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Michael Chekhov and the Search for the ‘Ideal’ Theatre

Andrei Kirillov

New Theatre Quarterly / Volume 22 / Issue 03 / August 2006, pp 227 - 234

DOI: 10.1017/S0266464X06000431, Published online: 11 July 2006

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0266464X06000431

How to cite this article:

Andrei Kirillov (2006). Michael Chekhov and the Search for the ‘Ideal’ Theatre. New Theatre Quarterly, 22, pp 227-234
doi:10.1017/S0266464X06000431

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 Andrei Kirillov

Michael Chekhov and the Search

for the ‘Ideal’ Theatre
In a keynote address delivered at the Michael Chekhov symposium ‘Theatre of the Future?’,
held at Dartington Hall in November 2005, Andrei Kirillov argued that Chekhov’s ideas
have not yet been fully assimilated, pointing out that merely to follow his exercises without
understanding their connection to the actor’s imagination and meditative as well as
spiritual dimensions is to fail fully to understand him. Andrei Kirillov is a researcher and
Assistant Chair at the Theatre Department of the Russian Institute of the History of the
Arts. His numerous publications on the history and theory of Russian theatre include
Michael Chekhov: the Path of the Actor, co-edited with Bella Merlin (2005), and Teatr
Mikhaila Chekhova: Russkoye Akterskoye Iskusstvo XX veca (The Theatre of Michael
Chekhov: the Art of Russian Acting in the Twentieth Century, 1993). Bella Merlin originally
enhanced the English-language version of this lecture, and with the author’s approval it
has been further edited by NTQ for publication.

MANY YEARS AGO a British colleague told
me that when one makes a speech in English,
one has to begin with an apology and grati-
tude. I really apologize for my Russian English
and express my gratitude to Bella Merlin
who ‘brushed up’ the language of this paper,
as ever in our collaboration. I thank deeply
all the people who made our appearance
here real, though I intend to talk more about
unreal appearances in what follows.
After the apology and gratitude, my col-
league told me, I should tell a joke. Instead of
that I’ll tell you a brief story which happened
on the very eve of my departure for the UK.
A teacher of acting from the Petersburg
Theatre Academy called me and said: ‘I’ve
got a typewritten copy of Michael Chekhov’s
manuscript in English – over three hundred
pages – from the personal archive of my
colleague. I do not know English well but I
am inclined to consider this text to be an
unknown work of Chekhov. So I’d like to
publish it.’ Finally she read me the title,
mangling the words: ‘Michael Chekhov’s To
the Director and Playwright, compiled and
written by Charles Leonard.’
I was surprised. ‘This book has already
been published in America twice,’ was my
answer. ‘The first time was in 1963 and then
in 1984, and you can find it in every bibliog-
raphy – although nobody knows actually
what portion of the text belongs to Michael
Chekhov and what to Charles Leonard.’ I
suspect that she did not believe me and is
probably now continuing her attempt to
bring this ‘unknown manuscript’ of his to
the rest of the world.
I guess such ‘discoveries’ are happening
beyond the Russian frontier on the English-
speaking side as well, because for the majo-
rity of theatre people abroad anything
published only in Russian means it has not
been published at all. Meanwhile quite a
large proportion of Chekhov’s literary heri-
tage remains published only in Russian or
not published at all.
Although my instead-of-joke preamble is
not serious, it is connected to the serious
question of Chekhov’s legacy. While prepar-
ing for this symposium, I met with the very
insistent wish of the organizers not to look
back into Chekhov’s own historic past, but
to look forward into the future. It was sug-
gested to us that we answer the provocative
question: ‘Does Chekhov’s system still have
any impact on the real needs of modern
theatre practice, or is it the outdated fantasy
of that gentleman alone?’
