- AS IF: The Actor's Role in Closing the Empathy Deficit using 'Reverse Engineering'

Let's start with a definition-

“To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the “as if” condition. Thus, it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth... It means temporarily living in the other’s life, moving about in it delicately without making judgments; it means sensing meanings of which he or she is scarcely aware, but not trying to uncover totally unconscious feelings, since this would he too threatening. It includes communicating your sensing of the person’s world as you look with fresh and unfrightened eyes....”

A perfect definition of what acting is. The concept of "As If" referred to here is one with which devotees of Stanislavski will be intimately familiar for sure. Stan also calls it "the Magic IF".

Except this definition doesn't actually come from Stanislavski, nor Michael Chekhov, nor from any other acting teacher or theorist. In fact it comes from the writings of the originator of Person-Centred Counselling, Dr Carl Rogers, and is the most commonly accepted definition in psychology nowadays for "Empathy".

Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938)

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

The word 'empathy' is, surprisingly enough, just a century old- first used in the

Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927)

English language by the psychologist E.B. Titchener in 1909, although later adopted and popularised by Rogers. Coincidentally, 1909 was the same year when 2 manuscripts were drafted by Stanislavski in his notebook as he was directing the historic landmark production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country in Moscow. During this period the great man was greatly inspired by watching his 6-year old niece playing "What if" games. It was these manuscripts which eventually became the core thesis for Stanislavski's masterwork trilogy beginning with An Actor Prepares, where he writes.:

"Bring yourself to the part..., as if it were your own life. Speak for your character in your own person. When you sense this real kinship to your part, your newly created being will become soul of your soul, flesh of your flesh."

The word empathy is a translation of the German word ‘Einfühlung’. Einfühlung was originally introduced by Theodore Lipps a few years previously into the vocabulary of aesthetics and psychology to describe the relationship between an art and the audience, who imaginatively project themselves into the contemplated object. Empathy and the concept of acting have a great deal in common. In fact the reason my blog is entitled Only Connect is because I strongly believe acting must involve a highly disciplined and specific form of emotional connection or empathy. Both empathy and acting are essentially imaginative processes that share a power to foster powerful emotional connections in the "I-thou" relationship. And they are connections that are highly infectious in the right conditions. If the actor fully empathises with his character the audience are more prone to being drawn into and identify with that character's journey too. Empathy is catching!

What got me thinking about all this empathy stuff was listening to a recent speech by US President Barack Obama:

"...There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit — the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us — the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.
As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You’ll be free to live in neighborhoods with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same schools, and narrow your concerns to what’s going on in your own little circle.
Not only that — we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses.
They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they’re all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can’t learn and won’t learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else’s problem to take care of.
I hope you don’t listen to this. I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all of those who helped you get to where you are, although you do have that debt.
It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential — and become full-grown."

Beautiful political rhetoric, but for me this goes to the very very heart of all that is wrong in the world today. Obama's words inspired me more than anything I'd ever heard from a politician. He goes on to explain how he believes books/litercy/education have such a vital role in the fight to reduce this empathy deficit. But for me drama, and especially theatre, can be a vastly more potent means for achieving the same thing. It's always been a spiritual /philosophical/political tool for just the kind radical revolution of spirit Obama is talking about here- like no other in fact. But people seemed to have stopped listening, and it's high time we ask ourselves why that is.

I've been meditating on empathy and it's associations with theatre and the art of acting a great deal these past few weeks as I get my head together to start at drama school. Part of my inner work was to do with questioning just why acting is so necessary to me- to the world. I can't help but suspect there won't be many classes in empathy while I'm at the RSAMD. Let's face it, there won't be any at all,! which, to be blunt, is a serious omission in any actor's education! Empathy, the stepping into another's shoes, is the foundation after all for everything the actor does at the end of the day.

In the theatre we can feel the pain of a suffering protagonist—but in a safe space. A sacred space, where we practise and hone our empathy skills. This is why and how art can helps us grow and mature. It provides a context in which we are less prone to the distractions and distortions created by our own lower egos. We are able to refine our understanding of the other without the white noise coming from our own ‘personal baggage’. I am bound to invite criticism here, but I think this is why I have an aversion to Lee Strasberg’s 'Method' because I equate his approach with a more personal healing process- one which is fundamentally focused on and motivated by the smaller ego. The same for Meisner, but for opposite reasons- because the focus there is placed very much on the other. A balance that finds the fulcrum in the symbiotic I-thou dynamic relationship characterises true empathy. With Practical Aesthetics the emphasis is on the action or actions (apologies to my friend Mark Westbrook!) rather than feelings.

But it is hopefully understood by the reader that drama is NOT, or at least SHOULDN’T be the same as mere escapism or ‘getting lost in a character’s story’, or emotional self-indulgenmce! No, it is about finding our real Higher selves, our souls if you like. Shakespeare makes us feel the emotions of Lear, Cleopatra, or Hamlet more keenly than we are capable of feeling them in our own everyday lives. And that is because their experiences are distilled through the active process of empathy.
I believe that if theatre is to address any form of religious or political agenda (or not!) then it needs to begin with fostering Empathy in the artist and the spectator, rather than assume that it exists already. Empathy and the basic human need for it is why theatre exists.

