The Actor's Body: An Owner's Manual

Our ability to believe an actor's performance springs from his or her command of fundamental physical principles of action, concentration, motivation, memory, cognition, and emotion. Their deployment can result in transcendence. Since ancient times, we have sought the source of the actor's art: is it in the head or the heart? Is it learned or is it nature? That spark makes the actor's body more than the sum of its parts. Joseph Roach, Sterling Professor of Theater and English at Yale University, and Martha Lavey, artistic director of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, present historic and contemporary ideas of the actor's craft and how these ideas are based on the difficult nature of the instrument the performer inhabits.

This program is generously underwritten by Carol Rosofsky and Robert B. Lifton.