#acting journal

Me: Oh, it's mostly a summer company, but sometimes they -

Older couple: No, are YOU doing anything in winter? We've seen you for the last couple years, and the reason we came out today, even though it looked like rain, was to see YOU as Hal!

Ironically, I seemed to have picked another technique by a guy who worked with Stanislavski in his early years!! Wild how that works out.

The difference between Michael Chekhov and Stanislavski is that Chekhov didn't care for the actor's personal feelings in his art. An actor has himself as a person and himself as an artist, and the two should not be mixed. The Chekhov technique completely focuses on the imagination, creativity, and the inner/outer connections of the actor.

Michael Chekhov was the nephew of Anton Chekhov and was a star pupil of Stanislavski before being forced into exile in 1928. He worked in Europe and settled in England for a couple of years, but moved to the US given the war that was going on. This led to the birth of the Chekhov Theatre Players. Sadly, with actors being lost in the war, the company had to be disbanded, and Chekhov moved to L.A. to carry on with his work.

I'm not sure how else to best rephrase what was written in the Backstage article for now, so we'll just run with it. The core tenet of the Chekhov technique is that "every choice they make is crucial to the story." So, Chekhov's philosophy, combining 'physical action, imagination, and the exchange of energy,' has these main principles:

Psychological Gesture: 'Physicalizing a character's internal want, need, or impulse into an external gesture.'

Movement: Warm-up so you feel in touch with your body and feel free to express yourself physically

Radiating: Share your internal energy with your scene partners.

Improv: Verbal or nonverbal improv work is key, usually done in a group setting, for the Chekhov technique. From what I understood, it's to help you combine the previous three principles in a way and tap into that creativity and imagination.

From what I can find, method acting seems to be closely related to the Chekhov technique, but I wonder if this is because of the Stanislavski connection simply.

Going forward, I hope to hold myself accountable to make a short, fun post a day and an in-depth post a week. However, Tumblr will generally be where I just quickly write my thoughts as a true diary. Substack is more for going through the thoughts, formulating them better, formatting them better, and adding more content with the increased processing occurring in my brain.