TRAINING
WITH EFFORT PRODUCTIONS
The Effort Productions Studio is the home of the work of Yat Malmgren: Character Analysis/Movement Psychology.
We offer a full programme of study in the subject broken into three levels: Beginners, Intermediates, and Advanced. All three levels are taught by James Kemp, sole inheritor of Yat's work. These courses can be taken individually or as a series of continuous training. As a whole they provide a thorough and complete study of Yat's work. Find out more by clicking here. The training is based upon the work of two pioneers of 20th Century performance research: Rudolf Laban and Yat Malmgren. Rudolf Laban, regarded as the architect of European Contemporary Dance, codified a system of analyzing and classifying movement in all its aspects, not only physical, but also in its expressive manifestations and psychological impulses. Yat Malmgren extended these ideas to create a psychological typology which brings together Laban and Stanislavski. This fusion of internal motivation and expressive technique offers the actor a basis for constructing character.
This programme's holistic nature lends itself to writers, directors, actors, and anyone interested in dramatic storytelling.
By the end of the classes you will be looking at the world through new eyes, being able to 'read' the movements of those around you for meaning, and to create physically expressive characterisations which both excite the imagination and serve the writers intensions. You will have begun the process of reading the world around them through this work, linking the psychological with the physical and the physical with the psychological. Clear examples will be given of what physical actions prompt what psychological responses, how those two areas are linked and entwined, how character is formed through control of the body’s movement, how different psychological types are manifested physically.
There is nothing new under the sun, just different ways to describe them. This work provides an accurate and complete way of describing human behavior and its dramatic representation, giving a practitioner the tools to transform their bodies and minds at will into the shape, form and thoughts of a new character, either subtly or profoundly. It provides a way to create nuanced and detailed characterizations, and to access inner sensations ripe for use in dramatic circumstances, and otherwise hard to stimulate.
"I am a strong believer that even a little knowledge of the work can go a long way, and that anyone should be able to take something from the classes which they could immediately apply to their work on stage or off, in front of the camera or behind, or for that matter as a member of an audience watching actors and drama.
At the heart of the work is the concept that we think with our bodies.
That our bodies are revelatory of our inner workings, our psyche, of our thoughts and feelings. Therefore if we could learn to harness and manifest our inner sensations and in a precise way control and express them through our bodies we would be able to share every inner desire, want, thought or emotion wtih a watching audience. And in turn that audience would be able to 'read' our thoughts, to 'read' our character and be thoroughly engaged in our dramatic lives."
— JAMES KEMP