Michael Chekhov Technique in the Twenty-First Century: New Pathways

by Tom Cornford

and the rhythm and form of a play can therefore be considered to be modelled upon the human body and its gestures,

This use of a rhythmical law makes the scene much stronger. [. . .] when [the latter scene] is done in this immovable way, the previous scene comes to the mind of the audience, [. . .] there are rhythmical means to preserve the scenes which are [. . .] passed [. . .] they can be brought back. And this is one of the most important laws of rhythm. We want to preserve everything which has been done before in this scene. [. . .] If we are able, by means of rhythm, to keep everything which has already passed, and to bring it somehow back, we give the audience the opportunity to experience the feeling of the whole – [. . .] the whole thing which has already passed – in one instant all is present here.

‘radiation’, in which the actor consciously imagines ‘that invisible rays stream from [their] movements into space, in the direction of the movement itself’

‘main idea’, is ‘the spirit of the performance’, whereas ‘[a]ll that we can see and hear is not the spirit of the performance, but the body’

what Viewpoints terms its Question, Chekhov calls its spirit: that

‘that which is between the spirit and the body of the performance – the atmosphere, or soul of the performance’.

have to feel’ (emphasis in original) in order to grasp a performance’s

‘[o]ur theatre will be very responsible for the soul o...

it was their shared aim ‘to be actors and more than actors – artists’

defining an artist as someone who will not only ‘create something’ but ‘live with it’:

your creation influences you, its creator, and the soul of the creator changes under the influence of his own creation. This is really the ability of an artist – to be changed because of his own creation.

‘cross[ing] over [a play or story] many times’ so that ‘we [. . .] realize what we have understood through our movements, words, and positions’

consider atmosphere as the substrate of dramaturgy: ‘the material on or from which [it] lives, grows or obtains its nourishment’

We must develop this feeling of contact not only with the other persons, but with the structures, with the space around, with the chairs, etc. [. . .] Each setting is a special world in which we have to create our actor’s activity. [. . .] The problem is to find and establish contact with each other and with the setting, and to find the moments of climax in the play.

asks his students to develop their ‘feeling of contact [. . .] not only with the other persons, but with the structures, with the space around’,

‘atmosphere’: ‘a feeling which does not belong to anybody [. . .] which lives in the space in the room’,

I]f we take the text and try to interpret it first from the words, it is mechanical. We must find the atmosphere of the play, and it must inspire us’

‘You must be in the music of the play. [. . .] You must always consider the atmosphere so that the gesture will be born out of the atmosphere. You must start with the atmosphere and then you will find the right way to produce the gesture and be full of feeling’

atmosphere is the feeling not only of a space but of an event-space.

Atmospheres are therefore spatio-temporal phenomena, experienced simultaneously and capable of being changed by all of the participants in an event-space.

Imagine the air around you filled with atmosphere – filled with this raging thing around you. Don’t try to squeeze anything out of yourselves – that would be wrong. Everything is in tremendous movement, in you and around you. If you will imagine this raging atmosphere truly, you will become either as small as a mouse or as big as King Lear. You will merge with it. Rachel will become like a mouse and Jingle like King Lear. Stiggins takes the atmosphere as inspiration. He is always involved in it, throughout the whole scene. The thunder storm is his inspiration. It forms a cloud around him.

‘score of atmospheres’

a processual, embodied articulation of the changing qualities of the ‘weather-world’ of a play.

First find the atmosphere, and then try to find the dialogues and soliloquies in the music of the atmosphere. First, very simply, try to find what is the music of the words. 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.

In this rhythmical conception of dramaturgy, Chekhov implicitly proposes that dramaturgical time is not chronological (a sequence of events), but kairological. Kairos is both the modern Greek word for weather and the ancient Greek word for a significant time, the moment when something needs to happen; it is therefore doubly atmospheric.

The first step is to research the various atmospheres [. . .] . The next step is to study the play – its historical values, background, costumes, etc. In this study we must discover the ‘world’ in which the play has to be acted. Each play must have a special world around and about it. Hamlet is a special world. Faust is another world. We must develop each play as a world; therefore, we need special study for each play.

This

Chekhov, himself, describes the consonants as ‘imitating the outer world, whereas the vowels express primarily human feelings’

This was not simply about putting movement to speech; the intention was to awaken ‘sensitive feelings’ in the ‘actor’s soul’ so that ‘harmony and natural beauty will permeate the speech and whole being of the actor and will lift him into the realm of art’

‘Chekhov only reached a mass public in America when much of his spiritual explanations and references to Steiner were removed’

Both Chekhov and Linklater seek to awaken human feelings through the imagination.

‘The more our body is full of feeling, the more you awaken this natural desire to act. [. . .] The human being is able to recreate his body and voice only from the inside. What a great power it is – our feelings – if we can manage them consciously’

Linklater’s exploration of physical awareness is deepened by working with Chekhov’s principle of ease and together they enable the actor to access receiving more effectively.

the actor moves on to vocalization, Chekhov’s principle of radiating, a psychophysical exercise imagining rays of energy emanating from the body, is effective in giving the actor’s voice clarity of intention.

Essentially, there are two processes at play in the brain: one that deals with the ability to stay in the present moment and have an awareness of feelings and sensations in the body and another that thinks about the experience and processes thoughts about the past or the future.

All our exercises are built as an organic whole – they are organically related – and cannot be separated. It is necessary to find the ‘spine’ of each exercise, but it is not possible to divide them any more than it is possible to divide the hand from the body.

When used to develop characterization, the imaginary centre is an expression of the character’s ‘psychological makeup’, with imaginative engagement and attention to inner sensation

forming ‘the link between the psychology and outer means of expression of the actor’

for Chekhov gesture encompasses the dynamic expression in space of everything in the world including ‘a plant, a tree, a chair . . . different flights of stairs’ (Hurst du Prey 1985: 85) and, of course, a character’s psychology.

‘Up to the very end of his work, rhythm was all important to him. The rhythm of an idea, the rhythm of a concept, the rhythm of the whole . . . gesture and rhythm, so close. The living force’

By considering movement within the training as crucial not only to the actor’s means of expression but also as a tool for the actor to understand text, composition and dramaturgy, Chekhov’s approach subverts the hierarchy of subject areas by tackling them simultaneously.

a heightened focus on the imagination, an emphasis on the actor’s creative individuality and an embodied understanding of the fact that movement is already ‘acting’.

‘It is a known fact that the human body and psychology influence each other and are in constant interplay’

We must know what our bodies are capable of. [. . .] In order to ‘know’, the pupils must discover possibilities in their own bodies – must explore these possibilities as if for the first time and must be aware every time they discover a new sensation or reaction during the movement exercises.

‘As concentration develops we can then begin to imagine these inner movements as happening. We make them happen’

Chekhov aims for the actor to have a strong sense of creative agency in every aspect of their work and to develop their

‘creative individuality’