Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique: A Practitioner’s Guide 9781350090033, 9781408156889, 9781472503459, 9781472503466

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MICHAEL CHEKHOV’S ACTING TECHNIQUE

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MICHAEL CHEKHOV’S ACTING TECHNIQUE A Practitioner’s Guide

SINÉAD RUSHE

METHUEN DRAMA Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Methuen Drama logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Sinéad Rushe, 2019 Sinéad Rushe has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. xv–xvi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Louise Dugdale Cover image © Liza Dimbleby All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any thirdparty websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rushe, Sinéad, author. Title: Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique: a practitioner’s guide / Sinéad Rushe. Description: London, UK; New York, NY: Methuen Drama, 2019. | Series: Performance books | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2018030452 | ISBN 9781350090033 (HB) | ISBN 9781408156889 (pb) | ISBN 9781472503473 (epub) | ISBN 9781472503466 (ePDF) Subjects: LCSH: Acting. | Chekhov, Michael, 1891-1955 Classification: LCC PN2061 .R745 2019 | DDC 792.028–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018030452 ISBN: HB: 978-1-350-09003-3 PB: 978-1-4081-5688-9 ePDF: 978-1-4725-0346-6 eBook: 978-1-4725-0347-3 Series: Performance Books Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

The actor should never worry about his talent, but rather about his lack of technique, his lack of training, and his lack of understanding of the creative process. Michael Chekhov

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. Henry David Thoreau

Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things. Anna Deavere Smith

This book is dedicated to the memories of Ann Campbell, Mary Clother, Patricia McKearney and Margaret Doverman.

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CONTENTS

Preface x Acknowledgements xv List of abbreviations  xvii

Introduction: Guiding principles  1 A note on the context of Chekhov’s work  15

PART ONE PREPARATION 33 1 The ideal centre  35 2 The first of the four brothers: Feeling of ease  42 3 Receiving  53 4 The second of the four brothers: Feeling of form  64 5 The third of the four brothers: Feeling of beauty  79 6 The fourth of the four brothers: Feeling of entirety  90 7 Radiating  102

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 8 Expansion and contraction: Expansion as a principle  111

PART TWO PRACTICE 123  9 Qualities of movement: Moulding, floating, flying  125 10 Further qualities of movement  136 11 Six directions  147 12 Archetypal gesture  158 13 The three sisters: Rising, falling and balancing  170 14 Image and imagination  176 15 Improvisation  188 Transition: Transformation  196

PART THREE PERFORMANCE 203 16 Imaginary body  205 17 Imaginary centres  220 18 Stick, veil, ball  235 19 Archetypes  243 20 Psychological gesture  260

CONTENTS

21 Subjective atmosphere  273 22 Objective atmosphere  281 23 Extras  299 Conclusion: Theatre of the future  308 Chronology of Michael Chekhov’s career  319 References  322 Index  328

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PREFACE

‘The highest and final aim of every true artist, whatever his particular branch of art, may be defined as the desire to express himself freely and completely’ (TA, 35).

When I first encountered the Michael Chekhov technique in a Paris workshop in 1995,1 I had never heard of Michael Chekhov. I didn’t know that in the early twentieth century he was a brilliant actor at the Moscow Art Theatre, working with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858–1943) and Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1955) as the latter was developing his pioneering acting ‘system’ to convey more truthfully what they called ‘the life of the human spirit in the role’ (Stanislavski 2010, 19), an endeavour which changed the face of acting worldwide. I didn’t know that he was the nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov and that he had participated in one of the most innovative and creative periods of theatrical and artistic history. I didn't know he spent the latter part of his life acting in Hollywood (in the 1950s), coaching many screen stars such as Yul Brynner, Gregory Peck, Marilyn Monroe and Anthony Quinn. All I knew was that when I was instructed to perform, in stumbling French, a scene from an Anton Chekhov play (I can’t remember which one), I have a physical memory of sitting in a chair, peeling a (real!) orange and eating it with relish while at the same time delivering a monologue. I don’t remember anything else about the scene or the rest of the classes. All I remember is feeling completely connected and free, with

This was a series of classes taught by Sergei Issayev, a tutor from Moscow’s Russian University of Theatre Arts (GITIS) and organized by Professor Patrice Pavis at the University of Paris 8-St.Denis. 1

PREFACE



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everything falling into place; I was able to speak my lines as though they were my own and had a sense of what to do without anxiety or planning in advance. When I began teaching acting more than a decade later, I witnessed other actors describe their encounter with Chekhov’s tools as a sensation of returning home, a mixture of recognition and fresh discovery. Chekhov’s modest claim is that he offers merely the conscious means to understanding and regaining the natural state an actor inhabits when feeling unhindered and comfortable on the stage (AA, 2:7). While at first glance the technique might seem like an accumulation of diverse and practical tools (which it is), over time I have come to appreciate that it is an active process of stripping away obstacles in our work ‘to discover many things which we cannot even believe are there’ (AIT, 267). My encounter with Chekhov’s practice confirmed and made more explicit a way of working that had seemed intuitive yet had never been ‘named’ or validated as a legitimate approach in many of the acting classes or rehearsal processes I had been part of. Three main things distinguish his technique. In the first instance, it privileges the imagination and offers concrete ways to develop it. Chekhov believes that the imagination is a muscle and he takes this very seriously: with sufficient practice it becomes strong and flexible enough for us to invent characters and situations about which we have no experience. ‘Ideally’, Chekhov asserts, ‘an actor is able to act everything he can contemplate’, without limitation (PT, 269). We do not need to delve into memories of our past when we can imagine instead. Secondly, its medium is the body. Part of Chekhov’s path to awakening the actor’s inner resources and what he calls ‘psychology’ is through training the body’s sensitivity. His is a ‘psychophysical’ approach to acting where every physical action stirs a psychological resonance, and conversely, each psychological state must inform and find a physical expression. The whole technique is built on this system of feedback between inner and outer world, and both must be receptive and supple. Thirdly, the technique encourages us as artists to know ourselves but to consider that inspiration may be found beyond ourselves. The more we can look at our characters and dramas as objective, independent entities, that is, from their point of view and according to their own

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PREFACE

laws, rather than filtered through and limited by our own personal lens, the more original and artful our work will become. To be an artist, for Chekhov, is to be in fruitful touch with life beyond our own immediate interests. This book is aimed at actors, directors, theatre-makers, playwrights, as well as teachers, academics and researchers. The tools not only make explicit the more nebulous or elusive aspects of performance, they demystify and systematize them. Chekhov works on the premise that as artists we are capable of creating anything, but the process by which we get there must be exacting and precise. My aim here is to offer the insights I have gained over the last ten years by working with a broad range of teachers across the world (whom I will acknowledge throughout), by teaching the technique myself in both professional and conservatoire contexts to actors, directors, designers and acting teachers, and by applying the technique in rehearsals towards my own productions. I situate Chekhov’s practical tools in the broader principles that underpin them, drawing on the full range of his writings, including unpublished material from the archives of Chekhov’s studio classes in Dartington Hall, Devon, UK, from 1936 to 1938,2 historical examples from Chekhov’s own life and career, as well as verbatim accounts from contemporary artists working with the technique. Some Chekhov practitioners emphasize that the technique is less a method and more an approach and this book is offered in that spirit: as a way of exploring the actor’s craft while grappling with a sense of why it matters. The book has three main parts, divided according to the way I normally teach the technique, and I start most chapters by plunging straight into an experiential exercise, indicated by italics. By way of illustration, I will draw mainly upon four examples: a literary adaptation, Nikolai Gogol’s short story, ‘Diary of a Madman’ (1835), a production I directed in 2011

Once held at Dartington, you can now visit the open-access archive at the Devon Records Office, Exeter, UK. The classes were delivered by Chekhov in English and annotated in English rather than in Russian. It is perhaps worth stressing that much of Chekhov’s written ideas are filtered through translation (Chekhov’s own and others’). 2

PREFACE

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for Living Pictures;3 a classical play, Shakespeare’s Othello (1603),4 which I directed at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London in 2012; a contemporary play, Sarah Kane’s Blasted (1995), which I have only studied; and the contemporary American television series Breaking Bad (2008–13),5 which like many others I appreciated simply as an enthusiastic spectator. I am mindful that in the latter case, and in various other films that I cite, the actors are not necessarily trained in the Michael Chekhov work nor are their performances elucidations of the technique; I use them as embodied, three-dimensional illustrations that reflect something of the power and truth we are trying to achieve. I cite additional plays that I have worked on where they offer a clearer example. Part One contains an outline of Chekhov’s preparatory principles, which we might consider as broad rules for composition; over time I have come to consider these as his most significant contribution. A sort of priming of the actor’s canvas or a musical ‘tuning’, they outline an attitude towards making art that is uncompromising and that implicates us as people as well as artists. To work only with his better-known tools of characterization (Part Three) is to miss the point. Those more ‘applicable’ aspects of the technique will only really come to life for the long term when they are embraced and explored in the light of the core principles. In a short workshop, I will focus mostly on these because if they are in place, the rest will follow. Part Two is a journey through the foundational psychophysical exercises, and it will flesh out what I consider to be the actor’s training routine, if you like. While these tools can also be applied to character, they mainly function as the equivalent of musical scales and arpeggios which the actor practises in order to train her or his instrument in its several dimensions (body, psychology, imagination). These are what we

The performance opened on 6 October 2011 at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, and toured in Wales, throughout the UK and internationally. A co-production between Living Pictures and Cegin Productions, Robert Bowman played the story’s protagonist, Proprishchin. www.livingpictures.org.uk. 4 The production was with BA Acting (Collaborative and Devised Theatre) and BA Theatre Practice students. 5 Written and produced by Vince Gilligan, the critically acclaimed show originally aired on the AMC network for five seasons. 3

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PREFACE

return to on a daily basis in warm-ups or when we are between jobs. In both Parts One and Two there are groups of exercises, such as the four brothers and the qualities of movement, which are normally taught sequentially; however, I separate out one or two of them because I find it gives a clearer progression to the work. The third part focuses on the more specific and elaborate methods of characterization, the equivalent of actually playing a piece of music in performance. These tools, in a more explicit way than the others, emphasize the necessity for the actor to move beyond themselves and to transform. Only in transformation, Chekhov insists, lies the seed of a truly artistic act.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Jenny Ridout at Methuen Drama for her initiative in this project as well as John O’Donovan, Anna Brewer, Camilla Erskine and Lucy Brown for their patience and support. Gretchen Egolf, Catherine Alexander, Graham Dixon, Joanna Merlin and Tom Cornford all read an early draft of this book and their insightful feedback helped refine its final structure and tone. I am very grateful to Tom Cornford and Peter McAllister for their detailed reading of subsequent versions and their willingness to engage in lengthy discussions about it. I would also like to thank Liza Dimbleby for her drawing for the cover of the book and her advice on Russian-language queries. I would like to thank the students who have explored the Chekhov work with me over the years, offering fresh perspectives and shedding new light: students of BA Honours in Acting (Collaborative and Devised Theatre) and MA in Actor Training and Coaching at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama as well as regular participants at Living Pictures and The Actor’s Centre in London, with the support of Michael John. I am grateful also to my colleagues Daron Oram and Aldona Cunningham at Central, as well as Robert and Elen Bowman at Living Pictures and Cass Fleming at Goldsmith’s College, all of whom have been invaluable interlocutors and collaborators in this work. I also wish to thank Robin Nelson and Gilli Bush-Bailey at Central who gave feedback on the introduction. With thanks also to the Michael Chekhov community, in particular my principle teachers Sarah Kane, Graham Dixon, Joanna Merlin and Lenard Petit, as well as Fern Sloan, Ted Pugh, Mel Shrawder, Jessica Cerullo, Ragnar Freidank, Scott Fielding, Jörg Andrees, Jobst Langhans. I am also grateful to all those who agreed to be interviewed about their

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

acting processes: Simon Callow, Gretchen Egolf, Sarah Kane, Joanna Merlin, Fern Sloan, Ted Pugh and Jamie Chandler. Finally, I would like to thank Clare Hallward, Fiona Duggan and Orla and Mário Rushe Trindade for offering their homes as quiet refuges for periods of intensive writing, Ria and Frank Rushe for their unflinching support in all my endeavours, and Peter Hallward for his detailed editorial advice and eternal faith and love.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AA

Powers, Mala, Michael Chekhov: On Theatre and the Art of Acting. There are four audio CDs. The references refer first to the CD followed by the track number.

AD

Black, Lendley C., Mikhail Chekhov as Actor, Director and Teacher.

AIT

Hurst du Prey, D. ed., The Actor is the Theatre. Unpublished transcripts of Michael Chekhov Lessons, Michael Chekhov Theatre Studio Deirdre Hurst du Prey Archive in the Dartington Hall Trust Archive, Devon Records Office, Exeter. This reference is to the condensed version (MC/S1/11:B). All other references are marked with the manuscript code.

AT

Zinder, David, Actor Training (Michael Chekhov), DVD.

BV

Zinder, David, Body, Voice, Imagination.

DP

Leonard, Charles, Michael Chekhov’s To the Director and Playwright.

DR

The Drama Review, Michael Chekhov.

DY

Michael Chekhov, The Dartington Years, DVD.

HA

Petit, Lenard, The Michael Chekhov Handbook: For the Actor.

LE

Chekhov, Michael, Ball, David (trans.), Life and Encounters.

LP

Chekhov, Michael, Lessons for the Professional Actor.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LT

Chekhov, Michael, Lessons for Teachers of his Acting Technique.

MC

Chamberlain, Franc, Michael Chekhov.

MCT

MICHA, Master Classes in the Michael Chekhov Technique, DVD. The first number refers to the disc number, the second to the session.

MH

Autant-Mathieu, Marie-Christine (ed.), Mikhaïl Chekhov: De Moscow à Hollywood, du théâtre au cinéma.

OC

Marowitz, Charles, The Other Chekhov: A Biography of Michael Chekhov.

PA

Chekhov, Michael, The Path of the Actor. This includes excerpts from Life and Encounters.

PT

Chamberlain, Franc, Kirillov, Andrei and Pitches, Jonathan, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Michael Chekhov.

RH

From Russia to Hollywood, DVD.

RS

Ashperger, Cynthia, The Rhythm of Space and the Sound of Time.

SP

Chekhov Theatre Studio, Dartington Hall. Studio prospectus.

TA

Chekhov, Michael, To the Actor on the Technique of Acting.

TOA

Chekhov, Michael, On the Technique of Acting.

TP39

Hurst du Prey, Deirdre, ‘Verbatim transcripts by Deirdre Hurst du Prey of lessons given by Michael Chekhov in 1939’ in The Training Sessions of Michael Chekhov.

TP78

Hurst du Prey, Deirdre, ‘Interview with Deirdre Hurst du Prey at Dartington in July 1978 by Peter Hulton’ in The Training Sessions of Michael Chekhov.

TS

Mason, Felicity, The Training Sessions of Michael Chekhov, DVD.

INTRODUCTION: GUIDING PRINCIPLES ‘I think the theatre consists of the actor and that is all. Nobody else is important in the theatre, from my point of view. If the actor is not there, then there is no theatre. All that the director, the author, the designer will do will not make a theatre’ (MC/S9/2, Lectures, February, 1991).

The main reason to celebrate the Michael Chekhov technique is that it empowers actors. Chekhov recognizes that performers, what they do on stage and how they do it (acting!), are the primary reason audiences go to the theatre; they make a performance electrifying or otherwise.1 For Chekhov, the most inventive, original and beautiful production in the world is worthless if the audience finds it difficult to believe or invest in the actors. By this he is not suggesting the performance has to be a naturalistic one. In fact, he is largely against naturalism, which is a point I will come back to. He asserts simply that the art of acting should take primacy in rehearsal and production. It is the director’s job to facilitate the actor’s process and to create the conditions in which the actor’s inspiration can be sparked. In return, it is the actor’s job to be inspirational or to produce what Chekhov calls inspired acting. The tools in this book provide a map for finding this treasure. If Chekhov asserts that the actor is at the heart of theatre, then the actor is also responsible for, on the one hand, acquiring the necessary

For simplicity, I will refer predominantly to theatre and live performance, as did Chekhov. The technique is applicable to all performance modes. 1

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Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique

skill and technique, and on the other, finding the courage from within a process to assert the actor’s art of invention, and to believe that she can, and must, influence the direction of the production. By all accounts, Chekhov’s own performances were so ingenious, bold and imaginative that they could not but strongly affect the flavour of the productions overall. One actor recounts how ‘all of Moscow raved about Chekhov’s Khlestakov’ in Gogol’s The Inspector General (Simonov 1969, 127), and as Erik XIV in Strindberg’s play, critics praised ‘Chekhov’s lightning transformation from one extreme state to another’ (MH, 302).2 I will return a little later to specific examples of his characterizations to elucidate certain aspects of his technique. Wherever he worked, Chekhov stressed the need to do everything it takes to avoid creating performances that are flat and unsurprising. Several years ago, I saw a striking example of an actor’s power. It was a production of a classical text in one of London’s national, subsidized theatres. It starred a famous, accomplished actor in the leading role and was directed by an established director. Although in many respects the production was proficient, for different reasons nothing quite worked, including the leading actor. It was as if the company hadn’t found a unified way to tell the story, although I am sure they searched long and hard. However, about halfway through the production, there was a long monologue recounted by one of the secondary characters, delivered centre stage without moving. No one would have envied him the task of trying to capture the attention of a vast auditorium of fidgeting spectators. Yet, during his storytelling, he achieved this feat. The concentration of the audience shifted into focus. Within moments, they were still; coughs miraculously faded into silence and you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. There was little to support the actor other than his ability to connect completely with the audience in that moment. From within a flawed, dissipated production, he pulled us in and held us. When he stepped forward at the curtain call, the audience’s applause reached a crescendo. I experienced it as gratitude. The audience acknowledged that through this actor we had experienced something; through him,

The Inspector General (1836, also translated as The Government Inspector) was performed in 1921 at the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT), directed by Stanislavsky and Erik XIV (1899), directed by Yevgeny Vakhtangov, was in 1921 at the First Studio and subsequently toured to Riga, Reve, Wisenbad, Berlin and Prague in 1922. 2

Introduction: Guiding Principles



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the story had travelled effortlessly beyond the stage and reached us. In Chekhov’s terms, this is acting and the audience recognized it. We felt it. It confirmed that all that had happened before his intervention was a kind of pretence. Everything in the Michael Chekhov technique is about trying to make this kind of moment possible. Every acting technique worth its salt is about this in a way, but Chekhov takes us there by emphasizing, in particular, the power and independence of our imagination on the one hand, and the capacity to be inspired by things beyond our own limited, personal experience on the other. Chekhov questions any approach that is too subjective because ultimately he wants art to take us into a greater, deeper connection with the world. For Chekhov, this has unabashedly cosmic dimensions, inspired by the teachings of philosopher and social reformer, Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), whose ideas he studied closely, practised and adapted.3 The more interest we cultivate in objective phenomena and others, the more we evolve individually and develop our creative intuition. The less we focus on ourselves, the more the self develops. It is a familiar spiritual dichotomy. This broad, ethical philosophy forms the bedrock of Chekhov’s approach in cultivating a ‘true, living knowledge’ (PA, 41) or code from which to practise.4 Within that, three specific, guiding concepts frame the technique: creative individuality, higher ego (or self) and divided consciousness. I foreground them here because an understanding of them is important for the practical tools that follow.

Creative individuality Chekhov believed, above all, in the power of the actor’s ingenuity and intuition, and his whole endeavour was about finding ways to harness Steiner sought to develop a system with which to investigate the spiritual world as methodically as natural science investigates the physical world. He believed that spiritual knowledge does not reside in an omniscient god and posits the existence of an objective spiritual world which we could come to ‘know’ experientially and intellectually through training. 4 Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that Steiner’s ‘Spiritual Science’ helped Chekhov out of a personal crisis and mental depression he experienced in the First World War years (Pitches 2006, 140). 3

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Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique

and release it. His idea of creative individuality is to stress that we each have our unique artistic perspective on the task at hand, a belief that has its roots both in Stanislavsky and Steiner.5 There can be many versions of Hamlet, but no two actors will play Hamlet in exactly the same way, even if they work with the same director.6 We need to ask ourselves, from the beginning, what our ‘take’ on the role is, our attitude towards the character, our point of view. Chekhov describes it as a process of allowing the ‘spark’ of our individual fire to be kindled by the ‘flame’ of the part, play and playwright (TOA, 17). Something in the play sets us alight, and we must be alert to this and coax it ablaze. In the process, Chekhov invites us to resist bringing the character down to our level, down to what we are already comfortable or familiar with. Rather than play ourselves in the part, we express ourselves through the part. It is a two-way process. On the one hand, we affirm our capacity and intuitive right to follow our nose, and on the other, we challenge ourselves to be worthy of the role granted us. Above all, the principle of creative individuality demands that we strive to create and construct an original work of art. This conscious act elevates the actor from performer to artist, Chekhov’s ultimate aim. It is hardly surprising to encounter such an idea if we consider that Chekhov’s formative years in the theatre were spent in the company of a group of innovative artists of extraordinary creativity and originality. After beginning his career at the Maly Theatre in St Petersburg (he graduated in 1910 from their adjoining drama school, the Suvorin), he joined Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko’s renowned Moscow Art Theatre in 1912.7 He was only twenty-one. The fact that the

Steiner describes individual perspective as originating on the level of sensation, stating that ‘I can perceive with my bodily senses the red table which another person also perceives; but I cannot perceive his sensation of red’ (Steiner 1970, 22). 6 There is an illuminating example of this in Playing Shakespeare, a series of workshops directed by John Barton at the Royal Shakespeare Company and filmed for BBC TV in 1982. Barton describes directing both David Suchet and Patrick Stewart on separate occasions as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Both actors play the same scene in succession to demonstrate their strikingly different approaches to the role, both of which Barton found convincing. 7 Nemirovich-Danchenko was a trained mathematician, a psychologist, playwright and teacher at the Musico-Dramatic School of the Moscow Philharmonic Society (now Russian University of Theatre Arts or GITIS), as well as co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre with Stanislavsky in 1898. 5

Introduction: Guiding Principles



5

company had achieved its first real success by performing a new play, The Seagull, written in 1895 by his uncle, Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), certainly facilitated his introduction.8 Michael Chekhov joined other young actors at Stanislavsky’s experimental First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre, and as early as 1913, Stanislavsky came to recognize him as ‘one of the current hopes for the future’ (PA, 209). Before Stanislavsky, we must remember that a systematic approach to acting technique, an analysis of what it is and how exactly it is done, was virtually unheard of, although certainly other artists had begun to explore psychological authenticity. More common was a theatre that privileged a kind of representational melodrama, where actors were tolerated as mediocre, frivolous stars who expressed little interest in emotional truth. Finding himself in the midst of Stanislavsky’s attempts to elevate the craft of acting by undertaking a methodical investigation of the nature of human behaviour, psychology and action, Chekhov describes how he was guided ‘intelligently and with inspiration’ (PA, 51). In spite of his previous experiences, Chekhov considered his time at the Moscow Art Theatre as his true ‘training school as an actor and director’ (DP, 37) and he declared himself to be one of ‘the believers in the religion of Stanislavsky’ (PA, 209). His writings are filled with recollections of Stanislavsky’s rigour, immersion and dedication, and while Chekhov soon came to question some aspects of his teaching methods and to outline a fundamentally different approach to characterization, his respect for the ‘giant’ (DP, 45) and for the inspiring conditions of enquiry he created is palpable. He states that Stanislavsky, ‘together with Nemirovich-Danchenko, was the first to break the land that opened up the new fields which all of us later tilled in our own distinctive ways’ (DP, 39). He is struck by how ‘both cut their ties with a comfortable past and both worked equally hard and sacrificed in equal proportion in order to realize their dream theatre’ (DP, 45).9 Chekhov, in his turn, would spend his life pursuing his own ‘dream theatre’, which he referred to as the theatre of the future.

The company’s emblem became a seagull as a result of this success. It was NemirovichDanchenko’s suggestion that they produce The Seagull at the MAT. 9 Chekhov also describes how ‘life at the MAT was not as enjoyable as it had been at the Maly Theatre. The strict discipline, the serious approach to the profession and the constant scrutiny of Stanislavsky inculcated in me a different attitude to theatre’ (LE, 23). 8

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Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique

If Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko offered Chekhov a rigorous new vision for theatre, Leopold Sulerzhitsky (1872–1916), another of Stanislavsky’s collaborators, offered an inspirational embodiment of the qualities necessary for the actor-artist: artistic authority, a sense of truth, intuitive insight and passionate commitment. Sulerzhitsky was a fervent proponent of Stanislavsky’s emerging acting system and had been assisting and influencing Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre since 1905.10 Chekhov remembers him as imparting his pedagogy with a palpable sense of humility and personal ethics, aiming to serve rather than demanding service. Above all, Chekhov celebrates that ‘he did what he said. We saw his ardent soul and his acute, loving mind more than we heard them’ (PA, 51). Leading by such example, he became a ‘spiritual father’ to the young actors and ‘cultivated in the First Studio a quality of collectivism and a sense of family’ (PA, 206). Collaboration, a sense of serving a higher goal, and personal ethics all bore their way into the bedrock of Chekhov’s technique, and any of those who worked directly with Chekhov describe him in terms similar to those he himself used for Sulerzhitsky.11 Yevgeny Vakhtangov (1883–1922), on the other hand, was more of a spiritual brother than a father. A contemporary of Chekhov’s and considered, along with Chekhov, as one of the most talented of Stanislavsky’s students, he began as a faithful teacher of Stanislavsky’s system at the First Studio. Once there, however, he gradually developed his own ideas. From an acting point of view, he began to emphasize ‘freeing an actor from his own personality’ and ‘preventing him from being too inhibited by a role’ (PA, 207). The ideas of creative freedom and building a character ‘objectively’ without drawing on personal experience were to influence Chekhov enormously and the two men became great friends. Chekhov celebrates Vakhtangov’s personal qualities of humility and receptivity, describing him as ‘a vessel into

In fact, he introduced the practice of yoga to the First Studio. He was also a friend of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, or Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), whose own beliefs emphasized compassionate imagination, self-improvement, a return to nature and the promotion of community and frugality. 11 American actress and teacher Joanna Merlin, who took a class with Chekhov in Hollywood in 1949 describes him as ‘warm and irresistible’, and ‘when he entered the studio, the atmosphere was immediately transformed. … He filled the space with his immense spirit, with his playfulness, humanity, humour, and above all, with intention’ (MH, 431–2). 10

Introduction: Guiding Principles



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which all the positive things could be poured’, a ‘wonderful artistic sponge’ (DP, 46, 54). For Chekhov, Vakhtangov was an example of creative individuality in motion and, like Sulerzhitsky, in him questions of art, life and ethics came together. Vakhtangov’s growing excellence as a director stemmed directly, for Chekhov, from his ‘humanity and a considerate attitude towards people in general’ (PA, 69). He was inspiring both artistically and personally. Chekhov believes absolutely in the convergence of person and practice, and all artistic endeavour for him involves a sort of code of honour. Developing the actor’s creative individuality means to understand how deeply life and work are connected; ‘It is impossible to be a cultured actor while remaining an uncultured person’, he states (PA, 41). For Chekhov, our behaviour, attitude and ethics will permeate our work whether we desire it or not. If we are unethical in life, our performances may be ‘efficient and adroit – but not captivating’, Chekhov insists, but as soon as a person begins to cultivate a certain attentiveness to destructive tendencies, coupled with a conscious practice of stimulating constructive thinking and behaviour, ‘he starts to see everything’ (PT, 267). This is not to say that we consciously bring our life onto the stage; rather, we live our lives in a way that will enhance our art and cultivate conducive conditions for inspiration. It is likely, too, that the spectre of death that hung over Vakhtangov as he fought a bitter battle against cancer spurred his passion and commitment. He declared to Chekhov: ‘I want so much to live! … There are the stones, the plants; I feel them in a new, special way, I want to see them, feel them, I want to live amongst them!’ (PA, 100).12 Chekhov realized that Vakhtangov acted ‘so magnificently’ in his last performance as Frazer in The Deluge because ‘he was fighting for his life. Again, it

I am reminded of British playwright Dennis Potter’s moving interview with Melvyn Bragg on Channel 4, April 1994, a few weeks before Potter died: ‘At this season, the blossom is out full now. … Last week looking at it through the window when I’m writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. Things are more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. There’s no way of telling you, you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance … not that I’m interested in reassuring people, bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it’ (Potter 1994, 5). 12

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was life, the feeling of life that brought the creative state into being’ (PA, 101, Chekhov’s emphasis).13 Igniting ‘life’, a dynamic creative state and artistic freedom in sympathy and harmony with the world as a whole, would all become part of Chekhov’s central tenets encapsulated in the principle of creative individuality.

The higher ego or self Inspired once again by Steiner, and surely Stanislavsky’s idea of the superconscious also (Stanislavski 2008, 81), Chekhov developed the concept of the higher ego as a way of distinguishing the actor’s creative forces from baser, more mundane impulses. The lower ego (or self), for Chekhov, is the part of our personality that ‘we carry in our everyday life’ (AA, 2:8) and incorporates ‘ambition, passions’ (PA, 146), everything that is self-centred, subjective and personal in the actor. It is not necessarily nefarious; simply it should not be the only force acting upon us, or allowed to dominate. By contrast, the higher ego (or self) is ‘the artist in us that stands behind all our creative processes’ and ‘stirs our imagination’ (TOA, 16). Through it, we rise above ordinary levels of activity and energy, giving our entire being to developing the art of the theatre and inspiring the spectator (AA, 2:7). Chekhov maintained that although these two aspects of our being are in constant battle, the actor must develop the higher ego to make sure it prevails when it matters, and the tools discussed in Part One largely serve this purpose. The lower self is, if anything, overdeveloped, and if reinforced on a daily basis it interferes with our work constantly, ‘doing rather harm than good’ (AA, 2:8). One aspect of the lower self is what he calls the ‘small, petty, cold, analytic, “figuring out”, reasoning mind’ (AA, 4:4). The problem he outlines with it is that it is ‘always suspicious, finding faults in everything and in everybody, always criticizing. Its nature is egotistical, and its tendency is to divide, to isolate, to separate’ (AA, 4:4). By contrast, the nature of the higher, creative self is to unite,

The play by Swedish playwright Henning Berger (1872–1924) was originally produced at the First Studio in 1915 and this final performance was on 14 February 1922. Vakhtangov also directed the production; Chekhov and Vakhtangov alternated playing the role of Frazer. 13

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amalgamate, draw conclusions, synthesize, to create ‘psychological oneness’ (AA, 2:7). This dichotomy helps Chekhov frame a distinction for the actor’s work between ‘personality’ and ‘individuality’.14 He believes that the personal is always subjective and led from the lower ego, and as such cannot enter the realm of ‘art’ (PA, 216). For him, anything that has a personal colour in art only serves to make us ‘a little smaller’ (DR, 62); he even goes so far as to consider it a ‘crime to chain and imprison an actor within the limits of his so-called “personality”’ (TA, 27). When we work from the higher ego, we begin to access our creative individuality, that is, the artistic impulses that are unique to each of us but which seek to express something of and for the world at large. It is an expansive rather than a narrowing perspective. In this way, it is non-egocentric and reaches towards objectivity. Again, there is an ethical dimension here. Chekhov asks us to appeal to our nobler ideals rather than our petty, selfish side. Our work is created from us, but it should not solely be about or for us.

Four reasons to develop the higher ego Chekhov maintains that there are four reasons why we should develop the higher ego. The first is to develop our creative individuality which, as we saw a moment ago, is our unique artistic perspective on the world and our work. The second function of the higher ego is to develop the ability to discern and portray ethical complexity in our characterizations. Chekhov maintains that often ‘the simpler we are on the stage, … the further we are away from the truth of life’ because we try to make our acting, believing it to be ‘natural’, as ‘simple as our everyday life’ (AA, 2:7). He warns that human life is rarely as straightforward as we sometimes pretend it to be on stage. To avoid playing flat, clichéd, one-dimensional characters, we must distinguish between the positive and negative aspects of a character and find nuance in both. Only then will we honour the ‘aim of the author,

Rose Whyman traces this back very clearly to Steiner (MH, 233–41).

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which is always hidden behind the fight between good and evil’ (TOA, 20). People in life have complex, sometimes contradictory psychologies; so, too, should the characters we portray and the stories we tell. We must seek the contrasts within our portrayals and productions and avoid black and white interpretations. The third function of the higher ego is to sensitize ourselves to our audience, have a sense of who we are producing the work for and ‘answer their questions … satisfy their needs’ (MC/S1/12, 17 February 1942). Depending on the time and place, different aspects of the play need to be emphasized. Things that are scandalous in one place may be banal in another, and vice versa. The way we challenge an audience also needs to meet them, in a non-condescending relationship. As we are preparing and rehearsing, Chekhov even suggests that we imagine our future spectators and visualize performing in front of them. Chekhov goes further to say that with a developed higher self we can cultivate a ‘deeper, finer bond between the audience and the actor’ (AA, 2:9) in the very moment of performance. During the run of Hamlet (1924),15 Chekhov describes beginning to sense his connection to the audience when he experienced how they were different every night. He began to cultivate an ability to ‘collaborate’ with his spectators ‘without being subservient or egotistical’ (AA, 2:9). He even claims that when we are in an actively creative state, we can ‘foretell audience reaction an instant before it takes place’ (TA, 91). Working from the higher self demands that we have the courage to come into relation with every audience, without fear, rather than simply delivering our pre-planned performance as if all audiences were the same. The fourth aspect to the higher ego involves developing a sense of humour.16 Chekhov calls humour a ‘faculty’ and considers laughing the best way to treat our ‘small ego’ (AA, 3:6). Indeed, for him, it is a requirement for good practice: ‘The more hearty gaiety the actor brings into all his exercises the better’, he insists (TOA, 50). Not only do we make contact with others through humour, more crucially it allows This was a production by The Second Moscow Art Theatre or MAAT 2. You will also see it written as Second MKht. 16 Sergei Tcherkasski points out how Stanislavsky referred to happiness as one of seven steps without which ‘it is impossible to live in the art’ (Tcherkasski 2012, 14). I am also reminded of the French author, François Rabelais: ‘To laugh is proper to man’ (Rabelais 2007, 31). 15

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us to laugh at ourselves, to let go of certain attachments, helping us to ‘leave personal things behind us’ (TOA, 23).17 Again, this is to be understood as a desire for a more objective perspective, liberating us from a self-centred vision coloured only by our own sympathies and antipathies. Chekhov is adamant that good art cannot be born out of egocentric practice; it requires a broader, expansive, less tightly gripped point of view. Chekhov describes the higher self as a ‘wise’ figure who sits in ‘our hidden unconscious laboratory’ (AA, 4:4),18 drawing conclusions from all our accumulated life experiences. We simply feed him the ingredients and he takes care of the rest, mixing the solution and getting the dose right. For Chekhov, this figure also has an assistant, the ‘lofty and noble intellect’ (AA, 4:4) whose ideas our higher self draws upon. The noble intellect has nothing to do with dry analysis, and everything to do with creativity and connection. The ‘real’ intellect, great ideas and thoughts, Chekhov asserts, are born ‘within our heart. We should find within ourselves our thinking heart’ (AA, 4:4). Out of what Chekhov calls ‘this heap of things, disconnected’ (AA, 4:4), the higher self can ‘unite things’ and find coherence (AA, 4:4). Chekhov develops this principle along broadly Romantic lines into a practice called the feeling of entirety, which we will see in Chapter 6.

Divided or dual consciousness An example of the higher ego working in practice boils down to something quite straightforward that most, if not all, actors are familiar with: these moments in rehearsal or performance when we are

Russian comedian Igor Meerson, referring to the 2014 ban on importing American and European goods to Russia in response to Russia’s annexing of Crimea in the Ukraine, makes a similar point: ‘My point of view is that we should laugh at difficulties that we have now. It is the only way to solve the problem for average people such as me, or anyone from my audience because we are not politicians. And if we can have a good time together, if we can laugh at anything, it means that we are stronger than those difficulties in international politics’ (Interview with Igor Meerson by Kirsty Lang, Front Row, BBC Radio 4, 11 August 2014). 18 Stanislavsky also used such terminology, referring to the subconscious as our ‘friend’ (Tcherkasski 2012, 15; Stanislavski 2010, 18). 17

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‘in the zone’, when we are both fully immersed in performing, but also aware at the same time that we are performing. Writer and teacher Franc Chamberlain defines this state of awareness as similar to our experience in a dream where ‘we are both a character in a dream and the creator of the dream’ (MC, 48). It is as if the higher self observes and directs proceedings from outside, whereas the lower self executes them (PA, 146). While Chekhov may have been exposed to the idea of a divided or dual consciousness first through Stanislavsky,19 he develops his own thoughts on it from his experience as a performer. When playing the character of Skid the clown in Max Reinhardt’s production of Artisten, Chekhov’s first job in exile, Chekhov suffered terribly.20 As well as having to learn German quickly for the part, he felt incapable of performing the clown’s tricks in a rehearsal period that was incredibly short and perfunctory. On opening night, Chekhov went on stage ‘with a feeling of dull indifference’ (PA, 144) and feared that his performance would be a disaster. Instead, Chekhov had one of his greatest moments of insight; he perceived on stage for the first time how interested the other actors or characters were in Skid. As a result, he began to feel a real sense of empathy for him, to see him through their eyes. He was able to relinquish his personal feelings about the role and tap into ‘genuinely creative feelings’ (TA, 91) that had ‘new, health-giving and invigorating forces’ (PA, 147). He learnt that only compassion ‘severs the bonds of your personal limitations and gives you deep access into the inner life of the character you study’ (TA, 90). Chekhov suddenly knew effortlessly what to do and the performance seemed to be happening to him, rather than him generating the performance. He describes how the energy coursing through his and Skid’s being ‘knew no limits’ and ‘could do anything!’ (PA, 145). He describes becoming a spectator of his own acting, how his consciousness had ‘split into two’ (PA, 145), experiencing himself both in the auditorium and standing beside himself. His performance was a huge success. From this experience, he began to build his ideas One of the several influences on early Stanislavsky when he first started work on his ‘system’ was the dramatic dialogue, ‘Paradox of the Actor’ (1883) by French philosopher, Denis Diderot (1713–84), which stressed that maximum theatrical effect depends on how artfully the actor conveys emotion rather than simply feel it. 20 The play is by George Watters and Arthur Hopkins, originally called Burlesque, and was performed in Vienna, 1928. Chekhov describes how the character eluded him (PA, 144–7). 19

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of divided consciousness in performance and to consolidate the idea of working from the higher self to harness our creative freedom. Inspired acting allows us to inhabit the present moment and to respond entirely to spontaneous impulses. It becomes possible in the state of divided consciousness and is frequently depicted in actors’ accounts of their most vivid recollections. The French actor BenoîtConstant Coquelin recounts that ‘one part … is the performer, the instrumentalist; another, the instrument to be played on’ (Leach 2004, 81) and the Polish director and actor, Jerzy Grotowski, describes how the actor is ‘creator, model and creation rolled into one’ (Grotowski 1968, 257). The Italian actor Tommaso Salvini (1829–1915), cited by both Stanislavsky and Chekhov, describes the state as a sort of double life where it is possible both to laugh and at the same time analyse the laughter (Carnicke 2009, 142). Many of us will recognize this experience in an improvisation, where we seem to be firing on all cylinders, a sensation similar to playing sport when we feel that we are sure-footed, in a flow.21 Chekhov assures us that all actors feel this phenomenon ‘intuitively, instinctively’ when we are working well (AA, 2:7) and asserts that we can train ourselves to make it conscious and available to us more readily in performance. It is not simply an idea: it is a tangible state of being that can be cultivated through regular practice. Access to this useful distance created between our acting (the character) and our awareness of our acting (ourselves) is what technique offers us. Although our character may cry, weep, scream, terrorize or rejoice on stage, we as actors must remain unattached to these feelings on a personal level and be able to leave them behind after the curtain call. We can, and indeed must, fully experience and be immersed in them in real time, but we must never be lost to them. It is not a badge of honour to be possessed by a role; rather we ‘must stand facing it’, in Steiner’s words, so that the part becomes ‘objective’, where we experience it as our ‘creation’ (TOA, 156). This is what it means to work artistically. We might say that Chekhov’s philosophy resides in these three principles of creative individuality, higher self and divided consciousness. I like to think of them as a set of invisible guidelines that frame the Sharon Marie Carnicke relates this to US psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow in athletes and performers (Carnicke 2009, 130). 21

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ethical and wider-reaching dimensions of his technique. When teaching or directing, I discuss them while working on the tools presented in Part One; they provide a basis from which to work, reminding us that art has meaning and purpose beyond our professional goals and personal ambition. From here, you can jump straight into the tools in Chapter 1. For an understanding of the artistic and political climate in which Chekhov worked, read on.

A NOTE ON THE CONTEXT OF CHEKHOV’S WORK Chekhov’s life and career is well documented elsewhere,1 so only the most essential contextual information is provided here. I will focus on the extraordinary period of socio-political change and artistic innovation during which he lived: early-twentieth-century Russia. This chapter might equally be read at the end of the book.

Imperial Russia Chekhov’s early work as a young actor-artist in Moscow coincided with the period in history when the Russian Empire, under a succession of emperors or Tsars, collapsed and became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Tsarist Russia was a profoundly conservative place, ruled by an explicitly autocratic regime;2 its society remained semifeudal, shaped by forms of class difference that were almost as rigid as a caste system. The horizons of ordinary people were severely limited by material hardship, direct oppression and relentlessly exploitative As well as MC, Pitches 2006 and Black 1987, see the introductions of Mala Power (TA, xxv–xlv); Andrey Kirillov (PA, 1–10); Deirdre Hurst du Prey (Senelick 1992, 158–70); Mel Gordon (LP, 11–18). 2 Even after unprecedented unrest led to open revolution in 1905, the basic principle of the Russian constitution remained the assertion, as the Fundamental Laws of 1906 put it, that ‘the Emperor of all Russia is an autocratic and unrestricted monarch’, and ‘to obey his supreme authority … God himself commands’ (Smith 2017, 16). 1

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working conditions. Both social and cultural life were governed by tradition-bound conventions that resisted radical challenge as a matter of course. Even the theatres were largely showpieces of Tsarist propaganda and six were directly controlled as Imperial theatres. Although they held a virtual monopoly on public performances in St Petersburg and Moscow, they were financially and administratively controlled by the Imperial Court and were subject to strict censorship; even artistic decisions about artists and programming were managed centrally. The Maly Theatre, where Chekhov himself first trained, was one such theatre.3 Within this context, at the close of the nineteenth century, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko set up the Moscow Art Theatre with the aim of bringing high-quality artistic productions to more of a general public; it would be funded privately by shareholders, largely by members of a nascent middle class, so as to be minimally restricted by State-imposed terms and conditions.4 Over the first years of the twentieth century, however, popular discontent with the general state of affairs grew rapidly, a situation which was escalated further by the demoralizing, near catastrophic impact of Russia’s involvement in the First World War. The transformative events of the 1917 Revolution ended almost two hundred years of autocracy and opened a period of extraordinary optimism and uncertainty. The Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, the autocracy collapsed, and mass participation in both politics and culture became a real possibility in Russia for the first time.

The Russian revolution When the Bolsheviks took power in October 1917, led by Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) and Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), their solution to the most pressing problems – ending the war with Germany, distributing land to the peasants, empowering the industrial workers of St Petersburg and Moscow – encountered immediate resistance from the old elite. The civil war that followed (1918–21) polarized the country and left much of

For more on this, see Frame 1994, 164–91. For more on this, see Worrall 1996. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko wished to make the price of theatre tickets more affordable but it proved difficult to sustain. 3 4

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it destitute and in ruins. Despite the heavy cost, Bolshevik victory and the consolidation of a socialist regime in the early 1920s also solicited enormous political enthusiasm and artistic creativity; ordinary people began to play an unprecedented role in the arts and in the administration of public affairs. The period of popular enthusiasm, however, was shortlived, and by the late 1920s a new form of dictatorship had begun to emerge, within the new Soviet regime itself. Political power came to be concentrated in the hands of a small coterie around the ruthless bureaucrat Joseph Stalin (1878–1953); internal dissent was repressed, and artistic and intellectual life suffered newly stifling forms of censorship. The story of the tyrannical Stalinist regime that culminated in the great purges and show trials of 1936–9 is well known, and is an important element of Chekhov’s own personal and artistic journey. A less acknowledged history, perhaps, is that of the early years of the Revolution, before Stalin – years of extraordinary hope and possibility for many ordinary Russians. We also need to remember this side of the story, if we are to make sense of the remarkable innovations in Russian theatre, and in the arts more generally, during the revolutionary period. Pioneering artists such as Kandinsky, Malevich, Rodchenko and El Lissitzky were at the forefront of the new Constructivist and Suprematist artistic movements, alongside designers such as Popova and Stepanova. Like everyone else, Chekhov and his contemporaries were caught up in the turbulence of the day. Vakhtangov described the Revolution as ‘a hurricane the likes of which has never been seen in the history of the Earth’ and he celebrated the fact that ‘instead of telling the history of the tsars’, Russians might now focus on ‘the life of the many-faced being, whose name is the People’ (Malaev-Babel 2011, 165–6). Even the street had taken on a new appearance. Ruben Simonov, one of the actors at Vakhtangov’s studio, describes how suddenly in Moscow there were ‘no more officers in full-dress coats, no more uniform coats or uniform caps. … Instead one saw soldiers in greatcoats without soldier straps, workers in leather and cloth jackets’ (Simonov 1969, 5). He describes the presence of ‘the new master’ on the streets: ‘the working people’ (Simonov 1969, 5).5

See also Smith 2017, 104, citing Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife.

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Post-Revolutionary theatre For the theatre, all of this meant new audiences. Theatres, which in pre-Revolutionary days had been the domain of the middle and upper classes, were for the first time opened to all classes as admission was made free of charge and tickets were handed out in factories and organizations. Stanislavsky describes ‘a totally new atmosphere in the house’, consisting of ‘rich and poor … teachers, students, both men and women, coachmen, janitors, clerks from various government departments, drivers, ticket collectors, workers, servants, soldiers’ (Stanislavsky 2008, 319). He sensed how the newcomers ‘did not come to the theatre casually but apprehensively expecting something important they had never seen before’ (322). Suddenly old and new theatregoers sat side by side; the old perhaps longed to recall the former era now gone forever, the new ‘came to learn about life and how to comprehend it’ (Simonov 1969, 5). Indeed, it seemed that the Revolution polarized the population into three camps: those who were for, those against, and those who were hedging their bets, waiting passively to see which side would win out. Vakhtangov described the Revolution as ‘a red line’ which divided the world into the ‘before’ and ‘after’. He claimed that ‘there was no corner of human life through which this line has not passed, and there is no person who has not felt it in one way or another’ (Malaev-Babel 2011, 165). There were divisions within the Moscow Art Theatre, too, and in the weeks immediately following the Revolution, the theatre remained closed, uncertain about how to proceed in an atmosphere of fear, violence and hunger.6 Nick Worrall notes that the majority of members of the MAT ‘were in no sense politically committed or politically active, the older generation, especially, tending to be conservative’ (Worrall 1989, 96). It appears that Chekhov also, by and large, took a somewhat reticent stance. Nowhere in his writing, to my knowledge, do we find enthusiasm for the Revolutionary project. He stood apart from the overtly political movements that evolved in the theatre of this period and

For more on this, see Pitches 2006, 55.

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resisted the emergent materialist world view that gave rise to what he perceived as mechanistic forms of art. By contrast, other prominent theatre artists such as Vakhtangov and the actor-director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940), embraced the new socio-political climate. Meyerhold had also been an actor at the Moscow Art Theatre for four years (1898–1902), before leaving to establish his own theatre and acting system of Biomechanics. Both he and Vakhtangov at different times were invited to take leading positions in the theatre department of Narkompros, the new Commissariat of Education and Enlightenment, headed by Anatoly Lunacharsky, just after the Revolution. This was an organization set up to outline the new (and political) goals of art in the new Soviet era. Live theatre was seen as one of the most effective ways of communicating the ideas of the new order due, in part, to the fact that most of the population was illiterate. Lunacharsky himself wrote that ‘agitation and propaganda acquire particular acuity and effectiveness when they are clothed in the attractive and mighty forms of art’ (Van Norman Baer 1991, 35). Even Stanislavsky describes the palpable sense during this period that ‘people came to the theatre not to be entertained but to learn’ (Stanislavsky 2008, 319).7 Meyerhold immediately absorbed the new preoccupations into his theory and experiments. He named the period ‘Theatrical October’, believing that ‘social revolution called for a theatrical revolution’ (Van Norman Baer 1991, 45). As there was an emphasis on improving the material conditions of the proletariat, and elevating the status of the working man, the new climate celebrated industry’s capacity to use the machine efficiently to help the worker rather than oppress him. Meyerhold viewed the efficient, well-oiled, fully coordinated machine as a metaphor for the new actor who would create revolutionary forms and be free from the bourgeois indulgences and excesses of the past.

Stanislavsky goes on to describe the atmosphere one night leading up to the October Revolution: ‘A thousand men and women had gathered in the Solodovnikov theatre to see The Cherry Orchard, in which the life against whom the people were to rise was depicted. … They seemed to want to find relief in the poetry and say goodbye forever to the old life that had to be cleansed. The performance ended to loud applause, and the audience left the theatre in silence and, perhaps, who knows, there were those among them who were preparing for the new life’ (Stanislavsky 2008, 320–1). 7

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Vakhtangov also wished to contribute to this new reality of collective proletarian empowerment, but he was inspired less by the factory and more by the accessibility to culture that the new world offered, insisting that ‘if something created in the old world is beautiful, it must be brought to the people, for the people broke their silence precisely because things beautiful were always kept from them’ (Malaev-Babel 2011, 166). With the arrival of the Revolution he said simply, ‘We all felt that things in art cannot remain the same … if the artist wants to create the “new”, to create after the Revolution arrives, he must create “together” with the People. Not for them, not for the sake of them, not outside of them, but together with them’ (Malaev-Babel 2011, 152, 165). Lenin himself endorsed this approach, believing art needed to draw on its heritage, not throw it away. ‘Proletarian culture’, he declared, ‘must be the logical development of the store of knowledge mankind has accumulated under the yoke of capitalist, landowner, and bureaucratic society’ (Sopotsinsky 1978, 6). It appears that Lenin, along with Lunacharsky, had even interceded to defend Stanislavsky just after the Revolution, when his work came under attack in some quarters because it was considered to be a bourgeois irrelevance (Carnicke 2009, 201). While history reveals that this open attitude was not to last, these early years of the establishment of the USSR, from the teens to the end of the 1920s, were a period of incredible experimentation, freedom and innovation across the board, not least in the arts. During this period, revolutionary politics and radical non-traditional art forms were seen as complementary. Everywhere there was an expression, in Nancy Van Norman Baer’s words, of ‘hope for the new Russia … nothing seemed too radical or impossible, and in virtually every artistic medium experiment prevailed’ (Van Norman Baer 1991, 36). The theatre saw a proliferation of interest: ‘More than 3,000 theatrical organizations flourished, serving an audience of hundreds of thousands of newly liberated workers, peasants and intellectuals. One theatre historian compared the interest to an epidemic: “never and nowhere had such a phenomenon been witnessed in modern history”’ (Van Norman Baer 1991, 35). In spite of his resistance to the materialist perspectives he saw unfolding in artists such as Meyerhold and Vakhtangov, Chekhov could nevertheless appreciate that this was the reality of the present day and

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he praised in particular Vakhtangov’s special ability ‘to poeticise this reality’ and seek ‘a whole and harmonious’ relationship with it (Worrall 1989, 96). Indeed, in the long term, this preoccupation with how to answer the spirit of the times through innovative artistic practice came to have a significant influence on Chekhov as a broader principle.

New theatrical forms Meyerhold quickly came to be recognized as the leading theatrical innovator of the revolutionary years. Whereas Stanislavsky desired the audience to lose themselves in the reality of what was happening on stage, Meyerhold anticipates Brecht in never wanting the audience to forget they were watching a performance. His production of Maeterlinck’s Sister Beatrice (1906) for example, involved slow motion movement, still poses and speech delivered without inflection. In rejecting psychology altogether, he exploded the idea of an invisible ‘fourth wall’ between stage and audience. While Meyerhold and Chekhov never directly worked together, they were familiar with each other’s work. Meyerhold admired Chekhov’s physically expressive performances at the Moscow Art Theatre and attempted on several occasions to entice him to perform in his company, including when Chekhov was in exile (PA, 3). Indeed, Meyerhold acknowledged that his ideas for his own seminal production of The Inspector General in 1926 were inspired by Chekhov’s ‘real and fantastical’ interpretation of Khlestakov in Stanislavsky’s 1921 production (Picon Vallin 2004, 275).8 Chekhov, for his part, acknowledged the bold stylistic and aesthetic innovations of Meyerhold. His theatre rejected psychology in favour of physical mastery, formal organization and expressivity: it was work that revealed its own mechanics and celebrated its rigorous, explicit theatricality.9 Chekhov praised Meyerhold’s ‘tremendous imagination’

Picon Vallin notes a description of Chekhov’s performance as ‘quick and changeable, light like a soap bubble, pathetic and mischievous, surprising at every moment’ (Picon Vallin 2004, 275). 9 Indeed, when Stanislavsky began to search for new forms of theatre to respond to the Symbolist plays emerging at that time, it was to Meyerhold he turned as a potential 8

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(DP, 39) and ‘his amazing ability to look beyond life’s realities, to probe much deeper and farther than those true-to-life replicas which Stanislavsky loved so much’ (DP, 39). He also admired Meyerhold’s criterion for theatre-making: make it true to your own imagination rather than true to life. In this way, Meyerhold asserted the primacy of his authorship of a production. He inserted new characters into his production of The Inspector General, the charwoman and the sinister ‘officer in transit’, and felt free to borrow from other appropriate texts or include his own writing wherever it served his purposes (DP, 42): he ‘reimagined everything’, Chekhov writes, ‘he reconstructed everything, he destroyed reality’ (DP, 39). If Chekhov ultimately rejected Meyerhold’s approach, it was because ‘he saw everything from its evil side’ and ‘dug the cruellest things out of human beings and events, their darkest deeds and most frightening qualities’ (DP, 40). Nevertheless, Chekhov could not help but admire Meyerhold’s capacity for invention, his search for non-naturalistic theatre forms and his distinctive creative individuality. He confesses that ‘I had always wanted to work on a role under his direction’ (PA, 154), but it never came to pass. Meyerhold was also an inspiration to Vakhtangov whose artistic ideas had perhaps the most significant influence on Chekhov, in part because they were developed with and alongside him. Vakhtangov felt that Meyerhold was ‘the only one who felt the theatricality’ (Malaev-Babel 2011, 151) and shared his assessment of the naturalistic performance style of the Moscow Art Theatre productions at that time as out-ofdate.10 He felt that ‘the petty problems, the self-analysis, the rummaging in one’s soul, so typical of the theatres of the pre-Revolutionary period, must be done away with’ (Simonov 1969, 149) and replaced instead with ‘fantastic realism’.11 This approach preserves psychological truth

collaborator, asking him to lead what was historically the MAT’s very first studio of experimentation in 1905 (PA, 205). However, the relationship was short-lived due to insurmountable problems of artistic incompatibility. 10 I am convinced by Sharon Marie Carnicke’s argument that Stanislavsky’s system of acting and ‘experiencing’ is not synonymous with Naturalism and how throughout his career, Stanislavsky sought new performance styles beyond psychological realism, explored in his experimental studios. I merely outline here the perception of this ensemble of artists towards the theatrical style of the Moscow Art Theatre productions during the period roughly between 1917 and 1924. 11 Worrall translates it as ‘imaginative realism’ (Worrall 1989, 139).

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as defined by Stanislavsky’s system but intensifies and heightens it with ‘sculptural’ theatricality (Malaev-Babel 2011, 156). Indeed, Vakhtangov also cites Chekhov’s seminal performance of Khlestakov as inspirational and ‘in the method of fantastic realism’ (Malaev-Babel 2011,  158), and it is perhaps no coincidence that Chekhov created another of his most successful characterizations in the same year (1921), that of the lead role in Strindberg’s Erik XIV under Vakhtangov’s direction. The latter’s ideas of discovering ‘a form harmonious with the content’ (Malaev-Babel 2011, 157) and seeking synthesis between internal and external expression were to take root as essential components of Chekhov’s own technique. If Vakhtangov asserts that it ‘goes without saying’ that ‘theatre should be theatrical’ (Malaev-Babel 2011, 154), Chekhov concurs, criticizing pure naturalism as ‘a stale piece of bread which you cannot eat’ (AIT, 191) because it ‘draws the actor’s attention towards the uncreative dimension of his personality’ (Kirillov 2009, 31). Truth of emotions must be balanced by a true and necessary theatricality.12 If Chekhov sums up Stanislavsky’s art as one of trying to ‘persuade his audiences that they were not in a theatre, that his performances were real life’ and Meyerhold’s work as a process of being ‘taken by the scruff of the neck and thrown out of this world and into another of his own imagining’ (DP, 43), it is ultimately with Vakhtangov’s approach that he identifies. The latter always strove to remind spectators that they were watching theatre; his work was neither ‘too naturalistic or too illusional’, it was neither ‘Stanislavsky’s reality or Meyerhold’s otherworld images’ yet incorporated ‘the powerful feelings of truth’ (DP,  43) employed by both. This inspiration from Vakhtangov, referred to by Chekhov as ‘juicy theatre’ (DP, 43), permeates his own philosophy and technique.

In an otherwise appreciative lecture given to the Drama Society of Hollywood, Chekhov said of his teacher Stanislavsky’s obsession with being true to life: ‘I never stopped wondering what was so imaginative and creative about merely copying life around us in every detail, photographically as it were, and I regarded it as one of the beclouded facets of Stanislavsky’s many-sided talent’ (DP, 39). Chekhov’s exile from Russia means that, perhaps, he was somewhat unable to appreciate that Stanislavsky also came to search for new theatrical forms. 12

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The Stalin years and socialist realism If, despite Vakhtangov’s passionate example, Chekhov seemed to resist the post-Revolutionary fervour, Jonathan Pitches points out that the shifting mood brought about by the rise to power of Stalin following Lenin’s death in 1924 ‘further distanced him from a culture he considered to be materialistic, superficial and mechanical’ (Pitches 2006, 129). As early as 1921–2, Chekhov asserts that he considered the theatrical world to be ‘a huge organised lie’ (PA, 13). Whether such thoughts were exacerbated by Vakhtangov’s premature death from cancer in 1922, his second great ally after Sulerzhitsky, it is hard to say,13 but it is clear that some of the more introspective, Steiner-inspired ideas he was exploring did not resonate with the newly dominant ideology of 1920s Russia: the lower and higher ego, the Romantic notion of man’s inter-connectedness with nature, as well as Eurythmy, a system of archetypal gestures which expresses the invisible movement or essence in speech, feelings and music. Chekhov emphasized in his art man’s relationship to the universe as a whole rather than the social and political world around him; he was more interested in psychological than material forces, spiritual elevation more than proletarian revolution.14 While the early post-Revolution years celebrated the life of the ordinary working civilian, championed worker’s rights and collective ownership, promoted industrial and artistic innovation, under Stalin all artistic practice was subordinated to furthering the goals of Communism and was considered a tool for propaganda. Although socialist realism didn’t become state policy until 1932, there were signs that the range

In the period between the Revolution and his departure from the Soviet Union, Chekhov experienced, in addition to bouts of mental illness, the deaths of his mother, Sulerzhitsky and his cousin, as well as a divorce from his wife Olga Knipper Chekhova who won custody of their daughter. Olga, whom Chekhov met at the Moscow Art Theatre, became a highly successful and controversial actress in Germany, accused of being a Nazi sympathizer. When Chekhov himself went to Germany, he acted in several films with her. Chekhov later married Xenia Ziller in 1918 who accompanied him to Europe and the United States. 14 Chekhov began to read Steiner’s Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment in 1922, and subsequently travelled to Germany and the Netherlands to meet Steiner and hear him lecture and teach. He describes being impressed with Steiner’s non-authoritative tone and his encounter with Steiner’s ideas as ‘the happiest period’ in his life (PA, 135). Later in 1930, he undertook a more formal training in Eurythmy and Speech Formation at a Rudolf Steiner school in Germany, which he followed with an intensive period of study. 13

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of art considered suitable for the new world was narrowing as early as 1924. Artists became employees of the state, obliged to conform to the socialist cause of portraying the worker in an ideal, heroic and ‘true to life’ light.15 Experimental, formalist, impressionist, cubist, expressionist, surrealist, eventually constructivist art, too, were all eventually banned; they were considered bourgeois, decadent, belonging to the old world and unintelligible to the proletariat. Access to foreign art and literature was restricted. Those who strayed from the party line risked persecution and were often ‘liquidated’. Even the revolutionary enthusiasms of Meyerhold couldn’t survive such ideological pressure. He came to be labelled a formalist and was tortured, forced to confess to charges of spying and executed in 1940. As is well documented, many artists, intellectuals and old Bolsheviks suffered the same fate. However, Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre were an exception and were adopted as the icon of socialist realism. Their proven commitment to nineteenth-century realism and ‘historical exactitude’ (Pitches 2006, 164) was co-opted for the Soviet enterprise. Marie Christine Autant-Mathieu states how they came to be considered as the Soviet ‘showpiece of theatrical policy’, enjoyed special privileges and that Stanislavsky himself became ‘the officially sanctioned acting and directing teacher’ (Carnicke 2009, 85).16 While this, no doubt, presented some difficulties and compromises for Stanislavsky, not least censorship, homogenization of his system, and isolation, it also meant the wide-scale dissemination of his ideas and practice. Michael Chekhov was not so fortunate. At a time when theatre was encouraged to be accountable and instructive, Chekhov was exploring Steiner’s spiritual forces, fairy tales and the actor’s inner power. You could say he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the year of his departure from Russia in 1928, he wrote to Lunacharsky complaining that he had been driven out of Russia because ‘those who control the theatre have become completely hostile to all the interests essential to the art of the theatre’ (Smeliansky 1993, 162–3).17 While he never explicitly mentioned Steiner in his teaching at MAAT 2, his experiments

See Pitches 2006, 48; Carnicke 2009, 85. For more on this, see Pitches 2006, 55. 17 See also Pitches 2006, 163–4. 15 16

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with Steiner’s movement and speech eurythmy exercises (1925) were reported to the authorities and he was ‘requested’ to cease teaching them (at this time there was a campaign against any group perceived as ‘religious’ by the General Political Agency, the secret police and forerunner to the KGB (PA, 219)).18 This was compounded by the resignation of sixteen actors in the Studio who declared opposition to Chekhov’s new methodology. His productions of this period at MAAT 2, two of which were his famous Hamlet (1924) and Petersburg (1925), an adaptation of the novel by Andrey Bely (1880–1934), were also condemned as mystical, ‘alien and reactionary’ (DR, 13).19 In particular, he chose to emphasize the spiritual crisis of Hamlet, an isolated figure struggling against the prevailing political expediency of the court. His interpretation was interpreted in many quarters as a critical comment on the materialist climate in the post-Revolutionary Soviet regime. Although Lunacharsky himself conferred upon Chekhov the rank of Honoured Actor of the State Academic Theatre for his performance, and MAAT 2 under his directorship was considered in many circles as ‘one of the best, most interesting and popular theatres in Moscow’ (PA, 213), by 1927, Chekhov began to fall out of favour in the press and beyond because he appeared to promote the kind of bourgeois, apolitical and selfinterested values that the Revolution sought to undercut. Chekhov was invited by the German director, Max Reinhardt (1873–1943), to perform in Berlin and he was granted permission to leave Russia in 1928. He left with his second wife Xenia, never to return. In the same letter to Lunacharsky cited above, he requested leave to return to Russia from Berlin, suggesting, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, that he could take up the artistic directorship of a theatre in Moscow which would be ‘free of political conjuncture and could act primarily as an institution of art’ (PA, 219). This and his continued affirmation of spiritual beliefs are themselves enough to reveal a level of naiveté in Chekhov about the party machine and would certainly seem to have In 1924 Chekhov took over the First Studio after Vakhtangov’s death, reconstituted as the Second Moscow Art Theatre or MAAT 2. 19 Chekhov performed in these productions and although he did not take credit as director, he greatly influenced the direction overall alongside his fellow actor-director collaborators, Valentin Smyshlyaev, Vladimir Tatarinov and Alexander Cheban. For a detailed account of the Hamlet rehearsals, see PT, 237–79. 18

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sealed his fate to a life in exile. He didn’t receive a reply. Chekhov’s artistic directorship of MAAT 2 was officially dissolved in October 1928; he realized that not only the party but the priorities of the members of MAAT 2 did not ‘coincide with the ideal and artistic goals which I had in mind for the theatre as its leader. … Only the idea of a new theatre in general, the idea of a new theatre art can fascinate me and stimulate my creative work’ (PA, 219, Chekhov’s emphasis). From this point forth, building on the inspiration of Stanislavsky, Sulerzhitsky and Vakhtangov, but now alone and from a position of exile, Chekhov would seek to forge a path for his new theatre, shaped by a set of ideals that I will discuss in the conclusion. In the meantime, he suffered the fate of other émigrés. In accordance with Stalinist policy, Chekhov was effectively disappeared and as Carnicke points out he was considered ‘as good as dead to Soviet theatre history until a decade after his physical death when Khrushchev’s “thaw” in the arts made a few articles about him possible’ (Carnicke 2009, 97).20 However, great efforts were made by a private circle of his students to disseminate his work, in particular by Russian actress and director Maria Knebel (1898–1985), who was largely responsible for assembling the first-ever Russian-language edition of Chekhov’s works that appeared in 1986.21 Although Chekhov died in 1955, he wasn’t really rehabilitated in Russia until the 1980s and only in recent decades is there a sense that finally, his moment has come.

Chekhov in exile and Chekhov Theatre Studio Despite offers of work and a plausible theatrical future in Berlin, his first destination in exile, Chekhov and his wife moved to Paris in 1931 and met Georgette Boner, a young director and student of Reinhardt who

Inna Soloviova describes how ‘for most of the people who stayed in Russia those who had gone abroad actually did cease to exist. All ties were severed. There was no way of finding out whether an émigré was alive or dead. Historians of the arts had to fight for the right to mention that émigrés had actually existed even before their departure: the inroads of official propaganda went that far’ (Carnicke 2009, 98; Senelick 1992, 70). 21 See Hodge 2010, 99–116. 20

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pledged to help him create his own productions. This European period is marked by an inability to fund and hold onto a company of his own, although he did have a happy and productive interlude performing and directing at the Latvian State Theatre in Riga (1932) and in Kaunas, Lithuania (1933). Indeed, there were plans to set up an actor’s studio in Riga, but a fascist coup in 1933 in Latvia put an end to future projects there. In 1934, Boner and Chekhov hired a group of Russian émigrés, some from the First Studio, to form the Moscow Art Players (viewed by some as a rather cheeky take-off of the Moscow Art Theatre), to play a series of plays of the Russian repertoire in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. They achieved some critical success with this in 1935, with Chekhov reprising many of his best roles, including that of Khlestakov. In New York, as well as meeting with Stella Adler and members of the Group Theatre, Chekhov met Beatrice Straight, a young actress and daughter of Dorothy Elmhirst who founded Dartington Hall, near Totnes in Devonshire, England. Dorothy Elmhirst, along with her second husband, Leonard, had created at Dartington a school and community devoted to progressive learning in sustainability and experimental agriculture, crafts, building and the performing arts. Beatrice, on seeing Chekhov’s performances, believed that she had found the right person to run a theatre studio there. Chekhov accepted her offer and in October 1936, the Chekhov Theatre Studio at Dartington opened to offer a three-year full-time actor training course to twenty students from United States, Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Germany, Austria and Lithuania (DR, 18). The students auditioned for the school and the whole enterprise was funded by the Elmhirsts. At Dartington, Chekhov was able to develop his actor training technique in a fully supported environment. He felt great connection to the natural surroundings of the thousand-acre estate in the Devonshire countryside, often conducting his classes outdoors. Dorothy Elmhirst’s son, William, described how his mother felt that Chekhov had led her ‘into a deeper awareness of nature’ (DY). This environment surely provided inspiration for Chekhov’s ideas on form, gesture and atmosphere. He was also in the company of a whole range of creative artists: Bernard Leach (1887–1979) taught pottery there, the American expressionist painter Mark Tobey (1890–1976) taught drawing, Kurt Jooss (1901–79), a student of Rudolf Laban (1879–1958) re-established the Jooss-Leeder School of Dance and the Ballets Jooss and Laban

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himself arrived there from Nazi Germany in 1937, assisted by his long-term partner Lisa Ullman (1907–85).22 This remarkable conjunction of talents and interests was certainly in line with Chekhov’s own ideals and must surely have contributed to the development of his ideas. Chekhov’s time at Dartington was cut short when the prospect of the Second World War started to loom, and in December 1938, the Elmhirsts and he decided to relocate the studio to the United States. Once again, the Elmhirsts set him up with new premises in Ridgefield, Connecticut (Dorothy herself was American, but she stayed in Dartington; it was Beatrice who accompanied Chekhov). Here, they set up the Chekhov Theatre Studio Players to take work out on tour at the end of the training. George Shdanoff, also a Russian émigré, who assisted Chekhov in all his studios until the end of his life, followed Chekhov from Dartington to the Ridgefield studio. While critics deemed their first experimental production, The Possessed, an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Demons, a failure,23 later work between 1940 and 1942 (Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Dickens’ The Cricket on the Hearth and a stylized production of King Lear) toured successfully all over America, including high schools and community theatres as well as Broadway. Chekhov also established a studio in New York city to teach biweekly classes to professional actors, but the Second World War draft soon meant that the studios were disbanded. In 1942, Chekhov moved to Hollywood where he appeared in many films, receiving an Academy Award Nomination for his role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). For the most part, it seemed that he found this career in cinema somewhat dissatisfying because his roles were mostly confined to playing eccentric Russian émigrés. However, throughout this period until his death, Chekhov, along with Shdanoff,

For an insight into the influence these artists had on Chekhov, see PT, 189–203. Critics praised the acting highly, but the language of the play was considered too ‘stilted, the sequences too disjointed and episodic, and the style in which it was written too bombastic. Also, there was not a real audience for “serious” drama with a political message on Broadway at that time’ (MC/S1/12; 3/6/2, ‘Dorothy Elmhirst and Michael Chekhov’). Mala Powers (1931–2007), American actress and former student of Chekhov’s, writes that it was considered ‘too heavy and too ponderously Russian for the critics’ (TA, xxxix). The New York Times wrote that ‘it conveys none of the spontaneity of a work of art’ (DR, 19). It was co-directed and adapted by George Shdanoff, with a set by the artist Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (1875–1957). 22 23

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also coached professional actors in Hollywood and gave lectures to the Drama Society in Los Angeles. The impressive list of his students is often cited: Mala Powers, Jack Palance, Eddie Grove, John Barrymore, Jennifer Jones, Jack Klugman, Sam Levine, Jack Colvin, in addition to Brynner, Peck, Monroe and Quinn cited earlier. Students of the Dartington and Ridgefield Studios also went on to build successful careers: Paul Rogers worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company for many years and won a Tony for The Homecoming (1967) and a BAFTA Television Award. Hurd Hatfield achieved fame playing the title role in the film The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), among others; Ford Rainey had a substantial career in cinema and TV in Los Angeles; Beatrice Straight won an Academy Award for Network (1976) and had a successful stage career in New York. One other person who was a crucial collaborator for Chekhov during this period at Dartington was Deirdre Hurst du Prey, who wrote down in shorthand every class Chekhov conducted. Her notes provided source material for Chekhov’s publications and they now form part of the extensive Michael Chekhov archive in Exeter, England. I frequently refer to a condensed version of the notes entitled The Actor is the Theatre and other transcripts throughout. Chekhov’s period in exile marks an encounter with a more commercial and more pressured way of making theatre, far from the long periods of rehearsal he had experienced in Moscow, and faced with the reality of audiences in need of light entertainment in the midst or aftermath of war. While his personal writing reveals much frustration and disillusionment with the theatre he witnessed around him, it also galvanized him to change it. The Chekhov Theatre Studio Players period may have been the closest he got to offering new work along the ensemble model he desired and while producing theatre effectively ended for him when he got to Hollywood, he began to adapt his technique to answer another need: to aid actors to meet the demands for ‘instant’ acting required in film and television. His objective of empowering actors in an atmosphere where they could easily feel they count for nothing crystallized and he devoted his time to this project until his death in 1955. In 1980, actors and former students of Chekhov, Beatrice Straight and Robert Cole founded the Michael Chekhov Studio in New York and began to pass on Chekhov’s legacy to the next generation of actors and teachers. Today, thanks to the efforts of the Michael Chekhov

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Association (MICHA) in the United States, Michael Chekhov Europe and Michael Chekhov UK, to name but a few of the groups he inspired, new studios are opening, the network of practitioners is growing, and the technique is beginning to form part of mainstream actor training programmes.

