Why Do Actors Train? Theatre, Philosophy, and Neuroscience

Why Do Actors Train? (Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama) is a new book by theatre artist and scholar, Brad Krumholz. Focusing on recent developments in neuroscience, philosophy, and related fields, the author develops a new theory of embodiment to investigate the actor’s craft. In this lively dialogue between the author and interarts performer and ethnomusicologist Julia Ulehla—a former member of the Grotowzki and Richard’s Workcenter where many of these exercises were developed—we will use the lens of embodied cognition to catch a glimpse of how all of us, not just actors, encounter the material world and the invisible forces at play within it.

Brad Krumholz is Executive Artistic Director and Co-Founder of North American Cultural Laboratory. He holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Brad has been teaching theatre creation and production for over 25 years, most notably as Assistant Professor and Head of Production at Hunter College, NYC. His recent publications include Why Do Actors Train? Embodiment for Theatre Makers and Thinkers (Methuen Drama, 2023), “The Problem of Movement Theatre” in Movement for Actors (Second Edition: Allworth Press, 2017) and “Locating the Ensemble: NACL Theatre and the Ethics of Collaboration” in Encountering Ensemble (Methuen Drama, 2013). Most recently, he co-authored an article with data scientist Niki Athanasiadou for Performance Research entitled “Artifical Respiration: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Humanizing AI and Future Trends in Performance.”

Leora Morris is a director/creator who splits her time between Canada and the USA. She has collaborated with artists and theatres across North America, including the Public Theater, Coal Mine Theatre, O’Neill Theatre Center, Alliance Theatre, NYU Tisch, Olney Theatre Center, Small Wooden Shoe, Dancemakers, Volcano Theatre, Theatre Aquarius, Tarragon Theatre, Canadian Stage, and Nightswimming. Leora received her MFA in Directing at the Yale School of Drama, where she served as co-artistic director of Yale Cabaret. Leora was shortlisted for the 2020 International Rolex Mentor and Protégé Prize and most recently was awarded the Toronto Theatre Critics' Best Director Award for her 2023 production of The Sound Inside. She currently resides in Vancouver where she teaches directing and acting at the University of British Columbia.

Julia Ulehla is an interarts performer, deviser, scholar, and cultural worker whose research engages with ancestry, traditional culture, and radical forms of experimentation. Her practice is rooted first and foremost in the embodied, emplaced voice—as a powerful nexus of the material, spiritual, ethno-cultural, and socio-political. She received a BA in Music from Stanford University, an MMus in Vocal Performance from the Eastman School of Music, a PhD in Ethnomusicology from UBC, where she received the Killam Doctoral Award, and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cultural Studies at Queens University. Julia was a member of the laboratory theatre Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, and now regularly performs throughout North America and Europe in a variety of performance milieus. Her scholarship has appeared in the journals Performance Matters (2023) and Ethnomusicology Translations (2018), and has a co-authored chapter in Research and Reconciliation: Unsettling Ways of Knowing through Indigenous Relationships (2019). As a composer and vocalist, she has recorded on Pi Recordings (2025) and Songlines Recordings (2017, 2014).