The Movement Director


Iphigenia at Aulis
The work of the movement director at times seems like it belongs to alchemy and the dark arts: it is invisible but the audience somehow knows it's there and yet they cannot describe it. It is implicit and also explicit, created in response to the specific requirements of the piece. The truth is in the way we move in the imagined world of a play. Struan's movement work is primarily based on the idea that we communicate with and understand more than merely the words that pass between us and this needs to be made clearer in performance.

Through working with the director and the actor he facilitates the best way for the actors in particular productions to be prepared for rehearsal and ultimately for the presentation of the play in performance. This can involve anatomical work to open the body and develop physical connection, also working to develop a sense of place through visualisation and exploration of the body in different environments - indoors/outdoors, climate, rural, urban, etc. It can also involve physical strength and endurance training.

Struan has been working as a movement director for almost 20 years. The diversity and range of his work encompasses classical plays, Shakespeare, opera, musical theatre and new writing.

Through his work with singers and actors Struan focuses on releasing the performer from physical habits accumulated in their work and life. As a result the actors are able to move with greater freedom in the space and the physicality of the character emerges as part of the process of rehearsing the play, as opposed to creating it in isolation. This encourages the evolution of a physical vocabulary specific to the piece of work. Physical characteristics specific to space and time, situations such as family traits and behaviour patterns (in plays like Easter by Strindberg), or community (in If Destroyed True by Douglas Maxwell) are developed in relation to the whole work as opposed to being seen as an add on by performers. Through working in this way the need for ‘blocking’ is negated as the performers are all in the same physical state in relation to the situation their characters exist in. It does also develop the physical discipline required for dangerous fight like situations such at Clytemnestra’s restraint (photo above of actress Kate Duchene).

Long Time Dead photo

There are also particular skills to be taught in relation to the requirements of the director and the production. For example, the specifics of the 360º body in fourth wall/realism productions directed by Katie Mitchell, such as The Seagull at the National Theatre London, or the creation of a physically connected ensemble, as in Neil Bartlett's Oliver Twist. Struan also enables individual actors to inhabit particular physical traits and abilities as required by the production or text: Mountaineering skills for Rhona Munro’s play Long Time Dead (photo above), the spinal mal-formation of Clov in Endgame with actor Stephen Dillane at the Donmar Warehouse, or the narcolepsy collapses of a character in Kevin Elliot's play Forty Winks at the Royal Court.

"One of the central characters suffers from narcolepsy ...it's made vivid here… when Carey Mulligan tumbles into one of her snoozes (she does this beautifully, as if she were surfing backwards on a wave)"
Susannah Clapp, Observer, November 2004


Also the specificity of chorus work in operas, such as Jephtha at Welsh National Opera (2004/6), and in Ancient Greek plays – The Suppliants at The Gate Theatre, London and Iphigenia at Aulis at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin and National Theatre, London. All of these are achieved through daily practice and the integration of these ideas into the rehearsal process.