Zen Zen Zo reflection 1 (Suzuki work)

Reflection 1 ( 26th April)

We started the lesson by reviewing the basics of Tadashi Suzuki’s acting method. Since this was my first time working with Suzuki, I found a lot of this very interesting as I had not engaged with the physical side of theatre as much as I would have liked to. The fundamentals of Takashi’s work include:

Breathing

I found that this was one of the most important parts of staying ‘still’, while simultaneously making it very hard to stay still. This is because keeping your core tightened and therefore remaining still requires huge amounts of breath, but at the same time, the amount of strain put on your breath causes you to be shakey, as you aren’t used to that kind of strain on your lungs. However, I started getting the hang of breathing as we practiced more.

Connection to the ground

  • This was one of the key components of Takashi’s work, as almost all energy emanates from your connection to the ground. It is important to keep your feet and ankles together, tensing your glutes and contracting then in, and softening your knees. Something that allowed me to create a lot more energy was spreading my foot and focusing on the three points of contact, and then spreading my foot wide. This is something I plan on using in the future as well, as it helps you ground yourself and allows for more stillness, so you can isolate upper body movement of specific parts

Relaxed Upper Body

It is also really important to keep a relaxed upper body, and to keep your shoulders directly above your hips, with your hands to your side still but loose. This was probably my biggest drawback, as my body tended to its natural posture, and it was hard to not focus energy onto my upper body yet also maintain a straight back.

Impossible tasks

This was one of my biggest learnings from this session. ‘Impossible tasks’ relates to the idea that no task/action should be simple, so it is important to find ways to make the actions more complex. This helps you achieve your full acting potential and achieve maximum energy.

My main takeaways from this workshop were the creative process Aly’s used and the amount of energy created by pure physical presence. the importance of posture also became very apparent to me, and the march exercise is good stimulus for a ensemble piece.

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