We human beings are often afraid of feelings. We desensitise ourselves and pretend they don’t exist in others, as well as in ourselves. It is an understandable if dishonest and fearful desire to protect our egos from feeling under attack. We need to overcome this by being aware that we are cutting ourselves off from what we feel. We need to be honest with ourselves, and that takes a lot of courage. As so called grown-ups we are not meant to discuss how hurt we are. How innocent and naïve we are. How jealous, how weak, how vulnerable and scared we are. The people who do are called "childish", "weak" or "nuts".

....OR- "Actors"!

As mature adults we need to find a way to communicate and find a place where common ground can be located, the sense that I feel the same as others do, and get them to admit to themselves that they are the same as me. That place is the theatre.

I think drama schools have an obligation to teach the value empathy to their classes, and ways of increasing the actors’ capacity for connectivity and compassion for and with others.

However, much as I love poetry and language, all forms of verbal and written communication, words are treacherous aren't they?- And frequently-at least the way I employ them- grossly inaccurate misrepresentations of what is really meant.

So that's why I find Michael Chekhov's Psychological Gesture technique such a powerful means for me of accessing what is really going on at a more profound soul level, far more so than mere language permits. And the curious thing is that my own PG for my Feeling of the Whole, my holistic sense of what Acting itself means bears an uncanny resemblance to what my PG(s) for empathy/compassion and Love look like. They are identical in fact.

Both start with my arms out wide and then slowly placing my hands together- as if very gently compressing and concentrating air between my palms (this is something like a distilling of heart energy), and then yielding to opening up the arms again, this time extending upwards and outwards into the infinite space beyond me in a huge, expansive 'sharing' gesture, as my chin and chest lift. It makes me think of warmth, sunlight; a rapturous, fearless surrender to orgasmic martyrdom. :-) It's a profoundly satifying creative sequence of movements to complete, sustain and radiate. The precise same gesture encapsulates my deepest sense of what both acting and empathy really are. To me the felt sense of both words are essentially one and the same at a psycho-physical level.

Medical students are now taught in medical school to be more empathic. Why not drama school? Actors are in the business of healing too aren't they? Professors and consultants teach the students’ beside manner by getting them to practise asking patients the following questions:

"Can you tell me more about that?" "What has this been like for you?" "How has all of this made you feel?"
"Let me see if I've gotten this right ..." "Tell me more about ..." "I want to make sure I understand what you've said ..." "Sounds like you are ...""I imagine that must be ...""I can understand that must make you feel ..." etc.

Actors can be taught to ask the same questions to probe the characters they play using Michael Chekhov’s method of conversing with their imaginary character as if they were real (Many modern acting teachers, the Practical Aesthetics mob especially, refuse to accept that the "character" is real, and this is only ever going to shut down any real possibility of empathy.) This questioning can be done on one's own in a similar way to what mediums call channelling. It can also by done through hot-seating in the rehearsal room/classroom too, although I suspect less effectively, particularly in the early stages of rehearsal.
Why then aren’t drama schools teaching their actors to do this? It's fear I believe. Pure and simple... Fear. The excuses that doctors give for not using these techniques for empathy with their clients are very similar to the ones lazy actors use , and it is easy to see actors and acting teachers making the same excuses for avoiding engaging witht the challenges of true empathy.

It is primarily seen as impractical, a waste of time, etc:

"There is not enough time for that nonsense."
"It is not relevant, and I'm too busy focusing on the problem(s)."
"Giving empathy is emotionally exhausting for me."
"I don't want to open that Pandora's box."

-and

"I haven't had enough training"!!

Well we could do worse than start with what life coach and author of "Finding Your Own North Star", Martha Beck, calls Reverse Engineering:

Martha Beck

“Imitate, as closely as you can, the physical posture, facial expression, exact words, and vocal inflection they used during your encounter with another. Notice what emotions arise within you. What you feel will probably be very close to whatever the other person was going through. For example, when I "reverse engineer" the behavior of people I experience as critical or aloof, I usually find myself flooded with feelings of shyness, shame, or fear. It's a lesson that has saved me no end of worry and defensiveness.”

This bears a remarkable similarity to Michael Chekhov's Imaginary Body exercise, but perhaps it goes even further. The body shapes itself in response to emotion, and shaping one's own body to match someone else's body language, vocal tone, even breathing rate is a fast-track to empathy.

You can do the same with animals and objects ("Be a tree, luvvies!), atmospheres, colours, whatever , not just people.

Martha Beck again:

“The benefits are enormous: an awareness of union that banishes loneliness, a natural ability to connect and relate to others, protection from idiot compassion, a wider, deeper life. As your empathy grows, you'll find that it's infinite and that through it, you transcend your isolation and find yourself at home in the universe. I promise, it'll do your heart good.”

And this is really what acting does for me. It gives me an "empathy work-out"! And I make the audience do it with me! OK it has in the past led to bouts of compassion fatigue on occasion, but that is why I now choose to meditate, keep a daily journal and try to be kinder to myself and others these days- treating myself to walks or simply being by myself as all part of my artistic process.

But acting is really one of the most healings things because it is all about empathic connection.

And they really should be teaching it in 21st century drama schools.

