Back to the Body: Infusing Physical Life into Characters in Theatre and Film

Back to the Body: Infusing Physical Life into Characters in Theatre and Film guides you to experience and use your body and its energy as a basic point of departure for performance and expression. You will learn to apply your entire self in acting, with your voice, body, mind, and emotion. This integrated training is designed to combine all these elements of yourself with your material, the environment, and other actors through explorations and hands-on work, which you may do on your own and with others. You will discover how to best fill the space, serve the story, and create a unique, honest, and riveting character. When you implement the practices in Back to the Body, your work will gain an enhanced level of performance and depth.

This book explores how actors can use their bodies, in concert with their voices and their emotions, in a range of roles and characters in both theatre and film. This way of working is not an abstraction, because our bodies always exist in relation to both our emotions and our environment.

Every story is told primarily through the use and expression of the actor's body. Close attention to physicality is essential to extraordinary performance, telling the story, and dealing with a character's conflicts in the most human way. The more the actor's body relates to the story, the more the audience is able to connect to the play or the film, because overcoming conflicts is a universal and inevitable human necessity.