Character Body
Character Body is a practical approach to acting, developed over more than 25 years of working with actors.
At its heart is a simple proposition: there is more happening within us than we can consciously understand or express in words.
Through a progressive series of physical explorations, we train our sensitivity to the body noticing itself, discovering a way to work with the imagination without continually needing to interpret, explain or control it.
Noticing — The body as it is
We begin with the body itself.
Through grounding, release and an awareness of weight, mass, space and gravity, we begin to experience the body without needing to give that experience a meaning.
We develop our sensitivity to the extraordinary detail of what is happening both within us and around us. Sensations, impulses and shifts of attention that we might ordinarily overlook.
The work is to notice without editing. To become increasingly comfortable with allowing experience to exist before we attempt to understand it.
Language — Discovering words from within
We then bring language into this heightened physical awareness.
Rather than approaching a text as a sequence of meanings that must be communicated, we explore the experience of speaking it. We allow words to arrive one by one, discovering what they awaken in the body and imagination.
Our analysis remains essential. It establishes the circumstances, relationships and objectives of the character. But rather than asking the actor to demonstrate that understanding, we allow it to become part of an unfolding experience.
The actor’s responsibility is not simply to communicate the meaning of the text, but to discover the living person beneath it.
Character Body — Giving the imagination physical form
Finally, we invite the character into the body.
Through abstract physical shapes, we begin to discover a form that can hold the character’s complexity: their history, desires, fears, contradictions, memories and imagined possibilities.
This is not simply about finding an external posture or gesture. It is about creating an extraordinarily detailed internal physical experience — a language through which the imagination can work beyond words.
We then return from the abstract form to an actable body, retaining the richness of that internal life.
Rather than consciously directing every moment, we learn to allow the character body’s desires and demands to lead us through the scene.
The character is no longer something we are trying to construct from the outside. It becomes something we can experience from within.