So why Drama School...?

Bernada continues to go well. We finished blocking Act I this afternoon, and we have already made some deep inroads into investigation of character, relationships, themes and motivation, etc. It’s fun and exciting. The cast feel galvanised and challenged, and so do I. :-)

I attended the Bothy yesterday which was being led by guest Mark Westbrook an Glasgow-based acting coach. I had an interesting and stimulating chat with him in the bar afterward about Practical Aesthetics, the acting technique developed by David Mamet and William H. Macy. I liked him and have signed up for an hour’s audition coaching with him on Tuesday afternoon. He seemed to have heard all about my work from a number of sources, although I was too afraid to ask who from and what they'd said! While speaking to him Mark brought up a question I've already been asked a number of times by friends, actors and directors. I sense it would please #Mark to know he provioked me to formulate a full respi#onse to the question.
What follows is an attempt to articulate an answer to that dreaded question, one that is more than likely to come up at the RSAMD interview itself:
i.e.
“Why drama school?” – the subtext probably being “Why bother, when you already have so much experience?”

Well here goes...


I have four headings.

• Spiritual
• Career
• Education

and

• Substantiation
  
  1. Spiritual. This is my main reason for doing the course. I am steeling myself to admit as much in the audition interview because it goes to the heart of who I am and who I want to be. Over the last few years I have grown increasingly drawn to the spiritual dynamic inherent in the actor’s process, and the remarkable parallels that appear to exist between mysticism and the actor’s process. For instance Michael Chekhov’s revolutionary inspiring concept of the Higher Ego, borrowed wholesale from Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophist ideas, but applied to the question of what best facilitates the actor’s transformation during the characterisation process has been a real ‘eye-opener’ for me*. By studying the MA at the Academy I gain the breathing space and freedom to experiment and explore further the ways and means in which I can communicate and embody the ineffable through practical and practicable techniques. And I can explore the processes involved in of making the invisible forces of love into manifest and tangible manifestations without the imperative of entertaining others, or earning a living through my acting. I am not interested in religious agit-prop, or message-driven theatre. At the risk of sounding self-involved this is about the process, and it is about me. And it is about serving my understanding of what God’s purpose is for me. Then turning that into empowering myself as an artist. My new-found Quakerism incites me to live my life ‘adventurously’. I am auditioning for this course because it is a risky thing to do, and I know that if I am accepted it is going to stretch me. I want to know and discover more and I no longer believe I can continue to do this as well as might in the context of rehearsing productions. I have been doing that for thirty years and now I have reached an impasse because I am not being taught what I need to know through doing. I need space to think, to research and experiment- putting that at the top of my agenda, rather than striving for results that I don’t believe in or have little understanding of. And I am going to have fun devoting myself entirely to growing as an actor. It may be counter-intuitive, even foolhardy (the financial implications alone tell me this). But where common sense says “No”, my heart and my soul say “Yes”. It’s been an ambition of mine since I was teenager to go to drama school, and I would regret it deeply if I didn’t manage to achieve that before I’m 50. I risk much talking about God and spirituality in the interview, but not to do so would be inauthentic and fall far short of my main reason for doing this course. This is a commitment to achieving a complete coherence with what I believe and say, and what I do in my life. This is about becoming accountable.
  
  Ultimately I have an obligation to honour the talent God blessed me with, This necessarily involves developing my gifts to their optimum potential. I deserve to study the craft at a centre of excellence.
  
  
  Career. The opportunity to gain a recognised and accredited qualification from the Academy and be seen by agents, directors, casting people and producers is an obvious draw for me. I hope to return to professional acting, but having devoted myself to teaching, directing and performing in amateur theatre and profit-share for most of the last decade I feel that the course would give me the platform to re-launch myself back onto the market, and be taken seriously. I am tired of the barely concealed sneers that greet my confession that I am untrained. There are plenty of trained actors out there who feel my lack of training gives them license to patronise me and sneer, when in fact I have more talent in my little finger than they ever will.
  
  Education. To become the best artist and practitioner I can be. Some may question whether the Academy is the best place to learn this, and if I am honest I would prefer to get Chekhov training in America. But the chance to experience first-hand some of the techniques of acting that I have little or no knowledge of, except in an academic context, i.e. from books is a huge attraction for me. The art of acting has fascinated me for well over 30 years. I have worked with many really shit directors, but very few shit-hot ones. Most of them are insipid and unimaginative. But even when they do claim to have a vision, not one of them has the least obligation to teach me anything, nor to facilitate my process or nourish my technique. They are focused on achieving results and show little interest in how those results are achieved. I am repeatedly cast on the basis that I already know what I am doing, and then I am usually left to find my own way. All my knowledge and skills have been drawn from my voracious reading of acting books and maybe the odd workshop. I now want hands on specific help identifying and then removing my habits and weaknesses as an actor.
  
  Substantiation that I am not deluding myself like some crazy X Factor contestant. I want to know I am a talented actor. Passing the audition would verify that. But more than this I long to prove to myself, the industry and the world that I am not just another dilettante- a part-timer, another ego-driven ‘am-dram’ dabbler, but a committed artist who is more than willing to sacrifice a year of his life to hone his craft. I am already a very good actor. I want to be a substantially better one.
  
