.

Figure 5 Feeling down, depressed or hopeless.

Figure 6 Little interest or pleasure in doing things. 10

Figure 7 Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed. Or the opposite, being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual.

Figure 8 Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television.

Symptoms that a majority did experience, like “Feeling tired or having little energy”, “Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much” and “Poor appetite or overeating”, can be attributed to the rigorous schedule and stress of being a college student and a young adult.

Figure 9 Feeling tired or having little energy.

However, an interesting result was the variety of responses gathered for the question, “Feeling bad about yourself - or that you are a failure or have let yourself or 11 your family down”. Due to the similarity of language in the question and responses gathered in the open ended question, I believe this result is linked to how certain methods of acting can have a negative impact on mental health.

Figure 10 Feeling bad about yourself - or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down.

Next, the subjects were asked to rate their mental health while performing or in acting class on a scale from 1-5. The majority of participants answered, “4”, making me conclude that while their mental health is not perfect, it’s more positive than negative during class. However, I believe similar results would have come from a question asking the subjects to rate their mental health during the day, assuming that a majority of people do not feel 100% great about themselves all of the time, making the question in the survey not specific enough.

1: I’m not feeling great. 5: I’m feeling my best! Figure 11 On a scale from 1-5, please rate your mental health state while performing or in acting class.

12 My penultimate question in the survey received some interesting information as well. The question asked the subjects if they thought an actor's mental health would improve if they weren't encouraged to reopen old wounds in order to simulate a certain emotion onstage. This question gave the subjects the opportunity to select one of three choices, yes, no, and maybe, or leave their own response. The majority of participants (55.2%) answered, “Maybe”, 17.2% of participants answered “Yes”, 6.9% answered, “No”, and the remaining 20.7% gave their own response. Some of these responses gave more insight as to how the subject experiences their relationship between acting and their mental health, such as the ones listed below. These responses were slightly unexpected because, when creating the survey, I did not take into account other reasons an actor’s mental health might need to improve.

Response 1: “I believe that it is necessary to reopen old wounds when you are

training. However, I think that consistently reopening that wound in an effort

to maintain a truthful performance can be dangerous for one’s mental health.”

Response 2: “Yes but they wouldn’t be as truthful as an actor.”

Response 3: “I personally think that emotional wounds need to be healed

regardless of if a person is an actor or not. But as for actors, because they dive

into emotional vulnerability it’s always helpful and healthy for them to deal

with their mental health concerns outside of acting more attentively than the

average person, so that the acting doesn’t trigger a reaction that leaves them

unable to function properly. … I think mental health concerns look different 13 for every actor so I don’t think you can say that being vulnerable onstage in

intense emotional circumstances will only either improve or deteriorate and

actor’s mental health.”

Figure 12 Do you think that an actor's mental health would improve if they weren't encouraged to reopen old wounds in order to simulate a certain emotion onstage?

Discussion

In my findings, I found a variety of responses that support my hypothesis, but more importantly, give additional insight into why many actors struggle with their mental health.

Some of these reasons are because they are using personal experience to inform a character, they struggle with feelings of rejection and being good enough, while others could have struggles from underlying negative experiences from outside of performance. However, I believe that the majority of the responses, while they use different vocabulary than I do, support my hypothesis.

The most useful part of my survey ended up being the open ended questions because I was able to understand how different people interpreted the effects of acting on their mental health. Some of the responses stated that a person should know what they’re getting themselves into when they decide to study acting, implying that acting has a reputation of being emotionally challenging and possibly negative on a person’s mental health. When looking at additional responses, this 14 made sense because it seemed that every subject had a general acceptance that the pursuit and study of Acting is difficult as a whole.

For future research, I would like to examine a larger pool of subjects with a different survey first to see what aspects of acting had the biggest impact on their mental health, positive and negative. Following, I would like to further research the top three aspects that came out of the survey to get a sense of what were the causes of these struggles and solutions that could address them. If my hypothesis is correct, a refined approach to the survey than I have recorded in this paper would be required in order to break out specific responses directly related to my research regarding the reasons that actors struggle with their mental health. This way, I would be able to separate the effects of each of the named facets of acting on the subjects. Some subjects pointed out inconsistencies in how I define “acting” in my survey. For example, this participant recognized that they have different meanings of acting, such as the “craft”, the “industry” and the

“method” of acting. For them, the “craft” of acting served as a practice of “being squarely in the present moment, having empathy for others and finding freedom in the breath and simply what is”, which they found to be a positive experience. The “industry” of acting can be negative because that is where the feelings of “not being good enough”, and struggling with rejection comes from. Then, there is an acting “Method” that suggests embracing past experiences as a way to connect to a character, which they would then consider to be negative. This made me realize the core error in my survey, which was its lack of specificity. My intent was for the participants to evaluate their relationship with a specific method of acting, Strasberg’s Method

Acting, in the survey. That way, other variables such as rejection from the industry, or the positive, therapeutic aspects of the craft of acting would not have affected the results. 15 However, enough responses supported my hypothesis that acting which requires a person to relive personal experiences can have a negative effect on their mental health, that I found it encouraging to continue my research. The rest of this paper examines breath, as taught through the Linklater Technique, as a healthier alternative to create and recreate authentic emotion onstage.

16 : History

History of Method Acting

To quote Atticus Finch from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” For some actors, this is to be taken literally. There are different methods of acting and techniques taught in theatre to help actors be truthful onstage. My focus is on type of acting called Method Acting, created by Konstantin Stanislavski. Stanislavski, a

Russian theatre director and actor, born in Moscow, Russia in 1863 is known as the founder of modern acting. While he did not coin the term, “Method Acting”, he did develop a technique in the 1900s where actors drew on their own personal experiences and memories in order to connect with their character. According to Lee Strasberg, who further developed Stanislavski’s idea, the Method is an acting technique that requires the actor to react truthfully under imaginary circumstances. He or she must cultivate an “’emotional reality’ by substituting the specifics of the scene with the memory of “a past event with the strength of emotional response that is pertinent to the monologue or scene …, which is a parallel reality” (Strasberg 29). This would mean that in order to portray a character’s grief over the death of a loved one, the actor must recall a memory similar to what their character is experiencing in order to evoke authentic emotion as their character. The goal of the Method is for an actor to create an organic and imaginative performance by experiencing or living though the role, which Stanislavski called

“perezhivanie” (Krasner 5). For some actors, these methods involve reopening healed wounds to live in a character’s shoes, and for others, it meant to live as the character 24/7, both onstage and off. While revolutionary, Stanislavski’s method became successful and started to replace 17 classical acting because it was less presentational. Stanislavski used the Method to show real human experiences onstage by revealing the self from the inside. Classical acting, the mainstream before Stanislavski, on the other hand, was acting with heightened language, character traits and physicality. It is like a Shakespearean text, it was more elevated, more dramatic, but more obvious. The Method became a sort of rebellion against classical acting, a more imaginative form, where you must “act from yourself, without thinking where your personal action ends and the character’s begins” (5).

