Overview

The Chekhov Training is a comprehensive master course in acting. It runs from September through July, with end-of-term pauses in December/January, March and May. 

 

A series of eight, 4-week sessions plus a 6-week summer session comprises the whole program. Each session meets twice weekly. Successive sessions introduce a new primary theme, while at the same time advancing the preceding work. 

 

The sequence of sessions, like the Chekhov method itself, is organic; that means, although it has many constituents, from a certain point of view all parts are one. The training develops in a way such that the actor achieves ever-greater levels of psycho-physical awareness and sensitivity while, at the same time, deepening his or her practical knowledge (skill) of acting craft. 

 

The course is grounded in a system of physical and imaginative exercises based on lawful principles of the creative process. Our disciplined approach emphasizes mastery of Michael Chekhov’s core techniques. 

 

Training is conducted in an ensemble-oriented environment. Actors are strongly encouraged, as well, to maintain an independent (at home) daily practice based on their practical experience with exercises, techniques and creative principles. Repetition is the key to growth.

Chekhov Method

Michael Chekhov was regarded as the most uniquely gifted actor of his generation. On stage and on screen, Chekhov was acclaimed for his brilliant and original characterizations, improvisational inventiveness, and commanding presence. Notwithstanding his achievements as actor and director, Chekhov's greatest legacy is his method – an objective (universal-lawful) approach to the art of acting based on a lifetime's experience and research with the creative process.

 

At the center of Chekhov’s method is an image of the Ideal Actor. As a creative instrument, the actor is naturally organized in a two-fold way. As an embodied being, the actor is corporeal: he has a physical body that moves and senses in the outer world. But she is as well a self-conscious being with thoughts, feelings, and will impulses: she has a vital and active inner life, a psyche or soul, capable of experiencing and knowing two worlds. – In Chekhov’s vocabulary, the term psycho-physical is shorthand for this view of the actor’s whole instrument. Mastering the method begins with a training that cultivates the two parts of the actor’s whole instrument to function together, harmoniously, in service of the creative imperative, the role. The actor's instrument should facilitate the actor's creative needs and aspirations.

 

Practical, elegant and artistic, the Chekhov method is founded on creative principles, techniques, and exercises that respect and unleash the actor’s highest nature. With its recognition of the true nature of the actor-human being, it is easily distinguished from other methods of acting. The approach is necessarily both physical and psychological, thereby developing of the actor’s total instrument while at the same time facilitating the actor's acquisition of a comprehensive professional craft.

 

Chekhov training awakens and elaborates the actor’s artistic imagination, strengthens the capacity for intense inner action, and loosens habitual restrictions to expressive emotion. Professional application of the method satisfies the actor’s longing for transformation. 

 

“Chekhovian” acting is evident in the totality of dramatic qualities that include exceptional originality, boldness, daring, physical and emotional expressivity, radiant presence, and truthful characterization. The Chekhovian actor is a pioneer of sorts, a harbinger of the Theatre of the Future.

 

The principles and techniques of his method are outlined in Chekhov’s book, To The Actor, about which theatre anthropologist and director Eugenio Barba wrote: “One of the best practical manuals for the training of the “realistic” actor. It should be read and re-read, reflected upon, pried into.” 

 

The Sessions

The first Session of The Chekhov Training prepares and establishes the ground for subsequent Sessions. The Sessions that follow make up, together with the first, the whole program. 

• Session 1: The Actor's Instrument
• Session 2: The Creative Individuality
• Session 3: The Imagination
• Session 4: The Objective
• Session 5: The Psychological Gesture
• Session 6: The Archetype
• Session 7: Characterization
• Session 8: Composition and Style
• Session 9: Rehearsal and Performance 

The actor’s feeling for scenic truth, expressive emotion, actor’s faith, ensemble, rhythm and continuous improvisation are some of the other fundamentals trained continuously throughout the course year.

Goals

The Chekhov Training aims:

• To advance the balanced development of the actor’s whole psycho-physical instrument for the unique creative demands of our profession
• To provide the actor with creative tools and practical knowledge to support the ambition to grow as an actor and succeed as a professional
• For the actor to acquire a reliable approach to creative inspiration in performance on stage and on camera
• To nourish and encourage the actor’s unique creative individuality
• To unleash the actor’s latent creative and expressive capacities, the talent

Dedicated actors can be confident of progressing in the direction of these aims over the course of the year’s training. With the commitment to consistent practice of our techniques, actors can expect to dramatically strengthen their acting skills, cultivate their creative natures and instrument, and thereby to further their professional prospects and accomplishments. 

