Students & The Acting Process

I have been studying T’ai Chi Chih with Bill Moore for about four years. I first was introduced to T’ai Chi Chi Kung in an acting class while a student at Stanford University in 1980, and studied it later in New Jersey. Recently, I performed the role of Bottom in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and made sure to go through the TCC practice before leaving the house for the theatre. I also used time after getting into make-up and costume, before the play began, to do a few TCC movements. In that time before going on stage, actors do everything from chit-chatting about nothing and everything to obsessively rehearsing their lines while wasting endlessly pacing back and forth. As a way of both allaying pre-performance anxiety and focusing attention on the task at hand, TCC proves to be an excellent resource.

In acting, we are often taught to act with our whole being, not merely with our intellects, and we are also taught to play each scene “moment-to-moment.” Just as in life we don’t know what’s happening tomorrow or next week, so too with our characters (even though as actors we do know what’s happening next). TCC’s focus on the center and the soles of the feet helps the actor stay in the moment and in the body, and this helps ensure that the actor is breathing from low in the body, which is essential for proper use of the voice.

The focus on the lower portion of the body also helps the actor to be free of bodily tension that is the enemy to a “free voice” and an expressive physical “instrument” (the actor’s body). I am aware that when I stand I tighten the lower back, which also shortens the spine, resulting with my being somewhat cut off from the lower body; after a while, I become aware of the lower back as a result of the discomfort caused by the vice-like tightening of the muscles there. Once aware, I can put my attention there and release the muscles, and feel myself settle into the lower body with the base of the spine now lengthened and the painful tension released.