In the 1920s, another influential actor and director, Lee Strasberg, took Stanislavsky’s idea and built upon it even further. He believed that an actor must live as their character for the entirety of the staged production and rehearsals or filming period. This includes inhabiting that character’s lifestyle and thoughts, which could result in the actor losing weight or changing their eating or sleeping habits. Strasberg maintains, in the process of the work, “ one aspect of the actor’s art may be emphasize temporarily at the expense of the other, but before a complete and convincing image ca be created on the stage both must be mastered” (4). This idea of self- sacrifice to the character of the play is one of the famous aspects of Method Acting. According to director, Elia Kazan, the actor’s performance is “indicated” or “pretend” if the actor is not going through what their character is going through. Real, believable behavior means, “real doing, not indicating or pretending” (6). Some important Method buzzwords include moment to moment, as if statement, impulse, playing off the partner and imaginary circumstances.

Method acting has become the most popular technique of acting in America. Lee

Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Stanford Meisner are known to be the principal teachers of the

Method extending into the late twentieth century. In the 1950s, according to Nathan D. Allison,

America experienced a rise in the popularity of the Method. He attributes this surge to “the 18 symptoms of “perceived loss (of agency, personal identity, and human uniqueness) occasioned by consensus culture” (Allison 105) due to a turbulent post-war world. The Method functioned as a way to live in and understand the world, and creating the space for people to cultivate their perception of themselves, and who they are. Some famous actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis,

Robin Williams, Heath Ledger and Kate Winslet are all known to use “method acting” to prepare for a role.

Kristin Linklater

The founder and creator of Linklater Technique, Kristin Linklater, grew up on an archipelago in Scotland called Orkney. She attended London Academy of Music and Dramatic

Art, where she studied voice under Iris Warren (See Appendix.) After school Ms. Linklater studied with Iris Warren to become a teacher, and taught at LAMDA for six years before moving to New York City to open her own private studio. From 1964-1978, Kristin Linklater taught

NYU’s undergraduate theatre program, coached voice for several pronounced theatre companies and Broadway shows, had a child, and published her first book, Freeing the Natural Voice:

Imagery and Art in the Practice of Voice and Language. Linklater moved back to the U.K., where she taught and performed along with Shakespeare and Company (a company she was the co-founder of) for the next twelve years. She then moved back to the States to teach at Emerson

College. While in Boston, she created an all-female Shakespeare company called the Company of Women, which she co-directed with Carol Gilligan. In 1992, her second book Freeing

Shakespeare’s Voice: The Actors Guide to Talking the Text was published before she moved back to New York City to become a Professor of Theatre Arts at Columbia University. In 2013, 19 she retired from Columbia and moved back to Orkney, where she created The Kristin Linklater

Voice Centre, a residential retreat for students to take classes, and undergo the teacher-training process.

Foundation and History of the Linklater Technique

In her novel, Freeing the Natural Voice, Kristin Linklater talks about the “imbalance between the creative use of inner self and communicative skill in both English and American

Actors” (2). Around the same time Linklater arrived in New York City, Method Acting had already exploded and fissured out among several premiere theatre companies. However,

Linklater noticed that while the Method allowed for actors to cultivate and share their creative, imaginative inner life, it came at the expense of the actor’s voice and body. Though skills and exercises obtained working with Iris Warren, Judith Leibowitz (Alexander Technique), Trish

Arnold (Movement), working on Feldenkrais and Yoga, and what she has learned from her students, Linklater has developed and documented in her books, her adaptations of these exercises for voice in creating the Linklater Method.

The Linklater approach to voice is designed to “liberate the natural and thereby… serves the freedom of human expression” (7). This work is based off of several ideas that all humans are assumed to possess. One of the assumptions is that the tensions acquired in the voice are due to stimuli in the world that force our bodies to create habits of defenses, inhibitions and negative reactions. These reactions then diminish the efficiency of the voice to the point where we are unable to express ourselves authentically in the moment. One of the biggest facets of Linklater

Technique is the focus on releasing tensions that limit the voice from full transmission of the 20 imagination. Kristin Linklater discusses that in order to achieve perfect communication, you must achieve a “balanced quartet of emotion, intellect, body, and voice” (9).

For the purposes of this paper, I will be focused on Kristin Linklater’s teachings on finding and releasing breath, as I believe breath is the foundation to uninhibited emotion.

21 : To Start

Understanding How the Voice Works

First, I will identify a simplified breakdown of how the voice works, as given in Kristin

Linklater’s, Freeing the Natural Voice, on page 13.

1. There is an impulse in the motor cortex of the brain. 2. The impulse stimulates breath to enter and leave the body. 3. The outgoing breath makes contact with the vocal folds creating oscillations. 4. The oscillations create frequencies (vibrations). 5. The frequencies (vibrations) are amplified by resonators. 6. The resultant sound is articulated by the lips and the tongue to form words.

This simplified version of how the voice works, shows how every human being was programmed to function when attempting to communicate verbally. Anatomically speaking, breath flows into the larynx, trachea and then into your lungs and out of your body through the same route. The voice originates in the larynx, where the vocal folds are located and determine the shapes to make in order to produce a certain sound. However, for the purposes of this research with the Linklater Technique, part of the training is using the imagination to extend the picture of where the breath and resonators are located. For example, imagining that your breath doesn’t stop at the lungs, but extends to the pelvic floor or to the feet, can increase the capacity of breath in the lungs. The important part of reimagining the location of your breath is that when you breathe as if you are filling up your pelvic floor, you are actually connecting your “mind to primal energy sources in the sacral nerve plexi” (15). Being able to connect to the source of 22 primal instinct in our bodies is how we will be able to train ourselves to respond, when needed, from a place of authenticity. This connection begins with breath.

