Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of virginia Woolf? - Physicality, awareness of space

1. What inhibitions do you still have in using your body to express yourself? What are the strategies you can use to overcome this?

I would admit that I am rather inhibited even until today, in using my body to express myself. I think firstly, it has to do with my personality. I do believe myself to be a pretty reserved person because I was brought up that way and also because I do lack confidence. Or I try to do what I think is best, so I end up thinking too hard. Sometimes I feel that my own thoughts inhibit me. I think I try to think too much. Too much about motivations and how to express myself. Sometimes it really is hard for me, because it’s hard to get that emotion out from my memory. Either that, or I think too slowly so I end up looking like I do have inhibitions. Besides this, I have not allowed myself to fully trust my peers, but I think that is somewhat subconscious. Because you really can’t help knowing that there’s someone watching you, can you? So I am self-conscious. Which is really bad. Stage fear affects my acting as well. I think I get stage fear because of my lack in confidence and because of a new surrounding, a new atmosphere.
Still, I think this inhibition has become lesser. I do feel less self-conscious and feel more comfortable around my peers. Which does affect my level of confidence and how conscious I am of myself also. But still, I think one simple way to free myself from inhibitions would really be to free myself. I have to think about my purpose in doing all this. It’s because I want to learn. And everyone around me is just as eager and they’re my friends! So ultimately my strategy is to ease all that tension and insecurity in myself and to tell myself to be brave. Of course, practice and rehearsals would aid my level of confidence too.


2. Read up on the works of Rudolf Laban and Jacques LeCoq To what extent do you think their work can help an actor be more adept in the use of space and their own physicality as an actor?

Rudolf Laban focused on dance and physical movements. He was a dancer, a choreographer and a dance / movement theoretician and believed that dance should be extended to everyone. Learning dance for the theatre appears useful as it makes actors more aware of their body and the space. It would also teach them to have better control of their own movements and warms them up physically.
Jacques LeCoq was an actor, mime and acting instructor. His acting style was having a closer interaction with the audience, an extended use of general space and a focus on the physical rather than the emotional side of the character to impact on the audience by way of social or political comment (I don’t really get this point but it does sound important so I added it). This can help an actor learn to focus on his physical movents and actions, which is important as it allows an actor to act more realistically.
Lecoq aimed at training his actors in way that encouraged them to find ways of performance that suited them best. Through this actors can learn to be more aware of themselves. And by learning through self experiment, actors can understand their body movements and actions better, thus forming his own personality as an actor. I think it encourages actors to be creative also.

ELEANOR!