Moving Towards Performance

Abstract

The actor’s senses are of paramount importance if he is to be fully responsive to his fellow performers and to the audience. They are the actor’s only means of experiencing and contacting the world around him. Sight and hearing are crucial, of course, but smell and taste and, particularly, touch, are equally important. Sight is the actor’s primary means of spatial location — remove sight (with a blindfold) and the actor has to reorient himself physically, and reach out through space. If the actor can learn to extend himself spatially with his eyes open he will automatically become more physically expressive — less ‘bound’ or ‘closed’ (as the ‘Fight in the Dark’ game demonstrates).