Integrating mind and body for harmony on stage

OUR bodies can be either our best friends or worst enemies. The human body and psychology influence each other and are in constant interplay.

An undeveloped or over-developed body may easily dim the activity of the mind, dull the feelings or weaken the will. It is seldom that we find a complete balance or harmony between the body and psychology.

But the actor who must consider his body an instrument for expressing creative ideas on the stage must strive for the attainment of complete harmony between the two - body and psychology.

There are certain actors who can feel and understand their roles deeply but can neither express nor convey to an audience these riches within themselves. Those wonderful thoughts and emotions are somehow chained inside their undeveloped bodies.

The process of rehearsing and acting for them is a painful struggle against their own body. But do not be dismayed because every actor, to a greater or lesser degree, suffers from some of his body's resistance.

So an actor must undergo a special kind of development in accordance with the particular requirements of his profession. The first requirement is extreme sensitivity of the body to psychological creative impulses.

This cannot be achieved by strictly physical exercises; the psychology itself must take part in such a development. The body of an actor must absorb psychological qualities. It must be filled and permeated with them so they will concert it gradually into a sensitive membrane, a receiver and conveyor of the subtlest images, feelings, emotions and impulses.