Publications In 1953 in New York, Chekhov published his book, To the Actor on the Technique of Acting. This was the third attempt to complete a satisfactory text in English. In 1942, following the advice of Stanislavsky and Steiner and with the help of his students Deirdre Hurst du Prey, Paul Marshall Allen and Hurd Hatfield, Chekhov had completed an early version of To the Actor. It was more detailed than the final version and was rejected by publishers. Chekhov was ultimately dissatisfied with this version and rewrote his own version in Russian, On the Technique of Acting and had it published at his own expense in 1946. The book was smuggled into the Soviet Union and was read by actors there. Chekhov retranslated On the Technique of Acting from Russian back into English and asked Charles Leonard, a Hollywood producer and director to edit it. This ‘streamlined’ version (TOA, xxxiii) was published in 1953 as To the Actor. It was republished in an expanded and revised edition in 2002 as To the Actor on the Technique of Acting and this remains his single most widely studied text. However, a re-edited version of the Russian On the Technique of Acting 1942 text (by Mala Powers) is available as a separate book in English, also entitled On the Technique of Acting, and contains the exercises and narratives taken out for the original 1953 book. Both books together are the best place to start to investigate Chekhov’s technique; the other works cited here, both by Chekhov and contemporary practitioners, are useful complements to the core texts.

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PART ONE

PREPARATION

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1 THE IDEAL CENTRE1 ‘Spend your power lavishly; it is inexhaustible, and the more you give, the more it will accumulate in you’ (TA, 9).

Imagine that in the middle of your chest, about two inches deep below the surface near the heart, and connected at its base to your solar plexus, there is a ‘centre’. Think of it as moderate in size, neither very big nor small. Sense that this place is the source of all your vitality, a sort of launch pad for your power. Consider your whole body as if ‘centralized’ around this dynamic point (LP, 84), a locus of potential and possibility. Allow an image to emerge and notice any sensations that arise in the body. You may imagine it as warm and glowing, or have a sense of something vibrating; I like to think of it as a bubbling source under pressure which contains a hidden, almost thermal energy. This energy could escape, dissipate or explode but imagine that you can contain, channel and direct it. Allow your mouth to fall slightly open, tongue sitting in the bottom of the mouth and jaw free. Focus on a specific place or object in the room and imagine that the very act of looking begins at the invigorating source. As you observe, picture the source pulsating with life and allow it actively to clarify your vision. This is Chekhov’s ideal centre. There is no set way to begin exploring the Chekhov technique, but I like to start with the ideal centre because it gets to the nub of the question of impulse. For many years, I remained puzzled and sceptical when I was directed to follow my impulses as an actor. Frankly, I didn’t know what that meant. What were my

Ideal centre is outlined in TA, 7–8; TOA, 44; HA, 46–8; MC, 137–8.

1

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impulses and where did they come from, in fact? The command to act on them only served to shut me down and left me lamenting my lack of spontaneous inspiration. My encounter with Chekhov’s notion of the ideal centre, together with a feeling of ease and receiving, both of which we will look at in subsequent chapters, was immensely liberating because on the one hand, it proposed a concrete process to draw on as a point of departure and on the other, it opened up a direct way for me to listen to my own inner life and to perceive my breathing, sensations and feelings. I realized that to follow an impulse you have to hear it in the first place; in other words, you have to be able to listen, both to yourself, your partners and the world around you. Nobody had ever really taught me how to listen with my body or whole being, as it were. There was an assumption that I already knew how to do that. Yet my experience in directing and teaching has proven that it is what performers tend to do least well, or forget about the most often.

Clearing a space The ideal centre promotes two important beginning points for developing an ability to listen: a sensation of inner spaciousness along with a feeling of calm. Anyone who has practised techniques such as meditation or yoga will recognize something of this feeling. Screen-writer Julia Cameron describes a similar sensation: ‘Art is an act of tuning in and dropping down the well. … As artists, we drop down the well into the stream. We hear what’s down there and we act on it – more like taking dictation than anything fancy having to do with art’ (Cameron 1993, 118). On the simplest level, the ideal centre creates first and foremost a tangible sense that we have an inner life. It cultivates the idea that as actors we are never empty inside, we are never starting from nothing, or certainly, we shouldn’t be. We need to be in touch with our inner world because our aim in performance is that there is always something happening internally, an alert, aware state of being from which impulse is born and through which we communicate. When we’re working on a play or character, any inner emotional ‘fullness’ is determined by the relationships and circumstances within that story; the ideal centre,

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however, is a condition that we need to be in touch with prior to determining such specifics. It prepares us for them. The ideal centre aims to cultivate an almost innocent state, so to speak, one that is uncontaminated by preconceived ideas, old feelings or obstructions. We clear our inner life, that is, mind, imagination, feelings, desires, of personal clutter so that a process of listening can begin. Our aim is to find a clear starting point, like a clean canvas.2 It is a foundation which prepares the creative ground for an ideal artistic outcome. Everything we do on stage begins at this source and returns to it. It frames everything we do with a conscious, awake state of readiness, and a sense of potential.

The ideal Chekhov chooses the word ‘ideal’ very deliberately, insisting that we cannot embark upon any serious artistic endeavour ‘without a spirit of idealism’ (DP, 29). Throughout his life and work he sought to define his own artistic ideal, epitomized, above all, in his vision for a new kind of theatre. At the root of this utopia is ‘the ideal artist’ who needs to be ‘like a powerful tropical plant which is full of quick, luxuriant growth’ (AIT, 103). Chekhov invites us to get in touch with our ideals. Who and what are the great artists and works of art that inspire you? What kind of actor or theatre-maker do you want to be? Who are your role models? Which character are you aspiring to play? What do you long to create? If Chekhov admired the theatre productions of Vakhtangov, it was because he considered the latter an artist who ‘implemented his ideals step by step in the works he directed’ (LE, 25), in particular, by challenging his actors to rely less on the content given by the playwright and more on the power of their own means of expression, that is, their acting and imagination.3 Chekhov’s proposition is that we engage actively with Israeli director and teacher David Zinder describes the ideal centre as a clear pool of water (AT). 3 According to Chekhov, Vakhtangov insisted that if the acting is good enough, an audience should be able to understand everything, even if it is in a foreign language (LE, 25). The Russian critic Pavel Markov describes Chekhov’s vision of the actor not only as ‘the creator of a certain ideal’ but of ‘a liberated life’ (Byckling 2011, 64). 2

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our ideals which ‘will only take form if you are working very regularly in their creation’ (LT, 54). When we approach any role, production, scene partner, rehearsal, class, script or performance with a conscious sense of aspiration, we edge closer to a concrete realization of our ideal, even if on the face of it, the conditions we inhabit seem far from it. While our ideals may guide us towards the realization of our more distant goals, they can and must influence our daily practice. The path begins with the concrete reality of ourselves and our body. Chekhov invites us to picture that our actual bodies, however imperfect, are already in a sense ideal, the perfect canvas for our future creations in performance. By regularly imagining that we have a perfect, welltuned instrument, we will come to feel as if we do have one and begin ‘to make the greatest possible use of it’ (TA, 8). Chekhov invites us to embrace ‘the psychology of an ideal body, even if we do not have a physical one’ (LP, 85). As long as we resist being merely ‘satisfied with a very vague feeling’, it will inspire and guide us (LT, 55). Working with the ideal centre creates the sensation of the ideal body; our limbs begin to take on its qualities of power and vitality, activating a sense of poised confidence. It also lays a crucial foundation for the actor’s later work, the act of imagining and transforming into other bodies or characters.

Location of the centre A question that often comes up among students new to Chekhov’s teaching is why the ideal centre is located in the chest. We know that it is common in acting traditions to refer to the performer’s centre placed somewhere lower down in the body, either around the navel, lumbar or abdomen. Japanese Kabuki and Nō performers consider the centre to be the area of the hips; Stanislavsky proposed that the centre of gravity is best experienced at the ‘lowest vertebra’ of the spine, ‘well screwed in place … where this so-called screw is strong’ (Barba 1995, 177); Meyerhold centralized the actor’s body in the solar plexus, naming it the ‘gruperovka’, the point around which the body gathers. Why then does Chekhov insist on the chest as the optimal location? David Zinder offers the insight that when we refer to ourselves, and say ‘I’, the chest is ‘the place we invariably point to’ (BV, 120), suggesting that this area of the body symbolically carries within it an association with self.

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Pitches points out that Chekhov drew specifically on Steiner in placing the actor’s core in the chest because it is the location of the heart which Steiner considers to be our soul or ‘the centre of our dreams’ (Pitches 2006, 154). It is also worth noting that the ideal centre is located in the torso of the body which is what Chekhov calls our feeling centre, the core of which is the heart. Throughout his work, Chekhov asserts that the actor’s profession is based upon love and that ‘we speak of our hearts because we must appeal to ourselves as human beings’ (AIT, 71); to work as actor-artists involves open-heartedness. Situated here, the ideal centre affirms the actor’s craft as acts of empathy and generosity. For Chekhov, the physical heart is the most important organ in the body, the ‘one organ through which all our activity goes’ and essential to ‘the circulation of the will and for efforts of thinking’ (AIT, 217). The ideal centre then is situated between the will centre which is the lower part of the body (groin and legs) and the thought centre which is in the head, a bigger idea which we will return to in detail in Chapter 17. In this way, we can think of the ideal centre as the geographical heart of the body, a connecting joint between different parts of our physical and psychological being, between thoughts/head and will or desires/legs and groin. It is a hub where all aspects of our humanity intersect. I work with the ideal centre located in the centre of the chest and imaginatively ‘plugged in’ both to the heart and to the solar plexus at its root. In this way, we situate ourselves in the centre of our being, connecting not only to our sense of compassion, but also to our breath impulse and the organic process of inhaling and exhaling, of absorbing our experiences, on the one hand and expressing ourselves, on the other.

Presence Effective use of the ideal centre creates an ‘ideal’ state of receptivity. We become conscious of ourselves as physical and psychological beings. As such it is the nucleus of the psychophysical continuum. We create the capacity to come into the present moment, engage fully with what we are doing and to whom we are relating. It also puts us in touch with a sense of our own power; a short time spent imagining the ideal centre awakens the realization that we have resources at our disposal, if we choose to tap into them. On a purely practical level,

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it is an excellent tool for increasing stage presence. Other fortunate side effects include reduction or elimination of self-consciousness, a sense of confidence, positivity and ease because we have moved our attention away from our head. I recommend that you also try using it beyond the rehearsal room. We must practise imagining the ideal centre until it is present all the time and does not require special effort to conjure it up. By incorporating it consciously as a starting point in all the psychophysical exercises that follow, it will become more and more spontaneously present. After we have cultivated the centre in the chest, Chekhov suggests that we can add the quality of radiating to it, an important extension of this exercise which we will discuss in detail in Chapter 7. We can also move the centre to different places in the body, a characterization tool which we will explore in Chapter 17.

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Sense where your heart is situated in your body, close to the centre of the chest and the solar plexus; pay attention to its organic movement of expansion and contraction. Imagine that this area of your body is gently opening. Take in a person or an object in the room and open yourself to them. Notice any feelings that arise. Execute simple movements consecutively while imagining that all your power emanates from the ideal centre (TOA, 44): raise and lower your arms, point at something, walk a few steps forward and backward, sit, stand up. Contact the impulse to move before you actually move. At the end of your action, come back to the centre and imagine a stream of power from the centre flow out beyond the limits of your body. Sustain the energy from the movement even though you are entirely still. Execute some everyday activities, such as putting on your coat, drinking some water. Imagine that the centre is doing everything for you. Stay in one place but begin to move more freely and in broad movements. Each time draw the energy to move from the centre. Find as many different movements as you can and try to work asymmetrically. Then gradually draw the energy from the

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physical movement inward until you are still and the only thing that is working is the centre (AT). From stillness, imagine sending out your power from this centre. ll

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Standing still, imagine that your arms and legs themselves start in the centre of your chest, not at their actual joints. Consider your joints to be free, fluid, flexible, bearing no stiffness whatsoever. Walk through the room in different directions. Sit down, stand up, imagining that your limbs are connected only at this one place, in the centre of the chest with the image of the ideal centre. Imagine that the ideal centre is the only joint in the body. Notice the inner sensation. Walk around the room imagining that the centre in the chest is ahead of you by a few centimetres. Follow it calmly and easily, with simple, everyday activities. You don’t need to chase it or show you are following it in any way, just imagine it is there ahead of you (TA, 7). Speak a short text to an audience with the centre alive. Find the impulse to speak from the centre, and return to the centre in stillness and silence after you have finished speaking. Sustain the power of the centre at the end as you make contact with the audience. Resist scanning the audience: speak to one person at a time. If you are working alone, give yourself a fixed point in space to speak to, ensuring that your text is clearly directed to that target.

2 THE FIRST OF THE FOUR BROTHERS: FEELING OF EASE1 ‘The actor must be brave enough to say goodbye to his own stiff body’ (DR, 78).

A feeling of ease is the first of what Chekhov calls ‘the four brothers’, four qualities which he believes to be present in all great pieces of art and which the actor must cultivate and inhabit so that his body becomes ‘a piece of art within itself’ (TA, 13). The remaining ‘brothers’, which I will discuss in the subsequent chapters, are feeling of form, beauty and entirety. The more I work with the technique, the more I believe that effective performance cannot happen without some version of these qualities. Although they may appear as somewhat elusive or general terms, as actors, we can nevertheless cultivate them as feelings, sensations or ‘psychological qualities’ (TOA, 48) in which to ground our work. While their ostensible purpose is to make the actor’s instrument ‘more artistic, flexible and expressive on the stage’ (TOA, 48), they also foster a certain creative state of mind and as such, I consider them a way of approaching our artistic practice at large.

The four brothers are outlined in TOA, 48–57; TA, 13–19; HA, 25–7; MC, 121–7; LP, 82–6; LT, 31–6, 45; RS, 313–14. 1

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Recall a time in your life when you felt joyful, uncomplicated and free. It may be a recent memory or from the distant past. Spend some time visualizing this memory, and enjoying it. As you contemplate it, begin to notice what is happening in your body: are you smiling, do you feel light, open, or expansive, have your shoulders dropped and is your breathing regular and easy? Notice, too, if there is a particular sensation on your skin. Does it feel cool or warm for example, and has physical tension been released? As you begin to focus on these sensations, invite the memory with which they are associated to fade lightly into the background, but stay with the physical sensation you are experiencing; move freely in the room (TOA, 48). Try to work actively with the sense that you have a capacity to move easily, free from any annoyance, awkwardness, embarrassment or difficulty. Execute simple, everyday actions: sitting down, standing up, taking a drink, skipping or running lightly across the room. Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from this sensation. If Stanislavsky invites actors to relax the muscles or to practise muscular freedom as the basis of a creative state, Chekhov proposes that we activate a feeling of ease.2 For him, it is the primary condition for performing. The choice of words is relevant here. I find it difficult to relax or release tension, on command. However, when I try to induce a feeling of ease, I naturally start to release tension without having to focus on my muscles directly. I am doing something positive and active in order to undo tightness, rather than simply ceasing to tense up. For me, there is also a sense of readiness and absence of difficulty that is implicit in the meaning. When we are at ease, we are relaxed, poised, but we still have the capacity to respond; we are not asleep. When we execute an activity with ease, it can provoke a sense of limitless capacity. In the Chekhov Studio at Dartington Hall, Deirdre Hurst du Prey describes how they always had to take the feeling of ease the very moment they came into the room or theatre (TP78, 6). This is a useful practice for any rehearsal room. Chekhov taught students to ‘pour this feeling of ease into your body, first get the desire to be easy, and then move your hands because of this desire’ (TP39, 16). Even if we can’t

Stanislavsky writes that in moments of great excitement, we must train ourselves to have the habit of relaxing rather than tensing our muscles: ‘Someone whose body is in the grip of cramps cannot feel free and really live a life onstage’ (Stanislavski 2010, 123). 2

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achieve complete physical ease at first, we can edge closer to it by desiring it. It is an empowering belief in our ability to overcome our inflexible bodies through an act of will. In this sense, ease begins with the right kind of attitude to the work, emphasizing possibility rather than stress or struggle.3

Physical ease We can tackle the issue of tension from different angles: from a psychological desire, but also from working with the physical body. Chekhov commiserates that ‘every actor, to a greater or lesser degree, suffers from some of his body’s resistance’ (TA, 2). Our bodies might be too tense, or the opposite, too slack, or they may lack sensitivity or expressive finesse. If our physical body remains undeveloped and we do not protect it against ‘constraints that are hostile and deleterious’ to our craft (TA, 3), Chekhov states that it will ‘become our enemy more than our friend’ (DR, 79). As a result, our creativity becomes like a ‘slave’ chained to our body (DR, 79) and we will be unable to fulfil our artistic dreams on stage. However difficult it is, Chekhov insists that we should strive to be ‘one hundred percent victorious’ over our physical limitations (DR, 79).4 Of course, some of our physical resistance may be a manifestation of something psychological that might even be completely unconscious to us. If we find ourselves falling asleep, or always experiencing pain in a particular activity or exercise, it is good to try to probe why this might be. What or who does it remind us of, or is there a pattern of behaviour that is familiar? Once these things are brought to our conscious attention, we can begin to look at them and loosen the hold they have upon us and our bodies. If we want to develop our emotional and imaginative sensibility as actors, then the more highly developed, supple and responsive our Again, Stanislavsky is eloquent on this: ‘Can I persuade you that physical tension paralyses our whole capacity for action, our dynamism, how muscular tension is connected to our minds?’ (Stanislavski 2010, 133). 4 Despite the acclaimed success of his physically distinctive character portrayals, Chekhov lamented his own inadequacies too. When questioned about how he worked physically on a role, he revealed that ‘naturally, a certain amount of limitations will always remain and it never fails to sadden me’ (DR, 25). 3

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body needs to be. Chekhov calls this kind of body an ‘elaborated body’ (DR, 69) and through it we can free our talent. He claims that ‘if the body is free, then I am forever free to act’ (DR, 69). Not only that, but we must be able to incarnate our wildest visions; Chekhov states categorically that ‘if an actor wants to be like lightning, he must be able to be. If he wants to be like water, he must be able to be’ (AIT, 55). If we tend to always walk with our toes turned out or in, or our chin raised in the air, or our shoulders slumped or with heavy feet – then we must tackle these habits, so that if we want to play a character with perfectly straight feet, a poised chin, shoulders back or a light step, then we can. So developing ease is an exercise of countering specific habits that might hinder our characterizations. Only by mastering correctly our body’s means of expression will our bodies become ‘friendly’ (DR, 63), capable of expressing everything that is required. Only then will our psychological and imaginative limitations fall away. In order to be imaginatively free, we have to be physically free. The feeling of ease is one of the means towards this freedom in performance. In Joanna Merlin’s musical analogy, it is the equivalent of playing ‘scales for the actor’ (MCT, 1). After all, the actor has no medium other than the body; there is no musical instrument, no paint or paintbrush. We are our own material, both sculptor and sculpture, and before moulding our creation, we need to soften the clay. A feeling of ease is the softening mechanism which makes our body more metaphorically porous, and it is no wonder that in Chekhov’s Dartington studio, the throwing off of physical constraints was considered as the ‘beginning basic training for old or young, trained or beginning actor’ (LP,  9). Sustaining a feeling of ease is a lifetime’s work; if we don’t exercise it, our body will become ‘just as antagonistic to our creative spirit as it is to a student or an inexperienced actor’ (DR, 79). Old tensions return if we don’t actively and regularly counteract them.5 If all of this sounds like we might have to spend hours in the gym getting fit, Chekhov is adamant that the exercise the actor needs is

Stanislavsky was an example for Chekhov of an artist who worked tirelessly to improve and learn throughout his career, despite his extensive experience: a ‘marvellous example of what it means to be trained, really trained, not only to know something. … He was never satisfied with his acting, although he was a marvellous actor’ (DR, 82). 5

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different from that of the acrobat or the athlete. The actor’s physical exercises are not purely for training the body, they must be a psychological work-out too, aimed principally at ‘releasing the actor’s feeling nature’ (LP, 9) and ‘sending out the feelings’ (AIT, 9). In other words, they must be ‘physical-psychological’ (TOA, 57). If a weak body is ineffectual so, too, is a hard, overly muscular body because it dulls rather than increases our sensitivity to what we might call psychological vibrations. The aim of our technique is to make the actor’s body more flexible and receptive to all inner impulses so that we can receive the psychological nuances inherent in all movement. In addition, none of the exercises we do should be complicated; on the contrary, Chekhov insists that they must be ‘as simple as possible’ (DR, 79). This does not mean that they are banal; rather, they are deliberately streamlined and refined, reinforcing Chekhov’s notion that the process of acting should be light, free and pleasurable. However, I think it is important for actors to develop physical stamina because acting, both performing itself and the path of the profession, is, in many respects, a feat of endurance and requires a good deal of mental strength.6 Physical training cultivates mental resilience. I recommend that actors walk, run, swim, dance or practise yoga for fitness, but avoid weightlifting or ‘bulking up’. I suggest making these kinds of activities part of your weekly routine, but warm-up and preparation for class, rehearsals and performance must take a different form: these must be psychophysical, exercising the imagination and the body’s sensitivity to impulse. All of the tools in Parts One and Two are suitable for this. Uplifting images of weightlessness and lightness, attempts at overcoming any impression of physical effort or heaviness, permeate all of Chekhov’s teaching. In his rehearsals for Hamlet, Chekhov invited the actors to ‘try to overcome your enchainment to the floor, to the earth’ (PT, 268) and elsewhere he invites students to ‘feel your arms as wings’ (LP, 58) and to imagine when we speak that our speech is simply carried to its target, without effort. Chekhov points to the sculptures of

The British actor Paul Rogers who trained at the Chekhov Studio states that one of the most important things that he learnt from Chekhov was that ‘the actor must have a welldeveloped and expressive body capable of performing demanding tasks, and providing the actor endurance’ (AD, 49). 6

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Rodin or Michelangelo as examples of art where ‘the material has been overcome’, ‘the weight has gone’ because they are ‘permeated with ease and lightness’ (TOA, 48). Not only then does ease mean lack of tension, it also means that we have the power to experience our body without excessive weight or bulk.

Emotional ease The ability to work with ease is necessary if we want to play roles that are emotionally or physically heavy, rough or violent. Chekhov maintains that ‘to be heavy on the stage kills our art, but to feel oneself easy and to perform heavy things, that is art’ (TP39, 17). The character or action on stage may be heavy or awkward, but the actor inwardly must be light and easy. We must create the illusion that we are making an effort, ‘“as if” with physical force but actually without physical force. It is just that little “as if” which gives it ease’ (TP78, 6). Actual heaviness is difficult and distracting for an audience, Chekhov warns, ‘depressing and even repulsing’ them (TA, 13) because it draws attention to the actor and the effort she or he is making rather than what she is trying to convey. As a result, it takes the audience out of the performance rather than drawing them in. Ease is far from easy, and I think it is rare to see an actor perform with real ease on stage. It is more common to see actors over-acting or acting their socks off, so to speak, ‘like raging elephants’, to use Italian director Eugenio Barba’s words, ‘caught up in the impetus of their own charge’ (Barba 1995, 51).7 Heightened moments of intensity are often strained or overblown, and audiences, rather than experience the power of the moment as a genuine participant, are often left cold, reduced to watching an actor have a passionate experience. Chekhov jokes that ‘such actors break the furniture, dislocate their fellow actors’

British director, William Gaskill (1930–2016), writes on this point: ‘It is always easier for an actor to shout at his partner; he feels like he has done something, got somewhere, the blood runs through him, he goes red in the face: surely he is acting? As I say to my actors ten times a day: “Anger is the easiest emotion to express. Find something else”’ (Gaskill 2010, 57). Gaskill was co-founder of the National Theatre with Laurence Olivier at The Old Vic and artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre from 1965 to 1972. 7

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arms and suffocate their lovers while on stage’ (PA, 147). When we’re muscularly tense, nothing can happen, nothing moves energetically. When we push, force and over-exert, nothing reaches our audience and nothing can. We must dance with our audience’s attention rather than bombard and overwhelm it. Actors must be like musicians; the effort involved in producing the notes is overcome so that the music can be heard. Ease allows us to do this.8 Implicit here is a reminder that the performance is not for us, it is for the audience. It needs to be a generous act. When exercising, I think the simple physical act of allowing our mouth to drop open and becoming aware of our breath coming in and out of the body is a first step. It expands our awareness of ourselves just a little so that we can observe what is actually happening in the present moment and experience it rather than projecting something onto it. We might begin to ‘see’ things for what they are, objectively. It is the overture for a listening, receptive state.

Application of ease When working on a role, I think it is always well worth identifying when a character is at ease and with whom, or, if never at ease in the play, picturing in which situation or circumstances they would be at ease: is it with a sibling, a lover, an old friend or perhaps with a total stranger or a rival? Knowing this means we know something intimate about them, something about their private self and provides a benchmark for other less comfortable relationships and events. In ‘Diary of a Madman’ for example, at the beginning of the second diary entry, ‘October 4th’, Proprishchin goes to the office of the director, the father of his unrequited love, Sophie, to sharpen the pencils.9 When Chekhov was in Paris, he praised the French actor Louis Jouvet (1887–1951) as the only actor he saw perform whom he found compelling because ‘ease was his by his rights’, he recounts (PA, 162). 9 Proprishchin is a low ranking civil servant (a titular counsellor) who falls in love with the daughter of a senior official and his boss, Sophie. The story begins when Proprishchin seems to overhear Sophie’s dog, Medji, ‘talking’ with another dog and suspects them of exchanging letters. Written as a diary in the first person, the twenty entries chart 8

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He describes with admiration the scholarly titles in foreign languages and infers from this that the director is a man of great erudition and seriousness. Proprishchin completely identifies with his role as clerk, and implies that he, too, is rather brilliant by association and, as a result, completely worthy of Sophie’s love. In this scene we sense his aspiration to become a member of the administrative elite of St Petersburg, refusing to acknowledge his lowly status. When Robert performed the scene, he played Proprishchin attempting to be completely at ease in this office among these books and people. He was trying to convince himself, and the audience, that he belonged here, as if he was among his own kind of people. By contrast, the ‘honest’ presence with which Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello dupes everyone around him suggests that he is a master at putting everyone else at their ease;10 we need only think of the effortless glee with which he cheats Roderigo out of his wealth in the ‘put money in thy purse’ scene (I:iii). By Act IV Iago has attained a level of invincibility, inexorable in his toppling of Othello. In Act V, when his game-plan has unravelled, we could play Iago’s final moment with intense defiance, or with ecstatic hardness or a stark coldness, but we might also work with a feeling of ease to capture something of his chilling victory, his complacence, his startling lack of remorse. Beyond character, I encourage as broad an application of the feeling of ease as possible. Chekhov promises that ‘many experiences will come as a result of knocking at this door of the feeling of ease’ (LP, 58). Rehearsal rooms can be stressful places, and asserting such a principle has enormous benefits. It might manifest in various ways: letting go of an idea that isn’t working, for example, or remaining open to the ideas of others; forgiving the mistakes of others or admitting we

Proprishchin’s attempts to be noticed by Sophie, his frustration with his lowly status in the world and his gradual decline into delusional madness. 10 Iago, Othello’s right-hand man, feels snubbed because Othello promotes Cassio to the position of lieutenant, despite Iago’s great work on the battlefield. Iago decides to take revenge on Othello through spinning a web of lies about his new, young wife Desdemona’s infidelity with Cassio. Othello murders Desdemona and on finding out the truth about her innocence, commits suicide.

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were wrong;11 letting go of applause and accolades, as well as harsh criticism; retaining a sense of perspective in difficult moments. This might read more like a self-help manual rather than a performance technique, but anyone who has been involved in mounting a production knows how rigid, fixed, self-serving thinking and behaviour can destroy a creative atmosphere. Asserting a principle of ease allows the process to breathe and resourcefulness to flourish. If you are the director of a process, your role is to cultivate an atmosphere of ease for cast and crew. It doesn’t mean that you let people walk over you, or compromise your ideas; it implies simply that you monitor your reactions and question whether your motives are for the good of the work as a whole. British film-maker Martin Sharp encourages a practice of checking to see if our way of thinking is getting in the way. On a film shoot, he asks himself, ‘am I keeping a particular shot because it’s a beautiful shot and I’m in love with it, rather than checking whether it actually serves the film?’ (PT, 320). A feeling of ease, I believe, helps us rise above our own personal filters and come into the actual demands of the moment.

Ease as a foundation If one of the essential skills of acting is to be fully in the present moment, breathing, then a feeling of ease is our foundation. In this way, it goes hand in hand with the ideal centre: together they provide a firm bedrock for a creative state of being. They allow us to receive impulses from the world around us, and this idea of ‘receiving’ is a crucial principle which we will discuss in the following chapter. One word of warning: ease must not be confused with weakness, looseness, slowness, passivity or lethargy. Sensitive to this risk, Chekhov provides the feeling of form as a counteracting tool, which we will discuss in Chapter 4.

Chekhov invites us to be ‘easy’ with our mistakes: ‘When we are afraid of making mistakes, we hear from our conscience only one thing, “wrong, wrong, wrong”, but if we are friends with our conscience, we may hear “lying, but that is alright”. When we get this ability to hear two things from our conscience, we have become friends with it, and that means to be free with it’ (AIT, 182). 11

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Further exercises ll

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Repeat a short mantra, ‘I have a body, it is my instrument’ and try to understand your instrument as completely fresh and new (LT, 52). Begin to walk in the room with the sense that your body is new, untainted, free and unobstructed. Allow the mouth to fall open slightly as you move. Enter a room and practise activating a feeling of ease throughout your whole body the very moment you cross the threshold. Activate the desire to be easy and then move parts of your body in response to this desire. Imagine that the space is full of particles of air that are easy, free. Imagine that the space is actually moving your arm; let the space move you. Check that you are breathing freely at all times. Take up space with the body and try to use different levels, planes of the body and rhythms. Repeat the same movements in a quicker tempo. Chekhov warns that the quicker we move, the more we become rigid or tense so working at a faster tempo is a good challenge to keep ease alive (TP39, 16). The greater the level of physical difficulty, the more your feeling of ease will be challenged. Imagine that your body weighs about half its usual weight (TP39, 16). Walk and run quickly. Then stop and continue the feeling of ease without moving. Undertake everyday activities with the sensation of lightness in the body. Take a chair and move freely with the chair, lifting it in the air, swinging it, travelling under and over it, jumping on it, standing on it. Experiment freely using the chair as your partner: work to counteract the heaviness of the chair. Keeping the feeling of ease, do everyday actions in a moderate tempo such as sitting, standing, picking up an object, drinking some water, entering and exiting through the door, speaking a simple sentence. Check that your movements are not limp, that they always have a certain power, yet free from tension. Strike broad positions, as if you are throwing something in the air, lifting something up, pushing an object away for example,

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and hold the end of the movement in a pause. Make the movements robust, rather than danced. In the still position, re-activate the feeling of ease. Draw your attention to where you might be holding tension and try to release it. Hold each position for longer than is natural or comfortable and check that you are breathing. Move from one position to another in a quick tempo and with a sharp quality. ll

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American teacher and director Lenard Petit suggests passing around (without throwing) one ball in a circle as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Imagine that the ball is extremely hot. You want to get rid of the ball as quickly as possible and if the ball drops, pick it up as quickly as possible and pass it on to the next person. Try not to panic: breathe and work with ease. Check that your tongue, jaw and eyes are not over-working.12 Notice moments in your life when you are ill-at-ease, tense, impatient or frustrated and observe the sensation in your body. Try to see these instances as opportunities to soften the tension and practise ease!

Michael Chekhov Acting Studio, New York, 2010.

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3 RECEIVING1 ‘One of the distinguishing features of an artist is the ability to see the world not as the others see it’ (DR, 48).

Choose an object in the room, for example a book or a bottle of water, and concentrate on it: perceive its size, shape, colour, texture, its fixed or moving parts, its smell and then pick it up to experience its weight. What is the sensation of touching it? Is it cool or warm, soft or hard? Does the touch of it inspire any feelings? Sit for a while holding the object, but rather than studying it meticulously, see if you can simply ‘be’ with it, experiencing everything about it all at once. Close your eyes for a moment. Let all its characteristics slowly make an impression upon you, imagining that with each inhalation you breathe in something of the quality of this object through your skin and senses so that gradually you become familiar with it. Consider yourself as a receptacle of sorts, an open vessel. Spend about five minutes with it. Then put the object down, and pursue an everyday activity in the room. Without directly looking at it, or handling it, allow any feelings or sensations you have received from the object lightly influence your movements. We come now to the next idea in Chekhov’s approach: receiving. Without it, none of the other tools can really take effect in any meaningful way. While we might be used to the process of acting as a kind of giving or sending out of energy (in Chekhovian terms, we refer to it as ‘radiating’, which we will come to in Chapter 7), receiving operates in the opposite direction: Drawing energy in from the surroundings. We allow

You can read about receiving in TA, 19; LP, 31, 55, 91; MC, 68; BV, 108.

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impressions to come to us, as well as actively inviting them in. On stage, this means we receive the presence of our partners, their actions and words, the atmosphere, the events, the set, the audience, indeed, ‘everything that should make an impression’ upon us as an actor and as ‘a character according to the meaning of the moment’ (TA, 19). Embracing the notion of acting as receiving can revolutionize our relationship with performing and teach us how to play into the elusive ‘present moment’. The most liberating aspect of it from my point of view is that it means that everything doesn’t have to start with us. We put our attention outside of ourselves, discover what is ‘out there’, not ‘in here’ in our subjective inner experience, and try to respond as fully as we can. When we put ourselves wholly in relation to our surroundings and partners and take seriously the responsibility of listening and reacting to them, we are relieved of the pressure to come up with a great idea or to do something immediately impressive. To receive means to relate, to be open, and we are always in relation to someone or something, even when we are alone. If we can start from the premise that our performance originates from responding to something, then we will never be empty or lost. There is always something to respond to, however small. However, we don’t simply wait around for everyone else to make propositions. The ability to receive depends on a capacity to perceive the depth, range and detail of our environment, on the one hand, and an ability to absorb those discoveries into our experience, on the other. We then transform them into a response. This activity is intensely active rather than passive, but it resists the sort of energy that bulldozes the audience (and our fellow performers) with the force of our preprepared interpretation along a one-way street. There can be a danger of becoming fixated on playing our well-considered choices, forgetting that actually the source of inspiration in the moment can often lie outside of ourselves – in the text, in our partners, in the atmosphere on stage, in what is happening in the audience, in a certain feel of the room. Strong interpretation is important, but receiving is more so. As British director Mike Alfreds puts it, ‘Competent actors make things happen. Good actors let things happen’ (Alfreds 2010, 344). Acting is a result of receiving; we speak because we have experienced something in the moment. We take action because something has provoked an impulse internally. The thought we utter is the final articulation of something that is already living or moving in

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our inner life and is the last stage in a process, not the first.2 Without this process of receiving first and foremost, we don’t stand a chance of spontaneity and thus we short-change the theatre audience out of the very thing they have come to experience. In order to receive, our bodies need to be full of ease. It takes absolutely zero deliberate effort: it is our natural state when we are not obstructing ourselves with judgements, tension and pushing or generating energy. Chekhov offers the metaphor of breathing; when we’re absorbing experiences or receiving, we inhale, and the breath comes in of its own accord; when we express ourselves, we exhale, out of necessity to expel the breath and make way for a fresh inhalation (AA, 1:11). This natural process is continuous and so, too, with receiving. What is important to understand here is that we need to take in before we can give out.

Transition and the changeover One of the best ways to practise and embody the principle of receiving is to throw a ball to each other, ideally in a group. In the gap between receiving a ball from one person and sending or giving the ball to someone else, we can experience what British Teacher Graham Dixon calls the ‘changeover’: where receiving changes over into giving. We receive the ball, we absorb the energy and presence of our partner (manifested in a gentle throw, for example, or an accurate throw, a short throw, or a rough, fast throw) and we give something in response (an equally rough throw or a clear, accurate throw). The transition where receiving transforms into giving is, for Dixon, ‘where we live as actors. It is not outside, nor is it inside our subjective selves, we live in that changeover period. And in that changeover, all sorts of things can “drop in”, and all sorts of things can be received again on many different levels’.3

Gaskill complained that ‘actors often tend to see their part as a series of transmitting actions: nothing is received; there are no reactions. … Great acting in the past was built around the moments of receiving’ (Gaskill 2010, 57). 3 ‘Giving, receiving and the changeover’ (17 August 2012): https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DVkjXj13Ynw. Dixon puts a percentage on the process: acting should be 25 per cent doing and 75 per cent receiving. The process and phrase of ‘dropping in’, now ubiquitous in acting circles, was invented by American director and co-founder 2

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In performance terms, this translates into receiving the ‘stamp’ or impression of our fellow actor. Their gestures, words, intentions, feelings, qualities can inspire our next move: a new thought, for example, or a sensation, a reaction, an impulse for action. Of course, we need to make choices that impact upon and activate our partners, but this way of working is an invitation to act in response to offers already made. If my partner enters a room, for example, slams the door, and throws their bag across the room, this will have a different impact on me than the same person entering, tiptoeing across and kissing me gently on the cheek. Both ‘offers’ influence me in distinctive ways, and provoke different responses. If our action is set stage business and has to be repeated over sixty performances, our task is to receive the actual action freshly each night. We don’t repeat our response of last night; we respond to what has actually happened tonight. This may mean something as simple as reacting at a slightly quicker pace than the previous night, or inserting a moment of suspension where there wasn’t one before. It could mean doing it at exactly the same pace and with exactly the same quality every night yet experiencing it inwardly and actively as if it were the first time. American actress and teacher Fern Sloan promises that ‘the possibilities for receiving are enormous if you really open your capacity for it because there is always something happening around us, always something given, something fresh, however small’.4 Into that small, new thing, we play. In my view, acting in its essence is this simple transition or movement between receiving and giving. We might say, in fact, that the changeover is where acting actually happens. Chekhov calls the ability to inhabit that place the ‘psychology of the improvising actor’ (TA, 40), that is, the capacity to be spontaneous on stage and to respond in the moment. Again, Chekhov isn’t referring to an improvised performance with no set script or blocking, although it can mean this too; he simply insists that

of Shakespeare and Company, Tina Packer, in collaboration with voice teacher Kristin Linklater (Wangh 2000, 173). 4 Interview with Fern Sloan and Ted Pugh. Sloan described to me how in one of the performances of a three-minute play by Thornton Wilder with The Actor’s Ensemble, they made radiating and receiving their only point of focus throughout. She described how ‘if you do one thing that you commit to so totally, something comes to meet it. It may be just radiating and receiving, but when I say “just”, it’s big, and extremely active.’

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even in the most fixed performance we can, and must, ‘improvise’, in a sense, opening up to our entire experience rather than closing parts of it off. If we have a willingness to lay ourselves open to not knowing everything in advance, then, Chekhov believes, we earn the right to perform. This is what British director Peter Brook calls ‘a panic-free emptiness within’ (Brook 1993, 21). We must overcome any tendency to operate on automatic pilot, resist our need for security and face our fears. In this way, performing becomes a surprising moment of creative vitality rather than an accomplished (and most likely, stale) presentation of pre-prepared work. Over time, the practice of receiving creates a sense of internal space whereby we can observe and, more importantly, experience what is actually happening in the here and now. German director and teacher Ragnar Freidank calls it a ‘leaning into life’ (MCT, 2:6) and the process is twofold: first, we can receive from our environment and other people, and second, we receive from ourselves, that is, we sense the impulses we have in response to what we absorb from the outside world. It is not simply an exercise; it is a practice of opening our awareness to perceive everything that is happening around, to and within us simultaneously.5 Our aim is to cultivate ‘highly developed sensitiveness’ (LP, 91), a finely tuned attention ‘with every part of your being’ in rehearsal, on stage, in life (TP78, 10). Then all we need do is stay alert, wait and the answers will come. In this way, receiving, alongside ease and the ideal centre, prepares a state of readiness.

Receptivity and embodied listening How do we open our capacity for receptivity? The late English actor and director, Alan Rickman (1946–2016), recounted how one of the most important lessons that his experience of directing taught him was that acting is about accurate listening. For Rickman, great acting boils down to one very concrete activity: ‘Truly listening to what the other

Brook writes that ‘the great storytellers … have an ear turned inwards as well as outwards, being in two worlds at the same time’ and ‘the true actor recognises that real freedom occurs at the moment when what comes from the outside and what is brought from within make a perfect blending’ (Brook 1993, 31–2, 69). 5

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person is saying and then truly answering. Once you start doing that … it becomes utterly compulsive’ (Lyall 2010). This doesn’t sound very difficult to achieve and yet we all know how easy it is to appear as if we are listening when, in reality, we are biding time until we speak our next line. Chekhov complained that ‘we don’t really hear much – we understand much but we don’t hear’ (LT, 55). How can we really step into the present tense and allow it to offer us something? How can we inhabit this vulnerable place and trust that something new could happen, eliminating any need to perform or invent something? Chekhov invites us to start by considering receiving as ‘more than merely a matter of looking and listening on the stage’ (TA, 19), warning that ‘looking and seeing is of secondary importance’ (DR, 55) because ‘with our eyes we see the surface’ (LP, 44).6 Rather, receiving happens with our whole being, ‘body, soul and spirit’ (TP78, 10), activating all our senses into a fresh, kinaesthetic totality. Activating the ideal centre here is of great benefit as it situates us, as we have seen, in the centre of our being rather than in the head, and keeps us in contact with our breathing. The subsequent ‘feeling of equilibrium’ (LT, 29) that Chekhov promises is, in fact, an embodied listening to the entire being of our stage partners and to the environment. I like to think of our receptivity as a large ‘ear’, hungrily absorbing everything that our sensory antennae can detect. Not only do we need to draw things, persons, events actively towards us, we need to ‘silence our usual likes and dislikes until the object of our observation penetrates into us, permeates us with its qualities’ (AA, 1:12). This is a process of what Chekhov calls ‘serious acceptance’ (AIT, 72) which involves receiving what is actually there, whether it appeals to us or not. We may have particular feelings towards our colleagues, we may think various negative thoughts about their or our own propositions in performance, we may question the director’s approach. While we cannot avoid oppressive or painful situations, it is, nevertheless, our responsibility to ‘be receptive to every impression and find a clear and conscious relationship to it’ (PA, 116). Chekhov invites us to ‘seriously accept’ the actual situation as our starting point because ‘intolerance means that

Stanislavsky complained that it is easy to fall into the trap of ‘mechanical staring’, that is, ‘to look and see nothing onstage’ (Stanislavski 2010, 94–5). 6

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the doors are closed; toleration means to be open’ (AIT, 77).7 We are not surrendering or giving up; simply, as we discussed in Chapter 2, we might stimulate more effective creative change by responding creatively to what is given, rather than just wishing the situation were otherwise. Chekhov also invites us to commit wholeheartedly to the activity of receiving, regardless of whether anyone around us is aware of it or doing it themselves. Our efforts, he assures us, will be contagious; they ‘will intuitively awaken other players and inspire their collaboration’ (TA, 19). In this way, the principle is a pillar on which we can lean, through which we can ‘erect ourselves’ and the work at large (LT, 58).

Concentration By allowing language, events, our partners, the stage environment, the atmosphere to affect us rather than reverting to our default position of acting upon those things, we cultivate a deeper, more expansive quality of attention. This is the kind of ‘unconditional concentration’ or ‘attentiveness’ that Chekhov considers essential for a creative state (DR, 47). He maintains that any ‘object or idea will become interesting if one deliberately concentrates on it’ (MC/S1/12; 3/6/2).8 The quality of our attention creates the interest, rather than the object itself; the most apparently banal item can become fascinating if we have the capacity for sustained curiosity. Regular practice with the psychophysical tools outlined in Parts One and Two of this book will help us to develop strong powers of concentration. I also find it a useful practice in rehearsals to assume as a point of departure that the people, place, furniture and props are all interesting per se without waiting for them to prove themselves so. Our task as artists is to have an extraordinary

I often add here the idea that the people in the room are the right people, adapted from one of the Open Space principles, ‘Whoever comes is the right person’. Open Space is a process of organizing meetings, first outlined by Harrison Owen, focusing on selforganization and empowerment. 8 This is from an article that Chekhov wrote called ‘Stanislavski’s Method of Acting’ originally published in Proletkult journal, Hearth, which caused controversy as actors were forbidden to write about the work of the Studio (DR, 8). The idea echoes the work of French surrealist poet, Francis Ponge (1899–1988), who wrote extensively and playfully on the minutiae and inner life of everyday, inanimate objects. 7

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attention, to look deeper and beyond. Chekhov puts responsibility for our experience firmly in our own hands. Yet real concentration, he insists, ‘does not occupy the brain at all’ (LP, 47), but involves being ‘concentrated with our actor’s being’ (DR, 80). For him, ‘the head has nothing to do with it’ (LP, 47) and ‘is quite free always’ (DR, 80).9 Concentration is an ‘inner event’ (TOA, 10), a kind of ‘additional will power’ (TA, 26), where ‘all the forces of your being are gathered together’ (LT, 15). We need to dissociate concentration from the idea that it is about thinking: it is about embodied receiving in all the ways we have described above. The exercises below create the capacity for this. In this sense, concentration means becoming intimate with the object of our attention, whether it is as trivial as a box of matches or as significant as a human being, and throughout his writing, Chekhov uses vocabulary of this nature: ‘Concentration is nearness’ (LT, 15), ‘you are with the object’ (LP, 44), and ‘by being attentive, we mean knowing all about the object’ (LT, 21). It means to contact, merge, identify and communicate with, be in harmony with, our point of focus. The process is one of fusion, where we ‘take’ the object of attention ‘to such an extent that you will not know whether the object has you, or you have the object: you become one with it’ (LP, 44). In other words, you are ‘in’ it and it is ‘in’ you. This process of taking and in turn being ‘taken’ or transformed is, according to Chekhov, ‘the only way to really know things’ (LP, 44). Ultimately, our knowledge of the character we play must be infused with such familiarity and intimacy. Sometimes Chekhov goes so far as to equate concentration with being in love, a state ‘of great strength’ (LT, 15) where you feel ‘as if you have become a person two or three sizes bigger than your ordinary physical self’ (LT, 25). It is relational, empathetic and expansive, urging us away from our default self-centredness. Receiving leads us to this quality of immersion where we are able to inhabit each moment, sense where we are and experience it fully for what it is. Quite simply, nothing lives in performance ‘when you are not present in your own creation’; when we are in it, Chekhov enthuses, ‘everything lives and trembles’

Chekhov continues: ‘Actors are composed of legs, arms, hands, torsos and very little heads. The head is something which cannot act’ (DR, 80). 9

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(MC/SI/10, 15 September 1939). We become present to ourselves and begin to reverberate energy beyond ourselves.

Further exercises ll

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Form a circle with a group. Take an attitude of accepting seriously your partners. Throw the ball in a circle. It’s a gesture of giving. Stay in eye contact with the person you’ve thrown the ball to until that moment is over. When you receive the ball, live in that moment of receiving the ball, stay looking at your partner until it feels that the encounter is over. When it is, give your attention back to the whole group again and receive people in the group individually. Take your time, don’t rush to give the ball away immediately. This is the space of changeover, where you will transform gradually from receiving to giving. You may spend longer taking one person in than another. There is nothing automatic nor even democratic here. Wait for an impulse to give the ball to someone new. Find someone who is really open to you, then throw the ball to that person. Receive the exchange. The ball is a symbol of what is happening between you. Continue working with the threefold principle: receive the ball/partner, allow a sensation to arise/transition, give the ball to someone new. Continue to throw the ball and now give a random word as you throw. Follow all the same principles as above except now in the transition you allow a word to drop in: free associate. Try not to censor yourself. Accept the word that comes in response to the throw and word given by your partner. Say the new word as you throw the ball (not before or after). You are giving one complete thing, a word and a throwing gesture combined. This mirrors what we do on stage when we speak text. Say the word clearly and with commitment. If no word comes, breathe, bring your attention outward to your partners and wait for something to drop in. Practise waiting and listening. Now create a story by throwing the ball and giving a sentence as you throw. Decide on the opening and closing sentence of the story and who is going to say them. Choose simple, contrasting

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sentences. For example, the opening sentence could be ‘it is beautiful weather today,’ and the closing sentence might be ‘this is the worst day of my life’. Follow all the same principles as above, but during the changeover, allow a sentence to drop in. The difference now is that you are trying to serve the whole story, trying to get to the end as a group as efficiently as possible, but with absolute justification. Avoid random sentences that do not connect to the previous sentence or prepare for the next. The assigned last person can receive the ball many times but they can only say the last sentence when they have logically arrived at that point in the story (up until then, they improvise sentences along with everyone else). If the story starts in the present tense, continue to improvise in the present tense; if it begins in the first person, let it continue as such. The aim is for the story to be coherent. ll

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In pairs standing, slowly say a random word or image to your partner, once or twice. Choose a rich and descriptive word. The partner receives it silently. Notice if you see an image, if it is big or small, if you have an emotional response to it, or if you have any physical sensation in response. Then once you have absorbed it fully say the word you have received back to your partner imbued with the impression it made upon you. Pick up a scarf, receive it and transform it into something; act upon the first idea that comes to mind. You might imagine that it becomes a baby nursed in your arms or thrown up in the air, or a pregnancy bump, a nun’s habit, a tail, a whip, the lead on a dog, a skirt. Allow each suggestion to be immediate and short-lived, without deciding anything in advance; inhabit each new situation fully and challenge yourself to see how many transformations you can invent. Repeat with a different object. Arrange an audience (or if working alone, an imagined audience) at one side of the room. Put a chair on ‘stage’. Then enter, look at the audience, and sit down. When sitting, take in the audience, receive them. Notice your sensations. At some point you will say something to someone in the audience, a simple short sentence. Don’t decide the sentence in advance; let the impulse arise from the situation. Wait for the impulse both to

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speak, and finally to leave. Resist rushing and any temptation to impress or entertain. ll

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When beginning work on a scene or doing a first reading in rehearsal, explore reading at least once with a view to receiving the text only. If possible, allow the actors to listen to their parts read by others. Invite readers to speak the text slowly yet fluidly, loudly and neutrally, with absolutely no interpretation, respecting all punctuation and pausing at every full stop. Try not to overemphasize words or split up the sense of the sentences. Actors, in turn, focus on listening to and absorbing the text, attempting to visualize the play, the story and the characters.10 When you read your own text aloud as an actor, even if you are performing it full tilt, try to resist the desire to have a certain effect, or impose a definitive reading of the character. All our encounters with the script can be an opportunity for discovering new details, rather than a platform for performance. Select a short section from the script of a character of your choice. Choose a text that is unfamiliar to you and that you do not know by heart. Sitting or lying down, with your mouth slightly open, begin to read the text slowly and quietly to yourself (or you can read silently), image by image, or thought by thought. Think of the words moving towards you, impressing upon you, permeating your skin as if it were a porous membrane. Pause after every thought or image to absorb it; you may close your eyes if you wish. Notice any pictures that materialize in your imagination as well as any sensations in the body. Live with each image or thought long enough until you have fully experienced it and it becomes concrete.11 When you have reached the end of the text, speak the whole monologue aloud to a target (a person or place in the room), allowing everything you have experienced to be present as you speak.

This way of reading was taught to me by Graham Dixon. German director and teacher Jobst Langhans describes this process as ‘meditating the text’ (Michael Chekhov Europe workshop, Ekenas, Finland, 2009). If you are directing, you can work through the entire play this way. 10 11

4 THE SECOND OF THE FOUR BROTHERS: FEELING OF FORM ‘Unless an actor is willing to nurture within himself a love of theatrical form in his speech, movements and even in his characterisations, he is doomed to dilettantism, which he then construes as freedom’ (LE, 15).

Bring your attention to your head. Sense how it is constructed and what its particular characteristics are; note which parts are soft and which are hard and touch them. Then become aware of your eyes that see the world from up here: look at objects in the room. Your nose and ears are also located here: what can you smell and hear? This is where your sense of balance originates from. Your mouth and tongue belong here also: you speak, swallow, taste. Bring your attention to this. The head also houses the brain, the most complex organ in the body with its billions of neurons. Visualize the brain situated up here in the head. Then move your head, exploring all that it can do. In keeping with a long tradition, Chekhov associates its qualities with clarity or alertness. Walk, sit down, stand up, pick something up with a sense of the head situated at the top of the body. Now bring your attention to the lower part of the body: the pelvis, legs and feet. The sexual organs are located in the pelvis, and as such we might consider the pelvis as the seat of desire. The reproductive organs are here and the body also expels waste from here. Then include in your

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focus the legs and feet and note how they enable you to travel from one place to another, to take action. Begin to move your legs freely and explore their mobility. They are your foundation and point of contact with the earth. Walk and try to feel the form and function of the pelvis and legs, noting their place at the bottom part of the body. Then concentrate on the middle area of the body which links the head with the pelvis and legs: the torso. Touch the hard and soft parts: for a woman, the belly expands to carry a baby, the breasts produce milk to feed it. Our heart which pumps blood throughout the rest of the body is located here, as are the lungs, our breathing apparatus. Without these organs we would not be alive; sense this and visualize them. Now notice how your arms and hands are connected to the torso: lay a hand on something nearby. With these limbs we reach out and make contact with the world; when we speak, we express ourselves with them. Now explore moving the spine, noting how it bends, twists and enables you to stand upright. Execute simple everyday movements such as walking, picking something up, sitting down, giving your attention to this central area. Consider how the function of this part of the body is reflected in its form. Then stand still and bring your awareness to your whole body, with these three differentiated parts together as one unit. Notice your body’s overall shape, its outline and how much space it takes up. Invite the ideal centre to be present also and imagine that through it you are ‘centralized as a form’ (LP, 84), a unified whole. Try to experience the form of your body internally as well as externally. Carry out simple activities with the idea that you are a three-dimensional, living form in space. In its most basic sense, this is a feeling of form which is the second of Chekhov’s four brothers (the first, you may recall, is ease). We start by becoming aware of our own body that is able to move and take meaningful action in different ways. Chekhov insists that, ‘the actor cannot deny form, for he must always deal with the form of his own body’ (TOA, 50) and that we must make sufficient use of our bodies so that they are ‘reactivated and made resilient’ (TA, 5). In training, we learn how to become conscious of our individual body, and correct any habits, obstructions and weaknesses that limit our expression. All good theatre training deals with this in one way or another and Chekhov’s approach is no exception.

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At the Chekhov Studio in Dartington Hall, not only were Chekhov’s students taught dance, they were also taught to mould clay by the Austrian sculptor Willi Soukop (1907–95) and drawing by Mark Tobey.1 Chekhov’s student Paul Rogers describes how huge pieces of paper were stuck to the walls of Tobey’s studio and that they had to learn not to draw ‘but to experience the whole being making marks with chalk to music’ (DY). The aim of Chekhov’s idea was to awaken a joyful, sensual vitality in the whole body, to ‘feel life throughout your whole being’ (LT, 27). Whereas the ideal centre is really situated imaginatively inside, the feeling of form must be experienced internally and externally. Chekhov goes so far as to assert that without experiencing ‘joy in the use of our hands, arms, body’ and appreciating their many possibilities, ‘we cannot really perform as artists’ (LT, 27). Indeed, as we will see in subsequent chapters, much of the technique involves exercising in free, full-bodied movements and large archetypal gestures, taking up as much space with the body as possible because it activates a sensation of feeling ‘full of life’ (LT, 27). In training and in rehearsal, we can use the fullest physical means required to activate us externally and internally. In performance, we must use means of expression that are appropriate to the style of the production and the psychology and impulses of the character. Both of these involve a feeling of form; it enables the story as well as the character’s inner impulses to be expressed clearly.2 Chekhov quips that if we were to take up one simple position after another, such as burying your head in your hands, placing your hands on your chest, then standing up with your head slightly raised, and were to ‘consider it acting’, then ‘an unwritten play will be started’ (LP, 158). For Chekhov, this is ‘pure acting’ because we didn’t begin with an idea or with some ‘psychology behind it’ (LP, 76); we just moved in a particular way and it awakened our emotional life. At its simplest, he is suggesting that moving our body affects our feelings, and that becoming conscious of this interconnection is the basis of acting.

The dance classes were taught by Lisa Ullman from the Jooss ballet. For more on this, see PT, 196–7. 2 Deirdre Hurst du Prey clarifies that although the actors often exercised in large broad movements at Dartington Hall, their movement on stage was natural, never formalized (TP79, 5). 1

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This goes back to Stanislavsky’s ‘psychotechnique’ (Stanislavski 2010, 18) where every physical action contains something psychological. Chekhov is suggesting that, although we can, we don’t need to start with the psychological alone. Our aim is to become so sensitive that even the smallest gesture can become an ‘intangible prompter’ to the inner life (DR, 79). If the danger with a feeling of ease is that we become de-energized and passive, when working on a feeling of form in the early physical exercises, we must remember to stay flexible and free from tension. I like to borrow Barba’s term of ‘firm suppleness’ in relation to form (Barba 1995, 77) because it evokes the necessary combination of strength and definition without rigidity. Chekhov also intends us to consider form in three other broad ways: (1) detailed and bold characterization (physical expression, voice and gesture), (2) the actor’s skill in composition (‘blocking’, stage business and design) and (3) the composition of the production as a whole (genre, style). Let us consider each of these in turn.

Form as characterization We may do a lot of work to understand and immerse in the psychology of the role, but this process alone does not mean that the character will be completely formed. It must be matched by full-bodied expression. Hurst du Prey puts it bluntly, ‘You may have a marvellous character, but you have to be able to project it’ (TP78, 10). There is a whole range of physical expression available to us for characterization: gesture, quality of movement, rhythm, vocality, all of which can and must be different from our own. At the very least, we need to be aware of what our body is doing on stage or on camera and what meaning it might convey as part of the bigger picture. At best, we must be capable of commanding it at will to express what is necessary for the story we are telling. Chekhov’s goal for the actor is to create a new form for every role, a new ‘body’ as it were, a complete transformation, and by all accounts, Chekhov himself was a master at creating bold, striking character portrayals.3 However, we must not be tempted to think of this as an See the discussion on transformation for examples.

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external ‘shape’ pertaining to the physical body of the character only, just as it would be wrong to presume that Chekhov’s approach overall is ‘physical’ rather than psychological. He cannot be pinned down so easily. As I have already noted, his is a psychophysical approach, and if we emphasize the necessity for the actor’s body to be expressive and sensitive so that it can awaken the inner life, this same body (and speech) must materialize as ‘a direct continuation of’ our psychology, as ‘visible and audible parts’ of our inner being (TA, 73). We must have ‘psychological grounds’ for our outer expression of the character (TP39, 22), what Chekhov calls the ‘inner aspect of the form’ (TOA, 51), sculpting it from an investigation of the character’s feelings, desires and thoughts on the one hand, and the content of the text, theme and production on the other.4 As Vakhtangov states, ‘Everything that constitutes the external characterisation of a person is an indispensable consequence of his inner state. It is his inner state that made him such’ (Malaev-Babel 2011, 107). This means that our body must become transparent, the ‘conveyor of the subtlest images, feelings, emotions and will impulses’ (TA, 2). ‘A self-conscious person will fumble with his suit’, Chekhov explains, a pedant ‘might unconsciously touch things around him’, a misanthrope ‘will perhaps push away from himself things within his reach’, while a ‘sly person might acquire the habit of throwing quick glances at the ceiling’ (TA, 83). In his memoirs, Chekhov recounts how he could always tell when Vasil Osich Larchenko, one of the caretakers who worked at his family home, was having breakfast because ‘not only his face, but also the nape of his neck and his back would exude the message’ of what he was doing (LE, 6). Effective characterization is an inner–outer coordination, a delicate and fluid marriage of the external and internal aspects of the character, without emphasizing one over the other.5 Just as emotional content cannot be separated from its physical embodiment, the inner life must continually adjust to the actions,

Already in the prospectus for the Michael Chekhov Studio at Dartington Hall, Chekhov states that ‘external technique must be permeated by the power of a living spirit’ (SP, 12). 5 The American actor Robert Lewis describes how Chekhov as Khlestakov in his New York performance of The Inspector General (1935) accomplished just that: ‘When he had to be drunk in the party scene, he didn’t do a lot of drunken movements; he got so drunk inside that it was positively catching’ (Lewis 1958, 55). The playwright Karel Capek wrote of Chekhov’s performance of Erik XIV (1921): ‘Chekhov shows up and demonstrates that the 4

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gestures and positions of the physical body. We no longer know where one thing starts in the chain reaction; both are continuously influencing and adapting to each other. Most of the tools in Part Three of this book are devoted to psychophysical characterization, so I won’t dwell on them here. Suffice it to say that perhaps we can begin to understand why Chekhov calls the principle a feeling of form, as it involves a synthesis between body and psychology, a body ‘permeated with the feeling of what is necessary’ (AIT, 7). Indeed, Chekhov insists that an ‘indisputable command’ of both body and psychology is a requirement for all actors (TA, 5); working on form assists us in becoming ‘masters’ of both mind and body (DR, 81) so that both are complete, inside and out.

Form as composition of the actor: Blocking What is worth dwelling on here, however, is the question of stage composition, or ‘blocking’. I am struck by how little artists say about this aspect of staging work. It seems there is great variety in approach: sometimes it is unconscious, sometimes it is treated as an obvious task that needs no explanation, sometimes it is avoided at all costs, or sometimes it is the entire focus. I often see a contradiction between the director/designer concept, the ‘blocking’ and positioning on stage, and the inner line of the roles, and Chekhov encourages greater sensitivity in devising all three elements to function as an interwoven whole. He proposes that scenes that are ‘saturated with impulses from the will’ demand ‘round, curved and wavy forms’ whereas ‘only thought harmonizes with sharp corners and with straight or broken lines’ (PA, 98; we will say more about will and thought impulses in Chapter 17). Scenographers, directors and actors need to collaborate to penetrate the psychological dynamics within the play and ensure design, composition and performance choices cohere to reveal them.

body (simply and energetically) is the soul. The soul itself. A despairing, perfervid, timorous, trembling soul’ (Senelick 1992, 146).

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The British theatre director Katie Mitchell reveals that she arranges the furniture on stage in such a way that the actors will spontaneously find appropriate positions and configurations (Mitchell 2008, 179). While some directors give and ‘set’ all the spatial arrangements, others, such as Mike Alfreds, resist this entirely, insisting that if the rehearsal atmosphere is creative and the actors are working correctly and with care, it is not at all necessary to ‘block’. Whether it is possible to achieve a spontaneous form without an ensemble of actors working together over a long period of time, I don’t know. Nevertheless, the model that Alfreds outlines is a tantalizing ideal. There is, perhaps, a middle ground where actors over multiple rehearsals spontaneously discover the shape and form of a scene, the business which happens in it and how it is executed. If we do this from the embodied experience of immersion in the situation and will impulses of the characters, the director can construct the production from the integrity of those discoveries. My own goal in production is to attempt to combine a precise, external form in the stage composition and stage ‘business’ with a sense of improvised feeling within the actors. Images, actions and stage pictures tell the story of our play as much as the emotional tenor of the acting, so I believe creating a strong structure within which the actors can play is the path to freedom (so long as the structure is born from the actor’s propositions). The principle of a feeling of form invites a commitment to a psychological analysis of the role on the one hand (feelings, thoughts and desires), and a plastic, specific staging that expresses this on the other. Although Chekhov was renowned for his spontaneity in performance and his ability to invent freshly every night, he emphasizes just as much the need for composition so that the sense that we are making theatre or a piece of art is never lost. Chekhov invites us to identify ‘which moments of the business are so vital that without them the scenes and characters will mean nothing’ (DP, 94). Chekhov’s own notes on directing reveal a scrupulous attention to detail in stage ‘business’ with actions such as putting on items of clothing choreographed to punctuate the dialogue at precise moments and in a contrasting tempo (DP, 149). He also recommends that ‘at least one rehearsal a week’ be devoted to establishing and rehearsing precise stage action only (DP, 55). Of course, one of the problems here is that more often than not, this issue is presumed to be the domain of the director and designers.

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After all, their scenographic choices determine the style or aesthetic of a production. In my view, actors usually don’t take enough responsibility here. Too often we leave it to the director and design team to think about space and designate ‘blocking’ and many actors demand only to be left alone to ‘feel’ the role. I resist this approach. Actors can and need to take the reins on finding how the character’s inner desires manifest in space, in precise action amid the overall stage picture. Performers can inspire and even control a director’s choices if we really take the initiative and defend rather than surrender our impulses.6 At Dartington Hall, Chekhov’s students worked regularly on ‘harmonious groupings’ (DY) in order to cultivate the ability to play consciously with their physical relation to everything and everyone on stage, of achieving conscious compositional harmony.7 Chekhov means us to cultivate a sense of stage space so that every movement, gesture or geographical position we make or take on stage becomes ‘an artistic necessity’, serving the meaning of the moment as expressively and specifically as possible (TOA, 154). We need to ‘distinguish the right side from the left’ he insists, ‘distinguish in all its fullness the proscenium and the back of the stage’ (PA, 59). Chekhov describes how facing the audience directly, for example, is ‘a very powerful means of impression’ and that ‘the stage and everything on it recedes, and the actor is as if alone – projected away from the stage’ (MC/SI/10, 11 September 1939). This ‘blocking’, he suggests, is appropriate when we want to show the audience the inner, moral qualities of the character as in a Hamlet soliloquy, for example, when Hamlet cuts his ties with the world around him. Chekhov also posits that standing in profile on stage ‘speaks of the mind’ and ‘calls forth a feeling of pride in thought’ (PA, 98). In our own production of ‘Diary of a Madman’, we initially charted the psychological journey of the protagonist, Proprishchin, as one of a gradual retreat from the audience; he began downstage in intimate proximity to the audience and ended as far upstage as possible, disconnected and emotionally distant.

Sharp gives an interesting take on this in PT, 322. See also the French actor and teacher, Jacques Lecoq’s (1921–99) exercises on balancing the stage whereby ‘a different distribution of positions … can breathe life into dramatic situations’ (Lecoq 2002, 143). 6 7

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However ‘natural’ our performance may appear, it demands conscious crafting: it is a creation. For Chekhov, ‘every word, each movement is form; inner state is psychological form; if I am on the stage, it is form; if I am silent, it is form’ (DR, 82). Again, nothing has to be literally choreographed or mannered, and everything can be crafted spontaneously as well as decided upon in advance. What matters, through simple conscious choices such as sudden changes of rhythm, travelling across the stage on a diagonal plane, or a slow turn of the head, is that we begin to relish our ability to ‘play’ the full range of our instrument in space with increasing finesse and detail.8 Often actors are put off when arriving in technical rehearsals because furniture and props are in slightly different positions, or the sidelighting is too bright, or the set is not quite as anticipated. Apparently, when Chekhov performed in films in Hollywood, he often found the environment of the set intimidating. He spent time alone on the set before filming, touching the furniture, endowing each object with life, and animating this world for himself so that he felt at home there, rather than alien to it. Similarly, Chekhov invites us to spend time acquainting ourselves with all the scenic elements and to consider how to ‘befriend’ them, to turn them into opportunities and allies rather than obstacles. For him, the setting ‘belongs to the psychology of the actor’s acting’ and is not separate from it (MC/S1/10, 7 February 1938).9 Chekhov insists that it is possible to ‘get inspiration from all sides’ and we must perform ‘under the influence of this inspiration’ (AIT, 56): ‘You get something quite different when you touch a metal chair than when you touch a wooden chair’ (TOA, 169), Mala Powers, another of Chekhov’s students, recounts. Likewise, a tall, lofty stage will influence us differently from a low, intimate stage. A subtly lit interior with comfortable furnishings and plush rugs, for example, provokes a

Chekhov describes a potent moment of stage business from one of the actors he observed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre: ‘Varlamov was playing Pishchik in The Cherry Orchard. He finds out that the house has been sold. There is a short pause of five or six seconds. Varlamov looks at the chair next to him, the window, the curtain, the emptiness of the wall in front of him, and everything has changed: on stage, in the auditorium, in the hearts of the audience, in the atmosphere of the play. It is clear that life in that house is over!’ (LE, 15). 9 Incidentally, this process of ‘particularizing’ and ‘personalizing’ the stage world to make it real to you is present in The Method, as developed by Lee Strasberg in 1950s New York in the Actor’s Studio, an American adaptation of Stanislavski’s ‘system’. 8

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different sensation and physical behaviour to a narrow, dark corridor with cold tiles and damp walls. The stage and film set have psychophysical properties if we are receptive to their influence. Our task is to become receptive to the full gamut of nuanced sensation available to us. This includes costume as well as set. Hurst du Prey describes how, from Chekhov’s point of view, costume is never just a costume, but part of the actor’s inner life. The costume ‘is alive for him, it acts for him if he is aware of it’ (TP78, 10), just as in life, we feel differently when we are dressed formally than when we are wearing our favourite jeans. Chekhov describes how when as a child he gave home performances for his mother and nanny, ‘I would take the first article of clothing that presented itself, put it on and once I had it on – would feel who I was’ (LE, 13, Chekhov’s emphasis).10 In ‘Diary of a Madman’, we explored Proprishchin as fully clothed at the beginning – he wore a long winter coat, hat, boots – and presented a relatively clean, respectable and proud appearance. As the show progressed, we decided that he should gradually shed layers of clothing until he was almost naked, stripped down to vest, underpants and shaven head. The clothes were symbolic of a shedding of layers of respectability, self-esteem, control and, finally, his sanity. The last image of him was one of a child: dirty, exposed, crying and vulnerable.

Form as composition of the production: Style A consideration of genre and the style of a script also belong to the question of form. To some extent, Chekhov adheres to the classical presumption that form should be consistent with content; a melodrama requires a different approach and tone than a work of social realism, for example. Yet he concedes that to find the right ‘style’ for a work is a rather obscure issue, ‘the most difficult and the most fine thing’ (AIT, 23). He maintains that ‘if there is style in the play, then in every British actor Simon Callow echoes trying to access ‘this kind of prelapsarian state that Chekhov describes, this Edenic state where children just get up and they say, I’m Captain Nemo and they are Captain Nemo; you believe everything they say because they believe everything they say’ (Interview with Simon Callow). 10

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part of your body, the style, like blood, must run though you’ (RS, 263). Without really saying too much about what style is concretely, Chekhov tells us what it isn’t: naturalism. The latter, for him, ‘kills every possibility for style’ (AIT, 23) because it aims to replicate life and serve it up just as it is without interpretation or imaginative transformation. He suggests that the style of each play we work on is to be understood ‘over and beyond naturalism’ (AIT, 23) and we will cultivate a capacity to discover it through developing our imagination, senses and psychophysical sensitivity. That said, it is important not to perceive the idea of style or form as belonging only to heightened or stylized productions. The work of making any production is a search for the right form; our task as actors is to make whatever we are doing appear organic, necessary and appropriate. As Brook puts it, ‘Forms are like words; they only take on meaning when used rightly’ (Brook 1993, 93). It is an ongoing negotiation to find the sense of ‘rightness’. Neither is there any division between ‘physical’ and ‘straight’ theatre. There is not one actor for a physical theatre performance and another for a Shakespeare play. Chekhov’s actor is one and the same: in shape, in tune, with a capacity to absorb, embody and express sensation, an imaginative artist who is psychophysically and stylistically athletic. This actor reflects upon and tests how her acting might reveal a play’s distinctive flavour. In his production of Bely’s 1913 novel, Petersburg at MAAT 2 (1925), Chekhov sought to express something of the Symbolist nature of the work and while the overall show was largely panned, his performance was praised for its appropriate lack of psychology. Avoiding the predominance of emotion, Chekhov focused instead on ‘the exact mechanics of the body as theatrical material’ (PA, 215) to express ‘the symbol of a dying social order’ (DR, 12). It seems that Chekhov incorporated the novel’s experimental modernism into his own acting, ideas which he later formulated into specific ideas on genre and style. In his writing, Chekhov discusses specifically comedy, clowning, drama, the Gothic and Baroque styles. Comedy, he states, requires ease in performance, a joyful quality, a quick tempo and the stressing of ‘a predominant psychological feature of the character’ (TA, 131), whereas clowning, more precisely, demands that the character is a kind of ‘subhuman’ whose reactions to circumstance are ‘completely

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unjustified, “unnatural” and unexpected’ (TA, 129). Drama necessitates ‘a purely human attitude and artistic truth in given circumstances’ (TA, 131), whereas tragedy requires a sense that the average boundaries of a character’s ego are broken, a sense that ‘he is exposed to certain forces which are much stronger, much more powerful than he himself’ (TA, 124).11 The Gothic style, for Chekhov, is a ‘tense conflict between earthly powers on the one hand, and a longing for light and spiritual growth on the other’ (TOA, 125). If we are working on a Gothic text such as Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s adaptation of Henry James and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Turn of the Screw (1898/2013) for example, Dixon suggests we can begin to interpret its atmosphere of dread, gloom and heightened emotion by sensing the vast movement upwards of a Gothic cathedral. In this way, we might grasp a feel for the Gothic style from within (PT, 318), an idea that will have more resonance later, when we discuss archetypal and psychological gesture. In the Baroque style, by contrast, Chekhov finds that ‘everything expresses restless, disturbed, movable human emotions, … shaking the human consciousness!’ (TOA, 125). British actor and writer, Simon Callow, describes the Baroque as ‘buoyant, wonderfully earthy, with a terrific sense of the certainty of being’.12 When working on Lord Foppington in John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse (1696), he drew inspiration from Blenheim Palace, which Vanbrugh also designed.13 Callow describes the architecture of Blenheim, along with St. Paul’s Cathedral, as projecting the idea that ‘we are very rich, very powerful, we run this country’ and once you begin to think in these terms as an actor, he reveals, ‘your spine immediately changes, your face starts to change, your shoulders open out; it’s very masculine’. If we probe first the period and the author’s own sense of style and progress to investigating the personality of this play in particular as opposed to any other, then we might get to the heart of the matter. As Callow explains, ask yourself: ‘What is Molière-like about Molière, Feydeau-like about Feydeau?’ (Callow 1984, 176).