  It might well be said I could obtain these things without forking out £9000 on course fees, or by delaying my career re-launch by a year. I could just spend the money on new 10 by 8s, a decent DVD show reel and some good clothes. But I need to be ready inside before I start adding the finishing, outer touches to what I hope to become. As Meister Eckhart said, “The outer work will never be puny if the inward work is great.” It will be puny if I shirk that work. Yes it’s expensive, but I can’t see me getting what this course is offering me anywhere else at a cheaper price. What I will get out of it is the priceless gift of time usefully dedicated to the refinement of my body, mind, soul and spirit in preparation for service to my art. (Wanky as that sounds)
  I need to find a way of saying all this succinctly in less than 90secs, and hopefully avoid leaving the panel with the impression I am just a sad, confused, old nutter.

Clearly I still have some more thinking to do. But there is time. I still haven't been given an audition date.

* Pun intended!

Actor Agape

1979

...At the tender age of 18, lounging in our back garden and learning lines for a college production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country. It occurs to me just how much (-not just my physical appearance but) my methods for creating characters have changed since those embryonic days. I find the work so much easier, and it's so much more enjoyable now than it was then.

And even more so since I stumbled across Michael Chekhov. And I like to think I am better at acting too! Oh, how I used to torture myself- to the point of making myself thoroughly ill with overwork and ridiculous levels perfectionism! The afternoon my mum took this photograph I was covering my comprehensively 'Unitted & Actioned' script with a plethora of 'Given Circumstances' marginalia in different coloured felt tips! God!


Yes, the work was all about the Stanislavski system then. Now 30 years on, having come through so many different phases as an artist, my preferred method is a mishmash of so many different influences and I suppose it has eventually evolved into a combination of my own creative imagination, the psychophysical ideas of Michael Chekhov with a healthy dose of the purely instinctive. Still a lot of studying and armchair work of course but nowhere near as intellectual.

And hopefully nowhere near as ego-driven either!

Acting has always been an incredibly potent, and intimate tool for my personal and spiritual growth from the very moment I first discovered I actually had some talent for it at 16. In fact I have often said that for me acting is a form of prayer. It is certainly about faith- a very practical faith, to do with the manifestating and embodiment of the ineffable. There have been long periods where acting has been more important to me than literally anything else; but as I got older, slightly wiser and hopefully better as an artist, my work slowly took on a healthier objectivity. Still impassioned, yes- but much less obsessive. I definitely feel my life now has a larger purpose than acting. Acting is a means, a very imporatnt means but no longer the be all and end all. Directing and writing have both helped me to achieve this perspective of course, but more importantly Life itself, and the lessons of relationships.

But perhaps more than any other single thing it was rediscovering the spiritual ideas from theosophy that were woven into the creative philosophy and exercises in Michael Chekhov's To the Actor 8 years ago that was the major turning point for me. I remember first reading Rudolf Steiner's Knowledge of Higher Worlds in Sutton library in 1976 or 77 and somehow sensing even then that if I had the brains to fully assimilate and comprehend the ideas contained in the book then they might well be adapted for use by the actor. What put me off at the time was all the Eurythmy, Hindu and Buddhist 'guff'. Everything I read was about acting then, including Nietzsche, Fromm, Dickens etc, and all the Romantic poetry I devoured. But I simply wasn't ready to fully grasp Steiner's occultist notions of the Higher I at the age of 17. They scared me a bit at the time, if I'm honest. So you might imagine just what an amazing synchronicity it was to realise many, many years later that the same book had been such a huge influence on Misha's life and work- especially the concept of the Higher I as the actor's inner creative treasure. I get what Steiner was going on about now, and am overwhelmed with gratitude for Chekhov making it relevant to my own artistic process and spiritual work.

I hope I am a better person than I was when this photo was taken. My obsession with acting for many years caused so many problems and much unnecessary confusion in my relationships with directors and fellow profesionals. I suppose I became what's known politely as "a difficult actor". A bloody good one, but difficult. I am sure my manner put people off working with me. Somehow I had programmed myself to believe that if I really cared about the work I wouldn't let anything stand in its way. I had to focus soley on that. I couldn't allow myself to get close others, especially to my fellow artists. It was more important to me to keep my distance from others and keep my head down. To stay lonely. I couldn't allow myself to be put into situations where I was somehow inauthentic, sentimental or weak. It took me until I was nearly 40 to finally grasp that perhaps the main reason I had never really had the recognition I felt I deserved as an actor- while many who were often far less talented but ultimately much nicer, kinder and more approachable colleagues had ended up doing so much better than I-was because (not to put too fine a point on it) I was a withdrawn, impatient, egoistic passive-aggressive, taciturn arsehole. Chekhov's book revealed to me that the reasons for my deep inner restlessness about my work, my sense of creative isolation which I had hitherto thought was an unfortunate byproduct of my 'genius' (ha!), were because I had forgotten the most important thing- namely Love. I had always stupidly dismissed it as an irrelevance,- impractical. I had taught myself to be cynical and closed off.

with Ann McTaggart, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2004)

I have since become a bit of an evangelist for this "Love thing", and quite unabashed in my conviction that it must be Love that lies at the very heart of the artist's process, at least if he is going to work at the very highest level.


