Standing Down Straight for Actors (362-0-20)

Instructors

William Lewis Siegenfeld
847/491-3147
10 Arts Circle Drive
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday, noon-2:00pm and by appointment

Meeting Info

Wirtz Center SOUTH: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:50PM

Overview of class

Standing Down Straight® for Actors (SDS) is an anatomically fact-based, injury-preventive, intensely rhythmically movement-driven approach to actor training. It guides acting students to use gravity-directed active relaxation as a means of embodying physical power, emotional truthfulness, and a wide range of vocal and motional dynamics on the stage. When doing the course's exercises, monologues, and scenes, students explore how to use the body's five primary emotional articulators - the 2 eyes, the 2 hands, and the voice - to express physical and emotional force from a base of grounded relaxation.
This relaxation-based grounding of body and mind is meant to yield a pleasurable result: working efficiently - using less muscular and mental effort when we throw ourselves into speaking or singing with conviction. That is, the acting goal in SDS is to Do LESS to achieve MORE.

Registration Requirements

Acting track juniors and seniors, or acting track sophomores who have taken either Dance 161 or Theatre 361 only
Request permission number from Prof Billy Siegenfeld siggy@northwestern.edu