Method combines motion with mentality

For weeks in a new professor's acting class that trains through movement and bodily awareness, sophomore acting major JuliaSmolka did not get it.

The training, called the "Suzuki Method," caused Smolka to undergo mental strain with physical demands to improve her on-stage skills.

Finally she got it.

"[Because of this] I've started being more observant in my everyday life," she said.

Adjunct professor and professor of the acting class Sophomore Movement, Benjamin Blazer, introduces the Suzuki Method – a training incorporating exercises similar to military marching, standing like statues and poses sequenced with a spoken sentence – to his first group of students. According to Blazer, his 11 students "haven't asked many questions" about trying Suzuki, a method that intends to heighten awareness of one's body and its surroundings, and to Blazer's satisfaction, is starting to click.

"It's training to make your performance on stage effortless … It makes me more aware," sophomore acting major Michael Angelo Turner said.

The Suzuki Method comes from traditional Japanese dancing, often with strict, precise movements like snapping into statue-like poses with each clack of wooden blocks. According to Blazer, Suzuki is designed to help actors gain a vocabulary of movements that they can use in any situation on stage. It is also a method of learned breathing to help actors look more normal on stage and for their bodies to flow more evenly.

 To do this, Blazer teaches exercises that have the simple goal of expanding "awareness of their bodies in the immediate space." With Suzuki, Blazer intends to help his students become better actors not just through their dialogue, but through their movements looking natural, as opposed to forced.

"My ultimate goal is to provide to the students awareness of their bodies in three dimensional space as a communicative tool for storytelling," Blazer said.

Blazer first learned Suzuki at the University of South Carolina, where he attended graduate school. He studied for three years under Robyn Hunt and Steve Pearson, a husband and wife team who had spent 15 years in Japan with the method's creator, Tadashi Suzuki. According to Blazer, Hunt and Pearson brought Suzuki to the United States. Now, Blazer brings his interpretation of Suzuki to Point Park University.

To begin each class, Blazer leads his 11 students in a short yoga-like routine to help his students get into the mindset for training and tune into their breathing with traditional poses like "downward dog" flowing down to the floor into "up-dogs" and back up to standing. From there he goes into the various, daily training exercises like marching and standing statues. With each class, the exercises are reviewed and perfected. Blazer watches each exercise and pinpoints things to improve.

During a march that looks like a robotic high-step, Blazer points out how the leg should snap up into the high-knee position, with the thigh coming into a straight line parallel to the floor. As each student walks in time, their socked feet thud against the wooden studio floor.

"Daily routines" are done every class and do not necessarily change, but evolve. The students are given a sentence at the beginning of the semester from anywhere, whether it be a quirky quote starting with "I have lost the battle but I have won the ward…robe" or a quote about love and self-respect. With each sentence, the student makes a series of poses that flow as the sentence is spoken.

Smolka's daily routine starts with the words "most objects," and she finds her first pose by making a long diagonal with her arms before flowing into the rest of her sequence. Each student must find their right flow of poses that fit with their sentences. By the end of the semester, each student will have perfected the flow of poses that starts with the first word of the sentence and the ending pose signaling the last word. Daily routines help with finding a natural pattern of movements and pairing them with dialogue in a natural manner.

Marching, or "walking" as Blazer describes it in class, challenges the students with precise, timed movements, almost like walking in a military line, that go with the beat of a song; on Oct. 12 and 14, they marched to the song "They" by Jem. The exercise demands focus on balance, such as a walk where the students stand on the balls of their feet, much like if they were practicing to be on their toes in ballet, and slide them across the floor. They glide for three beats and hold for one, then continue on, staying as tall as they can, keeping their legs, spine, torso and head as rigid as a telephone pole. During the entire walk, their feet never leave the floor, nor do their heels ever touch the ground.

According to Blazer, these walks are designed to help students channel their energy from the floor, up through their bodies and up through their heads. Marching challenges many of the students because of its demands for precision and sharp movements, areas of focus that, when paired, leave the body drained of energy even worse than a Pilates workout.

"Standing statues," as they are called in class, also help the students focus on sharp perceptiveness by creating angles and lines with their bodies and manipulating the space around them. Standing statues help the students work with the space around them and gives them an outlet to discover and create new postures that may come in handy on stage. Sometimes Blazer claps, and sometimes he clacks wooden blocks together to signal a change in statue. Blazer also says simple words like "low" to indicate what kind of pose the students shift into with the next beat. When he says "low" and signals the students, they immediately change into a pose low to the ground, such as dropping to bent knees in a crouch with a hunched back and spread arms.

By the end of class, it seems that the students will not have to go to the gym that day judging by the sweat beads on their foreheads, exasperated breathing and slow, leisured walkingThe buildup of endurance and muscle memory created with Suzuki training ultimately helps the students when they get on stage and into long rehearsals, as well as adapting to various situations. 

Since the start of the semester, Blazer has noticed the students starting to come in early to start warming up and getting their limbs used to the hard wooden floor. They have, to his satisfaction, started to use their breathing, something he says is the key to the constant movement and rigid body posture presented in Suzuki training.

"It's really a workout. I told the students when they first came into this class that if they don't breathe, they won't survive," Blazer said.

Blazer's goal for the class is simply to help his students gain the "ability to make choices instead of acting out of their habits" while they are on stage. For instance, if they are given a task on stage to be more "fierce" with their character, they can use a movement learned through their Suzuki training such as a tall, stiff posture to portray their character better. He also wants to provide his students with the tools to succeed as actors like the ability to pair natural movements and dialogue on stage with flawless detail, much like Blazer's heavy dependence on the progression of daily routines.

"I want them to have a process of their own so that they're not just guessing and flailing out there on stage," Blazer said.

His main goal for the training is simply to help the students gain more awareness of everything around them on stage so they can intimately connect with their setting and ultimately their character. The awareness Blazer teaches has even expanded to his students' daily lives, from noticing the paintings on the walls to the bracelets the person standing next to them is wearing. 

In addition to their training, Blazer's students have started to take their Suzuki training with them from the studio and feel a connection to the small details of their personal rooms, classrooms and the streets of Pittsburgh.

"I'm actually relating it more to everyday life right now," Kirsten Heibert, a sophomore acting major, said after class on Friday, Oct. 14.

Blazer's class has become a closely-knit group as the semester has progressed with discussions of where Suzuki came from, how it can be interpreted and how its supposed to help them. Because of this, the classroom has become a free place for honest opinions and discussion, such as Smolka's explanation of how Suzuki has come together for her.

"I was getting dressed the other day and I started noticing things on the wall," Smolka said. "At first I didn't know how all this pertained to everything and how it is supposed to help me, but now I get it."

"I think you're crazy," Turner said from across the group sitting on the floor.

But Blazer, sitting at the front of the group, smiled.

"I think it's beautiful."

Photo: Professor Benjamin Blazer leads his sophomore movement class in a marching exercise as part of the Suzuki Method of actor training. Photo by Camelia Montoy.

Published: Monday, October 24, 2011

Updated: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 22:10

Article on Globe website

Posted in: acting,COPA,Point Park University,The Globe