ABSTRACT

Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training offers a comprehensive analysis of the Sanford Meisner Acting Technique in comparison to the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique.

This compilation reveals the connections as well as the contradictions between these two very different approaches, while highlighting meaningful bridges and offering in-depth essays from a variety of sources, including master teachers with years of experience and new and rising stars in the field. The authors provide philosophical arguments on actor training, innovative approaches to methodology, and explorations into integration, as well as practical methods of application for the classroom or rehearsal room, or scaffolded into a curriculum.

Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training is an excellent resource for professors teaching Introductory, Intermediate or Advanced Acting Technique as well as acting program directors and department chairs seeking new, impactful research on actor training.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

The Case for a New Sacred in Actor Training

part I|26 pages

The Masters

chapter 1|6 pages

The Meisner Approach

“Be Simple and Rediscover the World” – Dostoyevsky

part II|44 pages

Expeditions in Deep Training

chapter 5|9 pages

Teaching the Michael Chekhov Technique in an Undergraduate Program

The Problem and the Arrival

chapter 6|13 pages

Reality vs Pretend

How to Surmount Collisions in Search of Truth

chapter 7|11 pages

We Are Not Historians

A Manifesto for Teachers

part III|92 pages

Methods in Convergence

chapter 8|15 pages

The Evolution of a Studio

chapter 10|13 pages

Meisner in the Classroom, Chekhov in Rehearsal

Pairing Complementary Methods in Smaller Liberal Arts Programs

chapter 11|11 pages

Studio Work with Meisner and Chekhov

chapter 13|12 pages

Sculpting the Energetic Action

Taking Us “Beyond the Verb”

chapter 15|8 pages

Re-discovering the Joy!

part IV|70 pages

Techniques in Practice

part V|10 pages

Continued Collisions and Strategies for the Future

chapter 21|8 pages

Conclusion

The Case for Non-Erasure in Actor Training