Laban's Efforts in Action

As an actor, awareness of your movement is the key to transformation. By making deliberate physical choices, you can fully and articulately embody different ways of being: you can become someone or something else. Laban's Efforts give you a way of identifying and making these choices. Working with them helps the actor to create wholly present and physically ambitious performances. This book outlines Ewan's practical process, which allows the actor to understand their own movement and that of others by exploring one key part of Laban's work: the 'Efforts of Action Drive'. This complete, stage-by-stage, working process has been developed through more than thirty years of work with actors in the studio. Clear instructions for practical exercises are woven throughout the book, as well as exciting ways to apply the work in rehearsal, performance and on set. This allows the actor to learn and apply Laban's Efforts for themselves. Full video and audio resources allow the reader to experience the practical work in action.

This is a fresh and invigorating new addition to the Laban for Actors family of publications. It’s just like being in the studio with Vanessa - with practical how-to exercises and guided explorations in Effort, this book will be invaluable for all actors and teachers of movement for actors, Vanessa Ewan's work with Laban and the Efforts, as you will find in this inspired book, provides performers with an incredibly fertile foundation from which to create. She has found an astoundingly practical way of applying Laban's work to the quest of being a fully embodied actor. You will find tools in this book that will open door after door to your own creativity and awaken you to the endless possibility of what you can create on stage and on screen.

Vanessa Ewan is Senior Lecturer on the three-year acting course and Co-Course Leader of the MA in Movement: Directing and Teaching at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, UK.Kate Sagovsky works as a theatre practitioner, specialising in movement-based work and cross-art-form performance, and is the artistic director of Moving Dust theatre company.