Fascia: Facilitating Physiological Fluidity and Flow-State for the Actor Body

Abstract

Interdisciplinary acting researchers often use neuroscience to support their understanding of embodied studio experiences. However, this neuroscience is predominately cognitive. Though neuroscience supports an integrative understanding of nervous system functioning, it continues to focus its efforts on brain-based research: the body — or soma — is often left behind. Because of the deep ties acting has to both healing and trauma, because of how much the actor has to use their body, and because actors already use somatic therapies and bodywork techniques to support their practice, this dissertation offers a fascial perspective to interdisciplinary acting scholars and actors alike. This work aims to support actors as they engage with the craft and career of acting. It will do this by empowering them with functional, practice-based, research-bolstered knowledge. Fascia ties to the body's function and form: it expresses how a body is faring internally through its external shape and movement capacity. Fascia can be an accessible "tool" — there is no microscope required. Sensually, many bodies already know the difference between feeling "fluid" and feeling "sticky" — fascia research is demonstrating why these feelings exist, on both macro- and micro-levels. As an interconnective soft tissue matrix, fascia facilitates the actor-body's sensory and expressive abilities. It is invaluable, yet because it has not specifically been attributed to the embodied experience of flow-state in acting scholarship (or to anything in acting scholarship), it is not usually understood. Historically, actors and scholars describe the sensation of truly great acting as magic. Actors train towards the magic of flow by eliminating "blocks" — they know how good it feels, but they do not know what to attribute it to. This dissertation posits that flow-state is facilitated by a healthy and fluid fascial matrix, and that educating actors in their fascial physiologies will aid them in training towards positive acting experiences.