Grasping this provocation, I throw back
my own counter-provocation. Are we ready

ntq 22:3 (august 2006) © cambridge university press doi: 10.1017/s0266464x06000431 227

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 to answer this question? And from which
point, from what dimension, are we ready to
answer it? What do we mean when we talk
about Chekhov’s theatre system? Do we
mean a collection of his exercises, which are
really very helpful?
I’ve met a number of collectors of Chek-
hov’s exercises. They are sometimes in com-
petition with each other: ‘I have one hundred
of his exercises in my collection!’ ‘Ah, I have
two hundred!’ But the physical execution of
these exercises to the very letter of Chek-
hov’s description often has nothing in com-
mon with Chekhov’s ‘theatre ideology’. For
example, the famous exercise with the balls:
we can throw the balls to each other for ages
and even form a good volleyball team, but
this will change nothing in our artistic skills.
It is worth remembering that, when Chekhov
proposed this exercise to his colleagues for
the first time in Moscow in 1923, they were
rehearsing Hamlet, and they acted not from
their own personalities but on behalf of their
characters. That is how they continued to
execute this exercise.
Connecting Exercises and Ideology
I maintain that it is possible to execute any
exercise and any action on the theatre stage
in accordance with Chekhov’s theatre ideo-
logy. At the same time, every one of his exer-
cises can be executed without any connection
to this ideology, or with a wrong understand-
ing of both the ideology and the connection.
Perhaps under the name of Michael Chek-
hov’s theatre system we don’t mean the exer-
cises only but rather a number of his more
general and extremely useful tools for acting,
as, for example, his famous Psychological
Gesture. And here I have another provo-
cation: is the Psychological Gesture itself so
original? I can imagine an actor who works
with Psychological Gestures being within
the framework of Stanislavsky’s method – or
anybody else’s, for that matter; and this tool
will have nothing to do with Chekhov if it is
used separately from the whole of his theatre
system.
There is a real danger of splitting Chek-
hov’s theatre system into a number of dis-
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crete devices and tools. Most of these devices
and tools are helpful and effective. However,
if this tendency triumphs over the wholeness
of the system, Chekhov’s theatre ideology
will die instantly, and we would have a
situation similar to that in the Moscow Art
Theatre during the Stalinist 1930s, when they
staged the novels ‘of a great writer Leo
Tolstoy away from his putrid ideology’.
Life is hectic and, as professionals, we are
in a permanent rush. We had a lot of theatre
knowledge and experience already before
meeting Chekhov. We need a quick and prac-
tical result. So we count on help from this
legendary actor and teacher to achieve it. Alas,
as long as we are in a rush Chekhov cannot
help us. As long as we are ‘practical’ only, the
pure idealist Chekhov will not answer our
questions. We will use not more then five per
cent of the advantages of his theatre and his
theatre system.
Chekhov’s theatre likes dreamers, ideal-
ists who desire and have time for meditation,
which is the real ideology of his magic theatre.
Stripped of this ideology, his exercises will
simply be exercises, and these tools will not
show their mystery in depth.
I remember something that happened dur-
ing my temporary teaching contract in the
US. One teacher from the Theatre Depart-
ment asked me: ‘Can you not only tell our
students about Michael Chekhov, but do
something practical with them using his
approach? What do you need for this: space,
some objects?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I can do this and I need
nothing; they will just sit around the table
and imagine.’
‘Oh no!’ my colleague exclaimed. ‘It may
be good for you Russians, but not for us. We
Americans always have to do something
active, something real.’ In my next class with
his students we did an exercise connected
with the imagination. They were sitting
round the table and imagining. After that I
asked them: ’Was this something active for
you?’ ‘Oh yes! Very, very active!’ They were
surprised that the process of imagining could
be so active, so impelling.
By the way, this is why I am wary of the
expression which is so popular in English,
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 ‘physical theatre’. I understand: it is prob-
ably just the alternative to ‘psychological
theatre’; but to me, as a native Russian, the
phrase sounds too literal and too sharp.
