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Alba Emoting Articles: Excerpts
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Articles and excerpts will rotated through these pages.
The following excerpts are from:
Rix, Roxane.
"Alba Emoting: A Revolution in Emotion for the Actor"
in _Performer Training: Developments Across Cultures_ (Ian Watson, ed.), Routledge Harwood Academic Publishers, 2001/2002
ISBN 9057551519
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The chapter begins with a general description of experiencing Alba Emoting, and delineation of how the system was developed.
The first excerpt picks up from the second section, which discusses emotion and emotion theory in a broader context. If you're unfamiliar with the science, the first part can seem a bit dense; the connections with Alba Emoting are discussed near the end.
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Rene Descartes is generally credited with bridging ancient and modern theories of emotion with his 1649 treatise, Les passions de l'ame (Gardiner, 1970:7), the first published theory to focus on physiology as the basis of "passions" (though, as Gardiner notes, the idea of bodily states as central to emotion is at least as old as Hippocrates). Descartes' dualistic view of body and soul--the body as a machine which experiences emotions as a result of agitation of the soul discharging "spirits" through glands, nerves, and blood vessels (Gardiner, 1970:7)--has strongly influenced all emotion theory since, creating what is often referred to as the "mind-body problem." (Candland, 1977:22)
Indeed, debate in regard to the question "What is an emotion?" has, for more than a century, raged over this so-called mind-body split: is emotion a physiological event or a cognitive one? "The first view maintains that bodily reactions... control and determine what we feel. The second view posits that bodily reactions are secondary effects... indicators of emotions." (Grings & Dawson, 1978:3) Late 19th century American psychologist William James promoted the idea that "the bodily changes" which accompany emotion and "our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion... Moods, affectations, and passions... are in very truth constituted by, and made up of, those bodily changes which we ordinarily call their expression or consequence." (James, 1962:11-12)1 For James, arousal state precedes cognition (the subjective recognition of feeling): "I see a bear, I tremble, I am afraid." (Candland, 1977:22) And without somatic and visceral changes there is no emotion, but mere thought: "We might see a bear, and judge it best to run, but we could not actually feel afraid." (Buck, 1984:47) The opposite view ("I see a bear, I am afraid, I tremble") was most ardently proposed by W.B. Cannon in the 1920s, though Alan I. Leshner (1977:87) notes that the casting of the theories as mutually exclusive is probably erroneous. Cannon believed that physiological arousal follows, rather than leads, cognition of an emotional state; that neural stimulation centered in the thalamus in turn stimulates "areas of the brain in which the experiential qualities of emotion are added to mere sensations" leading to visceral arousal via the release of various hormones (Leshner, 1977:87-91). Both points of view include a stimulus, and neither denies roles to body or mind in experience of emotion; but each defines "emotion" as the second event (after stimulus) in the causal/temporal sequence. Cannon's theory has long been the more accepted of the two; with advances in scientific technology, however, the most recent research has, in fact, proven James correct. Daniel Goleman cites studies by neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux which prove that sensory information travels first to the brain's emotional center, which begins a physical response before a second signal reaches the neocortex (the "thinking brain") , which then interprets the information and refines the reaction. (Coleman, 1995:15,17)2 If I see a bear, I do, indeed, tremble before I realize that I am afraid.
If we define the whole of emotional experience as a phenomenon involving all three aspects--stimulus, cognition, and physiological arousal-- the actor's challenge immediately becomes clear: there is no stimulus in the fictive world of the play beyond that provided by fellow actors (which may, in the best of circumstances, be considerable, but cannot be depended upon moment to moment); in Stanislavski's words, "There is no such thing as actuality on the stage." (Stanislavski, 1989:54). The attempt to fill the gap left by lack of genuine stimuli has been central to Western actor training (certainly, in the US) since Stanislavski and the birth of realism brought to the fore the idea of truth on stage. Most techniques--emotion memory (with or without physicalization of reexperience) , "magic if," belief in circumstances, substitution, use of images, objects, and so on--attack the problem through cognition: the actor uses the mind to create stimulus for emotion. Actors trained in American "Method" techniques rely on this self-induced stimulus to create genuine expressive response, with more or less success depending on talent, physical development, and strength of imagination; even actors trained specifically to discover from reexperienced feeling "simple, expressive actions with an inner content" (Stanislavski , 1989a:49) nonetheless begin with a cognitive base.
Alba Emoting is revolutionary because it approaches the "stimulus gap" from the other point of the triad: physiological arousal through purely physical means. While many actors, at times, consciously use breath, posture, and relative states of tension and relaxation to enhance and sustain emotional states, Alba Emoting is the first method to identify specific, universal patterns in these reproducible aspects of emotional expression, and systematize them into a technique to produce and express emotion at will. This use of direct physiological arousal in a sense turns nature on its head. In taking on the physical characteristics of an emotion, the body begins to feel that emotion: the limbic system, sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems etc., begin to respond as if there were a stimulus creating the response (a risk of stretching the point: I tremble, I feel afraid--but there is no bear at all). Subjective involvement may be consciously modulated, "allowing [actors] to experience as much of the feeling component as they desire." (Bloch,1993) That it is the body, not the mind, which expresses emotion cannot be denied, even by the most ardent proponents of cognitive techniques; what seems discomfiting to some is the idea that, aside from consciousness of technical muscle movement (in time, virtually effortless), the mind may be left out entirely. While some Danish and Chilean actors who have worked with Alba Emoting for a number of years would, like James, identify "emotion" wholly as physiological arousal, agreement with this point of view is neither necessary in order for Alba Emoting to function for an actor nor particularly germane to discussion of its value. An Alba- trained actor still must commit to circumstances, characters, actions, etc., but will enjoy greater flexibility and availability of expression. He or she is also free to continue to use psychological techniques in addition to the method--but, in my experience, isn't likely to want to.
