radiating and receiving exercise
Through June here in Galway, I am running a series of evening workshops called Chekhov and the Carousel of Love applying aspects of Chekhov
Technique on scenes of love, in the widest sense. The next bit is going to be a little philosophical but rest assured [if you are planning to come!] the class will be practise and application and not too much talk!
Love is a way of emanating our energy; whilst there are all sorts of different kinds of love I suppose I like to believe that love is an openness, a generosity of spirit , in Michael Chekhov terms a generous open gesture to a person, a belief or the world. I think it was Leonard Bernstein who said that teaching was like an act of love. What I understand by that is that when you have a real connection with students, you are sharing in a very deep way. You are ‘radiating and receiving’ to use Chekhov’s terms.
I feel this sometimes quite extraordinarily after I have been teaching, as if a weight has been lifted from me and I feel more open and connected to everyone. This happens to many people I am sure. Particularly, there is something that happens to me when drawing my students into focussing on radiating and receiving, that I feel a light go on more strongly in myself.
From a performance point of view I actually feel this movement of energy is a visible-invisible thing, like atmosphere. When used effectively, the audience get a sense of something which the actors generate and enliven. No one can see it exactly but it is there in the room.
Love of course is very complex, and there are many types of love, but this ‘how’ you are in love, does not negate or invalidate the power of a particular state of being, called ‘love’.
Chekhov speaks of Romeo and Juliet and asks how the performers can perform the balcony scene without the atmosphere of love, this movement of energy between the two. This might sound fanciful, but I can certainly recall those love-filled conversations of my youth where absolutely no one or no thing was relevant to me but myself with the other person. It is quite literally a bubble, or an atmosphere, if you like. All things can exist within that bubble; jealousy; sex; warmth; rage; vulnerability but these things do not negate the bubble itself, which is filled with love.
I suppose where this idea of focussing on scenes of love came from was that in the recent production I did of Twelfth Night I was moved and overwhelmed by the young actors’ energy and commitment to romantic love. Twelfth Night explores love in many of its connotations; gay; straight; devotional; romantic; lustful but with that openness of love comes attached the other energies; doubt; fear; confusion; idealism; devotion to name but a few. This focus on ‘love’ did not negate the frantic behaviour but it acted as a motor for everything that happened.
Malvolio observed by the clowns
Chekhov and The Carousel of Love is running Tuesday and Thursday nights through the month of June in the Blue Teapots in Galway City . email chekhovtrainperformireland@gmail.com for more details. the first session is on June 5th.
Max Hafler - Radiating /Receiving 