It is vital for the artist to be honest and authentic in life, but that does not mean being selfish or cruel. It is also vital to be committed and focused, but not competitive or offhand- working with such a focus that it is at the expense of one's relationships with one's fellow artists.


Kindness and compassion must come first.


You have given all of your adult life to the theatre. Pathetic, but it was always becuase of love. The love of the process of acting. But the larger reason for this devotion to acting is finally nothing to do with gaining recognition or power. It is about exploring and communicating the practicality of a belief in the power of inner and outer transformation of the actor and the spectator in the Eternal Present where Love lives.


As I embark on this new year of 2009 these are some of the thoughts that are buzzing round my head. Many others are unborn right now, and difficult to articulate. But I do sense very strongly that my soul is undergoing realignment to experience amazing encounters and deeper, more spiritually challenging work in this new era of my life.

And all I want to say is... BRING IT ON!

:-))

A loving , peaceful new year to all.

with Eric Robertson in Tango (2008)

"What do you believe that you can act like this?"

Message on plaque at the main gate of Dartington Hall

"Artists are specialists in the spiritual sense, otherwise they are puppets and nothing else.” Michael Chekhov

George Shdanoff: Misha, what are we doing here in Hollywood? We did not become involved to make better actors for Louis B. Meyer.

Michael Chekhov: We are not making better actors for Louis B. Meyer. We are helping people to grow spiritually, George, to become better human beings.

“Spiritual values are more concrete than concrete things”. Michael Chekhov

I love that apocryphal story about Michael Chekhov who, having just finished the first night performance of Hamlet, was pursued by crowds of Russian people as he rode in his carriage through the streets of Moscow, yelling after him:

“What do you believe that you can act like this?”

I long for my audiences to ask the very same question. That said, I am not in the least interested, nor have I ever been, in religious propaganda, a la Riding Lights etc. The artist is not a catechist, as Thomas Merton would have it. But I want the practicality of Love to make such an impact on my process the spectator is awe-struck. I long, through my work, to inspire in him a deep hunger for more knowledge about how to expand and express his own divine potential. I aim to heal, to in-spire and en-courage with my acting; and then to entertain and enlighten. Now I can continue to try to do this through my teaching, but I know I do it much more effectively through my acting.

Of course I do still retain a lower ego as an actor that fights for attention with its silly aspirations and vanities, its desire to be noticed and feted; and it continues to insist on getting in the way of my higher purposes despite my best intentions. But my aims have notwithstanding deepened since i began meditating- and they have begun to embrace a larger, more universal intention since I saw that plaque outside Dartington Hall (above) back in 2005. And as part of this deeper awareness and 'spiritualising' of my acting process these aims have become more refined and clarified. And of course part of this process in reconnecting with my divine purpose as an artist is my decision to apply for drama school- ideally (idealistically!?) to go much deeper into applying the lessons in a concrete way which I have been learning through my reading, meditating and writing in the abstract these last few years. I have always somehow known that an actor must train to develop the ability to grow spiritually. The two things have always been inseparable for me in fact, even though I have for one reason or another (usually inspired by fear) gone through lengthy periods trying to deny it. It's actually this symbiotic union that attracted me to acting in the first place-. It was always the most powerful means for exploring my spiritual potential, for tapping into higher levels of wisdom, being and compassion. Was it Artaud who said that the actor is an apprentice god? This is territory the lecturers, tutors and directors at the RSAMD will never go anywhere near of course! It will be up to you to take care of this core aspect of your development as an artist, as indeed it always has been your own private responsibility. Yeah, they'll teach you techniques and methodologies, but that is the end of the story as far as they are concerned. They cannot give you more talent, or make your soul grow. That must remain your own private business. Thankfully your own Inward Light can continue to be your own private tutor, your personal acting coach and guide, on call 24/7. It is this inner light which is the primary source and access point for your creative power as an artist. It offers the gift transformation, the promise of transcendence. No-one else can give you this beauty, nor indeed can they take it away. At least at MA level, where you are much more responsible for your own learning, you can continue to nurture this Inward Light by meditation and psychophysical means as part of your own daily discipline, and your Quaker faith, without interference from them- embodying the infinite potentialities and inspirations offered you by your Higher Self whilst the college lecturers suggest ways to apply it. Your inner guide will be a reliable way of sifting and organising the help they can give you, and selecting those teachings that may be used to help you become a better performer, and discarding those that will not. The RSAMD is an educational institution: they assess and grade students by empirical, objective means. This is of course total nonsense, but they have not found a way of measuring artistic success, or managing to give it a credible, quantitative evaluation. Because acting is primarily a qualitative, intuitive, non-intellectual activity when it is done well, they will never be able to teach you anything profoundly helpful. They cannot give you this. Their job is to offer students certain techniques and methodologies. It is then up to me to take these means (or not) and use them as function of the Holy Spirit.

