Arthur Lessac’s Embodied Actor Training

This book situates the work of the renowned voice and movement trainer Arthur Lessac in the context of contemporary actor training as a whole. Melissa Hurt uses Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theories of embodiment to frame Lessac's approach in terms of Embodied Acting, a key subject in contemporary performance. In doing so, she explains how the actor can come to experience both technique and expression as a subjective whole, through meditation and spatial attunement. As well as feeding this somatic approach into a wider discussion of embodiment, the author provides concrete examples of how the practice can be put into effect, and studied at university level.