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

by Tom Cornford

attentiveness to the ways in which inner sensations relate to movement offers a way of ‘giving to the body wisdom’ that comes ‘from the actor themselves’ and directs their individual route of enquiry

Movement in the technique should therefore not be understood as gymnastic but rather ‘psychological in that it affords us the experience of states and conditions of being’

If we grow to considering our simple exercises as wonders, we will get from them much more than if we consider them something dull and ordinary. We rob ourselves of a certain power. We reject something which is very necessary for our creative work. We must do our simplest exercises with love and care.

The

You must establish this feeling of confidence in your body so that no matter what you are called upon to do, your body will respond with complete confidence. For instance, the Meyerhold actors are trained in a special way to achieve this thing, and everything they do on stage has this feeling of complete confidence.

Lecoq suggests that ‘everything in life can be reduced to two essential actions: “to pull” and “to push”’

Thus,

The notion of a ‘pure’ form of any technique is thus perhaps more ideological than historical, and the ability for teachers to blend and bring into dialogue various approac hes is vital as part of a living and constantly evolving

practice, or as part of what Ben Spatz calls ‘research in acting’ where ‘like any other form of knowledge, acting technique is sustained by the ongoing and dynamic interaction of training and research’

There are two different things on the stage – acting and dance, and what we are doing lies in between. It is not dance, it is not acting, it is pure use of the qualities of our bodies – qualities which penetrate the whole body. We can fill our whole bodies with the quality of heaviness, or floating, or radiating, etc., just by standing still.

What was so remarkable was his performance as Khlestakov, the Inspector General – an unbelievable performance. Truly tremendous experience of an actor who moved, a dancer who was everywhere on the stage with scintillating ease and brilliance and bringing such vitality and life with every movement, everything that he did . . . he had performed like a ballet dancer in this rather grotesque performance.

‘inner life’: a constant engagement with imagination and inner sensation that simultaneously radiates outward and is shared and exchanged with other performers and the audience.

Both she and other teachers interviewed highlight, in particular, dancers’ reluctance to engage with intangibles such as their inner life and their fear of the freedom of creative individuality in improvisation, with one dancer feeding back: ‘I don’t get what I am supposed to be “sensing” . Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it!’

‘life force’, a kind of inner, energetic version of the outer body. Bennett terms this ‘inner-getic material’, and teaches how that energy can be transformed,

through the use of imagery, senses and the will, into outer movement and shape:

Sensations and images move through the body and are released. They fill not only the larger dance elements, but also the spaces between. . . . This single concept, that the possibility and power of energetic transformation is in their bodies, changes their perception...

‘in which each member of the theatre – actor, director, designer, or author – will each be responsible for everyone . . . in a real, true and deep sense of the word, a collaboration’ (TAITT: 14 January 1937). It does not expect the utopia of an

‘This does not mean’, he clarified, ‘that you write the lines with the author, but you must

be with him with your full activity [. . .] we must develop in ourselves this feeling for everyone who is around us’

In the first instance, it often facilitates ‘spaces of encounter’ between spectators and performers, as well as ‘between spectators and other spectators, spaces, site and objects’

Moreover, its aesthetic dimension affects individual spectators on a sensual and emotional level and this, combined with the material dimensions of set, light and architecture, is as significant in the audience’s understanding of any performance as other elements such as language

‘It is not enough’, he told them, ‘to find the real, naturalistic, clever mise en scene. It must be speaking about the main idea [. . .] the mise en scene must do a gesture, just as everything must’

psychological gesture (or PG) is well known as a physical summary of the character’s main motivating drive or will force; ‘the PG reveals to you the entire character in condensed form’

It takes the form of a fully embodied gesture, executed with a particular tempo and quality and is governed largely by a particular direction in space (forward, back, up, down, left or right).

By archetypal, Chekhov means that it is a fundamental, distilled approach to movement.