We will return to this exercise in Chapter 19 on archetypes. Interview with Simon Callow. 13 The production was at Lyric Hammersmith, London in 1983, directed by William Gaskill. 11 12

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Although throughout his career Chekhov for the most part performed the classics and adaptations of literary novels,14 he also searched for new forms, concerned as he was with establishing ‘a closer contact between stage and audience’ (TS, 19). Indeed, in the Dartington Hall prospectus, he presents a vision which entails students at the Chekhov Studio writing their own plays, as well as the idea of evolving ‘a playwright who, working with the group, will devote to it as much of his time and energy as do the actors themselves’ (TS, 18). At Dartington, writers participated in periods of rehearsal, creating from and collaborating with the actors, not simply producing a script for them.15 They also explored storytelling and fairy tales. Here, we see Chekhov as an early example of a devising artist and to follow the principle of a feeling of form through to its logical conclusion compels, I think, a commitment to innovation. Chekhov doesn’t oblige us to create something new for the sake of newness or to be at the forefront of the ‘zeitgeist’; simply, that the form our work takes is as important as the idea and the psychological content.

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Take up the following natural, physical positions: ‘sit in a chair with your head resting in your hands,’ ‘lie on the couch with your hands under your neck,’ ‘stand in the middle of the room with feet apart, hands behind your back, head slightly raised’, (TOA, 83), ‘the left arm behind the back, and the other hand on the chin’ (LP, 158). Receive the sensation of each position, and sense the internal psychological resonance. From the sensation you experience in each position, speak aloud the same short phrase, such as ‘I want to go home’. Try to cultivate a sense of harmony between your body, feeling and spoken word.

In particular, he was drawn to the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Miguel de Cervantes and Charles Dickens (DR, 23). 15 These playwrights included Henry Lyon Young, George Shdanoff (both of whom were resident playwrights at Dartington), Iris Tree and Arnold Sundgaard. The latter, in collaboration with Chekhov wrote a children’s play called Troublemaker-Doublemaker. Hurst du Prey describes how ‘the playwright worked right with us in rehearsals. We would try things and drop this or that, or take the scene in another way’ (DR, 90). 14

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Move in a spiral, experiencing the form being drawn in then spreading out. Pause and receive the sensation. Note if there is any psychological reverberation to the movement. Then with your whole body create the form and dynamic of the figure eight and similarly note its effect (MC/S9/2, 26 September 1983). Observe a chair from the perspective of form: size, shape, texture, weight, functionality, colour. Then close your eyes and see the form of the chair in your mind’s eye; enjoy the moment when you look at it again (MC/S9/2, 26 September 1983). After a few minutes sit on the chair, allowing yourself to absorb its qualities. Feel both yourself and the chair as three-dimensional forms. Work with a wooden chair: lift, swing, turn, improvise with it in broad, bold movements. It has a form, and together you are a form. Change your tempo, work on different levels, use the front and back of the body. Engage your legs and try not to repeat movements. Then explore sitting in the chair in different ways (sideways, backwards, with your feet tucked up), experiencing once again that you and the chair are one form or picture. In pairs, throw a ball or a stick across a large distance. When the ball is caught both partners hold the position of throwing and catching for longer than is comfortable. Experience the form of the body in these extended and extreme positions. Release any tension and breathe. Keep the eyes alive and stay conscious of what you can see in the room, engaging your peripheral as well as your direct vision. Sense the space around you in a 360 degrees direction. Become aware of the ‘new parts’ of your body that you are using; ‘discover new places’ in the body (LT, 52). Find the impulse to move again in harmony with your partner. Do everyday actions with the feeling of form: walk, run, enter and exit the room. Resist any temptation to externalize the form, comment or add anything unnecessary. There is no need to create a story or character. Try to do this with ease. Sit down and stand up as if you are creating something. Pause at the end of each action. Repeat the same movement many times until you begin to feel it as a piece of art or creation:

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‘you will have form in your thoughts, in your heart, and in your actions’ (LT, 31). ll

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Set up some chairs in a row as an audience. Enter and test out moving across the room in a diagonal towards them, pausing downstage. Retreat slowly from them, backwards in a straight line; then turn your back to them. Traverse the upstage in a curved line, while looking at the audience. Receive the different sensations of each stage position. Any of the exercises listed under feeling of ease can be repeated to explore form. Repeat practising ease and form together.

5 THE THIRD OF THE FOUR BROTHERS: FEELING OF BEAUTY ‘Let us look at manual labourers. We will see that their movements are often beautiful. When, for instance, the heavy hammer flies up and down again and again, the worker’s mind is occupied exclusively with the task, without any desire to “show off”. We may even say that true beauty must be hidden in order that others may discover it’ (TOA, 55).

Define a large, square area in the room using small juggling balls or chairs to delineate the four corners. Stand on the edge of one of the invisible walls of the square. Look into the playing area defined by the square from this threshold and see it as it actually is, the floor, ceiling, light. In a moment, you will invite an image to appear: it does not have to be complete, coherent, or have any sense of logic. It may include real and surreal elements, a combination of natural and man-made components, or appear highly luxurious or quite banal; accept the images as they first come. Imagine that inside this square is a ‘palace’ of beauty. If you were to dream up a place that you consider unconditionally beautiful (in the broadest sense of the word), your own individual space that can be anything you want, what would it look like, what would it contain? Invite an original image to appear, rather than a pre-existing location that you know. Wait for it to emerge and try to imagine it within the actual square rather than with your eyes closed. Can you perceive the floor, the ceiling (if there is a ceiling), the walls, the way the light falls? Are there windows

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or any sounds or smells? Is there a discernible temperature? Remember, the elements may be surprising and inconsistent (the floor may be a stretch of sand, for example, while the ceiling might be designed in ornate Rococo style), but they certainly don’t have to be palatial. It is your place of beauty, that is all.1 Once your visualization has materialized, so to speak, cross the threshold of the square and step into the palace, sensing what it is like now to be inside it. Touch the floor or the imaginary walls, move around, lie down in it. Spend some time taking it in. Now, move through this place until you come across something, an object, most probably. The only criterion is that it is something that you value and find of interest. It can be something familiar from your own life, or something new and invented. Although you cannot actually see it, visualize it. Again, everything is possible: it may be big or small, trivial or significant or may not seem to belong here. Walk until you ‘find’ this object, even if it takes some time. When you discover it, receive its qualities and all the reasons why you consider it striking. You might even pick up this imaginary item. After a moment, move again and discover a second item that anyone else might consider ugly or insignificant but that you find interesting. Once again, receive everything about it and observe any feelings you have. After five or ten minutes, leave it, walk around one last time and cross the threshold of the square to exit. Once outside, look back into the palace, noticing what is different about it now that you have experienced it from inside. Once you have a sense of this, slowly ‘dissolve’ the image. We are working here on the feeling of beauty which is the third of Chekhov’s four brothers, and perhaps one of his more elusive ideas. While the word ‘beauty’ may conjure up all sorts of problematic connotations, let us be clear that it has nothing to do with external, physical appearance or seduction and everything to do with attitude and approach. As the art critic Isobel Harbison puts it, we are referring to ‘beauty, not beauties’ (Charlesworth and Harbison 2016, 25). When I first learnt this exercise with American actor and teacher, Mel Shrawder, my palace had a floor of freshly cut grass, golden mosaic tiles on the walls, and a ceiling that was the sky itself; Michael Chekhov Acting Studio (New York, 2010). 1

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Sloan substitutes the words ‘honour’, ‘value’ and ‘significance’, all of which I find helpful; I would also add ‘appreciation’ and ‘respect’ to this list. When I imagine and reflect on someone I love or something that I value in my own life, or recall a great work of art that I find inspiring, I begin to connect with what matters to me in life and in art, and to a certain heart’s desire: who I am, what I want out of life, why I want to make theatre, what I want to express through my art. We must be wary of any tendency towards sentimentality here, a distortion that Chekhov calls beauty’s ‘counterfeit’ (TOA, 55).2 It is not about being ‘nice’ to everyone or avoiding conflict. We can conjure up feelings of love and honour for a person or work without our behaviour descending into over-romanticizing or excessive politeness. A feeling of beauty transcends such overtones. It is serious, robust and involves deep connection: to people, life, art and our craft. As such, it hones a sense of authenticity. Not only is it intended to plug us into our ideals and aspirations as artists, it is also an active practice, an important point that is often overlooked. This practice starts with taking responsibility for igniting our own spark of inspiration in rehearsals and performance as well as in our ongoing artistic development and sensibility. Only then will we be able to invest our work with the necessary vitality and sense of value, avoiding any sense of complacency where, as Chekhov puts it, ‘everything surrounds us like huge, cold lumps’ (PA, 97). By way of example, Chekhov describes the power of a surgeon’s skill as originating ‘from the feeling for the life which is in his hands. … Life! Another person’s life – that is the source of his creative power’ (PA, 97, Chekhov’s emphasis). Artists must have a comparable commitment to making works of art that pulsate with life; the stakes must be life or death and must command a corresponding approach. In fact, we might say that an appreciation for life, or vitality, is one of the sources of a feeling of beauty. It is a ‘feeling’ which is alive and active in the body as opposed to a fixed or static state. Chekhov is adamant that whether our art lives or dies depends entirely on us, as artists and as human beings. We don’t have to get everything right, but the commitment to our pursuit must be total. There can be no alibi, no apology, no half-heartedness. Nor is there much Chekhov insists that ‘sentiment kills the individuality’ and ‘the person who has no individuality has nothing to give’ (AIT, 72–3). 2

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room for fear, indifference or cynicism. Chekhov insists that ‘a true artist sees beauty first, not shortcomings or deformity. The more an artist criticizes and censures, the less of true art can be expected of him’ (DR, 56). A respect for beauty can release us into enjoying what we’re doing (and appreciating the fact that we are fortunate enough to be doing it) rather than spending too much time worrying about whether it is good enough.3 Of course, our standards should be high and rigorous, but it is important not to cloud our process with unnecessary psychological obstructions.

Beauty and aesthetics If Chekhov admires the surgeon’s feeling of life, he also commends his ‘immense power of concentration’ and the ‘boldness and beauty of his movements’ (PA, 97). In the case of the surgeon as well as the skilful labourer cited earlier, Chekhov celebrates their absolute immersion and investment in the task at hand, as well as their physical mastery of it.4 There is nothing superfluous in their movement: the simple action of hammering becomes beautiful when it is executed expertly and with complete commitment. As actors, we must cultivate equal levels of aptitude, focus, absorption and integrity. If the blacksmith were to become self-conscious or to try to impress us with his skill, our appreciation would diminish, and the beauty would be compromised because the connection between the blacksmith’s inner attention and his outer movement is ruptured. It would become ‘a primitive “showing off”’, which is a caricature of beauty in Chekhov’s mind and leads us nowhere (TOA, 55).5

Stanislavsky asserts, ‘Beauty lifts the soul and brings out the best in us’ (cited in Carnicke 2009, 48). 4 Gaskill commends the concentration of the athlete or gymnast as exemplary models for the actor, in particular their ‘absorption in the purity of action’ (Gaskill 2010, 64). 5 Worrall describes how Vakhtangov’s moment of revolutionary conversion is said to have occurred ‘while observing a worker mend a broken overhead tram wire. There was something about the way in which the man handled his tools, bent with absorbed concentration over his work, that suggested to Vakhtangov in a flash of insight that here was someone no longer engaged in somebody else’s work, but who was doing it for himself and on behalf of others’ (Worrall 1989, 96). 3

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Everything we do as actors should be a piece of art, Chekhov explains, executed with a ‘feeling of significance at all times’ (LP, 129). He asserts that by nature we have a beautiful form (our body and our psychology); when we handle our physical selves consciously with care and ease, and seek a certain harmony between our outer and inner worlds, so to speak, we begin to awaken a feeling of beauty. Even in the simplest movement exercises, Chekhov asked his students to perform ‘with the beauty which rises from within you’ (Cornford 2012, 114).6 No action on stage will be of interest, for Chekhov, if the movement is not reverberating within the actor in some way, if the actor’s inner life is not alive. Working with beauty makes ‘everything you do on stage aesthetic and harmonious because you are in harmony with your body, with yourself’ (TP78, 8).7 Even a simple exercise such as lifting your arm up and down ‘must not be done superficially. No. It must be done as a little tiny performance’ (LP, 68). We must avoid indulgence or vanity, yet we can invest fully in our activity. This total investment in what we are doing on stage and in its intended meaning and value for our spectator make it a piece of art. Consistent work like this also leads us organically to a feeling of form. This may sound as if we are only interested in balanced, measured, controlled performances. Not at all. The feeling of beauty describes the actor’s attitude, not the character’s. Actors have to play characters in extreme situations all the time, but just as we saw with a feeling of ease, a feeling of beauty teaches us how to play heightened circumstances artistically. We, the actor, need to come into harmony with whatever we are portraying even if our portrayal must appear disharmonious. No matter how nasty or violent our character, we must clarify, with a keen and respectful attention, what we hope to communicate through this behaviour. If Zinder jokes, ‘while the actor is killing himself or killing someone else, the actor inside should be having the time of his life’ (AT), Chekhov asserts that when we’re playing a hateful character, it is appropriate that the actor in us enjoys this hatred: ‘We love to hate on

In the Chekhov Studio prospectus, this extends to voice work too: ‘Special attention will be paid to the beauty of speech as well as to its plastic and musical qualities’ (SP, 21). 7 He elaborates that ‘as artists, we should receive images from the world of aesthetics and we should know that this world will only reveal itself if there is harmony within each of us’ (PT, 257). 6

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the stage, and our spectator … loves to see us hating while we are in love with this hate’ (AA, 3:9). To clarify, I do not think Zinder, nor Chekhov, mean us to take this task lightly. I think their point is that regardless of how we feel about the role, we must enjoy playing it and appreciate that portraying extreme emotion should be a stimulating process rather than one of suffering. The rage or hatred of the character isn’t ours, it isn’t personal, but rather it is an artistic performance that we take up and let go according to our will and skill. If we are performing a role that is ugly or shocking in this way, applying the feeling of beauty means that we will work with ‘aesthetic consciousness’ (TP39, 22) or as Petit puts it, ‘not make unconscious ugliness’ (HA, 27). Chekhov explains that ‘ugliness expressed on the stage by unaesthetic means irritates the nerves of the audience. The effect of such a performance is physiological rather than psychological’ (TA, 15, Chekhov’s emphasis). If, as an audience, we witness the actor lose control in a moment of violence for example, or fall badly so that we hear a bone hit the floor, it jars with us. If, on stage, we’re dramatizing a horrific or traumatic incident, the audience has to be preserved from any experience of worrying about the actor’s safety or mental health.8 We still have to portray the ugly situation in all its harrowing detail, but we must consider carefully the art of how we depict it, remaining conscious of what we are doing and mastering our portrayal rather than losing ourselves in the passion of it. Through cultivating an aesthetic sensibility, we lift the work into the realms of art rather than a crude, sensationalist or gratuitous replica of something we might see in the street. Above all, Chekhov posits that we must draw the audience into the psychological aspect of the violence rather than emphasizing its purely physical side. In this way, we invite the audience to absorb and reflect on the work rather than repel them to look away, drawing them into the conflict rather than taking them out of it. A feeling of beauty helps us to find the measure of what we’re doing, to determine what is the right amount of effort and what is not. From the performer’s point of view, a feeling of beauty also teaches us to perceive interest in something that others might overlook altogether.

Chekhov stresses that ‘we must not torture audiences, suffocating and writhing in the cramp of agony before them. Nothing except pain and disgust can be aroused within the audience through this means’ (TA, 214). 8

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When I first learnt the principle with British actor and teacher (not the playwright!), Sarah Kane, she asked us all to bring in an item that we considered distasteful or ugly. We spent time contemplating each item, trying to find some aspect of it that we could appreciate. Although our choices were all fairly anodyne (dirty hairs from the shower drain, clipped toenails, a rotten apple), we could sense how such a simple shift of attitude opened up the range of detail that we observed. It ignited our curiosity and expanded our perspective beyond our habitual, subjective likes and dislikes. It taught us to look at things objectively with fresh eyes. Indeed, Chekhov demands that we discover beauty ‘everywhere: in every posture, position, thought, picture’ (DR, 56), to open up to a greater range of experience without aversion or censorship. He calls on us to dig deeper imaginatively, to move beyond our obvious, conditioned response. Chekhov warns that ‘the more superficially we consider a thing that is beautiful, the more sentimental it appears, while ugliness where taken superficially often calls up a feeling of disgust’ (TOA, 57). For the actor who is called on to portray a huge spectrum of human behaviour, this deeper approach is essential if we are to avoid oversimplification or reduction of the character to our own personality.9 Of course, we are seeking to identify with and find a truthful relationship to our character, but we can connect with him or her in all kinds of ways that are not necessarily literal or purely psychological.

Beauty and character At the heart of all this is an invitation for deep empathy. Chekhov elaborates to say that we must love the characters we play in order to find their three-dimensional humanity, and in the case of a hateful character, we must find in them ‘something admirable’ (DP, 25),

I’m reminded here of Peter Brook: ‘I think there is one thing that I have found that can help every actor in every part he plays: that is for him to believe, by some basic act of faith, that whatever the part is, the part is greater than he. … If you’re playing a witless cretin, that witless cretin is more magnificently witless and more cretinously cretin than you can ever be’ (Moffitt 1999, 60). 9

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‘at least a grain which is not ugly and not repulsive’ to us (AA, 3:11).10 However unlikeable, our job is to make our character as alive as possible and to remain non-judgemental. By making a regular practice of trying to find something pleasant in things and people around us to which we are unsympathetic, as suggested in Kane’s exercise earlier, we will awaken our capacity to love playing our character. Even if it is small and insignificant, Chekhov insists that ‘it is worthwhile to find this little intangible something which is good’ (AA, 3:11). On that basis, we can find a kind of beauty in the most apparently ugly scenarios. More broadly, he recommends that we seek opportunities in our life ‘to render some help to other people around us’ (AA, 3:11) and by doing so we will ignite a capacity for empathy and curiosity so necessary for our craft. The spiritual undercurrent is evident here, but the argument still stands from a creative viewpoint.

The character’s palace of beauty The next stage of the palace of beauty exercise is to stand on the edge of the square from the perspective of your character and conjure her place and cherished objects. If you know very little about the character, it doesn’t matter: this exercise works just as well early on in a process. Cate from Sarah Kane’s Blasted (1995) for example, might cherish a Leeds United football shirt and a neck chain with a holy medal of Saint Christopher that someone gave her as a child. For Stella from Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), it might be a framed photograph of her and Blanche as children laughing and hugging each other at Belle Reve and a pair of Stanley’s old sweaty boxer shorts lying abandoned on a bathroom floor. In ‘Diary of a Madman’, Robert worked with the idea that Proprishchin stole a beautiful silk handkerchief from Sophie’s boudoir that he carried around with him in secret, and

Chekhov, describing an actor who was drawn to playing evil, negative characters, sums up this point: ‘Strangely enough, the more expressively he performed them, the more sympathetic they became, remaining nevertheless unmistakably evil. His secret became clear when I understood that the basic aim of his creative individuality was to vindicate the human condition’ (TOA, 7). 10

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occasionally sniffed with delight, scented as it was with her luxurious ambergris perfume. The more we can build a kaleidoscope of images of the character’s world, the more concrete the character becomes and the more the audience can believe in a person with a life beyond the stage. I recommend revisiting this exercise about four or five times throughout a rehearsal process (you can do this work on our own), accumulating new images each time and always working physically on your feet. Often, the objects that arise will begin to suggest a story around them or a moment from the character’s life. It is an imaginative and intuitive alternative to creating the character’s biography; an incomplete medley of eight to ten vivid, apparently disconnected images can serve our characterization just as potently as a well-constructed, coherent life story because they, more readily than facts and figures, appeal to our sense of fantasy and invention. I also suggest revisiting the exercise during the run of a show; the process of accumulating image upon image after the encounter with the audience will keep you discovering the character with renewed interest and depth. An advantage of working with our own sense of beauty before exploring the character’s helps us distinguish the differences between ourselves and the character. Chekhov maintains that the similarities between ourselves and the character take care of themselves and do not need dwelling upon.11 We can also ask our character the same questions that we began asking ourselves at the beginning of this chapter: what matters to them most in the world, what inspires them, what can they not do without? When we get in touch with the sorts of things that our character cherishes and values, the rest of the pieces will begin to fall into place. However we contact beauty, it can be a tremendous resource if we find ourselves lost or nervous in rehearsal. While working to avoid sentimentality, sustained work with this sensation situates us in what we are doing, brings great confidence on stage and a sense that nothing can go wrong.

Unless, of course, we are struggling to connect with the character at all, in which case it may be worthwhile to make the similarities more conscious for a period of time. 11

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Stand on the edge of a defined square from the perspective of your character. You don’t have to play the character, or act anything, just recall her world and mind-set. Then begin to conjure her palace of beauty: the floor, ceiling, walls, light. Step into this place and invite specific objects that are precious to the character to present themselves. Resist any need for the images to be grand, original or logical: what can appear as insignificant and trivial, such as a child’s teddy bear or a simple teacup, can have great potency. Spend about twenty minutes, then cross the threshold and dissolve the image. Take an object or a work of art that you consider beautiful or inspiring. Examine it through all your senses. Notice the sensation you experience in your body as you appreciate the object. Put the object away but hold onto the sensation you experienced. It might be quite a subtle feeling, but welcome it. Begin to move freely in full-bodied movements, keeping this sensation alive, gradually filling the space with it. Then begin to move more simply and naturally. Let the sensation continue to permeate everything you do. Take a random, banal object and find something of interest or beauty in it. Spend at least ten minutes with one item. Repeat the stages above. Revisit with ever more ‘ugly’ objects. Bring to mind someone in your life who is important to you and whom you respect. Notice the sensation in parts of your body (shoulders, armpits, back of the neck, nature of your breathing) and any feelings that arise. Gradually allow the image of the person to fade, but maintain the sensation resonating in your body. Execute simple, everyday movements such as entering the room, sitting down and standing up, putting on your coat, taking a drink. Speak a few words from this sensation, a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, for example, but do not speak too much. Explore broad, abstract, free movements with a feeling of beauty, experiencing the pleasure and satisfaction of moving

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your body freely, without judgement (TOA, 56). Move slowly at first and then build up speed. Explore moving freely with a chair or throwing a ball or stick to your partner (MCT, 1:2). Handle the objects with appreciation. Transmit the quality of beauty to the object itself (TS). ll

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Sit on a chair and move your hand. Make it significant for yourself (LP, 130). Look right, then left. Again, make it significant. Keep a sense of ease about what you are doing. Remember that you yourself are not trying to be beautiful and pay attention not to hold yourself in a particular way or become too reverent. You are making everything you do significant, bringing value to what you are doing and what is around you. Chamberlain suggests juggling with some balls or objects in front of an audience, with the attitude that everything you do is perfect and well done, even when you make a mistake (MC, 119). It teaches us never to apologize for our presence. With an audience, practice entering a room, walking centre stage to a still point and speaking one short simple line to a specific spectator. Work with the feeling that this small performance is significant, a work of art and that you value it. Any of the exercises listed under feeling of ease and form can be repeated to explore beauty. Practise ease, form and beauty together.

6 THE FOURTH OF THE FOUR BROTHERS: FEELING OF ENTIRETY ‘The ability to feel the whole thing is absolutely necessary for the artist: to have the feeling of the whole performance, the whole art, the whole scene, everything’ (AIT, 121).

Bring your attention to the polarity between the top of the body, the head, and the bottom of the body, the legs and feet. Begin to move the body freely, imagining that the head and the feet are always connected. While the head and feet explore different movements, think of them travelling in harmony with each other. Now begin to move one hand. As you move it, sense the hand in its entirety, all in one go – its shape, size, colour, temperature, weight, function, capability. Then bring your awareness to this hand in relation to the rest of your body. Begin to move the whole body slowly and freely in broad, large movements. Think of the body as an entire unit. Say to yourself that your body is complete and harmonious, and that each part works easily in relation to the other parts. Gradually explore a quicker tempo. After three or four minutes, pause and stand still. Sense the entire body as one entity. Then execute a series of everyday actions like sitting down or traversing the room with the sensation of coordinated wholeness. As you do so, begin to lift your attention to include the whole room and where

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you are in relation to it. Think of it as a cinematic overhead, wide shot. Without focusing on any particular detail, try to experience the room in its entirety, sensing all the elements in it together, including yourself, as one whole thing (architecture, light, objects, people). Alternate between looking at things directly and indirectly (with your peripheral vision). As you move through the room, work with the attitude that you and the room are interconnected, that you and it are part of the same world, in relation to each other. We are now in the last of the four brothers: a feeling of entirety, also known as a feeling of the whole. We practise it initially through simple exercises with the body as above, conceiving our physical and psychological body as one whole unit. Chekhov warns against considering our bodies as ‘movable in sections’ with ‘certain divided parts’ (AIT, 103). For him, a creative artist moves skilfully with the whole body, no parts or limbs are annexed or employed unconsciously. When we touch something for example, ‘the whole being becomes an organ for touching. … We are the whole being’ (AIT, 178). Working with a feeling of entirety in conjunction with a feeling of form develops complete kinaesthetic awareness. The unit of the body is also part of the larger ‘body’ of people we are working with (the cast, relationships with other characters and creative team), and this collective of people is part of a bigger whole which includes the space, the set, the lighting, the sound (the world of the play). Chekhov invites us to speak and act in sensitive relation to all these elements that constitute the ‘large and rhythmical body’ of the performance (LT, 70). The stage image, of course, is part of an even larger whole which is the auditorium and its audience. Drawing our attention to the fact that we are only a part, albeit an important part, of what happens on stage reminds us that the production doesn’t begin and end with ourselves and our work is to understand our function in connection to the big picture.1

Pitches charts the idea of the whole in Chekhov as an influence from Romanticism, in particular from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832): ‘Every one thing exists for the sake of all things and all for the sake of one, for the one is of course the all as well’ (Pitches 2006, 154). Robert Leach summarizes the idea of the whole in German Romanticism: ‘In order to understand a work of art one must see it whole; but in order to do so, one must see each part of which it is constituted; but each part can only be understood in the light of the whole; and so ad infinitum’ (Leach 2004, 49). 1

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Triplicity Ultimately, however, the feeling of entirety serves as an investigation of structure: of the text, the character and our rehearsal process. Chekhov asserts that every well-written play battles between the forces of good and evil within a three-part structure, ‘the plot generates, unfolds and concludes’ (TA, 94) and he invites us to think of our own production ‘as if it is one family in three parts’ (AIT, 111). This is his law of triplicity, which he regards as the first rule of composition. We can calibrate any text to this tripartite structure (a five-act play, a one-act play, a devised episodic work) and indeed, Chekhov advises we do so. It is often clarifying to do this, particularly when working on Shakespeare where the acts are often an editor’s addition and where it is easy to lose your way in a myriad of digressions and subplots. The law of triplicity also boils down to a very simple format: everything we do on stage must have a beginning, middle and end. This includes every speech, every monologue, every scene, every act, every performance. We are consciously constructing a work of art. When rehearsing ‘Diary of a Madman’, our three parts took the following form: Part one was comprised of the first eleven diary entries of the story, all taking place in the city of St Petersburg (Proprishchin’s office, the street, Sophie’s apartment), part two represented a shift of location mostly to his room, with an increasing amount of time spent lying on his bed (entries twelve to sixteen), and part three was defined by the asylum and solitary confinement (entries seventeen to twenty). We observed that time became compressed in parts two and three, accelerating in rhythm as Proprishchin’s delusion takes hold. From here, the progression of the story became clear: a movement from the outside to the inside, from a social, peopled world to a world inside his head (madness), from an expanded place to a confined one. We explored the idea that Robert play the early part of the story everywhere on stage, using the whole space, fully complicit with the audience; by contrast, the final scenes in the asylum became something of a retreat from contact, taking place in a restricted area, with little movement. Chekhov also suggests conjuring an image to encapsulate each section. Taking the example of Shakespeare’s King Lear, he proposes that the first might be of Lear on the throne banishing Cordelia, the second, Lear in the tent begging Cordelia not to harm him, and the

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third, Lear’s death with Cordelia in his arms (AIT, 115). In ‘Diary of a Madman’, we worked with the first image of Proprishchin reading the letters from his beloved Sophie (stolen from her dog!), the second as him declaring himself king of Spain to his housekeeper in his homemade, ‘royal’ cloak, and the third, the image of him alone in the asylum, beaten, like a dog. This simple idea provides clarity about the story we are telling. I also suggest ‘staging’ or embodying the images in still pictures because it is helpful for the whole company to see them; alternatively you can sketch or collage them, any process that renders them concrete and vivid.

Polarity In addition, Chekhov suggests that the distinguishing factor of a well-composed performance is that the beginning and the end are ‘polar in principle’, where ‘all the main qualities of the first section should transform themselves into their opposites in the last section’ (TA, 94). If the beginning of our play was heavy, Chekhov explains, ‘the end must be as light as air’ (LP, 71). The more contrasting we can make our beginning and endings, the more sharply focused the performance will be. I like to begin this work on our feet, delineating two spaces at either end of the room, one signifying the beginning of the play, and the other, the end. I stand in each area long enough to visualize images of the opening and the end: I picture the actual situation and what is happening, the characters involved, the place, atmosphere, colours, sounds. I move between both areas to experience the difference between the two. Afterwards, I make a list of the polarities between the beginning and the end, allowing it to be as open as possible. If we look at potential polarities in Kane’s Blasted for example, we might note the following: Beginning

End

Peace

War

Hope

Despair

Life

Death (Continued)

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Beginning

End

Abundance

Scarcity

Contained

Exploded apart

Verbal violence

Physical violence

Luxury

Poverty

Sense of the world ‘out there’

World ‘out there’ is now ‘in here’

Ordinary

Extraordinary

Real time

Poetic time

Sustained action

Episodic, fragmented

Dialogue

Images and action

Hotel room

Battlefield

Sense of boundaries

Boundaries broken

Civilization

Lawlessness

Cate as a child

Cate as a ‘mother’ or ‘nurse’

Cate in submission

Cate in charge

Ian dominates

Ian is dependent

Ian is mobile and free

Ian is immobile and confined

In devising processes, this exercise can clarify an initial framework where the text or content does not yet exist. Moreover, if we do it in the early days of rehearsal it gives the whole company an immediate grasp of the journey of the piece, opening up a rich collective ‘musing’ on the text without getting weighed down in analysis too soon. As you search for the right words with which to name the contrasts, you will find that you are already working imaginatively. Once the images and qualities of the beginning and the end have emerged, we can begin to think about how to manifest them concretely in our production. We can spend time staging the pairs of polarities, as suggested above, or we can sketch them, or gather a scrapbook of images. We may know nothing more than a series of adjectives, but that is enough to feel our way. It is illuminating also to focus on polarities for our own role in the same way. The character of King Lear, Chekhov suggests, is an evil oppressor at the beginning, while the end reveals him as an enlightened

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victim. Chekhov explains how this shift must also be visually symbolic in the staging: ‘In the beginning he was sitting higher than all the others, and at the end he must die being down’ (LP, 71). At times, the main characters’ polarities will correspond to those of the play overall, and if there are two principal protagonists, it is interesting to chart the difference between them. In Othello, for example, some of Iago’s polarities between beginning and end might be: disappointed/ triumphant, rejected/notorious, private/public, failure/success, marginal/ central, weak/strong, careful/reckless, hidden/brazen. Some of Othello’s might be:  hero/enemy, love/hatred, rebel/victim, honour/dishonour, bravery/cowardice, joy/despair, desirable/undesirable, central/marginal, success/failure, fellowship/isolation, law-abiding/lawless.2 Part of the successful dynamic in the play can be attributed to the fact that Iago and Othello often appear together in highly contrasting states. The more consciously the performers tap into this, the more exciting the relationship becomes. I also recommend looking at the polarities in any important character speeches too, particularly in Shakespeare where there is often a shift in the verse structure and imagery within a monologue. We can also determine the polarities in each act if they exist, as well as in each scene. Ideally, do this with scene partners so that everyone is on the same page, but it is still useful to do it yourself if no one else is working in this way and it is an indispensable tool for directors starting to think about shape and composition. Not only can we probe polarity between beginning and end from a psychological and thematic point of view, we can determine them in atmosphere, quality of movement (more on this in Part Two), tempo, dynamics and rhythm or a contrasting visual stage picture. The more comprehensive we are, the more expressive our work will be.

Flying over the play While Chekhov endorses breaking down the three parts of our structure into further subdivisions, he urges us to counterbalance It is questionable whether Othello is law-abiding given that he elopes with Desdemona in the middle of the night against her father’s wishes. However, I suggest it here because Othello wants to function and succeed within this society at the beginning of the play and seeks to win over the Duke and Brabantio to the idea that he is a worthy husband for Desdemona. 2

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detailed work in every rehearsal with a return to the whole scene or act we’re working on;3 this ‘run’ should help us reflect upon how the scene or act fits within the play and production overall. He also proposes running the entire play at various points in a rehearsal process because the performance will ripen more organically if the actors are given the chance to fly over the whole play at each stage of the work. Some Chekhov practitioners work literally with this image and visualize the scenes of the play laid out upon the rehearsal room floor; the actors imagine that they are flying above it, surveying it from a distant elevation. While running the play throughout rehearsals is fairly common, Chekhov’s proposition to rehearse the beginning, end and turning point of the play in isolation and in succession, is perhaps less so. While I confess I never do this myself, I can see its logic. Rehearsing the noisy, bustling beginning of Othello that reveals Desdemona’s elopement, the end with its series of ‘silencings’ (Emilia is silenced by Iago, Desdemona is silenced by Othello, Othello silences himself and Iago refuses to say another word) and the turning point of Emilia’s decision to give Desdemona’s lost handkerchief to Iago might help us to grasp the play’s atmosphere of betrayal and its muffled world of clandestine encounters and treacherous intimacies. There is perhaps something of NemirovichDanchenko’s influence here in the attempt to comprehend ‘“the spine” of everything’ (LT, 43). Indeed, it is to Nemirovich-Danchenko that Chekhov attributes an ability to bring ‘oneness, wholeness, completeness’ to process and production at the Moscow Art Theatre (DP, 45). Exercises on entirety are attempts at leading us to understand the guiding idea of our play and production.4 Chekhov also proposes rehearsing the play out of sequence, exploring climaxes or key events. When I rehearsed ‘Diary of a Madman’, we began with the closing scene and it informed work on the earlier part of the story.5 Rehearsals on Othello might benefit

Outlining text analysis tools such as Units and Actions is beyond the scope of this book and does not feature specifically in Chekhov’s writing, although it is implicit. Useful examples are outlined in Alfreds, 2010 and Merlin, 2009. 4 Chekhov concludes: ‘We must have an idea which is permeated with the feeling, which is unifying us. We must have a unifying will, a unifying idea, and feeling. … This is very abstract, but it will come to us, as if by itself, as we work, gradually’ (LT, 23). 5 You can read about how we rehearsed ‘Diary of a Madman’ in PT, 304. 3

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from beginning with the more demanding second half of the play, from Act III:iii. Chekhov believes rehearsals become more alive this way, a new beginning is created and ‘instantly the cast is out of the rut of repetition and on the alert’ (DP, 86).

Entirety of the role The feeling of entirety also requires considering the role as a whole which means to grasp the broad line of your character. Chekhov suggests that you assume your character is ‘unchangeable in its core, in spite of all the transformations it might undergo in the play’ (TA, 19). The process of finding the defining characteristics of the role is laid out in later chapters in Part Three. Suffice it to say here that part of the work of finding ‘the whole’ of the character is, paradoxically, about investigating the contradictions within it. For Chekhov, ‘the ability to combine things which are sometimes quite far removed and not akin to each other, give originality’ (AIT, 83), an ability he admired in Vakhtangov to produce work that was ‘very beautiful, very wonderful, very deep, and very light, and very mathematically clever and humanly bright’ (Malaev-Babel 2011, 4). Chekhov gives the examples of a character robbing somebody with love in his heart or opening himself up while remaining completely cold (AIT, 83), just as Iago destroys Othello with sweet words of love and friendship. Chekhov also suggests playing with language and sentences ‘as a juggler does’ (LP, 70), speaking one line with a slow or warm quality for example, and the next quickly and coldly. At all costs, we must avoid sameness, or what Chekhov calls ‘the straight line’ (LP, 70). For him, ‘art requires curves, and spirals’; only then will the audience be ‘with’ the actor (LP, 69). A comedian’s humour will become stronger if she is able to play tragic parts, our sense of beauty will increase by contemplating ugliness, our appreciation of wisdom will benefit from an encounter with stupidity. Cultivating a dexterity in playing contrasts in the broadest sense will help us grow as actors at large.6

Chekhov was praised as an actor for his ability to play contrasts. About his performance as Erik XIV, Silvija Radzobe quotes the critic Jānis Grots: ‘The King of Sweden that Chekhov plays is both king, wretch and fool. At times he is a great lord, at times a miserable tyrant and murderer, at times a tender and gentle child’ (MH, 301). 6

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When we can evaluate and situate such details ‘within the part as a well-integrated whole’, we will be able ‘to play each of these details as little entities which blend harmoniously into the all-embracing entirety’ (TA, 17).7

Working within the whole Just as we discussed with a feeling of form, the logical conclusion of entirety is to work towards aesthetic, formal and thematic coherence in the production overall. Chekhov posits that perhaps only actors who have experienced ‘the trials and tribulations of being a director’ can really act ‘with that particular “grasp” of the whole’ (PA, 183). Even if you have little interest in directing, in my experience the best performances come from actors who engage with the text and production as a whole, who remain curious about and alert to its evolution and who are sensitive to the fact that scenographic decisions affect their own work. I believe that the success of an actor’s performance is related directly to their ability to craft what they do in relation to the world of a production, something Chekhov describes as ‘radiating’ the whole, distinctive world of the play (PA, 183). I think the audience implicitly understands this and, for Chekhov, ‘is always unconsciously grateful to the actor for it’ (PA, 183).8 Cultivating ‘the ability to feel the whole thing’ (AIT, 121), Chekhov asserts, ‘feeds and leads our whole nature’ (AIT, 109). Chekhov also demands that we resist a singular attention restricted only to our role and question how we might influence the production overall, an idea in the terrain of another character for example, or in design, sound or lighting. Concretely, this might mean that as actors, we need to challenge how production and design meetings happen. It is notable how in mainstream theatre for the most part, actors are rarely British actor Ben Kingsley describes how in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, ‘Brutus’s inconsistencies are only a microcosm of the whole play. If you try and iron out these inconsistencies in order to make the part playable, you will in fact anaesthetise the energy within the lines.’ John Barton concurs: ‘In a way, the contradictions are the character’ (Barton 1984, 41). 8 Chekhov describes a particular actor and director at the Lithuania State Theatre, Zhilinsky, as a rare example of this (PA, 183). 7

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part of design decisions and yet the implications of the design affects us most of all.9 The difference between a design that inspires the actor psychophysically and one that inspires little or at worst is obstructive has enormous impact on how actors create. It is easy to think that challenging standard practices isn’t realistic or doesn’t suit our freelance demands, but it is worth considering how we can adjust our process to honour an ideal within the confines of industry standards. Of course, in a company, everyone has expertise in one particular area, and, ultimately, this will be what each individual focuses on, yet along the way we can all serve the work. Each of us individually has the power to influence the whole and when we really embrace this potential, we make it grow collectively. This means developing the capacity for robust dialogue and debate, standing up for our perspective on the whole work from the inside as it were. As an ensemble, we can determine what we, as this particular group of people at this moment in time, want to express through this piece of work. We can do this even if we have been hired into a project initiated by a director’s singular vision. Chekhov’s ideal process is an ongoing negotiation between our individual creativity and that of the rest of the ensemble, including the director: our choices contribute to the ensemble and the ensemble nourishes the individual’s work in return. Chekhov seeks to nudge us out of functioning only within our assigned ‘role’ into a more expansive way of thinking. If we are directing or teaching, we might think of structuring our rehearsals in line with a feeling of entirety. How does each day’s warm-up prepare the cast and team specifically for the scenes or themes of the day? How can we keep a flow going from one part of the work to the next? Can we conceive the day in continuous sections rather than a broken up ‘stand up, sit down’ approach? Everyone has their own way of working, but certainly it is useful for a director to think about working towards a continuity of activity demanding sustained concentration. It is difficult for actors to immerse in demanding scenes if the rhythm of work is fragmented and dissipated. Returning, as a matter of principle, to the whole of the text, the guiding idea, the aesthetic, the style,

The thriving ensemble and devising theatre scene in the UK often offers a refreshing counter example to this. 9

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keeps our choices in check and prevents a situation where the actors appear as if they are all performing in a different play. One final point is perhaps worth mentioning here: Chekhov invites us to think of his tools as a whole too, as ‘one big thing’ (AIT, 181), and I think it is good to remember this. In this book I have broken the tools down and divided them into categories that make the most sense to me, but the aim, of course, is to put them altogether. We are to think of one tool as a door that leads to the other tools. When, according to Chekhov, we experience the technique as one whole thing, then we ‘will be an actor and a happy one’ (AIT, 181). Even though it is good to investigate and exercise each point separately, our final goal in performance is one of synthesis.

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Create a short sequence of everyday movements in the room, such as entering the room, taking off your coat, sitting on a chair, and opening a book to read a few pages. Create a clear beginning, middle and end. Experience performing it at different speeds. Keep it simple, human and credible. Then see the image of this same sequence before you do it (TOA, 51). As you execute the movements, say to yourself, ‘I am beginning, I do, I have accomplished’ (DR, 81). Pause at the end to experience the sensation. As Sloan describes: ‘You have to be very present on the way, know the moment when it ends’ (MCT, 1:2). Take an object and handle it with interest and appreciation. Imagine you are becoming united with this object. Move in large, free movements with a sense that your body and the object are one thing. Then progress to handling the object naturally, as it would normally be used. Don’t play a character or situation. Chekhov invites us to consider the props we handle as extensions of ourselves. Divide the room into two areas, one part represents offstage, the other onstage. Create an imaginary threshold between one area and the next. Walk from one area to the other and try

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to establish the moment of your appearance as a significant beginning. Arrive at a certain place in the second area (at a good distance from where you began) and stand still. Connect with your audience and say a sentence or simply ‘hello’. Pause. When you are ready, leave and cross back into the other area, trying to work with a sense that you are disappearing from view and that there is a definite end (TA, 18). In Chamberlain’s version of this exercise, imagine moving from darkness into light and back again, or from air into earth, exploring the moment of transformation from one to the other (MC, 126). Above all, try to cultivate a strong sense of when you begin or ‘appear’ and when you end or ‘disappear’. ll

In a group, throw a ball with a sense that you are viewing the game from above. Imagine that the group is one whole harmonious unit, in spite of their different physicality, speeds and qualities. See if you can discover wholeness without a need for homogeneity or synchronicity.

7 RADIATING1 ‘Some actors forget or ignore that the characters they portray have living souls, and that these souls can be made manifest and convincing through powerful radiation’ (TA, 13).

Stand with your eyes closed. Picture a huge, warm, golden, radiant sun. Imagine that you are close to it and begin to experience the heat of this sun on your skin. Think of the sun’s heat as a powerful source that cannot harm you in any way. Then imagine that you are walking towards it and with each step you feel the warmth of it become stronger. Continue walking in your imagination until you are able to step right inside the sun. Now you are standing at its epicentre, the hottest part. Imagine that your ideal centre is the hottest part of the sun’s epicentre. You have become the sun itself: you have no hardness whatsoever, and in place of your bones and muscles there is only warm light. You are a body of light streaming out ‘invisible rays’ of warmth (TOA, 46). Embody the power and force of the sun: it sheds light on the world, it makes flowers bloom, things grow hot and change colour under its effect. Open your eyes and send the heat, light and rays down into each part of the body, all the way to the fingertips, up through the top of the head, out through the collarbones and shoulder blades, the lower back, back of the knees, out through the eyes and the shining skin. Starting from the ideal centre, fill the entire space around you with these radiations in a 360 degree direction. Imagine that you are filling the air around you with warm light.

For more on radiating see TA, 11–13; TOA, 46–8; HA, 45–6; MC, 131–3; LP, 124, 147–8; RS, 309–10; MCT, 1:4. 1

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Now stretch out your arm and point at something. Send the radiation specifically to that place from the hot spot of the ideal centre. Turn your head and point at something else, radiating specifically to that new spot. Lift and outstretch both arms and radiate from your palms and fingertips to a specific point in the room. Imagine that your radiation is lighting up the object so much that it is glowing and almost warm to the touch. Then begin to take a walk in the room, imagining that with each step you are lighting up the world. Check that you are moving with a feeling of ease. If receiving is drawing energy in from the world, radiating is its counterpart which sends energy out to the world. We can imagine that we are the sun, or simply that we and the air are ‘filled with radiant light’ (TOA, 47), although I find the sun particularly effective because it is both light and heat. This helps develop the sense of radiation as something which we cannot necessarily see, but can still feel from each other’s bodies. Chekhov alleviates any doubts we may have about whether we are actually radiating by suggesting that ‘if you sincerely and convincingly imagine that you are sending out rays, the imagination will gradually and faithfully lead you to the real and actual process of radiating’ (TA, 12). German director and teacher Jobst Langhans imagines that there is a large, warm shining light behind us whose rays penetrate and move our body while Kane suggests visualizing that we and the air are like a sustained note, merging in a continuous sun-beam of radiance and light.2 I find it helpful to think of myself as possessing solar, fiery properties, with the capacity to set things alight, or make them expand. It is a positive, unceasing force that can affect change, reminiscent of Goethe’s energy who ‘when he looked at a flower’, Chekhov explains, ‘looked at it as if he was creating it’ (LT, 31). While Chekhov considers radiating as one of his four qualities of movement (we will discuss the remaining three in Part Two), I find it useful to introduce it also as a foundational principle and early on, following the ideal centre, the four brothers and receiving, as it seems to have a broader reach than the other three qualities. The practice of radiating creates sensations of confidence, power, freedom, happiness and inner warmth, and in its most fundamental Michael Chekhov Europe workshop (Ekenas, Finland, 2009); Michael Chekhov UK Studio (London, 2008). 2

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application strengthens the actor’s presence. Regular practice of it counteracts self-consciousness, doubt, fear and anxiety. Although it is a very similar process to sending out power from the ideal centre, Chekhov clarifies that radiating ‘has a much lighter quality’ (TA, 12). To this end, we work with it in tandem with the ideal centre, to come into contact with ‘the actual existence and significance of our inner being’, something Chekhov considers to be a ‘treasure’ (TA, 12, Chekhov’s emphasis). While we can work simply with the ideal centre as a source of energy, we can also think of our radiation as beginning in the ideal centre. If Chekhov’s aim for us is to become more ‘majestic’ as actors and ‘more psychologically fine’ (AIT, 190), then awakening and activating our inner life by way of radiation is an early, helpful step. Once our inner life is activated, we can radiate out into the world. I like to use it at the start of a rehearsal or a class to ground actors in imaginative and energetic connection. Working with the image of warm rays of light from the ideal centre becomes an act of radiating goodwill towards our fellow actors. This has nothing to do with polite social gestures; it is simply the act of opening ourselves to each other in a whole-hearted and ‘unsentimental way’ in order to create (DR, 81).3 When we open up completely there follows a curiosity, an inner movement, a ‘going out’ (LP, 45), a ‘flowing toward’ (LT, 25), the possibility of an empathetic relationship. So radiating helps us move inwardly towards our partners and cultivate a feeling of ensemble.4 Chekhov asks us to consider the open-heartedness we activate in a rehearsal room objectively and impersonally ‘as an act, as a deed, and not as feelings’ (AA, 3:10). Radiating also helps us develop an ability to sense and think beyond the concrete materialism of our physical self, to learn to move on the stage without ‘being somehow subconsciously limited to one’s skin and body and by time and space’ (AIT, 191). Quite simply, this means that we must transmit energy from our inner life not only to our fellow actors, but also into the space around us and beyond the stage to reach our audience. Everything we do, feel and wish to express on

Chekhov insists: ‘I can have good feelings without sentimentality’ (DR, 81). Chekhov reminds us that ‘the creative ensemble consists of individuals and must never be considered by me as an impersonal mass. I appreciate the individual existence of each and every one present in this room and in my mind they do not lose their identity’ (TA, 42). 3 4

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stage cannot remain within us; it must move outwards. By offering us a way to concretize energy, radiating helps us to understand how to act upon our environment and affect it.

Radiating as a quality In the first instance, we can work with radiating as a quality that we apply to our movement and actions in training and in rehearsal. When we move the body freely, imagining that through our activity we are sending out rays of radiant light and warmth, we come to experience the sensation of assurance, self-reliance, quiet strength, positivity and lack of restrictions. It is even in our language to refer to someone as ‘radiant’, inferring both an internal and external glow. As such, we can apply it to character. We might decide to use the quality as an overall character choice, but we can also select it for specific moments such as when Romeo eavesdrops on Juliet on her balcony in Act II:ii of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. He describes Juliet as the ‘fair sun’ and admires the ‘brightness of her cheek’, while her eyes twinkle so bright that if they were stars in heaven, he marvels, ‘birds would sing and think it were not night’. Romeo may be basking in the luminosity of Juliet’s beauty, but it is he who is really radiating, his whole being moving towards her in a gesture of desire. Working with radiating in such a moment helps avoid the pitfall of a syrupy, ‘romantic’ performance and puts us firmly in touch with the physical sensations of heat and joie de vivre that are overwhelming Romeo. In ‘Diary of a Madman’, Robert used radiation to express the madman’s delusional declaration that he is the king of Spain. When he touched things, it was as if they became imbued with a royal glow. It gave him an invincible and unstoppable quality, superior and infallible.

Radiating as projecting or sending However, radiating has two aspects: on the one hand, we can use it as a quality of radiant light and warmth, as described above, and on the other, as the action of sending out energy to our partner (where the energy itself isn’t necessarily positive or warm). Radiating in its

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fullest sense then is about communicating whatever is living within the character at any given moment to our fellow actors and the audience. We initially use the image of the sun to make tangible the notion of ‘rays’ that travel outwards beyond ourselves; later, we can use the image, movement and directionality of these rays (without their warmth) to help us understand how to ‘carry’ our intentions and make an impact. All our emotion, impulses, desires, images and the whole psychological life of the character must travel and reach its target, that is, find the appropriate external expression. In this way, we can radiate anything: despair or fear, our objectives, or we can even radiate radiating! In fact, Chekhov states that ‘there is nothing within the sphere of our psychology which cannot thus be radiated’ (TA, 13). We must acquire the ability to transmit everything and, as a result, an apparently intangible means of expression becomes concrete and experienced. Radiating, similar to a feeling of ease and beauty, reminds us that what we do on stage or screen has an aim: the audience. Chekhov insists that the essence of our craft involves ‘giving, giving, giving and keeping nothing for ourselves’ (AA, 3:10). He warns that the actor who takes and retains everything for himself, who is, to use his word, an ‘egotist’, is ‘always torn to pieces with some unrest inside’ (AA, 3:10). Again, Chekhov dares to speak to this part of the actor’s practice and consider it relevant. Alternatively, if we develop our radiation sufficiently so that it is burning brightly all the time, we will benefit personally. For Chekhov, ‘giving means to go along the path which leads us to wonderful tranquillity and poise’ (AA, 3:10); a certain peace of mind is won when we remember that at its heart performing is an act of generosity towards the public, rather than a display of our talent. On a more practical note, when working in large auditoria, I find replacing the idea of vocal projection with the imaginative act of radiating often helps actors contact the ease, power and breadth required to meet the technical demands of the space. If we are truly radiating, and breathing freely and easily, we should have no need to push or strain vocally. It renders our work on stage significant, invites natural economy in our means of expression and gets the audience in our grasp. Fully developed radiation develops a feeling of entirety because it cultivates an expansive awareness and lays a foundation for the bolder imaginative work that comes later. The challenge when first encountering radiating

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is to avoid getting locked into intensity, stiffness and reverence. We must think of it as both strong and soft, flexible and robust.

Sustaining and the pause Sustaining is a word that Chekhov frequently employs and it is similar to radiating in the second sense of projecting and sending out. I like to think of radiation as a continuous activity evolving in the present tense and sustaining as the suspenseful prolongation of a moment that has just ended. We might think of sustaining as the ‘ability to go on without actually going on’ (LP, 62), or to follow-through; I sit down, for example, and once still, I imagine that I am continuing to sit down. Or, I continue to get up in my imagination after I am already up. I am alive internally even though externally I have stopped moving. As an actor I must never be dead or ‘stopped’ inside; I continue imaginatively in some form of sustained inner activity. This is particularly relevant at the end of an action during a pause. Chekhov describes the pause as ‘always the result of what has just happened, or it is the preparation for a coming event’ (LP, 63). In this sense it can come before something happens, or afterward. The pause is always in relation to something and ‘there is never a pause which means nothing’ (LT, 43). For Chekhov, ‘the most beautiful pauses are those which are the continuation of something, and then the turning point of preparation for something new, and a new action’ (LP, 63). In this way, they are filled with a certain structure: the beginning is the end of action, the middle is the metamorphosis where there is resolution of the first part and a movement towards something new, and the end is the beginning of a new action. It is a similar dynamic to the ‘changeover’ in receiving, reminding us that speech or deed is the result of an inner process rather than the beginning of it.5 Chekhov invites us to practise sustaining pauses for long periods at a time, filling and transforming them into a new impulse. Conversely, we must be able to sustain even for a split second, to distinguish

Hurst du Prey describes it as a physical action: ‘You enter the pause, you resolve the pause in the metamorphosis, and you exit from the pause’ (TP78, 12). 5

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between ‘cutting the thing abruptly, or having at least one spark of the sustaining’ (LP, 62).6 This skill, he insists, is ‘as necessary to the syntax of a scene as punctuation is to the proper structure of a sentence’ (DP, 97) and you will find exercises to practise it below. Mastering the art of sustaining and pausing eliminates bad habits of speaking without impulse or without living the truthful progression from one specific thought to the next. It keeps the actor’s embers hot, so to speak. Each correctly used pause, Chekhov maintains, refreshes the stage action, renders it ‘full of theatrical sense’ and has ‘the power to stimulate the spectator’s attention and compel him to be more alert than he already is’ (DP, 97). We will gain the confidence to hold the audience in the palm of our hand. The charismatic actor is one who has developed the ability to sustain to a high degree. Chekhov describes it as the delicious ‘gravy’ topping to our performance that brings out its flavour (LP, 62); its ‘aroma’ will linger and permeate the air. Regular work with sustaining also builds our powers of concentration.

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Define a threshold which you have to cross on the floor: literal or imagined. Approach it from a distance, but as you move you must increase your radiation until it is at its peak when you cross. When you cross, continue to radiate to an audience (real or imaginary) while standing still. Repeat this until you experience your radiation as a reality, as a moment of increased energy without tension (TOA, 116). Work with the quality of radiating in large, free movements, imagining that your radiating begins in the ideal centre. Repeat the broad positions listed in Chapter 2 (throwing, lifting, pushing). Note the natural tempo this quality inspires. Then execute everyday activities. Occasionally speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from the sensation you experience. Allow the words to reach a particular target without vocal tension.

Chekhov warns: ‘There are moments on the stage when we have to drop our words abruptly, but even then we have to perform as if we have stopped our words abruptly but still there is a little “tail” left for ourselves and the audience’ (LP, 62). 6

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Choose a person in the room. Starting in the ideal centre, imagine pouring light into them, illuminating and warming them up. Choose someone behind you that you cannot see but know where they are. Radiate through your back towards them. Then walk through the room radiating in a 360 degrees direction, pouring your light into everything and everyone you pass. Try substituting the image of the sun with fire, or a large yellow buttercup, or simply the colour gold or deep amber. Activate the image first, receive it and let it work on you. The important point is not the image itself but that you imagine that you are the source of radiant streams that are filling the air. Define the threshold line on the floor again. This time think of a secret you have which you don’t want anyone to know. Approach the threshold from a distance, cross it and ‘radiate’ this secret to the audience. Repeat the same exercise, replacing the secret with (1) a piece of good news/bad news that you have for the audience which you are forbidden to tell; (2) an image that you visualize (the face of someone you love, a yellow wilting tulip, a letter of bad news); (3) a specific desire to do or get something. Radiate what you are working with to the audience without revealing or representing it. Without words, let it influence your behaviour and your relationship with them. Discuss with your spectators afterwards what they received or understood. Take a short piece of text that has several images in it; for example: ‘The free bird leaps / on the back of the wind / and floats downstream / till the current ends / and dips his wings / in the orange sun rays / and dares to claim the sky.’7 Radiate each specific image to your listener as you speak the lines. Sit down on a chair. Continue imaginatively to sit down even though physically you have already completed the action. Stand up again. Imagine that you are continuing to stand up.

The opening lines from ‘The Caged Bird’ by the American poet Maya Angelou (1928–2014) from her collection, Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? 7

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Walk and stop, but imagine that you are still walking. Always remain active inside (LP, 62). ll

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Say to a partner, ‘why are you looking at me like that?’ and sustain the question afterwards in the pause. The next time drop some words of your phrase: ‘Why are you looking …?’ Continue to sustain the dropped words in your imagination. Then just say, ‘why …?’ and sustain the missing words (LP, 62). Try the same exercise without sustaining and notice the difference! Work in pairs. Say ‘no’ to your scene partner and sustain. At some point in the sustained pause your partner will give you a sign (a nod of the head will do). This is the turning point. Begin to prepare to say the word ‘yes’ in the second part of your pause. Speak the word ‘yes’ and sustain a pause again. When your partner gives the turning point, prepare for a ‘no’, and speak the ‘no’. The partner should vary the length of the pauses. Switch roles and progress to phrases, different words (LP, 63; AIT, 77).

8 EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION: EXPANSION AS A PRINCIPLE1 ‘Remain objective and you will enlarge your own psychology immensely’ (TA, 4).

Stand and contact the ideal centre. Say to yourself, ‘I am expanding, getting bigger, growing, awakening’. Then begin to expand with your body, opening yourself completely, spreading arms and legs wide to the left and right (this involves turning the feet out a little) and opening the hands so the palms face front. The posture should resemble a fullbodied star shape. You can look up slightly, but ensure the neck is not strained in any way and resist overarching the back and tensing the shoulders. You are opening rather than exerting effort. Hold the final position still for ten or fifteen seconds, breathe easily and receive the feeling and sensation you experience. Radiate the energy out through your fingertips, eyes, skin. Even though your body cannot expand any further, imagine that energetically you are becoming larger, more alive and awake and that you can continue to expand beyond the physical limits of your body into the room. Then repeat the gesture,

You can read about expansion and contraction in TA, 72–5, drawings two and three; TOA, 68; MC, 133; HA, 21, 40, 88; RS, 304. 1

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this time beginning from its opposite stance, a crouched, closed position, gradually growing into the star shape. Practise extending the period of stillness at the end, resisting any temptation to rush out of it. Having completed the gesture, speak ‘yes’, or ‘no’ while still. Then stand still and execute the same gesture in your imagination only. Sense the actual movement of opening to the left and the right inside. Repeat the gesture internally and then follow any impulses you have. Stay sensitive to what specifically this movement inside inspires you to do, whether it is jumping, running, stretching, or shouting. Notice how you do these actions: is there a particular tempo or quality, or a sense of taking up space? As you improvise and execute your physical actions, continue to expand internally. Occasionally say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, speaking from the feeling and sensation this movement has provoked within. This is Chekhov’s fundamental gesture of expansion.2 It is a quintessential psychophysical tool in that it involves executing a strong physical movement with the purpose of awakening a precise sensation and feeling inside. The gesture of expansion has a concrete application, which we will see, but I introduce it here specifically because it is also an important principle.3 The gesture of expansion incites an initial sensation of strength, happiness, fearlessness, energy, openness, alertness, an extroverted state. I like to think of it as having a sense of spaciousness too; there is space between the legs and under the armpits, an airy quality, a sense of physical release. For me, expansion ‘lives’ in the skin and the muscles and can be experienced in the vowels in speech. Practice of it brings about what Chekhov calls ‘increased life’ on stage, ‘life which is much stronger than our usual lives are’ (MC/S1/12, 29 January 1942). Chekhov complains that often on stage actors appear as ‘corpses … dressed in strange costumes’ (MC/S1/12, 29 January 1942), when in fact their whole presence on stage must be imbued with ‘quite a

In Chekhov’s own terms, expansion and contraction are the most basic forms of archetypal gestures; they are properly basic in that they form the basis for other ways of thinking about movement. For our purposes here, we do not need to worry about terminology; I will discuss archetypal gestures fully in Part Two. 3 Petit also makes this point (HA, 40). 2

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different feeling in space’ (LP, 140): an enlarged sense of our own being full of augmented sensitivity and awareness. Indeed, Chekhov’s technique at large aims to help us acquire this feeling because practically everything in it, he reveals, ‘has the tendency to break the boundaries of our bodies, our voices, and other abilities’ (LP, 139). Radiation, he explains, ‘means to give out everything I have inside’ and sustaining is something that ‘goes on’, so through both activities our body ‘becomes larger and more artistic’ (LP, 139). When we imagine a goal or objective fulfilled, he writes that ‘I am already out of my skin’ (LP, 139). The gesture of expansion makes this idea of unrestrained emotional and physical vigour even more explicit and kinaesthetically concrete, and it is a natural progression from the projecting energy of radiation and the ideal centre. Its power is similar to these, but we might say it is bigger, bolder and goes further.

Expansion as empathy In the same way we have seen with the ideal centre, receiving and the four brothers, Chekhov advocates that we take an ‘expansive’ approach to our practice overall, a conception on which he builds his vision for theatre in general. We are to expand our ways of thinking (about the character, about our craft), our sense of our roles, our idea of what is possible, our capacity to communicate with the audience and each other, and our ability to create new forms and to develop as human beings. It is an affirmation of the limitless potential of art, at the heart of which, as we have seen, is empathy. Applying a gesture of expansion at the beginning of rehearsal to activate a (sometimes absent!) desire to work and to transition from our everyday lives into the resourceful condition required for performance is already a good start; just as with the earlier exercises of opening the heart, it can help us become receptive to what the next few hours will bring with renewed interest and inquisitiveness, to discover an ‘inexhaustible fund of originality, inventiveness and ingenuity’ (TA, 5). When Chekhov was working in Europe and in the United States, he often considered empathy to be missing from the prevailing approaches, and I do not think it is anachronistic to reassert it here. Chekhov states explicitly that his image of what the theatre can be ‘and will be in the

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future’ is one in which ‘the spirit of the human being will be rediscovered by artists’, a theatre where ‘artists and actors will write the psychology of a human being’ (LP, 141). This kind of theatre will ‘serve our human culture more than anything else’ (LP, 26). What is important for Chekhov – and he is not alone in this regard – is that we are searching through our art to deepen our understanding of ourselves and our relationship with and connection to the world. It must take us beyond ourselves and our insular theatre community. For Chekhov, ‘the new theatre is not only a theatre, and training in it is not only training to be a good actor. It is necessary to penetrate much deeper into the human being who hopes to serve this theatre’ (LT, 71). Callow insists that what is needed are the kinds of actors ‘who bring everything on stage with them, their whole inner life. The ones who need to do that are the ones who actually change our lives’ (DY). The actors who don’t do that, ‘let us down’ (DY). For Chekhov, there is a deeper, ethical dimension to our work, the idea of theatre as a dynamic force that can make a bold offer to the world and begin to transform it. This begins concretely with the actor’s commitment to change in the act of transforming into someone else, which I will discuss in Part Three. All of this is expansion as a principle.4

Expansion and contraction as psychophysical tools Now, let us look at how we might use expansion and its opposite, contraction, as practical tools, and how they work in tandem. Stand once again, contact the ideal centre and take up the final position of expansion: the open star shape. We are going to use this posture as the starting point for expansion’s polarity: the gesture of contraction. First, say to yourself silently, ‘I am contracting, getting smaller, shrinking, withering away, becoming invisible’. Begin to feel what happens internally by way of response. Then start to contract with the physical body, closing yourself completely, crossing your arms upon your chest, The American actress Meryl Streep emphasized empathy as the heart of the actor’s craft in her acceptance speech for the Cecile B de Mille Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2017 Golden Globe Awards. 4

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bending your head in towards the chest, bringing the legs and feet together and crouching down, making the body as small as possible. Try to close off all the gaps in the body, place the arms and hands around the shins or thighs and keep the feet on the floor; kneeling all the way onto the floor can weaken the impact of the gesture. Imagine that you are becoming smaller, curling up as though you wanted to disappear bodily within yourself, and that the space around you is shrinking. Hold the position and breathe easily. Even though your body has stopped moving, continue to contract inside, beyond the physical limits of your body. Notice the sensation and speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’ under its influence; wait until you are still before you speak. Repeat the gesture of contraction by returning to the starting star position without letting the sensation drop. With each repetition, let the feeling of the gesture intensify. Then stand still and do the same gesture in your imagination only. Feel the physical direction of the movement internally. Listen for impulses and then act on them. Begin to move in the room, remaining sensitive to what this gesture inspires you to do naturally and how to do it. Is there a desire to shrink away from the centre of the room? What is the natural tempo of your actions and your attitude towards people and objects? Occasionally, speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from the sensation you are experiencing. The initial sensation of the gesture of contraction is one of closing down emotionally, withdrawal, resistance, a coldness perhaps, an introverted state with a sense of our life force ‘leaking’ away. I like to think of contraction’s sensation as a reluctance to take up space, or a kind of airlessness, or operating with a sense of restriction or restraint (e.g. to guard against harm or to keep your counsel). For me, in contraction I become attuned to the consonants in speech as well as the harder aspects of the body such as the bones and the skeleton; they become almost protective structures against the force of the outside world. An example of two expanded and contracted characters are those of Hank Shrader and Walter White in Breaking Bad.5 Hank is a tough-talking officer with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), investigating the drug cartels in New Mexico that produce and sell

Walter White was played by Bryan Cranston and Hank Shrader by Dean Norris.

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methamphetamine. In Series 1, he is confident, brash and recounts his ‘shoot ’em up’ experiences with an expansive bravado. Walter, by contrast, is a modest, depressed, chemistry teacher who has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. At the beginning of the series he is a troubled, contracted character, struggling with a sense of academic and financial failure and now faced with crippling medical debts and an uncertain future for his family. Both characters evolve: Hank’s confidence is rattled following violent confrontations with the cartel, culminating in a serious incident which almost cripples him physically and takes him out of action. He gradually contracts. Walter, on the other hand, turns his skill to the production of methamphetamine and becomes a significant player in the same cartel that Hank is trying to destroy. What begins as a sincere and desperate attempt to provide for his family’s future, transforms into a cold-blooded pursuit of his own self-interest. Walter’s journey, in particular, is one of dramatic metamorphosis and is a fine example of a movement from contraction to expansion – an expansion that has nothing to do with the moral qualities or goodness of the movement. It is possible to read any role in this way and look out for a similar polarity. At its simplest, we can ask, does my character grow or become empowered throughout the story, or become weak and diminished? Do they mostly open up to the world around them or, by contrast, retreat from it? On the surface at least, expansion typically pertains to happiness and contraction to a certain sadness, but they can be much more nuanced. Optimism, magnanimity, courage, hope are all forms of expansion, yet so, too, are rage, ambition, pride and arrogance. While fear, distrust, suspicion and despair are forms of contraction, so too are caution, prudence, fragility and timidity. While the movement of each is the same, either outward or inward, it can be coloured with a subtly distinctive range of hints and tones. We can access this ‘colour’ by executing the gesture with a particular quality or tempo. For example, I do the gesture of expansion slowly, or quickly, roughly, smoothly or softly. There is a whole practice of gestures with varying qualities in the Chekhov repertoire and we will come back to it in Part Two in full detail. The next time you are given the familiar note to ‘play with more anger’, just explore the gesture of expansion with a quick rough quality and the necessary feelings will well up in its wake.

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We can experiment with both gestures either as a broad character choice or for use in a specific moment or event. Desdemona’s public defence of her marriage to Othello to the Duke of Venice, her father and an array of senators (I:iii) is one such moment of expanded courage and defiance. In insisting that she is granted permission to accompany Othello on his mission to Cyprus, she overturns all expectation. The astonished audience witness a Desdemona who has grown up before their eyes: her strength and fearlessness are limitless because they are fuelled by her love and conviction. By contrast, for Othello’s ‘it is the cause’ soliloquy by Desdemona’s bedside, just before he murders her in Act V:ii, my students worked with the image of a contracting spotlight, slowly and inexorably pressing in on him and snuffing out all light.6 Simply playing a scene shifting freely and spontaneously between expansion and contraction as points of concentration can open up many interesting possibilities too; you can decide either to explore moving from one to the other yourself, or in collaboration with your scene partner, determine sections of text where one of you expands while the other contracts. While it is intended as an exploration, this can give a palpable sense of how to understand the spatial dimensions of the scene, clarifying distance and proximity between the players for example, or how to handle props in a given moment (such as gripping onto a pillow in a contracted moment or throwing open a suitcase and all its contents in an expanded moment). Some discoveries we might decide to keep, and in that case, it is a good rule of thumb to decide upon contrasting gestures with your scene partners. When we focus on a scene from this fixed lens, it often helps us understand how the power dynamic shifts, highlighting which character grows and which shrinks.

Polarity of the gestures We practise expansion and contraction as gestures, meaning concretely that rather than sustained and continuous movement, they are one complete gesture with a form that has a beginning, middle and an end.

The actors at Central were Kadeem Pearse, Martins Imhangbe and Natalie Boakye.

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In this way, they differ from the qualities of movement (which we will discuss in Part Two), but otherwise they serve a similar purpose: to sensitize the body and awaken the inner life. We execute a bold, broad movement and then work with the sensation it provokes internally.7 In every aspect, contraction is the opposite of expansion, which is why they are taught together. Starting to contract from the position of the star-shaped form of expansion, or beginning to expand from the crouched posture of contraction, creates a strong polarity between the beginning and the end of the gestures, which means we experience the movement of contraction or expansion as a journey, not simply an end result. On the way, we are listening for the impact the gesture has on us internally. It must take up space, ‘must also have a very clear and definite form’ (TA, 71) and engage the whole body ‘to the fullest degree’ (TOA, 41). We must check that the whole body is working even if specific parts of the body enact more of the gesture than others. Often, as actors, we leave our legs behind or fail to express the gesture all the way to the end of the fingertips. Chekhov advises that the gesture must be strong enough ‘to electrify your body’ (TOA, 42); only then will it awaken a psychological reverberation with the necessary potency. The gestures are also different from the kind of gestures we make in everyday life; they are neither ‘naturalistic’ nor ‘abstract’ (PT, 198). Instead, they express a recognizable ‘type’ of movement and form found in the objective, natural world. A flower unfurls when growing, for example, and opens its petals, an infant uncurls from the foetal position to find uprightness, an apple grows from a tiny, hard seed into a round, fleshy fruit: these are all variations of expansion which is synonymous with opening, growth, awakening, accumulation, visibility. Conversely, to contract means to close, to get smaller, to collapse, to decrease, to wither or die, to retreat, to shrink or to disappear. A dog or cat curls up to go to sleep, for example, or a pond shrinks in diameter in a drought, some flowers close their petals when the light fades and all of them wither when they die. American actor and teacher, Ted Pugh, reminds us that ‘when we receive some bad news, we collapse inwardly’8 while Petit gives the example of how the seasons shifting from winter to

Eugenio Barba describes Chekhov’s exercises of expansion and contraction as ‘basically a way of experiencing energy’ (Barba 1995, 74). 8 Interview with Fern Sloan and Ted Pugh. 7

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summer are ‘a slow and steady expansion’ and its reverse, ‘a steady contraction’ (HA, 21). Petit also reminds us that parts of our body, such as the lungs, expand and contract all the time. Chekhov identifies the same phenomena in human emotion: he asserts that ‘joy, love and all kinds of excitement seem to live in “larger” space’ whereas sorrow, grief, and longing tend to occupy “less” space’ (TOA, 82). Interestingly, Chekhov also suggests that expanding emotions live in a ‘shorter’ time frame than their opposite, which live in a ‘longer’ time frame (TOA, 82). To play ‘boorishness’, Chekhov invites us to think of ‘mentally expanding the space’ whereas shyness demands a ‘contracted time’. Laziness can be conveyed by an expanded sense of time, whereas ‘we can experience the mentality of a curious person as a result of “contracted time”’ (TA, 211). In short, the dynamics of expansion and contraction pertain to movements in life that any human being is familiar with, regardless of our culture.