If acting were that simple to quantify, then they could bottle the magic that great acting generates and put it in the college water supply. But acting is not a science. Because educational institutions attempt to appraise and calculate it in this absurd manner it is easy to dismiss the merits and value of such establishments, but as an artist who is hopefully on the threshold of entering its portals I need to accept and understand the limitations of their tools for assessment, and chooses to work within them. I must remember that all human measurements of artistic talent or 'worth' are flawed and inadequate. As Michael Chekhov said: "Acting is meditation". It cannot be measured. Knowing this makes me feel even less nervous about going higher now, because it is not my lower ego making me do this. God is. I am ascending because the intention is to take the work into the wider world. (I did not say my work- I said the work.) I am merely an ambassador, a humble channel for this stuff- a servant, a messenger. This is no false humility. The drive to act emanates from the divine, not from little 'Mark Coleman'.

King Lear (2006)

These past 4 or 5 years have been about gradually breaking free of this small-minded bondage, the impure intentions of feathering my own egoic nest that had corrupted my work for so long. In place of the mediocre aims of getting rave reviews for my work, or simply nurturing my own inner growth as an artist in order to become more impressive- what might be called politely art for art's sake, but is really art for my own sake!- it has become more and more about His sake- the desire to share something authentic and enriching through acting, to create better, more compassionate characterisations and so inspire other human beings in the audience- to herald the arrival of a kingdom of heaven, if you like, where people understand the true power of faith, imagination and belief to alter their reality. To, in the end, say something that will survive me. I have begun to grasp that the function of art- my function- is so much wider- not just in a token , intellectual sense- but so much more on a macro level, making a contribution to society and the wider world, to the soul development of Mankind. This is why I want folk to be moved to ask the same question that the crowds asked after seeing Michael Chekhov perform Hamlet.

And what do I believe?

It can summarised in three words:

All is Love.

with Cathal Quinn in Keats in Limbo (1994)

A simple message of course, especially when expressed in such bald terms- no doubt a fatuous one when written down or spoken aloud, but it is a message that keeps engulfing me (!) and all other voices in my daily meditations, one I can't ignore. And it is a call from a non-space of non-action to act authentically in space and time. I instinctively know that from this one perfect gift of divine wisdom is spawned everything else needed for the abundant life of creation.

Love as compassion. I am yearning for my audience to hear this silent call to embrace their fellow man with infinite, unconditional compassion. Meister Eckhart said "God's best name is compassion."

The actor's art is the Art of Compassion. I can think of no better definition. The actor enlarges his talent by seeking processes that enable him to embody compassion more and more... and more fully.

To make the ‘Inner’ content outwardly manifest- faithfully and authentically, to embody through the actor's psychophysical means Love into the world- through giving, giving, giving.

This must be your mantra as you prepare to study at drama school:

To give...

to give...

TO GIVE.

Don Juan in Don Juan Comes Back from the War

(Odon Von Horvath) (1993)

"It takes 20 years to become a master actor"

So said Sanford Meisner.
So the Master Actor is… what?

He is the actor who is connected to his Higher Self.

Prospero in The Tempest (2008)

The next question then is: How do I become this Higher Self?

This question has been one that I have spent the last 18 months trying to answer, certainly since Anna Karenina, and in some senses way before that- perhaps for as long as I have been alive. I can remember sitting in the Razed Curtain meetings trying to come up with a sanitised, acceptable version of what I think our work should have been about but I felt embarrassed to share my spiritual focus- for fear of not being business-minded or ‘realistic’. I made every effort to make my own version of the mission statement sound less wishy-washy but I could help but feel it just came across as vague and unfocused anyway.

I wouldn’t have the same problem now.

Much of the spiritual and artistic journey to becoming one's Higher Self consists of asking the right questions. Michael Chekhov would sometimes admonish his students for asking what he called "unborn questions", and I guess that for most the last 30 odd years I have been acting I have been asking unborn questions. It was only when I hit upon the Sanaya Roman books about Spiritual Growth and Personal Power that I began to realise that I had been barking up a series of wrong trees, seeking inspiration in the wrong places, putting too much faith in the guidance of others and not enough in my own inner wisdom for a start. The question how do I become my higher self strikes close to the one I really need to be asking when it comes to my acting; for if it truly is my vocation, or at least helps me to access the higher realms, then I have to open myself up to the answers such a question might reveal in order to align myself with and hopefully connect with the Divine Source.

And the first answer I got to this question was quite unexpected:

You already are your Higher Self!

It is the self, the Me that unifies all the limitless and infinite aspects of your divine soul, all the possible combinations and outcomes that are inherent and implicit in you, and could potentially communicate with the universe. The Higher Self is the access point for an infinite number of soul dimensions. With the right inner work this Higher Self can be made manifest in your work. But what then is “the right inner work”? Well first and foremost all this depends on you believing the incredible truth that this Higher Self is a reality, and not just an imaginative construct. As an actor you are used to attributing the imaginary circumstances and characters you inhabit with as much truth as you can so that they become true to the audience. It is about paring away the unnecessary, so that the higher values and qualities are revealed. Acting is a spiritual process that has much in common with the mystics journey of discovery which yields to a shocking and revolutionary principle that all notions of personal identity on our plane of existence is maya: illusion, that despite the apparent flaws in or nature we are each of us capable of being perfect channels for the divine, and allowing that Self to explore those selves through visualisation, imagination and the embodiment of the Ultimate in order to enlarge one’s sense of who one might be at a soul level. And the point is not so much what you do in your daily life or which profession you have. Whether you are a road-sweeper or a doctor, an office clerk or a waiter- well, it makes no difference really. What really matters is your “state of being,” the energy that you send forth, the energy that you are. It is not what you do but who you are that is the source of transformation. And as an actor you can be all these people and more.

