The development of Somatic Acting Process in UK-based actor training

This article introduces a new Body-Mind Centering (BMC®)/Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy (IBMT)-inspired somatic acting and creative methodology as part of my Somatic Acting Process® (SAP®) practice. It briefly unpacks the journey and the current shape of this ongoing actor-training pedagogy, along with my growing development as a somatically aware actor-trainer and educator. The discussion situates my practice within a lineage of somatic-based processes in conservatoire actor training, suggesting further developments through the modification of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s somatic process of embodiment and practices of witnessing in my current teaching. This article is necessarily a very concise sample of a larger and continuously developing praxis. Nevertheless, it proposes the valuable contribution of a somatically-informed creative practice for the understanding and communication of acting as innately interrelational and at the same time uniquely individual experience, as a process of dynamic sensitivity and responsibility.