 

The Chekhov Training represents a healthy and dependable approach to freeing the actor’s talent and highest potential. Upon completion of The Chekhov Training, actors can further pursue the path of mastery with advanced Chekhov training and further application of the method in rehearsal and performance.

How to Apply

Program Actors begin The Chekhov Training at the fall term start. Because the nature of the program is organic (the whole is present in each of the individual parts) it is sometimes possible for experienced actors to join at one or another mid-term point.

 

Actors may apply to The Chekhov Training following an interview with the studio director.    

Apply

Overview

The Meisner Foundation Training is a rigorous, step by step course that trains the actor to create convincing and compelling life in performance. Because truthful and expressive behavior is the foundation for remarkable acting in all media, the Meisner Foundation Training is invaluable to actors at all levels of experience, from beginners to experienced professionals.

 

The program runs from September through July.  End of term pauses in December/January, March and May.

 

A series of eight, 4-week sessions and a final 6-week summer session comprises the whole program. Each session meets twice weekly. The training is sequential and always moving forward. Missed classes cannot be made up. It is not possible to join the course mid-season.

 

The course is exactly modeled after the highly-regarded two-year program devised and taught by Sanford Meisner for over fifty years. As such, the Meisner technique is a proven approach that works. Over the course of the year, actors work with partners on improvisational exercises of growing complexity. The training gradually leads to unscripted “scene-like” improvisations that incorporate sophisticated crafting of circumstances, emotional preparation and relationships. Work with text is undertaken just two or three times during the year, and then for the primary purpose of exercising the actor’s developing instincts and abilities. 

 

The program is decidedly intensive. Actors can expect to be consistently challenged both in and outside of the classroom. At-home preparation requires several or more hours each week. 

 

The Meisner Foundation Training prepares the actor to work professionally with a keen sense of truth and the instinct for genuine contact, committed action, and spontaneous expressive behavior.

Meisner Technique

The Meisner technique is a progressive system of structured improvisations for developing concentration and imagination, freeing instincts and impulses, and achieving “the reality of doing” in performance. 

 

“My approach,” Sandy Meisner said, “is based on bringing the actor back to his emotional impulses and to acting that is firmly rooted in the instinctive. It is based on the fact that all good acting comes from the heart, as it were, and that there’s no mentality to it.”  

 

In Meisner’s view, great acting depends on the actor’s impulsive response to what’s happening around him. His key exercise, spontaneous repetition, is designed for the actor to develop the capacity to respond impulsively to every stimulus.  

 

Meisner’s approach trains the actor to “live truthfully under imaginary circumstances,” to discover or create personally meaningful points of view with respect to the (written or improvised) word, and to express spontaneous human reactions and authentic emotion with the utmost sense of truth. 

 

Robert Duvall said of his teacher: “I owe everything I am, everything I’ve achieved as an actor to Sanford Meisner.... He made me aware that acting is... not speaking a text but creating behavior so that the emotional life underneath brings the text to life.”  

 

Meisner technique is elaborated in the books, Sanford Meisner on Acting, by Mr. Meisner, and The Actor’s Art and Craft, by William Esper.

The Sessions

The first session sets the stage as the backbone for the whole program. Mastery of the principles given with the first session can take the whole year, and likely much longer. The actor’s dedication to the first session directly correlates to later success.

• Session 1: Contact, Point of View, Working-Off
• Session 2: The Independent Activity 
• Session 3: Raising the Stakes 
• Session 4: Working with Text I (first scene)
• Session 5: Emotional Preparation 
• Session 6: Expanded Emotions
• Session 7: Relationships
• Session 8: Domestic Partnerships
• Session 9: Working with Text II (second scene)

Goals

The Meisner Foundation Training aims: 

• “To eliminate all intellectuality from the actor's instrument and to make him a spontaneous responder to where he is, what is happening to him, what is being done to him" – Sandy Meisner
• To provide the actor with practical tools and knowledge necessary to support his or her ambition to grow as an actor-artist and to succeed as a professional
• For the actor to acquire a reliable approach to performing truthful human behavior on stage, on camera and on mic
• To nourish and encourage the actor’s unique creative individuality
• To unleash the actor’s latent creative and expressive capacities, the talent

Dedicated actors can be confident of progressing in the direction of these aims over the course of the year’s training. With the commitment to consistent practice of our techniques, they can be confident of strengthening their acting skills, cultivating their creative natures, and furthering their professional prospects and accomplishments.

