A&HHE Special Issue August 2016

Explorations in Charisma: Applying experimental actor-training techniques to nurture the outstanding musician

Ken Rea

Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Abstract

In this article, Ken Rea describes some of the key exercises he has taught to actors to enhance their presence, charisma and rapport with the audience, and he explains how he has also used these very successfully with musicians.

Drawing on his empirical research with both actors and musicians, and more than 30 years’ teaching at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Rea examines the qualities of outstanding performers, and the key traits and values they project. He explains how these can be nurtured in a conservatoire to facilitate a higher level of success.

One of the biggest challenges to career success, for both actors and musicians, is the need to stand out in an overcrowded profession. Rea’s premise is that, at the highest level this means achieving more than technical mastery: the greatest performers combine virtuosity with a unique and memorable personality that attracts audiences.

His research at Guildhall has successfully concentrated on finding new ways of enhancing personality with actors, thus strengthening their charisma, and he has successfully applied some of these to musicians through ground-breaking techniques. The key quality in his work is playfulness as an essential way of opening up personality and individuality in a performer. This is done through a process that encourages risk-taking, which in turn makes possible bolder artistic choices.

Rea’s proven approach is holistic focusing not just on performing skills but also powerful life skills that can help performers take more control of their lives and thus bring to the stage higher levels of confidence, presence and authority.

The article places this work in context by giving examples of other cross-arts work in Europe. It also suggests ways that this approach can be further developed in music conservatoires. The article is illustrated with photos taken at Rea’s conference workshop, in which actors and musicians worked alongside each other, and short video clips of some of the key exercises.

Introduction

For musicians, one of the greatest challenges to career success is the need to stand out in an overcrowded profession, especially if one aspires to be a soloist. At the highest level, success means achieving more than technical mastery of the instrument: in live performance, the most outstanding musicians combine virtuosity with stage presence and charisma (the capacity to compel an audience’s attention, to draw us in and enthral us).

My previous research at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (Rea, 2014) focused on the effect of musicians working alongside actors as a means of enhancing their personality. This present study goes beyond that to compare some of the key qualities that outstanding actors project, and to explore how these might be adopted by musicians as a way of strengthening their presence and charisma. I also describe the outcome when a particular group of musicians applied acting exercises to their classical repertoire, and presented these for the first time before a live audience. The aim was to test whether the audience would register differences in the quality of sound produced.

The nature of charisma

We might begin by asking what the charismatic musician in action looks like. Among other things, charisma – the cumulative result of several factors – requires  the musician to adopt positive body language, which enables the audience to be fully engaged. Indeed, research by Juchniewicz (2008) and Behne & Wöllner (2011), has shown that in a music performance what we see (the musician’s body language, facial expressions and level of animation) strongly influences our judgements about the quality of the sound. A key issue is therefore: Does a musician have to be born with charisma, or can it be developed?^[i]  And if so, how?

Having helped train many now world-famous actors over a period of more than 30 years, I have found that there are certain key qualities that actors can develop to produce more exciting work, increase their charisma and stage presence,  and maximise their chances of having a successful career (Rea, 2015). And having worked with highly talented musicians for many years, I’m convinced that most of these qualities are also relevant to them.

Key qualities

To begin with, a performer needs warmth and generosity of spirit. Why? The opposites of these – coldness and charmless self-regard – are unlikely to thrill an audience. The separation of character and actor is important here: even when playing a cold character or a villain, the actor must project a warmth that makes that character rounded, creates greater empathy and maintains the sense of playfulness  (the spontaneity that comes from the enjoyment of playing). There are always exceptions, but in general, warmth and generosity are vital qualities to develop because they allow actors and musicians to be comfortable with their vulnerability, exuding an openness, which attracts the empathy of the audience.

Enthusiasm and grit are crucial in giving performers the exceptional energy to dedicate themselves to their craft joyously, while having the resilience to bounce back in the face of all the obstacles that the music or theatre profession will inevitably throw at them.

Danger is a mark of the greatest actors – the capacity to be unpredictable within the carefully rehearsed structure of a performance. In theatre, audiences love to be surprised. A level of danger can also be found in the performances of some of the greatest musicians: they achieve a spontaneity that entrances audiences and makes them feel that the music is being created as they listen and watch it unfold. Danger in this sense recalls the phenomenon of Franz Liszt, whose playing occasionally caused women to faint (Sonneck, 1922).

To hold the attention of an audience, a performer must have presence: the capacity to be totally in the moment and to radiate energy that fills the space. Presence is something musicians and actors desire, but relatively few of them know how to acquire it. Developing presence is especially difficult for musicians because they are taught mostly in one-to-one classes and spend long hours practising alone. As Kemp (1996) has shown, this tends to develop an introvert energy, which makes it harder to connect with an audience or to project presence.

