My takeaways from Michael Chekhov’s “To the Actor: On the Technique of Acting”.

What a book.

  • Art is interpretation, not copy. (× Creative Being)
    • Artists re-present impressions of the typically unseen or overlooked (e.g. Willy the Salesman: while the audience encounters salesmen like him all the time.) (Artists “bring attention to” — × Psychedelics Revealing (attention))
    • The artist’s mission is to convey what he sees and feels.
  • With every artist their dominant theme, underlying all of their work.
    • e.g. Good and Evil (Schiller); mysticism in everyday moments (Maeterlinek); universal archetypes (Goethe); search for god (Dostoyevsky (Karamazov))
    • What would the recurring theme in your work be?
  • Develop your psychology and sensibility.
    • Empathize with characters and people from different eras.
    • See other people as different, not just “as yourself”. Only then can you study them with curiosity.
    • Strive to understand people based on their personality and circumstances; based on their objectives. “Ask yourself why they feel the way they do (or act the way they do).”
      • See people as a frame in the story (legend) of their life. (× The Hero With a Thousand Faces). How they’ve come to be who they are now; their dreams; and the super-objective of their life — realizing one’s legend.
    • Actors are empathetic by trade. Learning to understand characters is learning to understand humans.
  • A bad environment is an active force — ­e.g. uncreative, inartistic environments.
    • A lack of a quality (in one’s environment) is an active force.
  • Counteract bad environments by infusing positive stimuli — e.g. texting on a boring car ride: create your bubble.

Acting

  • Frame acting as first and foremost improvising (around definite scene constraints — e.g. improvising first between a beginning and an end, and eventually in-between all the written moments of the play). Acting is improvising your way from one “required” moment to the next “required moment” (“the necessities”).
  • The joy is in the ephemerality. If it was forever, it wouldn’t be fun. The draw of acting and performing is that they are temporary parts.
    • If we played our characters the whole time, we wouldn’t enjoy them.
    • If we acted out our same kinks the whole time, there wouldn’t be room for other explorations or balance.
    • If we lived forever, life would lose its value.
    • Pop-up rules in gatherings are accepted and exciting because they are temporary (The Art of Gathering: Pop-up rules)
  • Temporality helps objectify. Because they are time-bound, it is easier to consider parts (e.g. social experiments) objectively and distinguish them from one’s self (× The Art of Gathering: clear beginning and clear end).
  • Plays are a mise-en-abyme. Life in life.
  • We comprise three selves: our “lower” everyday self, our “higher” creative individuality, and the character.
  • Our higher self does not know self-criticism, lack of confidence, shyness — these are feelings of our lower self.
  • Our lower self should be a servant to our higher self. providing body, emotions, voice.
  • Our higher self is always there and accessible (Psychedelics Revealing: alternative states of consciousness are parallel, not created), makes its own parallel experience of life (“it goes on evolving its own, higher kind of experiences”) / Our creative self has its own stage time (Your Symphony of Selves).
  • The higher self is the primary force, to be restrained. The higher creative self is wild and unrestrained; the purpose of the everyday self is to accommodate it to reality.
  • Psychological gesture: a physical stance symbolizing the psychology of a character.
    • The body as instrument of symbolism:
      • “Do a new alteration. This time bend your right knee slightly, transferring the weight of your body to the left leg. The PG might now acquire a nuance of surrender. Lift your hands up to your chin and the quality of surrender can become stronger and new slight nuances of unavoidability and loneliness will introduce themselves. Throw your head back and close your eyes: pain and pleading qualities may appear. Turn your palms outward: self-defense. Incline your head to one side: self-pity. Bend the three middle fingers of each hand: a slight hint of humor might occur. With each alteration speak the same sentence to conform with it, e.g. “I wish to be left alone”.” (Same desire, different feelings).
  • Psychological gestures help state-shift. “Gestures for modifying your psychology.”
  • Act boldly, even for weak emotions. Actors should have high energy even when portraying a low-energy character. Psychological gestures should always be made clearly and strongly, even when portraying weak psychologies. (× Improvise (assertiveness; bold and clear decisions); Your Symphony of Selves (more decisions, clearly made); Never Split the Difference (accusation audit: exaggerating reproaches); Psychedelics Revealing (high-energy behaving); Embodied Intimacy’s Primal Play (exaggerating feelings); owning feelings)
  • Vacuous vs inhabited gestures: everyday gestures vs archetypal or embodied gestures. (× pouring your presence onto the objects you touch)

