the writer is a lonely hunter

The absolute highlight of my summer was joining an acting summer school at The City Lit. I’d been looking for a learning project that would be intensive (a full week from 10–4:30pm) and out of my comfort zone. I was delighted to find an acting improvers course and I enrolled alongside seven other students. Juliet Prague and James Jarrett were the tutors who put us through lots of drama exercises to sharpen our ability to respond in performance and develop skills as a company of actors. Theory input involved studying the art of movement as described by Rudolf Laban (1879–1958) who produced the following grid which refers to eight different forms of movement (or efforts) and the elements within them.

The eight efforts are punch, slash, dab, flick, press, wring, glide and float. The four elements are direction, speed, weight and flow.

One exercise involved finding the image of a character and ascribing to that character the behaviours of an animal. I chose to act as an urban fox. All self-consciousness was abandoned as I trotted, loped and galloped around the performance space. We were then asked to incorporate Laban’s efforts and elements into the movement which extended my thoughts on the character considerably.

On Wednesday afternoon we were given scripts to study in pairs. With my partner, I worked on a scene from Road by Jim Cartwright. The play is set in a derelict area of Lancashire during Thatcher’s 1980s government, and it gives insight into the desperation of the residents. I played Brenda, an alcoholic mother who tries to extract money from her daughter in order to buy another drink and feed her addiction. It was a challenging script to attempt – completely different from the roles I play in everyday life – but I managed to learn the lines over the next 48 hours and delivered a performance which included use of a regional accent. Laban’s efforts influenced the way I delivered the lines and how I choreographed movements across the set. Others in the group worked on different scripts and we showcased our work in the John Lyon’s theatre at the end of our course.

I continue to think about Laban’s efforts and what I can take from these as a writer. Certainly, the efforts can be used to inform the description of body language in fiction. It’s also possible finesse lines of dialogue with reference to Laban’s efforts.

Is the table of Laban’s efforts any use in your creative endeavours?