Development of the gestures When you become well versed in both gestures, it is worth exploring them simultaneously, that is, expanding physically/externally, while contracting psychologically/internally. Although tricky to master, it can be a helpful way to portray a character with a contradictory public and private persona, such as Claudius’s public moments in court where he has to consolidate a strong, favourable position as the new king while forestalling Hamlet’s open hostility and antagonism. Petit also proposes expanding and contracting the five senses; to play a blind person for example, we could try imagining that our sense of hearing is expanding or that our sense of sight is contracting (HA, 41–2). I find it helpful to do the gesture physically in the usual way using the whole body and then to imagine the inner gesture beginning in my ears or eyes. To play Othello, we might imagine that our sight is expanding as he watches Desdemona’s every move, seeking proof of her infidelity, whereas Macbeth might require a contraction of the sense of touch, evoking a kind of self-disgust at the accumulation of murders by his hand. We don’t have to display anything, or think of a particular taste or touch; we simply remind ourselves that we have this sense and imagine it expanding or contracting. It may help to locate the sense

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somewhere specific in the body (middle of the tongue, for example, for taste, or at the tips of the fingers, for touch, in the middle of the ears for hearing), but see what comes naturally when you try it. It is particularly effective for acting on screen when a greater intensity of small detail is required. In Chekhov’s teaching, gestures of expansion and contraction are the first set of a whole series of gestures which form the basis for Psychological Gesture, otherwise known as PG. While they are where we begin to lay a solid foundation for PG, they merit exploration on their own. They also prepare the ground for work on archetypes, which we will discuss in Part Three.

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Walk through the space with light, easy steps, imagining that your legs and arms are very long and are hinged together at the centre in the chest, almost like a pair of scissors. Imagine that your limbs stretch out into the space, extending into the room (MC/S9/2, 26 September 1983). Revisit the gesture of expansion, repeating it at least three times. Work in a moderate tempo. Then do the gesture inwardly and execute simple everyday actions such as sitting, lying down, picking things up, putting on an item of clothing, drinking some water. You are expanding all the time regardless of what you are doing physically. Revisit the gesture, quickly, slowly, softly, roughly, tentatively and notice how it changes the same activities. Keep the gesture alive within, and gradually interact with your partners. Shake their hand and as your palms meet, expand even more. Exchange a few words such as ‘hello, how are you’ and ‘I’m fine, thank you’, making sure that you are speaking from the sensation. Move on to someone else. With each handshake reactivate the will to expand into the room. Throw the ball to your partners expanding imaginatively into the room. How does it inspire you to throw and catch the ball? Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as you throw the ball to your partner, speaking from the sensation.

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Then stand still or sit still and expand energetically into the room from across the collarbones. Feel the dynamic of spreading out in both directions. Speak a short text to someone or a point in the room from the sensation located in this part of the body. Repeat all of the above exercises with contraction. Imagine the space around you is getting bigger, continuously expanding. Let it inspire you to follow your impulses. Then imagine the space closing in on you from all directions. Practise expansion and contraction by moving from the expanded gesture to the contracted gesture as a fluid sequence. Initiate the movement from the ideal centre each time. Breathe and do not hurry. Pause after each completed movement to sustain. Investigate the moments of transition from one to the other. Gradually do the same movement internally and practise executing some everyday activities as well as speaking a short text. Working with a character, bring to mind, on your feet, without premeditation, a time in the character’s life when she is or was expanded or contracted and try to inhabit and improvise freely in that moment: it might exist in the play or it may be an earlier time that is simply evoked. Chart other such moments within the play (and the character’s background). Practise expanding on the outside, but contracting inside, and vice versa. Use the exercises listed above: everyday actions, ball, improvising with partners and communicating a short text. Remember to work at different speeds and be attentive to working with ease, not tension.

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9 QUALITIES OF MOVEMENT: MOULDING, FLOATING, FLYING1 ‘How often the actor tries to force his feelings, to order himself to become sorrowful, gay, or happy, to hate, to love. It seems that such forcing is rarely successful. … Action with qualities is the easiest way to the living feelings’ (TOA, 36).

There are an infinite number of qualities we can work with, but Chekhov offers four as a foundation. In Part One, we looked at radiating and we turn now to the remaining three qualities of movement: moulding, floating (also known as supporting or flowing) and flying. Their purpose, first and foremost, is to develop our psychophysical sensitivity and although deceptively simple, they merit lifelong exploration. ‘You learn something about them every time you come to them’, Sloan promises, ‘they don’t remain static’.2 When we have mastered them, we can and should apply them consciously to our role. The aim of movement qualities is to master a process of working with our emotions as a tool like any other, eradicating any notion that acting requires painful soul-searching or squeezing feelings out of ourselves. At its simplest, it boils down to this: by executing an action in a particular way – with a certain physical quality – we experience a sensation which

You can read about these in TA, 8–13; TOA, 43–8; HA, 42–6; MC, 129–33; LP, 96–7, 124, 147; RS, 308–12. 2 Interview with Fern Sloan and Ted Pugh. Further quotes from Ted Pugh and Fern Sloan in this chapter are from this interview, unless otherwise indicated. 1

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also activates a feeling. If, for example, I move my body slowly and with a sense of weight, I will experience a sensation of heaviness, and if I do this fully, I will most likely feel sad. The ‘heaviness’ and the sadness merge, Chekhov muses, ‘like a dominant chord in music’ (TA, 60). If I try to begin with the feeling and command myself to feel sad, it is likely that no feelings would come, but by just doing something such as shaking someone’s hand, for instance, with a quality of carefulness and delicacy, almost immediately ‘a certain psychological tint will come into our movement, namely, caution’ (TOA, 36). Action is the verb or what I am doing; for example, I shake hands, I greet, I condemn, I expand, I push away,3 and quality is the adverb or how I am doing my action: slowly, heavily or with caution. This distinction between ‘what’ and ‘how’ is essential to Chekhov. He complains that the ‘“how” is now lost in the world of the theatre; actors are always playing “what” and never “how”’ (LT, 69). For him, the actor’s artistry lives in the ‘how’ and is essential if we wish to avoid ‘dry’, ‘clever’ and ‘mechanical’ performances (LT, 69). While it is always necessary to determine the ‘what’, he insists that ‘the “how” and the “what” must be felt together as one’, both in equal measure (AIT, 230).4 To activate and play whole-heartedly with qualities can produce tremendously detailed and transformative results, yet in my experience actors consistently underestimate their power. I encourage as bold a use of qualities in performance as possible, testing how far we can go with them within the parameters of a production and allowing them to be as colourful as life itself: a sharp turn, a slow entrance, a gentle hug, a frenetic brush of the hair, a measured walk, a loud laugh, an abrupt closing of the door, the possibilities are endless.5 When he was teaching and directing, Chekhov seldom addressed himself to feelings as such because they are capricious and ‘cannot be commanded’ (TOA, 36),6 and as Hurst du Prey explains, ‘the moment

Chekhov describes this as the content and ‘simple straight line of the meaning’ (AIT, 230). Chekhov warns equally that concentrating solely on the ‘how’ gives rise to ‘only dreams and vague ideas’ (AIT, 230). 5 I am reminded of Peter Brook here: ‘In the hands of a true artist, everything can seem natural, even if its outward form is so artificial that it has no equivalent in nature’ (Brook 1993, 72). 6 He concurs with Stanislavsky here who also writes: ‘You can’t force feelings’ (Stanislavski 2010, 43). 3 4

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you do something psychologically to the feeling, you strain or restrict it’ (DR, 85). Dixon’s analogy of children is helpful here; they cannot be coerced into playing and will only agree to collaborate if you propose an interesting activity for them to do. While we may not always be able to access a specific feeling in performance, we can always bid our body to do something that provokes a sensation in our body via our senses. Sensation, then, works like ‘a kind of magnet’ (TA, 59), drawing to it impressions and feelings, offering a physiological passage to our inner life. Qualities of movement attune our bodies to become a ‘sensitive membrane’ (TP78, 10), ‘a kind of receiver’ (TA, 2) that can experience the right feelings by what Chekhov believed to be the ‘right means’: objectively and indirectly.7 All of this means that, for actors, there is more to feeling than our own subjective experience. Our feelings must not be dependent on our particular mood or circumstance; as far as possible, we must be able to access them whenever necessary, like the ability to play notes and chords on a musical instrument and in every key. We have to be able to laugh and cry abruptly without any reason. ‘In our art’, Chekhov insists, ‘we don’t have to have reasons’ (DR, 60); that is what it means to be an actor. In addition, no matter how intense our feelings in performance, we must cultivate the ability to leave them behind us at the curtain call and to create a transition from the character’s emotional state back to our own. Feelings in performance are like an element into which we plunge and immerse; after some time, we emerge, dry ourselves off and get changed. To train for this, many Chekhov classes end with an exercise known as ‘the golden hoop’, described at the end of the chapter. It is a ritual of closure; what has happened in class, in rehearsal and on stage is now over, and we cross a threshold back out into the rest of our day. What I find healthy about this perspective is that, in performance, it encourages us to consider feelings as objective phenomena like any other, divested of the merely personal or introspective. Feelings are not ours to hold onto, but are simply part of our toolkit. Far from being caught in them, we conduct them at our will and remain conscious that ‘The right feelings by the right means’ was a statement written on the walls of Chekhov’s studio in Dartington Hall (MC/S1/12; 3/6/2, ‘Impressions of Michael Chekhov’ by Deirdre Hurst du Prey, March 1976). 7

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we are doing so.8 The actor who takes pleasure in playing a sorry state is performing in the best sense, according to Chekhov, because ‘he is enjoying it and looking upon it objectively. He is not sitting in this sorry state and is not a slave to it. He is mastering this sorrow’ (MC/SI/10, 29 January 1942). The qualities of movement offer us the beginnings of this mastery. Chekhov entices us to notice qualities everywhere and in everything. He suggests that a cypress tree might have a ‘quiet, positive, concentrated’ quality, while an oak has ‘a violent, uncontrolled’ quality; the violet is tender and questioning, while the tiger lily is passionate, persistent, ‘almost shouting at us’ (TOA, 40). To discover qualities is to see the life in something and by understanding the character of the organic world in this way, we lay a fertile foundation for our future characterizations.

Quality of moulding Imagine the air around you begins to thicken so that it would require a certain strength to move through it. Begin to move one hand through this dense air that resists your movement slightly. Imagine that, just as a sculptor moulds clay into a form, each movement you execute leaves an ‘imprint’ in space with a clearly traced beginning and end (MCT, 1:4). It is as if the air has become clay or wet earth that, moment by moment, you are moulding into shape. Carve out the air, using large, broad movements. Notice the natural tempo that emerges and listen to the sensation you experience inside. Then move one elbow, feeling the air resist it too. Ensure not to leave the rest of the body behind. After five minutes or so, explore moulding with the belly and buttocks only; try to isolate these parts without locking the rest of the body. Stay very active and curious inwardly. After a while, pause, let the body come to stillness but continue to radiate the sensation you experience. As you stand, imagine that your body is centralized in the belly and

In rehearsals for Hamlet at the First Studio (1924), Chekhov declared that ‘emotional theatre should move out of the way’ (PT, 255); instead he defined his new process as ‘moving towards the supra-emotional’ (PT, 255). 8

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legs, sending energy down to the earth.9 Take a few steps in the room, sit down and stand up, feeling the air resist you subtly as you walk. Be careful not to over-exert or hold your breath. When we immerse in the imaginative proposition that we are moulding the air around us, the sensation is one of being grounded and we experience the psychological feelings of inner strength, power, determination and confidence. If everyone in a room moves with this same quality, or throws a ball with it, it creates an atmosphere: one of suspense, tension or threat (I will say more about atmospheres later). As with expansion and contraction, qualities of movement are based on natural processes such as responses we have and ways we move when certain heightened events happen in life. ‘If you are opening a box that might be a bomb’, Pugh suggests, ‘or you’re coming to something and you don’t know exactly what danger lies there, the fact of the matter is that we naturally begin to move in a way that is like moulding in those life situations.’ As actors, Pugh continues, we have two choices: ‘You can “act” that, or you can let the body do it, and when you let the body do it, it does the acting for you.’ Working with qualities awakens what Pugh calls our ‘invisible muscles’, that is, memories stored in our muscles of human processes that we all go through. We can decide that our character predominantly moves through life using this particular quality and we can colour it positively or negatively, towards good or evil. The character of Anton Chigurh, an assassin played by Javier Bardem in Joel and Ethan Coen’s film, No Country for Old Men,10 could be described as someone who moulds as an overall character trait, to the point of incarnating a sense of remorseless inexorability. We can also use moulding simply to emphasize a particular moment, and it is particularly useful if you need to command attention or create suspense. To play the Duke in Othello for example, we might mould to persuade Brabantio to accept Othello as his new son-inlaw (I:iii). The Duke beguiles Brabantio, gives the impression of gently winning him over, but, ultimately, he asserts his authority over him.

Coordinating a location in the body with a particular quality are suggestions by Sloan (Micha workshop, Galway, Ireland, 2010). 10 The 2007 American film is based on the book of the same name by Cormac McCarthy (2005) and is set in west Texas in the 1980s. 9

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Here, the moulding is tinged with persuasion, but we might colour it equally with aggression; it will depend upon whether you think the Duke is a leader who cares about keeping the support of his senators or not. In ‘Diary of a Madman’, in the December scenes when Proprishchin is grappling with the question of who will become king of Spain (before declaring himself king), Robert worked with a moulding quality as he pondered and tried to work his way towards clarity: his thoughts were laboured and ‘muddy’, as if moving through treacle, and his movements were slow and slightly cumbersome, as if the world as he knew it was beginning to grind to a halt. Once we become familiar with the quality of moulding, we must take care never to try to repeat our last experience. Rather, we are to experience the reality of it freshly, as if for the first time. I also find it helpful to notice if certain images arise when practising the quality and let them influence what I’m doing. Imagining moist, malleable, caramelcoloured clay, for example, or deep brown, fertile, tilled earth can help us get in touch with our imagined material. Working with moulding increases our feeling of form as it is related to the element of earth;11 its main challenge is to avoid using unnecessary muscular tension and not to confuse it simply with slow motion.

Quality of flowing or supporting Imagine that the air around you is ‘a surface of water which supports you and over which your movements lightly skim’ (TA, 10). Rather than offer you resistance, the air now holds you up. Sloan suggests visualizing the air around you as liquid. Imagine that your arm starts at the ideal centre, move it through this air. In contrast with moulding, your movements now do not have a beginning or end; rather, they flow continuously, each action ‘slurred into another in an unbroken line’ (TOA, 45). Let the rest of the body follow the arm and begin to make large broad movements with the whole body. Resist any tendency to become dreamy; stay active. After about ten minutes, pause, let the body come to stillness but continue to radiate the sensation you experience. Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Chekhov proposes thinking of all four qualities of movement in terms of the archetypal elements of earth, water, air and fire and acknowledges his debt to Steiner in this (TOA, 47). 11

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As you stand, stay with the sensation but also imagine that your body is centralized in a point above and outside the head.12 Take a few natural steps in the room, feeling the air support you as you walk. It requires little effort. Ensure that you are neither dancing nor walking on tiptoe. The quality of flowing and supporting corresponds to the element of water and our movement must become effortless, organic and buoyant. Some teachers refer to it as floating but I tend to use Dixon’s suggestion of supporting as it concretizes the idea that we are moving in relation to some other active material, in this case, the air, and not simply drifting in isolation. Merlin invites us to think of the air itself as weightless (PT, 284) while Chekhov thinks of it as ‘the supporting surface of a wave’ (TOA, 46). Of course, water can be heavy also, but here we are interested in emphasizing its buoyancy. Flowing provokes the psychological qualities of calm, poise, ease, lightness and grace. A flowing or supporting character might be someone who cannot be deflected from their purpose, or a person who exudes a calm, quiet confidence that things will go their way. We could work also with it at specific points, to play the challenging moment of Cate’s fainting fit in Scene 1 of Blasted for example. Prior to this moment, Ian has been taunting her, calling her ‘stupid’ and ‘thick’, and she begins to stammer in distress. A sudden switch to a flowing quality might help us suggest that Cate is carried by a force beyond her control. It could also provide dramatic contrast to the preceding sharp, harsh, argumentative atmosphere, silencing Ian’s acerbic laughter and putting Cate centre stage. In ‘Diary of a Madman’, Robert worked with a flowing quality every time Proprishchin glimpsed or imagined his great (unrequited) love, Sophie. It was as if he was carried along by the flowing current of her aura. American actress and teacher Gretchen Egolf told me that when she played Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, she used the quality of supporting in all her scenes with Mitch to seduce him.13 We might also colour the same quality with an uncomprehending blankness to play her later scenes of mental breakdown.

Sloan adds that we can also imagine bubbles bubbling upward (Micha workshop, Galway, Ireland, 2010). 13 Interview 1 with Gretchen Egolf. The production was in 2010 at the Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, the United States, directed by John Miller-Stephany. 12

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When working with this quality, I find it helpful to pay attention to the natural inhalation and exhalation of my breath as I move, or to conjure the image of water and its palette of colours: cool blue, watery green and transparent silver or white. Working with supporting develops our feeling of ease and beauty and the actor’s challenge here is to avoid weak, vague or shapeless movements.

Quality of flying Sense the air around you, above, behind, underneath your feet. Sense its infinite nature and that you are surrounded by space. Now, rather than the air supporting you, imagine that it ‘stirs or urges’ you (TOA, 46). Envisage the air giving you specific impulses one after the other: on the back of the elbow, the forehead, the right ear. Sometimes the force is strong like a gust of wind and sometimes it is weaker like a gentle breeze. Try to remain specific about where the impulse hits the body and the true and natural duration of the movement it inspires. Repeatedly, let the air ‘take’ you, almost as if you were a plastic bag, light as a feather, no longer bound by gravity. Then a gust of wind lifts you off your feet so that your whole body is flying through the air like a bird. Each movement you make continues indefinitely in space, flying away from you. While your actions are continuous, they do not merge into each other as smoothly as with flowing. After a while, pause, be still, but continue to radiate the sensation you experience, as if you are ‘soaring aloft’ (TA, 11). Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. As you stand, stay with the sensation but also imagine that energy is coming up from your feet to your collarbones and flying out from there (MCT, 1:4). Then begin to move in the space under the influence of this sensation, resisting any tendency to become frenetic. Stay human, natural. The quality of flying corresponds to the actual element of air and our movements must be free, unbounded and released fully. We are to think of our body as having ‘the tendency to lift itself off the ground’ (TOA, 46) and our aim is to ‘fight the law of gravity’ (TA, 11). Flying differs from flowing in the sense that we are carried off and away; we rise, we cover distance, we imagine we are as light as the air itself. Its psychological properties are energy, lightness, dynamism and alertness.

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Flying coloured with a positive tint can help us to portray funny, impulsive, jubilant, confident behaviour, whereas coloured more darkly, it can suggest aggressive, provocative and somewhat scheming traits. Macbeth in the early scenes of the play might merit working with a quality of flying. The story begins with tales of his extraordinary prowess in battle and how he has touched almost supernatural elements in himself; he is perhaps elated when he enters, swept up in a whirlwind of hubris and adrenalin. Egolf played with flying as an overall choice for Blanche in Streetcar, helping her to think quickly on her feet, darting from one lie to the next, trying to cover her tracks. Shifting to a flowing quality for the final scenes, as described above, might provide strong, tragic contrast to her main characteristic, suggesting that something in Blanche is fundamentally altered, and lost forever. I find flying very useful in playing the birth of an idea, indecision or doubt, or a character who is engaged in sharp and quick-witted dialogue, such as Beatrice in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. A group of actors all working positively with the quality of flying can provoke an atmosphere of exuberant celebration; by contrast, it can be coloured differently to create a sense of rage, recklessness or daring provocation. These are simply my discoveries: explore the quality to find your own. To access the quality of flying, Sloan suggests imagining the air and the blue sky. I find it helpful to sense temperature: a gust of wind, a fan blowing, the sensation of cool air on the nostrils, lips or back of the neck. Flying develops our sense of dynamic form and ease. The challenge here is to avoid a sense of generic urgency; it is not a matter of controlling the energy but of releasing it out into the space.

Further exercises It is important to work with the four qualities in relationship to the air around you; in other words, outside you so that we always begin with the body in relation to space. This will develop our body’s expressivity and strengthen the psychological effects of the movement. Air is the element we work with in each quality as well as being one of the specific elements themselves. Practise the following exercises with all four qualities (including returning to radiating).

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Practise each quality in the following simple but large, full-bodied movements: throwing an imaginary ball, hitting an imaginary surface with an imaginary hammer, lifting an imaginary object in the air. Focus on the full movement rather than act out any scenario. Keep your movements clear, with a beginning, middle and end, where appropriate. Use the whole body and occupy space, eliminating all vagueness and shapelessness. Investigate whether it is possible to vary the tempo of your movement. Moulding has a natural slowness, but see if it is possible to move quicker with it. While you are moving, tune in to the sensation inside. After moving for a sustained period (at least ten minutes) in broad, free movement, execute everyday actions, listening to the sensation in this more subtle and natural movement: sitting down, standing up, running, drinking water, putting on a coat, opening a book, entering and exiting the room. Occasionally speak a word ‘yes’ and ‘no’ from the sensation. Execute the gestures of expansion and contraction with each quality. Notice the nuance it adds to the sensation of the gesture itself. Progress to doing the gesture and quality in your imagination only, following impulses for everyday activity, as above. Now work with an object. Pour the quality into the object first in broad, free movement and then handle the object as you would normally. Delineate four areas in the room, each quarter pertaining to one of the four qualities. Imagine before you go into that space that the quality is already there in the air. Practice entering the moulding area, and then exiting. In the moulding area, the space moulds you and you mould it back: it works both ways. The first time move freely, then repeat with everyday actions and movement. Progress to moving freely through all four spaces, exploring the transitions between them. Speak a short text to an audience from the inner sensation of the quality. Notice whether particular images stand out. Try to speak to your audience rather than getting caught up in a technical display of the quality.

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With a partner, throw the ball with the quality. Speak a word or say your partner’s name from the sensation as you throw. Choose an object in the room, observe its qualities (LT, 18). Then work with whatever you perceive its principal quality to be in the same way outlined for the other qualities. Train your fingers and hands separately with each quality. The golden hoop – with partners, stand in a circle and imagine that a large golden hoop is on the floor at your feet. Look down at it, and responding to a group impulse, bend down, pick it up slowly together from underneath and stand up. Holding it in your hands, look at each other and find the group impulse to throw it into the air. Look at it as it disappears upward.

10 FURTHER QUALITIES OF MOVEMENT ‘We can combine a number of qualities in our action, and in every case we will get the same result. We will have at our disposal feelings, real feelings, that will follow our movements, actions, slipping into them easily and with sufficient strength’ (TOA, 37).

While moulding, flowing, flying and radiating are offered as Chekhov’s main set of qualities, there are others that exist as additions to the repertoire. Staccato and legato, which are taught in a set form of gestures, emotional adverbs, an extensive list that includes familiar qualities that we all recognize, curved/straight sensation and large/ small steps, both of which are tools introduced to me by Sarah Kane that she attributes to Steiner and are not, to my knowledge, outlined in any of Chekhov’s writing.1 The psychophysical function of these additions is the same as the main four qualities in that they sensitize our body and activate the porous membrane between inner life and outer expression. In all of these exercises, our aim is to notice the difference between our response to the exercise (i.e. what we like, dislike or prefer) and what it does objectively. Mastering them greatly expands our performance range in surprising, playful ways that take us beyond our comfort zone. The more I work with qualities of movement, the more I believe that this is what acting really involves: doing something or taking action with a particular quality. From there, everything else can follow. It is easy to focus on characterization as a process of

Michael Chekhov UK Studio (London, 2008).

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understanding behaviour, thought patterns, feelings and motivation, and of course it is those things, but I believe if we immerse deeply in a quality, we could come to understand some of those aspects more readily and intuitively. When we master and inhabit qualities, answers present themselves and we become psychologically, emotionally and imaginatively ‘full’. This chapter is an invitation to reconsider their potential.

Staccato and legato2 Take up an easy standing position and contact the ideal centre. With the left foot anchored, lunge to the right, hands and arms extended straight in front of you as far as they can go in a throwing gesture without coming off your centre. The palms are open and facing down towards the floor, fingers stretched out, without rigidity. To understand the position of the hands, Petit invites us to imagine throwing ‘two tennis balls underhand as far as you can’ (HA, 39). Look in the direction of your hands to the right but focus the gaze on the horizon. Send out energy from the ideal centre along the arms right out to the middle finger and beyond, as if you have hurled something away. Ensure the arms are in a straight line, the shoulders dropped without tension. Try to find the polarity in the position; you are leaning forward to the right, yet holding onto a connection with your back left leg. As you lunge to the right, speak aloud ‘right’. Then return to a standing position facing forward, arms down by the sides. Now lunge to the left, anchoring the right foot this time and as you lunge, say ‘left’. Sustain for a moment, then return to a standing position facing forward, arms down by the sides. Then lift the arms up along the side of the body until they are high and straight in the air, palms facing front, the gaze following the hands. As you stretch upwards say ‘up’. Keep a connection with the feet firmly on the ground even though your arms and gaze are moving upwards. Return to a standing position as before. Now reach your arms down towards the floor allowing your knees to

For more on staccato and legato, see MC, 129; RS, 311–12; HA, 38–40; BV, 46–51; AT.

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bend a little, gaze looking down, palms facing the body, and say ‘down’. Return to base position. Then with your left foot anchored, lunge forward with the right foot, hands and arms stretched out forwards, palms facing the floor, gaze focusing forward on the horizon. As you lunge, say ‘forward’, while holding onto a connection with the back left leg. Return to a standing position. Then with the right foot anchored, lunge backwards, allowing the hands and arms to stretch back and out slightly to the left and right, letting the head lift and look up. As you lunge backwards, say ‘back’. Return again to base position. Repeat the entire sequence twice, this time making your movements staccato-like: short, sharp, direct and quick. Speak the words from this quality and check that you are breathing and releasing any tension. At the end of finishing the entire sequence for the second time, stand and notice the sensation inside. Speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from this sensation. Execute some simple activities in the room inspired by this sensation: notice your feelings and any thoughts you have. Then come back to a standing position, and repeat the sequence twice more, this time making your movements with a legato quality: fluid, flowing, one phrase running into the next. Speak the words from this quality and check that you stay active and resist becoming ‘dreamy’. At the end of finishing the entire sequence for the second time, stand and notice the sensation inside. Speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from this sensation. Execute some simple activities in the room: again, notice any feelings that arise and your pattern of thinking. Whereas the four qualities are related to the four traditional elements in nature, staccato and legato belong to the world of music and as such, have rhythmical implications. If we execute a movement in staccato, its tempo is fast. The quality is short, precise and the action is punctuated with defined full stops. Chekhov writes, ‘psychologically, staccato is very sharp and exciting’ (AIT, 55), like an arrow darting in a clear line to its target. It activates a sensation of vitality, alertness, an immediate sense of focus. Legato, by contrast, is slow and the quality is smooth, fluid, liquid. The action flows continuously and comes to stillness gradually. Psychologically, legato activates serenity, openness, and a

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sense of positive connection and in this sense is similar to flowing or supporting. Staccato and legato are usually taught in this set form described above: a full-bodied gesture of ‘throwing’ executed in six directions. In this way, they combine several practice tools: gesture, qualities and working with directions in space. Zinder describes them as creating a ‘strong affirmation of the actor in space’ because they work with ‘a sense of energy gathering, flowing and being sent out from the feet through the fingers and beyond’ (BV, 46, 50). He also suggests that if the whole ensemble execute the gestures together, they can create a strong sense of unison. Petit sees them as a way to ‘fill the space with your energetic self’ (HA, 40) and he recommends doing them as a warm-up before a performance, even individually.3 As well as conveying focus, deliberation, commitment, getting a job done, we can use staccato to convey a moment of panic, fear, urgency or adrenalin. Chekhov’s co-directors of Hamlet at MAAT 2 suggested that the actors playing the soldiers in the opening scene use staccato to anticipate the appearance of the ghost because it is ‘the rhythm of apprehension’ (PT, 272). In Breaking Bad (2:12), Walter misses the birth of his baby daughter because he is making his first clandestine delivery to an important methamphetamine distributor. The drug deposit is a ‘now or never’ opportunity for Walter and involves unprecedented levels of fear for him. He then rushes to the maternity ward, lies to his wife Skyler about what delayed him and tries to hide his anxiety as he takes his newborn daughter into his arms for the first time;4 the quality of legato in his action contrasts with the staccato, panic-infused, hard-edged action he has just been involved in, and the whole scene provides a beautiful polarity between guilt and innocence. It is helpful to consider whether your character tends to think staccato-like thoughts in the sense that they are quick and decisive, or whether in fact, their thoughts are legato, that is, slower and more reflective. Playing with staccato and legato simultaneously in opposition can create a sense of inner psychological conflict; for example, thinking

Petit recounts how his own teacher Blair Cutting began every class with them (HA, 38). Skyler is played by American actress Anna Gunn.

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or speaking in legato while moving in staccato, or vice versa. A simple stage movement which suddenly shifts from legato to staccato can create surprise, suspense and drama, and we should be bold in colouring our performances with such dynamic transitions.

Further exercises • Explore free, broad movements, first in staccato and then legato. Make the smallest and largest movements possible. Notice the specific sensations. ll Create a series of full-bodied, broad movements and gestures that travel across space and use different levels and planes of the body. Repeat the sequence deciding when to move in staccato and when in legato. Repeat again reversing the qualities. Repeat a third time, improvising when to use which quality. ll

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Set yourself a specific everyday task, such as folding a pile of sweaters and putting them away, or putting on and taking off a piece of clothing. Repeat the sequence deciding when to move in staccato and when in legato. Notice if you can sense a story or situation emerge. Pay attention to the moments of transformation from one to the other. Investigate how fully you can inhabit each quality while remaining natural and human. Speak a nursery rhyme in legato while at the same time taking off your shoes in staccato. Reverse the process: speak the nursery rhyme in staccato and move in legato. Try to make your movement and speech as natural as possible while maintaining the specificity of the quality. Explore this with a short speech also.

Emotional adverbs5 We can gradually progress to working with other more familiar qualities, of which there is a vast array to choose from. Examples of such qualities that Chekhov lists are ‘calmly, fiercely, thoughtfully, angrily, hastily, painfully, decidedly, slyly, wilfully, rigidly, softly, soothingly’ and ‘violently, This is Petit’s categorization (HA, 52).

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quietly, surely, carefully, tenderly, lovingly, coldly, angrily, cowardly, superficially, painfully, joyfully, thoughtfully, energetically’ (TOA, 38, 41). As we can see, these qualities are all adverbs: I move tenderly or with a quality of tenderness, I close the door aggressively, I kiss passionately and so on. As we discussed in the previous chapter, our action is what we are doing or aiming at, and the quality is how we are going about it. The how is the quality or adverb which makes our action specific. This will become particularly pertinent when we come to look at psychological gesture in Part Three. In the beginning, Petit advises us to focus on qualities ‘that can easily be imagined as a way to move … lightly, heavily, carefully, sneakily, explosively, sluggishly’ (HA, 52) while Chekhov also suggests employing colour and temperature such as ‘silver and cold qualities’ (AIT, 83). Once we become familiar with the process, we can progress to using emotional adverbs as listed above without running the risk of forcing any feelings or doing things in an incorrect order such as becoming angry and then moving (HA, 52). If we train in the manner suggested, our body will be attuned to detect what feels right. When you are confident with the four qualities (moulding, flowing, etc.) and staccato/legato, you can repeat the exercises above with these adverbs, or with those of your own choice. It is also good to practise the gestures of expansion and contraction with these adverbs. Then you will have a strong basis for the more complex work of psychological gesture that follows in Part Three.

Curved and straight sensation6 Stand and bring your attention to all the natural curves in the body. Gently begin to move parts of the body that form curves: the fingers, the small of the back, buttocks, elbow, breasts, back of the knees, neck, belly, ears, forehead. Appreciate the natural sensuality of these arches and begin now to make large, free movements, creating curves with the whole body. Use the back of the body, take up space and move in all directions, changing tempo regularly. Stay creative, avoiding repetition. Then pause and notice the sensation inside. You can read about curved and straight in RS, 308–9.

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Begin to take a simple, natural walk in the room, influenced by this sensation; internally there is a curved quality about it. From the outside, no one would notice anything about you; you walk normally (do not walk in curves!), yet psychologically you are a little transformed. Register any thoughts and observations you have. Ask yourself what kind of person could this be? Say a word or two, or a sentence, speaking from the sensation. Then stand and bring your attention to the straight lines in the body and gently begin to move those parts: the nose, forearm, collarbones, thighs, front of the hip. Then start to move the parts that when relaxed aren’t straight but can be straightened. Make large, free movements, creating long, straight lines with the whole body, and taking up as much space as possible. Have a sense of the front and back of the body, changing tempo regularly and remaining inventive. Then pause and notice the sensation inside. Begin to take a simple, natural walk in the room, influenced by this sensation; internally there is a straight quality about it. Again, notice any thoughts and observations you have about what kind of person you think this could be. Speak a word or two, or a sentence. We discussed in Chapter 4 on feeling of form how we can make compositional choices using curved or straight trajectories on stage. If we approach another character in a scene, or even the audience, along a direct (straight) or indirect (curved) route, it can convey different meanings. The straight path might be appropriate for a confrontation, or a generous offer, while a curved one might suit a situation of avoidance, deviance or secrecy. Here, our emphasis is a little different: we are focusing on curved and straight as specific sensations that we internalize. Although we move in lines or curves to begin with as triggers, in the end, we don’t present them literally and they don’t manifest physically in space; they become psychological characteristics working privately and invisibly upon us, like the other qualities. Curved movements tend to enliven the back of the body and evoke a certain sensuality, freedom, release, informality; they connect with our feelings. In contrast, straight movements often awaken the front of the body and create a sense of power, focus, structure, and a feeling of control, definition and formality. They connect with our thinking centre and our will (I will say more about these centres in Part Three). While strictly speaking they are not qualities (they are often referred to as

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sensations rather than qualities) because they prescribe a way to move and are actions of sorts (you could do a series of straight or curved movements with the quality of moulding, for example), nevertheless, they work in a similar way: they awaken sensation on the one hand, and on the other, can be applied directly to our performances. Once we have experienced the sensation from practising in large movements, we can internalize it as a basis for characterization. We can question whether our character thinks or acts with a ‘straight line’ or ‘curved’ psychology either as a broad character choice, or for specific moments. Iago’s tactics constantly shift between slippery cunning, which we might play with curved sensation, and ruthlessly hitting his target, which we might play with straight sensation. Hamlet also oscillates between reeling from the visitation of his father’s ghost and the sight of his mother’s ardour for her dead husband’s brother, Claudius (curved sensation) and lashing out in provocation against Claudius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who deceive him (straight sensation). In Scene 4 in Blasted, when Cate returns from the destruction in the city to find Ian mutilated and blinded, we might work with curved sensation for Cate and straight for Ian. Cate is disorientated from her exposure to the war zone and is cradling a baby in her arms whom she has rescued while Ian is desperately focused on obtaining help and comfort from Cate.

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Walk in curves in different directions. Have a strong sense of a curve in space, a curve across distance. Work in different speeds. Stop, experience the sensation. Repeat with straight lines. Create an abstract choreography of broad movement containing both curves and straight lines. Move across space and use different levels and planes of the body. Repeat the sequence, experiencing the contrasting sensations as you move. Divide the room in two: one side is ‘house of curve’ the other, ‘house of straight’. Freely experiment with moving between the two areas in large, free movements. Pay particular attention to the transition from one to the other. Progress to natural movement and then work with a short speech moving between the two areas.

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Set yourself a specific everyday task. Practise executing it with the sensation of curve, and then repeat it with the sensation of straight. Notice how the same activity becomes different. Repeat the activity deciding when to move with curve and when with straight sensation. Repeat reversing the qualities. Notice if you sense a story emerge. Move broadly and freely, combining straight lines with a quality of moulding. Pause and experience the sensation. Then follow impulses in natural, everyday activity under the influence of this ‘double’ sensation. Repeat straight lines with qualities of flying, floating and radiating. Repeat with curves.

Large and small steps Walk in the room taking large steps. Travel forwards, backwards, right and left. Feel the connection with your legs, feet and pelvis and sense your touch with the ground. Lead with the heel. After about five or ten minutes, stop and listen to the inner sensation. Imagine you are still taking these large steps even though you are still; experience them as an inward movement. Speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from this feeling. Then begin to walk normally, but imagine that you are taking these large steps internally. You can walk with small or regular steps, but you are influenced by the internal sensation of big steps. Try different simple activities: sitting down, taking a drink, putting on a piece of clothing. Notice what your relationship to space is, and how you are inspired to handle objects. Observe your thoughts and feelings. Next, pause and begin to move through the room taking small steps, travelling forwards, backwards, right and left. Again, after about ten minutes, stop and listen to the inner sensation. Imagine you are still taking these small steps internally, feel their movement and speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from the feeling. Then begin to walk normally, influenced by the internal sensation of small steps. Try different simple activities, noticing your thoughts, feelings and your relationship to the room and objects. When we experiment with the size of steps to create a quality of movement, we are in a relationship with the space around us. With large steps, space is there for the taking, to be occupied and moved

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through with a certain gusto. It creates an expansive sensation of power, confidence, courage which could be coloured with recklessness, aggression, domination. With small steps, the relationship with space is negotiated: Space is to be approached, stepped around, figured out, even respected. It engenders more contracted feelings of care, delicacy, caution, restraint and can be coloured with timidity, fear, cowardice. It is important not to confuse the steps with the character’s actual walk. We do not need to play the character walking literally with huge or tiny steps; it is the sensation that we are interested in. It is natural that something of the sensation may impact upon the walk and physical rhythm of the character and that we could decide that a character takes large or small steps as a consequence of our exploration. This is fine, but we need to be clear that we are not developing a gross caricature or a fixed way of moving. Similarly with all the qualities, we move broadly and freely to access the sensation which, in turn, inspires us to respond more ‘naturally’ in a particular way. We can ask ourselves if our character is someone who takes the space boldly or who, by contrast, hangs back, or is conflicted, like Hamlet. Is it a character who wants to make an impression on the world, make their mark, such as Ian in Blasted, or one who wants to leave as little impact as possible, such as Cate? A large steps character might be someone with a very strong will such as Othello and, I would argue, Desdemona, whereas a small steps character might be someone weak-willed such as Gertrude in Hamlet, or reticent and innocent such as Cate. In this sense, they express something similar to the energies of expansion and contraction and they are offered here as alternative means of exploring overlapping themes. In response to a direction to make the character bolder or more confident, simply translate this into a physical activity for yourself, such as the sensation of large steps. It moves us away from thinking and focuses our attention on a concrete activity that we can do to experience an immediate shift.

Further exercises ll

Working with the sensation of large steps, enter, sit down, pick up a book and read something to an audience. Imagine an audience if you are working alone. Repeat with the sensation of small steps.

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Then walk physically in the room with large steps leading with the ball of the foot. Travel in different directions, backwards as well as forward. Feel the connection with your legs, feet and pelvis. Notice the sensation. Then stop and experience the inner sensation. Progress to natural, everyday movements and speaking a short text from the sensation. Walk in the room taking small steps, leading with the heel. Notice how the sensation has changed. How is the connection with your legs, feet and pelvis different here? Progress to natural movement and speaking text. Ask yourself who this person could be. Experiment with changing tempo, combining large and small steps, or try to experience both at once, inspired by an emu, ostrich or cassowary! Experiment with small and large steps with the four qualities of movement.

11 SIX DIRECTIONS1 ‘When you are bound, you are not free’ (AIT, 71).

With the main four qualities of movement (moulding, supporting, flying and radiating), Chekhov invites us to form an imaginative relationship with the air around us (it either resists, supports, gives an impulse or sustains). In this chapter, we create a relationship with the air according to the direction in which we travel: forward, backward, up, down, left or right. This exercise is about becoming sensitive to the idea that travelling in a particular direction gives rise to a specific psychophysical sensation. When we develop a relationship with directionality in this way, we open up to its potential as a dynamic force (HA, 22); when that happens, it becomes an inspiring stage partner.

Forward direction Stand and contact the ideal centre. First centre your weight in the middle of your feet; we shall call this ‘home-base’.2 Then shift your weight forward one millimetre and stay there. Bring your attention to the front of the body and the whole area in front of you spatially. Make sure your heels are still on the floor and that you are not off balance; only a small physical shift is necessary. Notice the sensation of this tilt

For more on directions in space, see HA, 22; RS, 172–6. To my knowledge, there is nothing specifically written about them in Chekhov’s core writings that exists in English. 2 ‘Home-base’ is Dixon’s term, as is the image of the traffic light. Dixon also suggests imagining throwing open saloon doors as you move forward, Michael Chekhov UK Studio (London, 2008). 1

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forward and whether it is a familiar or unfamiliar place for you to inhabit. Imagine that the air and the world move past you in a forward direction. Put your whole attention on this frontal area; it is in perpetual forward momentum. Then imagine you are at a red traffic light, waiting for it to turn green, or a sprinter on the starting line. Suddenly, the green light flashes and you go! Thrust your body forward into the room: walk dynamically rather than run. Feel the force of your whole being moving forward. For the moment, try to sense the characteristics of the pure direction itself without adding any colour to it. Remember to work with a feeling of ease and without panic; you are focused rather than stressed. After ten minutes, pause and listen to the sensation. Speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Then pursue simple activities in the room under the influence of this sensation: sitting down, taking a drink, walking backwards, opening the door. Notice what you are drawn to and the nature of your thoughts; is there an inner monologue of sorts? The forward direction in space provokes a sensation of alertness, directness, purpose, clarity or even an experience of zooming in on the world. Once we have a sense of its broad palette, we can decide to colour it with certain nuances: determination, desire, curiosity, problemsolving on the one hand, and fanaticism, obsession, rage on the other. Just as we saw with the qualities of movement, we can work with the directions in two ways: as a broad character choice or to activate a specific moment. There might also be a clue in your character’s language if she often projects into the future, or talks of ‘moving things forward’, being ‘ahead of the game’, or if other characters refer to her as ‘forward-thinking’. In ‘Diary of a Madman’, at the end of diary entry ‘November 11th’, Proprishchin decides to try to get his hands on letters that he believes contain essential information about his beloved Sophie and how to win her heart. In the transition at the end of this scene to the next, Robert worked with a driving sense of anticipation of what he was about to find, of what he needed to find. Working with the forward direction gave him a palpable sense of a future just within his grasp. When Iago plants the seed of doubt in Othello about Desdemona (III:iii), Othello, at first, refuses to believe it and demands ‘ocular proof’ and ‘living reason’. Iago paints Othello a precise picture of how he heard

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Cassio dream aloud in his sleep about his passionate affair with her. Iago’s lie is carefully constructed; he pierces through Othello’s trust in his wife and allows graphic details of imagined kisses and sighs to penetrate Othello’s imagination. The colour of the forward direction here for Iago might be razor-sharp, rational, focused and deliberate, whereas for Othello it is more neurotic as he fixates compulsively on the minutiae of the adulterous picture painted for him.

Backspace or backward direction Stand against a wall, ensuring as much of your back is in contact with the wall as possible without discomfort. Put your attention on your back, sensing the touch and the temperature of the wall. After a few moments, begin to walk forward slowly. Let the mouth fall open a little and let the jaw relax, keeping your eyes open and on the horizon. As you advance, imagine that the past is unfolding behind you (RS, 173); it is not only your own past, but that of humanity, a sense of the history of mankind. Try to allow images to drop in, one after the other, just as they come. It may be images of devastation, or great feats of courage, ground-breaking inventions, important moments in history, significant cultural events or moments from your own past. They may be real or invented. Imagine the space behind gets larger with every step you take and that you carry the accumulating images behind you as you walk. Take your time: the whole exercise might take about thirty minutes. By the time you reach the other side of the room, the whole area at your back is full and your attention remains in that space. Speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with your attention in this backspace. Take a few steps in the room with the sense that the space behind you is alive. Then slowly dissolve the image. Inhabiting the backspace can trigger feelings of regret or sadness because it often conjures a sense of mistakes made and events gone forever. Often, it provokes a slower, less-focused, indirect energy. I like to introduce the backspace with this exercise as it is immediately potent, works the imagination simultaneously and eliminates any false notion that we are working the body on its own, devoid of psychological or imaginative content. Through all of the Chekhov exercises on the

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body, movement, gesture, sensation, it is ultimately the imagination we are seeking to activate, and coordinate a symbiotic relationship between our inner and outer experience. An alternative way to experience the backspace is to return to homebase, shift the weight one millimetre back (not off balance, toes still on the floor) and put our attention on the back of the body. It is as if there is nothing in front of us. Petit reminds us ‘to move forward with the will, yet with the imagination we are moving backwards’ (MCT, 1:3). We ‘live’ psychologically and emotionally in this backspace, focusing only on the world behind us. Characters who might inhabit the backspace could be those who are referred to as ‘backward’, ‘on the back foot’, ‘behind the times’, or ‘backward-looking’. It might also evoke someone who is attached to the past, nostalgia or someone who is dying. Coloured more positively, it could be someone who has great connection to their heritage or family history, and has an appreciation of lineage. Very practically, the backspace is useful to play reminiscing or recalling a memory. We also talk of harking back to the past and backtracking out of decisions, both of which convey a sense of physical retreat from the present tense. In the light of this, we might think of the home-base position as the present tense situated between forward (future) and back (past). We can also work with the backspace filled with something. Merlin suggests colouring the backspace to create an aura for the character, such as a red backspace for Arkadina in The Seagull to express something of her passionate glow of celebrity (PT, 291). In performance, the actress with whom Merlin worked on this wore a ruby ring ‘which kept the redness alive’ and even her choice of the psychological gesture ‘to consume’ evoked a fiery gluttony (PT, 291). It might be interesting to play the witches in Macbeth inhabiting the backspace all the time to capture their emotional detachment and alienation from the rest of the world. While they urge Macbeth to commit murder, they do so from a chilling position of indifference. They do not connect, they lack empathy, they are other-worldly, their focus is elsewhere; their backspace might be white, misty, cold. In Breaking Bad’s Series 1, when Walter White returns home to his family following the act of committing his first murder, it appears as if he enters the living room ‘carrying’ the image of his brutal, traumatic deed

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with him. He attempts to face his family in the usual way, engaging in the humdrum of dinner table chat, while simultaneously trying to put behind him the terribly fresh memory and sensation of this momentous act. Filling the backspace with the image of a secret event can become a stimulating obstacle, offering a dramatic polarity that can be very activating to play. On stage, in an effort to stay active, we can easily fall into the trap of playing everything in a frontal relationship, forgetting about the area behind us. Increasing our awareness of the backspace, activating it and, in a sense, bringing it with us onstage (with the appropriate nuance) increases the strength of our radiation and magnifies the power of our presence.

Upward direction Stand and contact the ideal centre. From home-base, shift your weight up one millimetre. Ensure that your heels are still on the floor even though your weight is lifting up a little off the legs and feet into the torso. Remember that only a small physical shift is necessary. Notice the sensation and whether it is a familiar or unfamiliar place for you to inhabit. Bring your attention to the top of your head, imagining that your head is on the ceiling or that the air is picking you up by the ears. Everything within and around you is moving upwards. Put your entire attention in the area above the head; your whole psychological and emotional life ‘lives’ up there. Speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Then begin to walk normally in different directions but live energetically in the upward direction. Occasionally run backwards and forwards, or lie down. Follow any other impulses you have and notice the sensation. Working in the upward direction in space brings a sensation of levity, lightness, growth, a sense of the aspirational. Our lexicon contains phrases such as ‘feeling upbeat’, to feel ‘up’, ‘things are looking up’, ‘we’re on the up’, ‘to move up in the world, ‘to be on top of the world’, ‘to take off’; these all largely suggest a positive movement, a sense of progress or achievement. The American actor and student of Chekhov, Jack Colvin (1934–2005), revealed that Chekhov believed that ‘everything that is beautiful in life begins as a confused mass, but

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then moves upward. Each blade of grass stretches upward. All art tends upward. Towards the air. Towards the sky. Towards God. Call it what you will’ (MH, 441). However, as with the other directions, we can nuance it. On the one hand, we might convey a sense of hope, youthfulness, innocence, delight, optimism inhabiting this direction, or coloured more negatively, we can convey air-headedness, dizziness, forgetfulness, naivety, stupidity, lack of focus or haughtiness. We can describe someone as an ‘airhead’, as having their ‘head in the clouds’, or their ‘nose in the air’. In ‘Diary of a Madman’, there is a sense that Proprishchin is trying to elevate himself from his position as the poor underdog. He fights his more base tendencies, attempting to quell his sexual desire for Sophie in favour of the kind of romantic, courtly love appropriate, as he imagines it, to a gentleman of noble birth. Playing with an imaginative reach upward helped Robert embody Proprishchin’s deep desire for a better existence, to move up in the world and soar into the heights of lofty ambition. Every time Proprishchin spoke about Sophie, Robert combined the upward direction in space with the quality of radiating. In this way, he began to touch the uplifting, heavenly qualities that Sophie embodies. To play Cate in Blasted, we might inhabit the upward direction as an overall character choice to convey something of her innocence, her lack of grounding and stability, her intellectual reticence and struggle for articulacy.

Downward direction Stand and contact the ideal centre. Starting in home-base, shift your weight down one millimetre, placing your weight into the legs and feet. Again, only a small shift is necessary; there is no need to collapse physically. Notice whether the sensation is familiar or unfamiliar. Bring your attention to the soles of your feet. Imagine that they are on the bottom of the earth, much deeper than the actual ground you are standing on. It is as if you are getting in touch with the bowels of the earth beneath your feet. Imagine that everything inside and around you is moving downward. Then put your attention in the area below the feet. Imagine that you view the world from down here. Speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Try to find the pure sensation of the movement without colouring it negatively.

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Then begin to walk normally in different directions but live energetically and imaginatively in the downward direction. Execute everyday activities and notice what the sensation inspires you to do and how. Working with the downward direction creates a sensation of gravity, weight, substance, stability, an awareness of form and the material world. Its positive colours might be grounded-ness, strength, solidity, confidence, a sense of a foundation, while its opposites convey depression, dullness, paranoia, heaviness, hopelessness, lethargy, obstinacy. We speak of ‘having our feet on the ground’, being ‘grounded’, ‘standing your ground’ or of someone having ‘gravitas’, on the one hand, and being ‘down’, ‘down-hearted’, ‘down in the dumps’ or feeling ‘low’, ‘flat’ or ‘being knocked off your feet’, on the other. Desdemona in Othello begins the play on top of the world, flying high, so to speak, but in the latter stages of it, she is without hope, burdened by the sorrow of Othello’s condemnation of her and the loss of his love. While this is a proposition for a broad character movement from up to down, alternatively, we can choose simply to shift momentarily into downward direction to convey receiving bad news or experiencing a sudden disappointment. Bardem’s portrayal of Chigurh in No Country for Old Men that we discussed earlier could also be described as living in the downward direction. Chigurh is a ruthless hit man, employed to recover stolen drug money and killing practically everyone he meets along the way. There are several shots in the film of Chigurh walking steadily towards the murder of his next victim; it appears as if he owns the very earth beneath his feet. His assurance, conviction, absolute fearlessness, and the inevitability of death are all conveyed in a steady, grounded, heavy walk across the desert in cowboy boots. It is a psychophysical masterpiece.3 On a contrasting note, we could consider Emilia, Iago’s wife, in Othello as situated more positively in the downward direction; she is practical, has her feet on the ground, relates well to people and takes action at decisive moments in the play.

It is interesting to note that Bardem’s long-term acting coach, Juan Carlos Corazza, lists the work of Michael Chekhov as one of his inspirations, along with Stanislavsky, Strasberg, Brook and Grotowsky. 3

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Right and left directions The right and left directions can be elusive when taken separately, although given that most of us are right or left-handed, we probably all have particular and different sensations associated with each side, such as one side feeling more dexterous than the other, perhaps. As with the other directions, we work with shifting the weight a millimetre to the right or left. Some practitioners reveal that living imaginatively only in the right direction in space gives a sensation of secretiveness or sneakiness and living in the left can offer a wistfulness or a sense of knowing. I do not have a strong experience of left or right directions offering a specific sensation, and I tend not to teach them, although it is enjoyable to try them out. In my view, they are best considered together. Petit refers usefully to expansion and contraction as the third ‘set’ of directions (up/ down, forward/back are the other two ‘sets’ (HA, 22)). Expansion, in the way that we explored it in the star-shaped gesture described in Chapter 8, moves outward to the left and right whereas contraction moves inward from left and right, in the way that we explored the gesture of crouching and closing (beginning from the star shape of expansion). Strictly speaking, the impact of making expansion and contraction gestures is a more three-dimensional experience than this suggests, but I find it helpful to consider them primarily as combined left and right movement because it highlights that they are specifically directional and that the periphery of the body is the most active: one opens out, the other closes in.

Combining directions Even if we make an overall decision that our character inhabits the forward space, we can also play with other directions at given moments to activate an important emotional shift in the character’s trajectory. I find that playing freely with the directions is tremendously helpful to root the character’s language and experience in my own bodily sensation. Resituating references to ‘heaven’ (up) and ‘hell’ (down), for example, as geographically distinct locations both in my body and in space gives me a tangible sensation that then ignites my imagination, which, in turn, stimulates my feelings. Chekhov describes King Claudius’s

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prayer monologue in Hamlet (III:iii) as a ‘thrashing between heaven and earth … two attempts to find a way up, to ascend to heaven, followed by tumbling, more painfully back to earth again’ (PT, 259). When we connect with ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ as concrete destinations at either end of a vertical, spatial plane, they cease to become simply an abstract idea. Similarly, a sense of anticipation I can experience simply by a combination of inhabiting the upward and forward direction, whereas downward and back can provoke a feeling of foreboding, fear or resistance. To evoke a child’s excitement, for instance, we might work with the forward and down, moving very quickly and lightly with a low centre of gravity. The thick, powerful determination of Bardem’s portrayal of Chigurh we might reproduce by moving forward and down with a quality of moulding. Here, we begin to move into the terrain of combining the directions with qualities. Try moving back and up with a quality of floating: You may begin to feel a little fragile, dreamy and, perhaps, slightly unhinged. We might use this to play the singing Ophelia in Hamlet in Act IV:v where she has lost her mind, and blend it with sudden shifts into the forward and down direction with a staccato quality for her addresses, or commands, to Claudius and Queen Gertrude – ‘pray you, mark’, ‘let’s have no more of this’, ‘say you this’. In this way, the ‘fog’ of her madness is cut through with arhythmical moments of sharp and accusatory lucidity and we might begin to access something of Ophelia’s tragic and turbulent distress. Dixon also suggests experimenting with moving just one body part in a particular direction, as does Petit: eyes that intermittently wander upwards, for example, might create a sense, in Blasted, of Cate’s insecurity and lack of confidence. Shoulders that lean backwards and a stomach that protrudes forward recalls something of Hank’s provocative and wise-cracking machismo in Breaking Bad. We could imagine that Romeo’s heart moves upwards or forwards or that Proprishchin’s lungs move backwards or downward as his health begins to deteriorate. You can also play with any of these propositions at different intensities (25, 50 or 100 per cent). Much detail and emotional richness can come from these combinations, but they need regular practice in order to be readily available to us and to remain finely tuned and specific. Neither are these suggestions prescriptive; there are endless possibilities and

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combinations that will evoke different sensations according to the project and context you are working within. Therefore, it is important to bring a sense of play and curiosity to this, rather than try to work everything out logically or feel that there is only one way to apply the exercise. The tools are intended to liberate our creativity rather than restrict it. A side effect of working with the directions is that they teach us something about our own physical habits and postural tics. We may notice that our default stance is in forward direction, or its opposite. We will not manage to play a very convincing Ma Rainey in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1982), if we are stuck in a pattern of walking lightly and upward on the feet. Our work is to train ourselves to be able to shift our weight in any direction according to what suits the character we are portraying, rather than remain stuck in the one and only way that feels natural to us. ‘Home-base’ teaches us to find a balanced aligned centre in the middle of all six directions. Re-contacting the ideal centre with it strengthens its stability. Of course, we may always identify more with the position and sensation of one particular direction, but by cultivating the ability to inhabit another, we can transform and begin to contact artistic freedom. This is important because one of Chekhov’s key aims is to help the actor to migrate from the ordinary, everyday world into an extraordinary, fantasy world, to embrace the full range of epic stories we might tell, from Homer’s Odyssey to contemporary science fiction. Our technique needs to help us inhabit and portray worlds beyond what we know.

Further exercises Repeat all exercises with each direction. ll

Execute everyday actions such as sitting, lying down, picking things up, putting on an item of clothing. Imagine psychologically that you are going forward with dynamism regardless of what you are doing physically.

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Throw a ball to your partners living in the forward space.

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Then stand still or sit still and radiate moving forward.

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In pairs, stand facing each other. A walks to B, shakes their hand and says ‘hello, how are you?’ working with the sensation of the forward direction in space. Reverse roles. Notice the inner sensations when both doing and receiving. Try moving different parts of the body only. Try keeping the head forward a little and walk around. Notice the sensation and how your psychology is affected. Notice if you have a sense of a characterization emerging. Then walk with thrusting the chest forward a little, without tension, or with the arms contracting and turning in towards the body. Walk with the little finger out or with the chest collapsed down. Again, notice the different sensation with each nuance. Combine the forward direction with a quality of movement, initially moving the body physically forward in space with the quality; then progress to everyday activity. Speak a few words. Notice the particular sensation of each combination. Explore multiple combinations: moving forward and down with a quality of moulding, back and up with a quality of floating, back and down with a quality of radiating, forward and up with a quality of flying. Explore shifting focus from forward space to backspace. Walk backwards and focus on the forward direction, walk forward with the focus on the backspace, walk forward with a forward focus, backward with a backward focus. Switch quickly between the two.

12 ARCHETYPAL GESTURE1 ‘To increase our own life on the stage means to be able to see everywhere – in the written words, in the events around us, and in our own psychology – gestures, gestures, and more gestures, but not states of mind’ (LP, 109).

Stand with your eyes closed and say ‘to give’ or ‘I give’. As you speak, let your hands follow, making a natural, everyday gesture that corresponds to giving. Pay attention to the direction in which you are making the gesture; in this case, you might move your hands forward, opening them out in front of you as if offering something. With this basic everyday gesture as inspiration, begin to extend the movement into the whole body, formalizing it now into a more full-bodied gesture: let the whole body lean forward, perhaps let one of your legs step forward also, extend the arms with the palms facing up.2 Working at a moderate tempo, repeat the gesture, giving it a clear beginning and end, ensuring you take up space as you execute it and hold the gesture in a still pose at the end. Create a polarity between the beginning and the end, but resist travelling in the room. Check that you are giving with your body, rather than your face, and resist any temptation to act out a scenario or exert unnecessary tension. Rather than mime the action of giving something away, we create the action of giving itself in ‘a pure, ideal, archetypal form’ (TOA, 41).3 The gesture should be clear and simple, neither pedestrian nor abstract. Ensure that

For more on gesture, see TA, 63–76, 183–215; TOA, 58–94; LP, 107–12, 133–4; LT, 27–8; PA, 187–8; HA, 48–55, 107–15; MC, 73–7, 140–1; MCT, 2:7; RS, 243–51, 263–81. 2 In fact, this gesture is similar to the gesture we discussed for staccato and legato, except here the palms face up rather than down. 3 Merlin warns, ‘Do not act the gesture; let the gesture act you’ (PT, 287). 1

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in the final position of the gesture, although you are physically still, your whole body appears to move and radiate in the direction of the gesture: in this case, forward, towards the recipient. Receive the sensation in your body once you have completed the gesture. Now cease speaking the verb aloud. From a standing position, feel the movement of giving begin inside, then execute the gesture of giving physically, and once the body has reached the end of its movement, continue to radiate ‘giving’ out into the space, imagining beyond the limits of your body.4 Even though the body no longer moves, continue to give internally, speaking ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from the sensation. Hold the gesture at least ten seconds, taking care to release unnecessary tension, send the energy out into the room through the fingertips, while maintaining a connection with your legs. Repeat the gesture three times, returning each time to the beginning position rather than to a neutral stance. With each repetition, intensify the power of the gesture within you and stay alert to the areas in the body where the gesture feels strongest or as Petit puts it, its ‘sweet spot’ (HA, 53): it may be when you extend the elbows out or open the palms of your hands. Then stand and visualize the gesture in your imagination only; even though your body is still, your inner life is in a continuous movement of giving. Internally, sense the forward direction of this verb; feel it as a movement inside. Next, let it inspire you to improvise in the room, noticing which kind of actions it activates you to do and how to do them. Do you find yourself gravitating towards people or specific parts of the room? Are you drawn to particular objects and if so, how do you handle them? Explore speaking a short piece of text with this gesture alive within you. It is as if the gesture is producing the words. In Chapter 8, we looked at expansion and contraction and described them as large, full-bodied gestures that we execute in order to stimulate the inner life. They are an indirect means of appealing to our psychology and awakening our feelings. Once we are activated internally by the

Petit calls this ‘the artistic frame’ (HA, 46). This process of beginning with the spoken verb and natural gesture is also his proposition. 4

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gestures, we no longer need to do them physically; they work on us invisibly, inspiring our behaviour and speech. An audience would never see our expansion or contraction gesture on stage; it remains our actor’s secret that we practise at home, before a scene in rehearsal, or in the wings of the stage or set. Expansion and contraction are, in fact, the first pair of archetypal gestures that we learn in the Chekhov repertoire as an introduction to psychological gesture (also known as PG), and the remaining, complete set of archetypal gestures in this chapter prepares us fully for it. Psychological gesture, which we will look at in Part Three, is characterspecific and is a psychophysical way to activate and embody both the character’s superobjective as well as smaller scene objectives. We first work with expansion/contraction and the full series of archetypal gestures listed in this chapter because they are the material from which we create a psychological gesture, and through them we learn the particular ‘archetypal’ form PGs take. In Chekhov’s technique, there are archetypal gestures on the one hand, and archetypal figures or personae (or what Chekhov simply calls archetypes), on the other. They span the gap between the universally fundamental and the narrowly stereotypical. In general, the way I see it, the most useful way to use these tools is to try to orient them, where possible, towards the fundamental, that is, properly distilled approaches to movements or essential roots of movements. There are lots of versions of giving, for example, but we are trying to understand giving in its most concentrated, intensified form. Of course, there is undeniably in Chekhov’s own writings some culturally particularist if not stereotypical aspects; in my experience, even these can be productive for actors working within these cultural horizons so long as we remember that the goal is to become conscious of the stereotypes that surround and saturate us and become freer in relation to them so that we can use them as tools of characterization. You will encounter both archetypal gesture and archetypes as separate tools in this book. Although they are closely linked, I teach them separately because I consider the work on archetype as an advanced, character-specific tool that works best only when you are well versed in archetypal gestures.

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The form of the gesture To create an archetypal gesture, we express physically an action or a verb, with a specific quality and tempo as well as a defined beginning and end, with the aim of activating our will and feelings. Archetypal gestures are neither naturalistic nor abstract nor ‘danced’. Rather, they are a formalized, three-dimensional posture or stance that we make as fully as possible with our body to express the most basic and recognizable forms in human life. As such, they are very concrete; almost anyone can understand the movement or form of something expanding or opening, as well as the psychological feeling of opening up. You may also be able to sense that the movement of pushing involves some sort of thrusting gesture forward or knocking against, and most of us will be familiar with the kind of energy that a ‘pushy’ person imparts. It is important to point out that we are not interested in enacting a scenario such as opening a door, for example, or pushing a heavy object; rather, we are extrapolating the fundamental, identifiable movement within ‘opening’ and ‘pushing’, the common denominator in all the possible variations of ‘opening’ or ‘pushing’ conceivable, the thing that all ‘openings’ or ‘pushings’ have in common, detached from any specific situation or story. Chekhov asserts that ‘we cannot command ourselves to be full of love, or full of hatred, but we can always do the gesture’ (AIT, 81). Indeed, for Chekhov, to inhabit a certain state of mind or feeling, to be ‘in a state of sorrow’, for example, above all ‘means to produce a certain gesture’ (LP, 109) with a certain quality or tempo. We saw how the gesture of contraction might induce feelings of sadness, withdrawal, closure, negativity, and expansion, the opposite. Our gesture of giving might provoke feelings of generosity, hope, benevolence, openness. Rather than perceiving a state of mind as ‘a fixed, dead, immovable psychology’, Chekhov invites us to consider it as an active place in which ‘inner movement goes on’ (LP, 109). We do something in order to awaken a certain power within and if we do it through full-bodied engagement with the body, it becomes immediately accessible. If the qualities of movement are how I am acting, the archetypal gesture is what I am doing, and as discussed before, exciting, activated performance demands both these elements in equal measure.

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The feelings, state and situation we need to access and inhabit in performance can all be translated into an archetypal gesture. Chekhov reminds us that even a purely psychological state of mind ‘is actually described in our human language as gesture’ (LP, 107), offering by way of example the phrases, ‘to draw a conclusion’, ‘to break one’s thought’, ‘to delve into a problem’ or ‘to kill the thought’, ‘to touch upon the problem’, ‘to burst into tears’, ‘to sidestep responsibility’, ‘to fall into despair’ (TOA, 59). He suggests that if we are able to ‘draw’ or ‘break’ or ‘delve’ or ‘grasp’ in a physical gesture using our actual hands and body, ‘we will understand more things about the human psychology, and acting, than if we tried to think it out’ (LP, 107). In one respect, this returns to relatively familiar ways of thinking about acting as ‘doing’, rather than ‘being’, with the important nuance that with Chekhov we embody the verb in a distinctively heightened and archetypal form. Whichever way we look at it, gesture is about activating our inner life and our will forces, in particular, without needing to have recourse to our memories or specific personal experience. Of course, we are free to draw on the latter, but Chekhov firmly resists actors drawing deliberately upon their own lives. Whatever is relevant and useful in our experience, he believes, will resonate somewhere in our subconscious, without the need to bring it consciously to light. As Chekhov suffered a mental breakdown (in the period between 1916 and 1918), he is particularly interested in the actor developing a highly elaborated level of awareness and imagination, without unnecessary levels of introspection. Above all, he is interested in how we can liberate the creative process from an excess of our own ‘too personal, too intellectual interference’ (TOA, 3); for him, we can only consider ourselves actor-artists if we are trying to move beyond ‘our petty, personal lives, desires, and limited surroundings’ (TOA, 3) and engage in a conscious, more objective practice. The archetypal gestures are offered as a set of impersonal tools that have nothing to do with our experience and everything to do with our psychophysical sensitivity.

The basic set of archetypal gestures Chekhov offers an inventory of archetypal gestures or forms that can be useful to distinguish and clarify an essential range of human action. He

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proposes an open-ended list of verbs/gestures and mentions, by way of examples – ‘drawing, pulling, pressing, lifting, throwing, crumpling, coaxing, separating, tearing, penetrating, touching, brushing away, opening, closing, breaking, taking, giving, supporting, holding back’, and so on (TOA, 41). Merlin narrows this down to a specific set of oppositions: to push/pull, to open/close (expansion/contraction), to embrace/throw, to wring/tear, to lift/smash, as well as to penetrate and to punch. Petit believes that ultimately all possible gestures fit into one of the following categories: to give/take, to want/reject, to stand your ground/yield. Petit calls these ‘the six statements of action’ (HA, 51). A pushing gesture is a version of rejecting, pulling, a kind of taking, throwing or tearing a kind of yielding, whereas an opening gesture could be a version of standing my ground, or lifting, a kind of giving.5 I think Petit’s broad categories are a useful place to begin to give a sense of where a gesture might belong, so to speak, and clarify what we are doing. My preferred sequence is to follow work on expansion and contraction by exploring Petit’s six statements of action, and then progress to Merlin’s list of oppositions, all in the manner described at the beginning of this chapter. In this way, we move gradually from a broad range of actions to more subtle subdivisions, progressing, in time, to specific psychological gestures, which, as I mentioned above, are archetypal gestures adapted specifically for the psychology of the character or a scene. We will come back to this in Chapter 20. Remember that archetypal gestures serve to activate our will and feelings and are never actual, visible actions that we see on stage. If I am working with an archetypal gesture of giving, giving gestures may creep in to what I am doing on stage, but they will take a different, more oblique form; most likely they will be more natural, but they will not be archetypal.

Direction and quality Each gesture has a particular direction, up, down, back, forward, left and right, and when creating them, it is important to notice and commit to their predominant direction and send our radiation in that Petit suggests that kissing and punching ‘are truly both giving. One of them is tender and soft, the other is violent and hard’ (HA, 51–2). 5

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direction. This is why it is important to be practised fully in the directions and radiating before we come to this task. The more sensitive we become to directional nuance, the more effective the gesture will be. We saw how expansion opens to the left and right while contraction closes down the left and right. We can understand easily, I think, that a rejecting gesture might travel away from us, two hands thrusting forward, creating distance between the body and the hands, while to do a smashing gesture we would probably push both hands and body down towards the ground with a certain force. A yielding gesture retreats and might involve leaning the body and head back on one leg and opening the arms a little on either side to reveal the elbows and palms. Chekhov insists that any slight alteration in the direction or aspect of a body part also carries new psychological information and with practice, we can become attuned to the slightest physical nuance. If we adjust the gesture of contraction or ‘calmly closing yourself’ (TA, 72) by lifting the hands up to the chin, he suggests that ‘new slight nuances of unavoidability and loneliness will introduce themselves’ (TA, 73). If we close the eyes and throw our head back, ‘pain and pleading qualities may appear’. The palms turned outward might evoke ‘self-defence’, while inclining the head to one side hints at ‘self-pity’ (TA, 73, Chekhov’s emphasis). Chekhov asks us to train this capacity for detail until even the slightest alteration incites a strong internal response. In addition, the quality with which we make the gesture renders it specific and we can execute any gesture with a quality of moulding, flowing, flying, radiation, staccato, legato, or with any other quality of our choice or from the list of emotional adverbs discussed in Chapter 10. To take a familiar example, if I am playing Romeo in the beginning of the balcony scene, marvelling at Juliet, I might work with a slow gesture of lifting with a quality of joy, admiration, reverence or radiation (joyfully, admiringly, reverently, radiantly). The gesture might begin with the knees bent, arms out, palms open to the ceiling and finish by slowly standing up, looking up and raising the palms as if making an offer to ‘heaven’. This is what Romeo is doing quite literally. He puts Juliet on a pedestal, sends her soaring off as ‘a winged messenger of heaven’ that ‘sails upon the bosom of the air’. Juliet is almost divine to him and his language suggests movement that streams upward. In this instance, the gesture is the action or verb (to lift) and the quality is the

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adverb (joyfully, etc.). In this physical action, all the necessary feelings will come without having to love your fellow actor in real life or imagine that she is someone you actually love. In ‘Diary of a Madman’, for the diary entry, ‘November 12th’, Proprishchin successfully steals the letters from the dog who he believes has been in correspondence with Sophie’s dog, Medji. Before he is able to read them, Proprishchin goes out for a walk to reflect on their content. Robert created a slow gesture of pulling something imaginary towards himself, with a secret, soft and saucy quality. He attached a phrase to it, ‘this is it’, evoking a quiet certainty that these letters would be the answer to all Proprishchin’s problems. We worked on the whole script in this way, dividing it into sections and Robert marked up the corresponding parts in his script with sketches of the gestures and their accompanying phrases. When we work with soft qualities, it is important to remember that the gesture itself must still possess a strong form because vague gestures will not stimulate our inner life: the quality may be light but the gesture must still be definite. Tempo is also important and it is always worth exploring the same gesture at different speeds. We can make a decision about what seems to be the most appropriate choice, but occasionally executing the gesture with what we might at first consider to be an ‘incorrect’ tempo can open up something new.

