The goal of this course is to bring awareness and responsiveness to the body as an essential part of the actor's training through, mainly, Anne Bogart's Viewpoints method of physical training. This awareness begins to create students who will be easeful and empowered in their body and can recognize and make choices about the information their body brings on stage and screen. Students' training would be continued by focusing on the ability to make physically specific choices in order to convey character through an introduction to the basic principles of Laban Movement Analysis and further work in the Viewpoints Method of actor training. Students will work with scripted material and apply the physical training to character and scene work and staging. Theories of acting and body movement discussed in non-Western contexts will also be reviewed and discussed.

Students will undertake warm-up that draws from Yoga, Pilates, Feldenkrais and breath, body and voice work that are widely adapted in different cultures. Throughout the semester, they will experience the principles of ensemble building and rigorous actor training through the Viewpoints Method. Following this foundation, the training and creative exercises by other significant movement artists and from other cultures will be examined as well. Students' engagement includes the composition of solo, duo and group movement pieces, which will allow them to uncover bodily expressions and to develop more techniques in free styles and disciplines.

To begin with, students are expected to develop general body awareness, release unnecessary tension, and create strength and mobility from the movement training in the course. With various exercises on stage and movement improvisation, students will be receptive to the different surrounding environments and immediate moments, to listen with the whole body, make a spontaneous offer with confidence, reconnect to the imagination and to identify emotional states.

Students are required to keep an individual journal throughout the course. Each lecture will make specific and progressive critical demands, and students are expected to develop their ability to form judgments and enhance their understanding of the lectures, readings, and exercises. As a result, the journal will be an articulation of critical analysis, personal reflection, development changes and self/peer appraisal.