 

Upon completion of The Meisner Foundation Training, actors have the opportunity to further develop their instrument and craft in The Advanced Training.

 

Graduates of The Meisner Foundation Training are also well-prepared for The Chekhov Training. Whereas Meisner represents a fundamentally psychological approach to acting, Chekhov is concerned with the actors' whole psycho-physical development and expression. The Chekhov Training furthers the Meisner-actor’s knowledge of craft with creative techniques that open doors to the world of objective imagination, artistic feelings and emotions, and vivid characterization.

How to Apply

Actors are admitted to the program only at the Fall term start.

Experienced Meisner actors should apply to The Advanced Training program for the Fall start.  It may as well be possible for experienced non-program actors to join the second year class for one or another particular session during mid-season.

 

Actors may apply to The Meisner Foundation Training following an interview with the studio director. 

Apply

 

The Advanced Training is focused on three primary themes:

• The Actor's Instrument – Identifying and freeing actors' psycho-physical restrictions to physical, vocal and emotional expression;
• Character and characterization;
• The Role – text analysis, the creative imagination, and rehearsing the scene.

The program also introduces the actor to on-camera technique and audition preparation.

Non-MFT graduates may be admitted to The Advanced Training following an interview and audition.

Apply

 

Four-times-a-week training demands an exceptional commitment. For which exceptionally accelerated development is the reward.

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The Performance Training is open to MCASB actors who have completed The Meisner Foundation Training, The Chekhov Training and The Advanced Training. This final year of specialized training is given to methods of rehearsal and performance.

 

Selected actors are selected for the program by invitation only.

Apply

 

Successful actors know that you’re as strong as your fundamentals. Like successful athletes, they often return to "summer camp" in the off-season to master the principles of their profession and to drill and improve their basic skills. They're aligned with Antonin Artaud, who called the actor an "athlete of the heart." 

 

They agree, too, with Michael Chekhov. He wrote, "It goes without saying that neither musicians, architects, painters, poets nor any other craftsmen can have their own techniques without first studying the basic laws of their respective arts. Inescapable are the rules upon which they ultimately must build those 'own' techniques that are to make them individual if not outstanding in their professions." 

 

Our Summer Intensives are "summer camp" for the benefit of experienced actors, collegiate actors and teachers. They're also intended for professionally-oriented beginners ready for the experience of challenging actor training at the professional level.

 

The Summer Meisner Intensive is an exacting and applicable introduction to Meisner’s foundation-building system of actor training. For beginning actors, it’s the ideal first step to professional acting; for experienced actors, it’s rigorous back-to-basics conditioning. 

 

At this Intensive, you’ll learn and train the two core planks of Meisner technique, the “repetition exercise” and crafting “independent activities.” Meisner training develops and strengthens the actor’s fundamental skills: truthful behavior, emotional elasticity, purposeful action, and creative fantasy. 

 

THE MEISNER TECHNIQUE is a powerful and systematic approach to truthful acting. For film and television acting in particular, behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances is the bottom line. Actors who can do that, get noticed. They get remembered. And they get work.

 

The Summer Chekhov Intensive is a practical overview of Chekhov’s objective professional method based on the creative laws and principles of the actor’s art. 

 

At this Intensive, you’ll be introduced to “psychological gesture” and other psycho-physical techniques unique to Chekhov’s approach.

 

Chekhov training is for talented actors who value creative and dependable tools to apply to their professional work. 

 

THE CHEKHOV METHOD frees the actor’s natural talent and opens the door to artistic inspiration. Chekhov training develops the actor’s whole psycho-physical instrument – the means for creative expression. At the same time, the method offers the actor an indispensible set of remarkable creative tools.

 

CHEKHOV and MEISNER TECHNIQUES are complementary approaches to acting that  

• Develop the actor’s instinct for truthful behavior 
• Ground the actor in the physical body
• Elaborate the actor’s creative imagination
• Loosen habitual restrictions to expressive emotion
• Free the actor’s inner drives and impulses for action

Accelerate your professional and artistic development. 

Show up and train hard this summer.

Act better this fall.

Apply