Why Physical Training?

What a community of actors with a common vocabulary can achieve.

by Jon Froehlich

These are some introductory thoughts for members of the community who may not have experienced physical actor training before, or who may wonder how training the body relates to acting, performance, etc.

First, a simple distinction: performing on a stage (that is, acting for “the theater”) has some crucially different characteristics than performing for a camera. The main difference being that acting for the theater occurs in unmediated space; the audience breathes the same air as the actors, and they can see (and sense) all the actors, from head to toe—as well as the whole space. The audience is therefore directly susceptible to the concrete rhythms, energies, and relationships that the ensemble creates, or fails to create, in that shared space. This requires the stage actor to sensitize and organize their whole body—and not only for themselves, but in coordination with other bodies, within the live space and real-time that everyone is sharing. Therefore, developing one’s body to be as fluently expressive and articulate as our brains are at thinking, speaking, and conceptualizing, has a direct impact on an actor’s total efficacy, range, and artistry.

A question that often comes up around this point, is something to the effect of “What about the actor’s inner emotional work, and psychology? How does physical training address any of that?”

A great question! Let me put it this way:

When using physical and embodied approaches, the actor’s emotional and psychological work are not diminished; rather, they are simply opened up, explored, and integrated from a very different perspective. Indeed, physical training provides the actor with distinct, but complementary tools to the traditional ones with which most are generally, or perhaps intuitively, familiar. How? As an embodied and experiential process, it can be difficult to describe on paper. But generally speaking, embodied approaches explore emotional and psychological expression as the organic outgrowth of concrete stimuli, with the body as the foundation, or ‘instrument’, for which each actor gradually develops & attunes their own integrated ‘keyboard’, ‘strings’, ‘baffles & stops’, etc. So that ultimately, whether using only embodied methods, or by integrating embodied methods with the emotional & psychological methods already in one’s tool kit, actors are enabled to take on and express anything that’s thrown at them, whatever the style, genre, direction.

At this point, it’s entirely possible that there may still be a lingering feeling that “surely, physical training is for physical theater—and I’m just not interested in physical theater. I don’t need, or want, to be some kind of acrobat, or dancer, to do what I want to do! If I want to get a workout, I can go to the gym.”

Completely fair! I would just close by saying this: it’s perhaps most important to emphasize that physical actor training, in addition to its many physically strengthening benefits, deliberately centers the actor and their integrated experience of the given exercise, over ‘mere technical accuracy’. Meaning, while there is a technical dimension to the work, and the trainings constantly challenge actors to ‘get better at’ many different skills, forms, and techniques, the point of the exercises are not simply, or merely, to ‘perfect’ them, or to ‘do them right’—as if their main value were in achieving ‘perfect form’! No. Because you are right—theater is not dance, or merely mechanical.

Instead, the exercises of physical theater create the conditions in which one can discover one’s own play instinct, inside and out, as a fully integrated human artist. The invitation is to dive in as a practice of expressive freedom, and to interact with the forms and structures of the physical exercises as a rigorous and dynamic springboard for sensing and expressing with one’s whole organism. At the center is your imagination, your creativity, your instincts, your emotional keyboard, etc.

And most important, it’s all in your own time. It’s all at your own pace. Play to your limits; explore gingerly; follow your instincts. There is no focus on competition, comparison, etc.

In fact, it doesn’t matter how much previous experience, or even aptitude, that any given person has. (You don’t even have to be an actor!) Instead, whatever your level of experience or ability, the point is to encounter—and dare I say enjoy?—the vitality of the exercises wherever you are, with your body and imagination. One develops a relationship with one’s own instrument, while simultaneously playing with others, in a supportive, highly collaborative environment. Just as it should be in rehearsal and on stage.

How does this happen? Again, I’m limited by what can be expressed in writing. From here, the best thing that will make sense of these descriptions will be to experience them directly for yourself—by ‘trying on’ the training exercises, with fellow actors—and to begin to let that direct experience inform your understanding.

[Are you interested in trying out a training session? Contact us HERE, or at our email address in the banner at the bottom of this page, to get connected.]