Physical Actor Training What Shall I Do with the Body They Gave Me?

If, as an actor, your body is your 'instrument' - and the only way you can express the internal impulses of the character you?re playing - what happens when the body-mind, ?psychophysical? connection is lost?

Andrei Droznin, Russia's foremost teacher of physical actor training, calls this loss the 'desomatization' of the human body, and argues that these connections urgently need to be restored for full expressivity.

This is a genuinely unique book which links theory to practice by a man who has worked at the very top of Russian theatre; a movement specialist who has taught at the Moscow Art Theatre as well as drama schools all over the world. Beautifully translated by Natasha Fedorova, this volume will excite and inspire a new generation of English-language readers.

Several words about Andrey Droznin and his book

Preface

Introduction

Actor’s External Technique

Actor’s External Technique (cont.)

Actor’s External Technique (end)

Body as a Material Medium of Acting

Desomatisation (Loss of Functions)

Desomatisation (Self-destruction)

Body and Soul (in Life)

Body and Soul (in Art)

Stanislavski

Meyerhold

The Problem (between Stanislavski and Meyerhold)

Vakhtangov

The Others (Time to Search)

After The Titans (Time to Lose)

Drama School in the Age of Pluralism

Physical Universalism

Phobia of the Physical

Phobia of the Physical (cont.)

On Actor’s External Technique Again (dropout of the external technique)

Actor Physical Training (Time to Gather)

Instead of an Epilogue

One of the most famous movement coaches in Russia, Droznin was among the founding members of the Tabakov Studio in Moscow and the Stanislavsky Summer School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.In addition to serving as Professor of Stage Movement at the MXAT School and the Vakhtangov Theatre Institute in Moscow, Mr. Droznin has taught in the Institute of Advanced Theater Training at the American Repertory Theatre in Harvard and Carnegie-Mellon University(USA) and directed movement in more than 140 theatre productions and movies in the former Soviet Union and abroad.

Natalia Fedorova was Andrey Droznin’s graduate student and long-term assistant. They have taught together in the Vakhtangov Theatre Institute, the Moscow Art Theatre School in Russia and in Stanislavsky Summer School in the USA. Natalia currently teaches Droznin’s method of stage movement in the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and Rose Bruford College in London.