Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Quintessence. We are all a complex mixture of the five elemental energies identified by many different cultures throughout history. Here, international acting coach MEL CHURCHER shows how an elemental approach to acting can help you bring your role more fully into life – plus a sample exercise from her new book The Elemental Actor.

I’ve worked primarily with screen actors for the last few decades, but my roots are in theatre. My first passions lay in the primal drives of myth and magic. All of my work has been shaped by the years I spent as an actor, director and voice coach working on Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, Lorca, Wedekind, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Peter Shaffer, in large spaces with actors and audiences sharing moments of excitement and revelation. The power of those shared moments resides in something primal in our nature: something that goes deep into who we are.

The ancient Greeks believed that the world was composed of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Plato’s disciple, Aristotle (who knew a lot about acting, saying that mankind does it from childhood onwards out of sheer delight) added a fifth element to his list. He called it Aether, Quintessence or Spirit. In some traditions it is referred to as space or void. These five elements can also be found in both Hinduism and Buddhism. The same elements are part of the ancient cultures of Egypt and Babylon, Tibet and Japan. They transcend any single culture, recurring again and again throughout human history.

These same elemental forces can be found swirling around – sometimes overtly, sometimes as an undercurrent – in many of the screenplays that I work with now, whether they are about superheroes or power-seeking executives. Our stories haven’t changed in any fundamental way since the dawn of human time.

The ancient elements are even embedded in our vocabulary. We use them constantly, and unthinkingly:

• We ‘float’ with happiness;
• We ‘dig’ for truth;
• We ‘burn’ with shame, envy, or love;
• Our roles are ‘fired up’ to take action, carry ‘heavy burdens’, or, sometimes, ‘drown’ in sorrow.

So, too, the five elements have been a fundamental part of the art of acting since the Ancient Greeks, and have been used in almost every culture on earth.

Working with actors over many decades, I’ve become aware of the power that we hold in our bodies and muscle memories. I am in awe of how a simple practical metaphor or improvisation can release so much depth, power and confidence in the actor; how a text springs to life when we physically act out specific actions or enact a ritual; or we find enormous metaphorical gestures that unlock all the dark secrets within a role.

Your imagination can take you into distant galaxies, or the deepest oceans. You can access hidden caves and walk through fire. And our bodies know even more than our conscious imagination. We are a wellspring of feelings, sensations and awareness of the tiniest details. We know much more than our brains know.

With my new book The Elemental Actor, I wanted to bring all the different parts and paths of my work together; to find a way to help actors prepare that suits every medium – whether there is an audience present or not; whether it is on camera or in a voice studio.

So what is an elemental actor?

An elemental actor is rooted yet flying; passionate and honest; real and alive. An elemental actor can play in every medium, in any style and in every genre.

When you were a child, make-believe thrilled you, scared you and invigorated every fibre of your being. Most of all, it brought you joy. Now that you are an actor, it is easy to lose that freedom and joy, as you compete for work and deal with your self-censor and the adrenaline rush that sometimes threatens to overwhelm you. No good actor is ever satisfied with their work – but that is what makes us continue to strive and quest for the very same satisfaction and complete freedom that we felt as a child.

The dark secrets, or the intense joy, or the striving for power that fires up your role can be hidden completely or rise to the surface to bring about change, chaos or peace. Everything is possible. Our roles are as full and complete as we are ourselves. We and the role fuse into a unique, living being while we play. We have public lives and private lives, rituals that keep us safe, secrets we keep – and so do our roles. In discovering them, we find the joy of our magic game.

I do believe in methodical text-detective work first, but then moving on to find the organic physical work that you can both trust and forget in the here and now of the performance. Moving from head to solar-plexus, if you like. As Joan Littlewood once said, ‘Preparation is the work; performance is the relaxation’. Using the body with a free breath and awakened senses allows you fully inhabit the role you are playing.

As an elemental actor, you can explore the primal drives of your role and enter into the imaginative world with full commitment, truth and energy within your ‘magic circle’ or ‘time-space bubble’, yet still jump out at the end of the ‘game’, whole and free. It will allow you to turn off your ‘decider’, your censor – and to fly higher than you’ve ever dreamed.

In my book, you’ll find more than a hundred practical games and actions for breath, voice and body; tips and exercises for confidence, strength and emotional release. The games in the book allow you to use elemental metaphors to explore the darkest of worlds in a safe and straightforward way.

Here is a very simple exercise taken from The Elemental Actor that you can try either for you as the actor, or you-in-the role:

Pressing Against a Wall

This exercise is a great help for confidence or power before you go on stage, or on set before you go in front of the camera. (But check it’s a real wall!)

• Stand with your hands flat against a wall. Press hard against it and feel your abdominal muscles working. This is your abdominal-diaphragmatic connection. From this place, you harness strength, breath and emotion.
• If you or you-in-the role needs to feel strong—press against the wall until you feel that connection. Decide when to pull away (very important!) go very slowly at first, relax any tension, and then walk naturally into the situation, carrying that power within yourself. Feel that the strength you found against the wall is still inside you—it is now you-plus-wall.

Who’d mess with you now? Have fun!

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The Elemental Actor: How to Release Your Hidden Powers by Mel Churcher is out now. Save 20% when you order your copy directly from our website here.

For more details about Mel Churcher’s coaching services, visit her website here.

Author photo by Phil Bray