[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: What is awareness?
Acting Coach and Specialist in the application of the Alexander Technique Jean-Louis Rodrigue: Awareness is a fascinating thing. It can be very similar if, for example, you meditate that you realize that when you meditate, you become aware of how the mind is working, especially if you have your eyes closed, you begin to feel the activity in your brain. Meditation is to quiet that activity or to stop it in some way, to pause. In Alexander [the Alexander Technique], it has something to do with hyperactivity that we’re uncomfortable when we stop. Some people feel that they need to do something always in order to be but that’s what you learn, you learn to be comfortable with just stopping or pausing activity (habitual activity) and to understand what it is to be in your body. That’s the awareness and the awareness also helps you to feel this relationship between your head and your spine, your whole body and what you’re doing with it. If you are tensing too much or holding yourself or interfering with your breath, all of this comes forward and the process of teaching is helping someone, allowing that natural coordination that we all had as children to come back. I think we all know what freedom is, we had it when we came into this world but gradually we lose it as we advance into our lives. Luckily actors can be children all their lives, so it’s a wonderful thing.
Film Courage: As time has gone on, you started in 1969 with the Alexander Technique, have you noticed that the ability to ‘just be’ is not in fashion anymore? Maybe it’s come back, but we’re so dialed in and we’ve got to multitask and have a…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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About:
Jean-Louis Rodrigue is an internationally recognized acting coach, movement director, and specialist in the application of the Alexander Technique to film, theater and television. In film, he coached actors and collaborated with directors in Passion Fish, Vice, J. Edgar, Life of Pi, W., I, Tonya, and many more. In theater, he collaborated with director Larry Moss and former NFL player Bo Eason in his play Runt of the Litter and playwright Pamela Gien in her Obie– and Drama Desk– award-winning one-person play, The Syringa Tree, both in New York and internationally. Jean-Louis has worked on- and off-Broadway and at major performing arts institutions such as Berlin International Film Festival, Cirque du Soleil, Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, Getty Villa, Geffen Playhouse, Royal National Theatre, Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Verbier Festival, Royal Shakespeare Company. For the past 34 years, Jean-Louis has taught at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Jean-Louis lives in Los Angeles with his husband, Kristof Konrad.
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