Step onto the stage, filled with confidence, understanding your character, becoming your character, flowing with the experience of combining skill, craft, knowledge, and emotional resonance into a powerful communicative acting event . . . the performance becomes the moment..
Goals:
Acting is a craft based upon aptitude and skill. This workshop will introduce participants to Experiential Acting, a collection of processes that enable the actor to approach a character from the inside. Experiential Acting is based upon a series of experiential hypnosis and trance techniques adapted by the instructor in ways specifically designed to help actors overcome difficulties they may face in their chosen profession. The instructor is a highly qualified hypnotist who is also a highly trained and skilled actor and director with extensive experience on stage and behind the scenes working with actors both as a fellow thespian and as a caring hypnotist. The experiential trance techniques developed for this workshop are those of a personal nature which help actors overcome personal blocks or enhance their sense of charisma and their ability to build rapport with an audience and engage the imagination. Issues such as stage fright are addresses and techniques used to help with on- and offstage anxiety. Other processes introduced in this workshop are specifically for the actor to develop the craft of performance. Stanislavski's sense memory is just the beginning as participants learn experiential trance techniques that allow them to step inside their character and advanced modeling processes that allow one to become the character in powerful ways as well as memory-enhancement techniques that help the actor learn lines more effectively by engaging all of the senses. This workshop is intended for working actors who wish to take their craft to the next level and experience powerful performances beyond anything they have previously encountered.
Workshop Content:
This workshop is for actors with all of the material aimed at enhancing one's inner state while performing in powerful ways. The instructor is a professionally trained and experienced actor as well as a very well respected hypnotist who know both what skills and mindsets and actor needs and which trance tools are most effective in enhancing the actor's arsenal and craft. This workshop takes performance enhancement techniques used by the hypnotist and places them squarely in the hands of the professional actor along with powerful acting exercises that are specifically designed to enhance the actor's ability to perform well - both on stage and behind the curtains.
Introduction
What is Hypnosis and Focused Trance? Separating Fantasy from Fact
Definition of Experiential Hypnosis
The Historical Relationship of Ritual, Trance, and Theatre
What is Trance-Acting or Experiential Acting?
Acting as Craft, Aptitude, and Skill
Purpose Goals for Processes Presented in This Workshop:
- Trancework for Inner Personal Change
- overcome personal blocks
- enhance sense of charisma
- build rapport with an audience
- engage the imagination
- eliminate stage fright
- lower on- and offstage anxiety
- Trancework for Acting Skill Enhancement
- develop the craft of performance
- sense memory
- experiential trance techniques
- step inside their character
- advanced modeling processes
- become the character in powerful ways
- memory-enhancement techniques
- learn lines more effectively by engaging all of the senses
- and More
Suggestibility Testing and Imaginative Involvement Processes:
- Experiential Trance Exercises Adapted for the Actor
Basic Experiential Processes as Group Warmup:
- Elman Induction Variations
- Progressive Relaxation
- The Chain of Experience Induction
- and More
Trance-Acting Processes for Personal Transformation:
- For Individual Self-Change (Anchoring, Swish, Six-Step Reframe, Sigil, and more)
- For Ensembles (The Phillips Group-As-One Process, Ensemble Imagery, Energizer, Ouija Dancing and Trancemovement, and more)
- Drug of Choice Induction in Theatrical Contexts (Sensory Effectiveness Exercises)
- The Flower of Experience
- and More
Trance-Acting Processes for the Craft of Acting:
- Building Rapport
- Enhancing Imaginative Involvement
- Experiential Roleplay
- Improvisational Trance Games
- Vicarious Experiential Machine Process for the Actor (Film/Video, Photo, and Text variations)
- and More
Creative Processes:
- Students in the workshop will learn creative processes that allow them to create and demonstrate wholly new and trance-acting processes, trance patterns, or imagery to suit the needs of any acting context
This workshop is extremely experiential so participants are asked to come ready to play and experience and transform their acting into a new level of experience.
Instructor:
The workshop is taught by Dr. Brian David Phillips, an internationally known and respected hypnosis practitioner, educator, author, and entertainer. Dr. Phillips is President of the Society of Experiential Trance and has in the past served as editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of Applied Hypnotic Arts and Sciences. Dr. Phillips is the coordinator and chief instructor for the oldest English-language hypnosis and focused-trance practice group in Taiwan and is the owner and moderator of one of the largest online email discussion communities related to hypnosis and focused trance techniques. Dr. Phillips appeared in his first play as a performer in elementary school and has undergraduate and graduate degrees in acting and directing as well as extensive professional experience as an actor and director. Dr. Phillips has BA and MA degrees in Theatre and wrote his PhD dissertation on Interactive Drama so he is certainly no stranger to the "two boards and a passion." He has taught numerous workshops and seminars on acting, directing, hypnosis, focused trance, and experiential hypnosis as well as a number of webinars (web-based seminars) on these and related subjects. Dr. Phillips is an associate professor at National Chengchi University where he teaches undergraduate and graduate workshops in acting, directing, drama, improvisational theatre, interactive drama, film, communication, critical theory, and more. Dr. Phillips uses rapid and instant hypnosis inductions routinely in his Waking Dreams Hypnosis Show, the only ongoing entertainment comedy hypnosis stage show in Taiwan.
Teaching Methods:
This workshop relies upon a very fast-paced system of demonstration and practice. More than any other workshop, this seminar consists of demonstration, explanation, practice, practice, practice. It is NOT intended as a lecture or passive learning experience. It is a very fast-paced and energetic program so students should come ready, willing, able, and eager to jump right in and run full speed ahead. The teaching methodology is very active. Students will learn through all of their sensory learning channels, particularly aural, visual, and kinesthetic . . . listening, seeing, and doing . . . as it is a practical applications competence workshop, there is a great deal of supervised "doing" with immediate and useful feedback. Typically, for each subject or technique, the training is within the following process model: 1. instructor briefs students on the topic, 2. instructor demonstrates technique with student volunteer, 3. the demonstration is then broken down into steps, 4. students then practice the technique several times with one another under guidance of the instructor with ongoing feedback, 5. class debriefs about experience and technique with performance notes from instructor, 6. students continue advanced practice (including homework for some techniques), 7. final debriefing with instructor. The workshop focuses upon practical competence and experienced application of the material.
Workshop Materials:
Students will be supplied with handouts related to the presentation topics in the form of the Trance-Acting: Experiential Hypnosis for the Actor text by Brian David Phillips.Please, students may not use recording devices during the workshop. However, the instructor may record portions of the training.
Online Resources:
