Why Do Actors Train?

Book excerpt: How are we to understand the actor's work as a fully embodied process? 'Embodied cognition' is a branch of contemporary philosophy which attempts to frame human understanding as fully embodied interaction with the environment. Engaging with ideas of contemporary significance from neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy, Why Do Actors Train? challenges the outmoded dualistic notions of body and mind that permeate common conceptions of how actors work. Theories of embodiment are drawn up to shed important light on the ways and reasons actors do what they do. Through detailed, step-by-step analyses of specific actor-training exercises, the author examines the tools that actors use to bring life and meaning to the stage. This book provides theatre practitioners and scholars alike with a new lens to re-examine the craft of acting, offering a framework to understand the art form as one that is fundamentally grounded in embodied experience.