‘A new kind of conversation’: Michael Chekhov's ‘turn to the crafts’

Dartington Hall, which was the home of the Chekhov Theatre Studio between 1936 and 1938, also accommodated other performing artists including the Ballets Jooss and Hans Oppenheim's music school as well as artist-craftsmen such as the painter Mark Tobey, the potter Bernard Leach and the sculptor Willi Soukop. This essay examines the training undertaken in Chekhov's studio in dialogue with the practice of these artists (who also worked with his students) and theories of practice articulated by the wider constructive movement in the arts in the 1930s. It goes on to propose that Chekhov's technique be considered as a means of achieving theatre-artistry through craftsmanship, and as an artistic technique whose reach extends far beyond the confines of actor training

Beyond realism : into the studio

In his epilogue to this special issue’s collection of essays on early modern drama and realism, Tom Cornford returns to Stanislavsky’s studio and to the practices which gave rise to his “System.” This approach is often cited as the means by which realism came to dominate the aesthetics of theater-making in the last hundred years, and yet, as Cornford shows, it was also an attempt to go beyond realism and was inspired as much by the challenges of staging Shakespeare as it was by any other form of drama. Stanislavsky’s studio practice was widely influential and this article focuses, in particular, on Harley Granville Barker’s ideal of an “exemplary theatre” (described in his 1922 book of that title). This was intended as a theatre “founded upon corporate study by the actors,” a model which is employed by Barker to redescribe Shakespeare’s work as well as to inspire innovations in future practice. Turning to the present day, Cornford uses Barker’s ideal to evaluate some current developments in studio-based theater-making before setting out his vision of a Shakespearean studio for the future

The Importance of How : Directing Shakespeare with Michael Chekhov's Technique

This article gives an overview of an approach to directing Shakespeare using the artistic technique of Michael Chekhov, drawign examples from the author's own rehearsal practice. It was published alongside essays exploring other approaches to rehearsing Shakespeare which are offered as alternatives ot the mainstream Anglo-American approaches in use today

Acting, Skill and Artistry

This short article explores Peter Gill's attempts, at the National Theatre Studio in the 1980s, to codify and communicate acting skills in the light of interviews with skilled manual workers undertaken at about the same time. It concludes by proposing study *with* - rather than of - Shakespearean performance

Michael Chekhov: Directing an Actors' Theatre

This chapter argues that Michael Chekhov's work is incompletely understood unless we consider him as both an actor and a director and as a theorist not only of acting but of theatre more widely. It offers an overview of his directorial work and analyses his directorial process, from which it derives some exercises for use in the rehearsal room

The Racist Case for Diversity?

This short article responds to a notorious incidence of racism in a British theatre review from 2018 to argue that diversity initiatives in the British theatre have failed to challenge the assumptions of white supremacy at the level of narrative and discourse and have thereby not only acted as a fig-leaf for systemic racism, but have actively sustained it

Willful Distraction: Katie Mitchell, Auteurism and the Canon

This lecture/essay uses Sara Ahmed's conception of 'willfulness' to consider the repeated accusations, levelled by critics against director Katie Mitchell, of 'auteurism' and productions whose effect is 'distracting'. It argues, via a close analysis of Mitchell's productions of three canonical works for the stage - Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Strindberg's Miss Julie, that Mitchell's project is deliberately and productively to distract from the political agenda that underpins these works' canonical status. In these stagings, Mitchell distracts - that is, draws attention away, both literally and figuratively - from narratives that sustain patriarchal and class oppression, in order to expose and counteract their interlocking functions. The essay concludes with a consideration, by contrast, of Mitchell's tacit acceptance of the hegemonic position of whiteness in the contemporary European theatre, and argues for a similar project to distract from its political agenda

Review: The Routledge Companion to Michael Chekhov.

A review of The Routledge Companion to Michael Chekhov. Edited by Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu and Yana Meerzon. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2015. Pp. xxi + 433 + 25 illus. £148/$204 Hb. - Stanislavsky in the World: The System and Its Transformations across Continents. Edited by Jonathan Pitches and Stefan Aquilina. London and New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017. Pp. xiii + 461 + 40 illus. £22.49/$30.56 Pb

Tyrone Guthrie

This chapter explores the life, work and legacy of the Anglo-Irish theatre director Tyrone Guthrie, with a particular focus on the UK and North America. It argues that Guthrie originated the model of the hybrid artistic, entrepreneurial and bureaucratic figure of the Artistic Director, which came to dominate the Anglophone theatre in the second half of the twentieth century, and that he also exemplifies crucial paradoxes and contradictions to be found in the settler colonial cultures of North America in this period and their relations with their former metropole

Backpages: The Editing of Emma Rice

This short article reflects on the significance of the sudden announcement, in autumn 2016, of the imminent departure of Emma Rice as Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe