MICHEAL CHEKHOV

Micheal Chekhov

Micheal Chekhov was a Russian-American actor, director, author and theatre practitioner who's acting theories have been practiced and praised by numerous accomplished performers across the globe. He was strong on the idea of actors being artists and respecting the work as such rather than employing mechanical, cold, analytical thinking.

Similarities & Differences 

Andy Fastow and Kai Kwasi Thorne

Male-Male

Employed - Unemployed

Father - Childless(?)

American - British

30s - Teenager

White - Mixed Race

Academically Driven - Artistically Driven

Wears suits - Wears jeans and T-shirts

This process allows the actor to establish differences between the character and themselves, Chekhov urges actors to embrace and acknowledge these differences because then actor can identify their route to the character.

I don't know how much this helped personally but i imagine theres more work to be done in a further step of the exercise however i couldn't find this online and we didn't get to explore so unfortunately it stopped there.

Psychological Gesture

Chekhov believed that psychological gesture is the key to an actors subconscious and that it awakens an inner life. He therefore believed that the same concept could be applied to character in that every character has a psychological gesture which exposes their inner life (secrets, motivations personality traits etc.) He talks about success being found through creating visceral imagery/gesture rather than stereotypical and the same can be applied with acting and Uta Hagens belief of finding inner truth rather than making something resembling truthfulness.

In our Enron rehearsals we created three gestures, ultimately refining them down to a single gesture as a means of finding/exploring our characters through physicality.

Gesture 1

What my character wants: My interpretation of Andy Fastow (for my half of the play at least) is driven by the want or need to be needed or wanted himself. He craves simple affection and normality, ironically evoking the opposite through his unsettling mannerisms and idiosyncrasies.

I created a gesture of by reaching out, extending my arms and legs then and drawing back in only to find emptiness, nothing changes and the gesture repeats.

Gesture 2

What my character does: My character problem solves, weather its in terms of the company or an uncomfortable silence, he will always be working to fill in the gaps and/or provide the stepping stones even if it means he himself is being trodden on.

for this i created a gesture almost linked to the previous gesture but instead of reaching out and drawing in, i did the opposite. I violently ripped ideas, thoughts facts etc from my head going from clenched fists and a restricted pose, to an outreaching vulnerable stance

Gesture 3

Andy Fastow deals with the world by pushing and forcing his way into it, like a jigsaw puzzle piece that doesn't quite fit. Weather its successful or not, there is a strong sense of desperation and pushing to his being. Ironically, this same tactic he uses to fit in pushes people away from him.

Im thought of the word pushing and worked it into my body, pushing things off of me and away from me. Without realising at the time i almost employed the laban effort of push and i'll definitely bare this in mind for my character over the duration of the play, to inform my movement throughout. This gesture was almost a combination of the previous two with added element of resistance.

Ending

After finding these three gestures we combined them to create a single consolidating gesture and roamed the space, experimenting, adjusting and finding new things within the gesture. Mine changed by the use of my entire body whereas i started off only using my hands. We then worked at combining the gesture with a line of text, bringing the element of vocals into the exercise and finally fed back our final ideas to the class. It was interesting to see other peoples ideas, some more natural and others more extravagant. 

Final Thoughts

I found this exercise useful in that it allowed me to explore the physicality of my character on a larger scale, through exaggeration and abstract concept rather than minuscule detailed physicality. It is easier to paint in detail on a huge board than a microscopic canvas. I was able to develop creative physicality to inform my movement rather than just working off of my interpretation of the text and imagining what he'd look like. I continued to explore this exercise at home (especially when going over scenes and lines) as i feel that it genuinely helped consolidate Fastows physicality, even up until the shows i was thinking about the stretching and i actually implored some of it into my Raptor work which was like a mini personal easter egg in the show.