[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: One of the topics in your book BACK TO THE BODY: Infusing Physical Life into Characters in Theatre and Film that you co-wrote with Scott Weintraub talks about script analysis to actors, teaching them how to break down the script, character maps.
Acting Coach and Specialist in the application of the Alexander Technique Jean-Louis Rodrigue: I think once your script comes in, you have to learn to read it and there is a technique in Alexander (there’s plenty of information on that so we did not invent this) but we wrote it in terms of how to integrate it with movement and physicality. So yes, we get to first read it as yourself and you’re just reading it for comprehension in terms of understanding what the story is from a very objective point of view.
Then the second way of reading it is from your character’s point of view. Everything that you read, you read it in terms of where you live, who you know and what’s happening but from your point of view. You’re discovering the life of the character that way.
Then the third way is that you begin to look for information from everybody else, where people are talking about you or what the script is saying about you that all of a sudden you have a different perspective.
I love the different perspectives. I’m very much into how you use space. In the book even before we go into character work or breaking down the script, we talk about how to relate to the environment. That is another perspective. What is the environment telling about your life as a character? That is part of it but then all this information that’s coming in, it’s a lot of information.
Yes, you can write on the script but I tell actors to create a biography. You write a biography as maybe a news person where you’re putting all the facts or maybe you do a diary…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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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