Western students practice the Suzuki Method

STORY BY KRAMER JANDERS

Sturdy and motionless, actors stand in a line on stage. Energy flows freely through the room as they tap into their surroundings. Breathing calmly, the actors deliberately swing their legs up and out, throwing themselves off balance, the first form that begins a long sweaty training session. Regaining balance quickly, each actor plants his or her leg back to the ground, and follows the next instruction.

These actors at Western are using the Suzuki method, a rigorous actor-training system, to find success on stage. Suzuki teaches actors discipline in their breathing, movements and stillness to prepare them for the most intense acts on stage.

Japanese theatre director Tadashi Suzuki created this method of training to give actors the endurance they need for multiple days of long performances.

“Suzuki is a body and voice training system for the actor,” says Rich Brown, associate professor in Western’s department of theater and dance. “[Tadashi] Suzuki created this method to help actors ground and root themselves and support their voices with their powerful bodies.”

Brown has trained in Suzuki for a decade, and for the last seven years, his students at Western have reaped the benefits. In February 2014, 55 Western theatre students traveled to Boise, Idaho for the annual regional Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.

While there, 25 of Brown’s theatre students performed an original piece called “Soap Box.” The two performances were packed, and the students received numerous awards at the festival. The judges noticed Brown’s students had been practicing Suzuki, he says.

“Your students versus other students, its night and day, because they have stillness,” the respondents told Brown.

Stillness is a way for the actors to remain engaged during the entire performance, and in doing so they engage the audience as well.

“Even though I’m not moving, inside the engine is going a thousand miles an hour, with the brakes on,” Brown says.

Suzuki is based on a blend of eastern and western traditions, noh theatre, kabuki theatre, ballet and martial arts and looks like a lot of stomping and repetition of set physical forms that work primarily with the lower half of the body, Brown says.

“But really what it is is an opportunity to find their animal energy that has been covered by societal teachings,” Brown says.

Suzuki Method trains actors using different physical actions called forms to isolate the core muscles. Actors practice these daily and learn to control their body and breathing while practicing the form. Through Suzuki, actors learn to control their body by finding their center or core.

Actor Linnea Ingalls, a senior at Western, says everyone has an eight-pack whether it is visible or not. Finding those bottom two abdominal muscles and strengthening them allows actors to perform a long dance and start singing immediately afterward. Ingalls and another actor choreographed a dance for “Soap Box,” and right after the dance she went straight into a solo.

“This dance was physically intensive and at the end I was supposed to sing,” Ingalls says. “Suzuki definitely saved me there.”

Suzuki Method teaches actors to breath correctly: from their center and not their chest. Breathing from deep in the diaphragm is important because it allows actors to find their natural voice, Brown says.

“Once I found the strong legs to support my voice, I found the full power of my voice,” Brown says.

Acting student Fred Tse started learning Suzuki when he first came to Western two years ago. Tse, now a senior, won a scholarship to attend a stage combat summer program at California State University two years in a row.

Making the throwing motion is easy, Tse says. But, adding singing or dancing to the form without proper breathing can cause fatigue to build up in the chest and disrupt the actor’s ability, Tse says. Through this training, actors strengthen their core to control where tension and pain builds up. Actors learn to focus their pain in areas where breathing is not affected, such as the legs.

Suzuki focuses on the core because it helps actors find their center of gravity. Having a strong core allows actors to breath properly while providing support to their upper body. Learning to keep all the muscular tension in the legs allows for the upper body to be relaxed, even through stillness, and helps an actor not melt into the background during a performance.

The method is always evolving and advancing as Tadashi Suzuki is still directing theatre pieces for his company, the Suzuki Company of Toga.

SITI, a theatre company based in New York, travels to Japan to train directly with Tadashi Suzuki. SITI brings the new forms back to teach actors like Brown who, in turn, teach their own students.

Actors on all levels fill a character’s role with their own emotions. Filling their characters emotions while on stage is seen as impossible because the actors have to deal with their own personal emotions too, Brown says.

Suzuki forms are designed to be impossible to perfect, Brown explains. By striving for the impossible daily, actors trained in Suzuki are ready to take on the challenges each new character presents.