ABSTRACT
Michael Chekhov believed that every moment onstage, any role – small or large – deserves to be a work of art unto itself. Improvisations will include moving the body with ease, props, chairs, or whatever is at hand with ease and then changing the focus to moving with artistic beauty, a sense of form – what shapes do you make with the prop/chair, and then completing a sequence of moves followed by a pause to experience that sense of entirety. One sample improvisation is “Dancing Puppet” where one actor is blindfolded, and the other acts as the puppeteer, both focused on moving with ease, creating a puppet dance of beauty, being aware of form, and then bringing it to a sculpted conclusion for entirety.
This chapter emphasizes another way to create character by guiding your imagination and allowing you to take on a “new” body. While you may not be able to magically change your physical self, imagining a new body can let you move and express yourself in a completely new way. Students of Michael Chekhov expressed how when demonstrating he would look so much taller or menacing, despite his short height, but this was all a result of him using this concept of imaginary body. You will be able to improvise a body, conjuring new facets of a body from head to toe, and then experience moving with the new creation. Other improvisations will include working with portraits – which can be of people or even of plants or inanimate objects. Once you tap into your imagination, there is no limit to who and what you can create.