When all of the above qualities are manifested, they can produce charisma. One of the most important aspects of charisma is focus: in the actor’s case, giving laser-like attention to the other actors. This is a heightened level of extrovert energy.  In the musician’s performance, such focus is more difficult to discern because, firstly the angle of vision may be such that the audience cannot always see the musician’s eyes, and secondly, there may be less frequent direct eye contact, either with the audience or the other musicians. Nevertheless, some of the most commercially popular musicians tend to project a strong and expressive energy in their eyes, even if this means they are just looking at the piano keyboard or the strings of their violin. The relevance of this is that their expression gives important emotional clues to the audience, which in turn affects the way we receive the music.

The process

How then do actors and musicians develop all of these qualities to project charisma? My research indicates that in the learning process, a key element is risk-taking: the ability to embrace failure freely, to learn from it and move forward to find successful solutions. This means, for teachers, providing a safe environment in which potentially outstanding performers can strive for bolder, fresher interpretive choices; an environment where they do not have to get it right, and where they can rekindle their joy in  acting or music-making – an enjoyment that they may have lost  while coping with the demands of aspiring  to peak performance.

Playfulness and risk-taking are at the heart of most actor-training methodologies, and I have repeatedly found that musicians can also benefit from these traits. Additionally I have found that the application of certain acting techniques can have an immediate positive effect on the quality of sound the musician produces.

To test the efficacy of these techniques, I demonstrated a selection of acting exercises with a group of five musicians in a workshop at the Reflective Conservatoire conference (2015). This was the first time that this work had been shown before a live audience. I shall now describe two of the exercises and the reactions to them.

The vertical axis

The vertical axis, as described by the critic Jan Kott (1974), expresses the connection between mankind and the cosmos.^[ii] In an acting exercise developed by the French mime teacher, Jacques Lecoq, you stand on the flat disc of the world (represented by the stage) and anything you say or do resonates with the gods in Olympus at one end of the axis and the inhabitants of Tartarus (the deepest underworld below Hades) at the other. You literally speak to the cosmos.

When an actor speaks text in this mode, directing energy infinitely upwards from their head and downwards from their feet, a stronger impression of presence is produced, and the voice sounds more connected and resonant. Technically, by imaginatively placing themselves on this axis, which passes through the body, the actor is reducing physical tension and projecting a wider, more far-reaching extrovert focus, based on relaxation.

When I have used this exercise with musicians playing an excerpt of classical repertoire, there has been a noticeable difference in the quality of sound produced. The musicians were observed to play with more expressive energy, taking more interpretative risks and producing a freer realisation of the score. When I demonstrated this exercise at the conference with a saxophonist, observers, who were professional music performers and teachers, noted the positive difference. The conductor, David Ramael remarked:

In my coaching I’ve always incorporated elements of yoga to get past the mind-body separation. This then allows the music to sprout from a deep inner core, rather than as a purely intellectual manifestation. This became manifestly clear to me in the grounding exercise you did with actors and musicians towards the end of the session, thinking about the rod connecting them from the heavens to the underworld.[iii]

Under arm energy

The second exercise concerns the centring of energy. The actor in dialogue with another actor, imagines their verbal communication, not as a horizontal connection leading directly from eye to eye, but as a vertical circle of energy passing through the torso and outwards to connect with the other person, or the audience.^[iv] This circle moves in one of two directions: up through the torso then out through the head to connect with the other person at their head. I call this direction ‘over arm’ energy, such as a cricket bowler uses. Alternatively, it can move down through the torso and out through the lower abdomen: ‘under arm energy’, recalling an under arm bowl.

In ‘over arm’, the centre of the energy rises, putting the actor slightly off-balance. There is an increased level of physical tension, especially around the back of the neck and the head, and the voice becomes more shrill. Arguably, this is a natural human trait, because when people are stressed, upset, or even overly enthusiastic, their centre normally rises and they tend to adopt ‘over arm’ energy characteristics, with the unhelpful tension that accompanies them. Obviously, this is not a good position for a performer to work from.

Conversely, when the actor imagines an ‘under arm’ circle of communication, with the energy coming down through the torso and out through the lower abdomen ( the  body’s centre of gravity), physical tension is released, there is greater relaxation, the voice becomes fuller and richer and, in an improvised scene, thinking is clearer, evident in the more articulate expression of ideas. All of these qualities contribute to an increased level of presence.

When I applied this exercise to musicians playing a fragment of classical repertoire, first in over arm, then in under arm energy, observers again detected a noticeable, positive difference in the quality of sound produced. As Ramael expressed it:

When players start connecting their playing with basic natural/physical concepts (such as gravity, resistance, centrifugal forces, etc.), the initial physical connection to the breath becomes intensified and they start connecting the production of sound to the physical world around them. This is somewhat similar to the over arm – under arm exercise you had them do. The physicality of the gesture becomes tied to a mental state, which in turn informs the playing. Again, very clear differences in the way sound was produced by the musicians.[v]

Benefits of the acting exercises

Ramael’s comment recalls Juchniewicz’s  research  (2008) in which observers believed they heard differences in sound when a musician used varying degrees of physical animation, but was in fact miming to the same pre-recorded soundtrack each time. However, in the present case, observers described the precise differences in sound, which had altered. Significantly, there was clear agreement that the acting exercises had produced ‘better playing’ than the first version when the piece was played without dramatic stimuli.

