Suzuki

Tadashi Suzuki

Born 20th June 1939, Tadashi Suzuki created the Suzuki training and composition method.
He is a theatre director, writer and philosopher working out of Toga, Toyama, Japan. Suzuki is the founder and director of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT) and organiser of Japan's first international theatre festival (Toga festival). He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Japan Performing Arts Foundation, a nation-wide network of theatre professionals in Japan.

Suzuki's Fundamental Technique and Theory of Acting:

• To act, one must have a point of view
• For acting to begin, one must have an audience
• To sustain acting, an awareness of the invisible body is required

Tadashi Suzuki's explanation of his method:

"The main purpose of my method is to uncover and bring to the surface the physically perceptive sensibility which actors originally had, before the theatre acquired its various codified performing styles. This works to heighten the actors innate expressive abilities. The method first occurred to me when I was examining the differences in physical perception among different people. These differences are found while the actors on stage just stand still, or have an impulse to move of speak and take some action. I wished to integrate these differences into something we humans could share as a common property, beyond all differences in race and nationality. First of all, I felt the necessity of inspecting our human orientation, in sensibility or feeling, toward the ground – the attraction for the ground which the lower half of our body feels. I extracted some basic ways of using the body to perceive various nuances of feeling, and then arrange them to formulate my method.

Technically speaking, my method consists of training to learn to speak powerfully and with clear articulation, and also to learn to make the whole body ‘speak’, even when one keeps silent. Thus the actors can learn the best way to exist on stage. By applying this method, I want to make it possible for actors to develop their ability of physical expression and also to nourish a tenacity of concentration.

In short, this training is, so to speak, a grammar necessary to materialise the theatre that is in my mind. However, it is desirable that this “grammar” should be assimilated into the body as a second instinct, just as you cannot enjoy lively conversation as long as you are always conscious of grammar in speaking. These techniques should be mastered, so that they serve as an “operational hypothesis”, allowing the actors to feel themselves truly “fictional” on stage. For actors to realise the images they themselves pursue, they will have to develop at least this basic physical sensibility.”

Our progress

10/09/12

Started Suzuki today - it was definitely a memorable experience. I was surprised by how much strain it puts on your body and your mind, it truly does put your whole self into chaos. 

We began by attempting to slowly walk across the room, in an extremely controlled way, with a partner clinging to our back. We were supposed to not let our heads move up and down, and for our journey to be very smooth - we glided. Suzuki puts your body to the test, the key word is struggle. And the struggle is supposed to manifest itself to the audience. We repeated the exercise with no weight on our backs, but maintaining the strong stance, tense centre body and controlled movement. We were supposed to pretend to still be struggling from the weight. And with your whole body tense, with the utmost concentration I found myself genuinely struggling. I was even short of breath, and felt bound up with energy. The days Suzuki training culminated with a ferocious session of stomping and falling to the floor, then moving slowly. When I was struggling I felt like I looking intriguing to the audience. We were also challenged to recite lines from Dante's Inferno as we moved, with breaths only between sentences, and everyone speaking in synchronisation. 

The whole experience was draining, physically and mentally, but also inspiring. I could sense that the group moving together must have looking quite beautiful to an audience.

17/09/12

Suzuki today: Exhausting, exhilarating, felt powerful. 

19/09/12

Continued Suzuki: stomping exercise tiring as ever. Did something new: Standing statue. We had to spring up and down into different positions, it was tiring on the ankles.

14/01/13

Exercises today:

- Sitting statue - working with someone else improved my focus, maintaining eye contact helped us achieve stillness more easily. Some people found a partner distracting though.

- Standing statue - we found it difficult because we hadn't trained in ages, discovered I would have to train regularly to keep the strength needed.

- Someone providing resistance while we moved in extreme slow: Found it helpful because I had to use more strength and felt the image was more powerful.