During a fascinating discussion on teaching goals last week at the International Chekhov Technique Teachers Coop, someone came up with an amazing image of teaching in a whirlwind, as if you had to impart everything and get people to experience everything in their bodies before the time came for the course to end.
How well I know that feeling of the shortage of time! On Zoom especially, with limited time and this feeling that you are held together as a group bounded by threads of light and images, though thousands of miles apart. It is the shadow that stalks all short courses; to give something of value in a short time whether you are working in the room or in the virtual studio.
What the whirlwind can do is it can create the ‘Wow Factor’ where participants get surprised by their response to stimuli and the text. They are jolted into a more holistic experience. This can be a great reason to go into ‘the whirlwind’ to keep people moving and experiencing so they do not have time to think. Their intellect sleeps and something else takes over. It is exhilarating and it opens doors. It makes them realise that the possibility of creation can bubble up in a new way, if they would just allow it to happen.
As someone else said, part of a teacher’s skill is reading the room and changing rhythm. Too much staying in the same rhythm and pace can make it harder for the student to engage.
But it is true as well that the whirlwind sometimes comes from a desire to cram in everything you can….this is partly because the various elements of the technique are so interconnected that one wants to share in the idea that all these elements of the technique are joined up. Michael Chekhov saw all these individual elements of practise igniting the others.
Some of us suggested that it was better to limit the number of tools taught, in order that the student can come away with something they can use now. Using an element immediately without sufficient practise however will not work for everybody. They can easily get disheartened if it doesn’t work for them.
Michael Chekhov frequently challenged his students to keep working on the technique as someone in the group reminded us in our discussion. But then, she also reminded us that he was training professional acting students, whereas we often have a mixture of people on our courses. But I think sometimes highly trained professional actors can be very resistant to a training which has more to do with imagination, freedom and the body. You simply do not know how participants will respond.
Chekhov technique is fascinating in this way; on the one hand the initial stimulus of the work can be mind-blowing and rich but to actually use it, like everything else, takes work and time to deepen our practise.
As Peter Brook said, in THE EMPTY SPACE,
“An actor, like any artist, is like a garden and it is no help to pull out the weeds just once, for all time. The weeds always grow, and that is quite natural, and they must be cleaned away, and that is natural too.”
But it is a balance for us teachers; to encourage application on the one hand; and on the other to do the work and do the practise which enriches the imagination and sensitises the body to all the influences to which it is subjected.
Then Actors really can be Magicians.
It can be that the participant is not quite ready yet to hear and fully experience a part of the work. It often makes us feel defeated. But there is nothing wrong with this; we have all had learning experiences of our own where we were unable to absorb or wanted to dismiss something we were being taught because we found it challenging in some way, shape or form; then years later (often many years later!) the light goes on and we go ‘aha! now I know what they were getting at!” It’s sad that we as teachers, do not always experience those riches of realisation in our students, but sometimes we do. Chekhov Technique , because it is primarily experiential and is about at a basic level connecting up imagination, body, voice sensations and feelings, enables us to see more of our fair share of these breakthroughs.
Thankyou, group of friends and colleagues for such an enriching conversation!
Max Hafler - Radiating /Receiving 