Biography

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(Born 1934)

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Mike Alfreds is a theatre director and teacher. After an early career in the US he returned to the UK and taught at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic art) from 1965 – 1970, he created the theatre company Shared Experience in 1975, and from 1985 worked with the National Theatre (London) and Cambridge Theatre Company. He has written two books Different every night (2008) and And then what happens? (2013). His teaching method is drawn Konstantin Stanislavsky and Rudolf Laban. 

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Summary of the Interview

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The interview examines in some detail how he uses Laban’s Efforts as a teacher and a director: How he first heard about Laban’s ideas, how Laban’s efforts offer a holistic, embodied approach to acting, how he teaches the motion factors, how he teaches the eight effort actions, how actors react to the efforts. 

The Interview

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How did you first hear about Laban’s ideas?

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Very simply, I got my Laban via Phillip Hedley when we both taught at L.A.M.D.A in the 1960s. He probably got it from Margaret Barry and Joan Littlewood at East 15 where he taught. It concentrated almost exclusively on the Efforts and that’s all I really use now. I don’t use or understand the rest of it. I have tried to understand all the Drama Centre work but all I know is that it gets so much into the intellectual head that instead of encouraging an actor to move, it freezes them. I remember working the Drama Centre students who had just graduated, and I tried to do some stuff with them. They had to think about things, there was no spontaneity – there was something not right. They were full of such ideas as ‘dream states’ and such like. I use the Efforts and have used them consistently for what must be about 30 thirty years, or more. I use them in practically every show, and I teach my idea of them. I try to be true to what I think they are. I just find them endlessly revealing and useful as a tool, as a mean for the actor to connect themselves up holistically.  

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His Early Training, Laban’s efforts as a holistic approach to acting.

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Let me back-track a little bit. I was trained in the States at a period when it was very Method-ised. It was always about working from the inside out. Over the years I have figured that it is a lot of use to work from the outside in, and of course Laban works from the outside in. By, committing yourself physically you will feel yourself think differently.  That is a wonderful way to get actors to break patterns and, first of all, to make them holistic so they let go of separating their heads from their feelings and all that stuff. That is one purpose. The other purpose is to change patterns. The basic eight efforts – floating, flicking, wringing, slashing, punching, pressing, gliding and dabbing - what I like to call the archetypes, seem to me to encompass the entire human experience.  Anything you do or think can fit into one of those very neatly. If as an actor you can get skilful at evoking those states, that means that they have huge a capacity and resources to tap into for their own creativity and expressiveness and that they are not locked into this series of patterns that they have grown up with. In that sense it is very good for the general wellbeing of the actor.

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And then of course it is very useful when you are doing character-work on a play. You can ask, ‘As a starting point what do you think is the main Laban effort for this character?’ I have found it wonderful for solving problems with a scene or a line. You can say, ‘You’re not being direct’, or ‘You’re being too direct’, ‘Be more sustained, be more flexible’.  It’s a wonderful language.  It doesn’t work for every actor, in every role, in every play but I find it is a wonderful tool to give to actors; they seem to respond to it.  It’s as simple as that, really.  In a sense I haven’t got a lot more to say about it.  

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His way of teaching the motion factors 

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I break it down. I start by saying, ‘I am going to teach you my idea of what Laban was trying to do with his efforts, and which is part of a whole lot of other work he did which I don’t understand. But the efforts are wonderful for the theatre.’ I was told something, probably by whomever Phillip Hedley brought in to teach Laban – it could have been Jean Newlove, but I can’t remember – when he was running a theatre in Theatre Royal in Lincoln. Whenever we were doing productions he would always have somebody to do Laban for him. This person said that Laban defined movement as the way you relate to the world. I thought that was lovely – think of the way that you move as your way of relating to life and to the world.  He analyses every movement as having three pairs of qualities. You can be light or strong, direct or flexible, sustained or broken. Having explained that I then get them to work on a quality like being very light, so that they can understand profoundly what it means to be light. I will define my ideas by saying things like, ‘You are defying gravity, you are doing things with ease, there is no barrier or obstacles to overcome, there is no pressure, it is easy, it is upwards, and in that sense it is defying gravity’. You can imagine that you are hooked up to balloons, or that they have some kind of substance under your arms and between your legs that is keeping you buoyant.  Then you ask them what does ‘Strong’ mean?  To some people it means heavy, that you have barriers to overcome, that there is resistance to overcome, so you have work with a bit of intensity.   