Archetypal gesture and other forms Chekhov asserts that archetypal gesture is to be found everywhere, ‘in nature, in living things’ (DR, 74). It expresses for Chekhov the inner vitality of an entity. Two influences are important in this development of Chekhov’s practice. The first is the expressive movement art form, Eurythmy, created by Steiner, which involves embodying a movement gesture to express the quality of a specific spoken sound; this was part of the voice curriculum at Dartington.6 The second source is Chekhov’s own observations of nature whereby he perceived in motionless, solidified This practice was taught by Alice Crowther. Hurst du Prey states that for Chekhov ‘gesture was the bodily speech of the actor’ (MS/24/S3/A, 10 April 1974). Pitches also attributes Chekhov’s development of gesture to Goethe’s ‘urforms’ (Pitches 2006, 140). 6

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forms a certain play of forces, or will impulses. This phenomenon of internal invisible movement he came to call ‘gesture’. William Elmhirst recounted how Chekhov even encouraged his students at Dartington to go out into the gardens and ‘feel the gestures of the trees’ (DY). Indeed, Chekhov describes the gesture of a cypress tree as streaming upward compared with that of an oak which rises upward and sideways (TOA, 39). The violet ‘peeps out of its surrounding leaves’ whereas the tiger lily ‘thrusts out of the earth’ (TOA, 39). Chekhov believed that the kinds of movement he perceived in nature could teach us about the key elements needed in our psychological gestures – ‘activity, direction, intensity, quality, time, space’ (AIT, 192). Similarly, Chekhov maintains that colours also have gestures. ‘The gesture of red is in a certain way active’, he explains, ‘the gesture of blue is passive’ and ‘will always retreat’ (AIT, 92, 197) whereas the gesture of yellow ‘is to radiate from the centre out’ (MC/S4/18/A, 15 March 1937). ‘Psychologically red will always turn to the blue and push it forward’, Caucasian flesh colour will tend to ‘disappear’ whereas lilac leads us ‘somewhere far away’ (MC/S4/18/A, 15 March 1937).7 Music, too, is full of gesture for Chekhov, as are ‘works of classical painting, architecture, sculpture and literature’ (PA, 187).8 Indeed, Chekhov declares that ‘there is nothing in the whole world that is not doing a certain gesture for a real artist who is walking through this world creatively’ (MC/S1/10/2, 7 February 1938). Cultivating an ability to perceive the inner dynamism of such things helps our work on archetypal gesture more broadly. Another way to connect with our performance surroundings as discussed in Chapter 4 on form is to identify specific gestures in the scenography and embody them. It is possible, Chekhov states, to contemplate a staircase on stage just as we contemplate a tree, as ‘something which makes a gesture. A gesture up, or if necessary, down’ (AIT, 88).9 The staircase also has certain qualities, ‘hard’, ‘persistent’,

For more on Steiner and Goethe’s influence on Chekhov’s ideas regarding colour and eurythmy, see Pitches 2006, 160–1, 139. 8 Chekhov states: ‘It is well known that one writes by doing strong and temperamental gestures’ (MC/S1/10/2, 7 February 1938). 9 See again Lecoq: ‘Looking at the Eiffel Tower, each of us can sense a dynamic emotion and put this emotion into movement. It will be a dynamic combining rootedness with an upward surge’ (Lecoq 2002, 48). 7

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and ‘it makes a certain effort’ (AIT, 88). A steep staircase has a different dynamic or will than a sloping one, a narrow door different from a broad door, a long window different from one that is square (TOA, 40).10 To all these elements, Chekhov urges us to ‘give them your life, or rather take from them something which gives you a certain kind of life’ (MC/S1/10, 7 February 1938). We only need to connect with each thing once in this way; it will be sufficient to create a bond or ‘living feeling’ (TOA, 40) with our setting out of which we can develop our own actor’s gestures. Acting is a process of taking gestures from everything and everyone, as well as giving gestures in return. Chekhov considers everything on stage or on set as ‘a composition of certain gestures around the actor’ (AIT, 89), all of which make up ‘the psychology of the whole stage’ (AIT, 88). Understanding which scenographic elements cohere with the overall creative idea and meaning might in the end boil down to a simple conclusion; Chekhov suggests, for example, that ‘perhaps the gesture of the whole scene requires that a chair will be low, with a low back’ (AIT, 87). The complete solution, of course, may be more complex than this, but the point here is that for Chekhov, all the scenic elements ‘can be expressed as a living, evocative “gesture” with its attendant “qualities”’ (PA, 188). When we understand this ‘psychology’ (DR, 75), become sensitive to it and work with it consciously, he promises that ‘the audience will feel much more receptive’ (MC/S1/10, 7 February 1938). By becoming specialists of compositional gesture, we will cultivate ‘a real artistic instinct to be able to say the setting is right, or the setting is wrong’ (DR, 75). We can also consider an entire play as a gesture. We might say that the archetypal gesture of Macbeth, for example, is a reaching out to the limits of what is human, a kind of relentless, ruthless grasp, stirred by an unstoppable hubris that eliminates all obstacles in its path. We might think of the archetypal gesture of Othello as one that expresses a stifling sense of enclosure. I find it inspiring for the cast and creative

10 Robert Bowman who performed in the original 1992 production of An Inspector Calls at the National Theatre, London, directed by Stephen Daldry, told me how the design by Ian MacNeil was so successful that every time he descended the staircase to the lower level, it gave him such a strong sensation of entering into another world that the subsequent scene was easy to play.

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team to create their own individual archetypal gesture of the play on the first day of rehearsal; it is striking how often the gestures are similar to each other and as a result, can serve as the first stage in the growth of a collective image of the play.

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Return to the archetypal gesture of giving, but this time execute it in a quick tempo with a quality of flying. First, contact the quality internally and then apply it to the physical gesture. Hold the gesture at least ten seconds on completion: resist the temptation to rush out of the gesture at the end simply because the overall tempo is quick. Once you have explored the archetypal gesture physically several times, visualize doing it in your imagination only. Follow impulses and explore speaking a sentence, or a short text as above; notice how impulses alter with a new quality and tempo. Repeat it with other speeds and qualities: slow/radiating; fast/ staccato; moulding; andante/rough; legato. Ensure that you begin the gesture internally, and at the end, continue to move imaginatively even though your body has reached the end of its movement. Progress from the physical to the internal gesture, then follow impulses and speak, as above. Gradually work through other archetypal gestures in the same fashion: giving/taking, wanting/rejecting, standing your ground/ yielding, pushing/pulling, lifting/smashing, wringing/tearing, embracing/throwing, opening/closing, penetrating, punching. Begin by speaking the verb to find the natural everyday gesture, determining clearly which direction the gesture moves in. Then begin to formalize your movement into a large, full-bodied, archetypal gesture that has a clear beginning and end. Working with punching, for example, you may begin with a naturalistic, sharp punching movement with your right hand, noticing that it primarily moves forward. From this information, begin to craft the gesture to involve your whole body: lean backwards, bend the knees, clench both fists and bend the elbows back either side of the body and lunge the body forward, punching both

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arms in front, while still remaining grounded on your feet. Hold the pose and listen to its resonance. With each gesture, choose instinctively a tempo and quality, and later explore contrasting options. ll

Choose an object in the room: a chair, a window, a bottle, a bag. Receive the qualities and form of the object, and begin to create an archetypal gesture for it. Remember that it is not a description or imitation of the thing itself, but a sense of its inner movement (its direction), its inner life, so to speak, and what we might sense of its will force. Repeat with observations in nature and in architecture. Speak a short text under the influence of this gesture.

13 THE THREE SISTERS: RISING, FALLING AND BALANCING1 ‘You don’t really have to move your whole body every time you speak, but you must feel the sensation of movement in your whole body’ (LT, 32).

The three sisters, also known as the three sensations, also work with the idea of direction: up, down and in between. Whereas the upward and downward directions in space that we explored in Chapter 11 can be experienced as more stable states in a particular spatial location (up there or down there), rising and falling are sensations of continuous movement. I think of the upward direction as ‘inhabiting’ the area above the head for a sustained period, whereas the sensation of rising is a continuous attempt to ascend. Rising is always in relation to the possibility of being pulled down to earth and involves a resistance, however small, to its opposite. I like to consider the three sisters in constant relation to each other; when I am rising, falling and balancing are potentially never far away. Chekhov taught the three sisters exercise at the end of his life to Jack Colvin who recounts that Chekhov suggested performing a whole play spontaneously moving between them (MC, 131); we can translate the character’s internal struggle into this psychophysical movement because, as Croatian-Canadian actress, director and teacher Cynthia

You can read about the three sisters in RS, 315–17; HA, 55–9; MC, 131; MCT, 3:9.

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Ashperger puts it, ‘throughout the course of the play, characters will continuously seek balance from one or the other direction’ (RS, 315). The three sensations are archetypal dynamics that can be explored by physically falling or collapsing, rising up on a height or standing up, and trying to maintain balance. When we use them in performance, they become internal events.

Rising Begin sitting on a chair, bringing your awareness to your feet on the ground and buttocks on the seat. Then stand upright, focusing on the journey of the movement upwards. Pause once you are standing and listen to the sensation. Imagine that you continue to move upwards even though your body has stopped moving. Then sit down and stand up again, accumulating the intensity of the feeling. Pause on completion each time to receive the sensation. Now grip your arms very tightly by your sides for about a minute. Then suddenly release them, allowing your arms to float freely up in the air, ‘like a cork’, in Petit’s words, ‘that’s been put down … incredibly deep at the bottom of the ocean … and keep[s] floating up’ (MCT, 3:9). Hold the arms in the air, as if they are continuing to rise. Repeat this movement several times. Then do the action in your imagination only and speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Begin to execute everyday activities under the influence of this sensation. If we consider what it is to rise, we know that it implies a movement upwards. In a job, if we are lucky, we get a ‘raise’. We also ‘raise’ a toast to honour a person and in a revolution we ‘rise up’; Petit points out how we refer to a positive event as ‘raising’ our spirits, or our heart ‘soars’ (MCT, 3:9). When we imagine that we are rising, being raised up or soaring upwards, we begin to feel lighter, more positive, an uplifted sensation. There is also a sense of it as a beginning or an inhalation. I think of rising as working wholly on a vertical axis in opposition to the ground, whereas the quality of flowing, supporting or floating, which might be considered as similar, operates, in my view, on a more horizontal plane, or more three dimensionally. In the latter, I am supported

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by the air underneath and around my limbs, and I can be carried left or right, up or down, whereas with rising, I am moving consistently in one direction: upward.

Falling From standing, take up an expanded star-shape position with the whole body. Allow parts of the body to fall in succession: elbow, arm, head, waist, knee. With each fall, really let go, trying to lose control. Notice the sensation. Then stand and slowly fall backwards onto your heels until you lose your balance. Protect yourself in the fall so that you are safe, or work with a partner to spot you if necessary, but also try to make the fall as risky as possible so you feel a surge of adrenalin. Try falling forward in the same way. Then try falling back into a chair. Tune into the sensation each time. After each exercise, try to recreate the feeling without actually physically moving (MCT, 3:9). Speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from the sensation; progress to everyday activities. The opposite of rising is, of course, falling, and we know that this implies downward movement, a loss of verticality, a sense of collapse. We speak about ‘falling’ asleep, or into a stupor, or coma, ‘falling in love’, ‘falling into despair’, a crisis or panic; we talk about how our heart ‘sinks’, or that we have ‘a sinking feeling’ or a ‘fall from grace’. Note that in this exercise we refer to falling rather than a fall. We are interested, above all, in the sensation of falling without having actually fallen. As Petit puts it, when we’ve fallen, ‘it’s over, nothing else can happen’ (MCT, 3:9); it isn’t actually the fall itself that is of importance, but ‘the activity of falling’ (HA, 57, Petit’s emphasis). When we imagine we are falling, it can evoke a sense of sorrow, vulnerability, weakness, or even relief, fear or surrender, a yielding of our control. There is a movement towards the conclusion of something, or at least the sense of an imminent end as well as an exhalation. Whereas in the downward direction in space, I am already in touch with the earth beneath, with the sensation of falling, I am in the process of moving down towards the earth.

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Balancing From a standing position, lean your weight forward onto your toes until you are off balance, so that you almost fall but catch yourself just before you fall, ‘like a huge grasp’, pulling yourself back from the brink (MCT, 3:9). Explore this moment of saving yourself repeatedly until you experience an inner ‘lurching’ sensation. Then standing still, do this physical action internally, imaginatively. From the sensation, speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’; progress to taking a walk in the room inspired by this internal movement. In between the polarities of rising and falling, there is balancing or trying to find equilibrium; we could fall at any time but we resist and catch ourselves. There may be some sense of relief that we have not fallen, but we have to continue to make an effort; we never rest on our laurels. We are never balanced, rather, we are forever balancing. The pursuit of equilibrium is active and demands careful attention and good reflexes. Petit describes how balancing ‘holds the transitory sensations of understanding and revelation. … It is so easy to fall, so easy to float off, but it requires much work to stay balanced and awake and this has its accompanying sensations of calm, collected reserve, power, sobriety’ (HA, 56). Active balancing can also engender a sense of precariousness, risk, being on the edge of something, or as if we are walking a tightrope, carefully keeping danger at bay. Balancing lives on the horizontal plane, trying to find stability along a vertical line determined by up and down, height and depth. I prefer to use this tool altogether, rather than as separate sensations. Most characters undergo many different experiences in a play, both achievements and setbacks, so I suggest navigating freely between the three sensations as a point of focus during rehearsal of a specific speech, scene or during a run of the whole play to find out where the highs and lows occur. We might also think of the inner line of a character throughout an entire play as a kind of psychological fall or ascent: Macbeth may think of himself as rising throughout most of the play, in position, in power, in invincibility, but as he ascends publicly, he is falling privately. Ophelia is afflicted with a terrible balancing act between her love for Hamlet and her duty to her father. Following Hamlet’s rejection and the death of

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Polonius, she abandons herself to the fall because living is too painful, emptied as it is of all that she loves. Iago starts the play with a fall from favour, but slowly rises up in devious defiance to bring Othello down. In the last entry of ‘Diary of a Madman’, Proprishchin finds himself in the asylum, confused, beaten and balancing his fear with a rising sense of injustice. He begins to conceive a get-away plan in a kind of reverie, imagining himself flying off into the clouds. He hallucinates and imagines seeing Russian peasant huts, his home and a vision of his mother. Suddenly hope rises within him and Robert imagined he was soaring over the rooftops towards her. He cries out to her repeatedly to save him, almost shouting. But there is a sense that she doesn’t hear him or rejects him and he falls again, condemned to his persecution. The very end of the story is a terminal fall from these precarious heights, a thump to earth, and madness.

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Sitting on a chair, contact each sensation separately in your imagination only and speak a short text from the sensation. Progress to moving between all three sensations, initially deciding in advance where to shift between them and finally allowing the decisions to be spontaneous. Imagine that your heart is rising slowly upward, like a balloon, or the ears, or the genitals, or the brain. Notice each different sensation and experiment with following impulses and speaking a short text from the sensation. Imagine that your heart is falling out of its physical place and down in front of you, just a small distance. The heart is continually falling, it never quite lands. Then imagine that the heart falls out the back and down. Notice the difference between the sensations. Speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and follow your impulses (MCT, 3:9). Imagine that your brain is falling straight down. Petit maintains that ‘the audience will perceive it as a thought process with a kind of quality, a moment where the character is reflecting’ (MCT, 3:9). Then try imagining that your genitals are falling. Again, speak ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and follow your impulses (MCT, 3:9).

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Explore balancing a stick (a broomstick cut to one metre in length, without the brush head) in the palm of the hand, on top of the hand, on each finger, the wrist, the elbow, on top of the foot, the chin. Work to really maintain the balance and bring your attention to all the tiny adjustments that need to be made in order to keep the stick upright. Notice this sensation of sustained precariousness. Put the stick aside and undertake everyday activities inspired by this feeling. Divide the room into sensation ‘areas’ and gradually move between them (RS, 316). Progress to walking through all areas with the inner sensation only, and then work with a short speech, spontaneously shifting between the three sensations and allowing them to inspire your delivery.

14 IMAGE AND IMAGINATION1 ‘Imagination is the ability to see something invisible. … It is very important to be a little bit astonished about this simple thing’ (AIT, 13).

Observe a chair in the room: see its colour, form and material. Then close your eyes and picture the chair in your mind’s eye as clearly as you can. Notice in your imagination from which perspective you see it (above, below, side on). Open your eyes and look at it again, noticing any details you missed out. Then take the chair away and continue to picture the chair in the empty place, with your eyes open. Dissolve the image of that chair and close your eyes again. Now visualize a pink rose with its petals closed. Notice its size, texture, whether you can make out the stem and from which perspective you see it. Receive its qualities. If in your imagination, you are seeing the rose from the front, try to shift your angle so that you observe it from behind (if you are looking at it from above, shift to below). Then visualize the flower slowing opening its petals to full capacity. Try to make the metamorphosis gradual rather than jumping to the final image (LT, 37). Again, ‘walk’ around this newly elaborated image in your mind’s eye to receive it from different perspectives. Finally and slowly, step by step, visualize the petals withering and falling to the ground; allow the images to morph gradually. After

You can read about image and imagination in TA, 21–34; TOA, 1–14; LP, 40–1, 45–8, 53–4, 68, 151–2; PA, 68; MC, 37–41; RS, 234–8; HA, 18–20. 1

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some time, try to visualize the central withered bulb transforming into the beady eye of a bird and the stem into a long, wiry tail so that the whole image becomes one of a mythical creature flying through the air. Conjure this fantasy in as much detail as possible, seeing it from different perspectives. Once the image is complete, slowly rewind the process to return to the original image of the living pink rose with closed petals. Try to make the transformation of images ‘a smooth, continuous flow, as in a film’ (TA, 31). Finally, dissolve the rose and open your eyes. For Chekhov, there is no theatre without the imagination and performing is an imaginative act. He foregrounds its use in the actor’s practice and, as we will see in this chapter, makes explicit the process of how to work with it effectively. If you found the exercise above challenging, take heart; Chekhov himself admits that it is ‘very difficult! Terribly difficult!’ and that ‘you need a terrific power of concentration to be able to do it’ (AIT, 277). We all possess the faculty of imagination, and even if our own is a little lacklustre, Chekhov affirms that we can do something about it. We do not have to rely on innate talent or succumb to false notions that only some people are imaginative. Chekhov unpicks the process of visualization so that we can work on and improve it. The imagination functions like a muscle, if unused, it will atrophy and weaken, but if exercised regularly, it will become ‘fit’ and responsive. ‘It is only a question of cleaning one’s own inner life by the right means’, Chekhov insists, ‘with patience and great effort’ (AIT, 267),2 and Hurst du Prey promises likewise, that ‘the more you use it, the more you become a traveller in it’ (MC/S9/2, Teaching Notes). A strong, flexible imagination is, for Chekhov, essential to the actor’s process and all the characterization tools in Part Three of this book depend upon its athletic agility.3 Ultimately, the basic visualization exercises discussed here are preparation for the more elaborate work on imagining the body of the character, known as the imaginary body exercise which we will discuss

When Chekhov took a break from acting as a result of suffering from depression (roughly 1918, but he was probably developing it since 1916), he maintained a practice of taking imaginative ‘walks’ through the streets of Moscow. He describes how ‘I only had to direct my attention to a particular place and I would “hear” noises and create a picture of what was happening there’ (LE, 27). 3 Stanislavsky was surely an inspiration here: ‘Without imagination you cannot be an actor’, he states, ‘develop it or give up the stage’ (Stanislavski 2010, 63–4). 2

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in Chapter 16. They work best as short, daily practices. Many of the psychophysical tools we have explored thus far, such as qualities of movement and directions in space, will help because they are essentially imaginative propositions. We begin with them because they involve moving the body in relation to space and as such offer a tangible starting point. However, unless we have the capacity to imagine what it is like for the air to be liquid (in the case of the quality of supporting, for example), we will get nowhere. The world of the creative imagination is at the heart of Chekhov’s technique and to engage with it requires a genuine, trusting commitment to believe in and develop its power. Hurst du Prey explains: ‘You enter that world, you live in that world, and it becomes a reality for you’ (TP78, 8). For many of us, this involves un-learning much of what we were previously taught, privileging visualization and imaginative flight over a more rational process.

Four stages in training the imagination Chekhov proposes four stages in training the imagination and they follow the structure outlined above. The first stage is to imagine something that we know exists (an object in the room, for example). This is re-creation from memory: it exercises our powers of observation and our ability to conjure up an image in our mind’s eye. The second stage is the ability to imagine something that we are not familiar with, but know exists (an iceberg, for example). Normally, visualizing something such as an iceberg or a small hut in the wilderness, for example, does not require much more information than this in order for a picture to materialize and with patience and coaxing, ‘more details begin to sparkle’ (MC/S1/12, 17 February 1942). The third stage is where we allow what we see in our mind’s eye to affect us, ‘to let it go through you’ (MC/S1/10, 5 February 1940). Chekhov explains that if you spend time imagining and concentrating upon a strange, interesting landscape for example, it will slowly affect you: ‘Your creation influences you, its creator, and … the creator changes under the influence of his own creation’ (AIT, 14). Here, we come back to the basic principle of receiving as we absorb our image’s

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characteristics until they affect our inner life; as artists we are not to remain emotionally neutral in the encounter. The fourth, and most essential, stage is to learn to control and alter the image we create at will: we imagine it in a different size, colour, circumstance, or we transform it into something fantastical such as a dragon or something extinct. Powers recounts that Chekhov often taught her to start with a very simple image such as ‘a man in black’ or ‘woman in green’ which she had to visualize in full detail, then alter at will, such as imagining the figure with a different pair of shoes (MH, 440). This fourth and final stage prepares us for characterization where, over time, we develop a detailed, multidimensional image of the character that is our own invention. Ultimately, in Chekhov’s view, we must cultivate ‘a kind of imagination that will give us new things’ (AIT, 59) which is the ability to create something that we have never seen, that we do not know, from nothing. It is, he insists, ‘the free union and combination of diverse elements into a whole which does not correspond to reality’ (DR, 54): ‘pure creation’ (LP, 68). That is what makes it artistic. Some of this may stem from Chekhov’s experience of his father’s madcap, scientific experiments in their home,4 and although the young Chekhov could perceive the eccentricity (and futility) of his father’s ideas, he describes his inventiveness as having made a distinct impression upon him, in particular the fact that ‘he was organically incapable of putting up with anything ordinary, habitual or conventional’ (LE, 2). He evoked his ideas ‘so vividly’, through storytelling, demonstration and dramatic gesture that Chekhov could picture them (LE, 9).5 However, Chekhov warns that our images will not come to us ‘fully developed and accomplished’ (TA, 23); rather, they are more likely to emerge half-formed and require our ‘active collaboration’ in completing them (TA, 23). We can’t just sit back and let it happen. This is why we train ourselves to metamorphose our early, basic images so that, later, if the first visualization of our character is not so potent, or if we need to adjust it to fit more coherently into the production overall, we know

As well as demonstrations of physics and chemistry ‘tricks’, some of these included breeding rare, expensive hens, making home-made linoleum and constructing their own wall clock out of wood and bottles of water (instead of weights) (LE, 2). 5 Perhaps it is also due to his father that Chekhov concludes how ‘faith and naïveté’, like a child’s, play a role in keeping the imagination ‘free and abundant’ (DR, 54). 4

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how to adapt and alter it repeatedly ‘until new and unknown visions strike’ (TOA, 6). With practice, Chekhov maintains that the image we have conjured will respond to our provocation, following an inner logic of its own, while at the same time remaining ‘free and flexible’ (TOA, 6). It is a process that cannot be rushed and we must learn to ‘wait actively … until the image has matured to its highest expressiveness’ and is ‘ripe’ (TOA, 4). Along the way, we cultivate a kind of instinct about when we need to probe the images further or when we need to desist from interfering with them; it is the art of ‘exact fantasy’, in Goethe’s words (TOA, 6). Far from free and unfettered, Chekhov’s imagination is disciplined and rigorously trained like any other aspect of the actor’s technique.

Thinking in images Chekhov asks us to take the imagination seriously as a faculty and to privilege it over an excessively logical, cerebral and conceptual approach. There is often an undercurrent present in rehearsal rooms which implies that clever ideas are the most important thing, and of course brilliant thoughts are great to have, but they do not necessarily help actors to inhabit the play or unlock difficult moments. Chekhov warns that ‘the more you probe with your analytical mind, the more silent become your feelings, the weaker your will and the poorer your chances for inspiration’ (TA, 25). While I believe that rigorous, actor-centred text analysis (as opposed to literary analysis) is essential and was probably second nature to Chekhov, working as he did for so long under Stanislavsky, detailed work on text must be accompanied and even preceded by the intuitive flights of fancy ‘which come out of nowhere’ (DR, 23). In my experience, the imagination can conjure more startlingly inventive options than anything that I might have tried to think up in a more reasoned way. This is an invitation to consider imaginative work as the primary focus, consigning the intellect to ‘the position of a servant who carries a candle, and does nothing but throw light’ (AIT, 259). Chekhov acknowledges that ‘of course the actor must know everything he possibly can. But the difference is how he knows it’ (AIT, 259). We must be willing to acknowledge that not all aspects

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of our creation are conscious or reasoned and that parts of the acting process require, instead, a leap in the dark. He insists that the actor’s knowledge must always be ‘an imaginative picture’, that ‘the intellect must be turned into a vision’ (AIT, 259) and that ‘by thinking, we mean imagination, thinking in images, and not intellectually’ (AIT, 189).6 For Chekhov, ‘the living images are our art’ (AIT, 18) and the more we have the courage to take them seriously, the more we will reap rewards. Imagining is not an activity located solely in the head. As we have seen with receiving and concentration, it is an act that involves our whole being; only then ‘the thief which is sitting in the brain will become weaker and weaker’ (AIT, 177).7 In this sense, the imagination is an important intermediary between the ‘cold intellect’ which does not see ‘anything but facts’ and ‘emotions without anything to direct them’ (AIT, 259).

Imagination in the actor’s process On a first reading of the play on your own, make an active practice of observing the images that materialize randomly in your mind’s eye as you read, in the same way that when reading a novel, pictures organically form of the characters and setting. An arbitrary image may present itself to you; if it persists on later readings, it is worth probing to determine its meaning. It may offer a surprising quality about your character that you had not considered before. When Chekhov was rehearsing the role of Ivan the Terrible which he then performed at the National Theatre of Riga (1932), ‘the image of a big bird flying with one wing broken’ (LP, 113) emerged during his work and it gave him the part, and at Dartington Hall, in a devised work called The Golden Steed, he offered his students the image of ‘a running

Russian director and teacher Oleg Koudriachov describes Chekhov’s approach as ‘a permanent training of interior vision’ (MH, 476). 7 Chekhov states that actors who annex the rest of their being in favour of their brain look ‘like a cripple’: ‘Actors have no right to be powerful in the brain and weak everywhere else. We cannot act with our head at all, only with our being, and the head must be the appendix of our whole being’ (AIT, 177). 6

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locomotive’ to convey the psychology of two evil brothers (Cornford 2012, 47). Merlin’s actress playing Arkadina in The Seagull that we discussed earlier came up with the vision of a fragile egg for Treplev and related to him through the power of this image (PT, 291). Kane proposed the image of a sponge for an actor playing Polonius in Hamlet, working on the idea that as the chancellor, he soaks up the morality of whichever master he serves.8 One of Robert’s early images of Proprishchin in ‘Diary of a Madman’, was that of a buzzing bee banging against glass. Its evocation of imprisonment and the relentless attempts to find a way through an implacable barrier it cannot fully comprehend fuelled a visceral understanding of the character’s marginalized, impoverished predicament. We did not apply the image in any direct way; simply, we spent some time every week actively visualizing it, ensuring that its qualities remained potent in our imagination and served as a guiding reference point. Chekhov also urges us to spend time individually receiving and teasing out every significant image in the text we are working on until each one is concrete, present and living. He insists, as did Stanislavsky before him, that the pictures must be so vivid to the extent that when we speak on stage, ‘the strength of the images behind them and all the feelings and will-impulses aroused by them will be “heard” in and through these words’ (TOA, 152). In addition, the possession of such images will help us penetrate our character’s state of mind rather than our own. In three different roles, Chekhov focused on visualizing particular images of death rather than portraying the character’s process of dying itself. When playing Erik XIV, he imagined that just before his death, Erik glimpsed the afterlife which ‘was light-filled in comparison with his own gloomy, hopeless existence’ (LE, 10). Chekhov’s Hamlet crossed over into death ‘calmly, in clear consciousness, as if he were carefully laying his body to rest’ (LE, 10), while he played Ivan the Terrible on his deathbed as someone who was seeing ‘jesters and buffoons, grimacing, whistling and shrieking wildly, who were either seeing him off from this life or welcoming him on the threshold of the next’ (LE, 10). In each case, death becomes a very active, embodied experience, a vision in itself. All images in the text

Interview with Sarah Kane.

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must become visceral for us in a similar way. It is too late to conjure them for the first time in the moment of live performance; they must already be known to us as old friends, their associations reverberating within.9 We can also use visualization to conjure images of the character’s past; for example, key moments that are not necessarily scripted but perhaps are mentioned or inferred in the text.10 If a rehearsal process allows little time for improvisation around the broader life of the character, this is a helpful way to access such material on your own without scene partners. We can always incorporate something of what we envisage, however small or subtle. Chekhov reminds us that the whole point is to ‘acquire some knowledge’ (AA, 1:13) rather than it be exactly right or sophisticated; ‘the only important thing is that we avoid the mistake of never imagining the play’ (LP, 53).

Imagination in the rehearsal process In his rehearsals of Hamlet, Chekhov suggested that the company see an image of the whole production, as well as visualize how each scene might look or be staged (PT, 259). Their image for the ghost of old Hamlet was that of a ‘Spirit’ who ‘will not be visible like matter’, but rather ‘a patch of light, a beam’, or ‘a gust of wind’, whereas Hamlet was envisaged as ‘just a single face which keeps appearing first here, then there’ (PT, 261). Their collective imagining also took the form of sound, with several possibilities emerging for the ghost: a ‘whistling’, ‘the sound (alone) of a string’, ‘a really bright sound, aiming upwards, which cuts off abruptly’ as well as words that are a ‘choir’, ‘real sounds which resound here, there – everywhere’. Chekhov refers to this imaginative process as ‘body-free’ rehearsals that ‘fostered inventiveness, boldness in performance and the certainty of striking the right note’ (LE, 61). In his British voice coach Patsy Rodenburg teaches a similar process for Shakespeare that she calls ‘anchoring the text’. For her, ‘Shakespeare’s language is sensual’ and once we have allowed its image to penetrate deeply into the breath and our psyche, she asserts that we ‘will have blown the dust off a world’ (Rodenburg 2005, 240). 10 See also Stanislavsky’s practice of ‘dreaming about the role’ and the actor’s mental ‘filmstrip’ where the actor imagines a series of moving snapshots of the character’s key moments (Tcherkasski 2013, 5; Carnicke 2009, 166). 9

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notes on the character of Don Quixote in Miguel de Cervantes’s 1605 novel, Chekhov describes seeing Quixote ‘in the centre, low down, and some figures bent forward, with their backs to me. It seemed to indicate the nature of the staging of the show’ (MH, 86).11 Hurst du Prey reminds us that there is no limit to what we might visualize (set, staging, action, costume, the body of the character) and that ‘the actor must make use of every precious moment to live in the imagination’ (TP78, 9), both well in advance of rehearsals and during the process. When directing a play, I rarely invite actors to imagine entire scenes, but rather focus collective visualization on a specific aspect of the world of the story, in particular something challenging to stage, such as the moment that Othello smothers or strangles Desdemona (V:ii), or when the Soldier in Blasted sucks Ian’s eyes out. I invite the actors and designer to close their eyes and conjure a picture of that complete moment to appear in their imaginations. I like to ask the actors to visualize both characters and the broader picture because it is interesting to discover where their images converge or contrast. I then ask a series of simple questions, such as, where are the characters and what does the place look like? What positions are they in, one in relation to the other? How does the Soldier lean over to Ian and what is Ian’s expression? Does he try to escape? Can you hear any sounds? We simply try to picture the event. Afterwards, we share what we saw and see if we can begin to concur on key elements that appeal to all of us and that we might try on our feet. I often start by trying to stage one aspect as a still image to get a feel for it, and then encourage the actors to build it into a moving improvisation. This approach often yields greater practical results than starting with an improvisation, or spending time in discussion about it. Finally, Chekhov is adamant that the imagination is a tool for everyone in the rehearsal room, not just the private, interior territory of the actor, and that rehearsal rooms need to be environments where it is valued as rigorous creative work. He also invites directors to communicate with words that inspire images in the actor’s imagination rather than ideas that create nothing but further complexities of thought (MH, 195). Chekhov’s ideal is that it should be difficult to determine ‘who should be

Chekhov never performed this character or produced the show, but left a journal of notes of his work on it in the period 1927–8. His emigration from Russia in 1928 broke off this study (MH, 77–100, 169–83). 11

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given the credit for the created image’ (DR, 27), such is the collective investment and responsibility for it. Indeed, he invites us to think of the performance at large as ‘a living being with an independent life’ (LT, 70) and how the entire creative team must consider themselves ‘servants of this higher being’ (LT, 70).

Autonomy of the imagination Chekhov’s observation of other artists at work helped him distinguish what was to become for him a fundamental characteristic of the imagination, that it has its own independent life. Most artists, I think, will recognize the phenomenon of images appearing from nowhere when working on a project. Chekhov recounts how his contemporary, the novelist Bely, would ‘patiently observe the characters he had brought to life. They would surround him day after day, evolving and trying to establish relationships among themselves’ (LE, 58). In the Renaissance painters he admired, Chekhov finds a similar occurrence. Raphael ‘saw an image moving within his room that later became the Sistine Madonna on his canvas’ while Michelangelo ‘complained despairingly that images pursued him and forced him to sculpt in all sort of materials’ (TOA, 2). What Chekhov noted in these artists is how their images ‘came to them’ with ‘an independent existence of their own’ (TOA, 2); it is the artist’s job to collaborate with them and see what they can become.12 Chekhov takes this idea of the imagination’s autonomy and transforms it into a conscious practice for the actor: we can learn how to create conducive conditions for the emergence of images and nurture them once they are there. The principles in Part One prepare these conditions, while the exercises listed in this chapter train the elasticity of the imagination muscle itself. We will discuss the specifics of how to develop images related to character in Chapter 16; what is important to understand here is that, for Chekhov, our imagination will work at its most inventive when we accept the idea of its independence (TOA, 5).

Similarly, when teaching screenwriting, Cameron explains, ‘I remind my students that their movie already exists in its entirety. Their job is to listen for it, watch it with their mind’s eye and write it down’ (Cameron 1993, 118). 12

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Autonomy of the actor Once we have engaged the imagination actively, half our work is done for us already. To his teachers in training, Chekhov suggested, ‘Imagine you are full of fire and vitality, and it will become a reality’ (LT, 35). British scholar Jerri Daboo makes the link between Chekhov’s use of the image and neurophysiology, offering compelling evidence that ‘imagining doing an exercise can have a physiological effect similar to that of actually physically doing the exercise, in that it stimulates the muscles, blood supply and nerves in that area’ (Daboo 2007, 263). The Olympic diver only wins when she has visualized the perfect winning dive in accurate detail. Chekhov subscribes to this empowering approach, declaring that ‘your developed imagination will give you yourself in your own hands’ and that ‘your whole being will be flaming, exploding, and flooding’ (AIT, 150). By cultivating the power of our imagination, we increase our capacity to become visionaries in our own right, rather than simply a pawn in the director’s vision.13 These exercises not only flex the muscles and prepare the way for our future original characterizations, they help promote us from interpreters to independent artists who envisage their own creative destiny. For Chekhov, there is no doubt we have the ability to strengthen our practice in this way; the only question is, will we do it?14

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Opening a page in a book at random, read a word from it and catch the first image it conjures up (TA, 28). Then utter the word to a partner who tries to grasp the first impression the word produces and convey it to someone else. Picture a fox in your mind’s eye and see it from different perspectives. Notice its qualities and then try to let them

Stanislavsky warns that if actors don’t develop their imagination, ‘you will fall victim to directors who will replace your imperfect imagination with their own’ (Stanislavski 2010, 63). 14 At Dartington Hall, Chekhov found the perfect context for this work because, as Yana Meerzon points out, the emphasis of the Dartington educational project across all subjects was the development of the imagination because it was considered to be ‘the most important gift of all’ (MH, 338; Young 1982, 83). 13

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become yours. Avoid the literal or presentational; rather than copy the animal, intone its quality within you. Open your eyes and begin to follow simple impulses from this image. Create a simple situation and let the image influence how you execute it: put on a jacket, walk through the door, sit down, put the jacket on the back of a chair. Pause and gradually allow it to dissolve. ll

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Listen to some music and at once visualize an image (AIT, 17). Imagine a landscape – the top of a glacier, a spring meadow full of buttercups, a busy city centre street in the rain, a huge sandy beach. Try to picture as much detail as possible. Look at a pair of eye glasses on the floor. Take them away and continue to see them there although they are gone. Now in their place imagine a new pair of glasses that you have never seen before (TS). Then make them twice as big or thick, shrink them back to normal size, then make them twice as thin, made of glass, then imagine they are yellow. Make each metamorphosis gradual. Then return to the original image as it began. Conjure images of the following: a young girl you have never seen slowly transforming into an old woman; a sapling slowly growing into a large, many-branched tree; a winter landscape changing into one of spring, summer or autumn; an opulent castle transforming into a dilapidated hut; a wolf into a handsome prince (TA, 31). Try not to jump from one image to the next, but engage in a slow metamorphosis. Imagine yourself walking backwards or pouring a cup of tea and then reversing the image. Chekhov invites us ‘to reverse the thinking. To think back’ (LT, 37). Zinder proposes using physical positions to inspire images. Stand with eyes closed and ask your partner to sculpt you into random, still positions one after the other. Imaginatively ‘inhabit’ each physical position. Receive the sensation of this posture and imagine who and where you are, what you are wearing, whether you are alone, what time it is, what you are doing. What can you see in this imaginary world? (AT).

15 IMPROVISATION1 ‘If there is no moment of inspiration, no signpost leading to the inspiration, then we are doomed to a crippled existence on stage’ (LP, 80).

Take an object and choose an action with it; for example, to throw a sweater to the ground. Do it and see what happens. Is there a situation that immediately springs to mind? If so, act upon your first impulse born out of this action, follow subsequent impulses and improvise. You may feel that you are a mother in her son’s bedroom, exasperated with the mess he has left, or that the situation is one where your flatmate’s dog has, once again, pulled your clothes out of the closet, played with them and damaged them. Run with your scenario until it reaches a natural end. Then return to your initial action and execute it now with a different quality: place the sweater gently on the ground. Notice if a different situation is suggested when you use another quality; it may be that you were about to put your sweater on to go out when you imagine you suddenly hear a burglar enter the house downstairs, or that you are unpacking your things after a long trip away, or that you are sorting out the clothes of someone who has died. Again, play your scenario until the end. Then repeat, but this time add a final action such as to pick up the sweater quickly and vigorously. Now you have a set beginning and end to your story. Add a line of text to each action: as you place the sweater gently on the ground, say ‘wait a minute’, and as you pick it up, say ‘this is great’. Execute the first action with your sentence and

You can read about improvisation and inspiration in TA, 35–46; LP, 55–6, 64, 77–86, 158; DP, 35–6. 1

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see what happens; do not try to anticipate what you are going to do in between. Improvise your way to the final action and sentence, allowing each successive moment to be a psychological result of the moment before it. Make your improvisation no longer than five minutes. Try a second improvisation with exactly the same actions and sentences, but this time change the qualities; allow a completely new scenario to emerge.2 Many of us may well consider improvisation an essential tool in rehearsal, but perhaps fewer of us believe acting on stage to be a ‘constant improvisation’ (TA, 40), unless, of course, it is a production where the dialogue and action are actually invented moment by moment. Whatever the play, whatever our role, and however ‘set’ the production, we must cultivate what Hurst du Prey calls ‘a juggler’s psychology … always fresh, never repeating’ (TP78, 12). For Chekhov, the actor’s creative individuality is largely expressed by her willingness and ability to improvise and that this is the real beauty of our art. If we do not seize the opportunity to improvise, Chekhov insists that we are merely ‘slave[s] to the creations of others’ and our profession is ‘a borrowed one’ (TA, 36). Chekhov warns that when actors repeat the same thing, ‘it spoils everything’ (AIT, 64) and kills the inspiration of everyone around, including that of the director: ‘We, the directors’, he explains, ‘must also have our joy, and that lies in seeing how the child grows after it is born’ (AIT, 216). It follows then that developing ingenuity in improvisation is one of Chekhov’s fundamental exercises. Working with objects and actions as discussed above puts the emphasis firmly on doing and action; we don’t just give lines, we give gestures in space. It develops our awareness that onstage the actor is someone (who? I/the character) doing something (what? throwing a sweater to the ground) in some way (how? slowly and cautiously). The scale of the improvisation can vary: a small, contained gesture can be as effective as a bolder choice, as long as we remain completely open to the influence it has on us and play in response to that.

This exercise was taught to me by Graham Dixon, Michael Chekhov UK Studio (London, 2008). 2

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Improvisation does not need to involve inventing new lines or deviating from important physical actions or ‘business’ that you and the director have decided upon.3 It means focusing on how you tackle your lines and business as well as creating ‘wonderful psychological transitions’ between them (TA, 36). It means following the psychological succession of inner events for your character as they unfold each night, as if for the first time, moment by moment, and allowing new impulses to be born. We have already begun this work with the principles of ease and receiving where we accept what is actually happening in the present moment and play in response to that rather than a preconceived plan. We cannot really improvise unless we can receive, and it is difficult to receive unless we are full of ease. Chekhov’s ideal actor on stage is one that lives in a constant process of giving and receiving: ‘A small hint from a partner – a glance, a pause, a new or unexpected intonation, a movement, a sigh, or even a barely perceptible change of tempo – can become a creative impulse, an invitation to the other to improvise’ (TA, 41).4 In fact, acting is improvising in that it is an interrelated continuum of acute listening and moment by moment responding. Improvisation technique builds upon our ability to receive and cultivates inventiveness: we learn to make a distinction between an accomplished, repeated performance and one that can be freshly crafted, full of nuanced variations and details. Our aim is to approach performance as a disciplined and structured improvisation.5 From Chekhov’s point of view, there are also a hundred different ways to do the same action, and ‘for a real artist the role can be acted differently forty times’ (AIT, 35). Indeed, he declares that it is an illusion

Although Chekhov admits that he sometimes did make changes to the dialogue during a performance: ‘There has not been one single part where I could resist the urge to improvise, especially in translated plays’ (DR, 24). 4 Chekhov echoes Vakhtangov in this belief, who in a lecture at his studio in 1917 declared that ‘ideal acting … happens when an actor reacts to everything spontaneously’ (MalaevBabel 2011, 116). 5 At Dartington, Chekhov recounted to his students that when his uncle Anton Chekhov wrote The Cherry Orchard and brought it to Stanislavsky’s rehearsal, one character wasn’t quite working. The actor playing the role improvised and recreated the part ‘so that it was entirely opposite and Chekhov … wrote words for him in his direction, and both author and actor were very happy’ (AIT, 38). 3

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to think that we need to fix things on stage.6 Chekhov describes how he always played repeated performances ‘more or less differently’, that 90 per cent of what he did (business and gestures) was created spontaneously and 10 per cent was conscious analysis (DR, 26). Indeed, one of the qualities which Vakhtangov praised most highly in Chekhov was his ‘rare, brilliant improvisational spontaneity’ (Simonov 1969, 127) and actors would return night after night to see his performances in Russia because there was so much consistent variety (TP78, 13). However, it would appear that Chekhov was also a master at finding dramatic vitality within the strict structure of a play and its staging, revealing an arresting ability to improvise without changing a movement of blocking or a word of text.7 This is Chekhov’s psychology of the improvising actor, what Hurst du Prey calls the ‘magic and mystery of the how’ (TP78, 13), where we have the skill to nuance everything we do in such fine detail. It is the perfect balance between crafting a plausible character in a credible world and leaving space for new inventions. Already the qualities of movement, directions in space and the three sisters expand the expressivity of our ‘how’; here we take it to another level. This improvising psychology requires letting go of the idea of delivering a secure, fixed performance in favour of laying ourselves open to surprise, vulnerability and change. Brook emphasizes how even the most creative of actors ‘longs to cling on to all he’s found, he too wants at all costs to avoid the trauma of appearing in front of an audience naked and unprepared, but still this is exactly what he must do’ (Brook 1968, 129). In the process of rehearsal, we aim to discover the character and build the scenes, but when we encounter the audience, Chekhov invites us to forget it all: ‘We must know and then be’ (LT, 28). We prepare rigorously for a role, but we must be in an open, improvisational

Even Meyerhold states that ‘the actor must not rivet his role tightly, like a bridge builder with his metal construction. He must leave some slots open for improvising’ (Schmidt 1981, 207). 7 Critic Konstantin Rudnitsky writes that Chekhov, as Khlestakov in The Inspector General, ‘stunned with his unbelievable improvised ease and unrestrained imagination’ (Rudnitsky 2000, 52). When Chekhov reprised the role in the United States, critic and playwright Charles Marowitz recounts how he ‘cavorted through the evening with an improvisational flair that made it appear as if he were making up Gogol’s play as he was going along’ (OC, 54). 6

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state while actually playing it. We work consciously in order to perform unconsciously. Our training gives us this capacity. If, for Chekhov, the ability to improvise consistently in a masterful way is one of the criteria for being an actor, he stresses that the inspired, spontaneous state is neither arbitrary nor left to chance. Neither is it, in Brook’s words, ‘a matter of splashing about in self-indulgent euphoria’ (Brook 1968, 126). It is prepared: without method it is impossible. Whereas the surrealists believed that real unbridled inspiration comes from suppressing conscious, willed impulses, Chekhov’s inspiration ‘must be very conscious’ (AIT, 63). In the second year of training at Dartington he introduced a systematic and rigorous training in it. Just as we create a discipline of the imagination, we also hone our capacity to be inspired; we prepare the ground for it so that it is ‘at our command’ (AIT, 1), as far as possible.8 The exercises here are offered in a similar vein: to cultivate the improvising habit so that when we come to perform within the set givens of a particular performance, it will be instinctive. The payoff is the sensation of having an ‘inexhaustible well’ from which to draw new impulses, and more importantly, ‘a sense of freedom’ on stage (TA, 36). If we are free, we might find inspiration. If we are inspired, then anything can happen.

Inspiration Chekhov recommends that if you are truly ‘prepared to act nothing then perhaps you will get something’ (AIT, 64).9 If, when we step on stage, we can let go of all our great ideas and plans, as well as our performance neuroses, and focus on receiving and playing into everything that is actually happening around us, then we increase our chances of inspiration striking ‘like a bolt that goes through you’ (TP78, 10). Inspiration is that moment in performance where everything comes together, ‘a moment of such greatness and strength that it cannot be mistaken for anything else’ (LP, 55). There is a sense of risk, unpredictability, and the joy

Stanislavsky writes that his own system ‘doesn’t manufacture inspiration, it just prepares the right soil for it’ (Stanislavski 2010, 320). 9 He continues: ‘If you don’t get inspiration, say to yourself that it does not matter, and then you will get it’ (AIT, 64). 8

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of surprise. In a way, all the tools in Chekhov’s repertoire are trying to prepare us for this moment. It describes a place where we are fearlessly in the present tense and where one thing flows inevitably into the next as if the role is happening by itself. It is a feeling of absolute alertness, a sensation Chekhov describes as being ‘everywhere – in the audience room, behind the stage, everywhere’ (DR, 57). This state of ‘one-ness’ (AA, 4:4) and complete connection with ourselves and our surroundings activates our ‘higher ego’, which you may recall for Chekhov is a kind of ‘volcanic power’ expressing ‘the voice of the true artist within us, the bearer of our talent, … your most inspired collaborator’ (DP, 70). When we are in touch with it, we release our personal preoccupations and inhibitions and ‘the play, the part, begins to exist independently of ourselves’ (LP, 55). A state of inspiration is also characterized for Chekhov by dual consciousness, as I discussed in the introduction: although we are fully immersed in our performance, we are not lost in it or ‘possessed’. We remain so objective, jokes Chekhov, ‘that you can absolutely see what your sister is doing in the first row of seats’ (LP, 101); we are completely involved while unattached. For Chekhov, this heightened awareness constitutes real responsibility on stage rather than any false notions that good acting means forgetting or being oblivious to everything else (LP, 101). Unleashing subconscious inspiration requires conscious work on ourselves. If Chekhov’s whole project is about empowering the actor ‘to express himself freely and completely’ (TA, 35), it follows then that actors, in turn, need to be rigorous about their creative independence. We cannot just sit back and hope for the best; not only do we need to develop acting technique, we also need to destroy any force that diminishes our creative development such as laziness, indifference, negativity, egotism and fear. The more we cultivate our material, that is, ourselves, the more we will cease to be ‘slaves to our own personalities’ (LP, 128), the more we will ‘rise above the average degree of activity and energy’ (AA, 2:7) and the more our artistic abilities will flourish.10 We are like a garden; it is not enough to weed only once. Weeds grow back and must be dealt with repeatedly. The principles in Part One prepare

American playwright and actress Anna Deveare Smith’s advice to young artists is similar: ‘Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things’ (Deveare Smith 2006, 37). 10

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the soil of our garden, while the tools here in Part Two plant and cultivate the seeds. Part Three, as we shall see, is the process of coaxing the flowers to grow.

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Enter the room carrying a bag and a pile of books. Repeat this task over and over but each iteration must be original without replicating previous versions. Repeat the activity at least twenty or thirty times, challenging your capacity for ingenuity and invention (TOA, 19). Create a beginning and end for your improvisation: you could, for instance, begin with hiding a ball under your jumper secretively, while saying ‘yes’ or ‘this is great’ as you do it. End with kicking a shoe quickly and roughly and saying ‘no’ or ‘what a disaster’. Follow your improvisation through. You can choose any pair of contrasting actions and sentences.11 Now take a third object, action and sentence to perform in the middle of the story, such as ‘I wring a towel pensively’ and say ‘I’m not sure what to do’. Do not try to find any logical justification or motivation for the object in advance; let it emerge. Improvise afresh even as you repeat with the same beginning and concluding actions and sentences. Add a fourth point between the beginning and the middle where you have to sit down exhaustedly (you can choose any action you like). Continue to add more actions with qualities and sentences while still keeping the same beginning and end (and accumulated actions). Try to keep each improvisation fresh and no longer than five minutes. You are learning to work within a structure and experience it as a springboard for creation, like points on a graph. Add further rules; for example, do the first part in slow tempo and the last part quickly (TA, 39).12

I learnt these exercises with Graham Dixon (Michael Chekhov Studio, London). For more of Chekhov’s improvisation examples, see TA, 37, 43–6; AIT, 61.

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Then reverse the beginning and end to develop a new improvisation. With a partner, repeat the exercises listed above; divide the actions and lines between you. Know who is giving and who is receiving at any one time. Then instead of using objects, use a body part as your object: for example, touching your knee painfully, patting your stomach pleasurably, or stretching your hand out slowly and sinisterly. Repeat the sequence of exercises as above. As a large group, establish contact, receiving from each other. Define in advance two or three actions such as everyone running to the wall, sitting down, or walking to the door. Silently listening to each other, as a group find the impulse to do one of these actions. No one declares in advance which action the group will do. When you have achieved your objective, make contact again with each other and find a new impulse from your defined list. Repeat at least three or four times (TA, 42). This exercise also works a feeling of ensemble.

TRANSITION: TRANSFORMATION ‘The desire and ability to transform oneself are the very heart of the actor’s nature’ (TOA, 99).

Transformation as a law of composition Chekhov names transformation as his ‘third law of composition’ (TA, 94), in addition to the first two laws we discussed in Part One (feeling of entirety): polarity and triplicity. We saw how Chekhov asserts that any well-constructed play, text or performance offers a contrast between its beginning and end. Transformation, for Chekhov, is the transition point between these two contrasting poles. He asks us to consider this middle part as a ‘continuous process’ and to inquire where and how it departs from the beginning and approaches the end. In other words, ‘in which sense has the beginning already transformed itself into the end?’ (TA, 99). Transformation, more broadly then, is about movement and change. For Chekhov, these turning points reveal the ‘true meaning and significance’ of each scene and character (TA, 100). Chekhov explains that in everyday life, ‘after encountering certain people or events we ourselves become different people’ (AA, 2:16). So, too, with the character: metamorphosis, however small, takes place in all characters throughout a play. While there is an overall consistent identity to the character, she is most revealed when at this crossroads of transition. Examining these moments for the character in each scene, act and

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the play at large will give us a broad understanding of the character’s evolving psychological journey. Transformation also happens in the transition between receiving and giving or expressing; we transform what we have experienced into a response. For Chekhov, ‘every moment something is disappearing and transforming’ (LP, 101) and it is an organic life process akin to the process of inhalation and exhalation. As actors and artists, not only are we to become conscious of this continuous movement from thought to thought, feeling to feeling, action to action, impulse to impulse, but we must also cultivate the capacity for this process to operate freely, without hindrance. The tools in Part One and Two train this skill. Part Three focuses on how to transform into a character.

Transformation as a practice For Chekhov, a character is an image born from the actor’s individual creative response to the words written in the script. It is an imaginative creation that is unique to every actor and, once conjured, it has its own independent logic and laws that we learn to follow and collaborate with. The actor’s job is essentially one of imitating and embodying their vision of the character, a process which begins with the imaginary body exercise in the following chapter. Before we come to that, I will say a few words about some of Chekhov’s larger concerns about characterization. Chekhov complained that often in their portrayals actors do not commit enough to the process of transforming into someone else; rather than try to find out how one part is different from another and different from ourselves, we are often too easily satisfied with playing versions of ourselves. Often, we focus on how this character is like us, or how we are like this character, rather than ask what this character is like. For Chekhov, this is the wrong way around and is a form of ‘inner laziness’ (TA, 4). Ophelia is not ‘just like me’: she is to be approached and understood in the same way we would try to understand any unfamiliar person. It is not enough, Chekhov insists, ‘to take our own ability to love a girl, and Othello’s words, and put them artificially together’. We have to find Othello’s love, he insists, ‘which is not at all like ours’ (MC/S1/12, 12 April 1942).

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In this sense, all parts are ‘character’ parts and there is no role that does not require characterization, however many parallels there are with our own life and temperament. We can note the similarities between the character and ourselves, but Chekhov insists that we do not need to dwell on them as they will resonate freely by themselves. Rather, we are to consider a character as someone we have to get to know, who thinks, feels, acts differently and indeed, Chekhov invites us to reflect consciously on these three specific differences and make a list. Just as we never meet two people who are exactly alike in life, no two roles are the same: ‘That which constitutes their difference makes them characters’, Chekhov insists (TA, 78). He maintains that ‘even a slight hint of character in you is already transformation’ (DP, 57);1 when we focus on differences, we move beyond working simply from our own patterns, prejudices and world view and embark upon an act of creation. I would also argue that even in some post-modern performances, where character is consciously eliminated, or where actors appear to play themselves, it is still worth thinking about oneself as a character. The actor, person or ‘I’ on stage, whatever the form, ‘must be transformed, not lost, but transformed’ (LT, 71). It is not simply ‘you’ in all your sincere authenticity; rather it is a ‘you’ that is conscious that you are performing. It is what Chekhov calls a stage psychology, different from the psychology of one’s private, everyday life (DR, 82);2 it involves a heightened awareness of what is unfolding in each moment, total concentration, a feeling of form, and the rigorous elimination of any thought, movement or feeling that is extraneous to the demands of the given performance situation. It does not help matters that the professional industry often thwarts our attempts to transform, particularly in television and film, where actors are often cast by looks, class, type or past roles. Often characterization ends in the audition room because producers and casting directors, through a failure of imagination and lack of trust in the

Powers adds that Chekhov insisted that ‘even if you think that the character is exactly like you, at least give her a crooked little finger!’ (TOA, 162). 2 Chekhov cites the American scenic designer Robert Edmund Jones (1887–1954) in this regard: ‘Everything that is actual must undergo a strange metamorphosis, a kind of seachange, before it can become truth in the theatre’ (TOA, 82). 1

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actor’s talent, desire a result that matches what they saw in the casting. Actors are often complicit in aiming to provide producers with what they imagine they want rather than challenging such a reductive approach to creativity. The principle of transformation invites us all, actors, directors and producers alike, to counteract this attitude. In fact, Chekhov believes there is no sense in being an actor if we cannot transform; it reveals ‘a lack of imagination’ (LP, 55), a ‘conceited’ and ‘poor’ psychology because we have created nothing of our own (AIT, 33). He equates it with a painter who only paints self-portraits; whereas the first attempt may have been creative and interesting, gradually the repetition cultivates nothing other than ‘clichés, bad theatrical habits, worn out mannerisms and even banalities’ (AA, 1:4), and, most likely, boredom. In this case, we can no longer call ourselves an actor; we become merely a sort of loudspeaker for the playwright, presenting what Chekhov calls ‘our parents’ work’ (AIT, 33). It is simply not enough to believe we can just stand up and do it. Only when we move beyond the limits of our personality do we elevate the craft of the actor into the realm of art. Chekhov reminds us that ‘it is always very interesting for the audience to see the actor transform his nature to such an extent that he shows that he has really done something’ (AIT, 33). For Chekhov, how we transform into the role is ‘the hallmark of talent and the divine spark within the actor’ (LE, 99) and it involves great graft and skill. That said, many actors will testify that on some occasions, from an early stage, they know how to play the character. Callow explained to me that when he did the first reading of Manuel Puig’s play, The Kiss of the Spider Woman, at the Bush Theatre, ‘I opened the page and there was the character, and there was the performance, there was everything. I didn’t actually rehearse that part at all because Molina was playing me, not me Molina.’3 This is a gift, and is, for the most part, the result of a well-exercised imagination and psychophysicality, but it is the exception rather than the norm. We must develop our technique so that such moments can happen; we can prepare for them, but we shouldn’t expect them.

Interview with Simon Callow. The performance was in 1985, and also featured Mark Rylance. 3

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Chekhov’s transformations As an actor, Chekhov was renowned for his characterizations. His professional performances in Riga, Latvia (1932–4) prompted critics to exclaim that ‘the art of Chekhov to transform from head to toe is astonishing’, that he played with his face, arms, legs, even fingers ‘to the point of becoming unrecognisable’ (MH, 303, 323). Dorothy Elmhirst at Dartington claimed that ‘he was capable of becoming the character he was playing so fully that it was almost disturbing’ (MH, 343). Vakhtangov cited the ‘sharpness of scenic design in the portrayal of his roles’ (Simonov 1969, 42) as an example to his own student actors and Stanislavsky described the physical detail of Chekhov’s Khlestakov in The Inspector General as exemplary.4 Robert Lewis describes the same portrayal by Chekhov in New York (1935) as ‘the envy of any dancer. Although he was a short man in this part, he had a line to his body which made him seem very tall’ (Lewis 1958, 55).5 Even when he was teaching in Hollywood, Colvin marvelled at how he saw Chekhov become ‘fat, heavy, tall, thin and, God knows, young and very old’ (RH). Chekhov’s transformations were not merely physically extraordinary. Lewis noted that his success lay in the fact that ‘his acting was absolutely complete, inside and out’ (Lewis 1958, 55) and the actress Seraphima Birman, one of Chekhov’s colleagues at the First Studio, marvelled at how he was able ‘to transform the quality of his acting from comic into tragic by simply transforming the rhythm and without changing any other expressive means’ (PA, 209). Chekhov exemplified the process that we discussed in Chapter 4 on form of both living the role and presenting it,

See MH, 148. Other reviews of the period include: ‘Impossible to believe that all these characters are created by a single and the same individual’ (V. Puk    ‚   e); ‘[he] acts with his whole body … original in all his creations, a true master (J. Appenszlak) (MH, 303, 323). Beatrice Straight wrote that when she went backstage to meet Chekhov following his performance of Khlestakov in New York (1935), ‘I found it impossible to believe that the small, quiet, modest man in his dressing room was the incredible creature I had seen on stage’ (MC/S1/12; 3/6/2, ‘Memories of Michael Chekhov’ by Beatrice Straight). 4 5

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juxtaposing depth of feeling with outward expressiveness.6 The tools in Part Three empower us to develop this virtuosity. Furthermore, in making a commitment to transformation, we begin to work towards Chekhov’s larger ideal that ‘every art serves the purpose of discovering and revealing new horizons of life and new facets in human beings’ (TA, 77). The art of acting through the principle of transformation, Chekhov insists, means that ‘you have to have your own life plus another life, plus ten lives as strong as your own’ (LP, 162). Pugh describes it as finding ‘a whole new “octave” that wasn’t there for you before’ (RS, 136). Through surrendering our ego to the empathetic act of embodying the life of someone else, our art might begin to ‘enrich the surrounding life’ (LP, 26) and itself make some contribution towards transforming the world through new ethical, political and human insights.

For a selection of photos of Chekhov’s characterizations, see PA, 93, 190–1 (Khlestakov); PA, 177 (Ivan the Terrible); PA, 146 (Skid); PA, 106, 109; MH, 114, 293, 302, 309, DP, 110 (Hamlet); PA, 94, MH, 91 (Erik XIV); PA, 91 (Malvolio); PA, 50 (Caleb). 6

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16 IMAGINARY BODY1 ‘Imagination is like a pleasant disease which is contagious – if I really see my character in my imagination, I become ‘ill’ with the disease’ (TP39, 29).

Take a walk in the room and sense your own body: its size, shape, weight. Then stand still and imagine that you have a long, thin neck. Gradually allow a sensation to emerge. Resist any temptation to ‘display’ your neck or make special reference to it. Notice if an image or a feeling of the rest of the body fills itself in: how tall is the rest of the body? Is it fat or thin, strong or weak? Allow yourself to experience living inside this imaginary body and notice if there are any feelings, thoughts or desires as you do this. Try not to demonstrate anything; simply inhabit it. Then ask yourself, who is this person, what is their name, age, profession, hobby, favourite colour and what might their goal in life be? Let answers just drop in. Begin to execute simple activities and notice the tempo and quality of your movements. Then let go of the image and return to your own body. Now choose a character you are working on or one from a play you know but have never performed. It matters little how well you know the play. Close your eyes and invite an image of the character to appear in your imagination. First of all, try to perceive the whole character in one go, an overview, the equivalent of a cinematic wide shot. How tall or short is the character, flabby or slender, is there a particular stance or posture, and does he or she give an overall impression of happiness, confidence,

For more on imaginary body, see TA, 21–34; TOA, 1–14, 95–106; AA, 1:8, 12, 13; PA, 108–10; MCT, 3:10; LP, 45; HA, 163–6; MC, 139–40; RS, 201–3, 208–14. 1

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strength, or the opposite? Accept what appears, even if it is surprising or odd. Do not worry about elements that are imperceptible; simply notice what you cannot see. After approximately ten minutes, gradually zoom in on details: for example, the teeth, the finger nails, the colour of the eyes, how bony the ankles are, the toes and hair. Notice if the features are well-groomed or dirty, hairy or smooth, wrinkled or youthful. When you have surveyed as much as you can, notice from which angle you are visualizing the character and change perspective: if you were seeing her or him from the front, look from behind, if below, go above. Notice anything new from this angle; then open out again to the wide shot and pay attention to the place or landscape where the character is situated. Notice if the character is in harmony with that environment or at odds with it. Then ask the image to show you, one after the other, how it smiles, laughs, walks, sits down. Spend about twenty minutes on this. Then open your eyes and imagine that the character is standing beside you in the room. Walk around it, noticing its size in relation to your own. Then from behind, actually step into the place where you imagine the figure is standing so that you are ‘inside’ this body, so to speak. Experience what it is like to look out from these eyes, breathe with these lungs and stand on these feet. Slowly sense each detail. Then try to smile, laugh, walk, sit down, imitating what you saw in your imagination. As you do this, listen to the thoughts, feelings, desires that arise; invite a silent, uncensored inner monologue to run in the character’s inner life. Do very little except listen and experience this body. Then gradually return to the physical place in the room where you began. Ask yourself what are the key features without which this body would not be this body, a particular tilt of the head for example, or a specific weight on the feet or a way of holding the lips or hands. Then, ‘step’ out of the imaginary body, observe it one last time from the outside and dissolve the image. This is the work of imaginary body. In the first exercise above, we invent a character from one physical feature such as a long neck, or short red hair, bony, translucent fingers, thick lips or a deep scar on the inner arm. By imagining ourselves as slightly taller with longer legs, for example, and really believing in it, we will give the impression that we are. If we imagine we have ruddy cheeks, for instance, the rest of

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the body may also imaginatively begin to fill itself in, so to speak, with tousled hair and bruised knees. While all the details of the whole body may not be complete, often there is enough to sense some sort of transformation into a different body. Sometimes we are given a strong physical detail from the writer with which we can start or if little is given, we invent one. I like to introduce this work first before progressing to the visualization of the character because it is immediately accessible and less imaginatively strenuous. The second exercise involves visualizing the actual body of our character. When we read the script for the first time, Chekhov invites us to pay attention to any instantaneous images of the character that flash in our mind, ‘an anticipation of the future image of the part’ (DR, 22). Throughout the duration of rehearsals, we make the visualization of this initial image a conscious practice as described above.2 Over a period of ten to forty minutes, we contemplate the figure, ‘spying and eavesdropping on the image’ (PT, 255), simply following it. When the image is so strong that we ‘become infatuated and captivated’ by it (PT, 255), we inhabit, imitate or try it on, so to speak. Chekhov invites us to ‘just get right into this body so that your actual body and the imaginary body will meet in the same space’ (AA, 1:8); the imaginary body becomes an intermediary, situated ‘right between the character and yourself’ (AA, 1:8). This practice he calls incorporation of the image, a kind of ‘inhaling’ of the character until we are ready to ‘exhale’ all its features through our own being (AA, 1:13). Some teachers refer to this version of the imaginary body as character body, as it is already influenced to some degree by the writer’s imagination. From the moment of the first reading until the end of rehearsals, I recommend daily work on imagining the character, avoiding premature incorporation by building the length and complexity of the sessions slowly over time. In the early weeks, I spend longer on imagining before incorporating, and in the latter weeks, I focus on both stages equally. That way, we avoid what Chekhov calls the ‘strangling shock’ that can occur when we try to absorb the whole image at once, ‘in one greedy gulp’ (TA, 32). I like to begin by imagining how the character looks, then

Some teachers suggest imagining opening a door to find the character standing or sitting somewhere (RS, 208). 2

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progress to her basic mannerisms: trying to visualize how she coughs, washes her face, reads a book, eats her food and inhabiting these slowly, one by one. Next, I begin to try to hear how the character sounds: again it is wise to begin with imitating only a word or two, and gradually build to include isolated lines of text. Then, I try to imagine the character in specific moments of the play, and incorporate those; it is good if these moments are short and manageable. Chekhov suggests integrating perhaps ‘twenty or thirty separate moments’ (MC/S1/12, 29 January 1942). Of course, in a rehearsal process where no one is using the Chekhov tools, the chances are that your work on an imaginary body will still be in its infancy and you might find it difficult merging it with your scenes in rehearsal. I advise not worrying about this, but just to persist, allowing individual imaginative work on your own (prior to, outside and alongside rehearsals) to seep gradually into your work overall. Chekhov assures us that the more we have developed our creative technique, the more our imagination will work subconsciously: ‘Your characters will grow and develop by themselves while you are seemingly not thinking about them, or while you are dreamlessly asleep at night’ (TA, 33). It does not mean that we do not have to do daily visualization and incorporation; rather, the more we envisage, the more the images will mature when we are not focusing on them.3

Psychological resonance of the imaginary body Essential to both exercises above is that we avoid forcing or stretching our physical body into purely external shapes, exaggerations or ‘cheap, outer means’ (AIT, 174). The aim is to feel how the physiology of a particular body has a particular psychological resonance. Chekhov

I am reminded of Russian film-maker Andrey Tarkovsky (1932–86) who makes a similar point: ‘How does a project mature? It is obviously a most mysterious, imperceptible process. It carries on independently of ourselves, in the subconscious, crystallizing on the walls of the soul. It is the form of the soul that makes it unique, indeed only the soul decides the hidden ‘gestation period’ of that image which cannot be perceived by the conscious gaze’ (Tarkovsky and Chiaramonte 2004, 45). 3

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advises that ‘the more you can imagine your face as resembling that of the person you have under scrutiny, the more will you feel the psychology that this person awakens within you’ (DP, 71). By imagining we have slightly raised eyebrows, we can transform our entire psychology; we might begin to feel sceptical about life or have an ironic or superior attitude. By visualizing that we have a long neck, we might feel constantly on the alert or with ‘just the imaginary nose of your character turned up, you might get the sensation of light-headedness, or a superficial attitude towards life’ (AA, 1:8).4 When playing George Bernard Shaw’s Candida, Egolf imagined she had a body very different from her own: a curvy, hourglass shape, soft, feminine and round, full and robust. She describes experiencing an energetic shift as a result, ‘an absolute assurance in myself as a woman, and areas in which no man would be capable; she had a kind of juicy enjoyment in her sensuality’.5 Listening to the psychological reverberation of a particular ‘body’, or aspect of a body, Chekhov invites us to begin to mould that body from within, permeating and influencing in turn its appearance with emotions and will impulses so that ‘the outer parts and the inner life are one’ (AIT, 173). It is a psychological-physical continuum.

Fantastic imaginary body We can also work with a fantastic imaginary body, both for a whole performance or for a specific moment; I find this particularly useful to portray characters who have undergone extreme experiences. In ‘Diary of a Madman’, for the final scenes in the asylum, Robert worked with an imaginary body of welts on his back, combined with the rub marks of restraining belts and the sting of freezing cold water. While his visible body on stage remained unchanged, the imagined body conveyed something of Proprishchin’s heightened sense of fear and shame in that moment: he became dog-like, crawling underneath the

Dorothy Elmhirst recounts how Chekhov would say that his own comical, snub nose meant that he shouldn’t take himself too seriously (Young 1982, 231). 5 Interview 2 with Gretchen Egolf. The performance of the 1894 play was in 2014 at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, directed by Ted Pappas. 4

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furniture, defending his territory and snarling protectively. To portray Cate’s fainting fits in Blasted, we could work with an imaginary body of deathly white alabaster, or imagine that her body is suddenly frozen and gradually begins to thaw as she wakes. Working with such images should not take us out of the genre and reality we are in; they remain secret inspirations that root our experience in sensation.

The character in the given circumstances rather than the actor Although we can only use our own person, our body, voice and emotions to portray the character, for Chekhov, the role is, above all, a picture, an apparition, an independent creation that is not simply a version of ourselves.6 This is one of the most significant ways in which Chekhov’s system departs from that of Stanislavsky. Whereas the latter proposes that we imagine ourselves in the situation or given circumstances of the character, Chekhov suggests that we forget about ourselves and from the outset, imagine the character in those circumstances. His firm instruction is that ‘you need to shift your centre of gravity from yourself to somebody else’ (PT, 255). The most useful way to describe their different viewpoints is in terms of perspective. By way of example, Chekhov describes playing the role of a father whose child is ill. He explains that if he ‘tried to imagine my ailing child lying there, I tell you honestly that nothing would happen to me’ (DP, 50). Rather than observe the child, it is the father that Chekhov must ‘watch’ and imagine what he is imagining. He explains that ‘if I see myself acting him, there in the room or at the bedside, and I study his emotions, movements and facial expressions, then it is much easier for me to emulate what he does and to feel what he feels’ (DP, 51). Chekhov describes the process as ‘enjoying’ the character in our imagination, being ‘inspired’ by her, and watching the character

British actress and writer Bella Merlin points out that Stanislavsky consciously adopted the word for ‘image’ to refer to a role when searching for an appropriate actor’s terminology, although he and Chekhov deal with it in quite different ways (Merlin 2012, 2; MH, 84). 6

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until we feel the desire to do what she is doing (AIT, 133).7 At no point do we consider ourselves as the character or try to find ourselves within the image of the character (PT, 255). Chekhov recounts how he and Stanislavsky ‘agreed to disagree’ on this issue (LE, 38).8 The second point on which they agreed to disagree was the tool of emotion memory, a technique devised by Stanislavsky whereby the actor draws upon the memory of physiological sensations from personal experiences to generate feelings appropriate to those of the character.9 Although Stanislavsky intended his exercise to function as a reservoir of impressions to draw from, experiences from the distant past that have long been distilled into an essence, Chekhov came to reject any tool rooted in what he calls ‘the personal and tiny experiential resources of the actor’ (TOA, 5). For him, this results in the ‘degradation of the actor-artist’, making him ‘unimaginative’ (TA, 27) ‘condensed and small’ (AIT, 54), ‘an enslaved labourer rather than an artist’ (TA, 27) and ‘a less interesting human being on the stage than he invariably is in private life’ (TA, 27). Indeed, he states that ‘in my view, the less the actor draws from his personal experiences the more creative he is’ (LE, 38, Chekhov’s emphasis) and so he posits that the living creative feelings that Stanislavsky sought to engender in actors are best accessed through an uncompromising engagement with the imagination first and foremost. In the rehearsals for MAAT 2’s production of Hamlet (1923), Chekhov began to develop his objective method of characterization, a reorientation away from the actor’s personality towards an imitation and embodiment of the image of the character. Although the product of our

Chekhov explains that this is an additional way of ‘awakening and kindling your feelings without laboriously and painfully “squeezing” them out of yourself’ (TA, 30). This way we ensure that we are in touch with the character’s feelings rather than simply our own (PA, 126). 8 Chekhov and Stanislavsky discussed their methods when the latter visited Berlin in 1928, on the invitation of the theatre director Max Reinhardt, to receive the distinction of Honorary Member of the Deutsches Theatre. Chekhov was working in Berlin at this time and this meeting was their last (LE, 38). 9 Stanislavsky’s emotion memory is to be distinguished from Lee Strasberg’s emotional memory exercise, although the latter was derived from Stanislavsky via his students Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya. There are many different views on the correct application of emotion memory; for two perspectives, see Carnicke 2009, 150–6 and Merlin 2012, 11. 7

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imagination comes from the individual, Chekhov considers the result ‘objective’ in the sense that we don’t necessarily control every aspect of it. Certainly, we control some of the conditions by which imagining is possible, but not the image that emerges.10 All this is not to say that our life experiences count for nothing. They do, but only insofar as we are no longer in the grip of them, that they are no longer ‘too personal’ (LP, 42) and that we do not need to draw on them directly in order to create.11 Our task is to find a deep connection with a role without it becoming about our own lives. Chekhov believes that events in our lives become absorbed somewhere in our subconscious, and once safely forgotten, they ‘will return as an artistic emotion’ (LP, 42) without consciously having to drag them out into the light. If we develop our imagination and concentration to a sufficient degree, the actual death of our real life father may inform our individual performance, but we will be free to understand and interpret the character’s experience as different, and possibly more surprising, than our own. If we apply our own personal suffering of our father’s death to every character who has undergone the same loss, we risk narrowing our range and homogenizing human experience. Regarding his own work, Chekhov declared that ‘everything still connected to my ego (egotistic, so to speak) is useless in my work’ (DR, 25) and warns that for the audience, ‘personal sorrow, or joy, or fear on the stage are not very interesting’ (MC/SI/10, 29 January 1942). Here, as everywhere, for Chekhov, the definition of being an artist is having the capacity to create and invent something original. The British actress Judi Dench, in an interview about her role of Evelyn Greenslade in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, describes how she struggled with the simple fact that she looked so much like herself in the part. She proposed dyeing her hair at least because she needed the character to be ‘one step removed’. She explained that ‘you can only properly express yourself if you are endeavouring to be another person.