Acting is one of the most effective tools available to mankind for channelling those inner, transcendent dimensions in an intensely creative and deeply inspirational form. It works on the same principles as the law of attraction we have heard and read so much about in recent years. Potentially, we are all nothing less than beings of gargantuan spiritual power, able to download extraordinary levels of wisdom, beauty and sublime insight. You can plug yourself into that power and download whatever you require for your journey- like a Blackberry with infinite memory. The responsibility is so scary that many cower and run from it: they pretend to themselves and the world they are mere artisans, and as Marianne Williamson says they choose to shrink so that others won’t be intimidated or humiliated, our deepest fear being the realisation that we are powerful beyond measure. But the power I am talking of does not humiliate other souls- though it may scare their egos into realising they have settled for far less than their divine inheritance! No: work that is generated and fuelled by this light gives other souls as Williamson says “permission to do the same”.

So how do you do this then?
Let me try and make a list. I love and loathe lists at the same time. Lists are made by the intellect, and tend to encourage a ‘ticky-boxy spirituality’: i.e. Do all this and, hey presto, all will be well. But there are no real shortcuts to this though, because your soul depths already operate by these rules. The trick is to align the spirit and the heart and the mind to all operate according to the same principles- only then can the power be made manifest through the following means. So then- the list:

What you must do with this power is...

1. Trust the universe, the divine will always support you, making your path lead ever higher. All you need do is believe.
2. Believe that help is given to you the moment you ask. Learn to listen for that voice. This is what your life has always been about, and you are so very close to the critical mass point where you explode with love. And ‘the semen of your being will come into the cunt of the universe’, as you once so eloquently said to Derek Pryor 25 years ago while high on lager, sulphate and magic mushrooms!
3. Develop the talent for listening to the loving thought as opposed to the fearful one.
4. Choosing honesty over pretence.
5. Root yourself in the heart of intuition and love, rather than the egoic, thinking mind
6. Feeling your own soul’s understanding of beauty is always preferred to society’s understanding of it. Always.
7. Access your playful inner child and lure him out of hiding.
8. Use your intuition with grounded discernment. Often it will tell you things that seem… well… obvious. Enter the imaginary body and feel the psychological changes imbue every cell and seep into your heart, mind and spirit.
9. Know that you really do create your own reality
10. Remember to connect to the divine source on a daily basis- meditate, pray, say hi and say thank you
11. Think always of service to others, rather than yourself, because you will otherwise remained mired in illusions and egoic thinking.
12. The goal is to live your highest life as highest self and you cannot help but serve others
13. Your goal, your higher purpose is to heal, to enlighten and encourage.

But our souls are immensely powerful- so potentially awesome in fact that we have created an illusion and then lived it as if it were real in order to accomplish larger, much more noble goals for ourselves. It doesn’t tend to work though because we become divided and separated from the Truth of Love which remains invisible.

A faithfully embraced and fully-committed heart-relationship with your higher self is required. When the connection with your higher self is at least as important and as real to you as any of your other relationships, once you trust it enough to follow and obey its guidance faithfully, you will experience “critical mass.” You are closer to achieving this than you ever have been in your life. The universe is starting to cooperate as never before as you align yourself to your inner connection to truth. Meaning and opportunity abound and multiply. Connection happens when you act on your vow of devotion to higher service- to the healing and enlightenment of others, rather than trying to accrue praise, money or nourishment for your own ego. When the Universe then trusts it can rely on you real transformation occurs. You now discover your hidden gifts and realise your astonishing untapped divine potential by logging onto that inner programme that’s been around since the universe’s beginning–your Soul. Following through on your inner guidance helps you become aware of incredibly precious and beautiful gifts that have remained buried in the secret corners of your soul from the beginning of time.

All actors- all souls!- have a common, universal and divine purpose (to learn, to grow, to serve etc.) as well as a specific purpose based on individual identity (to act, to make people laugh, to heal, to inspire, to comfort). This suggests that the individual, the personality or “ego” should not be “negated”, but actually accepted- and yes!- accentuated. You have been ashamed of the apparent “selfishness” of being an actor in the past. Your response to George Docherty’s email which had been intended as a message of support for applying to the RSAMD but which you interpreted as a reminder of your selfishness, illustrates better than anything else how much of a tender issue this is for you, despite all the inner work you have done to get you this far.

After all, the bridge between this world and the kingdom of heaven that many of us yearn for lies with each of us fulfilling our own life purposes, using our individual gifts and talents. Your gift which you have devoted your life to developing, Mark- your extraordinary, divine talent- is for acting. This is not selfishness though, because your soul has always known that despite the praise you get for it, despite the joy you get from doing it- it liberates and inspires others. How heartening it was to come across a review of the last play I performed in (Tango, in May) yesterday.

