Michael Chekhov's Psychological Gesture
- Samantha Robichaud
- Nov 9, 2015
- 2 min read
Michael Chekhov was renowned for using five key principles in order to create and bring his work alive. He refered to these principles as the 'five guiding principles'. All of these principles are key for an actor training in the Chehov style however there is just one I am going to focus on within this blog.
The technique ( Acting) is psycho-physical
Intangiable means of expression
The creative spirit and higher intellect
The technique is one thing: It awakens a creative state
Artistic Freedom
As highlighted in bold ,I am going to focus directly on Chekhov's Psychological Gesture ( also known as psycho-physical ).
One of our first rehearsals focused primarily on the gestures of hand movements. We needed a simple starting point and this was to be it. Chekhov's Pyshcophysical Gesture is a gesture which is created through your body and mind becoming one. Therefore the gestures an actor creates should be uncouiness decisions or decisions that they are not physically making but their mind and body are.(Hodge, 2000, pp.15-17)
The first rehearsals developed slowly and steadily. At first there was a slighy misunderstanding as to the directon given. However once this was ameneded and the actor knew what the director was asking for the gestures began to develop.
Simple hand movements became the first gestures to reoccur. From a simple excercise such as having two actors talk about their wants and needs , they uncounciously began to do hand movements. Once these were created the director asked them to shout their lines in order to possibly make the gestures bigger.
Whilst watching this excercise I couldn't understand why the gestures were not developing along the right path. I made a suggestion that the two actors should stand opposite each other , facing towards one another. Then they resumed the excercise.This helped them gage more of an understanding because they were able to focus and respond to each other.
From this first rehearsal , it is clear that excerices need to be clear and simple in order to help the actors gage an insight into what is being asked of them.
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