You can read a selection of these rehearsal notes in PT, 243–79. When working a few years later on the character of Muromsky as cited above, he writes: ‘I imitated an imaginary character, which itself acted for me in my imagination’ (PA, 110). 11 Indeed, Strasberg himself had a rule of not using any emotional memory less than seven years old. 10

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It is like those moulds for gingerbread men, I sometimes think. You have to inhabit another body in a way, make yourself another shape’.12 While she may have never heard of the Michael Chekhov technique, Dench is describing the process of the imaginary body.

Finding the objective So far, we have described visualizing the physical body of the character. This is only the first stage: our task ultimately is to understand ‘the psychology of the image’ and to ‘penetrate into the inner life of the character’ (AIT, 172). This involves perceiving their feelings, will impulses and thoughts, becoming almost ‘clairvoyant’ or possessing a ‘second sight’ (MC/S1/12, 29 January 1942). Chekhov reminds us that we can prepare for this work by making a practice of constant and sharp observation of living people. He insists that we need to try ‘to understand the forces which created that face, that forehead’ (TP, 268), ‘observe greedily how a person puts his foot on the ground, what is his favourite gesture, why he uses it’ (TOA, 98). Once we perceive the drive behind a person’s behaviour, we can practise imitating and incorporating what we have observed, experiencing what the person experiences, until we have ‘a true knowledge of the inner life of this person’ (AA, 1:13). We can practise with photographs, art images and cartoon sketches so that we come to understand how a physical body betrays internal desires and aims. Chekhov recounts struggling with finding the character’s objectives or aims as a young actor training with Stanislavsky and a breakthrough came only when he visualized the result the character wanted to achieve: ‘I must always have a picture before me’ (LP, 39), he reveals, ‘a kind of vision’ (AIT, 261) of the character fulfilling his aim.13 For Chekhov, picturing how Sir Toby in Twelfth Night enters the cellar, for example, and what he does there means ‘immediately the objective will come’ (AIT, 261). Chekhov describes how a person tormented

The Observer Magazine (14 October 2012). The film was based on the novel These Foolish Things (2004) by Deborah Moggach, released in 2012, directed by John Madden. 13 Chekhov also proposes an alternative method of finding the objective: act the scene freely and afterwards ask yourself, ‘what have I done?’ (LP, 39). 12

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by the need for revenge is fuelled by images of punishment, just as a mother who wants to embrace her child is already doing so in her imagination (TOA, 110). Once we can visualize our character ‘possessed’ in the same way by their objective, once we are stirred and activated by the image to such a degree that we want to do what it does, speak the same words, feel the same feelings, then, Chekhov claims, ‘we are born as actors’ (AIT, 174). Chekhov insists that more than any other method, ‘the imagination is nearer to us, and is what leads us soonest to the state which we may call “to be warm” or to be ready to act’ (AIT, 261).14 By incorporating the picture of the character with all her desires, the desires become ours to pursue.

Collaborating with the image While Chekhov insists that we must become specialists in the imagination and that everything about the character must be imagined, he also confesses that in his experience at times the image ‘vanishes’ and requires ‘an arduous search’ to reconstruct it (DR, 24). Elsewhere, he concedes that ‘it is not always necessary to imagine the whole body of your character; sometimes imagining only a part of it will open the door to his traits and mannerisms’ (LE, 64). When Chekhov encountered ongoing difficulties with any section of a play, he sometimes even visualized another actor that he admired playing the character in the scene (Byckling 2010, 63). With practice, we become familiar with what the imagination offers, and the kind of operations it performs. We learn to be patient with the gaps in the picture and accept changes as the image evolves. The fundamental work on training the imagination as a muscle outlined in Part Two lays an essential foundation for this. It is also clear from his own experiences that partial imagining was a natural part of Chekhov’s visualization process. He describes the initial ‘appearance’ of the image of the character Muromsky

Often Chekhov refers to the intellect as ‘cool’ or ‘cold’ and it is interesting to note the polarity he lays out here between it and the desirably ‘warm’ creative state. 14

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as disembodied. The single part of the picture that Chekhov could perceive clearly ‘was his long, grey side-whiskers’. It was only after a period of time that ‘the nose and hair appeared, then the legs and gait’. At a later stage, the whole face emerged, along with ‘the arms, the positioning of the head, which gently rocked as he walked’ (PA, 110). Long after his acclaimed performance of Hamlet, Chekhov describes continuing to recall his extraordinary features, ‘the distinctive yellowish shade of his skin, the remarkable eyes and some beautifully arranged wrinkles on his face’ (PA, 108). Similarly, while imagining the character of Don Quixote, Chekhov recounts not being able to see the face at all, although he could sense ‘the rhythm of his face as a whole’ (MH, 85). He describes how ‘it is clear that his being is made up of flames. I see a long moustache, long eyebrows, a beard and two wispy curls on his head, all of which were like flaming tongues’ (MH, 84). Despite the incomplete nature of the image, Chekhov perceives a dynamism in physical details that conveys something of Quixote’s quality of movement and indomitable spirit. Sometimes, imaginary work can also throw up contradictions that seem difficult to reconcile. The British actor, Jamie Chandler, while playing Orgon in Molière’s Tartuffe (1664), found that two contrasting ‘versions’ of Orgon seemed to compete in his imagination: one was a grounded, practical, muscular, balding Orgon, charging through the space in defence of his family’s religious integrity, while the other version was a pale, weak, long-haired, skinny figure with wrinkly inner thighs, treading as if on eggshells and radiating virtue. Chandler tried to focus on the second Orgon, but each time he requested it to execute some specific action, the muscular Orgon would take over and do something entirely different. Chandler questioned whether the muscular Orgon’s appearances were due to a lack of discipline in his imagination and decided to ignore him entirely. Retrospectively, he believes this was the wrong choice: ‘We meet Orgon at a point where he is undergoing a huge transformation with the arrival of Tartuffe into his life, so perhaps my imagination created these two bodies because of that: the old and the new. Perhaps they were showing me the conflict in him.’15 This is very Interview with Jamie Chandler. The production was in 2014 at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, directed by British director, Gráinne Byrne. 15

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likely; Chekhov reassures us by stressing that ‘mistakes are permitted’ and that our difficulties should be enjoyable as ‘only then will we be able to contact the world of images’ (PT, 264). Chandler also concluded that the light, radiating body was perhaps an image of how Orgon wished to be perceived by the outside world, a paragon of virtue, rather than his actual body and everyday behaviour epitomized in a bullish, grounded body. We will see later how archetypes can operate with a similarly double function. Just as rehearsal is an ever shifting process of investigation, discovery, setbacks and adjustments, so too is the work of imagining. Chekhov advises that we probe our image actively, striving to see new features and qualities in it, guiding it gently into a more complete fruition. As we revisit the character again and again in our imagination, we must resist being satisfied too readily. We invite it to show us certain specific actions, as we have seen, but we may find that our image needs certain adjustments in order to fit with the demands of the production we are in. For example, we may discover on the first day of rehearsal that it is a modern-day production when we have spent time imagining the character in a historical setting. Or the director might request that the character is heavier and clumsier than we have envisaged, or that we execute some set stage business that seems at odds with our instincts. We may find also that when we introduce key props that the image we had of the character has to shift to accommodate these new elements. We can ‘insert’ all of this into our visualization practice; we request our image to incorporate these new details by asking it questions and ordering it to show us different variations of possible ways of acting. Chekhov’s co-directors on Hamlet insisted to the cast that ‘you must not leave the image resting’ and that ‘the image should be showered with questions’ (PT, 258). Sometimes Chekhov explains that we must even give our characters ‘strict orders’ (TA, 23). In his Don Quixote journal, Chekhov recounts instructing Quixote, ‘this is what you are like!’, referring to a portrait Chekhov had drawn of him (MH, 182). Chekhov assures us that, with practice, the image will be flexible and transform under our ‘questioning gaze’ until we are satisfied (TA, 24). If we commit to it, the image will not let us down. The whole process here is one of asserting the autonomy and objectivity of the image on the

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one hand, and our own active interaction with it on the other; it is rather like a conversation with a companion, one of ongoing cooperation and ‘active collaboration’ resulting in an unpredictable outcome (TA, 23). As with the whole technique, we need to find the balance between letting the image emerge and willing it into more focused existence. Chekhov is also encouraging regarding images we might have from films, past productions or well-known performances, promising that over time, they will disappear gradually and be replaced by our own original and luminous vision! The result of this persistent ‘fantasy’ will be a sensation that ‘there is a new being near you, and this is your Marcellus, or your Horatio’ (PT, 255).

Merging with the image With highly developed concentration and regular contemplation of both the outer and inner life of the character, Chekhov promises that the character ‘will appear before us absolutely concretely … stronger than a real person’ (LP, 45), and its power will be such that we ‘will have the feeling of inseparable friendship with him’ (PT, 255) in a way that we ‘cannot say “no” to it’ (LP, 45). In the early stages, it is common to experience the image located in our mind’s eye, either in front of or around us, but over time Chekhov promises that ‘the character will jump into you’ (AA, 1:13), working through us and mastering us. When this happens for Chekhov, ‘the part is ready’ because it is ‘a living being’ (MC/S1/12, 29 January 1942), and we will be able to play the character in any invented given circumstances. At that point, but only at that point, Chekhov reveals that ‘the actor does not do anything himself. He makes no effort to perform or to play, it all happens of itself. He is free’ (MC/S1/12; 3/6/2, 22 September 1935). In this sense, Chekhov asserts ‘the independent existence of the character’ (MC/S1/12, 29 January 1942) and refers to his own portrayals as both his own creation and separate autonomous entities rather like ‘a performance by someone else, whose talent is much, much greater than mine’ (DR, 27). He describes objectively watching the character of Ivan the Terrible (1927) as he ‘worked out the details of his own being and behaviour on stage’ (LE, 96) and how Don Quixote occasionally

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‘vanquished’ him, commanding Chekhov to listen to him in turn ‘like a melody’, ‘like a sound’, ‘like a plastic movement’ (MH, 182).16 This process of characterization is one of healthy sacrifice, where we purify the role of all the ‘irrelevant’ features of our own personality and surrender ourselves to the character’s passionate desire for incarnation. For Chekhov, ‘it means that I am two persons. I have given my body, my will-impulse, and it [the image] has me’ (MC/S1/12, 17 February 1942). We return again here to Chekhov’s divided consciousness, a state of immersion that requires 100 per cent awareness of the fact that we are immersed. This approach to characterization means that we are not confined by who we are, where we come from and what our life or professional experience is. Through imaginative endeavour, we can move beyond our limitations and create the performance of our lives.

Further exercises ll

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Repeat the first exercise above with different suggestions: thin, pale, smooth lips/a protruding stomach and spindly legs/an upturned nose/broken, rotten and missing teeth/short, squat fingers with badly-bitten fingernails/dry, sparse hair/large, flat feet. In each case, let elements of the rest of the body suggest themselves organically and sense the attitude, thoughts, feelings and desires of each character. Observe a real person for a period of ten minutes. As well as noting their physiognomy, note their gestures, quality and tempo. Try to sense their drive, emotional state, what is going on in their mind and what is important to them in life? Then, a little later when you can no longer see this person, close your eyes and recall them. Try to visualize as much as you can about them. Gradually imagine that you have their eyebrows, the shape and expression of their eyes, that all your features are becoming

See PA, 110, 216. Similarly, when the artist Quentin Blake draws spontaneously, he recounts how he is often struck when he looks back at what he has done by how the figures have taken on expressions that he wasn’t at all aware of when drawing, or that he did not really intend (interview with Quentin Blake by Martha Carney, World at One, BBC Radio 4, 12 February 2015). 16

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those of that person. Open your eyes and look out at the world through these ‘new’ eyes. Sense what the rest of the body is like and the nature of the thoughts or feelings that arise: notice how they are different from your own. Then, close your eyes again, and dissolve the image. ll

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Zinder suggests describing the imaginary body of your character to someone, and as you outline the details, stop and inhabit each detail while simultaneously talking through it. Begin in the third person and gradually shift to the first person as you paint the picture. Then develop this into a grotesque physical exaggeration to help identify the key physical elements of this body. Slowly reduce the caricature until you are left with one or two key physical traits; naturalize them. Practise returning to your own body and then quickly re-engaging the physical ‘keys’ of this imaginary body (BV). American teacher and director Scott Fielding suggests imagining that you see your character out in the room somewhere, going about his business. As you observe him, see if you can see what is driving him. Then gradually turn away from the image and let his desires become yours.17 Create five different characters and imaginary bodies in half an hour, one after the other, finding how they speak and what they do. Do not develop the characters, but create new ones each day. Gradually reduce the amount of time allocated (DR, 80).

Micha workshop (Boston, USA, 2011).

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17 IMAGINARY CENTRES1 ‘Every living person, according to his general character, his main psychological qualities and peculiarities, is … centralized within himself. Our imaginations can easily find where this Centre, as I call it, sits within this or that person’ (DP, 60).

Thinking, feeling, willing centres Sense that around your head there is air and space and that you have the power to think: you have the capability to reflect, imagine, clarify, strategize, fantasize, reason, understand, conceive ideas. Imagine that your head is ‘a kind of little world’ (TOA, 52), a version of the universe in microcosm with its round form and position at the crown of the body. Imagine that you are centralized in the head. Then contemplate an art work from this perspective.2 Let us imagine that it is contemporary artist Tracey Emin’s My Bed (1998), where she presents her unmade bed (strewn with various personal items) as a work of art.3 What is your first impression? You may wonder why she did not make the bed or why there is a child’s puppy dog toy in the scene, or what she chose to wear instead of the tights abandoned on the mattress, or whether the packed rucksack means she has returned from a journey. In the overall

For more on imaginary centres, see TA, 80–4; TOA, xxxvii–viii, 52–5, 100–6; MC, 71–3,137–8, 79–80; AA, 1:7; MCT, 2:8; HA, 71–5, 93–107; BV, 120–8, 206–11, 214; RS, 187–97; MC, 71–3, 137–8, 79–80. 2 This is Bella Merlin’s suggestion (Merlin 2009, 305). You can also use the opening exercise in Chapter 4 on the feeling of form to begin to explore centres. 3 Images can be found online. You can use any art work or image. 1

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composition, you may notice that the bed is square without a frame and the mat beside the bed is a small rectangle; the bed is high, the mat is low. Then look away from the art work. Bring your attention to the pelvis, legs and feet. Sense that your legs can take you from one place to another, helping you to take action and that the pelvis houses the sexual organs, connected with desire. Crystallize your attention in this area of your body and return to the image of the unmade bed from this perspective. You might observe now that the unkempt bed is a double and that the rucksack might belong to a lover. The rucksack might belong to a lover. The discarded towel and the various bits of detritus might conjure associations with the body (tissues, tablets, toothpaste). You may experience a desire to make the bed or bounce on it. Then turn away from the image and move your attention to the torso which houses the heart, the lungs, the solar plexus, and the flexible spine. We use our arms and hands to reach out, touch and literally feel the world; Chekhov describes them ‘as the freest of our organs … capable of expressing outwardly the inner life of man’ (TOA, 53). Contemplate Emin’s bed again, imagining that you are centralized in the middle area of your body. What do you notice now? Perhaps it is the deep blue of the mat or the simplicity of its contrast with the white sheets and the other muted shades. Perhaps you wonder if it is the bed of someone who has struggled to sleep; perhaps she has been ill, and you find yourself wondering if she is alright. It is possible that the puppy toy was a ‘get well’ present from a friend. You may notice her slippers that suggest a sense of home. In the opening chapter, we began with the ideal centre. The imaginary centre expands upon this idea. Here, instead of the body centralized around a point in the middle of the chest, we can imagine this point to be situated anywhere in the body and sometimes even outside it. Whereas the purpose of the ideal centre is to aid the actor in finding a clear, ideal place from which to begin her work, an energetically charged source, the aim of the imaginary centre is to help the actor to transform. It is the source of the character’s energy and impulse and

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follows from our work on imaginary body as a tool for embodying the role.4 Chekhov proposes that locations for the imaginary centre can be divided roughly into three areas of the body: the head, the middle of the body (torso and arms), and the lower pelvis, legs and feet. He names these divisions the thinking, feeling and willing centres, respectively, three powerful ‘spheres’ of which any human being consists (PT, 257).5 In contemplating Emin’s bed, we started in the thinking centre, shifted to the will and finally ended in the feeling centre.

Interplay of the three centres The crux of this idea is that at any given moment in our lives we are primarily motivated either by our thoughts, feelings or a desire to take action. One of these three dominates at any given time and many characters within the course of a play often move between all three.6 In each centre, different elements tend to hone into focus: in the thinking centre, questions of form and content, or the reasons behind something become prominent, whereas in the feeling centre, we can find ourselves caring about the welfare of people. Intense emotions have associations with the middle area of the body, both in our language and in our experience: our heart races with adrenalin, we talk of being ‘winded’, or as having butterflies in the stomach. Chekhov describes this centre as connected ‘with the beating of the heart and rhythmical breathing’ (TOA, 53). In the will centre, we might be drawn to sensual or active details because the legs ‘move the human body through space, according to man’s ideas and feelings’ (TOA, 53). Chekhov invites us

Polish director Jerzy Grotowsky (1933–99) muses on a similar point: ‘I believe one must develop a special anatomy of the actor; for instance, find the body’s various centres of concentration for different ways of acting, seeing the areas of the body which the actor sometimes feels to be his sources of energy’ (Grotowski 1968, 38). 5 Chekhov credits his view of the ‘threefold form of the human body’ to Steiner (TOA, 52); Ashperger points out that Steiner draws connections between the head and imagination, the heart and inspiration, and limbs with intuition (RS, 36). 6 These ideas are also present in Stanislavsky’s method. In Elizabeth Hapgood’s translation they are called ‘inner motive forces’ and Jean Benedetti translates them as ‘inner psychological drives’ (Stanislavski 1994, 244, 247; Stanislavski 2010, 273–4). 4

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simply to observe how people walk around us; often it will be a clue to the nature of their drive.7 In performance, we can play the receipt of bad news from the feeling centre, work through an argument in the thinking centre, and devise a plan of action in the will centre. Chekhov suggests reading over our entire part with these three areas in mind, whispering the lines perhaps and imagining the role. He also suggests giving speeches in a play a particular focus; in Shakespeare’s King Lear, he proposes to play the ‘Blow, winds’ speech from the will centre, the ‘Poor, naked wretches’ speech from the feeling centre and the ‘Why, thou wer’t better in thy grave’ speech from the thinking centre (LP, 70). This trajectory reflects Lear’s journey from impulsive action to clear-sightedness. I think it is also useful to experiment with shifting centres within one speech, particularly if the character is caught in a conflict between head and heart, such as Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In his ‘It must be by his death’ soliloquy (II:i), he struggles between his feelings of love and admiration for Caesar on the one hand, and thinking through the logic and necessity of assassinating him on the other. Othello navigates between his heart and will in his ‘It is the cause’ speech to the sleeping Desdemona (V:ii); he determines to kill her while at the same time he is still enamoured of her and dreads her loss. Although there is much to be gained by the interplay of all three centres within a role, we can, nevertheless, decide that a character is primarily motivated by one centre in particular. Each centre has a broad palette or flavour, but within it, there are many possible nuances. Petit points out how a thought-centred person does not have to possess a keen intelligence; simply they could be led through the world by an unreflective, empty or even dopey mind (MCT, 2:8). The feelingcentred person is not necessarily open-hearted and loving either; rather, they may passionately fly off the handle, or tend towards envy and resentment, or react to most life situations fearfully. This character has a default emotional response to events whereas the will-centred person tends towards action of some sort, taking steps to get what they want. A character’s dominating characteristic might also be that they are weak-willed or indecisive; they, too, can be centralized in the

Chekhov criticizes how often on stage ‘the legs and feet just do not take part in the acting’ and how actors forget this ‘impressive and expressive feature of the character’ (TOA, 53). 7

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will centre in the sense that this weakness dictates their behaviour as much as action governs a strong-willed character.8 Activating the will centre is a useful place from which to begin to explore the desires, wants or objectives of the character, even if we believe the character is not centralized here. Simply reading the script or improvising a scene while placing our attention in the legs and pelvis can lead us to identify an objective without it becoming a cerebral activity. Listening to our partner from within the will centre can help us experience viscerally what we need from them. It is also helpful to notice which centre seems most familiar to us as people, where we ‘live’ most often in our daily lives. Playing a character through a less familiar centre will then enable us to feel a little less like our usual selves. If normally we are a reflective, head-bound person and our character operates from an active will, shifting centre immediately offers us an altered perspective on the world. Moreover, even if the character is dominated by the same centre as ourselves, we can hone in on the differences between our personal way of thinking, feeling and desiring, and those of the character; are our thoughts quicker, brighter, more positive than the character’s, our feelings more lukewarm, less generous, our actions bolder, more reckless? Identifying simple differences sets us on the path towards transformation and greater creative freedom.

Determining the character’s centre In order to identify the character’s centre, Petit suggests a playful shorthand: the ‘slap’ test. Imagine someone slapped your character in the face: if her first response is a question, ‘why did you do that?’ she is probably dominated by the thinking centre; if her response is, ‘that hurt’, she inhabits the feeling centre; and if she lives mostly in the will centre, she is most likely to slap back! (MCT, 2:8). The language of the character can also be a clue and it is helpful to read the text with a sensitivity to this. The character might express ‘love’ or ‘hatred’ often, or exclaim passionately and frequently, suggesting a feeling-centred person. As a thinking character, she may ask a lot of questions, make Chekhov exclaims, ‘How rich and varied is the realm of the human Will!’ and describes several ‘types’ – ‘a soft, gentle, loving will’, ‘an inexorable, strong will’, ‘a cautious, slow, penetrating will’ and ‘an extremely passionate will’ (TOA, 53–4). 8

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strong statements, have a tendency to weigh up the argument or consider carefully before she speaks. If we were to make a list of all the actions the character executes in the play, too, it may reveal that she is very active (will centre) or is a passive observer (thinking centre) or acts impulsively (feeling centre). These are far from hard and fast rules; probing the specifics of the character and their circumstances through the lens of your own instinct and imagination will lead you in the right direction. Chekhov’s method of determining the centre is through observing the character in our imagination: by visualizing Ma Rainey in different situations for example, and noting her actions and reactions, we will perceive where she is ‘centralized’. We can even put the question to the character as to where her centre is, just as we might put any other question; Chekhov insists that if we trust the imagination ‘the suggestion will come and we will know where her centre is’ (LP, 144). This confidence is typical of Chekhov and he insists that this work ‘is absolutely free for the actor to try’ (LP, 144), ‘without any restrictions’ (DR, 79), and that it is up to us to find out what works. Chekhov also advises trying to identify the centre early in the visualization process as it can offer clarity in what he concedes can be a complex business of digesting and incorporating the ‘sometimes absolutely incalculable richnesses of the character’ (LP, 144). Finding the centre grounds us by concentrating the source of the character’s energy and inspiration in one place and as a result ‘all the other things will follow more quickly afterwards’ (DR, 78). This is why some practitioners begin character work with imaginary centres. I prefer to work with them once the imaginary body work is well under way, and often, it is in the closing stages of a session incorporating the character’s imaginary body where I will invite a sense of the character’s centre to emerge for the first time. This way, I receive suggestions while immersed in the character. Often, I find that actors have an instinctive sense of the character’s centre. Callow told me that from the moment he read the script of Tuesday at Tesco’s, he knew exactly where the spine of his character Pauline was situated.9 Even so, initially, I like to explore the character in each of the centres; it can either just confirm that our choice feels

Interview with Simon Callow. The French play is by Emmanuel Darley, translated by Matthew Hurt and Sarah Vermande and the production was directed by Simon Stokes. First performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2011, it transferred to New York City in 2015. 9

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appropriate or offer a new, surprising perspective. We may discover, for example, that an alternative centre is appropriate for a particular scene, or that the character may have once operated from a different centre in the past. No exploration is ever wasted. Whatever our choice, Chekhov invites us to trust our intuitive response and judgement. There is no need to ask whether our choice is accurate: ‘If a centre you found satisfies or amuses you’, he insists, ‘then you may be sure it is correct’ (DP, 62). Neither are we to ‘toil’ in finding the centre; rather we are to enjoy and ‘play with it like a child would play with its ball’ (AA, 1:7)!

The centre in a specific part of the body Within each centre, we can also specify a precise location. The Mexican-American actor, Anthony Quinn (1915–2001), whom Chekhov coached in Hollywood, suggests that the character of Othello could have a centre in his right arm as someone who has a sword and the capacity to kill. By way of contrast, he suggests that ‘a man who is afraid of his power to command, who won’t take the power’ might have his centre in his stomach (RH). Likewise, the Franco-American actress, Leslie Caron, describes how a seductive woman will have her centre ‘on the bosom’ while an intellectual will be centralized around the forehead which ‘is going to be heavy with thoughts and a lot of learning’ (RH). Felicity Mason (1917–93), another of Chekhov’s students in Dartington, describes a centre hovering above the head to play a drunk person or someone ‘dotty’ (TS) and Joanna Merlin encourages us to examine the richness of working simply with the hands as a centre, really examining the possibilities of what that can bring. The hands might be the centre of an artist, a money-launderer or a midwife, she suggests.10 Chekhov describes how an inquisitive woman might have a centre ‘right in the tip of her nose, or in one of her eyes, or in one of her ears … or in the back of her neck which gives her the tendency to Micha workshop (New York City, 2012). Expressivity in an actor’s hands was very important to Chekhov. In the rehearsals for Hamlet, he requested that the actors practise refining their hands, so that at a minimum they would avoid ‘habitual, everyday hand movements’. Work on radiating from the ideal centre involved ‘imagining that your hands are two long rays emanating from this centre in your chest’ (PT, 253). 10

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walk with her head thrust forward so she won’t miss anything’ (DP, 61). A selfish and conceited person’s centre might live ‘in his protruding jaw. Or in that barely noticeable frozen smile lingering on his lips’ (DP, 60). A noble, quiet man’s centre will sit ‘right within his chest’, a coward’s will hang ‘beneath his posterior’ and an aggressor’s will ‘jump out of his body’ (DP, 61). When playing the mother of Bazarov in Brian Friel’s version of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1987), Kane describes how placing the centre in the character of the son gave her the whole part. The mother is a devout penitent figure who idealizes her son, and after his death, she turns him into a crucified and resurrected Christ figure. ‘She was in him’, Kane told me, ‘and that was enough’.11 We may have decided that overall the character is motivated by the feeling centre, for example, but we find that our imagination keeps presenting us with an alternative. Chekhov invites us always to trust our imagination’s choice (DP, 61). I recommend continuing to explore conflicting centres until one of them feels most right or wins out. While our aim is to try to find a fit between our sense of the character’s psychology and where they are ‘centralized’, we should not worry too much about fitting everything into a coherent schema. Quinn insists that what is important is that ‘I just feel a form here’ in a specific place, and when he does that, he feels free and no longer has to act (RH).12

An image in the centre This tool becomes exciting and strongly transformative when we add an image. If we were to return to the image of the sun that we began with when radiating from the ideal centre, we can also imagine that sun in a different location: shining in the middle of the forehead, or from the back of the head, or in the eyes, or out the top of the head or in the neck. Any of these are thought centre propositions that might evoke

Interview with Sarah Kane. The production was at the Stanislavsky Theater Studio, Washington DC, in 2004, directed by Andrei Malaev-Babel. 12 Petit adds a further breakdown of the three centres within body parts themselves. Within the head, he suggests that the top of the head is thinking, the eyes are feeling and the jaw is willing; within the hands, the fingers are thinking, the centre of the hand is feeling and the heel of the hand is willing (HA, 103). I find this application works best when you have a lot of experience with the centres in their simpler form. 11

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a saintly character, an innocent child, someone radiant, alert or curious. If we were to shift the image to the pelvis, or the feet, or the knees or shining out from the back of the legs, it might evoke a sexually confident character, someone bold and seductive, or a character with a loud and jovial sense of humour. In the feeling centre, we could put the image in the palm of the hands to play a healer, in the armpits to portray a freethinking libertine, in the small of the back to perform a young girl on the cusp of womanhood, in the crook of the elbow to convey a witty, ironic joker. These are simply suggestions; working with an image in a specific location will provoke different responses in different people. We can use any image that inspires us. Ideally, through daily work on a character, an image presents itself organically and it can be static or mobile. Chekhov suggests that the nosey person’s centre might appear as ‘a cold and hard needle’, for example, in the nose, or as ‘a sharpened pencil point’ (MCT, 2:8), while a prying and aggressive character might have a centre that is ‘constantly moving, shifting and restless’ (DP, 62). Caron describes how a witty, comic character might have a centre dancing about like a butterfly in front of its nose (RH) and Chekhov, for his portrayal of Khlestakov, imagined that ‘he had bedsprings tied to the bottom of his feet’ (TA, xxxii). To portray the bitter Don John in Much Ado about Nothing, we might work with the mobile image of a slowing, eroding and rotting prune in the heart, or Petit’s static image of a ‘cool, smooth black stone’ (MCT, 2:8).13 It is often interesting to work with an image in the eyes: shiny, rotating chestnuts (a warm grounded, earthy character), or sparkling diamonds (a calculating starlet) or the ice blue eyes of a Siberian Husky dog (an insightful, determined and intense character). If an image fails to come readily, we can either work simply with the centre without an image or we can investigate images that are present in the text. In Richard II for example, two potent images that appear throughout are those of the hollow crown and the sun. We can simply experiment with imagining one of them in a centre. Merlin describes how a young actor playing Treplev in Chekhov’s The Seagull observed how often Treplev said he felt sick and so, as a consequence,

Indeed, as we saw with qualities of movement, Petit reminds us how Chekhov was interested in the way qualities and images exist in our lexicon: a heart of stone, a heart of gold, cold-hearted, warm-hearted, a clear head, hot-headed, a sharp tongue, living on a knife-edge, tongue-tied, a stomach tied up in knots (MCT, 2:8). 13

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he worked with the stomach. The image then came to him ‘of a foetus in his stomach, as though he were carrying himself as an unborn baby’ (TP, 291). Later, the image evolved into one of ‘Treplev being the foetus, stuck in the birth canal, drowning, choking for breath’ (TP, 291). With time and attention, the image often evolves from its initial beginnings, sometimes merging different elements. For Blanche in Streetcar, Egolf initially chose the feeling centre and imagined ‘a really delicate, half broken eggshell, like a robin’s egg, so delicate that if a gust of wind were to come along, it may break a bit of it off’. Later, a different image emerged: that of a birdcage with a bird in it with a broken wing, sometimes fluttering about trying to get out and other times, resting. She describes waiting offstage for her first entrance and ‘often what appeared to me in that moment was a birdcage with an eggshell inside it, so it became a combination of both those things’. In the end, Egolf reveals that the most useful image to her was that of a bird that cannot escape or fly, that is broken. It encapsulated best for her Blanche’s overall experience of ‘being in this tiny little cage and having a spirit that is so much bigger than it’.14 At first, the image that emerges can appear to be quite arbitrary, or too epic to comprehend, or even a little abstract, but often if we accept it and try to receive its qualities, we might come to understand that it is offering us significant information about the character and can function almost as a kind of summary of it. Chekhov describes the imaginary centre as ‘actually pure psychology, because having such a centre makes one feel oneself differently’ (DR, 77). He goes so far as to say that the centre ‘is like the character itself, since it reflects the most symbolical feature of the character it personifies’ (DP, 61). The image’s power lies above all in its quality, and sometimes focusing on that alone can lead us to the character.

Centre as a quality It is equally legitimate to work with a certain quality in the centre without a precise image. Even if we have a strong picture, Chekhov insists that it is the ‘certain definite qualities’ of it that need to influence us above all (DP, Interview 1 with Gretchen Egolf.

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61). Pugh calls it to be ‘filled with a texture’.15 Similar to working with an image, the quality can be static or mobile. If the latter, it can be ‘changing in size, swinging, revolving, departing, approaching, contracted, radiating’ (DR, 79) or it can be ‘behind you, a fat, heavy, round thing which drags you back’ (LP, 85). We don’t have to be more precise than this if our sensation of the quality is tangible, specific and activating. Again, we can work with any number of qualities: a soft, fuzziness in or above the head (someone slow-witted or distant), a sense of tightness in the throat (an emotionally over-wrought character, or someone nervous and restrained), a light airiness around the lips (a playful character, or someone excitable and optimistic), a quality of sharpness in the teeth (someone alert, focused, direct, confrontational, articulate, capable, effective).16 Callow invites music to lead him to the centre: ‘The Berlioz sensation belongs to the head and the hips, the Puccini to the throat and the chest. Berlioz is on the balls of his feet, Puccini sits back on his heels and opens his arms wide’ (Callow 1984, 171). When we have activated the imaginary centre in one of the ways described above, I suggest spending some time working with it daily outside the rehearsal room. Conjure the image or quality in the centre and follow the impulses it provokes.17 Explore it while sitting on a train, taking a walk or undertaking a daily activity. I also find it helpful to read the play regularly from the perspective of the imaginary centre or to activate it while observing rehearsals of scenes I am not in. The centre can inspire us in all kinds of ways if we allow it; it functions best when investigated regularly and lightly so that it becomes so familiar that you no longer need to conjure it consciously.

Multiple and shifting centres A question that often comes up is whether you can have more than one imaginary centre for your character. There are no strict rules,

Interview with Fern Sloan and Ted Pugh. Zinder also proposes combining qualities in a centre, such as ‘round, sharp, thin’ and an image may drop in as a result of this mix (Micha workshop, Rutgers, New Jersey, USA, 2009). 17 Indeed, Chekhov insists that ‘this adjusting of your physical body to your invisible body and its centre … must be done absolutely every day’ (AIT, 125). 15 16

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but in my experience it is most effective to work with the same image and centre throughout. However, it can be exciting if the image or quality responds to or progresses with the circumstances of the character. We can work with a consistent quality or image that shifts location or we can have the position of the centre constant while the image or quality metamorphoses. Pugh recommends shifting centre if a major change or decision takes place for the character. When he played Claudius in Hamlet, the solo praying scene (III:iii) marked for him the change in the role and he worked with the centre sinking all the way down into his stomach. Pugh decided that ‘if he’s going to be a villain, he’s going to be the best villain in the world’, and the activity of shifting the centre in the character became an event viscerally felt by the audience: ‘If it is an idea, that is going to come and go; if it is an inner and outer activity, that is what makes a moment compelling’.18 In ‘Diary of a Madman’, Robert played Proprishchin largely in the feeling centre, striving to inhabit a higher, nobler realm but dropped into the will centre as darker, more base impulses come over him. Alternatively, the centre might stay in the same place throughout, but its quality might change. Sloan describes imagining a centre in the chest that was ‘like a secret, but then at one point, my secret was torn away, so my centre was still there but now it was ripped open’. Pugh gives the example of a centre in the chest of white warmth and ‘very slowly as you receive some information, that light becomes a mere candle flame, and perhaps the very last thing you receive blows it out’. To portray the journey of Lady Macbeth, we might work with the image of scarlet silk falling into the small of her back and slipping around to caress her hips as a predominant will centre image. As Macbeth’s deeds become more violent and ruthless, we might transform the silk to the slower, viscous movement of coagulating blood. This movement from an aesthetically pleasing, sensuous image to a physiologically unpleasant one encapsulates something of the psychological journey of Lady Macbeth from slippery smoothness to sticky, bloody consequence.

Interview with Fern Sloan and Ted Pugh. For Chekhov’s extensive description of Don Quixote’s centre, see TA, 82. All citations from Pugh and Sloan are from this interview unless otherwise indicated. 18

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Progressions like this can be rich and are certainly worth exploring. Let your choices be intuitive and keep them as straightforward as possible. I would not advise changing both image and centre location. This overcomplicates matters and we run the risk of disrupting a certain structural core in the character which the imaginary centre helps us to construct.

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Take a monologue and divide it into three sections. At random, name each section with one of the centres: thinking, feeling or willing. Speak the monologue moving through each centre and notice if any particular section of the text ‘fits’ with the centre. Experiment with speaking the text using one centre throughout. Picture a small, puffy, grey-white cloud, with ill-defined edges and a wispy, ephemeral quality. Sense how the cloud has the ability to change its shape imperceptibly. Imagine that in the centre of your chest sits this image of the cloud. Receive the characteristics of the image, its colour, its small size and soft edges, and let them influence you. Then choose a place in the room and look at it. Let the intention to look begin with the image; notice any feelings you have. Choose another place to observe; imagine that you are looking from the cloud located in the chest. You may begin to experience a sensitive, listening quality, a sense of taking in the world around you, or a sense of delicacy and fragility. Receive the sensation and follow impulses to take action and move in the room. Let the image dictate what you do and how. Petit urges, ‘let it walk you, sit you, run you’ (MCT, 2:8). Notice, too, when working with others, whether you have a desire to make contact. Keep all activity and communication natural. Resist any temptation to refer to the image; this will destroy its power. Then pause and relocate the image of the cloud to the centre of the head. All its qualities are the same, simply the location has changed. This is your centre now: receive the difference. Now you may find that your movement is quite slow and delicate or you have a sensation of innocence or wide-eyed curiosity.

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Now imagine the image sits in the middle of your pelvis. Observe points in the room from this perspective and progress to acting on your impulses. You may now have a sense of poise, a quiet, respectful confidence, an unimposing presence. Then visualize the cloud twelve inches above your head. You may experience giddiness, a light euphoria or even a sense of feeling lost. Lastly, imagine the cloud is living in the heart of someone else in the room. It is still your centre with all its attendant qualities, but it lives in someone else. Your impression now might be one of slight distraction, lacking agency and an ability to live in the present tense. Again, observe points in the room and progress to action. Experiment with the same image but in specific places within each centre (in the middle of the forehead, palms of hands, or in the eyes, toes, or at the back of the knees). Take the cloud image (or an image of your choice) and begin to move the body with large, broad, abstract movements that express its quality. For about five minutes, take the movement to its fullest point. Then gradually, reduce the outer expression of the movement until it is living and bubbling just in the heart and working on you internally only. Follow natural, everyday impulses, interact, say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Then dissolve it. Explore the same sequence of exercises with images described above: a cold, hard needle or sharpened pencil point in the nose, a butterfly dancing in front of the nose, bedsprings tied to the bottom of the feet, a rotting prune in the heart, shiny, rotating chestnuts or sparkling diamonds in the eyes, a flat blank piece of wood in the chest. Invent your own. Speak a text working with a quality in the centre: ‘Big or small, dark or light, dull or shiny, warm or cold, crispy and dry or soft and gentle; it might be aggressive and boisterous or calm and tranquil’ (DP, 62). Work with the same quality in different body parts.

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Observe people you know well and try to determine where you think their centre is. Try to determine this in strangers. Observe how people walk in order to determine the nature of their will. Listen to a piece of music from different centres, and places in the body, for example stomach, pelvis, feet, ears, heart (PT, 260). When incorporating the imaginary body of your character, try to sense the location of the centre (thinking, feeling or willing). Once you have a sense of its place, sense its quality. Allow yourself to experience both the imaginary body and the imaginary centre of the character at the same time for a few moments. This is a useful way to find the imaginary centre. Once found, I suggest working on the body and centre separately, so as not to overload the imagination and to stay precise. Later, over time and with consistent work, they tend to merge organically.

18 STICK, VEIL, BALL1 ‘You must try to develop a feeling that you are a creative person, that you are capable of creating anything’ (LT, 31).

Another way of conceiving the thinking, feeling and will centres is to think of them in terms of three types of objects: a stick, a veil and a ball, respectively. These are archetypal images in the Chekhov repertoire that correspond to certain characteristics of thought (stick), feeling (veil) and action (ball). If we are struggling to determine the character’s centre, or if a strong image remains elusive, this tool is a way to investigate centres from a different perspective.

Stick Take an actual stick, a walking stick or broomstick for example (focusing on the pole rather than the brush), and investigate how it moves and everything that you can do with it: look at it, throw it, roll it, drop it, balance it, lean it against something. Note its characteristics and receive its qualities: its smooth edges, straightness, rigidity, as well as its material and texture (wood, metal, plastic), width, length and weight. Notice if it is warm or cool to the touch, if its appearance is dull or shiny, clean or dirty. As you play with it, reflect lightly on its function. Then put the stick away and try to move as the stick: let its qualities be your qualities or as Zinder puts it, imagine that ‘you’re not a who,

For more on stick, ball, veil see HA, 60–6; MC, 132; RS, 204–7, 318–19. I was introduced to this work by Sarah Kane. 1

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you’re a what’ (AT).2 We become the stick, just as we inhabit a character. Although it is not human, stay curious about what the psychological resonances of this activity are. Notice the sensations that arise. Then begin to develop your movement into an extended, free physical improvisation: run, jump, turn, hop, lie down, leap, tumble and then explore broader movements of stretching, bending, leaning, expanding and contracting, and other archetypal gestures. Now you are no longer confined to embodying the way the stick moves exactly; rather, take the quality of the stick and the sensation it engenders into different ways of moving. After some time, pause and listen to the sensation internally. Begin now to move as a human being, with natural, everyday movement, but let all your movements become infused with this sensation of the stick: walking, opening a door, drinking, picking up an object. Imagine that you have ‘the psychology of a stick person’ (TS); say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ occasionally. Then localize the qualities of the stick in the thinking centre and explore everyday activity, as above. Follow your impulses: notice what you are inspired to do, and how to do it. Then gradually, let the sensation and image dissolve. We discussed earlier in Chapter 4 on a feeling of form how Chekhov considers the form of thought as one of sharp corners and straight lines. A stick is linear, rigid and has definition. It has a beginning and end, and its inflexibility accords it a sense of clarity and exactness, perhaps. For Chekhov, these qualities might loosely be applied to certain types of thinking: forward-thinking, the idea of lines of thought for example, or having a clear focus, the progression of an argument, reaching a conclusion or decision, hitting the nail on the head, so to speak. Of course, it is possible to have vague, imprecise or wandering thoughts but our concern here is with a broad, archetypal connotation. If we think our character lives in the thinking centre, Chekhov suggests that we can explore a specific, sticklike image to activate that centre with certain qualities. We can also think of the stick as a category in which there are many different species: an iron rod, a cricket bat, a stone column, a metal saw, an arrow, a pencil, a needle, a pin, a tree trunk, a thick branch, an aerial, a copper pipe, a glass tube, a plastic bottle, a hockey stick, a knife, a

Petit recommends that you ‘completely forget that you are a human being’ (HA, 61).

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comb, a dart, a ruler. While these objects all have different qualities, they all share some fundamental characteristics of ‘stick’. You can repeat the progression of the exercise above with each of these images. As you do, notice the nuances. I like to introduce this exercise with observation of a real object, but we can also imagine the object and work through the exercise in the same way. Try a combination of both.

Veil Take a handkerchief and investigate how it moves: you can fold, scrunch, wave it, wipe with it, but it is difficult to throw or roll. It takes on the shape of whatever it is draped over. Receive its qualities: its softness, flexible squareness, mobility, its flowing material. Notice if it is smooth or rough to the touch, if it is plain or patterned, clean or dirty. As you play with it, notice all the ways in which it moves or can be moved. Then put it aside and begin to move your whole body as the handkerchief: become it, noticing the sensations that arise. Then, as before, begin to develop your movement further into a broad, free physical improvisation as above for about ten minutes. Pause, and listening to the sensation, execute natural, everyday activities, saying ‘yes’, ‘no’ or a sentence or two. Pause again, and now localize the qualities of the handkerchief in the feeling centre and explore everyday movements, as above. Imagine that you have the psychology of a veil person. Follow your impulses. After some time, gradually let the sensation and image dissolve. A veil is the second of our categories and is amorphous. By veil, Chekhov means something akin to fabric, drape or cloth, and it corresponds, for him, to emotion because it is malleable, fluid, less clearly defined, with many possible permutations. It moves in reaction to forces that come into contact with it: it can billow like a wave, be blown by the wind, tied together, opened out, waved like a flag. These qualities are associated with feeling in the sense that they are often unpredictable, are in response to events and tend to fluctuate rather than remain static. We cannot easily bend or modify a stick, but we can usually change the shape of a veil. Its form can evolve rapidly just as a feeling might.

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The varieties of veil could also include a long, muslin curtain, a silk scarf, polyester string, a thin thread, a piece of rope, a gold neck chain, a cotton sheet, a shoe lace, a piece of elastic, a leather strap, a plastic bag, an electrical wire. Even a heavy metal chain might belong here in the sense that it is still moveable and able to change shape. Again, practise the exercise above with each of these images and notice their similarities and differences. If we sense that our character lives in the feeling centre, we can explore a veil-like image in this way to activate it.

Ball Now take a tennis ball and explore how it moves: you can roll, throw, catch, bounce it, even squeeze it a little, but it is difficult to alter. Note its characteristics: its round, fuzzy exterior, its combination of hardness and flexibility, its capacity to travel at speed, maintain momentum and rebound off surfaces. Notice the sound it makes. Then put it aside and begin to move as the ball. Petit urges us to ‘roll into things, bounce off them and continue in a constant motion of doing’ (HA, 64). Absorb the qualities of the ball; become it and notice the sensation. Then expand your movement broadly and freely as before, beyond rolling and bouncing, all the while retaining the qualities, rhythm and energy of the ball. Then pause and receive the sensation. Begin now to move with natural movement, saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ occasionally. Pause again and localize the sensation of the ball in the will centre and explore everyday activity, as above. Imagine, now, that you have the psychology of a ball person. Follow your impulses. After some time, gradually, let the sensation and image dissolve. We discussed earlier how, for Chekhov, the will demands expression in round and curved forms. Here, we come to the ball as the third of our categories which has the most dynamic quality of all. It has the capacity to move, travel and spring off surfaces in a forward and backward motion according to its own momentum. Chekhov considers these qualities as similar to those of wilful impulses, the thrust of a ball corresponding to the way desires propel human beings into action. When the will centre

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is activated, we are stirred into doing whatever is necessary to achieve what we want, and as a result, we impact upon others who feel the force of our drive. The will bears upon the world as a ball collides against a wall; whether the contact is soft or hard, it nevertheless has an effect and continues to move on towards its next goal. The category of ball contains many possibilities: a beach ball, cricket ball, a ping pong ball, a ball of string, a marble, a bead of polystyrene, a balloon, a football, a chick pea, a green pea, a pearl, a crystal ball, a bubble or a yoga ball. Again, practise the exercise above with each of these images and notice their similarities and differences. If we sense that our character lives in the will centre, exploring a ball-like image can activate it in new and surprising ways. If your sensitivity to the nuance between the three centres is a little blunt, I find that the stick, ball, veil tool can help awaken a strong, basic feel for them. It is a very good warm-up practice as it involves imagination, centres and full-bodied movement.

Connection with imaginary body, imaginary centre and qualities of movement This tool is a form of characterization based on and inspired by a stick, veil or ball. I think of it as a combination of imaginary body, imaginary centre and qualities of movement, although we can work successfully with it just on its own. The process is one of imaginatively ‘merging’ with the object in a way similar to that which we discussed in the work on image and imagination. Gradually, we put the actual object aside, no longer looking at or referring to it and we embody its features. The goal of this approach is to allow the image to work on us in its entirety, just as we would do with an imaginary body. In this case, the ball is the ‘body’, so to speak; it is the character. It may happen that this work supersedes the imaginary body to become a sort of fantasy body. It is also possible that both are resonant; if so, work with both it and the imagined human body of the character separately without any concern about merging them. In time, they will reconcile or one aspect will fall away.

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A second approach is to work with the image of the ball and/or its qualities as an imaginary centre, located in one of the thinking, feeling or willing spheres. It becomes the energetic ‘hub’ of the character in all the ways we have seen in Chapter 17. Whereas in the first example, we work with the qualities of the object diffused throughout the entire body, as an imaginary body, in the second, we work with them localized in a particular place in the body, as an imaginary centre. Both work with the qualities of the object. In my experience, when I have a sense of the centre of a character, an image often emerges organically. Often, it is only later that I realize that it ‘belongs’ to a particular category. It does not matter whether we make that link or not, but sometimes it can be clarifying to make that connection. When I am directing, I always begin rehearsals with a sense of where each character’s centre is and slowly collaborate with actors to find agreement on that. When an actor’s intuitive proposition converges with my notion of the centre’s location, that is, they have a stick image for the character and I believe the character lives in the thinking centre, then it gives me confidence that we are on the right track. In fact, I use the stick, ball, veil technique mostly in this latter way, as a barometer to help me test and measure where the character’s centre is. When I studied Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck (1879) with Sarah Kane and was working on the character of Margret, I had a strong image of her as a bright silver dessert spoon. This object resonated with the character’s clean-living, moralizing nature; she is often disapproving and quick to pass judgement. This suggests that she might live in the thinking centre and the silver spoon expressed the psychology of the whole character in one fell swoop: its straight, formal, silvery quality became an anchor. Its rigid, vertical qualities typical of the stick world helped conjure her upright, fixed and purist world view. The thinking centre, the image and quality of the spoon and the upward direction in space combined to form what was effectively her imaginary body. One question that often comes up is whether we can have a veil image in the will centre, or a stick image in the feeling centre, for example. The simple answer is yes. The example in Chapter 17 of Lady Macbeth’s imaginary centre of smooth silk slipping down into her hips is a veil image and yet there we explored it in the will centre. When this happens, I suggest exploring the ‘veil’ image first where it belongs

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(in this case the feeling centre) and then play with it elsewhere. See if you learn anything new by this exploration and then make a decision about which inspires you most. In my view, Lady Macbeth is dominated by the will centre and so this instinct will override all others. Chekhov reminds us that it is ‘the careful craftsman within … who must be guided and satisfied’ (DP, 63). For him, our originality is often based on the ability ‘to create your inspiration in the way that makes you happiest with it’ (DP, 63). We do not have to tidy up all our choices and make all the elements fit; ‘there are no mathematical rules or infallibly logical approaches’ (DP, 63). We do, however, need to remain receptive to shifts that emerge and keep an investigative door open as long as we are able, without cutting off possibilities. Sloan explains that sometimes an image will persist or the director will give her something to work with and she cannot understand its relation to what she is doing. In these instances, she encourages us not to make decisions about what it is about: ‘Just go and examine it and bring it into movement and find out what it is like.’3 It is also worth noticing in early readings of the text if an image emerges that belongs to one of these three types of stick, ball or veil. I suggest experimenting with it in one of the above ways, even if it seems contradictory or illogical, as it may lead us somewhere interesting further down the line. In our practice it is good to try out as many different objects belonging to the same category as we can to explore both the similarities and differences between them; this helps us to develop a greater range of creative possibilities. These three categories are archetypal images that lead us to types, which bring us to the world of archetype, the focus of Chapter 19.

Further exercises ll

Work with one of the stick images listed above. Deliver a short piece of text to someone and let the sensation of ‘stick’ inform how you speak. Take care to make each thought make sense, communicate them to your partner and resist any temptation to speak strangely. Find the truthfulness in your transformation:

Interview with Fern Sloan and Ted Pugh.

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the stick is now hidden externally, but its qualities are simmering internally. ll

ll

ll

Localize the same stick image, quality and sensation in the thinking centre and explore natural, everyday movement as above. Then repeat speaking the same short piece of text, as above. Explore all three centres with the same image and quality. Explore the following stick objects one after the other in the ways listed above, this time conjuring them as images: a metal pencil, a low squat tree trunk, a plastic syringe, a rusty nail, a cotton bud, a glass jar. Notice the nuances created by any difference in width, texture, size, material, colour within the prevailing quality of straightness and rigidity. Notice the difference in tempo of your movement and any shift in vocal quality. Repeat the above stages with different veil images: a piece of chiffon, a plastic bag, a tissue, a piece of wrapping paper, again as visualized images. Then try further ball images: a cotton wool ball, a pebble, a yoga ball, a gold stud, an egg, a metal ball bearing.

19 ARCHETYPES1 ‘There are no things which are without an archetype’ (LP, 118).

Chekhov encourages us to think of character in terms of the relation between highly specific individuals and broadly familiar categories or types. Characters are, for him, nuanced and detailed variations on fundamental drives and he encourages us to investigate the primary motivating force in a character early in our process so that we have a structure or spine to build upon. He offers work on archetypes or archetypal personae as a way to open this up. Chekhov’s notion of an archetype works with the idea of specific types of energy and will forces, and he invites us to search for one predominant archetype for our character overall. When we discover that, we begin to identify a certain guiding line to the character, what Petit calls a ‘broad stroke’ or ‘flash’.2 We saw in Chapter 12 how Chekhov applies this idea of a broad classification to basic forms of movement or gesture, like push/ pull, give/take and so on, and he uses the term archetype in this context to mean something basic or fundamental, basic meaning the simplest, most primordial forms that we draw on. When it comes to characterization, or developing the persona of a role, Chekhov uses the term archetype in a more conventional, familiar sense – and also arguably a more problematic one. By archetype here, he means cultural figures or forms like hero, warrior, wise man, child and so on. Of course, it would be easy to show that any fleshed out version of For more on archetypes, see LP, 112–15; HA, 66–71, 149–63; RS, 243–51; MC, 133–5, 138–9. 2 Micha workshop (Rutgers, New Jersey, USA, 2010). 1

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such figures is rooted in specific cultural traditions, and this applies to Chekhov as much as it does to Carl Jung (who provides some of his inspiration here).3 The basic work of the technique is the same in both cases, however. We throw ourselves into the more general, abstract, anonymous, impersonal motif, ‘the hero’ as such or ‘pushing’ as such, in order to activate an energetic force that we can use for our specific character. So, in a sense, we draw on the weight of specific cultural traditions in order to arrive at a performance or characterization that is minimally weighted down by them. We work through the type to escape or transcend the type. Think for a moment about some of the recurring cultural roles you have encountered in your life; everyone will have their own list. But to take some stock examples: imagine the familiar posture of a bully or a hero, a martyr, a coward, a traitor, or a saviour. Without pausing to reflect, and allowing the form of it to be completely free, quickly and spontaneously strike the still pose of a heroic warrior: hold the posture as a still image for a moment and notice the direction your body is in – forward, back, up, down. Try not to think about it: trust the immediacy of your first intuition. Then in a similar way embody ‘the martyr’ and ‘the bully’. ‘The hero’ might make a forward and upward gesture, ‘the martyr’ a surrendering gesture back and downward, the bully a gesture downward. Now, walk around the room and become aware of the space behind you. Imagine that there is a large, benevolent presence accompanying you from behind.4 Receive this presence. Gradually, begin to do simple activities in the room. Then pause and imagine now that the presence is that of ‘the recluse’. Take your time to sense the nature of its presence. Begin to walk through the room, listening to the presence, sensing how it makes contact with the ground: is it a light step, a reluctant step, a heavy step, a fast, slow or shuffling step? Allow the manner in which this presence makes contact with the ground to be your touch. Walk through the room, allowing the energy of the presence to move through you. Although Chekhov himself does not state that he is drawing explicitly on Carl Jung (1875–1961), his use of archetypes invites some comparison with Jung’s exploration of the figures he sees as inhabiting our collective unconscious. See for example Jung 1959, 3–4. 4 I was taught this way of working with archetypes by Fern Sloan (Micha workshop, Emerson, Boston, USA, 2011). 3

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From here, try to sense what this reclusive presence wants. Let its desire be your desire too. Express this desire in the will centre, through the legs and feet, and how you move through the space. Let this exploration be completely free, following any large or small impulses you have for action, to speak or make sound: hold nothing back. If you are working in a group, begin to interact spontaneously with your partners: play freely. Then pause and express the will of ‘the recluse’ in a large, full-bodied, archetypal gesture. Notice the initial direction of the gesture, and the natural tempo and quality you find yourself working with. Find a polarity between the beginning and the end and ensure it takes up space. Hold it on completion and radiate the sensation you experience. Speak a word or phrase at the end of the gesture, according to what spontaneously fits with ‘the recluse’. Refine the gesture until you are happy with it; with each repetition accumulate its power rather than returning to neutral. Then make it an inner gesture only and once again, follow any impulses you receive from it, improvising and surrendering to its energetic force. Pause and speak a short text. Ensure that you connect thought by thought, moment by moment, resisting any temptation to lock down the text into one sensation. Spend between twenty and forty minutes on this exploration. Then let go of the gesture. Return your attention to the space behind you and dissolve it of any trace of the presence. We discussed in Chapter 4 on form that to play a tragic part, it is helpful to imagine that we are followed by a superhuman presence that is more powerful than ourselves; here, we imbue this presence with the energetic force and will of an archetype and allow it to influence us in turn. This is the first way in which we can activate the archetype. ‘The recluse’ is someone who removes himself from the world, whose dominant energy is one of retreat, backing away, invisibility. The contact with the ground might be relatively light, contained, somewhat careful with a tendency to move backwards or to the side. The tempo is most likely to be relatively slow. By contrast, we might think of ‘the hero’ as having a dominant energy forward. It might have a confident, firm, strident step, full of inspiration and possibility, unstoppable in its optimism and momentum. In this case, the tempo is most likely to be fast.

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Gesture of the archetype The second stage of activating the archetype is to express its drive and energy in an archetypal gesture which acts as a kind of summary. ‘The recluse’ might be encapsulated in an archetypal gesture that involves taking a slow step back, turning and looking away a little, hands extended in front, pushing gently away in a rejecting manner. An alternative gesture could involve a contraction backwards, hands and arms covering the stomach or the chest, head looking down. By contrast, ‘the hero’ might be summarized in an archetypal gesture of thrusting one arm forward and up in the air, head and gaze upwards, determined and optimistic. I find it most fruitful to explore archetype in these two stages and in this order, and to consider them both as one whole thing. Chekhov insists that ‘if you see the archetype, you cannot avoid seeing the gesture which the archetype produces’ (LP, 114). At least within certain cultural horizons, if you ask a group of actors to spontaneously create full-bodied gestures of archetypes in the way we did above, you will find that not only are many of the gestures similar, most tend to conform to a particular direction: ‘the servant’ bows down, and probably moves back for example, with arms outstretched, or ‘the traitor’ twists back and turns away. There is often an immediate, shared impulse. Merlin suggests simply imagining an archetype doing something more natural and noticing the images that emerge:5 for example, we might imagine ‘the mother’ reaching out her arms to her child who wants to be picked up or embracing and comforting a child. Within all of these everyday gestures we can determine a certain movement forward and with that information we can begin to create an archetypal gesture which, let us not forget, is not naturalistic. The predominant direction in which we make the gesture is a significant part of its power. Indeed, Petit points out that once we identify the direction, we ‘know eighty-five per cent of the gesture’ (HA, 71) and ‘it is an easy way to catch the impulse, and connect with the energy that is in the image’.

Micha workshop (New York City, 2013).

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Direction connects with an impulse to move and hence plugs us into the will force. We begin to sense the action inherent within an archetype, that is, what it does. From this perspective, ‘the mother’ is a figure who gives (e.g. love, education, nourishment, punishment) so the direction of the gesture is most likely forward or opening left and right; ‘the king’ is one who rules and dominates (the gesture might move predominantly downwards); ‘the servant’ serves (downwards and forwards), ‘the martyr’ sacrifices or surrenders (backwards and downwards); ‘the traitor’ betrays (turning away or a twist) and so on. These verbs express the core action of an archetype. They inspire us to move in a particular direction that we can then crystallize into a more fleshed out, more specific gesture. Just as we explored with the gestures of expansion and contraction, the gesture of the archetype that we create must be a large, full-bodied movement with a clear beginning and end. The journey of the gesture is important too. We are not rushing to get to the end of it, but remain receptive to all the sensations it provokes along the way, investing in it, clarifying its precise quality and tempo. The only difference here is that it is an archetypal gesture inspired by an archetype rather than an action or verb. Remember that the gesture is not literal, descriptive or naturalistic. Chekhov is careful to distinguish between a ‘natural’ gesture, which we use in life and on stage, and an archetypal gesture. The former is ‘too limited, too weak and particularized’ to stir our will (TA, 70). Neither are we trying to enact the archetype. Ashperger offers useful examples here of what not to do: ‘stirring a pot for a Mother archetype or a miming of holding playing cards for a Gambler’ are not archetypal gestures (RS, 244). The gesture of ‘the warrior’ is not a representation of killing someone, although it might be inspired by that as a beginning point. Rather, within the warrior we can sense an essential drive to vanquish. It is this energetic force or action that the gesture must express, with a certain magnitude and potency. Merlin advises us to ‘allow the gesture to act you. Don’t be the child before you do the gesture of the child; the gesture will bring you to the child’.6

Micha workshop (New York City, 2013).

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The gesture is not an abstract movement either; it is an archetypal movement with psychological content, ‘the thing underlying the whole psychological action’ (PT, 198). It must occupy ‘our whole body, psychology and soul’ and ‘takes possession of them entirely’ (TA, 70, Chekhov’s emphasis). It becomes an activating force, ‘a big, big door through which we can enter and take everything, and turn them into things which we can act’ (AIT, 187).7 We never need to play the archetype on stage because it is not a character in itself;8 rather it is the actor’s secret, working upon us as a force, ‘an invisible richness’ (LP, 114) that fuels the life blood of our character.

Archetype as category Everywhere in his technique, Chekhov encourages us to find our own ways to transcend our limits, to move beyond what we are familiar with by drawing on what appears to be most universal, generic, typical. We have seen several of these principles already: the qualities of movement are archetypal in that they correspond to the four elements of air, water, fire and earth, and expansion and contraction are archetypal gestures of opening and closing. Just as the stick, ball and veil become categories for many other kinds of objects, archetypes are groups of types which house many different and specific characters. Chekhov’s work on archetype speaks to his more general desire to create tools that are not predominantly subjective and, where possible, take us beyond the confines of our immediate experience into a greater sense of connection with the world around us. The technique itself is expansive. He also intends it to bring us in touch with the fantastic, a sort of heightened or ‘super-natural’ poetic. American director and playwright Charles Marowitz points out how at Dartington, Chekhov spent a lot of time working on fairy tales with his students as ‘a way of coming into contact with archetypes and also a way of finding a path away from naturalism’ (OC,165). Chekhov also greatly admired the fact that

Better still, Chekhov promises that it ‘will make us kings of our profession’! (AIT, 187). Petit explains it is ‘too powerful, too pure, too big’ (HA, 151).

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Meyerhold’s theatre was saturated with archetypes, inspired as it was by different kinds of performance such as Russian fairground performances and commedia dell’arte (DP, 40).9 Moreover, as a young actor, Chekhov describes the stirring work of the Alexandrinsky Theatre actors in St Petersburg who, for him, did not merely portray a particular character, but rather personified ‘the archetypal image’ of people instead (LE, 15). Successful characterization for Chekhov always combines particular detail with a more open and ample resonance. While we always have to play a character who is a particular human being in a particular circumstance, we can employ the archetype as ‘the model we draw from’ (HA, 151), Petit reminds us, ‘an encompassing image of something’ (HA, 67), ‘the biggest possible idea we can find for the character’ (HA, 150). Chekhov explains that if we don’t have the archetype of the father, our portrayal of a father ‘will become a very small, dry, insignificant figure’ (LP, 113), ‘too personal in the wrong sense’ (LP, 40). Despite there existing many fathers in the world, we work with the archetype as the father, ‘the source’ of all fathers (LP, 113). The specific, nuanced character we play is borne out of this original model or archetypal category with its corresponding attributes and qualities. We can draw on a vast reservoir accumulated over time, of recurring and varying actions taken by different people in roughly similar circumstances. As Callow puts it: ‘Actors are deep sea divers in the collective unconscious who drag these characters, dripping with mud, up from the floor of the ocean and try to give them new life’.10 The point of drawing on an archetype is not to impose a reductive uniformity. There are obviously lots of ways to play the role of a martyr or a self-sacrificing altruist and there are obviously lots of ways in which a character is more than just that. If two actors work with the same archetype, their interpretation will vary in the same way that a group of painters who study the same landscape will not all paint an identical work of art. When we refer to someone as a martyr, many of us may understand that it implies a certain behaviour. This behaviour is not the whole of the person; they may go about their lives and do all kinds of

Autant-Mathieu also reads Chekhov’s impulse to rewrite the classics as a search for archetypes noting that he considers them ‘less the property of the author than as a universal patrimony’ (MH, 181). 10 Interview with Simon Callow. 9

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other things, but it describes a predominant aspect of the person which influences their actions. This individual specificity is what distinguishes the archetype from a mere stereotype or a cliché, undercutting any oversimplified notion of the ‘typical’. If, as Chamberlain explains, ‘stereotypes are a way of ignoring difference and limiting expression’ (MC, 139), the function of Chekhov’s archetypes is to expand our possibilities, bringing us in touch with something larger and deeper than our everyday experience.

Determining the archetype: Archetype lists The first way to determine the character’s archetype, as suggested by Merlin, is to make a list of any possible archetypes that correspond to the role so that we have an inventory of all the character’s facets. For Iago, Othello and Desdemona in Othello, we might create the following lists (to be read in vertical columns).11 Iago

Othello

Desdemona

Liar

General

Virgin

Villain

Outsider

Daughter

Soldier

Mercenary

Princess

Friend

Foreigner

Feminist

Strategist

Lover

Idealist

Devil

Saviour

Rebel

Right-hand man

Servant

Heroine

Trickster

Slave

Warrior

Charlatan

Hero

Lover (Continued)

There are no gender boundaries with the assignment of archetypes. A male character might well have the ‘mother’ as an overall archetype, a female character the ‘warrior’. 11

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Iago

Othello

Desdemona

Charmer

Warrior

Martyr

Murderer

Freedom Fighter

Bride/Wife

Reject

Victim

Revolutionary

Servant

Prisoner

Loyalist

Storyteller/actor

Dupe

Victim

Traitor

Tyrant

Newly wed

On the surface, Iago is a villain, a traitor, a trickster, a charlatan, a liar and it would be worth exploring all these archetypes. The trickster might give a particular rhythmic quality – a darting, quick vitality, a dexterous ability to change tack very suddenly, to play a role perfectly and then suddenly to drop his mask. However, we need, above all, to try to fathom what drives this devious behaviour in Iago. If we are to believe him at the beginning of the play, he is resentful of being overlooked by Othello for the post of Lieutenant in favour of Cassio whom he considers bookish and unworthy. He wants recognition for his efforts, loyalty and capability which he puts to brilliant use to bring Othello down. It is almost as if he is seeking visibility, notoriety, wanting to reveal how everyone has hugely underestimated him. We might explore the archetype of ‘the loser’, ‘the outcast’ or ‘the reject’. The reject is the one who does not fit, who is cast aside and who possibly longs to be seen and acknowledged. Playing with this archetype might help us find the humanity in Iago and draw us away from the dangers of a two-dimensional representation of a villain. As a director, I find making lists of character archetypes particularly fruitful to do with the whole cast because, in the first instance, actors are often able to shed light on a character that they are not playing and, in the second, it is a rich way to explore the characters and the text as a company. The process of justifying each proposition often inspires fertile debate and can set down some stimulating lines of enquiry. You can also do the task on your own and if you couple it with an exploration of the superobjective, which we will come back to, then it provokes a way of thinking specifically yet broadly about the character. From this list, we can select two or three archetypes that resonate with us the most strongly, with the aim of honing it down to one.

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Determining the archetype: Deeds done list The second way we might determine the archetype is, as Petit suggests, to make a list of all the actions the character takes in the play, what he calls ‘the deeds done list’ (HA, 69). Through surveying what the character does and achieves in the play, we gain an understanding of who they are and the nature of the will force or ‘energy behind the sum total of his deeds’ (HA, 70). In Othello, we might determine the following deeds:

Iago

Othello

Desdemona

He takes revenge on Othello for not appointing him Lieutenant

He appoints Cassio as Lieutenant

She listens to Othello’s stories

He betrays Othello and plots his downfall

He woos and elopes with Desdemona in the middle of the night without asking her father’s permission

She deceives her father

He looks after Desdemona in Othello’s absence

He wins wars

She elopes with an older man, a Moor and of a lower social class

He flirts with Desdemona

He defends his marriage to the Duke and Brabantio and demands the right to Desdemona’s hand

She confesses and stands up to the Duke and her father, Brabantio

He tells lies

He demands proof from Iago

She defends her right to marry Othello to Duke and Brabantio

He uses Roderigo

He believes Iago’s lies; he trusts Iago

She demands of the Duke to go with Othello to Cyprus to fulfil her marriage rites

He steals Roderigo’s money

He rejects Desdemona’s arguments

She obeys, loves and follows Othello (Continued)

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Iago

Othello

Desdemona

He incites Emilia to steal Desdemona’s handkerchief

He accepts Iago’s arguments

She consoles Othello

He takes the He proposes Cassio’s handkerchief from Emilia murder

She confides in Emilia

He plants the handkerchief in Cassio’s room

He calls Desdemona a whore and strikes her

She helps and defends Cassio

He gives Othello false ‘proof’ of Desdemona’s adultery with Cassio

He demands a confession from Desdemona

She asks Iago’s advice

He wounds Cassio

He condemns Desdemona

She protests her innocence to Othello

He criticizes Emilia

He kisses Desdemona before murdering her

She defends Othello

He proposes to Othello to He confesses his crime strangle to Emilia Desdemona in her bed

She tries to change Othello’s mind about killing her

He kills Roderigo and his He refuses initially to own wife Emilia believe Emilia that Iago has fooled him

She defends herself

He refuses to confess or He stabs himself explain himself

She remains loyal to Othello

He remains unrepentant

She fights for her life

He smothers/strangles Desdemona

From these lists, we can determine whether the actions all add up to one particular pattern or which archetype might best summarize these actions. Othello’s actions are extreme and absolute, a response, no doubt, to a life scarred by profound suffering, insecurity and servitude. His strong desire might be to end this line of suffering that is his heritage and begin a new lineage with a young wife from a powerful family. As a highly capable mercenary, he has fought many wars for the state and earned some honour and respect. Perhaps he wants to lay down his past and enjoy the fruits of his labour. We might explore the archetype of ‘the slave’. If the defining characteristic of the slave is that he serves against his will,

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Othello ultimately wants to be free from bondage and his new life with Desdemona offers something of this. His tragedy is that he becomes a different sort of slave, a slave to his passion and imagination that is fed by Iago. He becomes a prisoner of his jealous thoughts and in doing so, enslaves himself anew.

Determining the archetype: Key moments, polarity, image While my preferred method is to choose one archetype for the part as a whole, we can also explore several different archetypes to reflect particular aspects of the character at given moments, just as we have seen with many of the other tools. It is also possible to work with a combination of both: to choose an over-riding archetype for the role at large, and a different one to define a significant turning point in a role. Pugh describes working with the archetype of ‘the fugitive’ for Claudius in Hamlet, specifically from the moment Claudius is publicly humiliated at the hands of Hamlet in The Mousetrap play. Pugh explains that ‘everybody has just seen his deed enacted in front of the whole community so I had an image of him as a fugitive in the castle because one of the particulars of the fugitive is that now the enemy is everywhere’.12 We could also choose to work with archetypes to reflect the polarity of the character’s journey from beginning to end. For Desdemona at the beginning of Othello, we might play the archetype of ‘the bride’, ‘the beloved’ or ‘the rebel’, while at the end of the play, we could work with ‘the sinner, ‘the accused’ or ‘the prisoner’. You may find that for some productions this approach seems pertinent whereas for others, you will want a different process. I recommend keeping all options open with each new production. It is also worth mentioning that sometimes the archetype may just present itself as an image, suddenly and completely, without really searching for it. Chekhov describes his image of the big bird for Ivan the Terrible as an archetype (LP, 113) and Egolf’s image of the bird in the cage for Blanche is of a similar nature. The American actor Morris

Interview with Fern Sloan and Ted Pugh.

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Carnovsky (1897–1992), in discussion with Chekhov, recounts that on hearing a line referring to his character in the play Rocket to the Moon13 as ‘an orphan’, he envisaged ‘a boy standing behind a window, looking out at a world of activity to which he did not belong’ (LP, 112). Carnovsky declares that ‘on the basis of that image, I decided to play my part’ (LP, 112). If such spontaneity occurs and rings true, consider it a gift and run with it.

