Laban Efforts for Actors: The Eight Efforts and How to Use Them on a Character

The director watches your scene and says, “It’s all the same speed.” You know what she means. You’ve played every line at one tempo, with one kind of energy, and the character never changes gear. You nod and promise to “vary it”. Then you go home and have no idea what, exactly, you’re supposed to vary.

Rudolf Laban gave actors a vocabulary for that. Instead of “more energy” or “make it different”, you get four plain questions about any movement or any line: how heavy is it, how fast is it, how focused is it, and how controlled is it. Combine the first three answers and you get the eight efforts, from Punch to Float, each a different way of doing the same thing. The fourth, flow, colors all of them.

The short version: learn the four factors, learn the eight efforts by doing them with your whole body, find the effort your character lives in from the way they talk, and then run a scene in two different efforts so you can hear how much the choice changes. The rest of this guide shows you how.

What Laban was looking at

Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) was a movement theorist born in Pressburg, now Bratislava. His system for observing and describing how people move is now called Laban Movement Analysis. He came to England in 1938 and worked at Dartington Hall. With Lisa Ullmann he then set up the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester in the mid-1940s, as Trinity Laban’s history of the school records.

One route from Laban’s work to actors was Jean Newlove, his assistant in England. When Joan Littlewood asked Laban to recommend someone to train her Theatre Workshop company, he sent Newlove, and decades later she wrote her approach down in Laban for Actors and Dancers, a practical book of graded exercises.

The key idea is that the how of a movement carries meaning, separate from the what. Two people can both reach for a glass. One snatches it; one draws it slowly toward themselves. Same action, different person. Laban called that quality effort.

The four factors, in plain words

Every effort is described by four factors. Backstage’s guide to Laban Movement Analysis lists the same four, and each one runs between two opposite poles. Here they are as questions you can ask of any moment in a scene:

• Weight: strong or light? How much of your body’s force goes into it. Shoving a stuck door is strong. Brushing crumbs off a sleeve is light.
• Time: sudden or sustained? Is there urgency, or does the movement take as long as it takes? Ducking a thrown ball is sudden. Stretching in the morning is sustained.
• Space: direct or indirect? Is your attention on one point, or does it take in everything around you? Threading a needle is direct. Looking for a friend in a crowded bar is indirect.
• Flow: bound or free? Is the movement held back and controlled, or does it run on easily? Carrying a full cup of coffee is bound. Swinging your arms on a walk is free.

None of these is better than its opposite. A character isn’t “more interesting” because they’re strong and sudden. The point is to know which you’re doing, so you can choose it instead of falling into your own habits.

The eight efforts

Take three of the factors (weight, time, and space) and combine every pair of opposites. Two times two times two gives eight combinations. Laban named each one after an everyday action, and these are the eight efforts actors learn. The values below are the standard chart, the same one you’ll find on the Wikipedia overview of Laban Movement Analysis.

Notice the pairs that differ by one factor. Punch and Dab are both sudden and direct; one is heavy and one is light. Press and Wring are both strong and slow; one goes straight, one twists. Learning them in pairs like this makes the chart easier to remember than learning eight separate words.

Where flow fits

The eight efforts use weight, time, and space. Flow is the fourth factor, and it runs through all of them. The Wikipedia overview describes flow as separate from the eight actions, coloring any of them. You can Press with bound flow, held and careful, or with free flow, leaning in and letting it go. Teaching handouts don’t always agree on which flow belongs to which effort, so don’t worry about memorizing one. Treat flow as a dial you turn on top of whatever effort you’re in.

Learn them in your body first

Reading the chart won’t teach you the efforts. Doing them will. Clear some space and give each effort two or three minutes:

1. Do the everyday action from the table, full size, with your whole body.
2. Let it grow beyond the action: Punch with your shoulder, your knee, your head, then walk across the room in Punch.
3. Notice what it does to your breathing and your mood. Wring tends to feel tortured; Float tends to feel dreamy.
4. Say a neutral sentence in that effort, such as “I’ll be back by six.”
5. Shake it out and move to the next one.

Step four is where it pays off for actors. You’ll hear that “I’ll be back by six” in Dab is breezy and certain, and in Wring it sounds like a confession. You changed nothing but the effort.

Researchers have used the same vocabulary. A 2019 study in Frontiers in Psychology used Laban’s categories to describe movements and tested which ones people recognized as particular emotions. Movements coded as strong, sudden, direct, and advancing were linked with anger, which is close to a Punch. Fear went with bound flow and retreating, and happiness with lightness and free flow.

How to find a character’s effort from the way they talk

You don’t have to guess. The script tells you a lot, especially the rhythm of the dialogue. Treat the following as clues to test, not rules:

• Time: short lines, quick back-and-forth, single words, and interruptions suggest sudden. Long, run-on thoughts that keep adding clauses suggest sustained.
• Space: a character who goes straight at one person or one point, with orders, names, and questions, leans direct. One who wanders, changes the subject, or takes in the whole room leans indirect.
• Weight: commands, flat statements, and lines that end hard suggest strong. Qualifiers, jokes, and deflection suggest light.

