Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tom Cornford
Read between
June 13 - August 3, 2025
‘At the beginning stages we must not force [our imagination] by pretending we have more to show than we have. Just the most simple steps are enough’
‘every student will be required to give suggestions to the directors. [. . .] In this way the directors will receive many new ideas which they will be able to apply to their sketches’
[P]lay is the driver of creativity. Without a disposition – and ability – to play it is impossible to produce the conditions whereby the actor/performer is a creator rather than simply interpreter. While the divisions between being a creative as opposed to an interpretative actor are neither rigid or impermeable, Lecoq is proposing a model of performing where the actor is the (co-) author-maker of material whether it is physical, spoken, musical or imagistic’ (2010: 223)
Despite
awareness which required the actor ‘being absolutely open to what is going on, so that it flows into you and takes you and lifts you and moves you’ and notes that this must include every part of your being ‘body, soul and spirit’ (1978: 10).
Chekhov also encourages artists to develop a sense of what he termed the divided consciousness (the capacity to be both inside, and outside of, the performance) so that they have a clear sense of their relationship of the whole composition and strong contact with their fellow actors and – crucially – the spectators.
‘The play must be invented when the rehearsals are going on. It must not be written before’
Chekhov proposed that it was only ‘after the author has seen the sketch performed, [that] he must be able to re-write them because he has got new ideas, and the actors will re-act the new texts’
‘The later [the director] allows his actors to act, the better the quality will be. After he sees that inspiration has touched his actors, he must let them be free. At the beginning the director must improvise, then later the actors will improvise for him’ (TAITT:
W]hen the director begins to play with the Method as with balls, that is the right use of the Method’
isten and rely on the atmosphere and you will get more suggestions than you will from any director in the world’
I have seen for the first time today the instinct for playing which children have. [. . .] I have seen you unafraid in contact, and there was a certain charm which is in the playing of children. Keep this in mind, because it is the best quality you can get. And how are we able to awaken this instinct for playing? Through just such pedantic exercises as we have been doing. The more [. . .] you pay attention to all the exercises [. . .] everything, then [. . .] flowers will open inside you, and you will get this ability to play as children, but the difference will be that children are doing it
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Try to imagine a [very small] child who awakens [. . .]. Observe in your imagination how the child opens its eyes. Try to absorb the child’s psychology – not the movements – only the spirit [. . .] we must have a child-like psychology [. . .] open to everything which you see, hear, or do. You absorb everything, being absolutely open. Get it through the psychological gesture.
‘we must not kill our intellect and become mere idiots, but we must postpone the work of the intellect until later on, when it will be very useful to us. It must be under the control of the artist, and not the reverse’
Never ask anybody whether your idea about the centre is right or correct, use your own judgement; trust your intuition, your imagination, your talent. Of course you might take into consideration your director’s suggestion and alter your ideal conception of the centre, but there is no need to doubt your own judgemental, logical approaches to it. [. . .] Enjoy it, play with it like a child would play with its ball.
you will build the whole scene by means of your psychological gesture, you will at the same time rehearse the play, but on a level which is much richer’
linear process tends to ‘codify and formalise everything into a monotonous pattern’
‘these inflexible approaches often mean that important moments are neglected’
‘once a new beginning has been created’ in this way ‘the cast is out of the rut of repetition and on the alert’
the director propose an exploration of the various different forms of polarity between the beginning and end of a section, sidetracking the middle section temporarily, in order to make new discoveries.