Chekhov taught us that ‘The actor’s work is
to a significant extent a matter of waiting and
being silent “without working”.’ In Chek-
hov’s theatre ‘physicality’ necessarily comes
at a later stage, precisely from the work of
‘waiting and being silent “without work-
ing”.’ And the quality of ‘physical actions’ on
the stage will depend strictly on the quality
of that preliminary ‘silent waiting’, not its
opposite.
Actuality and Modernity
Let us return to actuality and modernity.
What are the absolute criteria of actuality or
of being outdated? The wide and intrusive
presence of anything in our life is not suffi-
cient argument for the positivity and appro-
priateness of that ‘anything’. Equally, if
something positive and appropriate does not
find its way into our reality this only means
that our reality is far from ideal.
When I see only little bits of Chekhov’s
presence in contemporary theatre or hear ob-
jections that his theatre system is too mys-
tical, subjective, and personal for modern
times and future use, I feel a strong wish to
proclaim an alternative and paradoxical slo-
gan: ‘Forward into history!’ Into the history
of Chekhov’s own acting, the history of his
theatre context, the circumstances that drove
him to create his particular theatre approach,
all of which help us properly to understand
the essence of that approach. We have to
know that specific history, that context and
those circumstances reasonably well.
Again: do we know the theatre system of
Michael Chekhov satisfactorily? What makes
Chekhov’s approach to acting original? On
the other hand, if this approach is original or
individual, to what extent can it be recog-
nized as general – namely, useful for dif-
ferent theatre modes and times? Finally:
‘What makes any teaching about art univer-
sal?’ and ‘How do we measure it?’
I think Chekhov found a very good answer
to that last question: this measure is the deg-
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ree of openness of a particular theatre creation
towards the ideal. The degree of openness to
the ideal is not so much in the result of our
artistic work but in the process of this work,
in the process of artistic creation.
As we know, ‘ideal’ is a philosophical or
rather an aesthetic category, and means any-
thing highly, inaccessibly perfect. The ideal –
which is in a dialectic opposition to the real –
can never be realized in reality. At the same
time, the ideal is the highest goal to strive for
and, as such, it provides a good orientation
for genuine artistic search or creation.
For the philosopher, the ideal is a kind of
absolute, and absolutes are good for the
druids of religion or philosophy. Yet we
know that not only different historical times
or national and social groups have their own
ideals, but that every human being has them.
What relates them one to another are not the
particular features of those ideals but their
common ideal nature.
Balancing the Subjective and Objective
Art is always subjective in its very nature.
Chekhov’s ideal characters are absolute for
him only. He does not suggest to us the abso-
lutes of Khlestakov, Hamlet, Ableukhov, or
Muromsky, whom he performed following
the ideal pictures of his imagination. He calls
us to search for our own ideal pictures of
these and every other character. Chekhov
does not propose absolute ideals to us, but
the ideal way, the ideal process for searching
for our own ideals.
Art is always subjective. On the other hand,
for the whole of his life Chekhov searched
for maximum objectivity in acting which,
according to him, was (and I guess still is)
too subjective, as it becomes limited by the
actor’s personality. What Chekhov actually
helps the actor to do is to be as objective
as possible within the subjective process of
artistic creation – objective and artistic. He
searches for the balance between the objec-
tive and the subjective, between the ideal
and the real, between the general and the
particular.
Chekhov appeals to the individual actor-
artist who would try to create a real character
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 as close to its ideal meaning as possible. In
our time we call this ideal character an arche-
type. Where could we search for these ideal
archetypes? Chekhov also found a good
answer to this question: in our imagination.
Why did he choose imagination?
When we observe the spheres of human
activity and expression, we cannot find a bet-
ter sphere, a better realm for the ideal, than
our imagination. In the sphere of our imagi-
nation we are free of the limitations of reality,
as nowhere else. And this freedom is the
necessary condition for reaching towards the
ideal. We are too limited in reality. We are
limited by a great many circumstances – the
laws of the physical world, our many
personal limitations, the limitations of the
external world, and so on. But we can do
everything in our imagination: we can fly, we
can blaze, we can become weightless, or we
can be as heavy as a mountain.
