EMOTION-ACTION TRAINING

CREATING A PRACTICE OF SCALES FOR THE ACTOR

CO-ORDINATION - MUSICALITY – MOVEMENT – TEXT – DYNAMIC POLYPHONIC SINGING

TOWARDS A DESCRIPTION

During the last fifteen years, Bred In The Bone Theatre Company has explored actor training from the perspective of embodied somatic practices, and developed its Emotion-Action training. By defining emotion as a physical event, generated by, and also arguably generating what is perceived as the body itself, we have re-claimed the word’s original meaning as “what creates movement”. Since then our work has thrived to explore all ensuing implications in our training, leading to particular embodiment and consciousness of self, as well as what defines inside/outside in one’s relationship to self and to the other beings that constitute the world we are part of.
 
Practices that have inspired our work are still present in our everyday practice of the “actors scales”, similar in effect to those trained by the musicians. Reminiscences of core theatre acting traditions are allied with new avenues of theatre making. Actor-performers of the company have added to their work on Physical Impulses and Physical Actions (Stanialvski-Meyerhold-Grotowski) and singing/moving (Piesn Kozla/Song of the Goat), their own take on Co-ordination and Theatre Musicality.
 
 

In our work, our listening is echoed immediately in Emotion-Actions that are not filtered or interfered with by conscious choices. Our listening is our

doing. By acknowledging in movement the relationships we have with all and each that constitutes the world, we become fully aware of their presence

and reciprocal influence on/from us/them.
 
As actor-performers, we seek to emote the world in a way that is active and transformative.
 
Through our dedicated training, we are effectively learning to let go of the injunction to act, and its fallout: the pre-empting of actions that hinders spontaneous relationship between self and others. During our practice, we seek to observe how we react to the world in micro, inside to outward, flows of movements. All the while allowing consciousness to take note of events without interfering with the co-ordination between us and others. In order to teach us understanding and belonging of shared space and time, to allow to be in relationship with other beings
without naming, dividing or judging.
 
From this place of acceptance of self and others, and from which we interact and change each other, we are able to access the inner and outer lives of the characters and the narratives of the play.
We can access and share the wonderous cathartic moment that is Theatre.

CO-ORDINATION –
Is the fundamental capacity of the actor to relate to himself and to others, physically and spatially, through the use of Emotion-Action.
The co-ordination training is a daily exercise which incorporates all the elements of the actors techniques developed by the company. It is comparable in its goal and effect to the scales practised by musicians.
Originally inspired by the work of Song of the Goat (Piesn Kozla Teatr), the co-ordination training has been an integral part of BITB theatre making, and continues to be widely disseminated by the Company in higher education conservatoires in the UK and Continental Europe.
 
MUSICALITY -The work of Bed In The Bone is intrinsically inspired by music practice and makes a direct parallel between the work of the musician and that of the actor. Since ‘Unreal City – a jazz performance’(2005) the Company has developed original techniques of movement and text using musicality as its core principle. Musicality exercises enable the actor and actor-musician to share the same sense and sensitivity to play together and with their respective tools: for the musicians their musical instrument, for the performers their emotive body. Pur work on musicality has been described (David Roesner 2014) and developed in the academia, notably on Ator-Musicianship programmes in the UK by different members of the Company. As with all that we do, we are humbly walking in the footsteps and take great inspiration in Stanislavski and collaborators of the Operatic-Studio (1934-38). 

MOVEMENT -Embodiment starts with movement and is BITB first and last focus in Theatre training The goal of our movement training is to teach the actors to relate to their environment, to emote rather than to seek expression in forms. This means that, unlike dancers, they must learn to show reproductible spontaneous reactions, rather than produce rehearsed and set actions. Our understanding of emotion as a physical event has enabled us to develop a unique training based on listening, and that aims to render visible the inner life of the body-soul of the performer-character. It is this quest that has given its name to the Company, as well as what links our work to the great traditions of physical theatre practices introduced -but  not limited to,A. Artaud and J. Grotowski. 

TEXT -All our work in Theatre making six to give the text a body, a sound, a space -all to convey its meaning. Taking inspiration from Shakespeare as the greatest a theatre language, we work on text material at all stages of training, and use them as the ultimate test of the value of our findings. This has led us to work with classic Greek myths, modern poetry, classic British and European texts, as well as devising with song lyrics and texts from novels.Our training seeks to discover the texts as texture of sound and voice, as musicality, as relationships, as flow of emotion(s), as well as the resulting physicalities of perceived protagonists. We look for text that is embodied,  that is visceral, that is bred in the bone. 

DYNAMIC POLYPHONIC SINGING -As co-ordination is a continuous harmonisation of the actors’ movements within and between them, we have developed our singing from practising traditional polyphonic songs to dynamic polyphonic singing training. Our singing seeks to find sounds that are connected to oneself because connected to others, before they are connected to a idea of pre-existing song. This echoes the way we work on co-ordination in how we engage with continuous flow of spontaneous reactions, and how we connect to our emotions as core tool for our work. 

 “It was the most fulfilling experience and the biggest change in perspective I have ever experienced. It has changed my perception of theatre and the reasons why I want to do it, but also my outlook on life. It placed me on a search for more and made me question my

honesty to myself and those around me, my relationships as a whole.” Ariadna Tilve, Spain, Residency 2010

COPYRIGHT BREDINTHEBONE THEATRE COMPANY 2009-2019 AND MATTHIEU BELLON 2019-2020

TESTIMONIALS

COPYRIGHT BRED IN THE BONE THEATRE 2022 CHARITY NO 6917202 ENGLAND AND WALES