The Well-Tempered Body: Expressive Movement for Actors, Improvisers, and Performance Artists

Physicality is the basis of performance. It is hard to argue otherwise: yes, voice is important, costumes are important, scenery is important, but rapport with the audience is established primarily by what performer is doing and how it is being done. The reality of the body - the way that it moves, and the way that it reacts to context (real or imaginary) – engenders a sense of presence, especially in the absence of dialogue.

One need only think of the great actors of the silent screen to know that characterization does not require a word to be spoken. Beyond this, a skilled improviser has the ability to suggest a mood or a place, a status relationship or an enduring friendship, simply by relying on our ability to “fill in” the background to the behavior we are witnessing. And the performance artist can create a powerful experience, transforming private vision into feeling and physical action. Even in the wildest experimental theater, where the inner logic of the scene is initially baffling, the presence of the actor’s body can be enough to lend structure and coherence, and to encourage the audience to give the presentation a chance.

In this fragmented age of ours, the genres of conventional acting, improvisation, and performance art may sometimes appear to be worlds apart, but they are linked inextricably by reliance on the expressive power of the human body. The reason is simple: theater in whatever guise is fundamentally a stylized social exchange, and the “decoding” of movement is always a part of the dialogue we establish with other people.

This process of nonverbal communication is actually a very familiar aspect of everyone’s life. Whether at home or at work, at rest or at play, we are continuously gauging personality (i.e. long-term temperament and short-term moods) based on holistic appraisals of physical presentation. We know when the boss is unapproachable even before he opens his mouth, just as we know if a first date is going well or badly. And the reason is our innate sensitivity to subtle (and none-too-subtle) behavioral cues.

For the actor, mastery of stage presence is thus intimately connected with the investigation everyday action as a communicative device. Nonverbal dialogue shapes all of our lives, and appreciating the way in which behavior clashes with or conforms to context is part of our heritage as a social animal. But as the consummate physical performer, the actor needs to take this process to a new level, harnessing the nuts and bolts of “impression management” and applying them to artistic ends.

Absolute Beginner's Guide to Hiragana

Thinking back to my first few years in Japan, I remember vividly an interview I had with the dean of a foreign language institute in Osaka. The man was originally from Scotland, but had been in Asia for the better part of a decade. He was married to a Japanese woman, and spoke Japanese quite fluently. Yet despite his extended stay, he remained illiterate and still required even the simplest day-to-day documents to be translated for him by his staff. "How sad," I thought, and how inconvenient. I could just imagine the difficulties of trying to navigate the train system, particularly outside the big cities, or of filling out the forms required to open a bank account, sign up for a mobile phone service, or rent an apartment.


In a way, his predicament was perfectly understandable. Of the tens of thousands of visitors to Japan, how many actually make the effort to tackle the written language? To be fair, the challenge can seem daunting: the hiragana syllabary, which represents the bottom rung of the ladder, consists of at least 46 basic symbols and score of derivatives. The same is true of katakana, and when we come to kanji, the ideograms that make up the core of the language, we're faced with memorizing about 2,000 characters and at least as many compounds if we want to reach even high-school level literacy.


Yet many do manage to attain this level of mastery, or even beyond. Each year, the national Japanese Language Proficiency Test, the benchmark for language learning, is held at centers throughout the country. Hundreds come to try for a certificate, sitting tests held completely in Japanese, even at the lowest levels. Some do it for the prestige and job opportunities, but I suspect that most just want the satisfaction of knowing that they have progressed beyond the fumbling, Japanese-English bar conversation stage, and are on their way to real independence and cultural immersion.

I did it. After six years or so of piecemeal study while teaching English I decided to buckle down get ready for the examinations. Taking one a year, I finished with the highest certificate after four years. Along the way, I turned my hobby into a vocation by finding a translation agency willing to hire me, despite my "intermediate" ability. Years later, I still earn a living as a translator, though now from outside Japan. My customer base is worldwide, and I'm rarely without work, which arrives on a regular basis by email (have laptop will travel!)


As another example, a friend came to Japan with no knowledge of the language, and after a year's immersion course was accepted at Kyoto University, one of the most prestigious in the country. Writing all his essays and exams in Japanese, he completed an undergraduate degree in psychology, and then moonlighting as a translator, went on to continue his education in graduate school - not bad for an ordinary kid from the Philippines!


Of course, there is no such thing as a leap into literacy - like everything else worth doing, written Japanese is best tackled in manageable stages. And stage I is mastery of hiragana.

Reading English News on the Internet (Japanese Edition)

This bilingual (Japanese-English) guide to "media English" covers nearly 200 connectors, phrasal verbs, idiomatic verb phrases, and everyday expressions. There are tips on reading news, sports, and finance articles online, and students can test themselves with mini-quizzes and a final exam.

Reading English News on the Internet

The purpose of this book is to help ESL learners at the intermediate level with the potentially confusing turns of phrase common to English articles online, in magazines and in newspapers. ESL veterans will appreciate that while many books cover English grammar and vocabulary, there are precious few dealing specifically with idioms, “quirky” verbs, and other compound constructs from a practical perspective. My goal has been to create a workbook systematic enough to integrate easily into a variety of academic contexts, making the learning experience as efficient and painless as possible.

This book actually stems from my experiences as a Japanese translator. Working at an agency in Hiroshima, I was struck by the number of questions I was fielding from coworkers trying to make sense of English newspaper articles and other challenging documents. On closer inspection, most of the difficulties seemed to involve idioms (”on the loose”, “public outcry”), constructs that are poorly covered in many textbooks and are difficult to look up due to their compound nature. In discussing this issue with friends and teachers it became apparent that related grammar elements such as connectors (“as…as a…”) and verbs of one type or another (“to show promise”) present similar problems for non-native speakers. I began collecting examples of the most commonly misunderstood “offenders”, and ultimately put together the manuscript over the course of about two years.

Applications: On one level, the book functions as a simple guide to the meanings of nearly 200 connectors, phrasal verbs, idiomatic verb-phrases, and expressions. Individual sections can also be introduced a few pages at a time into almost any classroom situation, gradually building English comprehension. To develop full lessons of 40 minutes or more, I would recommend supplementation with materials on mass-media, the internet, and current events. The “tips” sections on website content deal with the typical structure of online articles, and are best covered as part of a writing class with internet access. The mini-quizzes at the end of each unit provide immediate feedback about the progress of the students, and can also serve as a template for the creation of your own tests and exams.