To be exact: not we are, not us, but the ideal
characters of our imagination. Characters of the
imagination are the most flexible and res-
ponsive, the most inflective. And it is not
necessary to analyze, to count, or to maintain
the eternal interrelations of every imaginary
character with every other one, and with the
surrounding world of many levels, aspects,
and dimensions. All these interrelations live
within the ideal imaginary character at every
moment.
Ideal imaginary characters exist within us
but, to a certain degree, they are also separ-
ate from us, so separate that Chekhov dec-
lared their absolute independence of us,
since, according to him, they come to us from
the ideal world of spirituality. You can be-
lieve this as did the anthroposophist Chekhov
– or not believe it. This is not so important.
What is really important is understanding
their ideal nature.
Chekhov Meets Don Quixote
At this point I’d like to turn to Michael
Chekhov’s own practical experience of act-
ing. In 1925 Don Quixote by Cervantes was
included in the list of new productions to be
staged at the Second Moscow Art Academic
Theatre. Chekhov and Gromov began to
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work on dramatizing the novel. Chekhov
was to perform Don Quixote. Many ob-
stacles – the details of which are outside the
realm of our present subject – prevented
them from finalizing the production. But
Chekhov left us two documents which were
later published in two volumes: a brief essay
entitled ‘Meditation on Don Quixote’ which
was first published in a theatre journal in
1926, and Chekhov’s diary notes entitled ‘A
Diary on Quixote’ which he wrote while he
was rehearsing the role in 1928. As far as I
know, neither of these documents has ever
been published in English. I’d like to read
you an extract from the first document. This
is a good example of Chekhov’s work in his
‘inner laboratory’:
In the early years of my work in theatre Don
Quixote once appeared in my inner vision and
modestly declared his appearance with the words:
‘There is a need to play me. . . . ’
‘There is nobody to play you!’ I answered him
in excitement.
I did not even ask him, ’Why have you
appeared to me?’ – I knew: it was his mistake.
And after banishing Don Quixote, I started
to think about him calmly, objectively, and coolly.
I was thinking in general! I knew, I understood
how deep, inimitable, many-sided he was, how
unapproachable he was for me. I was quiet. He
and I will never meet each other.
Many years passed. But Don Quixote conti-
nued to be mistaken. He appeared to me again
and again, but now he said: ‘You should act’ . . .
I was frightened: ‘Whom?’
He disappeared giving no direct answer, but
visited me repeatedly. He repeated his hints.
Finally, I decided to explain to him on his
next appearance that I just cannot, cannot
embody all the mysterious profundities of his
spirit, so full of suffering. I wished to explain
to him that I have neither the means nor the
strength – external or internal – which are
necessary to embody him. Oh, I was ready to
battle with him and to prove to him exactly and
finely in all the details, nuances, and tones that
showed the very depth of his essence: who he is
and who I am!
Finally he appeared and I started to prove
it all.
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 We were fighting for a long time. I was
inspired by this battle. With the dexterity which
is usual for people enjoying a fight I penetrated
into him deeper and deeper. . . . I was drawing
him for himself. . . . I told him: ‘This is what you
are! . . . These are the things one must possess
and what one has to go through to embody you!’
I pierced him with my thoughts, my feelings,
my will!
I finished. I’m free. He will never visit me
again. . . .
He was standing in front of me . . . as the
winner! Strong and satisfied! Pierced entirely
with the arrows of my thoughts and feelings,
firmed by my will!
He spoke: ‘Look at me.’
I looked. He pointed at himself and said
imperiously: ‘This is you now. These are we
now!’
I was lost, confused, I was looking for the
answer.
But he continued ruthlessly with the persis-
tence characteristic of the knight: ‘Listen for my
rhythms!’
And he appeared for me in his rhythms. The
figures of those rhythms were arising in each
other and merging into one all-embracing rhythm.