The
while the non-actor simply reads the lines of a play script, ‘the actor reads between the lines, sees beyond the characters and events of the play. These magic “beyond” and “between” places make up that kingdom in which the talented actor lives and moves freely’
possible, the director should speak little and give only one or two suggestions to the actors, then have them repeat the scenes’
‘be in the line and style of the performance [. . .] because the more receptive the actors are, the more they will subconsciously assume the mood, tone, and key in which the director gives his suggestions’
he new theatre, if it is to have vitality, must write its own plays’, which ‘must be constructed in such a way as to give the new theatrical principles their fullest scope’
The author of the new theatre will be a person who creates the words for the play, not in the solitude of the study but working with and among the cast. He must know what it means to stand on the stage and utter the words. If he is an actor as well as an author he will know what words he must write down, and what words are possible for the actor to say. The director and the actors must be able to tell him what they wish to do and the author must understand and give the words for their purpose. The theatre is a great power but it must find itself. We must know what it means to be a member of
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Chekhov does not, however, ask that the writer become the ‘servant’ of the actors and director but stipulates that the writer should work ‘with and among’ them, accepting that their ‘impulse’ will come from actors and directors.
Writers must, in his approach, accept that their impulses will come from actors and directors, because their role sits closer to the ‘heart of the theatre’, as, for Chekhov, the theatre’s fundamental language is not primarily verbal but a language of feeling, and feelings – in Chekhov’s technique – are centred in the heart
The Studio will attempt to weld into one harmony all the elements of a theatrical expression. A production will be composed like a symphony following certain fundamental laws of construction, and its power to affect the public should be equal to that of musical composition. Composition, harmony and rhythm are the forces of the new theatre. Such a production should be intelligible to a spectator regardless of language or of intellectual content.
Where is the climax, for instance? Is it right for this sce ne to climb up to this high point, taking so long to do it, or should it be shorter,
etc., etc. Or the anti-climax should be reached in another way perhaps. The author must get the gesture of the whole picture – this is an invisible gesture – this gesture must be true and justified.
he used gestures ‘to express [. . .] the idea, the interpretation, the action, the text, [. . .] the feelings, the atmosphere, everything’
a ‘new kind of conversation [. . .] between actors, playwrights, costume designers, directors, etc.’, which would, he said, enable ‘the feeling [to be] much more easily awakened than by describing it’
c]hange the exercises I have given you, and if your idea is wrong, I will tell you. If you find other exercises besides those I have given you, please do them’
Sigal’s analysis of a range of versions of collaborative playwriting suggests that much more damaging than directorial control is a lack of clarity about who is ‘the guiding force within the creative process’
the actor’s ‘ability to delve with his intellect into the play’ was his ‘enemy’
‘We must not allow our intellects to function but must [. . .] call upon our imagination and capture and create images. We must write and re-write the play, creating new atmospheres and images all the time’
his approach attempts to blend thinking with will and feeling so that analysis is never merely thought but also felt and enacted, and therefore is able to embrace all of the three ways in which Chekhov thought that human beings interact with their environment.
for Chekhov, ‘there is no difference’ between rhythm and gesture
‘We have called it the psychological gesture’, Chekhov said, ‘but it is actually a rhythmical gesture’
Each scene has its own rhythmical gesture, and this is a very very complicated thing, this rhythmical pattern of the play. The rhythm of the play is the highest spiritual movement of the play. When you begin to feel this, you will speak your words with much more understanding. Find what gesture there is in your words. First find the gesture before you speak, then you will find the right speech.
Every rhythmical movement consists of a beginning, a middle part and an end in each case. When we have a feeling for the beginning, the middle and the end, we will be able to feel the whole movement. When we start at the beginning, we must feel the future of the middle and the end. When we are in the middle, we must feel the past and the future; and when we are at the end, we must feel the middle and the beginning. When you have finished and are out of this pattern, then you have the feeling of the whole which has happened.
hrough your feeling of the gesture, through your feeling for the rhythmical whole, every moment in the play must be organized. [. . .] Then you will be working in the right way’
‘flying over the play’ in order ‘to give the cast the opportunity, even before the play is ready, to experience the whole construction of it’ (TAITT:
‘no longer than one minute, perhaps even less’, which ‘must be full of meaning’ and ‘contain a few short sentences’. They must also ‘have a very strong atmosphere, very clear objectives for each person, and all the other means which we have learned through our exercises must be incorporated into these sketches’
‘improvisation means that on a certain given ground, and with certain conditions, you have to fill each moment as full as possible with your creative psychology’
i]n the human gesture lives the human soul’
