Movement ‘re-education’ helps drama students improve performance

Hillary Parker, a UConn graduate student working on a master’s degree in performance, faced a challenge.

For a recent Connecticut Repertory Theatre performance, she had to play a character who recites complex lists of information while keeping her body perfectly still.

“It was daunting,” she says.

But it was not too daunting for Elizabeth Huebner, who trains Parker and other students in the master of fine arts program.

Huebner, an adjunct faculty member, teaches the Alexander Technique, a way to use the mind and body to improve movement and performance. “I’m not an actor or a director,” she says.

“I’m a movement expert.”

Huebner showed the student how to breathe life into an otherwise motionless character. “She helped me be a still presence on stage, that could fill a room for a good 10 minutes,” Parker said. “People were amazed.”

Huebner says the Alexander Technique, developed by Australian actor F. Matthias Alexander more than a century ago, “is basically movement re-education.”

It helps athletes and musicians as well as actors and people in their everyday lives, use their bodies in ways that promote comfort and ease, instead of moving in ways that create discomfort, she says.

“This gives the average person more energy and vitality, and less injury to the neck and lower back.”

Classes in the Alexander Technique are required for graduate students in performance. They start taking the course their first semester at the University, and continue until they graduate.

Huebner is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, who has taught workshops and performed dance in Europe as well as the U.S. She maintains a private practice, and offers workshops throughout Connecticut.

She says the Alexander Technique is an important tool for acting students.

“Drama students need to have a very agile, powerful, and accurate use of their bodies,” she says.

“Their body is their instrument of expression. They need to be able to find a physical neutral and build a character out from there. If they have lots of unconscious habits, they’ll be very limited in the kinds of characters for which they’re cast.”

During class on this day, Huebner is working with an acting student who finds it hard to sing in public.

She works with his breathing, and the other students offer their thoughts.

An actor wants to be able to play the body of any character, says acting student Chris Hirsh.