The way that breath affects the vocal folds is through the amount of pressure offered to the vocal folds in order for them to oscillate. Breath also stimulates the muscles in the larynx to stretch the folds so that when the air arrives, the vocal fold provide enough resistance to create the oscillations (see Figure 13). To create a lower frequency, a gentle pressure of breath must be added to more relaxed vocal chords which will cause them to oscillate slower. Likewise, a strong amount of pressure from the breath onto more stretched vocal folds will create quicker vibrations resulting in a higher frequency. It is important to note the amount of air and force required in order to create these frequencies; it is usually a lot less than we think. Additionally, the location of where these vibrations will resonate vary depending on level of frequency. Low frequencies get resonance from the chest and pharynx (lower throat), low to mid frequencies resonate at the back of the throat, the soft palate, teeth, jawbone, and hard palate. Mid to upper frequencies occur in the mid-sinuses, cheekbones, and the nose, whereas high frequencies resonate in the upper sinuses and the skull. Having a good mental map of where the resonators live in the body will guide your practice by allowing you to create sound from the most advantageous part of the body. According to Kristin Linklater, finding the natural voice will allow you to “communicate the thought and a continuum of feelings [as] a hypothetical human being who is uninhibited, open, sensitive, emotionally mature, intelligent, and uncensored” (18). 23 Once we retrain the way we think about voice, where it is located and how it functions, can we begin to find our natural voice.

Figure 13 Anatomy of the larynx.

Why Do We Have to Retrain our Brain?

One thing that most people have in common is that, due to the way we live, we have lost the ability to behave reflexively. This reflexive behavior is defined by Linklater as our first, spontaneous, and instinctive action in response to a stimulus. Instead of first impulses, we learn to respond with only secondary impulses unless pushed to the extremes of our bodies by pain, fear or ecstasy. When these secondary impulses become so well developed that the first instinct ceases to exist, they form habits. As I mentioned in my introduction, not all habits are bad. Some are protective, for example, putting your foot on the brakes when someone around you cuts you off or veers out of control. Some of these habits are chosen from repeating the same task every day, such as always putting your right shoe on before your left. However, when we condition mental and emotional habits in a negative way that is when these secondary impulses take over and prevent us from reacting spontaneously. While these habits can be protective in life, they hinder an actor’s ability to respond authentically. Some of these emotional and mental habits are 24 thoughts like, “I can’t speak in front of an audience,” “I never sing by myself,” or “I always cry during animal shelter commercials.”, and often, they are formed by people other than the actor.

Kristin words it very well in her book that “Behavior that is suggested or demanded from outside responds only to secondary impulses” (19). Suggested or demanded behaviors is a vicious cycle that starts in your childhood, are carried through to adulthood, and unconsciously, passed on to our children. These behaviors are, understandably, taught to maintain a civilized society, where people are expected to function under Freud’s concept of the superego, “the ethical component of the personality [that] provides the moral standards by which the ego operates” (McLeod)

However, they have come to block and even reroute our nervous system impulses from responding properly. It’s not that reacting spontaneously is correct and calculation is incorrect, it’s that we should have the ability to achieve spontaneity and we seldom can. Tension filters your ability to connect to emotions and thoughts that are deep. It diffuses, redirects and deflects it. When you soften, you are able to drop into a deeper and more spacious place of yourself and you don’t have to do quite as much. As long as we live ready to respond with a calculated answer, instead of being emotionally open to receive information, our breath cannot be free. And if the breath is not free to give the voice the energy needed to produce sound, the voice will not work. When the breath is not free, it causes tension to be built in the lips and tongue as those muscles start to be overworked. And not just the voice is affected, in extreme cases, one of the most revealing parts of the body, the face, can harden into an impassive mask. It is easy to hide, calculate, and be invulnerable behind this mask, but in order to communicate honestly, people must want to reveal themselves and will realize that the strength to be open is found in vulnerability. One of the many goals of these exercises is to release the muscles face to reveal 25 authentic expressions that bubble from our inner lives rather than “put on” the inner life through muscular tension.

A popular term used in acting is for an actor to “let go” or “release” in their work. But, many of us have grown and been conditioned to have “control” of our bodies. To not have control, means to enter dangerous territory of the unknown, vulnerability and revealing what you are thinking or feeling. This has been programmed in our neural pathways such that our primal instincts have yielded to these secondary impulses that prevent us from relinquishing control. In order to find our “release”, we must recondition our bodies to be okay with losing control, and entering unfamiliar territory. The easiest way to give in to release, is to give in to a force that is constantly acting on our bodies, gravity.

Preparation

In her book, Kristin Linklater asks the reader to document four things, a drawing titled

“My Voice As It Is Now”, a drawing titled, “My Voice As I Would Like It To Be”, the outline of a gingerbread man with an illustration of where you think the problems lie with your voice, and a poem, “A Poem To My Voice”. At the start of my research, I documented all four of these images for myself, so when I reach a stopping point in my research for this paper, I will be able to do these exercises again in order to see if my perception of my voice has changed (see Figures

14-17). 26

Figure 14 My voice as it is now.

Figure 15 My voice as I want it to be.

Figure 16 Where the difficulties with my voice are located. 27

Figure 17 A poem to my voice.

Another part of Kristin’s work is the acknowledgement that you are starting from a place of Unconscious Incompetence with the goal of moving towards Unconscious Competence

(Unconscious Incompetence, Conscious Incompetence, Conscious Competence, and

Unconscious Competence). You must recognize that your voice will develop according to how disciplined you are. It’s not always how often you practice these exercises, but also how often you think about the work in your day to day life. Again, this work requires openness and willingness to explore your voice without judgement. Retraining the way we imagine the voice and breath will take time. And before readers who are not actors decided to skip the rest of this paper, recognize and be open to the idea that this work can be applicable to any human being at any point in their life. 28 : The Basics

“We either move in two ways. We contract which is fear based, like saying

‘no’ out of fear and the need for protection. Or, we expand which is saying

‘yes’ to the universe, which is acceptance and love” -Andrea Haring

I propose these exercises as a warm-up for an actor to find center, and start from a place of emotional availability. While there are many wonderful exercises not listed in this paper, I chose several that I found to be some of the most important lessons. These exercises have come from my work with Andrea Haring, Tess Dignan, and reading Kristin Linklater’s book, Freeing the Natural Voice. I have taken my own interpretation of some of the exercises as a way of appreciating and critically responding to the research conducted. Ideally, this warm-up would be used as a physical and mental reset before rehearsal, a performance, class, or anytime throughout the day. Make sure the student is wearing loose-fitting clothing that will not inhibit breathing.

