"The Actor's Secret"
Offering revolutionary new training for actors and performers, The Actor’s Secret introduces three powerful disciplines designed to transform your performance:
The Alexander Technique – improve ease of movement through neuromuscular reeducation
Breathing Coordination – change patterns of breathing and boost breathing capacity and awareness
Somatic Experiencing® – resolve trauma through the process of tracking bodily sensations to restore vitality and health
Developed by Betsy Polatin, a movement and breathing specialist. She was a Master Lecturer and Assistant Professor at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts for twenty -five years. The book’s simple tools, explorations, and exercises draw on the three disciplines to help you explore your acting work, improve stage presence and vocal production, reduce performance anxiety and stress, and initiate healing and self-growth.
Many techniques and self-help books teach a new way of "doing." The secret of this book lies in "non-doing." By learning to first recognize and then suspend habitual patterns, you open the door to deeper artistic choices.
About the Author
BETSY POLATIN is a movement specialist with four decades of experience in body-mind education and performance training. She has worked with many performing artists in theater, film, and music, including such luminaries as Rashida Jones, Ginnifer Goodwin, Andre Gregory, and John Denver.
As a highly respected senior Alexander Technique educator, she pioneered a four-year Alexander curriculum for the acting conservatory program at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. A certified Breathing Coordination instructor and a Somatic Experiencing practitioner, she holds a BA in dance and an MFA in theater education. She continues to teach her work extensively, both privately in Los Angeles and internationally on zoom, and in master classes in the United States and abroad. She co-teaches with Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Gabor Maté.
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“This is an indispensable book for people seriously interested in acting and is the most important book on acting I have read in a long time. The details and techniques discussed are very impressive and essential for the serious actor.”
“The Actor’s Secret contributes to the actor’s awareness of his or her body and voice—an approach to conditioning that awakens possibilities.”
“I have often puzzled at what makes an actor believable; what really lets you enter into their character’s world. Here in The Actor’s Secret, some of those very secrets are made tangible and accessible in clear descriptive prose. By learning to become embodied—in breath, in posture, and in movement—these powerful techniques are revealed, not only to the actor, but to all of us in how we live our everyday roles—whether awkwardly and inefficiently, or comfortably with grace and flow.”
Trauma in The Public Eye, London - June 20 & 21, 2020
Taught by internationally renowned trauma expert, Peter A Levine, PhD and movement, breathing and Alexander Technique master lecturer Betsy Polatin.
A one day class for performing artists, (actors, musicians, dancers), the therapists and teachers who work with these artists, and anybody else interested in Breath, Movement, and Trauma.
Contact Betsy for more information. See CLASSES page to register.