Objectives

  • Each character has their small objectives.
  • These objectives all serve the character’s superobjective.
    • All small objectives first appear random.
      • “The thing isolated becomes incomprehensible.” (Steiner)
    • With knowledge of the superobjective, they become coherent.
  • An objective is a will — doesn’t involve emotions or feelings.
    • e.g. “I wish to …; I desire to …; I want to …”
    • You do not control your feelings and emotions — you either have them, or you don’t.
  • Find out people’s objectives and superobjective.
    • Question them to understand them. “What does that person want?” — e.g. a guest at a community café.
    • Imagining someone’s behaviour upon reaching their goal helps precisely define their superobjective.
  • Objectives can be defined by marking moments: “And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.” (Death of a Salesman)
  • Use your superobjective as compass for life decisions, big and small. “Does this serve my superobjective?”
  • The characters’ superobjectives all serve the play’s superobjective — what “wants to happen”.
    • e.g. Love inspiring the creation of the world.
    • What is the superobjective of a place? (e.g. Zart)
  • The actual superobjective of a play is perceived by the audience, not the author.
  • The different characters’ objectives and superobjectives as well as the play’s superobjective engage with one another in a beautiful dance.

Characterization

Storyline

  • Each play is fundamentally about the fight between Good and Evil — and with either Good or Evil winning the game.
  • Each play is composed of three units: beginning, transformation, ending. (Triplicity.)
  • Each of these units contains a climax that summarizes what the unit is about.
    • Each climax can be seen as a rite of passage, e.g. crossing the threshold, slaying the monster, etc. (The Hero With a Thousand Faces)
    • The climax synthesizes the unit, as a psychological gesture synthesizes a character.
    • Climaxes are where to start with rehearsals — capture the gist of the play.
    • Climaxes are where to start with writing the play — start with the strongest moments.
  • Each of these units marks a new stage in the evolution of Good and of Evil.
  • Every main character is waging a fight in the play, and either wins or loses the battle at the end.
  • Contrasting ending: Plays should start one way and end the opposite way — in atmosphere, tempo, and the rest. (Polarity.)
  • Two dimensions of repetition:
    • Repetition in space, e.g. equally distributed rows of windows, pillars, tiers; or human figures passing evenly across the stage
    • Repetition in time, e.g. encounters between the two same characters in different scenes
  • Two kinds of repetition:
    • Repetition with change
      • Parallelism: e.g. juxtaposed relationships or characters – exacerbating differences.
      • Repeat – Repeat – Break
    • Repetitions without change: in time ⇒ eternity; in space ⇒ endlessness.
  • Applicable to set design, sound design, composition.
  • Inner vs outer action:
    • Inner action: pauses, silences — though never empty or devoid of purpose. “Empty pauses do not, and should not, exist on the stage. Every pause must have a purpose.”
    • Outer action: anything visible
  • Rhythmical waves give life to a play. They make the performance pulsatingly beautiful, kill its monotony.
    • e.g. subdued vs loud moments.

Atmosphere

Types of plays

  • Comedy:
    • Predominant personality trait; taking up a lot of space; quick tempo (with intermittent pauses or slower moments)
  • Drama:
    • Bad fate, being oneself but not learning lessons or seeing the greater meaning behind things.
    • Drama is tragedy without the Presence.
  • Tragedy:
    • Bad fate, dealing with forces greater than oneself and being at their mercy — being aware of it.
    • Suffering + Presence (of a powerful force) — without the latter, it’s just drama.
  • Clown:
    • Lots of small creatures taking turn controlling us. Gay, humorous and silly.
    • Subhuman beings — as opposed to tragedy’s superhuman presence.
    • Unexpected, unjustified reactions. A caricature of life, to an extent.

Defies pigeonholing

  • “Tangible intangibles: certain elements are intangible (e.g. atmosphere) though very clearly present.
    • Cultural and artistic progress stems from intangibles. “To progress culturally, life, and especially the arts, must be permeated with all kinds of intangible powers and qualities.”
    • What will remain is the intangible.
  • “Objective method”: having a method helps with consistently providing results.
    • “Following the recipe”: By simply “following the recipe”, you already deliver a good performance. Inspiration can come on top.
      • (e.g. as a technician: doing one’s work well, and then the personality comes on top)
    • A great performance is the best way to bring back an elusive inspiration: “A part correctly played has the best chance of luring back an elusive inspiration.” (Nikolayvsky)
      • (e.g. being on top of things in one’s everyday.)
    • Objective assessment (e.g. of plays) through shared framework and vocabulary.
  • Body warm-up:
    • Warm up with slow, clear, deliberate movements. Use the space.
    • Move from the chest.
    • Impulses precede movements; radiation succeeds them.
    • Pour your presence onto the objects you touch.
    • Your joints are not for stiffness but for freedom of movement.