Passion, Visions, Trance: Using Laban Technique to Train Actors in the Performance Non-Ordinary Psychophysical States in German Expressionist Drama

Abstract

In Washington State, where I teach acting at the community college level, high school juniors and seniors can take community college classes for credit (a program called Running Start). Thus, my acting classes are populated mostly by sixteento twenty-year-olds. Occasionally a returning veteran will give the class a try, as do students of a certain age. Rarely do I have a theatre major. This demographic is liberating in that I needn’t worry about training hopeful professional actors. I can explore a broad palette of training methodologies. I can play. But “play” in the context of an acting class must be meaningful for the students. Play needs to touch them deeply.