Body-Mind Balancing: Exploring Deep Embodiment in Oh What A Lovely War!

Acting methodologies have long been divided into two simplistic streams: “outside-in” and “inside-out.” These reductionist models fail to account for the range and synergistic nature of the elements integral to an actor’s work. Exploring these elements I discovered a personal tendency toward favouring an intellect removed from its source in breath, body, and imagination, and disengaged from sensation and emotion. Undertaking an exploration of deep embodiment through the practices of Syntonics©, Linklater voice work, Middendorf Breathexperience, and Batdorf Technique, and applied in Theatre@York’s production Oh What a Lovely War! I discovered a rich new source of information arising not from intellect, but from an intelligent, unified, physical being, or body-mind. This experience has revealed a new understanding of how to approach acting, in which every element becomes a potential entry point into a holistically integrated, reciprocal system, and in which visceral, sensate awareness births true presence and performance.