Archetype and superobjective When we work with one overarching archetype as a character choice, I consider it to be the ‘spine’ of the character in a similar way that Stanislavsky considers the superobjective or supertask to be the overarching drive of a character. Every person or character is motivated by a predominant desire that influences and determines their behaviour: a miser, according to Stanislavsky, relates everything to ‘his aspiration to enrich himself, an ambitious man with his thirst for honours, an aesthete with his artistic ideals’ (Stanislavski 2008, 79). In an ordinary, living person, this motivation may be unconscious, but in order to play a character convincingly, we must discover what it is. Chekhov, along with Stanislavsky and many other practitioners, asserts that it is essential to have a good grasp of the superobjective of the role at the beginning of the process. He maintains that this practical approach allows us to merge all the character’s minor objectives into a ‘“logical and coherent stream” without making any errors’ (TA, 142). I agree with Chekhov here; the superobjective can evolve and become refined throughout rehearsals, but it is most helpful to begin with some firm intuition about it prior to immersing in the details of scene work.14 I find the most effective way to work with archetypes is in tandem with an investigation of the superobjective because they both aim to

Written in 1938 by Clifford Odets, the play was originally produced by the Group Theatre at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre, directed by Harold Clurman. 14 Chekhov considered Stanislavsky’s work on objectives and units (dividing the play into manageable chunks that reflect the story and main events of the play) as ‘perhaps his most brilliant inventions, and when properly understood and correctly used they can lead the actor immediately to the very core of the play and the part’ (TA, 139). 13

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synthesize a character’s disparate facets and actions into one overall, psychological core, providing a structure for the role. Both incite a feeling of the whole for the part and are designed to activate our full inner life. Testing the archetype against the superobjective ensures that we avoid working with an archetype simply because it is enjoyable; the superobjective keeps us on the track of probing specifically the will of this particular character in these particular circumstances. While practitioners work with the superobjective in different ways, here, I am working along the lines defined by Chekhov himself, where it exists for the character before the play begins and is projected beyond the play itself (TA, 142). Framed in broad, almost spiritual terms, such as ‘to live life to the full’, it is not playable in itself. Rather, it influences and stimulates the choice of specific scene objectives which we can play. The scene objectives can help us to discover the character’s throughline or main line of action, that is, what she is trying to do or achieve concretely throughout the play. I subscribe to the definition by Alfreds that superobjectives ‘are motivated by character’ whereas throughlines are determined ‘by plot (the situation in which the characters find themselves)’ (Alfreds 2010, 356).15 Walter White’s throughline in Breaking Bad might be to secure a financially stable future for his family after his death from terminal cancer, (although we might argue that this perspective is a delusion, and that actually his throughline is to take revenge on those who failed to appreciate his potential). His superobjective might be to prove to the world how brilliant he is, something he believes he was denied by his original business partners in the pharmaceutical company he co-founded and left. The throughline is rooted in the concrete reality of the story whereas the superobjective has a broader, almost existential resonance. If I consider Walter as a father and husband striving to counter his own sense of inadequacy and the desperate financial implications of a cancer diagnosis, I might investigate the archetype of ‘the usurped’, ‘the nobody’, ‘the failure’; Walter overcomes this sense of incapacity through a radical and unorthodox reinvention of himself.

I am aware that there is some debate about the utility of the throughline and some practitioners disregard it in favour of the superobjective alone. I find it useful to work with the throughline, as if often helps me to clarify the superobjective. 15

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In this way, I like to think of the archetype as a seed from which the character’s desire for change emerges. This choice of archetype is from the perspective of Walter’s perception of himself, an aspect that he does not want anyone else to know about; the superobjective defines how he strives to change this sense of himself. In this way, we get underneath the character’s skin to encounter what Merlin calls the ‘inner face’ of the character, or their ‘shadow’ or hidden private self.16 For Walter, we could also argue for the archetype of ‘the saviour’ because Walter sets out with the noble intention to save his family from financial ruin, but as events unfold his own desire to save himself emerges, an attempt to rescue himself from a kind of intellectual, emotional and psychic death. It is good then to probe how our archetype and superobjective touch the themes of the play at large. If Walter’s superobjective is to redeem himself, to recover his self-respect and a life force that he has lost, the superobjective of Breaking Bad itself might be to ask the question of what makes life worth living. What gives us the will to live? What does it mean, really, to live? If, as Alfreds suggests, Nina’s character superobjective in The Seagull is to live life to the full, the superobjective of the entire play might be to show that it is important to follow your dreams, in art, in love, even if they fail, because life is short. Chekhov urges us to postpone the task of finding smaller objectives in order ‘to climb still higher, to the very summit, from which you can observe the whole play as a big panorama’ (TA, 144). He even urges us to ‘appeal straight to the audience’ for the play’s superobjective, rather than pondering why the author may have written the play (TA, 145). We are to imagine the reactions of the future audience; he believes that the audience has an ‘immediate’ rather than an analytical reaction to the play, experiences it ‘with its heart and not with its brain’ and remains acutely attentive to the ‘ethical value of the play’ (TA, 145–6). The heart of the audience, according to Chekhov, is ‘big and unprejudiced’ (PA, 146); ‘no matter what the author intended, it is what the audience interprets from his play that is the decisive superobjective. The psychology of the audience differs vastly from that of an actor or director, even the author

Micha workshop (New York City, 2013).

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himself’ (TA, 145). I translate this as trying to imagine the impact we would like our production to have on the audience, reflecting on the immediate sensation that we wish them to experience from it and a strong sense of why we want them to watch it.

Embodying the archetype of other characters We can also investigate archetypes to understand how characters appear to each other, an approach which opens up the relationships in a play. In The Seagull, for example, Masha might see Nina as ‘the rival’: she loves Treplev, yet he loves Nina. Masha also sees her as ‘the artist’: Nina is part of Treplev’s artistic aspirations, an apparently heightened and romantic world from which Masha is excluded. Arkadina might initially see Nina as ‘the protégée’: Nina flatters Arkadina and aspires to be like her. Later, Arkadina might also view Nina as ‘the rival’ or ‘the thief’: Her passionate youth and beauty seduce Arkadina’s lover, Trigorin, and the latter has to use all her cunning to win her bounty back. It is likely that in Nina, Arkadina sees an image of her younger self and Merlin’s example of playing her with the archetype of ‘the ingénue’ speaks to this connection and to ‘Arkadina’s fear of growing old’ (PT, 291). If you are playing Masha, for example, you can explore one of the archetypes that Nina evokes for her, such as ‘the rival’, or ask the actor who is actually playing the part to embody it for you while you observe. This is a useful device when the dynamic suggested by the archetype is particularly relevant to the scene. We can also play the scene holding the image of ‘the rival’ archetype in our imagination as a point of concentration. A similar exploration with each character in the play can help craft visceral, expressive and differentiated relationships: while each character sees themselves in a particular way, others perceive them in quite a different light.

Further exercises ll

Imagine an ‘innocent’. Let an image of it form in your imagination. Bring to mind the whole image in its entirety and

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note the size, gender and qualities. Where is it? What is around it? Which aspects can you not see? Open your eyes, keep the image there and sense its properties. Close your eyes again and imagine in the same way ‘the reformer,’ ‘the fool’, ‘the sinner’, ‘the addict’, ‘the survivor’, ‘the pilgrim’, the revolutionary’, ‘the visionary’, ‘the pawn’, ‘the pragmatist’, ‘the dispossessed’, ‘the saint’, ‘the virgin’, ‘the slut’, ‘the saint’, ‘the puritan’.17 Notice how these archetypes present themselves to you in your imagination. Note if the image you see also makes a predominant gesture or strikes a pose. ll

ll

ll

Take this series of archetypes and quickly and spontaneously embody or ‘become’ them in a still image. Hold the pose for a moment and notice the direction your body is in: forwards, backwards, upwards, downwards. If you are working with others, compare. Take the archetype of ‘the winner’. Sense the direction of its energy. You can probably sense that it moves up. Begin to follow this movement and gradually create a full-bodied, archetypal gesture that expresses ‘the winner’. ‘The winner’ is lifted up in the world, so the gesture might involve raising the arms upwards, fingers pointing triumphantly in the air, the weight lifting up and out of the body and the gaze and head looking up. Clarify the quality and speed of the gesture; find a polarity between the beginning and the end and ensure it takes up space. Check that your movement is neither abstract nor naturalistic and that it manifests in your body rather than in your face. Feel the reverberation of the gesture inside. Repeat it several times. Then imagine that you are executing the gesture in your imagination only. Follow the impulses to action you receive from it, and improvise; try speaking a short text. When you speak the text ensure that you connect with it thought by thought, moment by moment. Repeat with an archetype of your choice. Some of Chekhov’s own examples include ‘the tough guy’, ‘the bitchy woman’, ‘the seductive leading lady’ and ‘the absent-minded professor’ (AA, 1:2).

This is my own list of archetypes that I have worked with, rather than a set list or canon.

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20 PSYCHOLOGICAL GESTURE1 ‘Don’t act, but find the gesture’ (AIT, 19).

A psychological gesture, also known as PG, is an invented archetypal gesture produced specifically for the particular character we are playing. It does not necessarily take an actual archetype as its starting point and it also supersedes the basic list of verbs we discussed in Chapter 12 to become an original, unique gesture. Its purpose is ‘to summarize the intricate psychology of a character in an easily surveyable form’ (TA, 71). Whereas the archetype brings us to a broad understanding of the type of energy the character is driven by, the psychological gesture reveals ‘the entire character in condensed form’ (TA, 68, Chekhov’s emphasis). For Chekhov, each character, however complicated, is a gesture with a certain ‘unchangeable core’ (TA, 68) and as such, the PG becomes ‘the spine’ and ‘the scaffolding of your part’ (TA, 68, 74). We aim to find one overarching PG for any one characterization.

Archetypal gesture, psychological gesture and gesture of the archetype When I work on archetypal gestures or actions such as opening, closing, giving, pushing or taking in isolation as a psychophysical training tool, I refer to them as ‘archetypal gestures’ in order to establish them as a For more on gesture, see TA, 63–76, 183–215; TOA, 58–94; LP, 107–12, 133–4; LT, 27–8; PA, 187–8; HA, 48–55, 107–15; MC, 73–7, 140–1; MCT, 2:7; RS, 243–51, 263–81. 1

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non-naturalistic language or tool that awakens feelings. I tend to call more specific or individuated archetypal gestures that we create when working on a character in a given situation ‘psychological gestures’ because the PG’s aim is to help us understand more precisely the character’s particular psychology and will. In this case, the gestures are the actor’s inventions, although their nature is always archetypal, and based firmly on the structure of the basic set of archetypal gestures.2 When I create an archetypal gesture to express the archetype I am working on, I tend to call this ‘the gesture of the archetype’ as it conveys less the specific psychology of the character, and more the energetic force of the archetype from which the character feeds. This latter gesture is also an invention but tends to conform more closely to the basic set of training actions. I iterate these distinctions for the sake of clarity, but there is no need to become too pedantic about them. They are all archetypal gestures that can help us to realize the character. In the thrust of rehearsal work, the edges tend to blur and matter less, and one will often come into sharper focus than the rest. Whichever avenue we choose to explore, archetype, archetypal gesture or psychological gesture all have the same aim: to activate the actor’s will to take action. Chekhov calls them the ‘key to our will power’ (TA, 63), insisting that if we repeat a strong, yet simple gesture that is full of form, we will soon find that our ‘will power grows stronger and stronger’ (TA, 63), then everything becomes ‘actable’ (AIT, 86). Through it we become a ‘tremendous psychological machine’ fuelled with the kind of internal ‘fire’ and power which Chekhov believes is essential to the art of acting (AIT, 42).3

Psychological gesture and superobjective As discussed in the previous chapter, all characters desire something and their will is always directed towards a certain goal. We have seen

Chekhov insists that ‘psychological gestures are not symbols – they are absolutely concrete things – as concrete as the floor’ (RS, 244). 3 Chekhov states, ‘the actor is someone who burns. Without this internal fire, no one can be an actor in the proper sense’ (MH, 250). Anthony Quinn also describes working with a fiery image that Chekhov taught him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDhw_Qye6aI 2

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how Chekhov recommends finding the broad line of the character first, aiming to grasp the entire character as a whole before embarking on any specific scene objectives or elements. Chekhov’s own process included drawing humorous sketches, caricatures and cartoons to capture both characters and real people in one swift impression.4 He develops psychological gesture in precisely these terms, as ‘the broad charcoal stroke on an artist’s canvas before he starts on the details’ (TA, 71), a dynamic line of movement that encapsulates something of the over-riding spirit and force of the character. For some actors, it can be useful to sketch a rough abstract picture of the PG on paper to help them begin to embody it. Seeds of the PG were sown in Chekhov’s early character work. During rehearsals for Erik XIV at the First Studio, Vakhtangov told Chekhov that if he pictured ‘an imaginary circle on the floor and tried to go through it but could not’, then he would grasp something of the character (LP, 118). Chekhov describes this, in hindsight, as ‘a certain form of gesture’ (LP, 118). For the character of Frazer in The Deluge (1915), they ‘found that the character was always looking for something he had lost. That was the whole psychology: he was lost inside himself’ (LP, 119). Stanislavsky gave Chekhov ‘the key’ to the psychology of the character of Khlestakov in The Inspector General at the Moscow Art Theatre by suggesting that he ‘start to catch things, and … drop them suddenly’ (LP, 118). The PG in the first instance, then, is an archetypal gesture that embodies an immediate feeling for the character, ‘something which is organic, bound together with the human body and human psychology’ (DR, 74), and is ‘absolutely intuitively created’ (LP, 110). As we have discussed, even in the first reading of a script, most actors already have some sense or image of the character and these potent first impressions should be treasured and harnessed. From these early insights, we can create a psychological gesture at once before settling down to any serious analysis. It is often ‘the simplest and the first bell which we ring’ (LP, 110) and plugs us into a visceral sense of the character’s overall drive without it becoming too thought out. In the beginning, it matters little whether we

See PA, 21, 34, 53, 62, 67, 69, 95, 99; MH, 75–89, 92, 176. Chekhov attributes his love of caricature to his talented father who ‘could convey the outer appearance and character of a person in a few strokes’ (LE, 8). 4

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are able to articulate what this is; we simply begin to express physically something of ‘the most characteristic thing’ of the role (LP, 119). Of course, some roles elude us and require laborious searching, but the PG teaches us to act even upon a quiet, hesitant impulse. It helps us to find the middle ground between ‘vague floundering and arid reasoning. It is the product of pure, sound imagination’ (TOA, 94). By this, Chekhov does not mean that we do not have to work rigorously and systematically through our characterizations, and on text analysis; we do. He means simply that we do not have to have done lots of work on the script in order to begin working on the character. As I have stated earlier, reconnaissance work on the text should accompany or even follow the actor’s work on her feet, not precede it.5 The ‘table work’ of many rehearsal processes can overwhelm the actor and crush the desire to act rather than stimulate it. However, even if the analysis correctly focuses on situation, action and the event structure of the play, Chekhov insists that we ‘should not do all these before your creative intuition has asserted itself and spoken fully’ (TA, 66, Chekhov’s emphasis). Otherwise, we can get ourselves into a situation where ‘it is like knowing everything about a science or an art and ignoring the fact that this intelligence per se is far removed from being proficient in it’ (TA, 66). He advises that only ‘when our dreams have broken through’ should we read about and think more conceptually about the play (DR, 70).6 Only at that point will any intellectual visions be carried safely ‘on the wings of your childish, moving concept’ (DR, 70). Chekhov demonstrated his own PG for the role of Hamlet to the American director John Berry (1917–99): he raised his arms upwards above his head to a point. Berry recalls that Chekhov told him ‘it was gothic … and it is going to heaven’ (RH). While Berry does not mention a superobjective here, the rehearsal notes of the production reveal that Chekhov and his directors considered the theme of the play overall as ‘the desire of Hamlet’s soul for the Light’ and that Claudius, Polonius

Chekhov clarifies that ‘to try to discover the deeper level of the character’s psychology by means of the intellect is what psychologists do. It is wrong for the actor because our field is different. We can read books on psychology, but what use can we make of it in our art? It is not our realm’ (DR, 67). 6 Callow told me that acting for him is a sort of ‘day-dreaming’, that it should be ‘out of your dreams rather than out of what you saw on the tube that morning … an extraordinary evocation of character’ (Interview with Simon Callow). 5

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and the entire court are ‘distinct and specific obstacles in Hamlet’s path towards the Light’ (PT, 244–5). We can see how Chekhov’s PG reflects this yearning in an upward movement. We can also see how the PG is unique to itself and yet it is also a kind of ‘penetrating’ or ‘wanting’ or ‘reaching’ gesture. While, to my knowledge, there is no evidence (in English) that Chekhov worked on a specific archetype here, we might investigate the archetypes of ‘the truth seeker’, ‘the evangelist’, ‘the saviour’, ‘the redeemer’ or even ‘the crusader’ or ‘the spiritual avenger’. While there are many possible interpretations of Hamlet, following along this line of reasoning in Chekhov’s particular characterization, we might begin to think of Hamlet’s throughline as one of purging the land of its torrid sin and impurity. We can begin the work on PG as soon as we are cast and continue to adjust it throughout rehearsals in line with our discoveries. This can be done alone, regardless of the director’s process and methodology.

Creating the PG from the archetype We can also determine the overall PG by way of the archetype. In ‘Diary of a Madman’, Robert created a gesture of the archetype of ‘the orphan’ which was one of reaching up and forward longingly and desperately; he accompanied it with the phrase ‘love me’. This gesture inspired a light-footed, contracted figure who was looking, in fact, for a mother. In pursuing the affection of Sophie, Proprishchin is looking not just for love and sexual gratification, but also for a family, a home. In Sophie’s Papa, the Director, possibly he is looking for a father figure. Proprishchin yearns to find a place for himself, to belong; he doesn’t want to be the underdog, mocked and disrespected. Rather, he wants to take centre stage and declares himself the king of Spain to answer that need. The orphan archetype holds both the character’s vulnerability as well as his drive to overcome it. Often, work on overall PG and the archetype leads us to the same point, and many Chekhov practitioners state that they are, in fact, the same thing. I think it is helpful to work on both separately and see if they do, indeed, synthesize. In an ideal world, they will, but if they do not, it is worth questioning whether a reinvestigation of the superobjective or archetype is in order. However, if we find we have two contradictory

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gestures (in the same way that it is possible that two images of the character conflict), it is worth exploring both over a sustained period and, according to Chekhov, trusting that ‘they will find the combination inside of you. It is not necessary to combine them outwardly’ (AIT, 134). Our aim is to have one overall gesture for the character, and if our psychophysical instrument is robust and toned, any contradictory gestures or images will eventually sort themselves out. Merlin suggests that we can work with just one PG for the whole play and in each scene we can adjust that same PG to have different qualities and tempi. She translates this process as follows: ‘Once you’ve found the what, which is the superobjective, you need to find the how. So the how keeps changing in the course of the play.’7 Generally, I tend to focus the scene objectives on determining what our character wants from the other people in the scene and create a PG for that, regardless of whether it ‘matches’ with the overall PG. That said, Robert, above, found it useful to consider which kind of orphan was at play in each scene: the jealous orphan, the resentful orphan, or the vengeful orphan, translating these adjectives into different qualities with the same gesture: jealousy for Robert became a rather quick and staccato quality, resentment a version of moulding, and revenge as a strong, fiery quality.8

Creating the PG from specific archetypal gestures Alternatively, we can work loosely and freely with archetypal gestures for specific moments in the play to see if it reveals the overall PG. In a class with Merlin on Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904), we explored, randomly, different archetypal gestures or verbs to activate the scene we were working on.9 The American actor and teacher Trent Blanton worked with the gesture of ‘lifting’ from below to high up, with a quality of lightness, to play the moment at the end of Act 4 when

Interview with Joanna Merlin. In performance, Robert began to reconsider the superobjective of Proprishchin as wanting respect, and in the light of this, the archetypes of ‘the nobody’, ‘the underdog’ or ‘the pariah’ appeal more specifically to this particular drive. 9 Micha workshop (New York City, 2012). 7 8

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Lopakhin comes to declare that he has bought the orchard. Not only did the gesture reveal the sense that Lopakhin is lifting the family out of poverty in that moment, it also became about Lopakhin lifting himself up from his impoverished past into a future of a new social order where the serf can escape subjugation and become a landowner. The scene gesture revealed something of the superobjective, or the overall PG. Trent began to see the character’s archetype as ‘the winner’ while Merlin also proposed ‘the saviour’ as an archetype to express how Lopakhin sees himself at large. We could also work with the archetype of ‘the pauper’ or ‘the serf’ to express the private sense of himself as a lowly peasant who desires to rise in society and better himself. The process of rehearsal then is largely about refining and adjusting the overall PG as we come to know more about the character. Chekhov recommends that ‘first, you must produce the gesture just as you find it, then after you have done it many times, you can try to improve on it’ (LP, 111). It requires time to digest and we should trust its own organic laws. Chekhov assures us that ‘by elaborating, improving, perfecting and exercising the PG you are, more and more, becoming the very character yourself at the same time’ (TA, 68) and exploring the part in accumulating depth. Although we never show the PG itself on stage, it is our foundation and hidden structure that functions like ‘an invisible director, friend and guide who never fails to inspire you when you need inspiration most’ (TA, 74). While the gesture itself is simple, it is ‘like a magnet which attracts so many things of a more complicated kind’ (LP, 110), and enables a ‘process of synthesizing and not of analyzing’ (LP, 110, Chekhov’s emphasis). It crystallizes gradually into a kind of summary of the role ‘which includes everything’ (LP, 119).

PG and scene objectives We can also create psychological gestures for scene objectives. Chekhov maintains that if ‘the objective is something we want to get or to accomplish’, then ‘the easiest way to experience it is by doing a gesture’ (LP, 108); it is ‘the bank in which the capital is’ (AIT, 132). To portray a character that wants to extract the truth from their partner, for example, we might create an archetypal gesture that is a slow penetrating gesture forward with the arms and hands, or it could be a rough ripping gesture, as if tearing away a façade, or it could be a determined snatching or

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taking gesture. Just as there is an endless variety of desires, so too is there an infinite range of gestures we can make and Chekhov calls these ‘minor PGs’ (TA, 69). Just as we discussed in the chapter on imaginary body, Chekhov warns that it is not enough to name the objective, or ‘to feel a tepid desire for something. You must visualize the objective as constantly being fulfilled’ (TOA, 161). So, one method for starting work on the PG of the scene is imagining the character in the situation achieving her goal. However, sometimes we are unsure of what the character’s goal is in the scene. In this case, I read the scene standing up (or get others to read it for me or the actors to listen to), living imaginatively in the will centre. Immediately following the reading, without discussion, I create a spontaneous PG in response, repeating it several times until ‘full’ with its power. With this reverberating within, I play through the scene silently, listening for strong impulses to move or take action. At the end, I revisit the PG, make adjustments to it and then play through the scene again, this time speaking the text. Again, at the end I revisit the gesture, either re-working it or creating a new one according to what I discovered. Through this process of trial and error we come to clarify what the characters want instinctively through listening and receiving, without it becoming a cerebral discussion. It is useful to execute your gestures towards the character whom you are trying to affect the most, incorporating in physical terms whether you are higher or lower in status. It is also interesting to execute the gesture from where you believe the centre of the character is. Alternatively, Merlin suggests that we choose three words from the scene and create a PG for each one; we then select one of the gestures as an impetus to play into the scene. It is stimulating already to note that the word interests you and she maintains that if the text is well written, then almost any word can lead you to the gesture of the scene.

PG and acting gestures Whichever way we approach PG, and it can be different for every process, we must pay attention to how it activates us to move in space, take action and how it becomes translated into natural, everyday gestures on stage or what Chekhov describes as ‘acting’ gestures. He reminds us that while ‘the acting gesture and the psychological gesture

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do not contradict each other’, nevertheless, they ‘must not be the same’ (LP, 133). If the PG is an archetypal gesture of rejecting, natural gestures of rejection will certainly creep into your performance as ‘character behaviour’, but they will have a different, more subtle, more muted form (MCT, 2:7); we may find that we tend to move backwards on stage, create distance or rarely touch anything. Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins describes how his use of PG in creating the film roles of Henry Wilcox in Howards End10 and the butler James Stevens in The Remains of the Day11 inspired spontaneous, strong acting gestures for him in key moments: as Wilcox, he suddenly shields his face with the open palm of his hand to conceal his suffering when his wife announces she is leaving him, and as Stevens, he backs up into a corner clasping his book to his chest when the housekeeper Miss Kenton, who is falling in love with him, asks him to reveal what he is reading. In ‘Diary of a Madman’, at the top of the diary entry for ‘November 12th’, where Proprishchin sets out to steal the canine letters, Robert created a PG of victory in a moderate tempo, his arms raised in the air, fingers pointing upwards, head raised. The gesture possessed a determined, triumphant quality; Robert described its action as ‘I want to win!’ In performance, it inspired him to make an obscene gesture to the (imaginary) dog and sprint around the stage waving the letters gleefully in the air. PGs and objectives function in this way: to activate us to play the scene creatively and expressively. Out of this ‘stirred will’, Chekhov insists, ‘all action, all “business”, every gesture emerges on the stage, just as in life’ (TOA, 38).

PG and specific objectives When it comes to exploring objectives, there is, of course, an infinite number of potential actions or verbs to employ and it is perhaps useful to The 1992 film is based on the novel of the same name by Edward Morgan Forster (1910), directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant and screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Emma Thompson plays Wilcox’s wife, Margaret. 11 The 1993 film is adapted from the novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989), directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant, Mike Nichols and John Calley and screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Emma Thompson plays Sarah or Sally Kenton. Anthony Hopkins discusses this briefly here: https://vimeo.com/165904131 10

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list some of them and determine the kind of archetypal gesture that might form the basis of your own, original, invented gesture for the objective. Archetypal gesture

Objectivea

push

annihilate, humiliate, punch, stop, shock, provoke, dominate, stab, jolt, intimidate, demean, flatten

pull

awaken, consume, grasp, seduce, seize, fill (myself), devour, possess

open

illuminate, offer, dazzle, uncover, reveal, purge, heal, free, awaken, expose

close

mask, hide, bury, escape, protect, surround

embrace

protect, unite, suckle, nurture, merge

throw

cheer, escape (throw myself), offer

wring

manipulate, bend, fascinate, unravel, fool, seduce, charm, trick, twist, beguile, trap, mould

tear

strip, break, rip, eviscerate, punish, shock, reveal

lift

elevate, inspire, release, soar, strengthen, exalt, transcend

smash

annihilate, crush, dominate, intimidate

penetrate

reveal, discover, open

punch

provoke, stab, jolt

a

This list is by Merlin (Micha workshop, New York City, 2012). See also RS, 320.

If I want to intimidate, provoke or demean someone, I might create an archetypal gesture that is a version of a pushing gesture. A gesture of intimidation might be a slow push forwards with a moulding quality; if I want to provoke, the pushing could also take on a quick, jabbing, rough quality; if I want to demean, the gesture might be a light, gentle push downwards with a confident, calm quality. Again, we do not have to chart where our psychological gesture belongs in this way, but it may help us to situate what we are doing. This list is a series of suggestions only; there are endless possibilities and it is your own creative individuality that is the final judge. Chekhov assures us that the gesture is right ‘if it satisfies you as an artist’ (TA, 69).

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Although obvious, it is worth reminding ourselves again that through the PG we are trying to unearth the inner need in the character that is hidden underneath rather than on the surface of the text. For example in Act 2 of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953), Elizabeth confronts Proctor, demanding that he clarify the relationship definitively with the young Abigail with whom he had an affair, so that Abigail knows the relationship with him has no future. Ostensibly in this scene Elizabeth is accusing Proctor, demanding that he repair the damage he has done and forestall further repercussions. It would not help us to make the PG one of accusing. Underneath this attack, she might want to regain intimacy with Proctor, longing to be desired by him in the way that he clearly desires Abigail. Elizabeth is living with the painful sensation that her coldness is partly responsible for driving Proctor away. In this respect, the PG helps create a powerful polarity between what is visible and what is invisible.12 It is also important not to allow the work to become frozen or complacent. Chekhov insists that ‘the PG is always flexible’ (LP, 127) and that the actor must prepare the part so that in its detail, it is possible ‘to change everything and not fix anything’ (DR, 71). This does not mean avoiding making decisions; rather, that each decision we make can pave the way towards a more refined decision. Chekhov also suggests that once the smaller scene PGs have become absorbed into our muscle memory, we can ‘drop them entirely’ (TA, 69). Merlin applies the metaphor of a motor to the scene PGs: ‘once activated, we can simply drive without constantly thinking about it’.13 That said, the overall PG of the character, the superobjective, we are never to forget. Chekhov advises that it must remain with us always ‘as a kind of inspiration’ (TOA, 65). Chekhov recounts how Stanislavsky went into the streets of Moscow to see if he could determine the objectives of ordinary people and after a period of observation, he would enquire directly of his subjects whether his guess was correct or not. According to Chekhov, Stanislavsky ‘could choose the objective like a magician’ (AIT, 136) and likewise,

For Chekhov’s own example of Claudius watching ‘The Mousetrap’ in Hamlet, see TOA, 65. 13 Micha workshop (New York City, 2012). 12

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we are to become specialists in discovering how in every person ‘there is a psychological gesture hidden’ (LP, 128).

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Choose a character to work with. In the room, somewhere in the distance, or even entering the room, picture your character. Visualize the character in the midst of some activity. You may see the character make an everyday gesture of gripping onto something for example, or the character with a child in their arms, or you may picture an actual object that the character desires: a house, the flag of their home country, a wedding ring. Try to perceive what the character is aiming at; can you sense a desire, or a wish? Begin to create a PG that embodies that desire. The character with a child might become an archetypal gesture of reaching out, for example, or an embrace, arms cupping an invisible figure. In fact, Chekhov insists that the very act of imagining, or to imagine creatively means ‘to do gestures in our imagination’ (MC/S1/10/2, 7 February 1938). Choose a joyful piece of text and explore a contrasting inner PG. A servant who has many practical tasks to accomplish in a short period of time might work physically in a quick, light tempo, while internally she is slowly contracting with resentment at her subservient role. Or invent a quick, grasping gesture but make your outer behaviour slow and calm. Read a short speech and allow three words to draw your attention. Create a psychological gesture for each word, with an accompanying tempo and quality. Choose one of the PGs, execute it physically and then imaginatively, and then play the scene with the gesture as a stimulus. Explore the same with the other two PGs/words and see if any of them bring you to a deeper understanding of the scene. If one does, rework that PG focused more precisely on the scene. Take one line of poetry and try to convey it with a PG (LT, 63). Execute an archetypal gesture of lifting, first of all with the arms extending upward with a clear and strong quality. Receive its

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resonance and then make it in your imagination only; improvise, follow your impulses, speak a short text. Then return to the PG and make the following adjustment to it: spread the fingers apart as you lift. Improvise and follow your impulses as before, but notice the psychological shift from this physical nuance. Return again to the PG and try it with weak wrists, then with fists clenched, then with fists clenched and bowing your head. Receive the nuance of each and follow impulses under their influence (AIT, 132). Repeat each version at different speeds. ll

Receive and listen to a short speech or scene read aloud. Once complete, create a PG spontaneously in response and repeat it three times. Play through the scene silently, listening for strong impulses to move or take action. At the end, recreate a PG, making any necessary adjustments. Then play the scene again, now speaking the text. Again, at the end revisit the gesture; alter and refine it according to your discoveries.

21 SUBJECTIVE ATMOSPHERE1 ‘[The character] walks, as it were, within this subjective atmosphere as in a cloud, as in an aura that surrounds him’ (DP, 100).

Imagine a bubble around you, 360 degrees, with roughly a forearm’s length of space between you and the edges of it. Think of it as your personal space and you are at the centre, inside it. Walk around the room keeping a sense of this space, allowing nothing or no one to cross into it. Then imagine it is filled with the smell of fresh, blooming roses. The whole bubble is filled with this smell, in front, above, below, behind, left and right. Breathe it in with the whole body, imagining that the smell falls upon your skin like a gentle ‘rain’ (HA, 80). Notice any sensations you have in response. Then expand the bubble to fill the entire room so that now the whole room around you is filled with this smell with you at its epicentre. Spend a moment receiving the grandeur of the situation. Then, in a sudden release, imagine the bubble contracts to cling tightly to your skin as an additional, second layer of skin. Underneath it, all the qualities of the roses are vibrating: think of your skin glowing and permeated with them.2 Now begin to execute simple tasks, and follow any impulses you have. Strive to keep your actions straightforward and clear. Resist ‘smelling’

You can read about individual atmosphere in DP, 99–107; TA, 134; TOA, 26–42; LP, 52; AA, 2:3; HA, 78–82; RS, 180–6. 2 This was taught to me by Mel Shrawder, Michael Chekhov Acting Studio (New York, 2010). 1

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actions and if you are working with others, talk little and refrain from referring to the smell or the roses; it is simply there, a fragrance that emanates with you wherever you go and that subtly influences your behaviour. Notice the rhythm it evokes and what catches your interest. Are you open to the world, or do you feel confident? What kind of a person is this? Experiment speaking a line or two. Then gradually imagine there is a hole in the bubble and that the fragrance slowly drains away. Now dissolve the image of the bubble itself. We come now to the tool of subjective atmosphere, also referred to as individual or personal atmosphere. Similar to a cartoon sketch of a character with an ever-present rain cloud hanging over his head, it defines the impression a person makes and the kind of aura they exude. Again, Chekhov invites us to observe people in daily life to appreciate how personal atmosphere is a natural phenomenon (DP, 101); someone who has experienced personal loss can radiate a strong ‘broken’ atmosphere of despair and in our language we speak of someone being like a ray of sunshine. The personal atmosphere of Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative prime minister from 1979 to 1990, was encapsulated in her nickname, ‘the iron lady’. She radiated an impression of implacable ruthlessness, and an emotionally detached, steely pragmatism. Oprah Winfrey, the American actress and presenter, projects an atmosphere of confident exuberance, tinted with a glow of stardom and ease in the limelight. An individual’s aura can be strong or weak, positive or negative, and part of our job as artists is to cultivate what Chekhov calls ‘an almost radiological ability’ to define the individual atmosphere that surrounds a character and emit it (DP, 101). Indeed, Chekhov believes it is part of what make us human and he emphasizes that ‘to kill an atmosphere which surrounds an individual is impossible’ (LP, 52). Life circumstances, personality, world outlook all contribute to an individual’s subjective atmosphere.

Defining the character’s subjective atmosphere Chekhov invites us to start by defining ‘the general and most characteristic quality for the part’ (TA, 135). What are the adjectives that

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spring to mind: ‘pleasant or unpleasant, sympathetic or antipathetic, tragic, happy, dull, aggressive, dangerous, mysterious, pessimistic, optimistic, loving, hateful?’ (DP, 100). Do you see the character smiling and curious, or preoccupied and miserable? Does she have a bright, expansive energy or a muted, contracted energy? Is she a force for good, or the opposite? Is she light-hearted or serious? Chekhov names Falstaff’s qualities as ‘mischief and cowardliness’, for example, Don Quixote’s as ‘ease combined with those of romanticism and courage’, and those of Hamlet as ‘penetrating, prying and thoughtful’ (TA, 135). I find it helpful to imagine the impact of the character’s first appearance either walking into the room or onstage and to find one appropriate adjective to describe them (e.g. ‘she is so … confident, sunny, downto-earth, efficient, focused, or ambitious’). Daniel Day Lewis as Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting in Gangs of New York and Judi Dench as Barbara Covett in Notes on a Scandal, for example, emanate, respectively, in their introductory shots an atmosphere of cold-blooded callousness and calculating self-interest.3 Both figures convey in a flash a whole world beyond the scenes they play: we sense immediately that they are untrustworthy and unpredictable. Even though the audience may never see the rest of a character’s life, they must sense it and believe that it is there.4 As an additional method of sensing how the character shrouds herself, Chekhov also suggests that we ask if the character is hiding something from other characters and if so, what and by which means (DP, 104). Once we have identified the character’s predominant quality in this way, there are two specific ways to proceed to create the character’s aura: the first is to work with the adjective as a quality of movement, and the second is to translate the adjective into an individual atmosphere.

Gangs of New York was released in 2002, directed by Martin Scorsese, and based on the book of the same name by Herbert Asbury (1927). Notes on a Scandal was released in 2006, directed by Richard Eyre, and based on the book by Zoë Heller (2003), screenplay by Patrick Marber. 4 This ability to provide an instant, in-depth snapshot of the character was a skill Chekhov admired in the actors of the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, in particular Varlamov or Davydov: ‘I and every member of the audience with me, were in some incomprehensible fashion suddenly able to divine the entire life and fate of the character they were portraying. Without even a single word being uttered on stage’ (LE, 15; Leach and Borovsky 1999, 236). 3

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Creating a personal atmosphere Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing is full of sharp wit, playful banter and she exudes a sparkling individuality. We could work with a quality of sharp, sparkly playfulness in exactly the same way we worked with the four qualities of movement. We imagine the air around us is filled with this quality and as we do so, we begin to move the body in broad, free movements, listening to the sensation that moving this way provokes. We note the natural tempo of this quality – slow or quick – and whether it has a regular rhythmic dynamic or rather something more erratic and unpredictable. We can progress to everyday movements, instilling them with the same quality. Then we can begin to try speaking short sections of the character’s text under the influence of this quality. Visiting the quality in this way daily for ten minutes allows the sensation to take hold so that over time, when we step into Beatrice’s scenes, we are filled with her qualities and their tempo. We shouldn’t have to think about them, or add them on; with steady practice, they will percolate down into our blood stream, so to speak, and radiate out as an atmosphere. Alternatively, we can translate our adjectives into an image, sound, smell or sensation and fill our imaginary bubble with it. For Beatrice, we might imagine the bubble around us filled with the image of amber sparks flying, accompanied by the sound of their crackle and fizz. By contrast, I might say of Cate in Blasted that she is serious, sincere and vulnerable and fill her bubble with the sensation of grey, airless space, whereas for Ian, whom we might describe as cynical and coarse, we could work with the sound of a ticking bomb, the roar of a football crowd chanting in a stadium or the sound of striking a metal bar against a railing at irregular intervals. Chekhov imagined Malvolio in Twelfth Night (First Studio, 1917) caught in ‘a swamp of eroticism’ (DR, 8). Most of us respond strongest to smells or images, but it is worth exploring all the senses. Petit proposes identifying personal atmosphere as one of four tastes: we can consider the character as bitter, sweet, sour or salty and locate these qualities on the sides of the tongue, or tip, back and middle, respectively (HA, 80). Starting with the tongue as the epicentre, the personal bubble is filled with a taste. Other actors find sound the most potent of all. Callow told me how when he was playing Pozzo in Waiting for Godot he was inspired by Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony: ‘There is a terrible scherzo with shrieking clarinets

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and the strings just chugging away, a sort of nightmare music that I filled myself with.’5 To play Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, Callow learnt the overture of ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ by heart so that it ‘was always inside me somewhere’.6 For Callow, music gives ‘a fundamental pulse, sense, rhythm and a whole, because there is a whole world of sensation in music’. Indeed, Chekhov also refers to personal atmosphere as ‘hovering’ around a character ‘like an overtone does in music’ (LE, 15). Whatever we decide to work with, be it image, sound, quality, sensation, smell or taste, subjective atmosphere is a kind of palette with which we colour our character. It is a way of housing all the elements of a character’s life into a full-bodied ‘complexion’, if you like, or second skin, what Chekhov calls a personal ‘cloud’ (DP, 100) or ‘atmospheric cloak’ (DP, 104). Personal atmospheres often intuitively present themselves as we immerse in the world of the character; run with any initial hunches that arise.

Subjective atmospheres and playing moments Even though subjective atmosphere, like all the character tools in Part Three, is predominantly used as a constant for the character throughout the whole play, we can also choose to work with it for significant shifts, or, as Chekhov explains, ‘It is with him only during certain sections of the play and is replaced by another when and if the character changes for better or worse in the crucible of the plot’ (DP, 100). Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing might work with one of secret joy from the moment he believes that Beatrice loves him, translated into an image of the sun very slightly peeping out from behind the horizon, perhaps. When Hank’s confidence is shattered in Breaking Bad, his personal atmosphere of wise-cracking, friendly machismo shifts to one of sharp, bitter cynicism; his atmospheric ‘cloud’ transforms from sun to rain,

Interview with Simon Callow. All further references in this chapter are to this interview. The production was at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London in 2009, directed by Sean Mathias, also starring Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and Ronald Pickup. 6 The production was at the National Theatre, London in 1979, directed by Peter Hall, also starring Paul Scofield and Felicity Kendal. 5

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so to speak. Such transformations require sensitivity so that they do not completely undermine a plausible consistency and coherence in the character overall, but as we have discussed, characters and people do contradict themselves so it is a question of finding the right balance. We can also use subjective atmosphere for an isolated moment. Egolf chose a personal atmosphere of warm honey dripping all around Blanche for the moments when she was drunk.7 Shrawder suggests that Stella returning home to Stanley’s late card game might radiate a personal atmosphere of the crisp white napkins and the ring of the crystal glasses of the restaurant she visited with Blanche;8 where the sisters have just come from and the polarity between a refined, feminine civilization and the more tawdry realm of a drunken male poker game is dramatically evoked. In this way, we can use personal atmosphere as preparation for an entrance on stage to suggest the character’s immediate previous circumstances. More generally, it is very effective to activate your chosen aura in a warm-up, or to read the play the morning of a performance from within it. However, we must be sparing when employing the atmosphere for isolated moments. Rather than conveying a specific frame of mind or emotional ‘note’ in the play, subjective atmosphere works best when it deals with a character’s personality at large, and houses broader ideas such as her overall disposition, outlook on life and moral compass. An optimist can feel sad or discouraged; a villain, joy and hope. Chekhov describes how Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s mood in Twelfth Night fluctuates incessantly, but he still emanates ‘his own atmosphere of emptiness, stupidity and light-headedness’ (AA, 2:3). Petit reminds us that ‘a person with a sweet personal atmosphere can become glum, or angry, or sad, and still have a sweet filter surrounding him’ (HA, 80). It is the difference between a person being in a bad mood as opposed to someone who ‘carries a bad atmosphere with him’ (AA, 2:3). Mood is temporary whereas individual atmosphere is largely permanent; one is experienced by the character, the other is in or radiated consistently by the character. The specific personal atmospheres of each character can all coexist simultaneously. Within the rowdy atmosphere of a noisy bar, Interview 1 with Gretchen Egolf. Micha workshop (Emerson, Boston, USA, 2010).

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an example of an objective atmosphere which we will discuss in the following chapter, there can be many individuals all radiating their own subjective aura. They are all influenced by the place, but they bring to bear distinctive personalities, experiences and points of view in response to it. This is worth consideration when constructing crowd scenes on stage or set. The less we think of a crowd as a generalized mass of people, and more as a body of distinctive individuals with their own characteristics, the more convincing it will be. Chekhov insists that we are completely free to choose any personal atmosphere that inspires us; if we are fully convinced by it, then the chances are high that the director will be too. However, we must inhabit it regularly on our own outside rehearsals so that it becomes second nature, without the need to conjure it consciously. When we come to perform a scene, our whole attention must be given to our partners, receiving them and coming into the present moment of the situation; we do not remain lost in our own bubble, so to speak. Chekhov insists that ‘when you rehearse these elements separately you feed your subconscious and all you have to do is trust in them’ (AA, 2:4).

Further exercises ll

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Bring to mind the picture of someone you admire, living or dead, unknown or famous. What is the immediate impression you have of that person? Complete the following sentence with one adjective to describe their impact: ‘she is so…’ Now visualize a character; what is the first impression she makes? Conjure your personal bubble. Close your eyes and imagine it is filled with lots of coloured balloons floating upwards. Receive the image. Once you have a picture, open your eyes and walk slowly through the room with this bubble around you. Then expand the bubble to fill the whole room with many more balloons. Then imagine this bubble snaps and contracts to become a second skin. Follow your impulses, improvise, speak a short text. After about fifteen minutes, allow the image to drain out of the bubble and let the bubble itself dissolve. Repeat, experimenting with the following images: soft falling rain, dust, the colour navy-blue, twisted barbed wire, tiny,

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floating feathers. Choose your own images; note that the images may be static or in movement. ll

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Repeat the above steps filling your bubble with a texture or sensation: the texture of sandpaper, the touch of cool marble, cat’s fur, silk or velvet, the sting of being sprayed with freezing water, the sensation of the scorching midday sun beating down on your back, the sensation of a breeze on the skin. Invent your own. Repeat filling your bubble with a sound: a persistent car alarm, a high-pitched violin note, the sound of applause, a melody that you love or dislike, the flick of a sharp knife, a whip cracking, a mosquito buzzing. Repeat with a smell: that of leather burning, warm cinnamon rolls, freshly baked bread, rotting, mouldy bread, mahogany wood, a blown-out match, cigarette smoke, garlic frying. Imagine a personal atmosphere of bitter cynicism. Imagine the air around you is filled with this quality and begin to move the body in broad, free movements, listening to the sensation. Note the natural tempo of this quality and whether its dynamic is rhythmic or irregular. Progress to everyday movements and try speaking a few lines. Then try to translate this bitter cynicism into an image, a sound, a smell or a texture and fill the bubble with it.

22 OBJECTIVE ATMOSPHERE1 ‘There is nothing in the whole world without atmosphere’ (DR, 60).

Picture a train station during rush hour on a weekday. Focusing on the overall picture without entering into too much detail, try to get a feel for this place. What kind of lighting is here: natural, bright or harsh? Is the architecture of the space well designed or are the elements haphazardly constructed with cheap materials? Is the ceiling low or high and are the aisles spacious or cramped? What sounds can you hear; are there announcements? After a few moments, slowly dissolve that image and conjure another: a hospital ward full of patients. Once again, note the light, the level of activity, the noise levels, architecture and function of this place. How is this atmosphere different? Then, delineate a performance area in the room by using a chair or ball to mark each corner of a large square. Outside the area is offstage, inside is onstage.2 Stand outside the playing area and see the whole space as it actually is: the actual light in the room, the ceiling and the floor. Then slowly in your imagination try to transform this space into

You can study more about atmosphere in TA, 47–62, 195–200; TOA, 26–36; LP, 28, 37–8, 51, 56, 97–100; LT, 68–74; AA, 2:3; HA, 81–4; MCT, 3:11; PT, 294, 308–9. In the second part of To the Director and Playwright, Charles Leonard has collated notes detailing Chekhov’s choice of atmospheres for an American production of Gogol’s The Inspector General he directed with the Actor’s Lab in Hollywood in 1946 (DP, 111). 2 I was taught this way of working with atmosphere by Sarah Kane. 1

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that of a Gothic cathedral. Imagine it at dusk, in the deep winter, and that it is completely empty. Allow an image to emerge; notice the quality of the light, temperature and the feeling that is in the air. Above all, pay attention to the atmosphere that this place evokes. Then walk across the threshold into the square and receive the atmosphere from inside it now.3 Breathe it in with all your senses in a 360-degree direction. For the moment, do nothing other than walk gently through the playing area and receive your impressions. You can pause at any time. Notice if the air is cool or warm and if you can sense it move in any particular direction: you may feel it rise upwards or close into a high arch above or you may feel it make contact with a particular part of your skin. Is there a particular colour or quality to the light and can you sense a tempo or rhythm here? You may only experience one of these aspects, if at all. After about five to ten minutes, exit the playing space to return to the threshold and radiate back into the area all the sensations you received from it. Now enter once more and move in harmony with the atmosphere. Ask yourself, if this atmosphere were to move and make sound, how would it do this? Prepare nothing in advance; just step in and respond. Use broad, full-bodied movement; there is nothing naturalistic here. Move as if you are the atmosphere itself and that you and it are one thing. Tune in particularly to the rhythm and imbue your movement with its dynamic. Work three-dimensionally, shifting levels and taking up space with the body: surrender completely to it. Allow the movement and sound to evolve rather than become fixed in one invariable energy. Explore this for a few minutes and for the last thirty seconds take this atmosphere to an extreme. Then exit across the threshold. Offstage, facing towards the playing area, summarize the atmosphere in a large, archetypal full-bodied gesture, articulating an abstract sound with it also if that feels organic. Radiate its power into the playing area. Kane divides this stage into two: a preliminary stage where you walk into the atmosphere as yourself, receive it, and exit, and a second stage where you walk in as an actor. I tend not to separate these stages out; when I teach atmospheres for the first time, we only step in as ourselves and when working with them in rehearsal, I always ask the actors to step in as the character within their immediate given circumstances. 3

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Repeat it three times, then execute it in your imagination only. Now enter the performance area in a completely natural way, as a human being. Let the atmosphere influence you entirely. Focus on what it inspires you to do, how to behave and inhabit the space: do you find yourself retreating, drawn towards the periphery, or the centre, or moving quickly? Does it inspire you to look around, or to look out or to become withdrawn? Notice the tempo it motivates and the types of gestures you find yourself making. Test out speaking a line or two. Listen to the atmosphere and allow it to do all the work. After some time, exit, return to the threshold and dissolve the atmosphere. This is the world of objective atmosphere. Whereas subjective atmosphere ‘moves everywhere with its character’ (DP, 100) wherever he goes and whatever he does, objective atmosphere ‘remains fixed with its scene or event’ (DP, 100). A character’s individual atmosphere is largely constant whereas the objective atmosphere changes according to what occurs at given moments in the drama. Subjective atmosphere belongs to an individual whereas objective atmosphere belongs to a place and situation which often has several people in it. Subjective atmosphere comes from within a character whereas objective atmosphere is approached as something born outside the character. Objective atmosphere also describes the emotional landscape of a scene, a play or any piece of art. Chekhov describes it as ‘its heart, its feeling soul’ (TA, 53, Chekhov’s emphasis) and ‘just as the heart is absolutely necessary for the human being, the atmosphere is necessary for the performance because it is the heart of the performance’ (LT, 71). If, for example, we walk into a room where two people have been arguing, we can feel the air ‘thick’ with the event that has just taken place. We speak of ‘cutting the atmosphere with a knife’ and there being ‘something in the air’. Atmosphere ‘hangs’ in the air, so to speak, as an invisible aura or felt sense that envelops everything within it, ‘an indescribable thing which is there and not there’ (AIT, 205). Chamberlain puts it succinctly: ‘we don’t see atmospheres any more than we see the air or the wind, but we feel them and they affect how we behave’ (MC, 53). When we consciously cultivate atmospheres as actors, we become aware that there is something between us, rather than pure emptiness or dead space. Chekhov describes it as ‘giving’ us the air and space around us,

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a process of rendering the intangible tangible (DR, 59). When we endow the air around us with specific qualities, the environment becomes vital and psychologically rich. Atmosphere also unifies performers and audience in one world.

Time, place, event Above, we began with the atmosphere of a specific place because a train station and a cathedral have palpable ambiences. Ultimately, within scenes, we are trying to access the feeling around the situation our characters find themselves in. This is born not only out of the location but as much from the characters, their circumstances and what happens between them. So in spite of its ineffable quality, the idea of atmosphere is rooted in the concrete, physical world: in place, time and events. For Chekhov, every phenomenon, event and place has its atmosphere, ‘every landscape, every street, house, room; a library, a hospital, a cathedral, a noisy restaurant, a museum’ (TA, 48). The atmosphere of a school playground is very different from a maternity unit, a theatre foyer on opening night or an exam hall. When he returned from Moscow to his hometown, St Petersburg, to perform as a young actor, Chekhov describes how ‘the fairy-tale, unreal atmosphere’ of the city captured his imagination as much as when he had been a child (DR, 50). The architecture, geographical situation, culture, size, light, quality of the air and noise all constitute a city’s atmosphere and affect the lives of the people who live in it. In addition to place, atmosphere is determined by time. ‘Morning, noon, twilight, night; spring, summer, fall, winter’ (TA, 48) all affect the atmosphere of a place. In our daily lives, we are always in a particular place at a precise time of day in a certain season with specific weather and this affects both our mood and our behaviour. Above, we imagined a Gothic cathedral at dusk but it would be different in the summer at dawn or crowded with tourists. Picture the top of a mountain range somewhere such as the Canadian Rocky Mountains at ten o’clock in the morning in mid-July; the air is most likely to be cool and crisp, the sun high, the day unfolding, an uplifting atmosphere. In mid-November, at twilight, when it is snowing and windy, the same place might provoke discomfort, tension and the desire to depart. Environments become

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hostile or attractive to us according to these nuances and our emotional state adjusts in response to them. The third determinant of atmosphere are events. One of Chekhov’s examples is a street accident. If you and three friends were to walk happily along the street and then turn the corner to come upon a fatal car accident, you would all sense an atmosphere hovering around this event. You may be appalled and want to leave, one of your friends might be curious and eager to see the details, another might want to call the police while the fourth might be full of compassion. Your reactions may vary, but one atmosphere prevails and affects you all, albeit in different ways.4 Our earlier example of the argument is also an event. Consider, too, the announcement of someone’s death in the midst of a party for example, or a gun going off outside in the midst of a family breakfast; both occurrences might change the mood dramatically. Neither does the atmosphere belong to any one of you in the situation, not even the victim or the person who caused the accident. It is a result of the event, a consequence of this particular set of circumstances and has its own life. Indeed, for Chekhov, the defining characteristic of objective atmosphere is that it ‘exists independently’, that ‘the atmosphere of disaster is independent of the disaster’ (LT, 73, 70). It is as if the event releases a chemical reaction into the air, an atmospheric vapour that pervades every part of the environment. The resultant ambience is outside us and while we cannot see it, we feel it. We may have been part of the situation that gave rise to it, but once released, it has its own dynamic which we no longer control. Chekhov describes it as ‘an objective presence like a human being’ (LT, 73). The best way to cultivate sensitivity to atmosphere is to begin to pay attention to them in life. Chekhov complains that all too often ‘we pass through atmospheres without being affected by them’ (MC/SI/10, 29 January 1942) when in fact we are surrounded by them. Our job as artists, he insists, is to ‘think of space in a new way’, as ‘a reservoir for atmosphere’ and ‘to understand the atmosphere of everything’ (LT, 73). Indeed, he attributes the idea of studying atmospheres to ‘the great humanist’, Stanislavsky, and celebrates how ‘many productions

Chekhov explains that ‘an atheist can maintain his sceptical feelings in an atmosphere of religious awe, or a man in grief can still carry his sorrow in his soul when entering an atmosphere of gaiety and happiness’ (TA, 51). 4

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in the Moscow Art Theatre were conceived and interpreted through atmospheres’ (DP, 46; TA, 134). Chekhov goes so far as to say that all our art must radiate atmosphere if we are to avoid ‘death’, ‘becoming a machine’ or ‘a galvanised corpse’ (TA, 54; MC/SI/10, 5 September 1939). What is at stake, for Chekhov, is nothing less than the artistic version of life or death.

Determining atmosphere The investigation of atmosphere finds its natural place in the early period of a creative process and Chekhov points out that often artists are already in touch with the atmosphere of their future creations long before they start concrete work on them (TA, 134). Our initial intuitive impressions when we read a play the first number of times sow the seed for grasping its atmosphere and, following these readings, it is good to note down and tease out what we think the overall atmosphere of the play is. The rehearsal period should also involve investigating the atmospheres of each specific scene early on before we have made too many decisions. Most commonly, a scene in a play starts in a particular atmosphere, a major event occurs and the atmosphere changes. Determining the opening atmosphere is key as it determines what the actual situation of the scene is. I like to think of it in filmic terms; what would the opening wide-screen shot of the scene look like, where the audience recognizes instantly the world and circumstances we are evoking, as well as the specific emotional flavour of the moment. As elsewhere, I begin with a slow, neutral reading of the scene, ideally with the actors listening to their text read aloud by others, so that the cast receives and actively visualizes the scene without excessive interpretation. I have found this consistently to be the most effective way of penetrating the text without it becoming too cerebral. It is an extension of our work on image and receiving whereby we try to ‘catch’ the atmospheres ‘without interfering’ with the natural process of the imagination (MC/SI/10, 17 February 1942). After reading, establish concretely the time, place and main event of the scene. In this sense, atmosphere is another way of activating the characters’ given circumstances; when we are really immersed in the

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givens, the atmosphere often becomes clear. Stage directions are also additional clues; while we may decide not to follow them to the letter, they nevertheless convey information about the tonality of the scene and should not be ignored. Discuss what you think the atmosphere is and then test the scene following the method described at the top of the chapter. After the last stage, I like to play the scene silently first in the atmosphere, and then follow this by reading and/or playing the scene. While it takes a little getting used to in order to understand the difference between miming and playing without words (we are aiming for the latter), when we play silently, we often find out how the scene operates, its dynamic, tempo, how it moves in space and whether characters are near or distant. It is easier for actors to listen to each other, as well as navigate and experience the structure of the scene with its main event. Remember that the atmosphere is around you and becomes the environment which works upon you; all you have to do is to react to it. Resist any temptation to ‘act’ it or show it: you are inside an atmosphere of ‘sorrow’ for example, rather than being sorrowful. You neither wallow in this sorrow, nor are you a slave to it; instead, you play in it. It is a twoway process of creating the atmosphere on the one hand and learning to be so open to it that it can inspire you, on the other; it means ‘to be very active and at the same time to be very passive’ (LT, 71). In Act II:ii of Macbeth, for example, the moment just after Macbeth has slain Duncan and returns, bloody daggers in hand, to the waiting Lady Macbeth, the objective atmosphere of the scene might be one of danger. Here, the event that determines the tone of that part of the scene is the murder of Duncan.5 They are in the courtyard, it is in the middle of the night, the castle is full of the king’s sleeping entourage. Lady Macbeth tries to calm the distraught Macbeth down for fear that people in the castle will wake up and her trepidation is heightened when she discovers that he has forgotten to leave the murder weapons at the scene of the crime. Their reactions to the situation are different, Macbeth loses all focus while Lady Macbeth takes control, but they are reacting, nevertheless, to the same stimulus. It is dark, they have done something terrible, the threat of being caught is imminent and they are Given that scenes in Shakespeare are often very long, they often require several different atmospheres. 5

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in a state of panic. The verse is broken and rapid; they whisper and jump in fright every time they hear a noise. If someone were to walk into that courtyard they, too, might feel the tension in the air. The objective atmosphere must hold true for all characters, rather than simply belonging to one of them. This is what distinguishes it from a subjective or personal atmosphere. Even though Hamlet in Act I:ii brings a brooding atmosphere of his own, and is completely at odds with the court’s celebration of the new king Claudius, the atmosphere does not belong to him. The objective atmosphere is one of jubilant ceremony, coronation, the ushering in of a new era and while Claudius may be nervous about establishing his credibility, Gertrude both happy about being with Claudius yet tense about Hamlet’s unhappiness, and Hamlet resentful about the new situation, the overall ambience remains determined by the public situation. Hamlet appears almost as a solemn figure in black and white against a backdrop of full technicolor, and the drama of the scene resides in this contradiction.

Naming the atmosphere Finding the right atmosphere involves trial and error. In my experience, finding the right, most precise description of the atmosphere is as important as the atmosphere itself, yet the process of discovering it is usually one of feeling your way. Often, when trying an atmosphere out for the first time, I will select several titles, and after experiencing one of them on our feet, it becomes a little clearer what feels right or wrong. We can also nuance the atmosphere with an adjective: an atmosphere of ‘anticipation’ might become one of ‘suppressed anticipation’ for example, if the scene isn’t unambiguously positive, or one of ‘hope’ might become ‘fragile, tentative hope’. In this case, I tend to explore full-blown anticipation or hope first, and then add the qualification as a second stage, just to ensure that we access the atmosphere’s foundational energy. Sometimes the atmosphere remains a mixture of several things. When I open up an atmosphere for the first time, I talk the actors through the givens, the situation at large, setting the scene before dropping in the key words of the atmosphere. Once inside the atmosphere, I encourage the actors to focus on the specific characteristics of the atmosphere, how it affects them physically and

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what it inspires them to do; this avoids the danger of wallowing in a generalized mood. Some of Chekhov’s examples of atmosphere for his production of The Inspector General include ‘on the alert’, ‘impending catastrophe’, ‘panic’, ‘despair’, ‘alarm’, ‘awe, reverence and contrition’, ‘happiness and gaiety’, ‘a rushing storm’, ‘pandemonium rising and receding’, ‘triumph’, ‘shock’, ‘shame and infamy’ (DP, 115). For Dostoevsky’s The Possessed at Dartington (1939), his suggestions include ‘fiery conspiracy’, ‘unsolved problems’, ‘real concrete chaos’, and ‘painful emptiness, separation, loneliness’ (MC/SI/10, 5 September 1939). Chekhov also sometimes describes a scene more extensively to access the atmosphere, such as ‘despondency, premonition, a danger behind the wall, conspiracy’ (DP, 115) as an example of one total atmosphere, and another as a ‘courtly, aesthetic, high-life kind of atmosphere: calmness in the highest degree, fine manners except when dealing with underlings, a quality of Mozartian music’ (DP, 181, The Inspector General). Again, as we saw with subjective atmosphere, Chekhov returns to musical motifs. Act IV of The Inspector General has an atmosphere of ‘a gay pastorale, a deft juggling act, Offenbach music’ (DP, 277) and another which is ‘more accent than atmosphere’ (DP, 201). Throughout, he adds the additional qualities of staccato and legato, and even an atmosphere of ‘staccato despair’ (DP, 195). This musicality brings with it dynamics and tempo, and so the script becomes a score onto which we graft a series of rhythmical notes. Whether working explicitly with a musical reference, or simply determining the temporal and rhythmical nuances of an atmosphere that is not specifically musical, Chekhov encouraged his students to draw an atmospherical graph or score of the scene or play they were working on,6 and in their scripts to write ‘tentative words’ for the atmospheres marking the places where atmospheres start and stop (DP, 115). You might also mark up your script with sketches of archetypal gestures that express and summarize the atmospheres. The Australian actor Guy Pearce, on the release of his film The Rover, described how when he investigates a film script, he reflects less on genre, and more on tone. For him, the nature of the writing, whether it

See PT, 227–31 for further sketches and graphs.

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is largely ironic or sincere, gives him what he calls ‘the level of reality’.7 I think this is also a helpful way to think of atmosphere, and indeed, the musical inflection of the word ‘tone’ is relevant here.8 We are to consider atmosphere as the emotional ‘key’ in which a scene is played, and early on in our work Chekhov insists that we must ‘listen to the future play, to the future performance as if to music’ (MC/SI/10, 17 February 1942). We ourselves are the instruments that play sensitively in the key.

Heightened atmospheres As well as tangible atmospheres that we find in real life, such as ‘jubilation’ or ‘tranquillity’, we can also explore surreal atmospheres which are of a more fantastic nature. Indeed, some actors respond much more readily to these kind of atmospheres. In The Possessed, Chekhov proposes a ‘small room without air/everything dies and dies/dirty green air/slippery cold walls/dirty green smoke’ and ‘an atmosphere of listening, seeing, hearing – everything greater than on the earth’ (MC/SI/10, 5 September 1939).9 Elsewhere, the atmosphere is one where ‘ghosts and strange spirits are flying – the furniture is moving towards you’, or ‘cold light, like needles in the air which tear us to pieces’, and ‘sharp metal disaster ... knives hanging over’ (MC/SI/10, 5 September 1939). We can also consider the physical location of our scene and enhance it with non-naturalistic elements for example, that the floor is tilting slightly, knocking us off balance, or that there is a crowd of people looking periodically through the windows, or that the ceiling is imperceptibly getting lower.10 When Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking and contemplating the metaphoric blood on her hands, she might imagine Interview with Guy Pearce by Damian Barr (Front Row, BBC Radio 4, 7 August 2014). This perspective might also help us contact the style of the work, as discussed in Chapter 4. Released in 2014, The Rover is a contemporary western set in the Australian outback, written and directed by David Michôd. 8 Chekhov praises the writing of Bely for its atmospheres imbued with ‘overtones and semitones’ (LE, 58). 9 For more examples, see Cornford 2012, 43. 10 The ‘as ifs’, used by Strasberg in the Method, echo these; for example, Strasberg proposed to Shelley Winters to imagine that the furniture was moving to create a sense of unease for the role of Dixie Evans in the 1955 film The Big Knife, based on the play by Clifford Odets and directed by Robert Aldrich. 7

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that the ground is covered with the murdered, rotting corpses Macbeth has slain. When Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches for the first time on the heath, we might create an atmosphere of electrical charge, a sort of otherworldliness at the edge of civilization and beyond the law. In scripts that contain supernatural elements, these hyperreal atmospheres help us to create extraordinary worlds. While unusual provocations can be stimulating, we need always to ensure that our choice is born out of the givens of the text and not imposed upon it. The function of atmosphere is to bring us to a deeper understanding of the situation so if it unifies all the actors in one world and activates everyone to bring the scene into sharp focus in a surprising yet justified manner, then we are probably on the right track. However, we need to train our ability to understand when an atmosphere, although it may activate us in a way that we find exciting, does not concretely help us to unlock the story of the scene and may, in Chekhov’s words, misrepresent its true content (TA, 49). While not a fantastic atmosphere, he cites ‘slight fear’ as an example of an incorrect atmosphere for the scene of Ophelia’s madness in Hamlet; a more appropriate choice to his mind is ‘one of profound tragedy and pain’ (TA, 49). We have to develop rigour and sensitivity. If in doubt, or new to atmosphere, begin with concrete choices and progress to the more fanciful.

Atmosphere and the senses I prefer to start work with a more orthodox atmosphere and from within it, tease out the imaginative and sensory elements it evokes. In an atmosphere of fear, we may imagine that there is a distant high-pitched tone that slowly draws near, or the deafening thud of a rapid heartbeat. It might be accompanied by the sensation of a wet clammy hand on the back of the neck, or simply the sensation of cold sweat in the armpits. When exploring an atmosphere of love, I once experienced a strong image of the flutter of a sail caught in a gust; another actor, in the same atmosphere, might hear or feel something instead, such as a cacophony of laughter, or intimate whispering. The whispering might be accompanied by the sense of a lover’s close breath and lips tickling the ear. Often, atmospheres will divide into one of

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two categories – expansive or contracted – and while we don’t have to analyse this, imagining body and air temperature roots the atmosphere firmly in body sensation. Within any one atmosphere, each actor can find their own sensorial key. In an atmosphere of ‘a girl’s hen night’ for example, which I explored in a student production of Much Ado about Nothing for the scene where Margaret and Beatrice dress Hero for her wedding (III:iv), one actor heard the sound of champagne popping and spilling while another sensed the pulse and sweaty heat of a raucous night club. We do not have to reveal our particular inspiration, nor do we have to use the same spur. We all can work collectively within the same atmosphere while preserving a freedom to find the richest personal response every time. If you are leading actors through an atmosphere, I suggest encouraging them to pay attention to sound, light, rhythm, temperature, texture, image without imposing any one particular stimulus. We can use improvisation within a certain atmosphere as a starting point to open up almost any aspect of our production and if you are devising, it can generate all kinds of material: dialogue, stories, design ideas. ‘Unless we create atmosphere’, Chekhov insists, ‘we cannot live in the world of creative illusion’ (AIT, 205).

Atmosphere and colour We discussed in Chapter 12 how colours can reveal archetypal gestures. Atmospheres also often evoke certain colour associations and given that ‘our theatre atmosphere is always full of colours’, Chekhov insists that ‘it is important to be very competent in colours, to love colours and to understand how to use them’ (LT, 76). Blue, for Chekhov, has devotional, thoughtful properties, while red is assertive, enlarging, aggressive and attacking;11 green ‘wants to be framed’, he states, while green–blue is balanced and yellow is limitless. Yellow and orange suggest the quality of evening time, whereas green evokes daylight. He goes on to say that white gives us ‘a feeling of light, great

Lecoq describes red as ‘explosive’, existing ‘in the powerful dynamic tension of the instant’ (Lecoq 2002, 49). 11

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quietness, peacefulness, and a certain kind of activity’ (AIT, 197; MC/S4/18/A, 15 March 1937).12 In this vein, Sarah Kane teaches colour as an atmosphere in itself, but I tend not to do this because in my experience responses to colour are largely subjective and working with them can often distract us from the unifying intention that an objective atmosphere offers. Kane also proposes reflecting on the polarities within a speech in terms of colour which I find much more effective: imagining the beginning and end of a character speech as two different colours and finding the intermediary point where one colour blends towards the other.13 This approach allows for individual interpretation. Colours can also emerge in response to an atmosphere. For the last scene of ‘Diary of a Madman’, Robert and I began by identifying the atmosphere as an ‘end of tether’ feeling, a desperate attempt to come up for air as Proprishchin struggles to cope in the mental asylum. Once Robert had played the scene in that atmosphere, he identified the journey of the scene as progressing from a burning, feverish red to a peaceful, loving, gentle blue. This trajectory expressed the atmosphere of the scene more completely for us. We named the latter atmosphere the ‘blue of belonging’ as it was associated with the search for home, peace, family, his mother, security and love. This blue was enshrined in the lighting design and was employed sparingly to evoke a remembrance of Proprishchin’s lost innocence (PT, 308). We can, and should, according to Chekhov, commandeer all the scenic elements (lights, sound, setting) to enhance and augment the atmospheres with which we are working.

Multiple atmospheres Just as it would be difficult to imagine a piece of music played in two different keys at the same time, the ‘rule’ of objective atmospheres is that two cannot coexist simultaneously. The key can change,

The lighting installations of the contemporary American artist James Turrell are a useful point of reference here in understanding atmosphere as an intangible colour and presence ‘in the air’. He creates atmospheres defined entirely by colour and light, what he calls a ‘sensing space’. See www.jamesturrell.com. 13 Michael Chekhov UK Studio (London, 2008). 12

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but at any given moment, one must prevail. For example, the objective atmosphere of a library might be one of studious peace and quiet; if a group of terrorists were to burst in, then either the terrorists dominate and transform the atmosphere to one of fearful panic or dangerous mayhem or the library occupants overpower them and convince them that this is a quiet place of study where they do not belong! It is possible for a character to transform the objective atmosphere if their arrival is a significant event, or if their personal atmosphere is particularly strong. Othello’s brooding fury dominates many scenes in the last two acts of the play. Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men is so frightening and single-minded that his presence almost invariably changes the ambience of any environment he walks into. By contrast, other characters remain firmly in their own world, often at odds with their environment. The eponymous hero of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck (1879) carries with him an impoverished, neurotic presence surrounded by a whirlwind of military posturing and ostentatious parades. Don John’s bitter, defeatist presence in Much Ado about Nothing provides stark contrast to the buoyant atmospheres of camaraderie, wit and love present throughout much of the play and Cate’s innocence prevails amid the final atmosphere of devastation in Blasted. More often than not, individual characters with their personal atmospheres coexist within a dissimilar objective atmosphere and dramatic tension and suspense arises from the clash and collision between the two.

Atmosphere in rehearsal As with many of Chekhov’s principles, we can think of atmosphere beyond the confines of our performance. Although he did not often direct the final performances, his teacher Sulerzhitsky’s presence and guidance in rehearsals at the Moscow Art Theatre Studio helped cultivate ‘an atmosphere that was subsequently very palpable to audiences’ (LE, 41). Rogers describes how at Dartington, ‘there was an atmosphere of total freedom, intellectual spiritual freedom’ (DY) and in Chekhov’s subsequent classes in Hollywood, Merlin recalls how ‘the playful atmosphere he established allowed us to move into areas

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of the unknown without fear of failing’ (PT, 284). When the Habima Theatre company performed in Berlin (1930) during Chekhov’s tenure there, he celebrated the ‘general atmosphere of intense, resolute activity about them’ (PA, 155) and went on to direct a successful production of Twelfth Night for the company in the same year.14 In Riga, rehearsing The Inspector General for the Latvian State Theatre (1932), Chekhov rediscovered with great pleasure ‘an atmosphere of reverential silence, concentration and love’ similar to that of his own theatre in Moscow (LE, 95).15 One of the central tenets in the Chekhov practice is to establish a difference between ordinary life and that of creative work. This has become crystallized in the exercise known as ‘crossing the threshold’, passed down over generations.16 By picturing an imaginary line on the floor of the rehearsal studio which you physically cross, you transition from the every day with all its preoccupations to a creative realm where anything might happen.17 This allows the creation of a ‘special atmosphere’ (DR, 93) in which productive work can begin. I also find that activating explicitly an atmosphere of freedom or possibility at the start of a rehearsal often establishes the necessary creative state. Inspiring atmospheres are consciously crafted, rather than simply given. Chekhov claims that atmosphere is ‘the best director. No director can suggest things which the atmosphere can’ (DR, 61). When the atmosphere of a scene is right, actors often know exactly what to do, without thinking or second guessing. The surprising freedom that ensues can be carried into our performances which Chekhov maintains will be different every night ‘because the atmosphere is the life, and the life is never the same’ (DR, 61). Atmosphere ‘enlarges our being’, Chekhov promises (PA, 139) because when we are successful in establishing it then all the rest of our work comes to meet it: ‘everything is there. It is one thing’ (AIT, 269).