‘Listen for me as a melody.’
I listened for a melody.
‘Me as a sound.’
‘Me as the movements and gestures.’
It was the finale of my battle with Don
Quixote. He, who was always defeated, he won
this time. As for me, I accepted his destiny. I was
defeated. And in my unsuccessful fighting, in
my failure, I became Don Quixote.
The whole process described here by Chek-
hov took place entirely in his imagination.
He is doing nothing, just explaining to the
imaginary character that it is beyond his
capacities to act such a role. And in the end
he masters the character in spite of himself.
To give you a sense of how gradual and
delicate this ‘imaginary’ work was for Chek-
hov himself I’d like to add that, two years
later, when he began to rehearse the role of
Quixote ‘properly’, he wrote in his diary:
The imaginary picture of the character is still
uncertain. . . . It is clear that his essence is
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entirely that of a flame. I see his long moustache,
long eyebrows, his beard and two rebellious locks
of hair on his head – all these are as the tongues
of a flame. . . . But I still do not hear his voice and
do not know how he speaks. . . . It is necessary to
perform a spiritual character spiritually. . . . The
main dominant feature of the character is that he
has a cosmic consciousness. . . . Quixote cannot
walk: he either jumps and practically flies, or
stumbles and falls. . . . Is it possible to crumble
him to pieces at the end? In the best moments of
creative work, physical laws momentarily lose
their force. It is possible to jump and to hang in
the air, or to bend with the whole of one’s body
ignoring the law of balance, and so on. . . . It is
necessary to consider theatre art in all its details
exclusively as meditation. . . . All the exercises
are the ways towards this meditation of art.
And before and after every rehearsal Chek-
hov wrote that again and again he was ‘look-
ing at’, ‘observing’ the imaginary picture
of Don Quixote, trying to clarify this ideal
vision of the character and to imitate and
master it.
‘Meeting’ the Character and the Play
In his lecture dedicated to the theatre of the
future, which was later published as an
article, Chekhov writes that the first impulse
for any artistic creation has to come from the
outside. The first appearance of Don Quixote
in his inner vision had nothing to do with a
mystic. Of course he knew about Quixote’s
existence from literature and from theatre
(Chekhov mentions Don Quixote performed
by Feodor Chaliapin whom he observed in
the operatic version and who made a pro-
found impression on him). The image of the
character lived somewhere in the actor’s sub-
consciousness until he declared himself to
Chekhov for the first time.
Chekhov writes that the first meeting with
a character and a play is of great importance.
Try to grasp intuitively your general impres-
sion not only of the character but of the
whole play when you read it for the first time.
Do not analyze the play or the character at
this very first stage. The stage of analysis will
come later. Trust your very first impression,
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 which holds the whole thing in its entirety.
Be patient and do not force your imagina-
tion. Dream about the character, communi-
cate with the character delicately in your
imagination. The ideal image of the character
will gradually develop in your inner vision.
For Chekhov, imagining the character is
the first and most important stage of rehear-
sing for it establishes the basis of the perfor-
mance. It is here that you are modelling the
scale of the character. If you force the pro-
cess, you may reduce this scale, and cut off
the important aspects or distort this charac-
ter completely. We see the degree of freedom
that this process of rehearsing entirely in the
imagination allows Chekhov:
The essence of Don Quixote is entirely that of a
flame.
The main dominant feature of the character is
that he has a cosmic consciousness.
Quixote cannot walk. He either jumps and
practically flies or stumbles and falls.
Chekhov dreams of crumbling him to pieces
at the end.
And so on and so forth.
According to Chekhov, it is absolutely impos-
sible to put yourself, in your imagination,
into the place of the imaginary character, to
replace the character with yourself, or to try
to combine that character and yourself, with
your own features. The highest degree of
‘idealism’ in Chekhov’s ‘ideal’ theatre is that
the development of the imaginary character
is completely free of the actor’s personality.
