Michael Chekhov

Franc Chamberlain

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138599253
• eBook ISBN: 9780429941061
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Following in the footsteps of his renowned teacher Konstantin Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov's work as an actor, author and theatre practitioner gave great insight into how to access the creative self. This revised and updated edition of Michael Chekhov includes:

• A biographical introduction to Chekhov's life

• A clear explanation of his key writings

• An analysis of his work as a director

• A practical guide to Chekhov's unique actor-training exercises.

As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.

1
Biography and Context

Michael Chekhov, regarded as a phenomenal actor by many who saw him, is one of the key figures in twentieth-century theatre. His ability to transform himself onstage was celebrated by some of the major directors of the century – Stanislavsky, Vakhtangov, Reinhardt and Meyerhold – and his practical advice continues to inspire actors through his writings and through schools devoted to his work in Russia, Lithuania, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain and the US. His book To the Actor is considered one of the best actor training manuals ever published in the European tradition. Yet in spite of this, there have been very few studies of his work published in any language.

Childhood

Mikhail (Michael) Aleksandrovich Chekhov was born in St Petersburg, Russia, on 16 August 1891. His father Aleksandr, the brother of the great playwright, Anton Chekhov, was an eccentric and an inventor. Aleksandr Chekhov was always dreaming up some scheme or experiment, often in order to save money, and involving young Michael in much of the labour. Chekhov respected and admired his father for his intelligence and his creativity, but lamented the time spent helping with his father’s experiments when he felt that he should have been playing.

On the positive side, Aleksandr would talk to his young son about a wide range of subjects, including philosophy, natural history, medicine and maths.

One skill that Aleksandr possessed, which gave much delight to his son, was the ability to draw cartoons and capture the essence of a person’s character in a few lines (Chekhov, 2005: 21). Michael considered that his own love of cartoons had an important effect on his later development. Cartoon caricatures emphasise a recognisable aspect of a person and exaggerate it until it appears ridiculous. A good caricaturist can make the individual recognisable through this exaggeration and also bring out an aspect of the person which is not usually noticed. Chekhov developed a healthy sense of the ridiculous, or the grotesque, and felt that this was very important for the actor, because it brought a sense of humour and lightheartedness into work that might otherwise have become self-indulgent.

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904): Russian playwright whose major works The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904) were all staged by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre. Chekhov’s plays involve very little action and there is a strong emphasis on mood and atmosphere. Although Chekhov was unhappy with the naturalistic detail of Stanislavsky’s productions, it is largely due to the work of the Moscow Art Theatre that these plays have become central to the study of twentieth-century drama.

A major problem in Chekhov’s relationship with his father was that Aleksandr was an alcoholic and had an inability to harness his immense energy and talents in any purposeful direction. When Michael was a young man he also became an alcoholic and found himself unable to work systematically. The recollections of his childhood presented in his autobiography, The Path of the Actor (1928), suggest the importance of finding a balance between work and play, between spontaneity and discipline. With his father’s constant demands that he work, the young Chekhov’s life was skewed away from play, and in his young adulthood he swung the other way and emphasised play. This, as we shall see, was to cause him some problems with Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre.

Performance Beginnings

Chekhov’s first performances were for his mother and nanny, Aleksandr being much less interested in his son’s performances. The self-devised shows often featured the members of this intimate circle as the key figures who would be involved in both realistic and fantastic situations. At this early stage there was no sense that Chekhov would become an actor and he thought that he would become a doctor or a fireman. Later, as he began to perform extracts from Charles Dickens and other authors, with some of his own material incorporated, for his family and guests, he became more aware of the possibility of becoming an actor and joined a local amateur dramatic group before moving on to drama school.

Chekhov at the Maly

From Imitation to Creation

In 1907, aged sixteen, Chekhov joined the Suvorin Theatre school, which was attached to the famous Maly Suvorinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. Two of his teachers at the Maly, B.S. Glagolin and N.N. Arbatov, were to make an impression on him and influence his later thinking on the theatre, although not necessarily in the way that they intended. Glagolin was a talented actor and it was while watching him in the role of Khlestakov in The Government Inspector in 1909 that Chekhov had the insight that:

Glagolin played Khlestakov not like everyone else, although I had actually never seen anyone else in this role before Glagolin. This feeling of ‘not like everyone else’ arose in me without having any comparisons or analogies, but directly from Glagolin’s acting. The unusual freedom and originality of his creativity in this role astonished me, and I was not wrong: no-one played Khlestakov in the way Glagolin did.