Exercise 1: Alignment

What many of us don’t realize is that the way we live actually works in opposite to the way we were built to function. We spend our days hunched over a computer or a phone, curling our spine in ways that inhibit the body from breathing easily. Or, due to the shoes we wear or the sports we practice, we stick out our tailbones, crunching the lumbar spine. The goal of these exercises is to develop a physical awareness of the spine through relaxation. By finding the natural and relaxed alignment of the spine, the efficiency of breath improves exponentially. 29 Linklater quotes from Moshe Feldenkrais’ novel, Awareness through Movement, “Any posture is acceptable in itself as long as it does not conflict with the law of nature, which is that the skeletal structure should counteract the pull of gravity, leaving the muscles free for movement” (32). An exercise given to me in an Alexander Class (See Appendix A) by teacher

Gwen Walker, is to draw a picture of my skeleton, without referring to any scientific images for help. This exercise helped me to realize the way I picture my skeleton is not how it is built in nature at all. What many people forget, is that the spine has five curves, and moves in the direction of an “S”. It allows for the skull to rest perfectly on the top of the cervical spine, without additional work to hold the body up. As I mentioned, many people have retrained their body’s alignment, due to being hunched over a computer, or walking in heels. This forces many of the body’s muscles not responsible for alignment to get involved in holding the body up. Such as the ribcage, designed to protect essential organs and assist in intercostal breathing. If the ribcage must work to hold the chest high, instead of the upper part of the spine, it will not allow for the body to experience a full range of breath.

Figure 18 How I imagined the spine. 30

Figure 19 What the spine actually looks like.

This exercise requires the person to lie semi-supine on the floor, focused solely on alignment and breath. Allow the image of filling up a giant balloon from your diaphragm to the pelvic floor to assist you in your breath.

Figure 20 Semi-supine position.

Exercise 1

1. Allow gravity to do the work of sinking your body into the floor, trying to release any holding or tension.

2. Focus on breath.

3. Allow the breath to come in and go out freely without controlling the air. 31 4. Breathe only when you have the impulse to do so.

In this position, it is also easier to find the natural curve of the spine. With the feet placed flat on the floor, the tailbone is free to point towards the floor to create a gentle curve in the lower back instead of imprinting the spine in the floor (in Pilates, we call this your “mouse house”).

Moving up the body, now that the lumbar spine has its natural curve, the ribcage is able to move freely, and there is more space in the torso to breathe into. At the solar plexus and collarbone, it’s important to find where the upper spine meets the floor, without pressing into the floor and opening the ribcage. For those of us who are used to working hunched over a computer, keeping the shoulders wide and on the floor may feel like you’re extending your back, but you’re probably actually lying flat on the floor! This allows for the neck vertebrae to naturally curve forward, if you think of placing your head in line with the pelvis instead of your neck.

Figure 21 Neutral Spine.

32

Figure 22 Overextended Spine.

Figure 23 Imprinted spine.

Exercise 2: The Spine

This next exercise is aimed to bring the body into the inner process. In order to achieve maximum effect with minimum effort the actor must be rooted, and they must be rooted in truth.

Commitment to the inner processes of the body, imagination and emotion, will stimulate the body and voice to respond with truthful expression. This is similar to Strasberg’s approach to acting (acting from the inside out, creating an “as if” relevant to their life), but I believe this exercise forces the actor to connect with their emotional center, allowing them to be open to receiving information in the moment, instead of responding to the circumstance they have crafted.

33 Exercise 2

1. Being standing both legs apart. Shift the weight into your right knee, while stretching the right arm up to the sky and yawning.

2. Shift weight to the left leg, and repeat to the other side.

3. Shifting the weight to the right leg, bend the body forward, reach out with your right arm, and yawn into your lower back.

4. Repeat on the other side.

5. Standing with your weight evenly placed on both legs, slowly widen your stance into a squat, hanging your head, keeping your elbows on the inside of your knees.

6. Soften, as you continue keeping the knees bent, and folding the body all the way down. Feeling the relationship between the diaphragm and the pelvic floor.

7. Yawn in this position.

8. Lick your lips, smack them, then as you blow through your lips, straighten the legs and let your tailbone fly up so you’re hanging upside down.

9. Walk your feet in, about five inches apart. Continue hanging in this position, and loosen you neck.

10. Roll up vertebrae by vertebrae as you breathe a sigh of relief. Stop before you lift up the head

11. Lifting up through your vertebrae, soften your belly, keeping your head dropped to your chest. Check in with your lips, eyebrows, and jaw, making sure they are soft.

12. Breathe in this position, allowing gravity to keep your head down.

13. Slowly roll up.

14. Pause.

15. Slap your body. Don’t hurt yourself, but really get the blood going and wake your body up. Make sure to do one side of the body at a time. 34 16. Find your standing position again.

17. Rotate your elbow points forward and up so they’re in line with your shoulders.

18. Keeping the knees, belly, and lips soft.

19. Float your wrists up to the sky, then the palm, then the fingertips.

20. Turning the palms out, wiggle your fingers and bend the knees. Keeping the shoulders down.

21. Yawn as you bounce the knees.

22. Come to stillness with your fingertips still reaching up.

23. Part by part, inhale, and exhales a sigh of release as you drop the fingertips

24. Inhale, and exhale as you drop the palms

25. Inhale, and exhale as you drop the wrists to the elbows. Keeping the elbows up.

26. Inhale, and exhale as you drop your arms to your sides.

27. Inhale, and exhale as you drop your head.

28. Inhale, and exhale as you release the thoracic spine

29. Inhale, and exhale as you release again, folding the body in half. Keeping the knees soft.

30. Hanging over your body, bounce the knees as you release the jaw.

31. Inhale, and exhale as you gently bounce the body and roll all the way up.

32. Repeat steps 16-31 two more times.

When working with Andrea Haring, the Head of Voice at The Linklater Centre in New

York, she had me do this exercise over and over. Deceitfully simple, this exercise tricks the 35 student into believing they are really releasing their muscles as they drop part by part to the floor.

However, due to the muscular tension we have taught ourselves to carry daily, I found it nearly impossible to drop my arms by releasing the muscles in that part of my body. Instead, in my attempt to be a good student, my muscles would force my arms down to my sides, tricking my brain into thinking gravity was doing the work. Even by the end of our session, I was still struggling to “do the right thing”, to “do” the exercise, when Mrs. Haring pointed out to me that it’s not about doing the right thing, it’s about just doing it. If we live in a constant state of feeling like I have to portray my character the way that I wrote it out to be, the way I have crafted it, I will get the same result as I did in the exercise. I’m not authentically living in the moment. I am not connecting my breath to myself, I’m doing it for someone else. Theatre is the human experience. You don’t do Romeo and Juliet because everyone can relate to a love story, you do

Romeo and Juliet because everyone can relate to having a passion for something that they are willing to do anything for.