The music teacher, Jo Hensel noted:

It was intriguing to witness this playful approach to enhancing musical presence and communication. As the musicians worked through the exercises, I noticed changes in the quality of the sound they produced, and in their focus.[vi]

And as one of the musicians taking part later reflected:

[The experience of these acting exercises] reminded me that as music students, our energy, often so focused inward, should be propelled outwards to the audience. Once this is done, all self-destructive thoughts leave the mind and we are able to concentrate on the most important part: delivering a message to the audience. In another exercise, when we were told to play with a certain motivation in mind – to seduce, to [project] anger, to comfort – I noticed an immediate change in my playing. These simple tasks gave my performances more meaning and focus.[vii]

Her comments are corroborated by the educationalist, Tony Woodcock, who emphasised the value of the playfulness that came from applying these acting exercises:

Musicians need the freedom of expression that appears to come so naturally to actors – returning to the childhood state as you put it, to touch their id and to celebrate being polymorphously perverse all over again, instead of the usual demonstration of anxiety and stress and tension. Your session so brilliantly gave them this gift again, allowed them to perform so naturally and to communicate as human beings in the world rather than as uptight young musicians.[viii]

Conclusion

It becomes clear that a level of playfulness in the training process can help musicians find more individual expression in their playing (although further research is needed in this field). This in turn helps enhance presence, rapport and charisma.

However, the conditions for playfulness need to be set up carefully, as they require of the musician a radically different approach from the introverted mindset with which they may be most familiar (see Kemp, 1996). A mindset conducive to playfulness requires, for example, the acceptance of risk-taking as a means for finding bolder, more creative musical choices. Risk-taking in turn requires conditions in which the pressure to get it right – in musical terms, to produce technically perfect sound – is reduced. Not having to get it right has proven fruitful in actor-training (Rea, 2015), and has consistently allowed a level of playfulness when I have worked with musicians. Paradoxically, the lack of pressure seems to induce both better acting and better playing through a heightened, more confident focus.

One explanation for this heightened focus, based on my work with actors, is that if you give performers a task not directly related to the text or score, it frees up the mind in other areas and distracts them from the task of greatest concern: How can I look and sound impressive while performing this piece?

For example, the act of imaginatively aligning themselves along a vertical cosmic axis distracts musicians from the exclusive concentration on producing technically perfect sound. Paradoxically, this has usually altered the sound in a positive way, allowing the musician to take more ownership of the music because part of the brain was playfully dealing with the vertical axis.

The pedagogical agenda here requires a process in which performers can find the confidence to widen their range of expression, let go of clutter (unhelpful defence mechanisms, unnecessary physical tension, affected facades and masks) and gently move out of their comfort zone until they can connect with their authentic self. For this to happen with actors, certain key values need to be in place, such as warmth, generosity, enthusiasm and grit. I conclude that while I have identified these principally as actors’ values, they apply equally to musicians.

Making it happen

There is a growing body of evidence to show that exposure to other disciplines such as acting, is a reliable way of helping musicians widen their range of expression and bring more ownership and presence to their playing. While this may challenge orthodox approaches to training, it is critical that institutions, confident of their excellence, should be able to embrace innovation in the quest for new and more effective ways of producing the charismatic musician. Acting techniques have been demonstrated as one of these ways. As Woodcock commented, ‘It would be so good if this were just a part of their normal training and thinking. The benefit would be transformational.’

Footnotes

[i] One of the early meanings of charisma was, ‘A god-given gift’.

[ii] This is similar to the classical axis mundi.

[iii] Unpublished interview with David Ramael

[iv] This relates to a Buddhist concept, often referred to as the forward and backward circle of energy.

[v] Unpublished interview with Dr David Ramael.

[vi] Unpublished interview with Jo Hensel.

[vii] Unpublished interview with Catherine Poplyansky.

[viii] Unpublished interview with Tony Woodcock.

Bibliography

Behne KE & Wöllner C  (2011) Seeing or hearing the pianists? A synopsis of an early audiovisual perception experiment and a replication 15: 324 , originally published online 15 August 2011 Musicae Scientiae, DOI: 10.1177/1029864911410955.

Juchniewicz J (2008) The influence of physical movement on the perception of musical performance Psychology of Music 36: 417 originally published online.

Kemp A (1996) The Musical Temperament. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kott J (1974) The Eating of the Gods.  London: Eyre Methuen.

Rea K (2014) What classical musicians can learn from working with actors. British Journal of Music Education, 2015.

Rea K (2015) The Outstanding Actor: Seven Keys to Success. London: Methuen Bloomsbury.

Sonneck OGT (1922)  Henrick Heine’s Musical Feuilletons. The Musical Quarterly 8: 457–58. Retrieved 14 May 2010.