PREFACE

With a continuing commitment to provide our students with opportunities that expand their creativity and expressive abilities, our department hosted Dr. Susana Bloch as a visiting professor in the Winter of 2001.  While she was in residence, she worked with intermediate Acting students and the cast of The Pirates of Penzance.  Dr. Bloch is the originator of Alba Emoting, a scientifically based method she has developed for inducing, modulating, and expressing basic human emotions.  It is a unique use of scientifically generated information about human emotional experience being made serviceable for actors and performers.  Without exception, techniques of Alba Emoting made the fifty student performers more interesting, more believable, and more expressive in their performances.

 Dr. Susana Bloch was born in Germany and raised in Chile, South America.  She is fluent in four languages: Spanish, French, German, and English.  Her Ph.D. in Psychology is from the University of Chile, and she did post-doctoral work in Experimental Psychology at both Harvard University and Boston University.  She was a Professor of Neurophysiology at the Medical School and in the Psychology Department at the University of Chile.  For twenty-three years, she was a Research Scientist in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, France.  She has written several books and many scientific articles which have been published in international journals, and her scientific work has been presented in lectures and workshops at many international conferences.  Her research has been concerned with basic laboratory work in areas such as Visual Psychophysics, brain functions, animal behavior, and the psychophysiology of basic human emotions.  Based upon her latest research, Dr. Bloch developed a method for inducing these emotions. This system is known as Alba Emoting.  The method has applications in performance training, communications, clinical psychology, and other fields.  Dr. Bloch currently resides in Santiago, Chile, and conducts Alba Emoting training sessions throughout the world. 

 Ever since I began learning about the emotional effector patterns which form the basis of the Alba Emoting system, I thought that a philosophical introduction to emotions and emotional experience should be part of the training process for the techniques.  Learning the effector patterns that induce, entice, and allow human emotional experience was nice, but a connecting element that linked behavior and experience was lacking.  I was anxious to be given a working knowledge of the scientific basis for the emotional effector patterns I was learning to use.  I wanted an explanation of the ideas which created the system of emotional induction, and I missed an overview of its development in my introduction to the work.  Dr. Bloch has published articles explaining her research, but they appeared in international journals over the course of twenty years or so. That made them difficult to locate and obtain, and I knew that a contemporary collection was needed.  As I progressed in mastery of the techniques and began to teach them to other people, I felt that an introduction to the ideas which created the work and an overview of its development should be given to  people as they began training.

 My personal experience with Alba Emoting has always been positive.  From the beginning of the training, I found myself wondering about several things: What part of each of us is emotional?  What function do emotions have in the well-being of a person?  What should I  learn and know about them?  Doing the emotional effector patterns, I felt

mildly energized and very peaceful.  There was also an element of joy and exhilaration in my body and consciousness.  My usual stride had been altered without any conscious volition on my part.  My weight resisted gravity in a decidedly different way.  Somehow, doing – or  attempting – the induction patterns for the emotions, and then stepping out to neutral, put me into a state of emotional balance that was more positive and expansive than negative, restricting, or anything else.  A relaxed sense of well-being came – each emotion felt  balanced with the others, each existing in its potential of fullness at the same time.  Emotional unity.  Throughout the body and spirit.  Absolute, free potential.  I felt vivid.  Energy emanated out from my being and back into it.

 During Alba Emoting trainings throughout the years, I have repeatedly reconnected with parts of myself which are intuitive and impulsive and passionate. There is a healthy, energy-promoting result from using these emotional induction techniques.  The balance of feelings was rejuvenating to experience and refreshing to feel.  I sensed a healing and helping kind of reaction inside of myself each time I did the emotional effector patterns.  I continued to feel liberated and free.  My core being was happier, more open, and more accepting than usual.  I felt reverently calm, yet powerful.  Daily tensions and concerns still had to be dealt with, hopes and daydream fantasies continued to go unfulfilled, but I felt balanced in my potential to allow and deal with any personal feeling or emotion which may have developed inside of me.   Somehow, I was able to re-experience my own sense of humanity in a very organic way because of that emotional training.  Channeling breath, posture, and facial energies was exciting.  It was enabling, allowing, strengthening.  It filled me with light and created rich, personal power.
     
 There is no doubt in my mind that Alba Emoting techniques induce emotions within me and my students. There is also no doubt on my part that executing the Alba Emoting effector patterns induces emotions in people regardless of age, life experience, gender, educational preparation, cultural background, or intellectual capacity.  A specific training approach for actors continues to formulate in my teaching and directing; the applicability of emotional creation, expression, and control to actor-training is very clear. People trained in Alba Emoting need to find the best way to harness the power of these emotional techniques to help humanity.

 As stated previously, long ago I sensed that an introductory compilation explaining the research which originated the development of Alba Emoting would make training with the system more efficacious.  Among Alba Emoting practitioners there has been occasional discussion about collecting and publishing the articles which explained the discovery and classification of scientific data that identified aspects of the emotional effector patterns, but discussion did not produce a compilation.   With this booklet, that much  has now been accomplished.  Minor editorial changes have been made in the texts in an effort to promote clear expression of ideas, and a unified style has been applied to each article.  Otherwise, the information here is presented as the authors originally published.

Hyrum Conrad
Department of Theatre
Brigham Young University - Idaho
April 2003