Discoveries in Space

an office can be somewhere else –

I had a real moment when I was teaching today online in my second class on qualities of movement .. 

I did not sit down for pretty much one and a half hours this afternoon. If I had something to say I mostly spoke stood up and so did everyone else. It meant that the energy kept flowing, and I felt my body charging and recharging with energy which does not happen when one is constantly parked in front of the monitor.

Try this as an experiment . Sit in front of the monitor for a minute and then stand up. Even if you get an impulse to stand up it takes a tremendous effort. Sit down again. Feel the energy sink into your hips . It feels like work.

Like the read-through of a play, when the actor is sat down, there is a disconnect, a sense of not fully engaging with your whole being. The reason you feel that is because you aren’t connected. We are still over conditioned to the idea of the read-through as some kind of communal starting-point, some kind of reverence to the text. I remember how boring they were as a young actor, that I was always itching to get on my feet as soon as possible, rather than watching everyone deal with their nerves, try to impress the director or enjoy the adulation of younger less experienced people. The read through was something to be endured. I have always been of the opinion that a read-through has only a value if you are standing up, because the energy flows through you and it is easier to engage with the text and everyone else. 

And Chekhov is all about the movement of energy, and without that physical movement it is hard to bring up the more subtle movement of energy that happens when we are not moving. So Zoom or no Zoom we have got to MOVE!

We did sit for a few minutes to fly back but mostly I really felt like I was in the studio. Maybe i am getting more used to the process of teaching online but maybe it is not just that.

Free movement in the qualities class

My study normally has a bed and it used to double as a guest room. Now there are no guests and the bed is gone which enables me to stand more, to show more. The room is an oblong and much longer one way than the other. When I first moved the bed I planned to turn the monitor round so we could work lengthways but initially I  only turned the monitor occasionally to show things. Today for the first time, i turned the monitor throughout the class and it transformed my energy. . I didn’t want to sit down at all. It changed the focus. This was not a sitting down class where you stood up to do exercises; it was an active movement based class, where you occasionally sat down.  when I gave the class that focus, they gave it too. People were more able to move….  It felt to me like an actual workshop. My energy was clearer and much more like I was ‘ in the room’ .

So where students do their work is absolutely crucial as to how much they get from a class. Of course I know people are often very compromised with space so they need to understand that space and what they need to do to improve on it. This includes lighting (not too much from behind them) and making everyone aware in the house that they will be making noises. It requires removing things that might get broken or personal stuff they do not want people to see. 

That class was a blast. Thanks students

if you are interested in courses from Chekhov Training and Performance Ireland then email chekhovtpi@gmail.com

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Playing on the Cusp -Chekhov course Online

Finding these amazing moments in plays when we actually somehow touch the invisible is often missing from the plays that we see because we do not acknowledge these moments as part of life. We dismiss them as sentimental or ‘unreal’, when they are not. Anton Chekhov’s plays in particular are full of these extraordinary moments. And these moments are open to us as artists continually; but, and this is really important, these moments where we cross the boundary are not peculiar to sensitive artistic souls; they happen to everyone . One of the chosen pieces from this exquisite book we are using, To the Lighthouse, involves the servant cleaner, Mrs. McNab remembering the old lady who owned the house. These moments we all have illuminate both character and audience; a quick flash and they are gone. Or they can be great moments of destiny, where the character sees themselves in the whole panoply of history.

If art connects the living and the dead, the numinous and the everyday , then we need to consider  occasionally how on earth we can make this connection happen authentically in a play or film. How do we make this alchemy happen ? Is it always something that only happens by accident? I do not think that is the only way these connections are made. These connections between the tangible and intangible happen to us in life at moments of selflessness or crisis, like when someone endangers their own life for someone else or at times of,instability like the Covid crisis. A moment when this happens is when someone brings a gift. Recently, a neighbour brought four new cups and saucers to the house as a gift. There were many levels on which I experienced this simple act of generosity. I had had a bad day wrestling with the internet company and was quite overwhelmed by his generosity. The fact that somehow I felt the universe was protecting me on some level was quite profound. I am sure some more sceptical people would say this was a delusion but that did not stop me experiencing it deeply. Whether it was the meaning, it felt like it was. Of course on another level a neighbour was simply bringing me some crockery which would be very useful. These levels of experience stirred inside me and created a response.

This search for the intangible requires an understanding in us of how we respond to events and how many things go on inside us at any given moment. I remember the first time I did the Chekhov exercise where you were asked to connect to  an object whilst walking around the room, then chat to a fellow participant whilst at the same time imagining singing a song! What I learned is that it is hard to keep everything going but our minds flit from one focus to another, sometimes accentuating the song and sometimes the object, or sometimes the conversation. That has been my experience in ‘real life’. The exercise illuminates the amazing complexity of multi-layered response.

Declan Drohan and I will be exploring these elements online with PLAYING ON THE CUSP on July 19 between 3 and 7 pm GMT online. email chekhovtpi@gmail.com. Very exciting. As always Chekhov work goes to interesting unusual places. There are still a couple of spots.

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