Author Penny O'Connor trained as an actor in the 1970s at Rose Bruford College and then as an Alexander Technique teacher in the 1990s, so is well-placed to fulfil the promise of the title of this book for a subject that has been popular in actor training institutions for quite some time.
However it dates back, according to O'Connor, to the 1880s when Australian actor F M Alexander was having vocal problems while on a Shakespeare reciting tour. He found that his poor physical posture and technique was causing muscular tension that was inhibiting his voice. He therefore developed ways of recognising unwanted tension, often from learned habits, and of working on eradicating it.
The problems of tension have been recognised by other, perhaps more famous theatre practitioners since then. Tortsov, Stanislavski's alter-ego in An Actor Prepares, talks of "the evil that results from muscular spasms and physical contraction" and tells the story of an actress whom he helped to transform her performance simply by getting her to stop tensing her eyebrow in moments of high drama. The idea of a technique that is more about removing obstacles than learning something new is rather like what Polish director Jerzy Grotowski referred to as via negativa, which he says, in Towards a Poor Theatre, is "not a collection of skills but an eradication of blocks." The exercise of lying on the floor chanting instructions to the body to relax, flatten and extend is described by legendary RSC voice teacher Cicely Berry in Voice and the Actor.
O'Connor's approach is to get her reader to learn about how his or her body works through a mixture of physical exercises and anatomy lessons, with the aid of some very useful and always relevant drawings by Jenny Quick, in order to identify where tension is needed and where it is restrictive in order to give the actor more control over movement and voice. It is set out as a series of eleven lessons designed to be completed in as many weeks covering posture, breathing and voice, all geared towards what an actor needs to be able to do to create a performance on stage.
Like most practical subjects, a book can never be a replacement for being in the same room as a skilled teacher, who could tell at a glance exactly where any problems lie and what a student needs to do to eradicate them. O'Connor compensates for this by creating exercises that can be done solo, exploring one's own body and experimenting with tension and relaxation, perhaps using a mirror or a video recording device, with versions that can be done in pairs or groups, which are usually said to be preferable if possible.
The descriptions are mostly pretty clear, with a few links to some video and audio resources online to help, but there were a few things I had trouble visualising from the descriptions—although I confess I didn't spend eleven weeks trying every exercise in order to write this review. Some of the exercises are valuable in themselves for actors, even aside from their relevance to Alexander.
As an introduction to the Alexander Technique, this is reasonably priced and pretty thorough and I'm sure, for anyone with the patience and tenacity to complete all of the exercises and homework properly, it could have a significant effect on an actor's performance and provide a few more tools in their skillset. And if the book doesn't go far enough for you, the author teaches both in-person and over Zoom.