The Alchemical Actor

The Alchemical Actor – Performing the Great Work: Imagining Alchemical Theatre offers an imagination for an alchemical theatre inspired by the directives of Antonin Artaud.

(Book). An actor's script is both a gold mine, and the map to discovering it: if properly read, a script will reveal its riches to you. Unfortunately, most actors never learn to efficiently read the map, or master how to convert what they find in a script into playable gold. Why? Because this aspect of the acting process is seldom taught in a simple and tangible way in the classroom or studio. Acting can and should be more than guesswork and instinct. Actor's Alchemy: Finding the Gold in Your Script examines the relationship between the script and what an actor ultimately does on the stage or on screen. Here is a straightforward guide filled with useful information to help actors learn to use their scripts in a specific and analytical way to solve the problems of the scene and bring their elusive characters to life. In learning how to decipher the script, actors will be equipped to make the choices that lead to delivering a gold performance.

The eponymous alchemist of Ben Jonson's quick-fire comedy is a fraud: he cannot make gold, but he does make brilliant theatre. The Alchemist is a masterpiece of wit and form about the self-delusions of greed and the theatricality of deception. This guide will be useful to a diverse assembly of students and scholars, offering fresh new ways into this challenging and fascinating play.

Alchemy in Contemporary Art analyzes how twentieth-century artists, beginning with French Surrealists of the 1920s, have appropriated concepts and imagery from the western alchemical tradition. Examining artistic production from ca. 1920 to the present, with an emphasis on artistic on the 1970s to 2000, the author discusses the work of familiar as well as lesser known artists to provide a critical, theorized overview of the alchemical tradition in 20th-century art.

This book rediscovers a spiritual way of preparing the actor towards experiencing that ineffable artistic creativity defined by Konstantin Stanislavski as the creative state. Filtered through the lens of his unaddressed Christian Orthodox background, as well as his yogic or Hindu interest, the practical work followed the odyssey of the artist, from being oneself towards becoming the character, being structured in three major horizontal stages and developed on another three vertical, interconnected levels. Throughout the book, Gabriela Curpan aims to question both the cartesian approach to acting and the realist-psychological line, generally viewed as the only features of Stanislavski’s work. This book will be of great interest to theatre and performance academics as well as practitioners in the fields of acting and directing.

In this third volume in The Actor of the Future series, Dawn Langman continues to explore the integration of Steiner’s research into speech, drama and eurythmy with Michael Chekhov’s acting methodology. Her advanced applications of all the basic processes allow the art of the actor and speaker to evolve beyond the ‘soul and body’ paradigm – still broadly accepted in contemporary culture – to include dimensions of the spirit. The book contains a seminal analysis of comedy and tragedy, showing how an understanding of their esoteric roots – sprung from the Eleusis mysteries of ancient Greece – deepen our appreciation and our ability to implement the practical suggestions made by Steiner and Chekhov to differentiate the fundamental styles. A comprehensive exploration of the vowels in relation to planetary beings lays the foundation for many layers of artistic deepening and application. ‘Dawn Langman gifts us with yet another magnificent contribution to her book series developing an integrated acting technique based on the indications of Rudolf Steiner and Michael Chekhov, in which actors become the work of art. Venturing even further into the deeper alchemical mysteries of the work, Langman leads us into an imagination of future theatre that includes a genuine experience of the I AM, the origin of comedy and tragedy, Dante’s Paradiso as example of how we can experience the planetary spheres in word and gesture, and much more, inspiring the unfoldment of actors of the future.’ – Dr Jane Gilmer, actress and teacher, author of The Alchemical Actor (2021) and former Assistant Professor of Drama, VPA, National Institute of Education, Singapore ‘In this present volume, Dawn Langman continues her in-depth exploration of the integration of Michael Chekhov’s system of psycho-physical awareness with Rudolf Steiner’s indications for creative speech and eurythmy. In so doing, she genuinely models both teachers’ emphasis on experimentation and exploration absent the dogmatism sometimes associated with such work. The careful, conscious communication of her own advanced exercises created to develop this new methodology will be most effective when worked in conjunction with her previous books, The Art of Acting, The Art of Speech and The Actor of the Future, Vols. 1 & 2. Taken as a whole, Langman reveals the degree of empathy and responsiveness possible not only between human beings, but with all the manifold community of beings “between earth and heaven.”’ – Dr Diane Carracciolo, Associate Professor of Educational Theatre, Adelphi University, USA

Alchemists are generally held to be the quirky forefathers of science, blending occultism with metaphysical pursuits. This text challenges the widespread dismissal of alchemy as a largely insignificant historical footnote to science.

Alchemy is popularly viewed as a secret way of turning worthless base metal into gold, and then a precursor to modern chemistry. This is often taken as a metaphor for psychological development. This book describes an innovative "third way" for both the education and exercise of an alchemical imagination that embraces both material matters and psychological insight: alchemy as lyrical poetics, or the intensive production of embodied metaphor. Alchemy here is viewed as an immanent set of metaphor-driven "best practices" for indwelling complex and contradictory earthly matters in a sensual, artistic and humane manner. Or, again, it describes best psychotherapeutic practice. Alchemy is read not as a medium for "personal growth", but optimal co-existence with the natural world. It is an eco-logical rather than ego-logical project with deep aesthetic concerns (education of the senses in close noticing) and political intentions (a democracy of worldly things). The book echoes post-Freudian developments in psychoanalysis that avoid the mysticism of symbol systems to work rather with everyday signs and linguistic registers such as embodied metaphors, keeping the focus on known and sensed phenomena rather than abstractions.