Chekhov Collective Open House: Exploring Chekhov through Play with Cass Fleming
Open House sessions are offered once per season and provide an introduction to some key principles of Chekhov Technique. Newcomers to the method are welcome, as are those who with to refresh their memories.
Led by Cass Fleming (The Chekhov Collective UK / Goldsmiths, University of London), this workshop explores the centrality of play in Chekhov’s Technique and his desire to re-awaken the instinct in actors, directors and other artists, for playing. This session will introduce selected aspects of Chekhov’s technique through his innovative method of using ‘grounds’ of his technique as catalysts for play. Cass Fleming draws on Chekhov Technique and also the play principles and methods developed by Suzanne Bing in France, which later fed into Jacques Lecoq’s pedagogy. Cass has explored the synergies between these two methods in her practice and scholarly research (2009, 2013, 2016, 2019) for over 20 years.
… I have seen for the first time today the instinct for playing which children have […] I have seen you unafraid in contact, and there was a certain charm which is in the playing of children. Keep this in mind, because it is the best quality you can get. And how are we able to awaken this instinct for playing? Through just such pedantic exercises as we have been doing. The more careful the way, the more conscious, the more you pay attention to all the exercises [and] everything, then […] flowers will open inside you, and you will get this ability to play as children, but the difference will be that children are doing it quite instinctively, while you do it with the knowledge which has become again child-like.
The Actor is The Theatre. Class delivered by Michael Chekhov at Dartington Hall, 22 October 1927.
