Dreamwork for Actors

Acting calls upon inner powers and perceptions, but most of all it calls upon the actor’s imagination. In this revolutionary book, Janet Sonenberg offers an entirely new technique for exploring the imagination. The term “dreamwork” describes the process by which an individual can free the dreaming mind to explore issues or materials from the waking state. Dreamwork for Actors brilliantly explores the potential of dreams for actor training and development. Dreams, Janet Sonenberg shows, can unlock the actor’s autonomous imagination. Working with the noted Jungian analyst Robert Bosnak, she has re-interpreted the ancient practice of “incubating dreams”; in this new technique , the actor seeds the dream with materials from the play under study and then uses the resulting dream. No other acting technique offers the perfromer’s own dreams as a means to imaginative and artistic expression. Drawing upon her wide experience as actor and director, Janet Sonenberg shows what dreamwork can do. The result is a new tool with which actors can explore their psyches and enrich their performances.

Author Biography

Janet Sonenberg is Professor of Theatre at MIT. A stage director who has also worked in television and film, she is the author of The Actor Speaks: Twenty-Four ActorsTalk about Process and Technique. In August 2003 she will be developing her dreamwork technique with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She lives in Cambridge, MA.