Exercise 3: Breath

Breath is the source of life. Every person has a breathing habit that is a result of their uniqueness and life experience. When an actor studies a character, they have to study their ways of thinking, their ways of feeling, their ways of encountering the world, and the way they breathe. However, as long as an actor’s breathing patterns and muscular habits remain the same, the level of character development they are able to achieve will only be skin deep. The actor must be able to start from a clean slate. There is no one, correct way to breathe, however there are methods of breath that cultivate spontaneity. These methods are ones where the actor is able to train the musculature of the breath to “pick up rapidly shifting thoughts and feelings 36 engendered by an imaginatively created state of being” (44). Meaning we must train the breath to react intuitively to our responses to information received in the moment. It is necessary to observe the breath without controlling or deciding what is right or wrong. A change in habit starts with articulating anything in the new practice that is fresh, new, or interesting. This way, we are able to shift our minds out of criticism, and into one that celebrates an experience that was different from our normal habits.

When you breathe, it means you have an impulse. This could be an impulse to speak, to move, to change, or literally to just breathe! The incoming breath is feeding yourself the emotional impulse you’re going to speak with. It’s important to acknowledge when these impulses to breathe happen, and not to ignore them or force them. Another thing to note is if and how much you are controlling your breath. In yoga for example, controlling the inhale and exhale of breath is part of the practice. However, the goal is to breathe naturally, to breathe like a baby without tension or maybe the pressure of breathing the way we were taught. This position, semi-supine, allows for gravity to assist you in your inhale and exhale. With the force of gravity giving light resistance to your inhale, we are able to breathe when we need to, and only with the air needed. In the exhale, allowing gravity to pull your stomach down, will help release the air without forcing it out. The release, or exhale, is an immediate wholehearted giving away to gravity. Feel the breath in your lips, not the larynx. We don’t want tension to arrive in the larynx because we don’t want sound to get trapped there. The lips are the last point your thought touches before it goes out to whomever you’re speaking to. The more forward it comes in your mouth, the easier and more economical it becomes. This exercise has come directly out of

Kristin Linklater’s book, Freeing the Natural Voice. 37 Exercise 3

1. Stand softly with a long spine and relaxed muscles. Allow your focus to draw you inward to the center of your body.

2. Tune in to your breath, and notice the involuntary rhythm with which you breathe.

3. Let your breath tell you what it wants from you.

4. Consciously, keep releasing tension from the belly, the shoulders, and the jaw. Be aware that it is your breath moving your body, not your body moving the breath.

5. Remember that the outgoing breath is complete inner relaxation, and the incoming breath will happen automatically if you wait.

6. Let the breath release out of you.

7. Wait --- but don’t hold your muscles --- until you feel the need for a new breath.

8. Yield to the need.

9. Let the breath be replaced.

10. Let the breath release again.

11. Relax into a small internal pause,

12. As soon as you feel the tiny impulse of need, give into it, and allow the new breath to come inside your body.

13. Continue this repetition of allowing the breath in when the body needs and releasing the breath out for two to three minutes.

Note that these breaths may be small. The more relaxed you are, the less oxygen you need. You may find that in the rhythm of your breath, an urge to yawn or sigh may come along.

Yield to this need. Your body sighs and yawns when it is in need of an extra surge of oxygen. 38 Try to reshape the habit of suppressing yawns and sighs as not rude gestures, but important aspects of breathing. Do not force your sighs or yawns, allow them to be triggered by a thought or a feeling. In terms of acting, think of a sigh as revealing thoughts and feelings that bubble up instead of describing and projecting them. According to Kristin Linklater, “The sigh of relief is the first key to unlocking the doors to those primal impulse centers and reopening the primary neuro-physiological routes between brain and body” (51).

14. Continue the awareness of your natural breathing rhythm.

15. Picture the diaphragm moving upward as the breath releases out and falling downward as the breath drops in. (You cannot tell the diaphragm how to move, but you can influence it’s movements by picturing them as you breathe.)

16. With the mouth open, allow small “fff”s on each outgoing breath.

17. Feel that your breath and your observing mind are in the same place, the center of your body. You and your breathing are one and the same thing. When your breath releases, you release.

18. Let the outgoing breath contain a feeling of “willing escape.” You are allowing the inside of yourself to escape into the outside world. While each incoming breath has a feeling of welcome renewal. Expiration and inspiration live in the continuous cycle of a natural rhythm of breathing.

19. Consciously decide to feel a “sigh of relief.”

20. Feel the relief go deep inside your body, all the way to your pelvic floor.

21. Changing positions, move the body all the way to the floor so you are lying on your back with your legs stretched out.

22. Let your body give in to gravity.

23. Do a whole body scan, starting with the soles of your feet.

24. As you move up the body, imagine the skin, flesh and muscles melting off your bones into the floor. Soften the belly, the face, the tongue and the jaw. 39 Abandon your body on the floor. Feel the total weight of your body on the floor as it is pulled by gravity.

25. Let your mouth drop open. Lick your lips so you feel the cool air coming into the body, and warm air as it exits.

26. Place a hand on your “Breathing area”, the area right above the navel, below the ribcage.

27. Feel a sigh of relief deep into your body. Imagine the air moving into your groin and pelvic floor, then let the air exit your body with abandon.

Exercise from Kristin Linklater’s Freeing the Natural Voice, Pages 43-63

Exercise 4: Finding Center

As we experience our day, we experience an infinite amount of emotion. Moments of joy, frustration, sadness, or anger. When we feel these emotions, they have an effect on our body. For example, moments of frustration may pass in the mind, but they continue in the body in the form of stiff shoulders or a furrowed brow. When an actor is preparing to do the work, they must start from a place of openness, or a slate clean of all the events that have happened to them during the course of their day so far. This idea of “releasing”, again comes forward as an important step to inhabiting a character.

I propose this exercise as a way to clean your slate, and start from a place of openness. I first learned this exercise from my voice and speech professor at Penn State, Tess Dignan. We used this exercise to begin class, as a way to focus on breathing and to give the body a moment to let go of what had come before.

Exercise 4

1. Find an open wall where you have the space to lay down on your back, moving your buttocks to the wall, and propping your feet on the wall. You should be making a 90 angle with your torso and your legs. See Figure. 40 2. Close the eyes and place the hands softly on your breathing area.

