Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique: A Practitioner’s Guide

Intended for actors, directors, teachers and researchers, this book offers an exceptionally clear and thorough introduction to the renowned acting technique developed by Michael Chekhov. Sinéad Rushe’s book provides a complete overview of the whole method, and includes illuminating explanations of its principles, as well as a wide range of practical exercises that illustrate, step by step, how they can be applied to dramatic texts.
Part One provides an outline of the ideas that underpin the work, which help to prepare practitioners to become responsive and receptive, and to awaken their imagination. Part Two charts a journey through the foundational psychophysical exercises that can both orient an actor’s training routine and be applied directly to the development of a role. Part Three focuses on more specific and elaborate methods of scene work, characterisation and the art of transformation.
Drawing on the full range of Chekhov’s writing in English and French, this book also examines unpublished material from the Dartington Hall archives and features interviews with actors who have worked with the technique, including Simon Callow and Joanna Merlin. It illustrates Chekhov’s approach by referring to Rushe’s own productions of Nikolai Gogol’s short story Diary of a Madman and Shakespeare’s Othello, as well as characters and scenes in Sarah Kane’s Blasted and the contemporary American television series Breaking Bad.
Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique is an accessible, comprehensive and contemporary point of reference for those already trained in the method, as well as an initiation and toolkit for practitioners who are just beginning to discover it.

Sinéad Rushe is a lecturer in Acting and Movement on the BA (Hons) in Acting at Central School of Speech and Drama, London (CSSD) and teaches the Michael Chekhov Technique for acting teachers and for professional actors and directors (through Living Pictures and The Actor’s Centre). She studied the Michael Chekhov technique intensively at the Michael Chekhov Studio in New York and London as well as in Paris. A director, performer and acting teacher, one of her recent works, Out of Time, was nominated for a 2010 Olivier Award and 2009 Dance Critic’s Circle Award for its London run. Sinéad is the co-translator into French, with Sarah Hirschmuller, of several works by English playwright Howard Barker.