Emotion Training and the Mind/Body Connection

Abstract

Do actors really need to experience true emotion on stage? According to Alba specialist Roxanne Rix, assisting “student actors safely and effectively to expand their emotional range and expressiveness is an issue which concerns instructors at all levels of training.”¹ The controversy between those who favor emotion training and those opposed remains an important issue. Most significant in this debate is Lee Strasberg’s Method acting techniques. This discussion focuses on the affective or emotional memory and personalization techniques of Lee Strasberg, and on Alba Emoting, a “psychophysiological technique to help actors create and control real emotions” developed by neuropsychologist Susana Bloch.²

A large part of every impersonation is, and must be, as mechanical as the putting on of a wig or the painting of crows feet under the eyes. But comparatively few dramatic characters consist of manners alone. It is passion that interests and moves us; therefore the reproduction of passion is the actors highest and most essential task. By what methods, then, can this reproduction be most fitly accomplished?

—William Archer, “Mask or Faces?”