ABSTRACT

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.

chapter 1|2 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|12 pages

The actor’s external technique

chapter 5|8 pages

The body as a material medium of acting

chapter 6|16 pages

Desomatisation (loss of functions)

chapter 7|12 pages

Desomatisation (self-destruction)

chapter 8|10 pages

Body and soul (in life)

chapter 9|8 pages

Body and soul (in art)

chapter 10|10 pages

Stanislavski

chapter 11|12 pages

Meyerhold

chapter 13|10 pages

Vakhtangov

chapter 14|8 pages

The others (time to search)

chapter 15|9 pages

After the Titans (time to lose)

chapter 16|11 pages

Drama school in the age of pluralism

chapter 17|7 pages

Physical universalism

chapter 18|9 pages

Phobia of the physical

chapter 19|11 pages

Phobia of the physical (continued)

chapter 22|3 pages

Instead of an epilogue