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

by Tom Cornford

‘You must open your hearts. Without this gymnastics, without this heroic act, you will never get the artistic feelings. You must open your heart with tears and pain – but you must do it – otherwise your heart will be in a nice box, but nobody will see the jewel that is lying there’

‘The actor must develop within himself a sensitivity to the creative impulse of others. [. . .] An improvising ensemble lives in a constant process of giving and taking. [. . .] He tries to be aware of the individual presence of each. He makes an effort, figuratively speaking, “to open his heart” and admit everyone present’

Move around the space, finding space, moving through space. Imagine that there’s something pulling you forwards, it’s compelling you forwards. The force disappears and you are moving through space again. Feel a magnet pulling at your back but you are trying to move forwards anyway. And then it releases and you move. Now you experience a pull from the front. Imagine you are being pulled from the back. Imagine you are being pulled from the ceiling.

Working with Chekhov, particularly imagining an external impulse which acts as a catalyst for gesture and extra-daily movement, allows people to think through their body rather than feel like their head is telling their body how to move. This

Chekhov’s techniques seem to work for people that have been removed from themselves for a long time but not in a ‘let’s go back into this traumatic event’: it’s purely from a ‘let’s imagine that this is happening’. It allows them access body and emotion.

Your body must be in a certain way a wise body. Our exercises, which are very simple, are giving to the body wisdom. This special kind of wisdom is what we are aiming at. [. . .] It is possible to go about our daily life and still keep these exercises in our consciousness. They will, in that way, become part of you.

Some Applied Theatre processes explicitly support people to think about others, to put yourself in their shoes. We took some of those ideas and were rigorous in embodying that person. Chekhov talks about crossing the threshold and this supported people getting into character, to imagine that people are standing in front of you and you are, literally, stepping into the them [using the technique of the imaginary body]. We treated it like work – the exercises gave you permission to do that. In order for it to be realized, it needs to be rigorous: as a participant you can’t half engage, you fully engage, you embody’

‘You must always feel what is going on in your pupils. This is most important’

Hartley

‘As a teacher, you must be (1) active, (2) giving, (3) you must enter the room as a teacher. [. . .] ‘Prepare your entrance. When you cross the threshold, you must be already concentrated on giving with as much love as you can feel’

‘responsibility for social life’ he argued that this can often be achieved using laughter and humour: ‘to make people laugh, [is] to expand the human being. Laughter is like heat, like food, like a deep breath. Without humor the human being is not able to expand’ (TAITT: 16 January 1938). In 1991, Baars met Chekhov teacher Lenard Petit, who introduced

‘loss of the feeling of the whole’.

the relevance of Chekhov’s work for social and political contexts is the way it can help us to relearn how to listen,

‘Try to listen to what someone is saying with your heart while asking your mind and your judgement to be silent for a time. You will always have time afterwards to analyze, agree, accept, deny o...

Listening as downloading, or as I call it: listening as ‘checking and filing’.

Object-focused or factual listening

Empathic listening. For the third mode, we need ‘to activate and tune a special instrument: the open heart, that is, the empathic capacity to connect directly with another person or living system’

Generative listening.

The Chekhov Studio’s] aim must be to find the connection to the whole world around us. [. . .] We are working for humanity and for society. [. . .] It means nothing to be an egotistical group. We will discover how to be useful to society, and we will grow in this way’

‘You invite the other person to enter your heart; you give him or her space; this is quite a different thing’

We cannot avoid the social responsibility of our life, whether we want to or not. We don’t have to be political or diplomats but be social we must. [. . .] To be able to work as a social group, as an organism. We must feel each other. We will all suffer if one makes a

mistake. In a good sense you must be responsible and live with the life of our present suffering humanity.

t]he three essentials in a teacher’s approach to her work are: WHO is giving. WHAT is given. HOW it is given. In other words, your work, your method, your being’

‘display all the qualities which the pupil hopes someday to have, and much more, because she must lead the pupils to higher ideas, through the power of her understanding and her greater vision. [. . .] To do this the teacher must radiate a feeling of security, of understanding, of love, and of truth’

A Spanish Evening that ‘the fact should be borne in mind that the play [. . .] owes its existence to Mr Chekhov, who worked at great length and with much care upon the M.S. and was, in fact, almost a collaborator’. The letter goes on to point out that although Chekhov did not ‘requi re royalties for himself, something should, of course, accrue to the Studio in respect of this work’

techniques. He describes archetypal gesture as ‘one which serves as an

original model for all possible gestures of the same kind’

the archetypal aspect of his methods function as prototypes that enable artists to work with simple, clear and large starting points but which are transformed through the artists’ creative individuality (their embodied imagination)...

the feeling that belongs to a particular space and/or event that expresses its inner dynamic and rhythm.

Chekhov says that atmospheres are objective in their quality, though they do not necessarily inspire the same reactions in different people; therefore characters will have individual feelings within a shared atmosphere.

Awareness – Du Prey described this as a technique that 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’

related to the movement quality of ‘radiating’, and is experienced intuitively and internally, and

therefore emerges as a consequence of the artists being true to themselves.

‘the source of inner activity’

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’

‘[t]o create by inspiration one must become aware of one’s own individuality’

six fundamental directions in Chekhov’s technique, forming three polarities: forwards and backwards, upwards and downwards, expanding and contracting.

(the capacity to be both inside and outside of the performance), so

Flowing as a movement quality is distinct from ‘floating’, a sensation of upward movement, as though being lifted.

it is related to the movement quality of ‘moulding’.

the technique or idea upon which the performer concentrates and which serves as their guide. This principle catalyses and heightens the artists’ creativity.

treat anything as potentially a springboard for improvisation/play and the generation of interpretative or original material.

‘To actually receive means to draw towards one’s self with the utmost inner power the things, persons or events of the situation’

Chekhov notes that the ‘answer’ or discoveries may come in the moment of acting (or devising) or afterwards, but using this principle avoids intellectual reasoning dominating the early part of the training, making or rehearsing process.