(Chekhov, 2005: 39–40)

What does Chekhov mean by the statement that Glagolin played ‘not like everyone else’? In one sense, it is obvious. Any actor necessarily brings personal difference to a role and Mel Gibson’s Hamlet is very different from Ethan Hawke’s or Laurence Olivier’s. Chekhov, however, began to think about why this was. For him it wasn’t as simple as answering ‘because they’re different people’. He was later to put forward the idea of ‘creative individuality’ as his answer. One of the aspects of creative individuality is a sense of creative freedom and Chekhov was also interested in the freedom with which Glagolin played. Chekhov found Glagolin interesting, because there was no attempt to copy the role as other performers had previously played it.

The tradition within the drama schools at this time was that students would imitate the way that their teachers performed a role. Chekhov later argued that this meant that the students didn’t get a grasp of the fundamental principles of the art of acting. That is, they only learned to imitate and not to create. The lesson Chekhov took from Glagolin’s performance, whether it was intended or not, was that the actor doesn’t need to be an imitator but can be a creative artist. This is an important key to Chekhov’s view of the actor.

Artistic Freedom and Form

One of the fundamental principles that Chekhov thought was lacking in the curricula of the drama schools was an understanding of artistic form. This sense of form is something which is central not only to the art of the actor but to the whole process of staging, from Chekhov’s viewpoint. It was Glagolin’s colleague, Arbatov, who impressed on Chekhov the importance of this principle. Chekhov was critical of the naturalistic style of Arbatov’s productions, claiming that naturalism was the absence of style and therefore of art (Chekhov, 2005: 40). But he valued Arbatov’s grasp of form in the overall shape and design of the performance, in his models and even in the arrangement of his study.

Chekhov became critical of the haphazard curricula of the drama schools which failed to educate their students in the basic principles of the art of the theatre. Without an understanding of form and style, Chekhov felt that the actor was either confined to imitating old forms or working without any form at all. Chekhov later described this working without form as being a false freedom. The performer lacks artistic discipline and Chekhov, drawing on his own experience, suggested that a lack of artistic discipline implies a lack of discipline in everyday life; that is, a failure to understand the conditional nature of freedom. Chekhov believed that there were important connections between the actor’s life and his or her profession. He was very critical of actors who felt that they didn’t have to study even the fundamentals of acting because their natural talent would show them what to do.

He caricatures such actors as believing that study would only stifle their spontaneity. On the other hand, Chekhov only came to this realisation in the 1920s and criticises himself for putting too much emphasis on his own talent and not seeing the value of working systematically to master the craft of acting earlier in his career.

After graduating from the school, Chekhov joined the company of the Maly Suvorinsky Theatre and played a variety of roles, both in performances in St Petersburg and on tour.

Putting on a Show

While Chekhov was at the Maly, however, his father’s health began to deteriorate and his own inner conflict led to him drinking more and more heavily and performing while drunk. Chekhov described himself during this period as someone who was always ‘putting on a show’, whether onstage or off (Chekhov, 2005: 27). He was using the theatre as a way of hiding from his personal problems, not least his alcoholism. Hiding from our problems in a fantasy world is not helpful in the long run, even if it brings some temporary relief, because the problems tend not to go away and can often get worse. In terms of the theatre, an actor who is always ‘putting on a show’ is likely to keep repeating old habits, and to perform just for the approval of the audience. There is also the risk that, if we’re hiding from ourselves, we’re not really able to make good contact with our fellow performers or the deeper sources of our creativity. In other words, we avoid the challenges to developing the sensitivity necessary for becoming an effective performer. It took several difficult years before Chekhov realised that he had to face his problems.