3. Softening the jaw so the mouth is slightly open.

4. Relax for breath.

5. Feel the incoming breath enter the body and fill up the balloon that extends from your diaphragm to your pelvic floor.

6. Let the outgoing breath leave the body by allowing gravity to pull your navel to the floor.

7. Allow sighs of relief and yawns to come and go as the body needs them. Recognize them when they appear, and allow them to disappear without judgement.

8. Tell your body to soften and be supported by the earth.

9. Stay here for five to ten minutes.

10. Slide the legs down the wall to one side as you come into a fetal position.

11. Rest for a moment as you explore the space in your ribcage that is unhindered by the floor.

12. Continue rolling into a child’s pose.

13. Use this pose to allow your breath to expand and explore the space in your lower back.

14. Slowly, come into a squat with your knees bent, hands on the floor, and your neck loose, being pulled by gravity.

15. Straighten the legs in your own time as you roll the spine up one vertebrae at a time. You may experience dizziness or nausea at this point, so be careful to roll up slowly and allow your body to readjust to standing.

16. Soften the belly, continue breathing from the mouth.

17. Lift the shoulders up to your ears and rotate the arms out so the inside of your elbows and your palms are facing forward.

18. Reach the fingertips to the floor as you draw the shoulders down. 41

At the completion of each exercise, it is imperative that the student takes note of what they experienced. They should try not to judge the experience in terms of good and bad, but in terms of what was different. Our old habits and control have brought us this far in life, so they must be considered reasonably safe. It’s important to recognize that, and it’s important to recognize the ability to move on. Admitting new feelings and experiences will be the exciting incident that will bring change to your body. Writing these things down, will help your body transform twice as fast. While everyone’s individual experience is personal, it does not have to be kept private. We must keep the mind open and accepting to change, and to share it with others so we realize while everyone’s journey is different, we still share similarities in feelings and experiences. Asking yourself questions like, “What feels better than before? What feels worse? How do you feel?” and “Have you found anything new?” (59), will allow you to celebrate the changes you felt.

Keep in mind there is no wrong observation or feeling, listen to your body and allow your breath and impulse to inform your mind.

42 : Discussion

Personal Experience

In my experience moving through these exercises, I feel more open to receiving the world around me, and allowing it to affect me. It has taught me to bring attention to my jaw and my tongue, which I noticed I am constantly clenching or holding in my mouth. Exercise 1 allows me to slow down, and focus on my alignment. As a dancer, due to the way I had interpreted correct

“dance alignment”, I have created a habit of constantly tucking my pelvis, and “sucking in” my abdominal muscles even when I am not dancing. But, Exercise 1 reminds me that a slight curve in my pelvis is the way everyone’s body is physically built, and meant to function. When the body is in the correct alignment that is when we are able to explore our fullest range of breath.

Exercise 2 allows me to wake up my spine. When we spend most of our day in one position, either standing behind a cash register or sitting at a computer, we unconsciously form habits that trick our minds into thinking that is the most comfortable way to hold our body up. Because of this, our spine loses its ability to let go of the extra muscles keeping the body up and to allow them to return to their original function. Exercise 2 teaches me about the places in my body where I am afraid to let go because I am afraid of getting hurt. But working on being vulnerable with myself, and building my trust with gravity is a major step in growing the ability to be vulnerable with an audience. In Exercise 3, I am reminded of how to breathe. Not only is the breath the source of life, it is the source of your sound, your emotions and you. You breathe in information with the incoming air and with the outgoing air, release your response. Exercise 4 brings me back to a clean slate. Whether I use this exercise to warm up before a show to rid myself of the tensions from the day, or as a way to cool down after a show as a way to rid myself 43 of the character and tensions that arose from that performance. This exercise was imperative to my mental health as an actor, to make sure I didn’t bring outside feelings into a scene as a way of getting into character or coping with those thoughts, and being able to let go of a character after a performance and come back to myself, especially if I had to navigate some difficult places as that character.

Things to Consider

While I have done as much research as I can to the best of my ability, there were still some limitations I experienced in this process.

My first limitation is the fact I am only able to document my experiences, and that they are my viewpoint of how I felt. In the original design of this research, I planned to present my work to an audience, and showcase several songs or monologues that required an experience of the extremes of different emotions. In some selections I would use the proposed warm up, and for some I would not. Then, I would ask the audience to respond to the presentations of what they believed and what they did not. Of course, this research would have limitations in itself of only getting the viewpoint of a few people, and the fact they might be biased or have different tastes would have to be taken into consideration. Unfortunately, due to the fact that the rest of this research had to take place during quarantine for the COVID-19 crisis, this presentation did not take place.

Another limitation is that I am, by no means, a master of the Linklater Method. It is a technique that I have studied inconsistently for the past four years, and am very passionate about, but there is still a lot of learning to do and information to be gained before I can truly draw 44 precise conclusions about the method. I am also biased, and have had wonderful experiences with the Linklater technique, that others may not have shared.

By the same means, I am also not a master of Acting or the Method. The idea for this experiment arose from frustrations in my acting training. I have interpreted vocabulary and skills differently from other people, as seen in my survey, which some actors have agreed with and some have disagreed. Additionally, I found success with the Linklater Method, but it is important to note that everyone is different, and some people may find this method confusing and unhelpful. Every actor has their own process and opinions, so it is difficult to label one method as “wrong” and another as “right.” Strasberg’s Method Acting was considered extreme even among some of his contemporaries such as Stanford Meisner and Stella Adler, two prominent actors who created their own techniques and studios when they found Strasberg’s

“effective memory” method to be too difficult on their lives.

So while this research has many limitations, I believe it is still important to be conducted because if it helps even one person discover a safer alternative to getting into character, than I consider it to be a success.

45 : Conclusion

I have been passionate about the connection between breath and emotion since I was changed by my teacher Tess Dignan my freshman year of college. From one class, she taught me to accept vulnerability, be authentic and find my emotional power through breath.

You have to trust that the talent is there. There is no need to “put on” or hurt yourself mentally. All acting is going back to the core of what gives us life, our breath. It is revealing the architecture of you. It’s impossible to “do” you. It’s just there. A person with red, curly hair doesn’t have to “do” red, curly hair. You breathe, and trust yourself to share it with the world.

When approaching acting, you don’t need to “do” your character. Your character is you, the words are yours. If breath is an impulse to respond, all you need is breath.