Find a character’s home effort, the one they fall into when nothing is pushing them. Then look for the moments when they’re forced out of it. A character who lives in Glide and suddenly has to Slash has had something happen to them. Those shifts are often the beats that matter most, so mark them in your script the way you’d mark a beat change.

Efforts also work well with status. One way to play high status is in sustained, direct efforts; a character trying to please might try light, sudden ones. Our guide to status in acting covers that side of it. And if you’ve worked with Michael Chekhov’s psychological gesture, efforts give you a way to describe the quality of the gesture once you’ve found it.

Efforts in your voice

The efforts aren’t only for your arms and legs. Every line has weight, speed, direction, and control too. A Dab line is crisp and placed exactly on its target. A Float line drifts, with soft attack and rising, wandering pitch. A Press line is slow and pushes through the words like they’re resisting.

Theatrefolk’s teaching notes on the eight efforts suggest trying an effort with the voice and noticing how it changes your physicality too. That runs both ways. If a line won’t land, try changing your body’s effort and say it again. If a movement feels false, change the voice’s effort and see if the body follows.

A practical rule for lines: the effort should live in the thought, not in a funny voice. Wring isn’t a strained sound. It’s the feeling of a thought that keeps twisting before it lands. Keep your natural voice and let the effort shape the timing, the stress, and where your attention goes.

A solo exercise: one scene, two efforts

This exercise is a quick way to hear what efforts do. Take a short exchange and run it twice, in two efforts that differ in all three of weight, time, and space. Here’s a good one, from Act 2, Scene 2 of Macbeth (full text on our Macbeth page). Macbeth has just come back from killing the king.

MACBETH: I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?

LADY MACBETH: I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.
Did not you speak?

MACBETH: When?

LADY MACBETH: Now.

MACBETH: As I descended?

LADY MACBETH: Ay.

MACBETH: Hark!
Who lies i’ the second chamber?

LADY MACBETH: Donalbain.

MACBETH: This is a sorry sight.

LADY MACBETH: A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.

Run one: Dab. Light, sudden, direct. Whispered and alert, every word placed precisely. The one-word lines snap back and forth like two people listening for footsteps. “When?” “Now.” takes almost no time at all.

Run two: Wring. Strong, sustained, indirect. Each short answer drags and twists, and your eyes don’t settle anywhere. “This is a sorry sight” stops being an observation and becomes something Macbeth can’t stop turning over.

Neither run is right. The point is to hear how far apart they are, and to notice which one tells the story you want. Then try a mix: Macbeth in Wring and Lady Macbeth in Dab. Now the scene is about two people in different worlds, one stuck and one trying to move on, which is one strong reading of the scene.

Common mistakes with Laban efforts

• Playing the chart. An effort is a tool for finding something, not a performance style. If the audience could name the effort you’re doing, it’s probably too big.
• One effort for the whole play. People change efforts constantly. A home effort is where the character starts, not where they stay.
• Confusing strong with loud. Strong weight can be very quiet. Press, said almost under your breath, can be the scariest line in the scene.
• Skipping the body. Thinking “I’ll say this in Flick” without having done Flick with your whole body rarely works. Do the full-size version first, then shrink it.

Getting the lines out of the way

The two-effort exercise only works when you know the words well enough to stop thinking about them. If you’re still reaching for the next line, your effort becomes “Trying To Remember”, which is sustained, indirect, and very bound. Learn the scene first, then play with how you say it.

In Offbook you can run the exercise alone: upload the scene, pick your role, and realistic voices read the other part while Offbook listens and plays the next cue as you finish each line. Run it once in Dab, loop the scene, and run it again in Wring, without stopping to reset.

If you’d rather drill the words on paper first, our free first-letter tool turns any speech into first-letter cues. Then put the script down and give the efforts your full attention.

Questions actors ask

Do I need a Laban teacher to use the efforts?

A teacher helps, especially for spotting your own habits, but you can learn the eight efforts alone. Do each one with your whole body, then with a neutral sentence, then on a scene. Filming yourself shows you quickly whether Glide actually looks different from Float.

What is the difference between Laban and the Chekhov technique?

They overlap but start in different places. Laban’s work is a system for describing the qualities of any movement. Michael Chekhov’s technique uses imagination and gestures to reach a character’s inner life. Many actors use both: a psychological gesture to find what the character wants, and efforts to describe how they go after it.

Which effort is my natural one?

Many actors find they have one or two they fall into without noticing. Do all eight and notice which feel comfortable and which feel like a stretch. The uncomfortable ones are where your range will grow, and the comfortable ones are what you’ll default to under pressure.

Can I use Laban efforts in a self-tape or on camera?

Yes, but smaller. On camera, the efforts show in your timing, your eyes, and your breathing more than in big movement. Work the full-size version at home, then let it live in how you think the lines.