Thoughts on Michael Chekhov's Acting Technique

By Ragnar Freidank

“In our technique there are no purely physical exercises, all exercises are psycho-physical” M.C.

Movement and consciousness: When we move our movement is expressing some inner experience: I see something, I don’t like it: I turn away. - On the other hand it is also possible to move in a certain way and then notice what this makes me feel like: I have to stand straight with my hands to my sides, yelling at the top of my voice: “Yes, sir!” – what is the resulting experience for me, the soldier?

The purpose of movement in this technique is not to create outer stereotypical forms. The meaning of movements the actor makes, consists not in what the movement may look like outwardly (to an observer), but in what a particular movement awakens in the actor himself; or better: what experience it awakens in the actor.

Chekhov’s technique, one could argue, is about consciousness, consciousness not as something that is limited to the mind, but consciousness as an awareness that can encompass the whole body, thus awakening the body from its daily sleep into an instrument for the actor.

The awakened body is the actor’s instrument.

What “music” can be played on this instrument?

This “music”, one could say, is the actor’s imagination.

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Outside and inside: Psychologically speaking we seem to experience the world as falling into two separate parts. The one part is everything that we experience as being outside of ourselves, and the other as being everything that we perceive to be part of us, and therefore: inside of us.

We think of the “inside” as “who we are”, our personality.

The moment the actor becomes aware of his “inside world” it ceases to be inside. His consciousness is looking at it and it has become thus another “outside”.

We can see that any “outside world” approaching the actor’s consciousness is really freeing him, because all he needs to do is letting his human nature react to this “outside world”.

We can now notice how the “inner world” we carry in us is made up of images. Once we become aware of the existence of this imaginary world in us, we see that it meets us in a similar way as the outer world does: out of nowhere. We don’t know where the images come from and we are as much affected by them as we are by events in the outer world. Through the act of noticing this, the “inner world” has become independent from our consciousness. We can now look at it and let it change us.

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Two Stories: In any situation we can notice 2 stories that are happening simultaneously: One is the outer story (“We are all in a room together”) and one is my own story (“I am so exhausted, so sad”...)

The outer story everyone can see   – the inner story we can hide.

In hiding that part of myself I can interact with my colleagues on a social level, but I cannot truly give of myself, because there is this inner story that I feel I have to keep inside for some reason; maybe because I am ashamed of it or because I think it has no value.

Giving that inner story, giving the laugh, the sigh, the imperfection to my colleagues is a generous act; it is to give from my life.

Life meets me from the outside. My partner smiles at me. That smile is not my invention; I have nothing to do with it. It meets me from the outside. I cannot earn it; I cannot prevent it. It is there. One thing I can do is: I can see it. And accept it. When I accept it I have received: I have let something outside of me touch me.

This is potentially scary, because I don’t know what that “touch” will do to me: It might make me smile, but it might also make me frown.

Giving and receiving, we can say, is something that naturally takes places between us. We not so much create this process, but we often interfere with it.

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What is the actor’s creation? The actor creates with something that is immaterial. It takes on a temporary form (of gesture, sound, word…), but nothing remains. After the performance is over, it has vanished and lives on only in the memory of the people involved (or not).

To be creative within the theater event the actor needs to go to the same “immaterial and transient” place within himself. This “place” is his own soul, or: his experience of himself and of life around him.

We can observe how we are unable to define or capture our own experience. “It” eludes constantly, shifts constantly. The act of wanting to capture “it” has already changed “it”. “It” is the way my soul, my will, my inner life, moves. “It” is outside of my control, because this “it” is “me”.

What can I do in his attempt to create with this slippery soul of mine, a soul I can never be sure of, because it will never be one thing?

Instead of placing importance onto the ‘result” of being one thing or another, I can notice how my relationship to life is moving from moment to moment. A way to notice this is to move myself. Not to move to create anything in particular, but to move in order to find out: what do I really feel or want, how do I really relate to what is happening. Not how should I react, but how do I react? Maybe I find out that I really push something away I think I ought to embrace.

By allowing myself to move, to express what is there I am noticing the movement of my own soul, a movement that might have been curbed by socialization; I am noticing how I constantly accept, reject, long, suffer, etc…

Experiencing our own ever-changing relationship to the world is to be in contact with our own life of gesture. We are in contact with our own “will”.

Out of this contact with a living force within him the actor can begin to experiment with this world of gesture: If I find that I am withdrawing from someone, say: a teacher, what would happen to me, if outwardly I would start to approach him with open arms.

It is important that I do not lie to myself, in order to attain a certain result. When I move, I will have an experience. This experience is always the truth.

It is important for me to believe more in my experience, then in what anybody (including myself) expects to happen. In this way I allow the gesture, my own gesture, to speak to me and to change me. This change will happen to me. I cannot change. I can only be changed. A gesture that changes me can be called a psychological gesture; it can awaken in me the notion of who I have become, a notion of who that person is: the character.