The company was originally the Jewish theatre studio in Moscow directed by Vakhtangov from 1917. In 1926 they left Russia to tour Europe and America, and set up permanently in Tel Aviv in 1931. They are now known as the State Theatre of Israel (PA, 210). 15 Chekhov was invited by the director Viktor Gromov to perform in The Inspector General, Erik XIV, The Deluge and The Village of Stepanchikovo, an adaptation of the 1859 Dostoyevsky novel (DR, 66). 16 It was certainly taught at the 1980 Michael Chekhov Studio in New York. It is described at the end of this chapter. 17 See DR, 93; RS, 303; MC, 116. 14

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Atmosphere and the audience Just as the smoke of a fire will gradually rise and fill an entire room if left unchecked, so, too, will atmospheres travel beyond the invisible walls of the stage and reach the audience, if the actors radiate them powerfully enough. They are a kind of invisible, positive contamination, if you like, that ‘can exert a tremendous and lasting power over the cast and, ultimately, the audience’ (DP, 84). If we create a strong atmosphere on stage, the audience feels it. They are no longer ‘looking into a psychologically void space’ where each actor appears to perform in her own separate play (TA, 49). Instead, a strong bond is formed between spectator and actor, auditorium and stage where everyone is united in the same imaginative and emotional landscape. Chekhov warns that if we selfishly enjoy the atmosphere and keep it for ourselves, ‘it will immediately die out’ (DR, 61). By contrast, the more we radiate and give it to our audience, the stronger it will become.

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Crossing the threshold. Define an imaginary threshold on the floor: a circle or square. Stand on the edge of it. Imagine that the space beyond the threshold is one of freedom and creativity. Step into that space and let that atmosphere determine your approach to the day’s work, leaving your daily life and concerns behind. Look at the actual light in the room, both natural and artificial; notice how it falls on furniture and people. Imagine that this light is getting warmer until it is a warm golden light. Freidank suggests imagining that the gaze is completely unimpeded and that there is a sense of physical closeness. Imagine that you are almost touching someone far away from you physically and that you can feel the warmth of their skin. Improvise simple actions, and communicate with your partners if you have the impulse. Then gradually imagine that the light is getting cooler so that it becomes a very cold light. Here, imagine that your gaze reaches other people with difficulty, that it has to travel through something obscure such as ice to see the other person.

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If someone is close to you, imagine that they are physically far away. Improvise freely, noticing the difference. Again resist any temptation to act out feelings of cold or heat, or to reference the light. Gradually return to the actual light in the room (MCT, 3:11). ll

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Define the playing space and imagine it is the atmosphere of an intensive care unit in a hospital. Go through the steps described at the top of the chapter. If working alone, at the end, choose one sentence and try speaking it in harmony with the atmosphere (DP, 115). If you are working with others, you can do the final stage in short, silent duets. One person enters and behaves under the influence of the atmosphere. Then a second person enters and there is one moment of greeting or encounter between them. When an exchange has taken place (it may be immediate or take some time), the first person leaves and a third person enters and has an encounter with the second person. The second person leaves and a fourth enters, and so on. Focus on what the atmosphere inspires you to do, how to behave and inhabit the space. Resist playing any kind of scenario or character, particularly anything to do with a hospital; simply enter as yourselves in this atmosphere and respond to each other. Try not to plan anything. Repeat with other places: a supermarket, an airport, a public lavatory.18 Repeat with the following atmospheres: a school playground at lunchtime; last orders in a pub on payday; the arrival of a new puppy in the house; a disused warehouse; bitter defeat; first night/opening night; happy family reunion; preparations for a party; imminent departure; peace; tranquillity; suspicion; uncertainty. Now imagine the space is filled with dark, grey fog or mist. Resist ‘acting’ anything to do with weather and avoid referring to it. Repeat with mist or smoke of different colours. Now imagine the space is filled with the atmosphere of loneliness. As you explore the atmosphere in the stages described above, try to sense how the space moves within it and if there is a direction to it (HA, 169). Notice if you have a

This was taught to me by Sarah Kane.

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sensation of the space closing in on you from all sides. Can you feel the air or space act upon a particular part of the body? It may press in on the throat, heart and top area of the back or you may feel it forces the eyes to sink a little deeper into their sockets. In an atmosphere of longing, the space may stretch tentatively out and upwards; in an atmosphere of fear, the space might pull us tautly backwards. Note how it manifests for you and focus on this above all. ll

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Without defining the space, throw a ball to your partners in different atmospheres in quick succession. Notice how the game changes in each instance: tempo, distance, rhythm. Chekhov even suggests a ‘start-and-stop method of acquainting the players with the sensation of being in and out of the atmosphere; donning and doffing it instantly’ (DP, 117). Practise combining an atmosphere and a quality of movement. Some combinations are symbiotic, such as panic and a quality of flying, or tension and a quality of moulding. When a whole group works with the same quality it often conjures an atmosphere of its own.

23 EXTRAS The ghost exercise1 Choose a character. Close your eyes and invite a picture of him or her to appear in a place that is private and safe to them. Observe the nature of this space, (light, size and qualities) and invite the character to move around it in your imagination. Then from this location, visualize the character looking out through a window at some other landscape until she perceives something there: either a significant incident that happened to her in the past, or something that she hopes for and longs to see. It might be a key event like a marriage, funeral or fateful meeting, or it may just be the image of someone. Wait for it to manifest. Then as the character looks out, she suddenly senses that there is someone else in the room. Now, receive both your character and this new person. Visualize the newcomer making some kind of gesture towards your character, followed by whispering in the character’s ear. Try to ‘hear’ what the whispers entail and then observe the newcomer moving through this room. Continue to observe the relation between this figure and your character, shifting your perspective into a ‘wide shot’. Open your eyes and place the imaginary figure of the newcomer in the room somewhere. Slowly step into its imaginary body and embody it in the usual way. Improvise a while, executing the actions you saw this figure do in your imagination. After about ten minutes, step back out and allow the imaginary body to remain there as a fixed point. Move to a different location in the room and without giving it your

For more on the ghost exercise, see MCT, 3:12; RS, 251–6.

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attention, imagine it radiating towards you from its position. Begin to read or play a short text from your character freely while receiving this imaginary presence; note its influence upon you. Then dissolve the presence. If you are working with a partner, when you open your eyes, gradually begin to describe the newcomer, who is the ‘ghost’, to your partner in as much detail as you can. This time, rather than placing the ghost in the room or embodying it yourself, you are giving the ghost to your partner to play. Impart a sense of the energy and personal atmosphere of this figure as well as physical details. Your partner describes your image back to you and as they do so, they begin to inhabit gradually the qualities of that figure as an imaginary body. Offer adjustments and recommendations to your partner’s portrayal and fill in any missing details. Once immersed in the imaginary body of the ghost, your partner begins to improvise freely, acting on impulses received from this body, so to speak. You, in turn, begin to play from the perspective of your character and allow an improvised ‘scene’ between your character and the ghost to emerge, following its momentum. There may be very little speech, there may be a series of repeated phrases and actions or perhaps some of the whispered lines heard in your imagination are spoken; let it evolve organically. When this has taken hold, shift into playing a specific scene from the play with your actual scene partners. Your partner as the ghost continues to act as a physical presence, interfering, arguing and improvising yet invisible to everyone but yourself. She will talk in between or over the lines of the scene; while she may touch you or try to get your attention, just continue to try to play the scene normally. When the scene is over, the ghost leaves. Repeat the scene again, this time working with the ghost as an invisible presence only. When you reach the end, actively dissolve the image of the ghost. Although the ghost exercise was developed in recent years by Joanna Merlin and Ragnar Freidank rather than created by Chekhov himself, it combines several elements that belong in the Chekhov practice: imagination, imaginary body, archetypes and improvisation. It works with the idea of physicalizing ‘an imaginary presence as a motivational force’ within a character’s life (RS, 251).

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The ghost in question may embody the strongest hidden force at play within the life of a character, what Merlin calls ‘the driving force behind the character’ (RS, 251). It most often takes the form of a person and frequently is from the character’s past (dead or no longer in contact) who continues to have some sort of hold over them. Identifying what that is can help actors engage in a very active struggle to shake free of it or come into relationship with it. Merlin proposes the example of the actual ghost in Hamlet who, although real, ‘is the power behind Hamlet’s intention’ (MCT, 3:12). The ghost for Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard might be Grisha, her young son who drowned on the estate, prompting her departure to Paris. She is ‘haunted’ by his death; his memory overshadows her return to the orchard and offers a painful reminder that both the past she staunchly defends is soaked in tragedy, and that the future is equally precarious. The ghost could also be a younger or older version of the character. Merlin’s actress playing Arkadina that we discussed earlier worked ‘with the image of an old woman behind her, always pulling her back as she tried ‘to dazzle’ (PT, 291) while Othello’s ghost might be the image of himself as a young slave. Walter White’s ghost in Breaking Bad might be the image of himself as a young chemist, full of potential, on the brink of glittering, global success, yet cut off in his prime. The ghost might also be an object, place or act. For Ranevskaya, the image of the cherry orchard itself might hang over her. Freidank suggests that we might consider the city of Moscow as a ghost in Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1900), because although no one in the play goes to Moscow, it looms large in everyone’s imagination as an alternative utopia that they discuss endlessly (MCT, 3:12). In ‘Diary of a Madman’, we worked with the ghost as Proprishchin’s mother in the Russian countryside who, although mentioned only once in the story, brought up a feeling for Robert that Proprishchin had been abandoned or rejected by her in some way. In this sense, the ghost can be understood as an obstacle that holds characters in its grip and prevents them from moving forward with their life (RS, 251). If Merlin proposes that the ghost of his father is the driving force for Hamlet, Freidank adds that the ghost might also ‘make the character do things he might not want to do’ (MCT, 3:12), at least not consciously. For Freidank, the exercise echoes an essentially normal psychological process such as when we chastise ourselves for doing something

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foolish, for instance, or coax ourselves into doing something we do not want to do. He suggests that we are ‘possibly talking to someone who might not be alive anymore, but we keep that person in us … in our psyche’ (MCT, 3:12). It also may be a part of our psychology that is afraid or ashamed and when we transfer this to character, we externalize that aspect of our character’s psychology through the ghost to create a kind of actor’s ‘life support’ (MCT, 3:12). Whereas the imaginary body works with the image of the character we are playing, the ghost exercise works with the image of someone else, a shadow figure or energy that influences the character positively or negatively. We might think of it as a kind of superego or a voice in the head subtly dictating the choices the character makes. The exercise brings that presence to life to become a forceful undercurrent or subtext, propelling the character into action or becoming an obstacle to achieving their desires. While this new addition to Chekhov’s repertoire runs the risk of taking the technique into a more psychoanalytical terrain by privileging the darker pain or trauma present in the character’s life, I think it can be of value if we consider it in the realms of archetype, possessing existential rather than naturalistic properties. Let your imagination present the ghost rather than thinking it through logically. When improvising as the ghost, I suggest remaining as free and bold as possible so that we access its energetic drive or pulse.

Character biography or time line2 Clear a space between two opposite walls in the room and imagine that between them there is an invisible time line. Begin standing at one end of the room, a few steps away from the wall; close your eyes and imagine the character of Othello.3 Imagine Othello at the moment the play begins. See him in your imagination. Is he happy or sad, satisfied

I was taught this exercise by Mel Shrawder, Michael Chekhov Acting Studio (New York, 2010). 3 It is clearer to demonstrate this exercise with a specific character in mind so that you have a sense of the questions to ask. Substitute the character you are working on when you have an overview of how the exercise works. Allow the questions to be light and wait for images to appear rather than ‘think up’ answers. 2

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with life or dissatisfied? What has just happened before this moment that is affecting him? Is he thinking of the future or the past? Where is he and is he comfortable there? What are his associations with this place? Is he alone or with others? Notice how he feels about these others or about his solitude. Receiving the images, atmosphere and sensations that arise, begin to create a psychological gesture that expresses the totality of this moment in time for him. Pay particular attention to the quality of the gesture. Speak aloud any sound, words or sentences (either from the play or of your own invention) that occur to you to accompany the gesture. For Othello, he begins the play in an extraordinary situation. He is in a secret inn, the Saggitary, with the very young Desdemona, having just married her secretly in the middle of the night without her father’s consent. This is possibly the first time he has been alone with her or kissed her. Did he kiss her after they exchanged wedding vows? What were the vows they said to each other? Did he add anything of his own heritage or was it a strictly perfunctory affair, to be executed as quickly as possible? Where did the ceremony take place exactly, who conducted it and was Iago a witness? Were there any other witnesses? Did Othello give Desdemona the handkerchief love token here or before? Did he go himself to fetch Desdemona from her house, or did Iago do it? Othello knows the news of their marriage will soon filter out, and he must be in a state of adrenalin-fused delight and apprehension. While his sense of the immediate future might be filled with some trepidation (he is uncertain as to whether the Duke will override Desdemona’s father’s rejection of the marriage), he must have a sense of joy and excitement as he envisages a new future unfold. Nothing of this scene is described in the play so imagining the details of this private, intimate and stolen beginning for Othello is crucial to portray a sense of his huge, personal loss later. Then open your eyes and step forward to the moment when Iago first hints at the idea of Desdemona’s supposed infidelity with Cassio. Stop where you think this is along the timeline. Does he believe him? Has this thought ever crossed Othello’s mind before? Does he see Desdemona in all her magnificence and believe it all to be a lie? Is he afraid that he has made a huge mistake? Does he fear he has been

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set up by the court of Venice? What does he do to console himself? Is there somewhere he goes to find solace? Does he pray? Again, find the PG for this moment. Then step forward to the moment when he is standing above the sleeping Desdemona in her bed contemplating her murder. What is this bedroom like? What is its atmosphere? Are there any memories that arise in this moment? Has he decided that he will commit this act for certain or has he entered to determine whether he will actually do it? Does he long for her to confess her sin so that she might be saved? Is he indecisive, or resolute; is there a sense of cold feet? Does he sense Emilia’s presence lurking nearby and is he concerned that he will be disturbed? Is this the bed and bedroom where they consummated their love, the scene of a honeymoon? Desdemona may be naked. He kisses her and possibly smells the unique fragrance of her skin and its exceptional youthful softness. She may look perfect to him in her sleep, completely blameless. Is he overwhelmed with love for her? Despite his warrior-like status, is he afraid? Find the PG for this moment. Then step forward along the timeline until you are at the end of it, close to the opposite wall. This is the end of the play, the moment just before he commits suicide. He is still in their bedroom but he is surrounded by people, exposed as the murderer that he is. This bedroom is now a very public scene. Desdemona lies dead, Emilia lies stabbed by her husband Iago who she has revealed as a liar and traitor. Othello has lost everything. In this moment his whole life might flash before his eyes. Does he relive the conversations with Iago now in a new light? Does he ponder how he will go down in history as a villain and a dupe? What matters most to him in this moment? Is it the image of Desdemona’s fidelity and devotion? Create a PG for this moment. Staying in this place on the timeline, imagine that at this moment just before his death he is given a small box inside of which there is a significant object which sums up something of his life to him. Picture Othello opening the box and holding the object for a moment. Is it the love token he gave to Desdemona, or a lock of his mother’s hair treasured all this time, or a broken shackle that marked his freedom from slavery? Return the object to its imaginary box and express everything that it provokes in a PG.

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Then step all the way back along the invisible line to the beginning of the play where you started and experience it in the light of the end. Then take one step backwards from where you are. Keep your eyes closed. This is twenty-four hours before the play begins. What is Othello doing exactly, where is he and who is he with? Is he familiar with this place? What is the relationship between this moment and the beginning of the play a day later? What is his pervading sensation? Othello may be in the process of negotiating a priest to marry him in secret the next night. He may have to leave it this late in case the news is divulged. Does he meet with the priest or does Iago do it on his behalf? There may be bribery involved; if so, what is the nature of the transaction? How long in advance did Othello and Desdemona plan this elopement? Was it this moment that the details of the escape plan for Desdemona were divulged to her? If so, how where they divulged? Are Iago and Othello devising a back-up plan in case Desdemona doesn’t manage to escape from the house? Sensing into image, atmosphere and feeling begin to create a psychological gesture that expresses the whole of this moment. Then take another step back: this is ten years before the beginning of the play. Where is Othello? Is he already working in Venice for the Duke? Or has he been fighting for some other master? Does he know Iago and Cassio? Is he nurturing or training them, teaching them how to fight? If he is not with them, who is he with? Is his life at risk? What are his daily conditions of living? What does he eat? Does he have money? Is he beginning to make his name as a fighter? What is his ambition at this period in his life? Create a PG for this moment. Then step back even further until he was only ten years old. Where is he? Is he in captivity or is he is free; what is he doing? Does he have any family with him, or is he alone? Is he persecuted or happy? Does he have a sense of the future, any hopes or dreams? Is there anything he particularly loves to do such as play a particular game? Imagine he has one object here that he could not lose or let go of, what is it? Create a PG for this moment. Then from here, walk all the way to the end of the timeline just before his death. Have a sense of the polarity between these two points and the great emotional distance Othello travels. Then gradually move

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through all the points on the timeline again, visiting each point for a few moments to sense their relationship to each other. Revisit the gesture of each place. Then walk away from the time line and dissolve it. This exercise is an extension of Chekhov’s imagination work. It is an embodied way of charting through the biography of a character using imagination and psychological gesture. I think improvisation is helpful to explore key events in a character’s back story, but if a rehearsal process does not allow for it, this is a fertile way to create an experience of those moments on your own. The exercise is constructed as if working on an existing play, but it can easily be adapted to create material for a devised work. It works best early on in a process without having yet decided upon any of the answers in advance. It is helpful to do as a whole company with the director leading and asking the questions: the whole design team can observe the discoveries of each actor, providing visual snapshots of the character’s life story. We can create additions to the timeline as our rehearsals progress. In Othello’s case, other points we might want to imagine between the moments we have discussed above are when the Duke consents to his marriage, when he is reunited with Desdemona in Cyprus after fears of them all being shipwrecked at sea, when he sees what he considers to be the final proof of Desdemona’s guilt in the handkerchief and decides, on Iago’s suggestion, to kill her. Although I recommend doing this before you rehearse the scenes, it is still valuable to revisit once you have opened them up; it creates a healthy dialogue between your individual imaginative exploration and the practical discoveries in rehearsal with the director and scene partners. I tend to start at the beginning of the play, walk forward through it in sequence to the end, and then go back to the moments before the play begins, in that order, but you can also explore it out of sequence. As a light rule, I face forward in the direction of the end, and take steps backwards to return to previous moments and the beginning, so that I have a physical sensation of moving forward into the future and backwards into the past. I like to spend time receiving the beginning of the timeline (with my back to it) when standing at the end point and vice versa (standing facing the end from the beginning). Remember also that the pictures can be half-formed. We are aiming, above all, to have a felt sensation of each moment in time and to make

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them a reality for ourselves. It is not a test of scientific detail; over time, we can revisit, refine and flesh out if we so wish. Of course, we can create a biography of a character by just imagining, writing and making a collage of images, but working on our feet in this way over a sustained period and actually moving through time ensures that we are working in a full-bodied, intuitive way. This exercise can last from twenty-five minutes to one hour. It is good not to rush it.

CONCLUSION: THEATRE OF THE FUTURE ‘We shall raise ourselves – and with ourselves also the theatre – to a genuine creativity only when, like surgeons, we feel responsible for the life of our play, the life of our theatre’ (PA, 99, Chekhov’s emphasis).

Chekhov refers frequently to ‘the theatre of the future’, a notion derived from some sense of dissatisfaction with his profession in the present.1 In a lecture given at the New School in New York in 1935, Chekhov outlined systematically how actors and directors ‘of the future’ should work: through a complete immersion in an imaginative process. This involves receiving initial, intuitive impressions of the text as a whole and is followed by a process of developing detailed images of the play, incorporating those images until they become embedded within us and our performances. In fact, it is a description of the imaginary body exercise. For Chekhov, the quality of theatre now and in future depends above all upon the calibre and capacity of our imagination. This applies as much to directors, designers and playwrights as it does to actors. As Callow explains: ‘if you’re honest with your imagination, if you listen to its promptings and you allow your body to express them then you will create truth because the imagination never lies. It can’t by definition’.2

It is interesting to note that English actor, director and scenic designer, Edward Gordon Craig (1872–1966), also referred to the ‘theatre of the future’ in his seminal text, On the Art of the Theatre (1911) to describe his vision of a modernized theatre. Craig designed Stanislavsky’s seminal production of Hamlet at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912. 2 Interview with Simon Callow. 1

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If Chekhov offers us a methodical way to train the imagination on the one hand, he reminds us equally to stay in touch with a childlike impulse for creation and fantasy, on the other. He insists that ‘children do not react to the life that surrounds them with cold and calculating mentalities’ (MC/S1/12/B; 3/6/2, 22 September 1935);3 rather, they have the capacity to fall in love with an idea, a game, a proposition and immediately run with it. If we can harness our own daydreams, however primitive or far-fetched, and elaborate them systematically along bold, imaginative lines, then we might ‘soar artistically’ (TA, 159). Chekhov urges us to explore the fantastical and the archetypal as a means of regaining ‘the poetry around our art’ (LP, 139). He also compels us to raise our game and to do everything we can to make the theatre at large more ‘noble’ (LP, 26). Our theatre should transcend the ordinary into the extraordinary and when it does, ‘a marvellous thing’ happens (AIT, 204): actor and audience become fused in one shared reality.

Summary All Chekhov’s tools train the imagination in one way or another and taken as a whole, they prepare us to rise to his challenge articulated above. In Part One, we prepared the terrain. We began with the ideal centre as an imaginary energetic source in the centre of the chest. Its proximity to the heart means it is intended to connect us with a sense of empathy, opening us up to absorb impressions and sensations from our environment (people, places, things). Indeed, receptivity is a consequence of this practice, as well as increased stage presence. From here, we can begin to cultivate a connection with our ideal artist-self which the principles of the four brothers render concrete as psychophysical sensations in the body: ease breaks down our tensions and barriers, form crafts our compositional skills, beauty develops aesthetic awareness while a feeling of the whole cultivates a sense of purpose and connection to a bigger, guiding idea. Our concentration sharpens as these concepts crystallize in our experience and unhelpful This is a document entitled ‘The Theatre of the Future’ by Michael Chekhov, based on the same lecture by Chekhov, entitled ‘The Actor and the Theatre of Tomorrow’ given at the New School for Social Research, New York, 22 September 1935. 3

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psychological barriers (such as fear, distraction and judgemental criticism) fall away. Through a cumulative process of psychological spring-cleaning, if you like, we begin to come into contact with why we want to make art in the first place; through radiation and expansion, we communicate this to the world. Expansion also begins to teach us how to maximize our powers of expression, and together with the archetypal gesture of contraction, these lay the foundation for psychological gesture which activates our will. Expansion and contraction also bring the body into a specific relationship with space and as such are connected to the subsequent tools of qualities of movement, directions in space and the three sisters (floating, falling and balancing). The air around us becomes a collaborator: it expands or contracts around us, it resists, supports, sustains, carries the body or it travels forwards, backwards, up or down. We invest the air around us with imaginative properties (inspired by the natural world) and move the body in harmony with it. By taking our attention outside ourselves we awaken a response internally until there is an unbroken psychophysical continuum between the inner and outer life. With a supple, sensitive body-psychology, we can begin to activate the imagination in a more targeted fashion. Through the task of conjuring images consciously, and transforming them in our mind’s eye at will, our imagination grows stronger and more dexterous. Once we experience the organic vitality of images and the delicate balance between allowing an image to emerge and willing it actively to transform, we begin to access the spontaneous, improvisatory state. All the tools in Parts One and Two are a complete physical, emotional and psychological workout that gets us in shape for the act of creation. If Part One is cleaning out the system, Part Two is toning the muscles. While I like to think of the tools in Parts One and Two as a kind of progression, the character tools presented in Part Three may be explored more freely. This final part is about ‘taking off’, going the creative distance and reaching our full potential. Not simply is it the art of transforming into someone else through the multiple tools of imaginary body, imaginary centre, archetype, individual atmosphere and imaginative biography; Chekhovian transformation is, above all, about liberating our work from the shackles of our own personality and (often relatively narrow) world view. Our work is to open up a depth of empathetic understanding for experiences, cultures, writing that are

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unfamiliar to us and beyond our knowledge, rather than impose our personal perspective upon all that we encounter. Of course, we can never take ourselves out of the equation, but we can avoid starting with ourselves. The additional tools of psychological gesture and objective atmosphere, respectively, synthesize the work on the character as a whole, and bind actors and audience together in one world. I began this book by laying out Chekhov’s explicit concepts that underpin his work: creative individuality, higher ego and divided consciousness. I will end by discussing three further themes that are implicit in his approach and which I consider essential to his ideas on the theatre of the future: collective, interdisciplinary and independent practice.

Collective practice Working through Chekhov’s principles in their entirety leads us to an appreciation of the importance of the ensemble; it is an extension of the feeling of the whole. Chekhov cared deeply about the spirit in which we undertake creative work. He delighted in the fact that even in the difficult years of 1919–20 when Russia was in the grip of famine and civil war, his students in Moscow arrived to rehearsal after a ‘heavy day’ of work elsewhere to focus ‘as if with one mind; no one complained about the difficulties of life; … there was one life which everyone shared’ (PA, 83).4 Vakhtangov, too, in his Mansurov Studio, placed great importance on ‘all the little things of everyday life in the theatre’, in particular the atmosphere and etiquette backstage, contributing to ‘an atmosphere of great spiritual uplift’ (Simonov 1969, 72). These ideals of collective practice, interdependence and dedication were all explicit at the Moscow Art Theatre, where Stanislavsky asserted that ‘we all create together, we depend on each other’ (Stanislavski 2010, 555), and Chekhov carried them with him into his own practice.5

Chekhov set up the Chekhov Studio at his home in the period from 1918 to 1922 (PA, 77). Stanislavsky describes how ‘every member of the team must feel he is a “cog” in a large, complex machine’ (Stanislavski 2010, 554). Some of these ideas were inspired by Tolstoy’s idea of a united ‘brotherhood’ (Carnicke 2009, 140). It was precisely this approach to practice as much as the practice itself that inspired Harold Clurman and the American Group Theatre throughout the depression years (Carnicke 2009, 47). 4 5

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Chekhov’s aim for his students was that they would unite in a shared vision: to become the best artists they could be and make the best work possible. For Chekhov, this is made possible when a collective of actors work together as an ensemble and indeed, his ultimate aim at Dartington was to build a company that would continue to train together and tour their productions. He did manage to do this with some success when the studio moved to Connecticut in the United States, just before the outbreak of the Second World War, although world events meant that it was rather short-lived. In this respect, Chekhov’s project at Dartington was more than professional actor training; he was conceiving ‘the idea of a new theatre art’ (PA, 219), one ‘that is whole and alive in all its aspects’ (PA, 83), both in what it makes and how it is made. Of course, most of us do not have the luxury of working in a permanent company, and Chekhov would surely have lamented the demise of the repertory theatre system that offered so many actors an opportunity to develop their craft over a sustained period of time with the same group of artists. Yet, Chekhov insists that ensemble is as much a feeling, principle or approach to a project as a desirable model for making performance. No matter what the play, the circumstance, the company, the level of prestige, Chekhov’s demand is that we desist in perceiving ‘our fellow actors as mere accessories, which we need for our aims’ (PA, 99).6 He wishes to propel us out of a fixed, egocentred point of view into an enthusiastic commitment to the collective project at large, where in Sharp’s words, the work is ‘mutually owned in a collaborative space, inter-subjectively’ (PT, 320). On the opening day of his studio at Dartington, Chekhov stressed to his new students how important it was for an artist ‘to do everything with great pleasure and joy. You must be gay and serious at the same time’ (AIT, 1). This joy is about being together and creating together and it is imperative that actors ‘find the contact’ in any given situation, including a onceoff, half-day shoot on a television set (AIT, 72). Chekhov goes so far as to say that ‘the group feeling … is one of the most essential and

As early as 1923, in rehearsals for Hamlet at MAAT 2, Chekhov states that ‘if an actor lives egoistically, lives for himself, then this is already going to hinder our work significantly’ (PT, 266). 6

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inspiring things for us as actors’ (MC/S1/12, 12 April 1942);7 only then, he insists, will we be ‘capable of serving rather than being servile, of working rather than earning a living’ (PA, 83). He also adds that ‘it is one of the doors without which we will choke in loneliness in our profession’ (AIT, 72). These ideas were also shaped by Chekhov’s experience as a professional actor in exile, working in Europe and in the United States. At certain points in his life, he railed against what he perceived as ‘the complacent indifference of the theatrical world’ (PA, 90), a ‘me, me, me’ attitude with an emphasis on enjoying ‘oneself on the stage in the most egotistical and selfish way’ instead of ‘giving things’ (LP, 26). To some extent, he felt this degeneration was a direct result of some of the material conditions of production he encountered in these new places: rehearsal periods that are too short (five weeks on average as opposed to the extended periods of rehearsal he enjoyed in Russia), a box office that ‘begins to be an authority for us’, a star system where the lead is ‘an isolationist’ and an audience that is ‘not brave enough to have its own opinion’ (DR, 29–32). Such concerns, no doubt, remain as relevant as ever for many of us. Yet, in spite of everything, we can cultivate the ensemble feeling in our approach to the situation we find ourselves working within. As Kane puts it, Chekhov’s idea of the theatre of the future is ‘not this sort of idealised ensemble that’s going out and wowing the world. It is this kind of exchange, getting under the skin of a company somewhere … and just bringing about a different attitude’ (PT, 323).

Interdisciplinary practice Early in his career in exile in Berlin (1928–32), Chekhov writes that ‘it is impossible for me to stay in the theatre just as an actor who merely plays a number of roles, because I got over my infatuation with individual roles long ago’ (PA, 219). At Dartington, Chekhov wished the actors to focus on the production in its entirety and to understand how every element of theatre works. Hurst du Prey describes how they had to ‘design Chekhov echoes Stanislavsky here: ‘Weep and wail at home, but when you’re with others be warm; happy and pleasant. You must discipline yourselves to do this’ (Stanislavski 2010, 558). 7

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costumes, sets and lighting, create music and sound effects and direct’ (DR, 90), and Chekhov’s lessons, as we have discussed, extended to a consideration of colour, objects, costume and scenography.8 In addition to inviting resident playwrights to develop scripts in response to the actors’ work, Chekhov’s student actors also had to write plays, a desire that ‘was always paramount’ (DR, 90) in Chekhov, according to Hurst du Prey. Even when working on classical texts by dead writers, Chekhov asserted, as did Meyerhold, the liberty of the actor to edit, adapt, add to the script so that he felt he was ‘the author of the performance’ with ‘some rights to create freely’ (AIT, 38, 36).9 For Chekhov, ‘we aim to be actors and more than actors – artists’ (AIT, 1). Actors are not passive, deferential interpreters: we are creators in our own right, with the right to take a stand on what we are doing and saying. Chekhov is not proposing that actors replace writers, production or design teams, nor that our own craft becomes diluted in a ‘jack-ofall-trades’ soup or that no one takes charge; simply, we can become stronger collaborators – and actors – by practising writing, producing, designing and directing ourselves. At the very least, we learn to see our own work from a different perspective. At the very best, we create an environment of cross-fertilization, full of artists who can engage with each other’s disciplines adeptly in service of a collective vision. Also implicit in Chekhov’s project, borne out of his experiences with Stanislavsky and Vakhtangov, is the idea that directors must understand the actor’s process and craft. What I find striking about the dance profession is that more often than not, choreographers are dancers. It is almost unthinkable to imagine a choreographer who could not dance and did not learn their craft through dancing. And yet, in the recent English tradition of theatre-making, it is quite common to encounter directors who have done little or no acting per se and who found their specialization at a very early stage of their career. Of course, there are striking exceptions to this tendency, but often directors are encouraged to create a work less by drawing on the concrete experience of their See MC/S4/18/A, 15 March 1937. Chekhov continues: ‘I don’t want the actor to be forced by the author … it is too dry and slavish’ (AIT, 36). As Mel Gordon notes that when criticized for taking liberties with his portrayal of Kobe in The Wreck of the Ship ‘Hope’ by Herman Heijerman (1913, First Studio), Chekhov replied that ‘he went beyond the playwright and the play to find Kobe’s true character’ (Gordon 2010, 97). 8 9

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actors than by conceiving it on the model of a text or composition.10 For me, directing follows from acting and develops from acting; you have to participate in the creation of each part and each moment as well as manage the whole. Chekhov’s ideal director is knowledgeable about, has experience in and is passionate about acting. At the very least, she walks the ‘labyrinthian corridors’ of the actor’s creative imagination (TA, 124), considers it her shared responsibility to unlock actors’ freedom and establish rich conditions whereby they can expand their creative choices. Sharp describes in his own directorial process trying to ‘cease to dictate the flow and structure of the work and try to embrace something of the actor’s flow and self-direction’ (PT, 322). I also resist the division between the director who focuses on the entire vision and the actor who concentrates on the role. Rather, the more the actor is sensitive to and adjusts what she is doing in relation to the whole and the more the director imaginatively inhabits the psychology of the characters, the better the work will be. My interpretation of Chekhov’s theatre of the future sees characterization tackled vigorously as a collaborative creation between director and actor, a process that involves, in Callow’s words, ‘the director trusting the actors and the actors trusting themselves’.11

Independent practice Actors must also play their part, so to speak, in motivating and influencing a director’s choices. Even in minor roles on film and television sets, actors can start to appropriate creative command if we resist a tendency to work alone and respond only to direction. It is sometimes difficult to negotiate an active position in productions when you are not playing the lead part or you are not ‘established’, yet somehow we must activate the capacity to be something other than a passive receiver of instructions. Chekhov invites us to empower ourselves, have a point of view and take ownership of what we want to express, however small our role.

I discuss these ideas more fully in ‘Drama between Theatre and Dance’, a talk presented at Sadlers Wells Theatre (11 November 2013). For a full transcription, see http://www. sineadrushe.co.uk/talks-and-publications/ 11 Interview with Simon Callow. 10

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Sometimes the difficulty is that our own inspiration has dried up. Our practice is intended to give us the courage and clarity to acknowledge when our own performance or process is lacklustre, yet equally, ‘we must also be able to say it is good, and believe it’ (DR, 31). Egolf told me that she came to the Chekhov work because she realized that she was treading water artistically, that what she was doing ‘was good but not great’, and her encounter with it woke up the child in her and ‘put the art back into the business’.12 We can always take responsibility for the quality of our own contribution, regardless of the conditions of production. If our problem is one of not getting employment, Chekhov lays down the gauntlet here too. If there is no work, make it, he suggests. If you don’t like the work you are employed in or see, create an alternative, even if it means presenting work in a small room or café, without set or costume. Chekhov insists that if a group of actors ‘simply show this tremendous desire to overcome these difficulties … then I believe in everything’ (DR, 30). Chekhov’s theatre of the future depends upon the actor’s pioneering ‘strong spirit’ (DR, 30); through it, he maintains, ‘the actor will gain all the rights that the actor rightfully has, and will create the theatre that is worth creating’ (DR, 30). More importantly, the actor will take control of her own destiny and carve out her own artistic path. The key word in all this is practice. Chekhov’s technique is, above all, to be practised as a cumulative, embodied process and it will work best through regular repetition rather than applied as a quick fixer. This is why Dixon refers to it as an ‘approach’ rather than a technique because ‘when you approach something you actually have to look at it’ (PT, 317). Whether you are embarking on these tools for the first time or revisiting them through my perspective, I encourage you to stay in touch with the principles and ideals that embrace them. When we do, it touches a collective aspiration to work in a particular way and a theatre that is built on those terms offers a future worth investing in. There are few actors or artists who have not experienced the disempowering feelings of doubt and failure. It is part of any creative path yet it is rarely addressed explicitly, or given specific attention as

Interview 2 with Gretchen Egolf.

12

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a concrete aspect of practice to work on. Chekhov acknowledges the person in the midst of the work without it becoming personal and asserts that part of developing our talent involves ‘freeing it from the influences that hamper, occlude and frequently destroy it’ (TA, 157). As mentioned earlier, given that he himself suffered a breakdown and a creative, almost spiritual crisis, rescuing the actor from negative forces or ‘artistic suffocation’ is relevant and important (TA, 160). While his work is intended ultimately to develop our artistry, there is no doubt that his tools can aid personal transformation. At Dartington, Dorothy Elmhirst came to observe Chekhov’s classes every day (eventually joining in) and stated, ‘I hardly asked myself where I was going; I only knew that the work opened up new vistas of life for me’ (OC, 157). Chekhov’s work draws upon objective phenomena that are part of human experience and orients them to our creative advantage. By employing them consciously in our professional practice, they also benefit our everyday lives. Consequently, I would argue that there is a future for Chekhov’s work beyond the theatre itself – in education, group work, personal development, therapeutic settings and within organizational structures. Chekhov declared to his students at Dartington that ‘we are not working for ourselves personally and egotistically, but we are working to create a future culture which we may never see because it is so far away. But we must take this first step’ (AIT, 5). Whether we are stepping out for the first time or are seasoned travellers along the actor’s path, what matters is that we are moving towards an ideal. Chekhov’s theatre of the future is an invitation to grapple with his ideas and make them our own, as well as acknowledge whenever we have lost touch with their truth. It is a summons to take responsibility for ourselves and the vitality of our craft, as well as our creative relationship with colleagues, our profession and the audience. It is a bid for the primacy of the imagination, too, for asserting our artistic freedom, and for embracing risk and non-conformism. Above all, it is a call to actors to stand up and be counted, to gather our forces and ask ourselves how we are going to invent our future without waiting for someone to give it to us.

318 

CHRONOLOGY OF MICHAEL CHEKHOV’S CAREER Summary 1891–1928 Moscow Art Theatre and the First and Second Studios. 1928–35 Chekhov in exile in Europe. 1935–42 Michael Chekhov Studios in Dartington Hall, UK, and Connecticut, USA, including Michael Chekhov Studio Players on tour. 1942–55 Chekhov in Hollywood: acting, directing, teaching, writing.1

Chronology 1891 Born in St Petersburg to Alexander Chekhov, eldest brother of playwright Anton Chekhov. 1907–9 Trains at the Suvorin Drama School and performs with the Maly Theatre in St Petersburg. 1912 Joins First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre and begins to study with Sulerzhitsky and Vakhtangov. 1913 His father, an alcoholic, dies. 1914 Performance of Caleb Plummer in The Cricket on the Hearth, directed by Boris Sushkevich, is the First Studio’s greatest success, and brings Chekhov international attention. Marries Olga Konstantinova Knipper, his aunt’s niece. 1916 Sulerzhitsky dies. 1917 Bolshevik victory in Moscow. Plays Malvolio in Twelfth Night. 1918 His daughter, Ada, is born and Olga divorces him. Has been developing mental problems and takes a break from acting until 1920. 1919 Opens his own teaching studio in Moscow. 1920 His mother dies. This is Hurst du Prey’s summary (see MC/S9/2, Harvard Lecture, February 1991).

1

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Chronology of Michael Chekhov’s Career

1921 Performs lead role in Vakhtangov’s production of Erik XIV to great acclaim. Performs Khlestakov in Stanislavsky’s production of The Inspector General to great acclaim. 1922 Vakhtangov dies. Interest in the ideas of Rudolf Steiner begins. Acclaimed tour of Erik XIV to Riga, Revel, Wisenbad, Berlin and Prague. 1924 The First Studio is reconstituted as the Second Moscow Art Theatre (MAAT 2); named artistic director. Performs Hamlet, under collective direction. 1925 Plays Senator Ableukov in St. Petersburg, an adaptation of Andrey Bely’s novel, under collective direction. Experiments with Steiner’s Eurythmy in MAAT 2 classes. 1927 Develops imaginary body and imitating the image exercises while playing Muromsky in Sushkevich’s production of The Case. Denounced by a cohort of actors in MAAT 2 as a ‘mystic’, receives bad press and becomes inactive at MAAT 2. 1928 Autobiography, The Path of the Actor, becomes a bestseller. Given permission to go to Germany to play Skid in Max Reinhardt’s production of Artisten. 1929–30 Performs Skid in Vienna, works in German films with his ex-wife. Studies Eurythmy and Speech Formation at a Rudolf Steiner school. Directs a production of Twelfth Night for the Hebrew-speaking Habima Theatre in Berlin, to great acclaim. 1931 Moves to Paris, forms the Chekhov–Boner company with Georgette Boner, a young director of the Deutsche Bühne in Paris and pupil of Reinhardt. Productions include The Castle Awakened (a mystical, Symbolist pantomime based on Tolstoy), Twelfth Night, The Deluge and An Evening of Anton Chekhov Sketches. 1932 Performs at the Latvian State Theatre, Riga, Latvia, in lead roles of The Inspector General, Erik XIV, The Deluge, Selo Stepanchikovo, an adaptation of the Dostoyevsky novel, Hamlet, The Death of Ivan the Terrible and Chekhov Sketches, all to great acclaim. 1933 Performs in Twelfth Night, and subsequently directs Twelfth Night and Hamlet in Kaunas, Lithuania. Establishes an actor’s studio in Riga, but a fascist coup forces Chekhov to leave. Has a heart attack. 1934 Forms the Moscow Art Players with Boner. 1935 Moscow Art Players, produced by Sol Hurok, present a fourweek run at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway, New York, with

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Chekhov in the lead roles of The Inspector General, Poverty Is No Crime, Strange Child, Bulgakov’s The White Guard, and Anton Chekhov’s sketch, ‘I Forget’, to critical acclaim and full houses. Tours to Philadelphia and Boston. Stella Adler and other Group Theatre members attend and meet Chekhov. Beatrice Straight attends and proposes the Dartington Hall Studio. 1936–8 The Chekhov Theatre Studio opens at Dartington, Devon, UK, with twenty international students, ranging from ages 22 to 26. 1939 The Chekhov Theatre Studio relocates to Ridgefield, Connecticut, USA, and forms the Chekhov Theatre Studio Players, directed by Chekhov and George Shdanoff. They open their first major production at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre in an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed, the style of which is panned by critics. 1940–2 The Chekhov Theatre Studio Players tour to high school and community centre theatres throughout the United States, performing Twelfth Night, The Cricket on the Hearth, a stylized production of King Lear, as well as Twelfth Night on Broadway’s Little Theatre, to great acclaim. Establishes the Chekhov Theatre New York Studio to teach professional classes. With playwright, Arnold Sundgaard, Chekhov writes a children’s play, Troublemaker-Doublemaker. 1942 The Chekhov Theatre Studio is disbanded due to the war. Moves to Hollywood. Completes the unpublished, 1942 version of his acting manual, To the Actor. 1943–6 In Hollywood, performs in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s The Song of Russia, Warner Brothers’ In Our Time, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (receives Academy Award Nomination), The Specter of the Rose, Cross My Heart and Abie’s Irish Rose. 1946 Privately publishes Russian-language acting text, On the Actor’s Technique. Directs The Inspector General at the Hollywood Actor’s Lab. 1948 Starts teaching professional acting classes and coaching. 1948–54 Stars in the films Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven, Invitation, Holiday for Sinners and Rhapsody. 1953 Harper & Brothers publish To the Actor. 1955 Delivers a series of twelve lectures for the Drama Society in Los Angeles. Dies of heart failure.

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INDEX

acceptance  58–9 Alexandrinsky Theatre  72 n.8, 249, 275 n.4 Alfreds, Mike  54, 70, 256–7 Amadeus  277 archetypal gesture  24, 66, 111–21, 158–69, 236, 241, 245–9, 260–2, 265–71, 282, 289, 292, 310 archetype  120, 160, 216, 241, 243–59, 260–1, 264, 266, 300, 302, 310 artistry, actor-artist  x, xi–xiv, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27, 28, 36, 37, 39, 42, 44, 53, 59, 66, 71, 74, 76, 81–2, 83–4, 90, 91, 113, 114, 126, 156, 162, 166, 167, 179, 185–6, 190, 193, 197, 211, 212, 255, 262, 269, 274, 285–6, 309, 312, 314, 316–17 Ashperger, Cynthia  149, 171, 175, 247, 301 atmosphere  6 n.11, 18, 19 n.7, 28, 30, 50, 54, 59, 70, 75, 93, 95, 96, 129, 131, 133, 284, 303, 304, 305, 311 objective  281–98, 311 subjective or individual  273–80, 283, 288, 300, 310 audience  1, 2, 8, 10, 12, 18, 19 n.7, 20, 21, 23, 30, 37 n.3,

41, 47–8, 49, 54, 55, 62, 71, 76, 78, 83, 84, 87, 89, 91, 92, 97, 98, 101, 104, 106, 108, 109, 113, 117, 134, 142, 145, 160, 167, 174, 191, 193, 199, 212, 231, 257, 275, 284, 286, 294, 296, 309, 311, 313, 317 Bardem, Javier  129, 153, 155, 294 Baroque  74, 75 Bely, Andrey  26, 74, 185, 290 n.8 Berry, John  263 The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel  212 Birman, Seraphima  200 Blanton, Trent  265–6 Blasted  xiii, 86, 93, 131, 143, 145, 152, 155, 184, 210, 276, 294 blocking  56, 67, 69–73, 126, 140–1, 151, 184, 190–1, 216, 267–8, 287 Bolsheviks  16–17, 25 Boner, Georgette  27, 28 Breaking Bad  xiii, 115–16, 139, 150, 155, 256–7, 277, 301 breath  36, 39, 43, 48, 50, 53, 55, 58, 65, 106, 111, 115, 129, 132, 138, 171, 172, 197, 206, 207, 229, 273, 282, 291 Brook, Peter  57, 74, 85, n.9, 126 n.5, 191, 192

INDEX

Callow, Simon  73 n.10, 75, 114, 199, 225, 230, 249, 263 n.6, 276, 277, 308, 315 Cameron, Julia  36, 185 n.12 Candida  209 Carl, Jung  244 Carnovksy, Morris  254–5 Caron, Leslie  226, 228 centre feeling, 39, 220–9, 231, 235, 237–8, 240–1 imaginary  220–34, 239–40,  310 thinking  39, 142, 220–7, 235–7, 240 will  39, 142, 220–7, 231, 235, 238–9, 240, 241, 245, 267 Chamberlain, Frank  12, 89, 101, 250, 283 Chandler, Jamie  xvi, 215–16 character, characterization  xi, xiii, xiv, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 22, 23, 36, 37, 38, 40, 45, 47, 48, 49, 53, 54, 60, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 83–8, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 102, 105, 106, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 127, 128, 129, 131, 133, 137, 139, 142, 143, 145, 148, 150, 152, 153, 156, 157, 160, 163, 171, 173, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 189, 190, 191, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201 n.6, 205–19, 220, 222–34, 235–6, 238–40, 243–4, 248–59, 260–72, 273–80, 283–8, 294, 297, 299–307, 310, 311, 314–15 Chekhov, Anton  x, 5, 190 n.5, 265, 301 Chekhov, Xenia  24 n.13, 26 Chekhov Theatre Studio, Dartington  xii, 28–30, 43, 45, 66, 68 n.4, 71, 76,

 329

127 n.7, 165, 166, 181, 186 n.14, 190 n.5, 192, 200, 226, 248, 289, 294, 312–13, 317 playwrights at  76, 314 Chekhov Theatre Studio, Ridgefield, Connecticut  29, 30, 312 Chekhov Theatre Studio Players  29, 30 The Cherry Orchard 19 n.7, 72 n.8, 190 n.5, 265–6, 301 Cole, Robert  30 collaboration  6, 59, 76 n.15, 117, 179, 183, 185, 193, 217, 310, 311–15 collective  20, 24, 91, 94, 99, 168, 183, 184, 185, 244 n.3, 249, 292, 311–15 colour  9, 53, 90, 93, 102, 109, 132, 141, 150, 166, 176, 179, 205, 206, 232, 242, 279, 282, 292–3, 297, 314 Colvin, Jack  30, 151, 170, 200 comedy  12, 74, 97, 200, 209 n.4, 228 communism  24 composition  xiii, 67, 69, 70–1, 73, 92, 95, 117, 142, 151, 166–7, 221, 267, 293, 309, 315 law of  196–7 concentration  2, 59–60, 82, 99, 108, 117, 177, 181, 198, 212, 217, 222 n.4, 258, 295, 309 constructivism  17, 25 contraction  161, 246 and expansion  40, 111–21, 129, 134, 141, 145, 154, 159–60, 161, 163, 164, 247, 248, 292, 310 Cornford, Tom  xv, 83, 182, 290 n.9 creative individuality  3–9, 13, 22, 86 n.10, 189, 269, 311

330

creative state  8, 10, 42–4, 45, 50, 57, 59, 214 n.14, 295, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 314, 315, 316–17 The Cricket on the Hearth  29 crossing the threshold  108, 295–6 The Crucible  270 Daboo, Jerri  186 Day Lewis, Daniel  275 The Deluge  7, 262, 295 n.15 The Demons  29 Dench, Judi  212, 213, 275 devising  69, 76, 92, 94, 99 n.9, 181, 292, 306 ‘Diary of a Madman’  xii, 48–9, 71, 73, 86, 92–3, 96, 105, 130, 131, 148, 152, 165, 174, 182, 209, 231, 264, 268, 293, 301 directing, directors  xii, xiii, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 31, 35, 37, 47, 50, 52, 54, 57, 58, 63 n.11, 69, 70, 71, 95, 98, 99, 103, 171, 180, 184, 186, 189, 190, 199, 216, 219, 222 n.4, 240, 241, 248, 251, 257, 263, 264, 266, 279, 292, 294, 306, 308, 314–15 Chekhov as director  27, 28, 70, 126, 139, 189, 216, 281 n.1, 295 directions  139, 147–57, 164, 170, 178, 191, 246–7, 310 backward  149–51, 155–7 combining  154–6 downward  152–3, 154–6, 170, 172 forward  147–9, 155–7, 159 right and left  154 upward  151–2, 154–6, 170, 240 divided or dual consciousness  3, 11–14, 193, 218, 311

INDEX

Dixon, Graham  xv, 5, 37, 55, 75, 127, 131, 155, 316 Don Quixote  184, 215, 216, 217, 231 n.18, 275 drama  xi, 29 n.23, 74, 75, 140, 283, 288 melodrama  5, 73 drawing  28, 66, 93, 94, 111 n.1, 165, 213, 216, 218 n.16, 262, 274, 289 ego  39, 75, 106, 193, 201, 212, 302, 312, 313, 317 higher  3, 8–11, 12, 13, 24, 193, 311 lower  8, 9, 12, 24, 106 Egolf, Gretchen  xv, xvi, 131, 133, 209, 229, 254, 278, 316 Elmhirst, Dorothy  28, 29, 200, 317 Elmhirst, William  28, 166 Emin, Tracey  220–2 emotion memory  211 n.9 empathy  12, 39, 85, 86, 104, 113–14, 150, 285, 309, 310 energy  8, 12, 35, 53, 54, 55, 61, 76, 103–5, 108, 111–13, 118 n.7, 129, 132–3, 137, 139, 149, 159, 161, 193, 209, 222, 225, 238, 243–4, 246–7, 252, 259, 260–1, 275, 282, 288, 300–2, 309 ensemble  30, 70, 99, 104 n.4, 139, 195, 311–13 Erik XIV  2, 23, 68 n.5, 97 n.6, 182, 262 ethics  6–8, 37–8, 81–2, 116, 201, 240, 278, 311 eurythmy  24, 26, 165, 166 n.7 event  16, 22, 48, 54, 58, 59, 60, 96, 107, 117, 129, 149, 151, 158, 171, 184, 190, 196, 212, 223, 231, 237, 255 n.14, 257, 263, 283, 284–7, 294, 299, 306, 312

INDEX

expansion and contraction  40, 111–21, 129, 134, 141, 145, 154, 159–60, 161, 163, 164, 247, 248, 292, 310 as a principle  99, 104, 106, 145, 154, 161, 186, 201, 248, 295, 310 fairy tales  25, 76, 248, 284 fantasy  21, 22, 23, 87, 94, 133, 156, 177, 179, 180, 209–10, 217, 239, 248, 290–1, 309 Fathers and Sons  227 feelings  xi, 8, 12, 13, 23, 24, 36, 37, 38, 40, 42, 46, 53, 56, 58, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 76, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 88, 89, 90, 96 n.4, 104, 111–12, 113, 115, 116, 125–7, 129, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 144, 145, 149, 151, 153, 154, 155, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 171, 172, 175, 180, 182, 193, 195, 197, 205, 206, 210, 211, 213, 214, 217, 218, 219, 222, 223, 224, 232, 235, 237, 261, 283, 284, 292, 293, 301, 305, 312, 313, 316 Fielding, Scott  xv, 219 First Studio  2 n.2, 5, 6, 8 n.13, 26 n.18, 28, 128 n.8, 200, 262, 276, 294, 314 n.9 four brothers  xiii, 42, 65, 80, 91, 103, 113, 309 beauty  42, 79–89, 97, 106, 132, 309 ease  36, 40, 42–52, 55, 57, 65, 67, 74, 83, 89, 103, 106, 112, 131, 132, 133, 142, 190, 274, 275, 309 entirety or whole  8, 11, 21, 24, 35, 42, 50, 58, 62, 65, 66, 67, 69, 90–101, 105, 106, 114, 118, 119, 139, 193, 196, 167,

 331

170, 173, 179, 181, 183, 186, 200 n.5, 205, 214, 215, 227, 239, 240, 246, 248, 249, 251, 254, 256, 257, 262, 265, 277, 298, 305, 306, 308, 309, 311, 312, 313, 315 form  28, 42, 50, 64–78, 83, 89, 91, 98, 117, 118, 128, 130, 133, 142, 160, 162, 163, 165–6, 169, 176, 198, 200, 220, 222, 227, 236, 237, 238, 243, 245, 260, 261, 262, 268, 309 Freidank, Ragnar  xv, 57, 296, 300–2 Gangs of New York  275 genre  67, 73, 74, 210, 289 given circumstances  75, 210, 217, 282 n.3, 286 giving  8, 12, 53, 55, 56, 59, 61, 106, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 167, 168, 190, 195, 197, 260, 283, 313 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von  91 n.1, 103, 165 n.6, 166 n.7, 180 golden hoop  127, 135 Gothic  74, 75, 263, 282, 284 Grotowsky, Jerzy  13, 222 n.4 Group Theatre  28, 255 n.13, 311 n.5 guiding idea  96, 99, 309 Habima Theatre  295 habits  45, 65, 108, 156, 199 Hamlet  4, 71, 119, 143, 145, 154–5, 173, 182, 231, 254, 288, 301–2, 308 n.1 Chekhov’s production  10, 26, 46, 128 n.9, 139, 182, 183, 201 n.6, 211, 215, 216, 217, 226 n.10, 263–4, 270 n.12, 275, 291, 312 n.6

332

Harbison, Isabel  81 Hatfield, Hurd  30, 31 Hollywood  x, 29, 30, 31, 72, 200, 226, 281 n.1, 294 Hopkins, Anthony  268 Howards End  268 Hurst du Prey, Deirdre  30, 31, 43, 67, 73, 126, 177, 178, 184, 189, 191, 313–14 ideal centre  35–41, 50, 57, 58, 65, 66, 102, 103, 104, 108, 109, 111, 113, 114, 121, 130, 137, 147, 151, 152, 156, 221, 227, 309 ideals  xi, 9, 25, 27, 29, 37–8, 70, 81, 99, 158, 185, 190, 201, 221, 255, 309, 311, 313, 315, 316–17 image  23, 35, 41, 46, 62–3, 68, 70, 73, 79, 83 n.7, 87, 88, 91, 92, 93–4, 95, 96, 100, 102, 104, 106, 109, 114, 117, 130, 132, 134, 149, 151, 168, 176–87, 205, 210, 212, 213, 214, 244, 246, 249, 254–5, 258–9, 262, 265, 267, 273, 276, 277, 279–80, 281–2, 286, 291, 292, 308, 310 in the centre  220–2, 227–35, 239 character biography  302–7 collaborating with the image  214–17 ghost exercise  299–302 imitating the image  169, 197, 206–8, 211, 212 n.10, 213 incorporation of  183, 207–8, 213, 214, 216–18, 225, 234, 267, 308 independence of  3, 185, 210–11, 217 stick, ball, veil  236–42

INDEX

imaginary body  178, 197, 205–19, 222, 225, 234, 239, 240, 267, 299–300, 302, 308, 310 imagination  xi, xiii, 3, 8, 21–2, 37, 38, 45, 46, 63, 74, 102, 103, 104, 107, 110, 112, 115, 134, 147, 149–50, 154, 159, 162, 168, 171, 174, 176–87, 191 n.7, 192, 198–9, 205–8, 210–12, 214–16, 220, 225, 227, 234, 239, 254, 257–9, 263, 267, 271–2, 275, 281, 283, 284, 286, 296, 299–307, 308, 309, 310, 315, 317 immersion  5, 60, 70, 82, 218, 239, 286, 300, 308 Imperial Russia  15–16 improvisation  13, 56–7, 62, 70, 77, 112, 121, 140, 159, 183, 184, 188–92, 194–5, 224, 236–7, 245, 259, 272, 279, 292, 296, 299–300, 302, 306, 310 impulse  8, 9, 13, 35–6, 39–41, 46, 50, 54, 56–7, 61–2, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 77, 106, 107, 108, 112, 115, 121, 132, 134–5, 144, 147, 151, 166, 168, 174, 182, 187, 188, 190, 192, 195, 197, 209, 213, 218, 222, 230–1, 232–3, 236–8, 245, 246, 247, 259, 263, 267, 272–3, 279, 296, 300, 309 ingenuity  xi, 3, 4, 97, 113, 142, 179, 180, 183, 185, 186, 189, 190, 194, 200 n.5, 212, 217, 235, 241 inner life  12, 36–7, 54–5, 57, 67, 68, 73, 83, 104, 107, 112, 114, 118, 127, 136, 137, 150, 159, 161, 162, 165, 169, 177, 179, 206, 209, 213, 217, 221, 256, 310

INDEX

The Inspector General  2, 21, 22, 23, 28, 68 n.5, 191 n.7, 200, 200, 201 n.6, 228, 262, 289, 295 inspiration  xi, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12–13, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 36–7, 38, 53, 54, 56, 59, 71, 72, 75, 81, 87–8, 99, 108, 112, 115, 120–1, 132, 138, 144, 145–6, 147, 153, 158–60, 167, 173, 175, 180, 183, 184, 187, 188, 189, 192–94, 210, 225, 228, 230, 236, 239, 241, 244, 245, 247, 249, 251, 264, 266, 268, 270, 276, 279, 283, 287, 289, 292, 295, 297, 310, 313, 316 interdisciplinarity  311, 313–15 intuition  3, 244, 255, 263, 286, 307, 308 Ivan the Terrible  181, 182, 201 n.6, 217, 254 Jooss, Kurt  28 Julius Caesar  98 n.7, 223 Kane, Sarah (teacher)  xv, xvi, 85–6, 103, 136, 182, 227, 240, 293, 313 Khlestakov  2, 21, 23, 28, 68 n.5, 191 n.7, 200, 201 n.6, 228, 262 King Lear  29, 92–4, 223 The Kiss of the Spider Woman  199 Knebel, Maria  27 Laban, Rudolf  28 Langhans, Jobst  xv, 63 n.11, 103 Latvian State Theatre  28, 200, 295 Leach, Bernard  28 Lenin, Vladimir  16, 20, 24 Lenkiewicz, Rebecca  75 Leonard, Charles  31, 281 n.1 Lewis, Robert  68 n.5, 200

 333

listening  36–7, 48, 54, 57–8, 61, 63, 115, 118, 128, 134, 144, 148, 169, 171, 185 n.12, 187, 190, 195, 206, 209, 218, 224, 232, 234, 236, 237, 244, 267, 272, 276, 280, 283, 286–7, 290, 308 love  39, 50, 60, 64, 81, 84, 85, 86, 97, 119, 125, 161, 165, 172, 197, 223, 224, 247, 257, 264, 280, 291, 292, 295, 309 Lunacharsky, Anatoly  19, 20, 25, 26 MAAT 2  25–7, 74, 139, 211, 312 n.6 Macbeth  119, 133, 150, 167, 173, 231, 240–1, 287, 290–1 Maly Theatre  4, 16 Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom  156, 225 Marowitz, Charles  191 n.7, 248 Marshall Allen, Paul  31 Mason, Felicity  226 memory  xi, 43, 129, 150, 151, 162, 178, 211, 212 n.11, 270, 301, 304 Merlin, Bella  210 n.6, 220 n.2 Merlin, Joanna  xv, xvi, 6 n.11, 45, 131, 150, 158 n.3, 163, 182, 226, 228, 246, 247, 250, 257, 258, 265–6, 267, 269, 270, 294, 301 Meyerhold, Vsevolod  19–20, 21–3, 25, 39, 191 n.6, 249, 314 Michael Chekhov Association USA (MICHA)  31 Michael Chekhov Europe (MCE)  31 Michael Chekhov UK (MCUK)  31 Michelangelo  47, 185 Mitchell, Katie  70 Moscow Art Players  28 Moscow Art Theatre  x, 4, 5–6, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 28, 96, 262, 286, 294, 311

334

Much Ado About Nothing  133, 228, 276, 277, 292, 294 Muromsky  212 n.10, 214–15 music  xiii, xiv, 24, 45, 48, 66, 83 n.6, 126, 127, 138, 187, 218, 230, 234, 276–7, 280, 289–90, 293, 314 naturalism  1, 22, 23, 74, 118, 161, 168, 246–7, 248, 259, 261, 282, 290, 302 natural world  6 n.10, 24, 28, 79, 83, 118, 128, 138, 152, 165–6, 169, 187, 193–4, 310 Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir  x, 4–6, 16, 96 No Country for Old Men  129, 153, 294 Notes on a Scandal  275 objective  30, 106, 113, 160, 195, 213–14, 224, 251, 255–8, 261–71 objectivity  xi, 9, 3, 6, 11, 13, 48, 85, 104, 111, 118, 127, 128, 136, 162, 193, 198, 199, 210, 211–12, 217, 248, 317 observation  12, 35, 48, 52, 57, 58, 72 n.8, 77, 80, 82 n.5, 85, 135, 142, 144, 165, 169, 176, 178, 181, 185, 206, 210, 213, 218–19, 221, 223, 225, 230, 232, 233–4, 237, 257–8, 270, 274, 299, 306, 317 obstacle  xi, 72, 151, 167, 264, 301, 302 Othello  xii, 49, 95–7, 117, 119, 129, 143, 145, 148–9, 152–3, 167, 174, 184, 197, 223, 226, 250–4, 294, 301, 303–7 pause  52, 63, 72 n.8, 77, 90, 100, 101, 107–10, 121, 128, 130, 132, 141, 142, 144, 148, 171,

INDEX

187, 190, 232, 236–8, 244–5, 282 Pearce, Guy  289–90 personal, personality  xi, 3, 6–9, 11–14, 23, 37, 50, 75, 84, 85, 87, 104, 106, 127, 162, 193, 199, 211–12, 218, 224, 249, 274, 278, 292, 310–11, 316–17 Petit, Lenard  xv, 52, 84, 118, 119, 137, 139, 141, 150, 154, 155, 159, 163, 171, 172, 173, 174, 223, 224, 227 n.12, 228, 232, 238, 243, 246, 249, 252, 276, 278, 297 Pitches, Jonathan  3 n.4, 24, 25, 39, 91 n.1, 165 n.6, 166 n.7 polarity, contrast  10, 62, 70, 90, 92, 93–5, 97, 114, 116–19, 121, 131, 133, 137, 139, 143, 151, 158, 169, 173, 174, 184, 194, 196, 214 n.14, 215, 245, 254, 259, 270, 271, 278, 293, 294, 305, 312 The Possessed  29, 289, 290 Powers, Mala  29 n.23, 30–1, 72, 179, 198 n.1 practice  xi, xiii, 3, 6 n.10, 7, 10, 11–16, 21, 24, 25, 36, 38, 40, 42–3, 46, 50, 51–2, 55, 57, 59, 61, 81, 86, 89, 91, 99, 103–4, 106, 107–8, 112–13, 116, 117, 121, 133–4, 139, 141, 144, 155, 160, 162, 164, 165, 177, 178, 180, 181, 183 n.10, 185, 186, 197–99, 207, 213, 214, 216, 219, 226 n.10, 238–9, 241, 276, 295, 298, 300, 309, 311–18 presence  17, 39–41, 49, 54, 55, 89, 104, 113, 151, 233, 244–5, 285, 293 n.12, 294, 300, 301, 302, 304, 309 present moment  7 n.12, 13, 20, 40, 48, 50, 54, 58, 60–1,

INDEX

62–3, 65, 100, 107, 150, 182, 190, 193, 233, 279, 308 projection  106 psychological gesture (PG)  75, 120, 141, 150, 160, 163, 166, 260–72, 303–6, 310, 311 psychology  xi, xiii, 5, 9, 10, 21, 22, 24, 38, 39, 42, 44, 45, 46, 56, 66, 67–8, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 82, 83, 84–5, 91, 95, 104, 106, 111, 114, 118, 119, 126, 127, 129, 130–2, 133, 136–7, 138–9, 142–3, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 156–7, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 173, 182, 189, 190, 191, 197, 198, 199, 208–9, 213, 220, 227, 229, 231, 236, 237, 238, 240, 248, 256, 257, 260–1, 262, 284, 296, 302, 310, 315 psychophysical  xi, xiii, 40, 46, 59, 66, 68–9, 73, 74, 99, 112, 114–17, 118, 125, 136, 147, 153, 160, 162, 171, 178, 199, 200, 209, 248, 260, 265, 309, 310 Pugh, Ted  xv, xvi, 56, 118, 125, 129, 201, 230, 231, 254 qualities  xiii, 6, 22, 38, 42, 52, 53, 56, 58, 64, 67, 71, 74, 77, 80, 89, 93–4, 95, 97, 101, 103, 104, 112, 116, 118, 125–47, 148, 152, 155, 157, 161, 163–5, 166, 167, 168–9, 174, 176, 178, 181, 182, 186–9, 191, 194, 200, 205, 215, 216, 218, 220, 229, 235–6, 245, 247, 248, 249, 251, 258, 259, 265, 268, 269, 271, 273–4, 275–7, 280, 282, 284, 289, 292, 298, 299–300, 303, 310, 316 as a centre  229–34

 335

curved/straight sensation  136, 141–3 emotional adverbs  136, 140–1, 164 flowing or supporting  125, 130–2, 133, 135, 136, 139, 141, 147, 155, 157, 164, 171, 178 flying  125, 132–5, 136, 144, 147, 157, 164, 168, 298 further qualities  136–46 large/small steps  136, 144–5 moulding  128–30, 134–5, 136, 141, 143–4, 147, 155, 157, 164, 168, 265, 269, 298 radiating  40, 53, 98, 102–10, 111, 113, 125, 128, 130, 132, 133, 136, 144, 147, 151, 152, 156, 157, 159, 163, 164, 166, 168, 215, 216, 226 n.10, 227, 230, 245, 274, 276, 278, 279, 282, 286, 296, 300, 310 staccato and legato  136, 137–40, 141, 155, 164, 168, 265, 289 stick, ball, veil  235–42, 248 Quinn, Anthony  x, 30, 226, 227, 261 n.3 Rainey, Ford  30 Raphael  185 realism fantastic or imaginative  22–3 social  73 socialist  24–7 receiving  36, 46, 50, 53–63, 76–8, 80, 103, 107, 109, 111, 113, 127, 157, 159, 169, 171, 176, 179, 181, 182, 187, 190, 192, 195, 197, 225, 229, 232, 235, 237, 238, 244, 245, 259, 267, 271, 272, 273, 279, 282, 286, 299, 300, 303, 307, 308 receptivity  xi, 6, 9, 36, 39, 40, 43, 46, 48, 49, 53, 54, 56–9, 61,

336

73, 85, 104, 111, 112, 113, 118, 127, 139, 147, 161, 167, 190, 191, 241, 247, 274, 309, 310, 317 Reinhardt, Max  12, 26, 27, 211 n.8 The Remains of the Day  268 rhythm and tempo  51–2, 67, 70, 72, 74, 77, 90, 91, 92, 95, 99, 108, 112, 115, 116, 119, 120, 128, 134, 138, 139, 141–2, 145, 146, 155, 158, 161, 165, 166, 168, 169, 190, 194, 200, 205, 215, 218, 222, 230, 238, 242, 245, 247, 251, 268, 271, 274, 276, 277, 280, 282, 283, 287, 289, 292, 298 Richard II  228 Rickman, Alan  57 Rocket to the Moon  255 Rodin  47 Rogers, Paul  30, 46 n.6, 66, 294 Romeo and Juliet  105, 155, 164 The Rover  289–90 Russian Revolution  16–21, 24–6, 82 n.5 scenography, design  xii, 1, 17, 54, 67, 69–73, 75, 91, 93, 98–9, 117, 160, 66, 167, 181, 183, 184, 198 n.2, 200, 216, 276–7, 279, 292, 293, 306, 308, 312–16 The Seagull  5, 150, 182, 228–9, 257, 258 sensation  xi, 4 n.5, 13, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 43, 51–2, 53, 56, 61–2, 63, 66–8, 73, 74, 76–8, 87, 88, 90, 100, 103, 105, 108, 111–12, 115, 118, 120–1, 126–7, 128–35, 138, 140, 141–48, 150–7, 159, 167 n.10, 170–5, 187, 192, 193, 205, 209, 210, 211, 217, 230, 232, 236, 237, 238, 241–2, 245, 247, 258, 270,

INDEX

273, 276–7, 280, 282, 291–2, 297–8, 303, 305, 307, 309 Sharp, Martin  50, 71 n.6, 312, 315 Shdanoff, George  29, 76 n.15 Shrawder, Mel  xv, 80 n.1, 273, 278, 302 Sloan, Fern  xv, xvi, 56, 81, 100, 125, 130, 133, 231, 241 Simonov, Ruben  17–18, 22, 191, 200, 311 Soukop, Willi  66 stage business  56, 67, 69–73, 126, 140–1, 151, 184, 190–1, 216, 267–8, 287 Stalin, Joseph  17, 24–7 Stanislavsky, Konstantin  x, 4–6, 8, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 31, 38, 43, 67, 126, 180, 182, 200, 210, 211, 213, 255, 262, 270, 285, 311, 313 n.7, 314 Steiner, Rudolf  3, 4, 8, 13, 24, 25–6, 31, 39, 136, 165 Straight, Beatrice  28, 30, 200 n.5 A Streetcar Named Desire  86, 131, 133, 229, 254, 278 subconscious  11 n.18, 104, 162, 193, 208, 212, 279 sustaining  107–10, 113 style  22, 29 n.23, 66–7, 71, 73–6, 80, 99, 290 n.7 subjectivity  3, 8, 9, 54, 55, 85, 127, 248, 293, 312 Sulerzhitsky, Leopold  6, 7, 24, 27, 294 Suvorin Theatre  4 synthesis  9, 23, 69, 100, 255, 264, 266, 311 Tartuffe  215–16 tension  11, 43, 44, 45, 47, 51–2, 55, 67, 77, 107, 108, 121, 129, 130, 137–8, 157–9, 191 n.6, 230, 284, 288, 294, 298, 309

INDEX

text analysis  11, 70, 94, 96 n.3, 180, 191, 262–3 theatre of the future  5, 114, 308–17 theatricality  x, 12 n.19, 19, 21–3, 42, 64, 70, 74, 77, 83, 108, 179 three sisters  170–5, 191, 310 balancing  173–4 falling  172 rising  171–2 Three Sisters (play)  301 Tobey, Mark  28, 66 tragedy  75, 97, 133, 155, 200, 245, 254, 291, 301 transformation  xiv, 38, 54, 55, 60–2, 67, 73, 74, 75, 93, 97, 101, 107, 114, 116, 126, 140, 142, 156, 177, 179, 185, 187, 196–201, 207, 209, 212, 215–6, 221, 224, 227, 231, 241, 277–8, 281, 294, 310, 317 Chekhov’s transformations  2, 6 n.11, 200–1 law of composition  196–7 practice of  197–9 triplicity  92–3, 95, 196 Tuesday at Tesco’s  225 Twelfth Night  29, 213, 276, 278, 295

 337

Ullman, Lisa  29, 66 n.1 unconscious  11, 44, 68, 69, 84, 91, 98, 192, 244 n.3, 249, 255 Vakhtangov, Yevgeny  6–8, 17–24, 27, 37, 68, 97, 191, 200, 262, 311, 314 vitality, life  x, xi, xiii, 7–8, 35, 38, 57, 66, 70, 71 n.7, 72, 81–2, 97, 107, 112, 120, 128, 138, 158, 165, 167, 186, 191, 199, 201, 248–9, 251, 284, 285, 286, 295, 302, 308, 310, 311, 312, 316–17 Waiting for Godot  276 will  39, 44, 60, 67, 68, 69, 84, 96 n.4, 106, 142, 145, 150, 161, 162, 163, 166, 167, 169, 179, 180, 182, 192, 209, 213, 217, 218, 222–5, 227 n.12, 231–2, 234, 235, 238–41, 243, 245, 247, 252, 253, 256, 257, 261, 267, 268, 310 Worrall, Nick  16 n.4, 18, 21, 22 n.11, 82 n.5 Woyzeck  240, 294 Zinder, David  37 n.2, 39, 83–4, 139, 187, 219, 230 n.16, 236

338