Redirect the breath into your center. You can’t breathe for anyone else, you can only breathe for yourself. Energy moves in an inward circle. This circle of energy has to come into you before you ever allow it to be shared with an audience. Energy, forward energy, sprays your words onto other people without giving them the chance to accept it. You must feel the energy coming into your center. When the energy only goes out, it not only exhausts the actor of their emotion and performance, it exhausts the audience. Actors must remember that you do all the preparation work so it doesn’t have to be done in performance. You read the text, you understand the character then all you have to do is make sound. An actor doesn’t need to get “into” a character. Start from where you are. That is how you can be the most authentic you can be.

Breathe the thoughts in, and always keep the mouth open. When your mouth is open, it’s like a window. You don’t have to ask for the air, or thoughts, or emotions to come in, they just do. Stay connected to the words of the song or text and how you felt when you first heard it. See the images. Go even further inside, and trust the sound will come through. Let the breath in. 46 Appendix A

Iris Warren

One of the founders of voice training for the actor. Warren worked with proficient West

End actors who found they were losing their voices due to the effort and strain of projecting their emotions onstage. Warren discovered that in order to free the voice, an actor had to relax, breathe deeply, and feel the sound of voice in their body, which allowed emotion to be released from the root and release the voice. Warren focused her training on getting actors to release the voice “from the inside out, not the outside in” (Linklater 5).

Alexander Technique

The Alexander Technique is a way of learning designed to rid the body of harmful habits that cause tension in the body. The goal of Alexander Technique is to get the body to move in the way it was designed by working on ease of movement, balance, coordination, posture and support. Created by Frederick Matthias Alexander after doctors could not heal his chronic laryngitis whenever he performed. He found that the laryngitis was caused by excessive tension in his neck and body. Once he realized this, Alexander not only cured himself, but developed a technique that has been use by actors and medical professionals alike as a process of healing the body. 47 Appendix B

Survey Questions and Answers

Researching Mental Health in Actors * Required 1. Are you an actor? * a. Yes b. No

2. About how many years have you studied or practiced acting? This includes taking class and performing. * a) Less than 1 year b) 1-2 Years c) 3-5 Years d) 5-10 Years e) 10-15 Years f) 15 + Years

3. Would you say that acting affects your mental health? * a) Yes b) No c) I don't know

4. If yes to the previous, would you say that acting affects your mental health positively or negatively? * a) Positively b) Negatively c) Both d) Neither e) I said "No" to the previous question

5. Why do you think it affects your mental health? Fill in the Blank Response

The PHQ-9 (Patient Health Questionnaire) Objectifies the Degree of Depression Severity.

How often have they been bothered by the following over the past 2 weeks? (please complete only if you feel comfortable doing so.)

48 6. Little interest or pleasure in doing things a) Not at all b) Several days c) More than half the days d) Nearly every day

7. Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless a) Not at all b) Several days c) More than half the days d) Nearly every day

8. Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much a) Not at all b) Several days c) More than half the days d) Nearly every day

9. Feeling tired or having little energy a) Not at all b) Several days c) More than half the days d) Nearly every day

10. Poor appetite or overeating a) Not at all b) Several days c) More than half the days d) Nearly every day

11. Feeling bad about yourself - or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down a) Not at all b) Several days c) More than half the days d) Nearly every day

12. Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television a) Not at all b) Several days c) More than half the days d) Nearly every day

49 13. Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed. Or the opposite being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual a) Not at all b) Several days c) More than half the days d) Nearly every day

14. If you checked off any problems, how difficult have these problems made it for you to do your work, take care of things at home, or get along with other people? a) Not difficult at all b) Somewhat difficult c) Very difficult d) Extremely difficult

15. On a scale from 1-5, please rate your mental health state while performing or in acting class. * 1: I'm not feeling great. 5: I'm feeling my best!

16. Do you think that an actor's mental health would improve if they weren't encouraged to reopen old wounds in order to simulate a certain emotion onstage? * a) Yes b) No c) Maybe d) Other:

17. Will you allow your responses to be quoted or recorded in my thesis? a) Yes b) No 50 Results

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55 Answers to Question 5: Why Do You Think It Affects Your Mental Health?

Lots of stress, lots of not feeling good enough, having to relive intense emotions Because I find it incredibly therapeutic and it helps me both escape and be more vulnerable at the same time. It often involves thinking about and talking about very personal/traumatic situations. I think having to be so vulnerable is difficult sometimes, but I think acting has allowed me to release and makes me really happy. Because it involves me getting into a headspace that allows my depression to seep in. When I’m asked to be vulnerable in my work, I break down and get extremely depressed. It allows me to explore step out of myself and try to understand someone else, but also offers a positive outlet to explore my own thoughts and feelings. I think that often time the amount of work that goes into acting can take a toll on my mental state, negatively. And depending on the roll it can take you into places that you don’t often go or into places that you don’t ever think you would have to go. But on the other side, it is so much fun and brings me such great joy that any affect that it may have on me is not that great. Acting tests your self-confidence and questions your every move more than other professions/lifestyles. In some ways it’s a blessing to be reliant on self-assurance and self- confidence, but the constant test and longing for assurance from others can be toxic. Acting distracts me from every day stressors. When I’m acting, I find a way to free myself of tension that may hinder me in everyday life. However, I’ve found that acting can affect your mental health if you are consistently drawing upon your own trauma and past experiences. Acting makes me more aware of my emotions and more vulnerable. It affects my mental health because it can cause me to over-analyze things (like I would in a scene) which ultimately triggers my anxiety. In a positive way, acting has made it much easier for me to identify my triggers and articulate my feelings. We’re the people that dare to go back to places some people wish to never visit again. We are the researchers of behavior and the mind. The stress and anxiety of rejection and not be “good enough” and constantly comparing to others affect it negatively. However on the flip side, the theatre is also a release from all the stresses of constant “real” life I think that acting directly functions besides and with our psyche and we put it under high emotions on a daily basis that aren’t real. Constantly having to measure up It’s literally training your body to feel emotions at certain times, and it’s not always easiest to hop right on out of. Also it effects my mental health if I feel like I’m doing bad work. 56 There is lots of pressure when it comes to performing and the negative energy other people may or may not bring within theatrical connections

Because when acting we have to jump into the mind of a made up human- who, depending on the circumstances, could live a very unhealthy lifestyle, which can then spill over into real life.