If you are Direct, then you know what you want, you know what you are going for, you are totally focused and very, very clear. Your mind is clear, all of you is clear. It is a most difficult state to get into. You are very much present, you are alert, you know, you can hear, see, smell touch everything that is going on around you – you are focused and alert. All I can say to them is, ‘You know those wonderful days when you wake up and you feel terrific, and you go out into the street and you are alert to everything.’ If you clap your hands and a dog perks its head and is ready to go for a run, all its energies are focused. That is the state. For an actor, that is indispensable, and it is a wonderful state. You are in control, you are focused and you know what you want.  

Flexible is when you give up all control; you are a receiver. Nobody’s taught me this; that’s what I’ve figured out. I am open to be affected. When I am Direct I am giving out, am asserting myself. When I’m flexible I am receiving, I am taking in. I am allowing myself to let things happen to me.  I am available, I am accessible – to my own feelings, to thoughts, to moods, to impulses from outside.  I just let myself go.  Some people are very frightened of that and don’t want to let go. They are opposites: one is, ‘I lead’ and the other is ‘I follow’.  We need both in life.  One of the things I always say to the actor is, ‘Don’t value one effort or one quality more than the other. They are all vital, all absolutely essential for your living – we need all of them. You can’t be in control all the time because you’ll go dead, you’ll dry. It is very creative to be receiving, to let things in.  That’s how I define direct and flexible: one is giving out and the other is taking in.  

With a sustained movement you are more careful in a way, you are smooth, you are flowing, the feeling is very fluent. I give images like you being an underwater plant and you are washed by very gentle under-currents, it is curved, circular, with nothing abrupt, nothing sudden, nothing broken, it is continuous, it evolves and just keeps flowing.  It tends to be slower. Then there is broken, or fast or quick, or whatever you want to call it.  I don’t care about what you call these terms. All I know is that I used to get into stupid arguments with people who insisted that you can’t call it this or that. As far as I’m concerned you can call it ‘ZED’, as long as you understand what it is about. One is sustained so the other is not sustained – so it is quick, or fast, or broken. How I describe is that you are constantly renewing your energy. It is like any sport, particularly competitive sports – like tennis, or table tennis. Even if you are dancing you are renewing your energy all the time, and you will inevitably be quicker. I also say that you can be more spontaneous when you’re broken because you can be more ready to adjust to things. When you are sustained it takes you a longer time, you are more careful, more wary. Those are crudely what the six things are.  

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How do you teach the Efforts?

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Of course these terms are just words, so I don’t talk to the actors or students beforehand. I simply say that they have to commit themselves totally physically. They have to do a lot of very intense physical work. I ask them to walk around the room without connecting with anyone else, they should start just by working on themselves.  ‘You can walk, run, go sideways or backwards – explore a multiplicity of different ways of moving whilst making sure that your eyes are alive, your spine is alive, your breathing is taken care of, every little bit of you, not just your arms, but your pelvis, is involved. I want one hundred percent physical commitment. Everything comes out of that physicality. At the end of a session I bring them to halt and ask them to sustain what they are thinking and feeling and imagine that that is going on inside you although you’ve actually physically, on the outside, come to a halt. Walk around the room, look at each other and see what you feel, see what you think. Now tell me what did you experience, what did it feel like?’ I want them to discover for themselves, basically. So they tell me, ‘I felt this, I felt that, etc.’ If someone felt nice or worried I ask them to figure out why this might be. I try to get very specific. Then I ask, ‘What sort of people are like this, generally speaking? These are generalisations, of course. Who would be like this?’ 

So I do the three pairs of movement elements separately. I might do a pair a day – it is quite a long process. I could teach it in a day but that would be pointless, as most workshops are. So, I do about an hour of it a day. Then I ask them to put them together in pairs – light and sustained. Then I gradually get them to put three together and you have the Efforts. That’s how I come to the Efforts. Then I ask, ‘When in your life are you like this: when you’re in love, when you’re drunk, when you’re angry?’  

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You see I don’t know what I was taught and what I’ve invented now because I’ve been doing it so long and because I keep discovering more about them over the years. They seem to be endlessly open-ended. I also ask them not to put them into little boxes.  Whatever I say to say one day, you may find more applications for them. It depends on the context in which you’re using them, where you’ve come from and where you’re going to.  

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The Eight Effort Actions

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I think that each of the Efforts has its basic centre somewhere on a scale from Heaven to Earth. When you’re Floating your centre is high but when you’re Pressing it is very close to the ground. When you’re Gliding it is somewhere in your sternum. When you’re wringing it’s in your upper stomach, when you’re Slashing it’s in your hips and your genitals. There is a centre for each Effort. But of course you can play with it. Then it becomes very sophisticated – you can ask someone to be a very heavy Floater. I say to actors that these are only tools to be used, they are not things for you to achieve or to get right. If you understand the principles it is then up to you to use them creatively with your imagination. Once you understand the pure idea of them – that’s why you do them physically – then you can play with them. 

