WHAT ARE OUR ARTISTIC GOALS?

Joanna Merlin

What are our artistic goals? How can we pass on Chekhov’s legacy? Chekhov
said, “The moment you’re not alive on stage, you’re dead.” We continue to
ask ourselves the questions: “How can we bring life to our teaching? How do
we free our talent - both teachers and participants, how do we unlock our
creativity?

No technique is formulaic, we don’t feel it benefits any of us to be slavish, to

keep repeating exercises from Chekhov’s books, year after year. We alternate
some of our faculty from one workshop to the next; we choose a play for each
workshop so that we can apply the exercises and classwork to character and
text. The classes are intense, master classes; the atmosphere is serious but
playful.

Here is a brief description of some of the things we are trying to accomplish in

our workshops that will take the participant closer to realizing the Chekhov
approach in his own work:

We strive to create a safe, permissive environment where the participants trust

the teacher and the process;
We work toward openness on every level; physically, psychologically, inwardly,
spatially; we stress the importance of being open to the other actors – to
develop the capacity to receive, to open our imagination and our dreams;
We look for ways to help the participants transcend their inhibitions - to free
them from blocks;
We concentrate on awareness: of the body, sensations, impulses received and
given;
We work on enlargement of one’s self image;
We look for ways to experience and keep alive the inner sensation or inner
movement generated by outer expression;
We stress the importance of giving visceral life to the image;
We try to sensitize actors to the difference between experiencing the
movement, gestures, and qualities rather than executing them mechanically;
We look for polarities in character, atmosphere, qualities, psychological
gestures;
We try to awaken the actor to that which lies under the surface, so he can with
confidence, use all of himself;
We look for ways to risk the unknown, so that we can stumble into discoveries
that might never have been made if confined to what we already know;
We encourage working intuitively when starting to create a role, using
imagination and body rather than analysis;
We explore the use of archetypes as character paradigms;
We discuss the use of the technique in auditioning and acting for the camera;
We believe in taking participants to the edge of their own perceived
limitations, and beyond.