[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Can you talk about the power of the breath?
Acting Coach and Specialist in the application of the Alexander Technique Jean-Louis Rodrigue: Yes, I think breathing is the energy that flows underneath your ideas. I see the breath as the force or the power that moves your ideas. If you do not have the air pressure behind it your ideas would not go very far. Also, the breath is where the emotions live. It’s when you’re breathing then the emotions can be lubricated to come out. If you’re not breathing then there’s a holding.
The interesting thing is that the breath is automatic and what I mean by that is you don’t have to think about breathing all the time. Most of the time we’re not conscious about the breath, it’s just happening, you learned about that.
Jessica Wolf is a colleague of mine at Yale. She teaches at the Yale Drama School. She has developed this process of breathing coordination because the breath is a coordination with your body. The organs of respiration and they’re all happening quite naturally all the time. Through Alexander you learn to do less manipulation with the breath. You just let it happen but then you develop it, you use that word before developing. Yes you develop it, and you integrate it, into your own behavior and life. It’s quite natural it shouldn’t people should not say:
Oh, I love his voice! It’s so booming.
Because that’s almost too much. You love my voice because it speaks of what’s going on inside of me. It speaks to you directly. That’s the kind of breath and energy that I want to grow so it’s the best. It is an adventure that will continue until I take my last breath.
Film Courage: Are there right ways to breathe and wrong ways?
Jean-Louis: Yeah. For example, if you went if if you went to a class, a lot of breathing classes they would say:
Okay, now everybody take a big breath!
Right, so go ahead and take a big breath.
You may notice that I gasp, take a big breath and I lifted my chest and I kind of tighten my lower back. That’s the thing that you want to avoid to take a breath. We actually go and teach people to do the opposite. We say whatever breath you have, let it come out first so you let the breath out and then the incoming breath will come in automatically.
We work on allowing the breath to be released out to the very end or we call it the logical conclusion to the very end of the breath. Then automatically, almost like a reflex, the inhalation happens. Those are the best kinds of breaths that you want to integrate it into your life…(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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