ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to place Michael Chekhov’s theory and practice in the context of cross-disciplinary artistic debates, specifically reexamining his legacy in relation to practices in the visual arts. Recent theoretical discussions about the intercultural and transnational nature and principles of twentieth-century avant-garde theatre have drawn attention to the primacy of performance gesture, hybridity of artistic forms, and visual dramaturgy as opposed to text. This shift in authority from literary to performance-driven practices is one of avant-garde theatre’s principal characteristics. In Chekhov’s theory and practice, the relationship between the textual and the performative is complex. In his preoccupation with the image and the infinite possibility of its transformation during the process of creating a character, he is akin to visual artists-cum-playwrights such as Vasily Kandinsky and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, whose experiments with visual art forms influenced their approaches to language and theatre. Chekhov’s image-driven methodology has also been compared to Antonin Artaud’s treatment of performance gesture (Chamberlain 2004: 24; Byckling 2000: 109-10). Liisa Byckling argues that Chekhov’s attempts to create a universal theatrical language, especially in his Paris production of the pantomime The Castle Awakening: An Essay in Rhythmical Drama, can be compared to Artaud’s experiments with performance-based non-western culture; she also links Chekhov’s artistic pursuit for universality in theatre to later experiments of Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba, and Peter Brook’s search for universal language. Yana Meerzon, too, writes that Brook’s principles of actor’s training that he was developing in the 1970s at the International Center for Theatre Research in Paris are evocative of “Chekhov’s attempts to create an international language based on movements, gestures, rhythms, and sounds” (2005: 269-70). She further highlights the intercultural and interdisciplinary nature of Chekhov’s theatre and compares his theatrical vision to the works of Jacques Lecoq, Richard Schechner, and Robert Lepage. Arguably, Chekhov’s acting system, rooted in the actor’s ability to imagine/create/collaborate with the image, can be discussed in the context of recent avant-garde experiments by
Robert Wilson, the Wooster Group, and others in which visual dramaturgy created on stage calls upon the audience’s associative and sensory responses. Chekhov’s acting methodology, which he painstakingly developed through his
own performances and pedagogical practice, was impacted by many artistic styles and philosophical ideas, and thus exemplifies the hybrid trend of twentieth-century avant-garde theatre. While the task of identifying influences, both explicit and implicit, of visual artists and their theories on Chekhov’s methodology can be both challenging and invigorating, for the purposes of this article, I intend here to narrow the focus to Kandinsky’s synesthetic experiments and discuss them in relation to Chekhov’s theatrical vision. Specifically, I am interested in investigating the artistic and philosophical parallels and intersections between Kandinsky and Chekhov in order to trace cross-disciplinary aspects inherent in Chekhov’s theory and practice. What can this analysis of Chekhov’s cross-disciplinary approach to creating theatre reveal about his acting and pedagogy as well as his own artistic relationships with visual artists? And in what ways can this discussion be potentially conducive to discovering new perspectives for reexamining Chekhov’s approach to theatre making?
