The Michael Chekhov Handbook For the Actor by Nikhil Navsariwala

The Michael Chekhov Handbook For the Actor by Nikhil Navsariwala

Publication date : February 5, 2020

If I could have, I would have asked Michael Chekhov: What do

you believe is the most important factor in your method? Instead,

I asked my teacher, Deirdre Hurst du Prey, Chekhov’s student

and secretary for 20 years. ‘That would be Truth’, she answered.

This is a big idea, but simple enough. The difficulty is in keeping

it simple. Once it gets complicated the truth becomes more and

more elusive. I want to speak from this place of simplicity, where

I found my own truth, because useful acting techniques can only

be about one’s own truth, the truth one is experiencing in the

moment.

The Michael Chekhov technique is a very free way to work

as an actor. The material we encounter is immediately provocative

and rewarding. I have been a practitioner of this approach for

30 years. I have been a teacher for nearly 20 years. I know most

of the Chekhov teachers professing this work throughout the

world today. It is not such a large community, and I am very happy to be a part of it. One striking thing about this group of

teachers is that we are individual in how we see things and how

we do things, yet the essence of the work shines in all of us.

We stress the elements of the technique in different ways. We

have all found what we believe to be the essential elements for

our own work. We each go our own way in the technique.

Chekhov’s methods are actually limited in scope. His intention

is to lead the actor to an inspired performance. The ways in which

we can bring ourselves to inspiration are limited. This is actually

a good thing because we can choose exactly how we will work

and in what manner we will approach the role; and we will expect

not to flounder. I am now presenting an approach to this method, and I want

to make it clear from the start that what you will find here is

how the technique has come to me, how it speaks to me, and

how I have made it my own. I quote Chekhov in these pages,

but I choose the words that have caused a stirring in me. I do

not believe there is one orthodox way of teaching or using this

technique. I have seen some extraordinary teaching and it was

new to me, things I had never seen nor considered before, but

I recognized how ‘Chekhov’ these new things were. It is easy to

know when it is Chekhov, and also easy to know when it is not.

The purpose of the technique is to inspire, to find a creative state

that is both pleasing to be in, and also full of the power of

expressing oneself. Through the principles he offered to us,

Chekhov expected each actor to find his own technique, his own

way of working