“A little piece of Art”

CHEKHOV TRAINING AND PERFORMANCE IRELAND SUMMER SCHOOL

“A little piece of Art”
Finding a sense of form in the character, the piece or the play through the Michael Chekhov Technique.
NUIG Galway
August 16-19^th 10 – 5.  Tutor Max Hafler
For Actors, Students, and Directors .

Michael Chekhov said that everything you did onstage, every exercise, every improvisation, every scene, every play needed a ‘feeling of Form’ and a “feeling of Entirety”. Each piece had to be “a little piece of Art”. We are going to explore these two fundamental planks of Chekhov Technique to enable us to create more believable and focussed characters and performances using the psycho-physical technique which through the imagination and the body takes us to new realms.

Getting the whole understanding of form in our bodies is crucial. How do you start a scene? What are the dynamics? And how does the scene end? And what happens in between? Working with tableaux, gesture and transformation, we will work with a yet to be decided text. This technique will give a strong grid on which to work, yet at the same time give you as a performer/director an immense freedom. It is both completely practical and helps the performer to express the invisible.

It is going to be exciting.

some thoughts

Of course these ideas  of Form and Entirety are not new in consideration of art but they are too often dismissed or ignored by practitioners as outmoded or outdated, that they make smug or complacent art, as if life could be tied in those kind of parcels. I would question whether theatre has the slightest responsibility to imitate life in quite that kind of way, even if this was true.

Form and Entirety [or wholeness] are related of course but are not quite the same thing. I would say that Feeling of Form is something the performer practises that becomes an inate performance skill  whereas a Feeling of Wholeness is a state that is discovered both as a character and also through the experience of the whole play.

We have to accept that Form and Wholeness are woven into our lives. The two things we know for sure are that we are born and we die; a beginning and an end. Because we understand this on a fundamental visceral level, it is not surprising to me that we often look for this quality in art. The end we seek in our plays and films is not necessarily a comfortable easy end; nor is it always an attempt to just have our own values expressed and validated. Remember, if you look at a play or film with an ending which appears inconclusive, the creators have decided that ending for a reason.  It is still an ending.

In my real life experience, endings are beginnings with new challenges and obstacles and pleasures. At least they are changes – the start of a new consideration, some new way of being. The end is a stopping and pausing point. however, in a work of art it offers a deep satisfaction because it is a pinnacle, a place for the characters to rest and take stock before they move on. In a fictional narrative, it leaves us with a feeling, a question and a resolution all rolled into one – if it is powerful that is.

So, in addition to needing a ‘Feeling of Entirety’ for the whole piece of art, we have a feeling of form for the character. What about the beginning, the start of the character’s journey? What are the energies and desires he brings into the space and how does he seek them?  Chekhov always talks about How and what  being the most fundamental questions which lead to the answer of Why someone does something.

When working on entrances and exits in another workshop, we observed that the moment you entered was one of your moments of ultimate power. The audience are intrigued by a new energy, by a feeling that the arrival of this person is going to change things, alter the dynamic. Finding a starting point through psycho-physical exercises is a nuanced and exciting exploration. Finding the end point gives you somewhere to go.

booking details

If you are interested to book for this course , please contact chekhovtrainperformireland@gmail.com. the cost of the course is €180 for tuition only

 

 

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Everything is Beautiful at the Ballet

Later this month I am participating in a Teachers’ retreat for Michael Chekhov Teachers, and one of the things we are asked to consider is the time “when we were very young and dreamed of the stage very secretly.” Michael Chekhov. To explore what that creative joy felt like.

At first when I read this, I was a bit apprehensive. Like many artists, I feel my creativity was bound keenly to a very difficult environment of family breakup, tragedy and illness. I wondered how much of these things I wanted to pick through in order to explore this and how much I wanted to share. On the other hand, I am not someone who fakes exploration in workshop; I want to explore.

I asked my intuition before I went to sleep as to how I might tackle this in a manageable and safe way and I came up with something . I came across a picture of myself at three singing ‘Living Doll’ (an early Cliff Richard song) in a talent show. It made me think of the ‘forward movement of energy ’ required to be a performer, to be able to go out there, the ability to share but also to say “look at me”. As a child, acting was a total release for me. It made me feel like I had something of value to share, that despite the dangers and disappointments of ‘real life’ here was a place I could be myself.  It felt generous and open and exciting, like a light had gone on inside me. To some extent though, this quality is also tied up with ego and narrowing selfishness, and whilst this forward movement is vital for me as a performing artist, it is only part of the story.

Where my creativity really sprang from as a child, where it really nurtured me,  was from an inward movement of energy, a lonely creation of expansive imaginative worlds through my puppet theatre, my games and by voracious reading. It was no accident that when, as a young actor, I saw the show A Chorus Line , I wept copiously during the song, “Everything was Beautiful at the Ballet”, so much so that members of the audience sitting behind me told me to shut up! This lovely song really captured for me what it was like to sublimate your pain into art, to forget your problems, and when I think about it now, to consider the work of creativity and performing as being the most beautiful important thing.

This inward energy or imagination, seems to be the true core of artistic creation. Afterwards of course, we share that with others, our co-artists and audiences, which augments and strengthens its value. And I feel it is my job to always, always be open to this impulse to both the inward creation and the outward expression.

Often though in our creative world of ‘the business’, so many of us are denied this expansiveness, or have it only for a short period of our lives. In the end I think that is what I loathe about the idea of being professional. In that world the very thing that gives the work its power is the very thing that is denied all but a very few fortunate souls. I think this is almost unbearably cruel, to snatch this raw creative power away as we try to reconcile our ideals with the raw realities of agents, headshots and survival. I think ultimately that is why I love teaching as much as I do, because what you are doing is working with this inner creative flame. You do not have to consider these materialist realities, because it is the creative imagination which is the reality.  

When I found the work of Michael Chekhov, I felt I had found someone who never lost this sense of the power of the imagination, of this liberation and joy, despite the various trials and tribulations of his own life. I can honestly say it changed my life because I found someone, and through him a whole network of people, who think and feel as I do myself – that theatre makers are primarily artists no matter what.