In this imaginary development of the ideal
you must not think about yourself at all. It
has nothing to do with you, only with the
character.
Do not worry. Your individuality will find
its way to express itself in spite of any special
activities of your own. You can imagine only
what you can imagine. You can develop an
ideal image only to the degree that you can
develop it. You can ask of the image of the
character only your questions. And you can
get only the answers which you can get, for
which you are ready. Your ‘subjectivity’ will
develop within the character irrespective
of your will. But within the frames of your
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individuality that imaginary character will
be as near perfection as possible, of the maxi-
mum freedom and scale. It will be of the ideal.
The Ways of Imagination
Does this ideal process contain any historic
limitations of the past, the present, or the
future? Does it contain any temporal limi-
tations? I do not think so. Chekhov is not
looking for this or that kind of theatre, but
for the artistic essence of theatre in general.
For him, an actor necessarily has to be an
artist. The ideal process contains only one
limitation: are we gifted or not? Talented or
not?
For Chekhov, being a talented actor thus
means, among other things, having a rich, re-
active, and flexible artistic imagination. And
this is true for any art, although in different
arts imagination manifests itself differently.
One may be a talented musician whose
impressions will transform in one’s imagi-
nation into the images of musical sounds. Or
one may have the imagination of an archi-
tect, or a painter. It is hard to believe that an
artist may have no imagination at all, or has
a poor imagination.
There are many ways to imagine. I can
close my eyes and imagine this or that parti-
cular table or chair. There will be nothing of
an artistic order in this picture. I remember a
charming girl from Denmark doing an exer-
cise on imagination at the Chekhov work-
shop in Emerson in 1994. I do not remember
what particular circumstances were proposed
to her, but after some meditation she declared:
‘I awoke, ate my breakfast, went outdoors,
did some shopping, met my boyfriend, we
had sex,’ and so on and so forth. Her imagi-
nation was sleeping, or she had no artistic
imagination at all. She was imagining her-
self, and did not have any external object,
which means that she had no external source
for creative imagining; she had no distance
between herself and what she was imagin-
ing. It had nothing to do with the ideal at all.
Chekhov’s approach contains one more
limitation. He suggests to us the following
questions. Are we ready to step over our
personality? Are we ready to sacrifice our
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 personality for the ideal image? I understand
how hard it is for an actor to do this, since
our traditional notion of the actor’s profes-
sion is connected with the delusion of its self-
centred nature. Once an actor with a highly
developed individuality understands clearly
that the sacrifice of his/her personality is not
in vain but is for the ideal, he or she will
joyfully accept this destiny of the actor-artist
as a great honour. Because the ideal is the
highest measure and the highest goal for all
the arts in all eras.
The particular content of the contempora-
neity and the actuality of the ideal will be
ensured by us contemporary artists who are
called upon to develop that ideal. We don’t
need to add it to the latest edition of the TV
news or latest fashion. The live actor who
is always a contemporary is a conduit for
modernity in the ideal process of art creation,
and this guarantees that his or her ideal
imaginary character will be a modern and
true interpretation.
Working in accordance with Chekhov’s
method, I do not form, do not construct, do
not compose a picture. I develop an ideal
image in my imagination, a picture of the
ideal character of Don Quixote. I do not think
that he has to be real – he doesn’t have to be.
I do not think about how to do this or that in
reality. Of course I will not fly or grow on the
stage. But, following my ideal image, I will
bring an image, a sense of height, and an
image, a sense of flight, that are within me
onto the stage. It will appear from how I feel,
how I move, how I behave, how I speak. I
just follow that ideal image, that ideal pic-
ture in my imagination with which I estab-
lish a permanent interconnection and which
leads me in my playing of Don Quixote.
I will never interpret this ideal image en-
tirely. According to Chekhov, he himself never
fully reached the ideal images of his inner
vision, and he was dissatisfied with his per-
formance of every role. But that image will
let me know how to behave, how to move,
how to speak, how to react at every moment
of my existence on the stage. And that per-
manent interconnection with the ideal image
will inspire me in every moment. This inter-
connection will make it possible for me to
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improvise every moment, although all my
improvisations will remain entirely within
the ‘logic’ of that image of the character.
