Fusion Technique

Going forward, at various times in the calendar year, Alex Murphy will offer a Fusion Technique workshop for high functioning, advanced actors-admittance based on an audition and an interview. Alex is also designing a Fusion Technique workshop for actors who are at the beginning of their training.

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Why Fusion Technique?

It has been said, “success leaves clues.” Very few successful actors today have relied on a single technique of acting-one way of working to get them and then keep them at the peak of their abilities- making it possible to deliver, on demand, a rich and very watchable level of performance on stage or camera.

Fusion practice employs a collage of world-class actor techniques to get you there: Stanislavsky, Meisner Technique, Practical Aesthetics, Stella Adler, and Second City Improvisation technique. And then add to that distinct, challenging camera and stage performance project goals for each cycle of Fusion workshop.

Fusion Technique for Actors offers a multi-layered, cross-training approach as precisely the way to work.

Among all best teachers and directors anywhere in the world- of the viable techniques for actors- listen closely, and what you will hear is the relativity of their goals for the actor. There may be different ways of articulating the goals, different exercises -as many different ways as there are good teachers. In the end, all the good directors and acting mentors will be essentially urging you toward revisiting and refining a handful of universal practices for the rest of your creative life.

The Fusion Technique for Actors has been developed during a few thousand hours of classes and workshops-through trial and error. For some time now, Alex has observed that by explicitly blending the techniques in a “studio” program, a kind of expedited grip on technique takes hold. As “cross-training” is to athletes, the Fusion Technique for the Actor is a training device which develops core flexibility by offering the actor a chance to merge the best, most playable techniques and perspectives to work with any role, any genre.

Thus..Fusion Technique for Actors becomes, in and of itself, a way of working.

Fusion Technique also recognizes that many actors may be striving to keep the skills sharpened, and then grow them while, at the same time, they are working “survival” jobs or studying to obtain a formal academic degree, and often at the same time- some actors also may have steady family commitments to maintain. Time and finances are limited for many talented actors to workout with more than one of the act disciplines that intrigue them. In an intensive workshop setting, or for weekly class series- Fusion Technique can offer an actor the opportunity to maintain and further understand their craft by putting to work -specifically- the synergy of several pre-eminent act techniques in an intensive workshop over several days, or for multiple weeks .

Alex Murphy has been conducting classes for years exclusively rooted in Meisner and Stanislavsky techniques , Stella Adler principles, the relatively new Practical Aesthetics methodology, Acting for the Camera technique, and Second City Improvisational technique. He will continue to offer these stand-alone classes.

gogoHeart Film and Stage.

“The real benefit of actors 'technique' is a very slow cook..absorb its virtues, its essence, its scent, then forget it.”

Technique was never necessarily meant to teach you how to act. It is there to activate, to refine..it is to be used when you’re stuck, flat, off the mark, and significantly, when you are not serving the “original intention” of the writer’s script-you will have such days. The road to the cold dead place that is mediocrity is littered with skilled smarty pants act technicians. Genuine, spontaneous, very human acting is another thing. It is what we all wait for.

Improvising, remaining spontaneous while working with text and playing the role-making that leap as honestly and impulsively as you can - your take on the world at that moment-using no more, no less than is needed, and then doing this as much as possible, with ebullience and an open heart - because you WANT to do so.  This, I believe, is the surest way for actors to perform for the stage or the camera in a way that will linger in the mind and the heart of any audience. - Alex Murphy

“Learn to ask: what does the character in the script want? What does he do to get it? What is that like in my experience?..Every scene should be able to answer these three questions: “Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it? Why now?” -David Mamet