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Then I get to the point where I say, ‘Let’s see if you can change your Laban Effort without moving.’ You’re sitting in a chair feeling quite ‘Floatey’ and then suddenly you can get very ‘Slashey’ – there is a whole energy change going on. As a conventional actor, that it probably the most useful application of the Efforts. Click this little switch within yourself and your whole being is changed. Your energy, your focus, your whole being changes. That can be very thrilling. Imagine three people on stage and suddenly something happens and the whole atmosphere changes. I get them to create characters out of Efforts, and then do improvisations. Then I ask them to do an inner and outer Effort:  how you want to be seen and how you really are inside; what you’re trying to hide and what you’re trying to present. We do this all the time in life when we’re trying to present an image. We might not be very happy, but will say, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine’. The results can be very funny or very frightening. Someone who is a Slasher inside tries to present themselves as a Glider, very cool. A lot of teenage kids are like this: very laid-back. I did a workshop like this in NIDA, the drama school in Melbourne, and one of the teachers there found the Laban work a revelation. She said how she’d never understood how some of her students, particularly the boys, can be so laid-back and cool and suddenly they can be violent. Then you realise that although Floating and Slashing are opposites, together they make a whole – you’ve got the outer and the inner going. 

Then I get more sophisticated – and these are things that I have developed myself. One part of your body can be Flicking and another part can be Gliding, or something like that.  I say to the actors that this is a tool with which they can develop their own creativity. The more applications they can see for it, great! It is only useful inasmuch as it takes you somewhere. It is not an end in itself, any more that Michael Chekhov’s ideas of the Centres and Psychological Gestures are. They are tools for your creativity, they are ways of breaking patterns of conceiving of how you can develop character.  

So, this is what I do. And as I go into more and more detail so I find more applications for the work. Sometimes a student or an actor will say something very relevant and it is something that I’d never thought of. I have no idea what Laban really thought, and all I say is, ‘This is what I think they are.’ I’ve done this for so long that I’ve probably detached myself from the original concept. I never went to a Laban school and learned them consistently. I just picked them up and they just seemed so right for me. They just clicked inside me and I had a moment of instinctive understanding of them, and I just used them.  

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Do you find Laban’s idea of Flow to be useful? 

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Yes, but they seem to be so implicit in the Efforts and Elements themselves it seems irrelevant to make a separate category. If you are Sustained then you’ll be a little more bound than if you were Broken. It seems to be built inside the Efforts rather than separate. If you’re Flicking then you are free Flowing. Some can clearly be both and some are one or the other.  I’ve never really spent time on Free and Bound Flow.  

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I do make the point of the opposites making a whole. Take the example of Flicking and Pressing which are the total opposites of each other: Flicking is about being playful and silly and irresponsible and partying, jokey, flirtatious and vain; Pressing is about being very earnest, sincere, loyal, and stubborn and focused and meticulous and thorough and so forth. So, very crudely, one’s irresponsible and one’s responsible. Together they make a whole. Or you could take the positive and negative aspects of Wringing – each Effort has a positive and negative side. Wringing can be about indulging yourself in sensuality, sex and food; and then it can be anxiety and worrying and distress and nervousness. But both are both indulgences, you see. Whereas the opposite of that is Dabbing, which is getting on with life, dealing with things, sociable, practical. They make a very nice pair. I rearrange them in different categories so that actors can see them in different ways like that.  

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For me, they are very useful for work not only on character, but also on a scene – even on a speech or a particular word. One can give a direction, ‘You are being too direct in that moment.’ Or they might be too sustained.  

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The reaction of actors to work on the Efforts

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When I was in Australia I did another workshop, also on Laban. The students were in their second year and had already done some scenes, which weren’t very good. I taught them Laban very briskly and got them to apply the Efforts to the scenes and they changed, they suddenly made sense. It was revelatory. I would say that I wanted them to play the scene in a thrusting or driving way and see what happens. Suddenly what was blurred became focused. I know the Efforts can work. They are very useful, practical thing. They make sense psychologically and emotionally. It is a way a looking at the way human beings function, basically. I love it in the way that I love the Alexander Technique in that it isn’t imposed. It isn’t something that is stuck on. That’s why I don’t like some of Shared Experience’s work – they do these funny little moves that no human being has ever done. I don’t know what they mean. It is an intellectual idea rather than an organic idea. What I love about Laban is that it is organic and that it has got to come from the whole body; the whole body has got to be committed. Even if I only use my hand, my whole body is involved. It’s a way of getting the actor to be present. Some casts take them on and it doesn’t go as deep with others. Also the Efforts are a wonderful warm-up and it’s good for breaking patterns. You can watch a group of actors walking around a room and then ask them if they are aware that the always move their arms in a certain way. They always repeat certain gestures, or turns. If you give them the Laban Efforts they can’t do that. If they are blocked or are not fulfilling a particular Effort, you can say that they’re not really doing it. People get quite freaked out by some of the Efforts – a lot of the time men hate Flicking or Floating. A lot of young women hate Thrusting. Gender assumptions means that they are not ‘meant to do that’. I don’t use it enough, but I should get them vocally involved – getting them to make a sound when they’re doing the Effort.  Let’s see what the sound is.  

