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.
Now it's time for the fun to continue! Michael Chekhov believed that we have an artistic center that lives in the upper chest – a ball of energy within us that can support us in being our most artistic and ideal selves. While we may want to light up this center prior to walking in a room for an interview to be our best self, it's not typically the center that is going to create a unique character for a performance. For these exercises you will allow that center to move, finding a new location, a quality or image for that center, and a sense of movement. One example is to let that artistic center drop into the belly with a quality of jelly and a jiggling movement. Moving through the space with this new center will immediately create a transformation and allow a new character to shine through. The brilliance of this technique is that once you are ready to let go of a character, you move the energy back to that artistic center in the upper chest, which provides for you a safe space to return home to, filled with a sense of being grounded and calm.
