Archetype Work

Acting and voice training with Jason Bennett

A character may require a way of being your everyday self rarely allows. Enter through voice, body and imagination. Explore the Lover, the Killer, the Child, the Protector ... then bring what you discover to the particular person in the script.

View Archetype Work visual full size

What is Archetype Work?

You use an archetype as a recognizable way of being: a protector, a pleaser, a rational mind, a playful child. Each gives you something to investigate in how you think, feel, move, sound and relate to another person. The name begins the work. Your experience and the particular character give it detail.

These archetypes do not fit into nice categories and are not literally people living in your head.

Jason Bennett, from the original Intro to Archetype Work.

You may find some qualities familiar and others difficult to allow. In the Psychology of Selves, you call the strongly identified patterns primary selves and the less accepted possibilities disowned selves. You investigate both as an actor. You can value your discipline and also make room for play; value your warmth and investigate authority or reserve.

You encounter the Psychology of Selves and Voice Dialogue developed by Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone through Jason Bennett's application to actor training. Formal Voice Dialogue has its own method; an exercise with an inner quality is not automatically a Voice Dialogue session.

What happens in the room?

You work with a facilitator who helps you notice how a way of being expresses itself, through conversation and attention to physical, vocal, emotional and imaginative qualities. You also have opportunities to step back, reflect and choose how to use what you find.

Your voice and body are part of the investigation. You work through sound, movement, spontaneous imaging and improvisation. You work with the experience of a quality as well as your ideas about it.

You then connect the exploration to your material. You read and reread the play, use your established craft tools, and investigate the character's familiar and less familiar ways of being. You bring discoveries into rehearsal and test them against the writing, the circumstances and your relationship with the other actor.

I am not suggesting that actors should be thinking about archetypes while they are actually performing.

Jason Bennett, from the original Great Actors Access Archetypes.

Your preparation serves the story. In performance, your attention has to reach your partner and what you are doing. You can pause or decline an exploration. This is actor training, not psychotherapy or medical treatment.

Who is this work for?

You can begin as a new actor or bring years of professional training. You can use the work as an actor or singer. Your starting point is the work you want to do and where you are in your process.

You might bring a scene, a monologue or a song. You might understand a role intellectually and want to investigate its voice, movement or point of view more fully. You can also work on your range between roles, as preparation for material you have not yet received.

Begin with a conversation

Study Archetype Work with Jason Bennett. Begin with a brief phone conversation.

Request a conversation

Read further

Archetype Work in the Encyclopedia of Acting gives you the definition and its place among other acting tools.

Intro to Archetype Work takes you further into the vocabulary, lineage and use of this work in preparation.