Chekhov's Vision

"As actors and actresses, we must rejoice in the possession of our physical faculties. We must experience joy in the use of our hands, arms, body etc. Without this appreciation and realization of the body and its many possibilities, we cannot perform as artists. You should feel a flow of joy because you are alive. Your body will feel full of life. That is what you must give from the stage. Your life. No less. That is art: to give all you have. And what have you? Your life-nothing more. And to give life means to feel life throughout your whole being."-Michael Chekhov

Week 1

This week, I finished my personal directing experience with 7th graders at BASIS. We put on "Alice in Wonderland" for the students' family and friends after several months of rehearsal. Our small class was responsible for organizing the various components of a successful production and all of the students did a fantastic job. It was an honor to work with them. Several weeks from now, I plan on surveying the class to begin collecting data on the middle school age group for my study.

I also started observing a 5th grade choir class as they start rehearsing for a musical about summer camp. The 5th graders will be the youngest age group incorporated into the project; I intend to survey them about their acting at some point in the future.

Finally, I began reading the first of several source materials for the project: On the Technique of Acting by Michael Chekhov. Chekhov's theories will serve as the informative foundation of my project by providing me with a specific conceptualization of how the character creation process fits into acting as a larger activity.

See you next week!  

Hello!

Hi,

My name is Alonzo Beatty, I am a high school senior at BASIS Peoria. For those who don't know, the senior project at BASIS is an opportunity to explore a topic of interest to each individual student. In the past two years, I have discovered a passion for theatre by participating extensively in our drama program here at school. Therefore, I decided to mold my senior project around one of my favorite aspects of theatre: characterization (a.k.a the multi-faceted process of creating a character's personality, mannerisms, etc. in a performance).

From my official project proposal: "I hope my research will reveal any differences or similarities in the perception and development of characters in theatre across age groups. I am primarily interested in exploring whether school age children have noticeably different means of creating and viewing characters when compared to adults. What mental process does each group go through when preparing a role? What are the categorization trends for each character within the groups (based on the theories of Chekhov)? Do the groups have similar impressions of similar characters (i.e. do they independently produce similar descriptions of characters)? How much does character perception vary within both groups? Ideally, I’d also like to get data from non-actors to gain insight into potential differences in perception between people who choose to pursue acting and those who don’t."

I intend to gather data via a curated survey distributed to each age group. The survey will measure how the actors characterize their roles, yielding tangible data for direct comparison. I will be updating this blog on a weekly basis with any progress I make in my research.

Thanks for reading!