The Moscow Art Theatre

Meeting Stanislavsky

In Spring 1912, his aunt Olga Knipper-Chekhova, who was visiting St Petersburg with the Moscow Art Theatre, successfully arranged an audition for Chekhov with Konstantin Stanislavsky. Vishnevsky, one of the leading MAT actors, gave Chekhov a preliminary audition and the following day he was auditioned by Stanislavsky himself. Chekhov describes it as a rather traumatic encounter noting that he was always shy and that when he met someone for the first time, ‘I can’t even say two words’ (Beevor, 2005: 22). He was especially nervous to be in the presence of such a celebrated director and was unable to feel at ease. He answered all of Stanislavsky’s questions mechanically, then, when he was invited to do his audition speech, his collar suddenly snapped and the edges bit into his cheek. Not surprisingly he was embarrassed and wanted to run away, but froze (Chekhov, 2005: 45). After a few moments, he realised that it couldn’t get much worse and was able to relax into his piece. Although we can assume that Stan-islavsky wasn’t being overly generous because of his connections with Chekhov’s family, the audition was a success and Chekhov was invited to join the theatre on 16 June 1912. Stanislavsky’s notes after the audition included the comments ‘talented, has charm’ and ‘one of the real hopes for the future’ (Benedetti, 1990: 207). In August, Chekhov left his home city of St Petersburg and moved to Moscow.

Olga Knipper-Chekhova (1868–1959): Russian actress who was one of the original members of the Moscow Art Theatre and who married Anton Chekhov in 1901. She played leading roles in all of Anton Chekhov’s plays staged at the MAT, as well as major roles in other key productions.

Moscow Art Theatre (MAT): Inspired by small art theatres that had sprung up in Europe during the previous ten years, the MAT quickly became one of the most celebrated theatres in the world.

Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938): Russian actor, teacher, director and founder, with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858–1943), of the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. Stanislavsky’s work is usually associated with realism in both staging and acting, but he also experimented with different styles of theatre.

Looking for a new Theatre

Michael Chekhov was only seven years old when Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky formed the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 and included his uncle’s play The Seagull in their first season. Stan-islavsky’s approach, at this time, was to attempt to create as detailed an imitation of life onstage as possible. A counter-movement to Stanislavsky’s realism was symbolism, which was championed in Russia at this time by such practitioners as Vsevolod Meyerhold. Meyerhold, inspired by the symbolist plays and theories of Maurice Maeterlinck, was interested in the idea of a stylised theatre which emphasised ‘atmosphere’ or ‘mood’ over naturalistic detail. It is important to note that Anton Chekhov himself was uncertain of Stanislavsky’s approach to his plays (Chamberlain, 2010: 63).

Atmosphere, for Meyerhold, was generated by the actors and, despite his reservations regarding Stanislavsky’s production values, he felt that the MAT actors had managed to evoke the appropriate mood of The Seagull. Working with these symbolist influences for a decade, Meyerhold attempted several productions of Maeterlinck, searching for a technique which would use movement as ‘plastic music’ in order to construct an ‘external depiction of an inner experience’ (Braun, 1978: 36).

The themes of atmosphere, actors’ creativity and physicalisation of inner experience, as well as the question of style, which were to become important elements in Michael Chekhov’s method, can be seen to have been part of the theatrical milieu for over a decade before 1912 when he joined the MAT.

Realism: an artistic movement which focuses on everyday life and naturalistic detail. Requires a naturalistic and psychological approach to staging/acting.

Symbolism: an artistic movement which emphasised suggestion and atmosphere, attempting to represent the inner world of dreams and imagination rather than everyday ‘outer’ reality. Requires a stylised approach to staging/acting.

Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940): Russian actor and director who was one of the original members of the MAT but who became opposed to Stanislavsky’s realist approach. Meyerhold’s creative and imaginative explorations were to lead him beyond symbolism to a rhythmical physical theatre.

Maurice Maeterl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• Preface to the second edition
• Acknowledgements
• 1 BIOGRAPHY AND CONTEXT
• 2 WRITINGS ON THE TECHNIQUE OF ACTING
• 3 CHEKHOV AS DIRECTOR
• 4 PRACTICAL EXERCISES
• AFTERWORD: COMING UP TO DATE
• Bibliography
• Index