Ways to the ‘Ideal’ Theatre
Thanks to Chekhov, we can search for his
‘ideal theatre’. It is up to each particular actor
or teacher of acting how far he or she will go
in this direction because the ideal has endless
possibilities – what he or she will add to
Chekhov’s view of the theatre, and what he
or she will combine with them. I’m far from
thinking that it is really possible for every-
body to work on a particular role for two or
six years.
Thanks also to Chekhov, we can observe
him, a great artist, in the ‘ideal’ process of the
‘ideal’ search for the ‘ideal’ character. This
observation gives us not only inspiration, but
also helps us to understand the ideal nature
of theatre art in general, according to our
own theatre ways. It gives us the ideal orien-
tation, ideal landmarks, and knowledge of
what are the most valuable and important
areas in theatre art. In our common journey
towards the ideal, we will gradually move
our beloved theatre in general further and
further from the real to the ideal, bringing it
closer to its own ideal nature. This nature is
artistic and spiritual at any time, past, pre-
sent, or future.
It is naive to think that the transformation
of a particular actor into the artist of Chek-
hov’s ideal theatre can be easy and fast; naive
to expect from Chekhov that there is one,
precise magic word which will provide and
ensure this transformation. Chekhov himself
told his colleagues in the Second Moscow
Art Academic Theatre, while teaching them
his ‘new technique of acting’, that the whole
of their essence had to be transformed on the
way towards mastering this technique. He
later wrote in The Path of the Actor: ‘In time, it
will become clear to an actor how deeply his
life and profession are connected.’ This is a
way of working and living which demands
years and years of persistent, systematic, and
conscious labour, and which gives no guar-
antees since guarantees are simply impos-
sible in the realm of art.
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 One more word. When Chekhov speaks
about the ideal theatre, he speaks mainly
about ideal acting. He was a great actor and
teacher of acting, and he accepted the mean-
ing of theatre primarily from this point of
view, which is not in contradiction with the
age of ‘director’s theatre’. If an actor is taught
in accordance with his method (or adopts it),
he or she would act following its principles
absolutely naturally in any circumstances,
and any limitations or director’s demands
would just provoke new questions regarding
the ideal image of the character. The ideal
character will answer them, for sure.
In our imagination we stay free even if our
hands and legs are bound, and our mouth
and eyes are closed. The nature of the ideal is
that the ideal will develop itself in any cir-
cumstances and master any limitations freely
and easily.
In conclusion I would like to touch on the
question of Chekhov’s legacy, with regard to
editions of his work in English, again not
from a practical but from an ideal or idealis-
tic point of view. We have his valuable To the
Actor in several editions. We have the audio-
tapes of his wonderful lectures edited by
Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, and
some of his other materials as well as the
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material about him. We now have a book of
autobiography, which I hope will fill one of
many gaps. But we still do not have a lot of
brilliant and valuable materials by and about
Chekhov translated into English – some of
his articles, essays, diaries, hundreds of his
wonderful letters, records of his rehearsals,
evidence of his own miraculous acting, and
so on.
It is interesting and helpful to observe
how this or that point or particular theatre
idea came to Chekhov himself, and how he
searched and developed it. I have spent over
twenty-five years of my professional life
with Chekhov, and I can say that his book To
the Actor, which he considered the main deed
of his life, is really of great value. But it is
hard to say where I learned more about this
or that aspect of his theatre, or this or that
principle of his approach. His wonderful
thoughts, ideas, and observations are in dif-
ferent documents, and it is my dream to see
more of Chekhov’s own writings published.
This way we will not rediscover America, as
we say in Russian, but nor must we confuse
America with India, as sometimes happens
with Chekhov because of a lack of know-
ledge of his thoughts and views, and of his
life and professional experience.
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