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The next excerpt describes my first experience of Alba Emoting
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In Cachagua, Chile, in October of 1993, Bloch offered the first training seminar in Alba Emoting open to actors and teachers worldwide.
Limited to ten people, the two-week session attracted a polyglot group of participants from Europe and South America, as well as four from the US: Nancy Loitz of Illinois Wesleyan University, Michael Johnson-Chase from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Stephen Book, a private acting teacher from Los Angeles, and myself. None of us Americans knew one another, nor had previous experience with the technique beyond ATHE workshops (if that). Though my own limited experiment with the breathing patterns had proven to me their power to evoke emotion (Rix, 1993), I remained to be convinced about the system as a whole. Novices compared to our classmates (several of whom were Danes and Chileans who had worked with the technique during its development), the doubts and questions we brought would, over the course of the session, come in turns to the fore. (And, certainly, we "Yanks" were distinguished by our impatience to understand and learn, and our willingness to struggle loudly when we didn't! )
"For the first 3 or 4 days I was appalled. Most of us looked embarrassingly wooden, contrived, and like very bad actors when we did the patterns. We became argumentative and cross with each other. At one juncture it seemed as though the whole training was going to fall apart. ...Finally, as we became more skilled, it became apparent that there is a critical difference between doing the patterns poorly and doing them well... the details of any given pattern are complex and take some time to learn." Michael Johnson-Chase (1994), in this comment describes not only our experience in Chile but one aspect of Alba Emoting in which skeptics sometimes mistakenly find validation: in the first phase of learning, the Alba technique looks and feels phony, often to the point of absurdity. The apparent result (which is not a result at all, but a first step) appears a grotesque stereotype of emotion. While occasionally a new student will experience genuine emotion on the first try, it is far more common to feel ridiculous--and/or irritated and frustrated at the difficulty of precise technical reproduction--and even the rare student who genuinely contacts emotion the first time will not likely be able to reproduce it reliably. This first phase, which Bloch terms "robotic," is entirely technical: for each emotion, the student repeats, to its maximum intensity, a precise respiratory pattern (which includes not only rate and depth, but force, placement in the body, and, for some patterns, slight holds), creates a specific facial mask, and modulates posture along the dual axes of tension/relaxation and approach/avoidance.5 Having attended several of Bloch's workshops (and had, I had thought, some successful experiences), I was astonished to discover in Chile how much more precision and subtlety is required than had ever been apparent; for the first few days the experience was, indeed, often awkward and frustrating. I was also surprised by the occurrence of anomalous reactions during the robotic phase, such as when the pattern for joy left me sobbing. (I have since seen this occur with my own acting students relatively often--usually crying, but sometimes laughter-- and come to value it as a strength of the technique, a non-psychoanalytic "flushing out" of old tensions necessary for some to gain emotional freedom.)
Within a few days, most of us had begun to master at least one of the patterns, and, by turns, experienced the second phase of the learning process: induction. This is the "magic moment" when the individual's genuine emotion emerges (often quite suddenly and intensely) from the practiced pattern, and the variations of emotional expression which make each person unique mingle and merge with the prototype. As well as bolstering confidence in the technique, this experience answered a common question with which most of us had been struggling: what about individual difference? In fact, it appeared, aside from possible physical abnormalities (which probably can't be corrected) or psychoemotional distortions (which both can and should, for an actor!), individual variations in emotional expression are minute; what, for some, initially appear to be conflicts between the patterns and genuine experience ("I don't do that when I cry") are almost always the result of entanglement: the individual's habituated mixed emotional response. (I discovered, for example, that, in life, being afraid makes me angry, and anger makes me sad; though I had never noticed this before, once I saw it, it was perfectly clear.) I have come to use the analogy of a hand. If you and I each have normally formed hands, our hands will look essentially the same: even though your fingers may be longer, mine wider, your skin smoother, etc., both are recognizably hands (certainly, we won't mistake the other's hand for a foot!). The effector patterns are like the basic structure of the hand; our individuations, the myriad subtle features that distinguish your hand from mine. Once an actor has broken through entanglements to the expression of pure emotion, he or she can then mix emotions at will, according to character interpretation rather than habituation (e.g., characters I play no longer automatically become angry from fear--though I am still, of course, free to make that choice).
In this last stage, which I would describe as "integration, "the actor gains control of the intensity of the experience; the removal (or, at least, weakening) of emotional blocks, and increased technical proficiency, allow the feelings to flow easily rather than to burst through unexpectedly (the most unsettling aspect of the induction phase). While none of us attained equal proficiency with every pattern--each struggled with at least one or two patterns, depending, again, on our personal blocks and temperaments--the understanding of how the patterns work in the body, which comes only with experience, allowed us to progress more quickly, and with less fear of the intensity of induction. And, though the emergence of genuine feeling is important part of the process, even before induction on the remaining patterns, the physical appearance of the emotions was becoming increasingly natural. I also observed, in myself and my classmates, a remarkable increase in relaxation, freedom of expression, and overall sense of well-being, both in and out of class: posture had become more naturally open and aligned, vocal tensions faded, and, most startling to me, lines had dropped out of our faces. The elusive, and much sought-after, quality called 'presence" had strengthened dramatically in us all.
*CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
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 roxanerix@albaemotingna.org
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