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When you get to Slashing which is the most exhausting of them because it’s the least controlled. Gliding which is the total opposite is completely controlled – I know what I am, nothing’s going to disturb me, I know who I am. It’s very elegant full of poise, ‘I can do a bit of therapy for you’. Slashing is just about letting go – on a Saturday night you go on a rave, or bungee jumping. On the other side it’s about paranoia, violence, the stuff of multiple killers. It is about hitting out wildly without any focus, it is exhausting. It is about of panic, out of being hurt and wanting to retaliate in some way; it is very dangerous. I am very careful when we explore Slashing because you really have to throw yourself around and hurt yourself. So I get them on the floor and use crash mats; then they can really let themselves go. You really have to let go when you’re slashing. You have to careful.  When you get on the floor you’re much safer because you’re supported. David Glass has an exercise where you lie on your back and shake and release more and more – some people find it very frightening, I think it’s wonderful. You just scream and yell, you build it up and release. It’s fabulous.  

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There is a Canadian system called inner massage. You lie on the floor and very slowly bring your arms up, around and then down over the space of an hour. It is incredibly slow. You start to vibrate; it is very exciting. For some people it is very emotional, and they start crying.  It is thrilling when your whole body starts vibrating!  You need someone there to monitor you, just in case.  It could be a bit of a gimmick because obviously if your arms are under that amount of pressure they are going to shake.  But it is fascinating how much people have locked inside their bodies.  

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While I was doing a production of Bernada Alba in Banff there was this wonderful Feldenkrais teacher there. We were up in the mountains and people tend to get very emotional up there; there’s always a lot of weeping. Everyone was lying on the floor with their knees raised and he said, ‘Release your thighs’, and two women in their forties just burst into tears. So this is what were they were holding. It fascinates me how holistic we are, and Laban was holistic. So much of acting is compartmentalised and directors are always talking intellectually to them: the more you talk, the less you get the actor going. Everything is in us. Emotions aren’t vague things drifting about the ether, they are in us, locked in us. Our thoughts are in us, they are parts of our bodies – we are one. I find that very thrilling even though it is very obvious. The Laban is a very good means of getting that concept over – if you move in a certain way then you will think in a certain way. The thing is to get the actors out of their heads and doing. A lot of actors feel that before they do anything they have to understand: no, do it, and then you’ll understand. As in life, you’ve got to experience something. It’s a process.  

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That’s my take on Laban, though I could go into more detail.  When the book comes out you find there’s a little section on Laban where I do go into a fair amount of detail.  I do explain a lot of things in it that I would normally not say to an actor; or rather that I would only say to an actor when they’ve done the exercise. The section is a bit results-orientated, describing what you might discover. There’s quite a lot on it, but it is more or less what I’ve said to you. I find it deeply useful, and it has never got stale. Usually, after every session I have thought, Oh that’s a new one, that’s a new thought, a new application, which is great. The trouble is that it is encased in so much [theory?]. I find that cube terribly worrying, although I did meet a wonderful choreographer who lives outside London and who was working with some Opera company. I was doing a workshop with opera singers.  She did a session, and I asked her to explain this cube, and she made it make sense. She said that you’re not locked inside the cube – you take it with you as you move – the cube moves around with you. It seems that there are areas when it gets intellectually driven rather than spontaneous. I don’t use the cube because I don’t fully understand it, and I might be missing something out as a result. I have found a very useful means of using the Efforts without that.  

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Obviously there’s a place for intellect and a production needs an idea. But going from head to head is not the best way to get actors to work, because otherwise it becomes very conscious. Such work can be very intelligent, very clever, but it’s not embodied in the actor. It lacks spontaneity and is very self-aware of what it’s doing. You have to lose that. Laban is just one of the things that I do to bring everything together, so the interpretative intellectual and the organic spontaneous somehow all come together in the actor. It’s not an either/or. It takes time.  

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