Welcome to the Training Grounds section of our special edition devoted to Michael Chekhov. As in all previous editions we hope to offer you a practitioner-oriented perspective on his work and ideas. We begin with a series of short reflections (you could call them postcards), and then some longer than usual pieces, concluding with a book review where Phelim McDermott thinks back on how Chekhov's books have influenced his own work.
First then, the postcards. Mark Evans vividly recalls a Chekhov exercise from a workshop he took in 1979. Grisana Punpeng reflects on how the psychological gesture is both ‘inside out’ and ‘outside in’ – in other words, truly psycho-physical – while Sean Aita argues for its increasing relevance in acting for the screen. Finally, Max Hafler offers a timely reminder that Chekhov's ideas might still seem alien to the greater part of the theatre community.
David Zinder writes about Chekhov the Director – an article which, in his own words, treads ‘a fine line between conjecture, extrapolation, cultural archaeology and historical evidence’. He lists certain elements that shaped his productions, including the laws of triplicity, polarity, transformation, climaxes and repetitions, and rhythm; or, as his assistant and tireless amanuensis would insist, ‘rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm’. Rare photographs from his production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with the Habima Theatre give a vivid image impression of his work as a director. Zinder ends with the sad reflection that had there been the resources Chekhov would undoubtedly have ‘taken pride of place among the great directors of modern times’. This article is complemented by Sinéad Rushe's diary of her rehearsal process for an adaptation of Gogol's Diary of a Madman – which she directed inspired by Chekhov's principles. Thus we see the principles cited by Zinder put to work in a contemporary production. With a similar feeling for practice Joanna Merlin (who studied with Michael Chekhov from 1949 to 1955) offers a record of a seven-day workshop where she explored the Psychological Gesture, finally applying it to a monologue from Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. Forty years of teaching are here condensed into her step-by-step introduction. When Hugh O' Gorman writes about the teaching of Chekhov he selects a quote that Phelim McDermott echoes in his review: ‘the method will imbue you with the feeling that you have already known it all along’. Both O'Gorman and McDermott stress how this is a method based on doing and not thinking, of getting out of your own way and thus allowing your creative imagination to inform you.
An overview of the work of three founder members of the Michael Chekhov Centre UK is offered through interviews with Graham Dixon, Sarah Kane and Martin Sharp, conducted and edited by Tom Cornford, Cass Fleming and Sinéad Rushe. Graham Dixon argues that Chekhov invites us to go ‘beyond the duality of psychophysical, or mind and body, and to connect with everything that's outside me: other people, objects, nature, the elements, everything’. For Martin Sharpe there is a similar invitation: to see that ‘we're always in relationship with others, we are never isolated’. Possibly this is what lends that sense of wholeness that Sarah Kane writes about in relation to Chekhov.
The next issue of Training Grounds will have the usual sections – more short writings in the Training And… section, responses to the question ‘What training do you wish you'd received?’, another Essai in the series about Kinaesthetic Empathy, and reviews of workshops and books. As ever, we look forward to receiving your ideas and proposals for any of these sections and a revised call is now up on our website with full details.