Chekhov Technique: Directing and Theatre-Making

Cass has worked in theatre, opera, film and television since 1984.  From 1997, when Cass was first introduced to a series of Chekhov exercises at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama as a post-graduate student specialising in directing, she has been using it in her own work as a director and as a teacher of actors, directors, choreographers, devised theatre makers, scenographers and applied theatre practitioners.  Since this time, she has been on a journey to learn more about the technique developed by Chekhov along with his underlying social, inter-personal and artistic principles to explore and question how these might work in contemporary theatre practice and training.

She was particularly interested in Chekhov’s firm belief that directors need to undergo training, have methods for use in their own work, and that this needed to include their development as a creatively individual artist. Chekhov also believed that directors need to develop a high level of relational skill in inter-personal communication and facilitation with all their collaborators, and to actively recognise and celebrate all actor’s creative individuality/difference. His practice also sought to give them agency as artists in their own right, and to work with ethical awareness.

This resonated with Cass’s creative and political ideas and her identity as a feminist queer artist and underpins her work in these earlier years, and her later work as the Founder of The Chekhov Collective.

From 2013, Cass Fleming took the lead on a strand of research investigating the use of Chekhov technique for Directors and as a method for Devised Theatre Making, as part of the New Pathways project.

She founded The Chekhov Collective to explore this strand of the practice-research project.

The explorations for this strand considered questions such as:

• Why did Chekhov believe in training directors and what methods did he provide for them to use in their process?
• What might be important and relevant about a use of Chekhov Technique to contemporary directing and devised theatre practice in the C21st?
• How could we use archival materials to give us further ideas on how to direct and devise theatre?
• What kind of direction is needed, or encouraged, through a use of Chekhov Technique and what does this require in terms of the type and quality of relationship between a director and ensemble?
• What are the politics and ethics of a use of Chekhov Technique in directing practice?
• Are there shortcomings or challenges in using specific techniques in contemporary practice and in relation to current understandings of identity and politics?
• What do we want, or need, to blend the technique with and why?

The Little Prince (2013-2016) was a long-term practice research project led by Cass Fleming and undertaken by The Chekhov Collective. The project explored selected research questions related to using Chekhov Technique for Directing and Devised Theatre Making that were posed in the Michael Chekhov in the Twenty First Century: New Pathways Research Project.

This project interrogated and experimented with archival materials from the Michael Chekhov Theatre Studio, developed by Deidre Hurst du Prey and held by the Dartington Hall Trust, on Chekhov’s early work in directing and devised theatre practice.  This material had not been addressed in Chekhov’s published texts but holds significance in a twenty first century context.

The initial phase of outreach work for this project began when Cass Fleming was invited to run a workshop on Chekhov Technique for directors at the Royal National Theatre Studio in 2013, with the assistance of a former student, director Rebecca Frecknall.  This was the first time the Studio had used this radically actor-centred technique with their directors and despite it being markedly different to many of the other approaches offered by the studio it was a considerable success.  Many of the participants asked why they had not come across the method being used for directorial practice before and wanted to find out more about it.

Later that year, Cass Fleming brought together a group of practitioners who had previously trained in Chekhov Technique and were using it in their practice in different ways.  This was to become The Chekhov Collective.  A larger group of practitioners was involved at different stages of the practice research project including: Tom Bostock; Francesca Castelbuono; Sian Clarke; Derek Elwood; Bryn Fitch; Alistair Foylan; Rebecca Frecknall; Melody Parker Grome; Katja Hilevaara; Hanna Junti; Joshua MacLellan; Saskia Marland; Joe Mercier; Roanna Mitchell; Phoebe Naughton; Holly Shuttleworth and Chloe Stephens. A core group formed to continue working on the archival materials and research questions on a part-time basis over the next two years, with members of the wider collective returning to give support at different points in the process.  The core group became Cass, Tom, Sian, Alistair, Katja, Joshua, Roanna and Phoebe.

