Keywords

Breath Methodology, Breath and Voice, Breath and Movement, Breath Pedagogy

Abstract

Breathing is an involuntary reflex that happens every day, usually without any extra effort or consideration. Often as actors we are instructed to “just breathe” in a scene, but what does that really mean when breathing is something that is already done subconsciously? Since beginning graduate training, I have realized how imperative breath is in our work as performers, and how it is the cornerstone of everything: the voice, the body, the text, and how it acts as the connecting force between the performers and the audience. How can actors, educators, and directors expand their vocabulary and use breath as a tool to create powerful performances full of humanity? This thesis documents my progress throughout my graduate journey incorporating different breath techniques into my performances in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Winter 2023), Go Like Saints (Summer 2023), Metamorphoses (Fall 2023), and Sweeney Todd (Spring 2024), as well as creating exercises and a curriculum for teaching and directing. Each of these chapters utilizes a different methodology to explore breath work including LeCoq’s Seven Tensions to use breath and movement to safely drop into and get out of intense circumstances on stage, grammatical analysis to find breath in the text though punctuation, Catherine Fitzmaurice’s Destructuring and Restructuring to connect the freedom of breath release to living moment to moment on stage, music theory to analyze where breath is in song and what that reveals about character, and Erika Fischer-Lichte’s concept of the autopoietic feedback loop to examine breath as the connection between the performers and the audience. This project aims at taking graduate methodology and theory and transforming it into practical application, making it accessible to future casts and students that I direct.

Completion Date

2025

Semester

Spring

Committee Chair

Edmonson, Chloë

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

School of Performing Arts

Identifier

DP0029316

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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