NYU/Gallatin No Passport Conference
Patricia Angelin
Every person is an absolute, unrepeatable individual---but our emotions---the 6 core emotions--are cross-cultural, primitive, ancient as mankind and universal. They are the same in Borneo, Japan, Kenya, Chile, France, Ireland, Russia, China, and the good ol’ US-of-A. We all have inborn access to the Primitive "Precious 7.”
"…breathing accompanies the emotion, and it is possible to enter into the feeling through the breath, provided one could discriminate which breathing corresponds to which emotion." — Antonin Artaud (1932)
Actors/artists do not like to feel "reduced" to the technical. We like creative, chaotic mystery. Alba does not reduce us.
The 3 primary colors (red, blue and yellow) give us Picasso, Monet, Rembrandt, DaVinci! The 6 Emotional Effector Patterns are universal but similarly far from being reductive. Indeed, Alba frees us for emotional clarity and specificity. Freedom of un-heretofore-known availability "in-the-moment." That is what actors seek and spectators yearn to witness.
Emotions are from a primitive part of our brain and yet scale the heights of Mind. In this "information age" ALBA gives us a tool to, as the lintel over the entrance to the Oracle at Delphi advised, KNOW THYSELF. Core body-knowledge for the actor.
These precious tools are:
Fear (anxiety)
Anger
Sadness (depression)
Joy
Tenderness
Erotic love
And last, but definitely not least:
Neutral
You gain neutral emotion via The Step-Out protocol, a valuable resource! Full body emotional access, full body emotional health; the actor becomes authentically "an athlete of the emotions." (Artaud)
To reclaim our neurologically basic emotions makes us more human and far better actors!
"I just take a breath... and there it is!"