The Expressive Actor ─ Integrated Voice, Movement, and Acting Training

The second edition of this actor-training guide by Michael Lugering (theatre, U. of Nevada Las Vegas) stresses the integration of movement, breathing, and voice. Lugering understands Stanislavski as primarily a physical teacher, and offers a training method of practical alternatives to avoid the woodenness that can come with "thinking through" roles, and the narcissism that can come with "feeling through" them. The author's own mix of physical techniques is inspired mostly by Stanislavski's Method of Physical Action, the Alexander technique, Linklater voice training, and the training techniques of dancer Erick Hawkins. Laban, Lecoq, and physical theatre performers will find much in common as well. Lugering's techniques are extensive, but aren't a specific vocabulary of gestures like Decreux training, so inhibited readers may feel further inhibited by long lists of terms and general ways of standing, breathing, sounding, being, and moving to perfect. However, much of this prescriptive material is unavoidable, as the book is primarily a teacher-training guide for the Lugering Method. Coupled with open-ended, relaxed practice and feedback, the book can be very useful to both students and teachers. Few written works in English exist on the practical aspects of inhabiting a human body and using it to communicate. The author offers a system that is adaptable for training many kinds of performers in situations involving speaking, singing, moving, and/or dance, and is general enough to make useful reading for teachers and students who would rather be eclectic than dedicate themselves to one method. The most difficult aspect of good training to find in the US is work that integrates body and voice. Lugering is well trained and experienced in both, and has designed much of this work specifically to bridge the gap. A book for serious performers and teachers of performance, in fields from opera to Shakespeare, kitchen-sink drama to dance and clown, with subsidiary interest to students and teachers of martial arts, yoga, acrobatics, counseling, physical and speech therapy, and other disciplines that work to integrate body, mind, and breath. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)