My mental illness often manifests in the contexts present in musical theatre: anxiety in large social groups, in the pressure of being emotionally present and available, and in the expectations this business has of actors. But, these same difficulties have also challenged me to become more emotionally agile, and consistent. Since acting and my mental health are important, I’ve dedicated time and resources to help manage existing with both simultaneously, and the more autonomous of a person I become, the more I can trust myself to assess and respond to these experiences in a way that will be healthy for me. It helps me clear out the negativity in my life by giving me a way to release my inner tension. Playing roles with circumstances that are similar to my own, or crafting “as if’s” that may hit close to home, can bring up past and current life experiences that make me scared, sad, etc. I have to constantly be aware of my limits and know what is off limits. Also, it has taken me a very long time to let go of vanity when standing up in front of others in class. In fact, it is something I have to remind myself to let go of each time I am working in class — screw the hat covering my acne, stop worrying about adjusting the shirt to cover the stomach in dance class... just be!!! On the flip side, when onstage, I am filled with a rush of adrenaline and endorphins that positively impact my life in the moment. Acting requires so much of yourself it is impossible to not have an effect on you. You are constantly asked to examine yourself and abandon yourself in order to create human experiences. Naturally this can bring up challenges especially when faced with difficult material. Sometimes these impacts are positive sometimes negative but the impact is certainly felt. Acting forces you to dig deep into the parts of your mind that are scary and uncomfortable. This affects me in both positive and negative ways sometimes I want to first say that I am so appreciative of you opening up the difficult conversation of mental health. Thank you for creating a platform to research this important topic in relation to our emotionally demanding industry. However, if you don’t mind me giving feedback, I had some trouble understanding the language you used in the previous two questions of this survey: “Would you say that acting affects your mental health?” and “If yes to the previous, would you say that acting affects your mental health positively or negatively?” My initial impression was that the word “acting” could be interpreted in multiple ways, resulting in vastly different answers. When you say “acting”, are you referring to the CRAFT of acting, the INDUSTRY of acting, or the METHOD of acting that uses past experiences? Here are my answers to each, if you are interested: I would say that the CRAFT of acting positively affects my mental health. The core craft of acting serves as a practice of being squarely in the present moment, having empathy for other people/characters, and finding freedom in the breath and simply what is. To me, these are the roots of stable mental health and I cannot think of a cooler way to practice 57 these roots than acting. However, the CRAFT of acting and the INDUSTRY of acting are two very different things. In my experience, the acting INDUSTRY sometimes negatively affects my mental health, and it is only when I repurpose my work towards the CRAFT of acting that my mental health improves. Perhaps, though, the industry’s negative effects on my mind can also be seen as a positive, in that the difficulty of the industry compels me to bring my focus back time and time again to what actually matters to me in my work and my life. Perhaps the industry’s negatives force me to stay true to myself and my values, and that practice improves my mental health. So perhaps the INDUSTRY of acting has both a positive and negative affect on my mental health, depending on how you look at cause and effect. Lastly, I noticed a later question in your survey that asked: “Do you think that an actor's mental health would improve if they weren't encouraged to reopen old wounds in order to simulate a certain emotion onstage?” This led me to question if “opening old wounds in order to simulate a certain emotion onstage” is what you meant earlier by the word “acting” -- to which I respond: There is an acting METHOD that suggests embracing past life experiences to retrieve an emotional connection to the material. If this is how you define “acting”, then I would say that “acting” negatively affects my mental health. Why? Because prodding for personal traumas again and again sounds really... well, awful. However, some do not define “acting” in such terms. In fact, some believe that that is actually the opposite of acting. I am one of the latter. I believe that the CRAFT of acting is based in imagination, the present moment, and empathy. I rarely use my past positive experiences in my acting, let alone my past negative experiences. I think that if any actor is being “encouraged”, either by themselves or others, to “reopen old wounds in order to simulate certain emotion onstage”, then I would argue that they are not actors, they are not acting, and/or they are not taking an acting class – thus rendering the survey question obsolete. Maybe I argue this because I believe that the craft of acting should be just that -- acting. Or maybe it’s because I’m selfish and want to pursue something that fills my heart and that I can mentally sustain. Or maybe it’s because I’m weak and I’m a bad actor because of it. That’s a great question. If you’d like to discuss anything further, this is [Name removed for privacy]. Thanks, Laura!

Long Response Answers to Question 16: Do you think that an actor's mental health would improve if they weren't encouraged to reopen old wounds in order to simulate a certain emotion onstage?

I believe that it is necessary to reopen old wounds when you are training. However, I think that consistently reopening that wound in an effort to maintain a truthful performance can be dangerous for one’s mental health. Totally yes, but by studying acting one has to know that that’s what they’re getting into I think this goes case by case. Some wounds, if healed properly are not painful to look at or use. I think it's the actors job to determine whether or not it is safe for them to engage in that restipulation I personally think that ultimately emotional wounds need to be healed regardless of if a person is an actor or not. But as for actors, because they dive into emotional vulnerability it’s always helpful and healthy for them to deal with their mental health concerns outside of acting more attentively than the average person, so that the acting doesn’t trigger a reaction that leaves them unable to function properly. Personally I usually find that if I’m working consistently to 58 address my mental health issues, acting becomes an outlet for me to express my emotions openly without audience members ever needing to know the reason for my emotional depth. So to answer the question, I think mental health concerns look different for every actor so I don’t think you can say that being vulnerable onstage in intense emotional circumstances will only either improve or deteriorate and actor’s mental health. In terms of students studying acting in school, I think that instructors should always keep in mind that students are very young and don’t have as much of a handle on their lives yet. So the concept of “dealing with emotional baggage” or “improving mental health status” may or may not be something that they’ve had a chance to tackle to a point where they know what they’re doing. At 18-24, etc students are still discovering themselves and sorting through their emotional trauma. As an instructor, I think it’s irresponsible to expect students to lay out their emotions and not have any sort of resource, or at the least, advice on how to stay healthy mentally. That’s not to say the instructor should take on the role of a parent but they should offer solutions, should the student’s mental health start to slip through pursuit of the acting work. Yes but they wouldn't be as truthful of an actor 59 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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ACADEMIC VITA

Laura Guley

[email protected]

Education

B.F.A. Musical Theatre, 2020, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA

Honors and Awards

Henrietta Thomas Memorial Award for Musical Theatre Voice Performance

Professional Experience

THEATRE

A CHORUS LINE Bebe The LEXington Theatre Company

THE MUSIC MAN Zaneeta Shin The LEXington Theatre Company

MATILDA The Acrobat Wagon Wheel Theatre

OKLAHOMA! Gertie Wagon Wheel Theatre

MAMMA MIA Ali Wagon Wheel Theatre