The Corridors exercise: a Michael Chekhov-based approach to discovering, experiencing, and embodying Given Circumstances and character biography

Abstract

Slava Kokorin, 2009 winner of the Stanislavski Prize for ‘Best Theatre Pedagogue’, worked with the Michael Chekhov technique for more than three decades. One of Kokorin’s contributions was the development of a Chekhov-based exercise called ‘Corridors’. Corridors is grounded in the principles of psychophysical experience and the actor’s imagination. Through the images born from the Corridors exercise the actor physically and psychologically discovers, experiences, and embodies a character’s Given Circumstances and biography, as well as the character’s Objectives, Super-objective, stakes, and urgency. This renders Corridors more effective and efficient than traditional intellectual work on Given Circumstances and character biography; work that many actors and students of acting find cumbersome and dull. Corridors is dynamic, surprising, and immediate because it is based in active creative research. It is an innovative tool for both actor training and character creation.

What follows is the lead author’s documentation, reflection, and interpretation of the application, meaning, and value of his first experience with Corridors as an actor/student, interspersed with responses and context from his teacher, the co-author. It documents a previously undocumented exercise by an important theatre pedagogue; an exercise that extends the lineage of Michael Chekhov’s impactful work.

Keywords:

• Michael Chekhov
• Slava Kokorin
• Corridors exercise
• character biography
• Given Circumstances

Notes

1 Chekhov espouses that all great works of art contain a feeling of ease, a feeling of form, a feeling of beauty, and a feeling of entirety (or the whole). He calls these four feelings or sensations The Four Brothers.

2 The actor may remain in each corridor for up to twenty minutes, at which point he is asked to turn around and walk out of the corridor, returning to the ‘present’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fabio Polanco

Fabio Polanco is an actor, director, and educator. He is a 2018 recipient of Kent State University’s Outstanding Research and Scholarship Award and the 2013 recipient of Ashland University’s Taylor Excellence in Teaching Award. He is the co-founder of Latinx in Theatre, Kent State University’s first Latinx student theatre group. His writings on links between acting methodology and Flow have been published in Stanislavski Studies and in the book Objectives, Obstacles and Tactics in Practice published by Routledge. Polanco is a certified teacher of the Michael Chekhov technique and received his M.F.A. from Case Western Reserve University.

Lionel Walsh

Lionel Walsh is an actor and director who teaches in the BFA in Acting program, University of Windsor. He is a Certified Teacher of the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique (Michael Chekhov Association) and trained at the Moscow Art Theatre.

Lionel is a recipient of the Alumni Award for Distinguished Contribution to University Teaching, the Students of Dramatic Art Award for Teaching Excellence and a nomination for the OCUFA Teaching Award. He also received the Alumni Association’s Excellence in Mentoring Award.

He holds a BFA in Acting from the University of Windsor and an MFA in Theatre from Virginia Commonwealth University.