ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a new set of exercises for coaching actors when working on productions that are non-traditionally staged in arenas, thrusts, allies, or site-specific productions. Michael Chekhov exercises are designed to give performers a chance to solve the question of who a character is through the body and then to analyze their intentions only after some physical discoveries have been made. The key to character exercises through the Chekhov Technique is to embrace what shows up in the body, creating many different kinds of movements and then seeing which one really resonates with the actor for the character. It does not actually have to make intellectual sense. The traditional Western approach to character study is the other way around, finding the objective intellectually and then working to find ways to manifest the intellectual discoveries through the body. One way to use the Chekhov Quality of Movement exercises (QOM) is to employ the use of categorization.
