MIND AND MOTION
EDITION #9

Table of Contents

• WHY I LOVE CHEKHOV’S TECHNIQUE

• SIGNPOST 🪧 - QUALITIES

• MY TRAINING

• MY CURIOSITY

MIND AND MOTION
WHY I LOVE CHEKHOV’S TECHNIQUE

The major reason I love Chekhov and his technique is how it communicates the spirituality of the art. In “To the Actor” Simon Callow revises the work of Michael Chekhov, but also forwards the work. In the beginning, he touches on how Chekhov replies to people saying that the work is too ‘mystical.’ To that, Chekhov says, “Try the exercises and you will see that they are not mystical. Try them and you will see that they are truly practical.” I think Chekhov is copping out. The exercises are absolutely practical, and doing them leads to something far greater, hence the psychophysical abilities this technique holds as its foundation. I think the word mystical used in this context was a judgment on what is actually spiritual. Because of the fear of the communist regime in Russia, even though Chekhov escaped, there was a bias against anything spiritual, and the eyes of others calling something mystical could have caused a little bit of watering down on Chekhov’s part. Yet he didn’t say “it’s not spiritual.” It’s absolutely practical, but he copied what others misinterpreted and said it is not “that.”

If Chekhov came around in our day in age, there would be a lot of differences in how he may teach his work. As I’m on a journey toward artistic and spiritual freedom, The week I spent at the consortium led me to believe that I was in fact on the right path toward both. Images flew past me at slower speeds, catching them for longer periods, dreams went from 720p to 1080p HD, and the feeling of the whole became both practical and increased in power. I felt as an actor I was repotted into fertile soil, and my roots swelled and increased in size and energy.

I remember as an actor I would watch my fellow students call upon trauma after trauma, realizing just how vanilla a life I lived. Nothing was that awful for me. I had my pain points, but I saw how other people held far more pain than I did. I was jealous of this, and I remember (I still have the page where I wrote this) writing down that I wish I had more interesting experiences, how my life is boring, and how I wish it was more exciting. I happened across that passage waiting for a subway train, and I don’t ever cry in public, I still have too many “man” walls around me for that, but when I saw what I wrote I broke down in the middle of the subway station. That’s because what I wished for, I got, but I also learned to be careful of what I wished for.

In tandem, I learned how unsafe techniques like “sense memory” were, pulling on emotions from your past to fit a character. It felt like a square peg slamming against a circular hole, wondering why in the world it wouldn’t fit. What happens when you don’t have a similar experience to your character? What happens if you may have a similar experience, but you’ve healed from that, especially after putting a great deal of work into that healing, what happens if you bring it up again? Might I also say that you’re doing a disservice to the character you’re embarking upon by saying your experience is just like that? Imagine trauma bonding with someone in your life, is that necessarily going to help them heal? From what I’ve learned in books like “Attached” “How to Do the Work” and “Untamed” trauma bonding doesn’t work out in a positive way for either participant. From what I’ve learned and experienced, some of the old Stanislavsky techniques, hurt the actor, and hurt the character. Not that I didn’t get a lot out of his work, but I’ve just found a better way.

Chekhov works closely and deeply with the character, but rather than a powerful actor forcing logic onto the character, the character and the actor are now working in collaboration with each other. The actor receives just as much as they radiate within this work. Exercises teach us to step in and out of our characters, like a swan completely shaking off a fight that happened thirty seconds ago in a pond. We go there, we head into dark depths, dark waters, and dangerous territories, but the actor has agency to step out, walk away from the work for the time, and come back whenever ready. This work doesn’t implant in your subconscious that you need a rich interior life, or a dramatic/traumatic life to play difficult characters. It teaches you that where you are right now is powerful enough to meet these characters. It teaches you that your imagination is a superpower and deserves to be developed. That imagination will be the power to reach into greater depths of the work.

Which is so obvious to me that even writing this down now I’m baffled at how I lost my way thinking I needed to always experience things to actually know something. Yet that’s the difference between naturalism which is purely journalistic acting, to, instead, reaching a rich inner truth of a show, or play, that captures and cultivates genuine change. Even now my mind is changing on what it means to be an actor, what our job is, and how to tell a story. It’s becoming more grandiose than I expected, not an untrue grandiosity, but even grander than grandiose. It excites me that I get to share these lessons with you, as I begin to implement my work in Chekhov.

A practice that isn’t mystical, a spiritual practice. A practice that isn’t too painful and logistical to realize, a practice that anyone can utilize. A practice that can be the next step toward incredible art, art that opens the doors audiences had kept hidden for some time. A mission is brewing, I can sense it. Shall I continue opening the scary basement doors?

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