Class Acts

Cathy Albers wants her classroom to be a sanctuary where young actors leave the realities of their everyday lives behind. A place where they feel free to experiment and take risks and cast conventions aside. Warmed by the scattered patterns of sunlight playing on the hardwood floors, the classroom—tucked away in the “attic” of Clark Hall—seems a natural backdrop for her class, Acting Technique I, rooted in the traditions of the late actor and teacher, Michael Chekhov.

Only the Brave

Besides offering beginning acting students a better understanding of the teachings of Chekhov, who believed in the transformational powers of the imagination, the course is also intended to allow them to “grow imaginatively and creatively,” serve as a foundation of skills for their ongoing study of acting, and engage them in a discussion about the direction in which acting is headed.

Breaking through barriers: Cathy Albers

A certified master teacher of the Michael Chekhov technique, Ms. Albers considers herself both a teacher and a student in the classroom. The associate professor of theater arts casts off the title of “professor,” insisting that it creates a barrier between her and her students. She prefers the emerging actors to call her “Cathy,” instead.

On this particular day in early September, the teacher and her nine students (five women and four men) arrange themselves in a wavy oval in the middle of the classroom to begin their warm-up routine.

Standing at the top of the oval, she guides them through several sets of Staccato-Legato, a sort of meditation in motion—developed by Chekhov—intended to enliven the body and spirit of actors.

The warm-up also includes five minutes of jogging and a readiness exercise that challenges students to move within a small square, at varying speeds, without running into one another. The activity is intended to prepare them for anything that might happen on stage.

Finally, the class moves on to today’s main activity: building and running a human “machine,” in which students assign themselves to play different parts of a machine, which they create one component at a time. By the end of the exercise, the students become characters based on the motion they choose to repeat, the role they play in the operation of the machine, and a sequence of instructions their teacher gives them throughout the process. The activity is intended to expand the students’ imaginations and aid them in character development.

Ms. Albers cautions students to select their motion carefully, because the machine will run for a long time and they will be repeating their movement continuously. Gesturing toward the middle of the classroom, she says, “Let’s begin by having one person volunteer.” A man steps forward and takes a seat on the hardwood floor, bending his knees and tapping each foot, alternately, against the floor. A woman follows, sitting cross-legged in front of the man, tilting her head to the left and right. Another man joins the twosome, standing behind the first volunteer, pulling an imaginary rope down to the man’s head.

Heads up: During their regular warm-up routine, Cathy Albers (center) and her students work on keeping a large ball aloft.

When all the students have chosen their role in the machine, Ms. Albers comes around to them, individually, asking them to stop what they’re doing so they can observe the overall machine and their relationship to the other parts. Many alter their motions slightly. Later, she urges each student to consider whether he or she is a worker or boss in relation to the machine. “Decide what your status is,” she says, “and let that awareness of your status come into the machine.” Again, minor adjustments are made. When Ms. Albers prompts the young actors to invent a sound, word, phrase, or sentence that best captures their job function and status, one woman sings “doo, doo, doo,” and another drones, “chug, chug, chug.” Before long, the machine is transformed by its music into a mesmerizing piece of equipment, spewing out a wild riot of sounds that merge together yet stand apart.

Finally, Ms. Albers instructs students to break out of the machine and let their chosen phrases transform them into a character based on their “status” as workers or bosses. She also reminds them to “physicalize” their character in their body, meaning that if their character is angry, their physical movements should reflect that emotional state.

When the students split off from the machine, their teacher gives them a series of directions, asking them, for example, to choose a partner and interact with that person, using the phrases they’ve chosen.

After about fifteen minutes, Ms. Albers tells them to “go back to the machine with everything you now know. Based on who you are now. The new machine will be reflective of your new character.” When the students reconfigure the machine, it looks and sounds considerably different with its new, compressed structure and its parts seemingly moving more freely.

With about ten minutes left in the class, she asks students to assemble themselves in a circle on the floor for a discussion. “Tell me what happened to you today,” she urges.

One woman says she was surprised by how profoundly she felt her character in her body. “Once we broke out of the machine, I was just drudging along.”

“Good,” Ms. Albers says, smiling at the woman.

A male student observes that running the machine was easy at first, but as more people joined in, staying attentive became increasingly difficult. “At the end, I was really tired.”

“What you were doing did demand a lot of attention,” Ms. Albers says softly. “And, in a play, you may have to maintain that intensity for the duration of the production, which can be a long time.”

After several more students respond, their teacher says, “I saw all of you change. You took risks and weren’t held back by conventions.”

Character Development

The Museum Piece project calls for students to select a painting at the Cleveland Museum of Art that touches them in a visceral way and talk about how they feel about the piece. Then, they are asked to figuratively place themselves in the image, “so they are a completely new person in the painting, explains Cathy Albers, an associate professor of theater arts at CWRU who teaches the Acting Technique I class. Once students join themselves with the painting, she says, the process of transforming themselves into characters begins.

Ms. Albers facilitates the process, by requiring the undergraduates to write a biography of their character and guiding them through a series of exercises designed to better acquaint them with their characters. She asks them, for example, to bring an object into class that has a true connection to the character, so they can tell the story of the object as it relates to their character. And she asks each of them (as their characters) to write a letter to their mother. “So, in class, they sit around and tell the story of the character’s childhood, and they begin to speak in the first person as the character,” Ms. Albers says. “The goal is for students to create a character that they become.” Ultimately, students create a written and oral monologue for their character, which they present to the class at the end of the semester.

It’s the end of the class, and before students leave, she reminds them that they’ll meet Tuesday at the Cleveland Museum of Art to lay the groundwork for a semester-long assignment called the “Museum Piece” project.

Later, in her Eldred Hall office, Ms. Albers explains that the assignment requires students to select a painting at the museum that touches them in a visceral way, figuratively place themselves in it, and create a character that they later become. Eventually, the actors create a biography for the character as well as a written and oral monologue, which they present to the class at the end of the semester.

The class also requires students to, among other things, write a paper about an actor of their choice, read and respond to fourteen plays, and keep a journal that responds to the work they do inside and outside of class. Referring to the journal in her syllabus, Ms. Albers writes, “This IS NOT a listing of assignments or your doodling in class. This is a written record of your journey as an artist. This is a vital part of your work; don’t ‘forget’ to do it!”

A highly respected professional actress, Ms. Albers admits that she expects a great deal from these emerging actors—but for her part, she also gives a lot, in return. The recipient of CWRU’s Carl Wittke Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching in 1995 and the John S. Diekhoff Award for Distinguished Graduate Teaching in 2002 is adamant about creating and preserving a space where students feel safe enough to take risks, make themselves vulnerable, and fail in front of their peers.

“Acting class is very dangerous,” she explains. “You have to create an environment where students feel secure to take risks, because acting is a huge risk. Because you’re putting yourself out there. Because that takes great courage.”

Ms. Albers leans back in her seat, looking reflective. “I’ve been told that I’m more protective of my students than most teachers,” she says, smiling. “But I think all good acting teachers should be protective of their students.”

Ellen Brown

Photography by Michael Sands, CWRU

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