From 2014 the Collective met on a regular part-time basis to continue to train and undertake this research.  Between 2014 and 2016 the results of our practice research were shared with different audiences and participants at various points, and in different formats.

The Little Prince: Process and research findings

We established that the different members of the Collective were using Chekhov Technique in a wide variety of ways.  This included directing both play texts and devised work, making devised performance, and site-responsive and site-specific work. It was also being used for movement direction, theatre for and with children, live art practice, street performance, clowning, film making and writing for performance.  Within the Collective we were often blending Chekhov technique with other methods, to a greater or lesser degree.  Some practitioners were explicit about their use of Chekhov technique; others did not foreground this in all of their professional work.

We were attracted to various aspects of the technique but overall, we were drawn to the fact that it is a psychophysical, actor-centred, collaborative and ensemble practice.  The fundamental principles of collaborative working practice, giving actors agency as artists and celebrating each company member’s Creative Individuality (i.e. difference and identity), appealed to us in relation to the way this could facilitate a contemporary practice which seeks to be creative, inclusive and diverse.  We were all drawn to the fact that the embodied imagination is centralized and that the technique frees us from the use of personal memories and encourages creative transformation and an engagement with otherness.

A key finding of our research was the way in which Chekhov Technique as a tool for directing worked equally well across a continuum of theatre practices.  We found that a use of the Technique provided directors with the skills and principles to not only direct existing play texts and carry out embodied dramaturgical analysis, but to creatively adapt plays, to create new material for existing plays, and devise entirely original material.  Moreover, our work on the Little Prince clearly demonstrated the way in which these tools can equally be used by a director for physical performance, dance, performance art, and clowning.  The technique therefore offers directors (and choreographers) a flexible and shared language with their companies to work in various different forms and styles of performance.  This was a crucial finding in the context of twenty first century practice because as Duska Radosavljević noted in 2013 much contemporary theatre practice in the UK no longer sits in a neat binary of ‘Text’ or ‘Performance’, and directors therefore need the skills to embrace the shift we have witnessed in the past thirty years.  This finding determined the expansive focus of The Chekhov Collective as a Practice Research Centre.

Since 1997, Cass Fleming has been drawing on Chekhov Technique for her own directorial practice.  Since this time, she has also embedded aspects of this in her practice-research and pedagogic approach as a trainer of actors, directors, choreographers and devised theatre makers at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Rose Bruford College, Brunel University, Goldsmiths University of London and E15 Acting School.  The technique spoke to her interest in collaborative, actor-centred, feminist and queer theatre making practice in a number of exciting ways that felt helpful in a contemporary context.  She has also blended this with an interest in Suzanne Bing Technique, the work of Joan Littlewood, and various approaches and methods used in socially engaged and therapeutic theatre practice.  Between 2000 and 2013 she explored the use of play in actor and director training and theatre making in the work of Michael Chekhov and its points of synergy with the practices developed by Suzanna Bing in France for her doctoral research.

Founder member of the Collective, Sian Clark, also shared her practice, and research, on ways of using Michael Chekhov Technique for solo feminist performance, solo comedy and writing in 2018 and 2020.  To see more about this strand of work click here.

The Chekhov Collective is committed to developing new and diversified networks of practitioners to foster exchange, collaboration, support and critical dialogue.  We are also committed to developing peer to peer support – particularly for directors from the global majority, women, working class, queer and disabled artists who may not have the networking and financial support offered through attendance at Oxbridge and/or public-school education.  In 2021 we ran a session titled Chekhov Collective: Critical Friends, which was a session for Directors, Choreographers, Theatre Makers, Circus Artists, Teachers, Coaches and Applied Practitioners that was led by Cass Fleming and Ro Mitchell.  From October 2023 Critical Friends sessions will take place a number of times each term which will be led by Tom Bostock, Sian Clarke and Yasmine Irian Angeni.  See current workshops and events for further information.