For Chekhov, the whole set must radiate inner vitality, and PG was the means with which to find it: ‘we must create a setting by creating it with movement’, he insisted

‘effective style’, he stated, ‘w ill not emerge unless there is a harmony among all the elements of the production and the play itself’

As

Gesture, Chekhov argued, ‘is to be found everywhere, not only in the human body. In nature, in living things and in dead things. In everything and everywhere, an artist can find and create psychological gestures which are not in immediate connection to the human body’

‘You are to experience this simple gesture’, Chekhov explained to his students, ‘as though you were trying to develop a part’

Chekhov develops his point: downstage imparts ‘intimacy’ (TAITT: 16 March 1937), while facing the audience directly, for Chekhov, means that ‘the stage and everything on it recedes, and the actor is as if alone’

red and orange speak to us as ‘God’s wrath’, that green and orange ‘tend to make us egotistical’, whereas black,

grey and brown ‘represent evil powers and evil influences’. The more redemptive colours include yellow which ‘leads us to spiritual self-realisation’, blue which offers ‘the quality of “God’s mercy”’, lilac ‘calls up mystical feelings’, while white radiates aspects of the ‘highest part of the human being’

Red, he claims, has ‘a gesture’ of ‘activity and movement’, and when there is some red on a green field or plane, the red ‘begins to move’.

When red is coupled with blue, ‘we get the feeling that red is nearer than blue’, whereas when it is combined with yellow and blue, red ‘endeavours to balance the two’ and also ‘tries to fight the blue’

yellow perceived o n its own has the quality of ‘joy and pleasure’,

add a little green to it, he states, it evokes ‘the most dreadful feeling’.

Chekhov’s exercise teaches that design is not about creating an art object such as a painting; the set must facilitate life in the performers and what is actually happening on stage.

In

Yet we might ask how often do designers engage in acting processes, and how much is their training focused on realizing a director’s or even a company’s concept rather

than, for example, learning to create environments with the kinds of psychophysical properties that inspire actors to play?

it is the designer’s job not only to ‘feel our space’, but ‘to make space from our feelings’

Design is not solely a mental activity, ‘it is not a thing which we must find with our brain’, Chekhov insists, ‘we must feel it’; it is a ‘psychological a, b, c’

‘Modern problems are so serious, so intricate, and so tortuous that if a solution is to be offered in the theatre, the theatre must leave the ways of mere imitation and naturalism and probe beneath the surface’

it’s ‘aim must be to find the connection to the whole world around us. [. . .] We are working for humanity and for society’

Chekhov positions the actor – rather than the director or write r – at the centre of the theatre-making process, charging them with creative autonomy and critical responsibility.

I need your help. The abstruse nature of the subject requires not only concentrated reading, not alone clear understanding, but co-operation with the author. For that which could easily be made comprehensible by personal contact and demonstration, must of necessity depend on mere words and intellectual concepts [. . .] the technique of acting can never be properly understood without practicing it.

The Chekhov work runs as a parallel in my life [. . .] I was drawn towards the philosophic premise of what it is to be. In the world of existential psychotherapy, there’s no essential nature of a human being, just an existential sense of being. With an existential sense of selfhood our supposed nature is constantly in flux, in a state of becoming, and therefore in a dynamic relationship with the world and others. When therapists talk about therapeutic interventions, they’re usually referring to relational issues with someone or some people. So it’s usually about how we are functioning as being-in-the-world, as Heidegger terms our unavoidable situation. So there is no position available to us that is not as a being-in-the-world, as open towards the world, in a state of social beingness if you like. So this state creates a sense of ourselves as manifestly situated in the world, and always

in relationship towards others in the world [. . .] and we can manifest that in different ways; as being-for-another, which perhaps suggests our most intimate relational state. This is usually a state manifest between therapist and client within a therapeutic alliance. This opens out into a more communal, and social sense of self, as being-for-others [. . .] and for me there is an additional potential state of being-for-all-others, which is perhaps an aspirational state of consciousness with a unified global and ethical attitude towards all beings. It’s an expansive position, and in Chekhovian terms could be considered as a psychophysical gesture towards the world as a totally inter-related, inter-dependent organism which includes all living organisms, but also could embrace so-called inanimate entities too. This can form a deeply integrative relational sense towards the world as a total holistic entity. This suggests to me a kind of Chekhovian consciousness that implicates a cognitive parity between the rational and imaginative faculties which can offer a vast landscape of meaningful narratives with which to engage and cohere around creatively as well as therapeutically.

Hartley