We all know what atmosphere is. We sense it when we go into a room, or stand on a beach, or wait in a hospital waiting room, or sit in our own bedroom. We notice it at weddings, funerals, and graduations; and whilst every person will have a different response to any atmosphere there is something which is common to everyone present. Through the use of atmosphere, the characters in a play are united on a Deep level. Atmosphere is, as they say, ‘a thing’.
When I work with a new group to me, I frequently start with atmosphere and last Sunday, when working with local actors for the Drama League of Ireland, I did just that. Starting with atmosphere can be difficult for some people because it does require a focus of imagination we are not always used to; but once you trust it, it can be overwhelmingly powerful. Michael Chekhov went so far as to say that the atmosphere is the soul of the performance, yet it is astonishing how often this very key roadway to the realm of feeling is absent when we go to watch even the most professionally produced of plays. I have written about this extensively on this blog. The thing about it is that when an atmosphere is generated by actors, the audience knows there is something powerful emanating from the stage without necessarily being able to put a name to it. They just feel it.
Atmosphere takes us closely to our childlike response of “let’s pretend” . On one level we are immersed in a serious game with our friends of ‘cops and robbers’ (or whatever children play and fantasise nowadays!) However, we can easily interrupt our imaginings to give instructions or set rules for the fantasy before returning to it and seamlessly the atmosphere floods back as we return to the imaginative game.
What is astonishing about atmosphere is that because you are imagining something external to you and then letting that thing work and use you, the inspiration for the way you move speak and behave appears to be coming from outside you. This has a deep potency and when I first experienced it, was unlike anything I had ever experienced before in acting. It is like magic. As the great teacher Lenard Petit says , “you let the atmosphere play you”. This stirs amazingly challenging feelings and sensations which you often are not expecting. So often I hear first time explorers of this element of the work say, “I said the lines differently to how I was expecting , and yet it felt right and truthful”. While Chekhov alerts us to the fact that the first thing we find is not often the right one and there are other elements to find before we settle comfortably with our character, nonetheless, those first discoveries can be life changing in terms of the way you see acting/ performing in general.
It is the very palpable feeling of watching someone make these realisations, of being ‘astonished’, realising you truly have the power to imagine and make the invisible manifest, not only for yourself but for an audience, and that is where the true joy of this transformation lies.
And not only in acting. The number of times I have seen someone change gear in front of me, like they are getting some kind of jolt on a deep level, and they communicate with the audience or with each other in a new way. There is a kind of shift inside them, a transformation. Of course these transformations are sometimes momentary and we try sometimes to ’get back there’ the next day and we have difficulty.
That is what practise is for. Because something is magical does not make it always easy to maintain, but as an initial revelation, it is something which can encourage us deeper into the work. Perhaps that is the most important thing: to have the revelation in the first place, and that, as Chekhov said, ‘Actors Are Magicians.’
I am running Playing with Atmosphere online which begins Nov 7th at 5.15 irish time and runs for two hours
Declan Drohan and I are running two online courses , one starting on the 15th Sept at 4.00pm Irish time on the Fundamentals of the Chekhov Technique Ease,Form,Beauty and The Whole, and from October 4th at 5pm Irish Time for 6 weekly sessions ,The Quest for Character which will help us deal with finding imaginative entry point for building the character. email chekhovtpi@gmail.com . there’s a short video on the fundamentals course, below
Video link
Max Hafler - Radiating /Receiving 