“The situation is saved by the stunning Mark Coleman as Stomil, Arthur's father. His relaxed acting and lovable wackiness makes him stand out among some indifferent and tame performances.” The Skinny

Stomil in Tango (2008)

You have worked towards seeing from the soul’s perspective for a long time now, Mark- and your spiritual vision is to sharpen still more. This review was a wonderful encouragement to keep on developing my talent along spiritual lines, especially after I had been feeling at a discouragingly low ebb these past few weeks, wondering why no one appeared to be offering me any acting roles. I loved the fact that I managed to make such a flawed and arrogant character “lovable”. But actually this is not really about ego (well, not much!), actually it is more about recognition that I am not wrong! and that somehow God has been working with me on this role all along. I committed to applying deep, spiritual principles learned and expanded from Michael Chekhov about the Higher Self and Love to my work on that role, and that it happened to amuse and thrill one other person- in this case a young Polish girl who happens to write for a freebie magazine. It sounds disingenuous I know but in the end that one response really does make that work all worthwhile. Her words filled me with pride- but a good pride; with a humble gratitude to God for her encouragement that I am travelling on the right road. It’s not selfish to feel this way. If it were then it would please me to have Marta’s direction and the other performances in the production slagged off. It so doesn’t. It really upsets me, in fact, and I think it must have upset Marta too. That is why I perfectly understand why she preferred to keep the review’s publication a secret from everyone involved in the production for the last 7 months.

This time ahead as you apply for the RSAMD offers you such amazing opportunity, as an explorer and a vehicle for truth and freedom. I am already thinking deeply about writing my dissertation about the Higher Self and its practical use to the actor. This inner power, the soul’s power based on love, is what will turn this planet around. The spirituality of acting is such an important area of research that many of the academics prefer to ignore. They are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The time for this ‘new’ way of being is NOW. You as an actor are to be part of this movement and ascension up to the next evolutionary level of the art and the society it influences and helps to change. You will go as high as you can imagine. Everything you can imagine becomes real from now on.

But still, your own emotional body is very sensitive to fear, to anger and aggression and to all strong sentiments which easily pull you out of your centre. This was illustrated in the way you responded to the Anna Karenina debacle last year. In trying to unravel exactly what went pear-shaped then you have been required to stop blaming others and instead take responsibility for the emotions you feel, examining them and following them back to their source(s). In this process of internalization you do not search for the cause(s) of your problems in the outside world anymore but you look for them within yourself. Thus you take responsibility for your own energy and that is one of the most important things you have been learning in your spiritual life and will continue to learn through your acting, teaching and directing too.

Prospero in The Tempest (2008)

There are 3 danger-areas for you.

Firstly- Spiritual anger (if that isn’t too much of an oxymoron!).

In the past I have interpreted this as a creative energy, a drive for perfection, but actually unless used in the correct way it can so easily become very destructive! The desire to help and change things often contains a form of spiritual anger although this may go completely unnoticed. After all you seem to simply “want the best” for other actors or for the audience. But surely there is anger inside you when you feel inclined to force somebody – no matter how subtly – to change their behavior or their emotions. You get very impatient and it takes you out of your centre, away from the creative source. Often you do not notice that the time is not yet ripe for change.

This inner rage and itch for perfection feels like inspiration but it takes you away from your soul. There was a secret meaning behind the suffering incurred during this time. Each person involved- Dean, Sarah, me and all the others were there to unfold, to express and to learn more about what it is to be human and spirit at the same time. Each one of us proceeded according to his or her own path of development. And I was being asked by God to respect this, to take a step backwards and to concentrate entirely on yourself, on your own light. Instead I banged my gavel in judgement. You vibrated hate and rage for what they were doing wrong. You took on the responsibility for being their moral and artistic compass because you didn’t trust that they had to find their own way. There was no need for you to stand on the barricades. There was no need for you to fight. You should have walked away when you realised it was happening, instead of staying out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, and egoic preservation of your desire to be proved right.

Roverini in The Talented Mr Ripley (2005)

It’s strange but even though acting should be about actions, the emphasis your way of working has is really not about doing but being. When your spiritual energy is in balance, the healing energy you send forth to others flows easily and effortlessly, without physical or mental exertion. It feels light and smooth, not exhausting to you. You find your flow. Things, ideas, inspiration and people show up as if by magic on your path and turn to you for healing.

Each time you lock yourself in your righteous indignation and anger, even if it concerns injustice or suffering that you find unbearable to witness, you need to have the courage and patience and wisdom to just step backwards and move into the center of yourself. A state similar to the one you get into when meditating. Enter the silence and accept that things are as they are. Accept that everything completes its own cycle and has its own development, including the people who are dearest to you. Set them free, as the Kinks song says. Trust that it is enough ‘just’ to be there.

You ended up being blamed for the fall out during Anna Karenina, but your desire to be right was what alienated everyone. Sarah accused me of trying to force my spiritual principles onto others. It was a humiliating realisation but many months later I was able to come to the realisation that she was damned right even though I had been appalled at being blamed for this at the time.

So much for Anger.

Then there is Melancholy.

Feelings of depression or gloominess originate from low self confidence. Intellectually perhaps you may understand perfectly well that you carry a spiritual light within, that you are a sensitive, compassionate and wise soul. But the wounded 3 year child inside you, still standing at the top of the stairs looking down at his mum, still yearns for recognition and appreciation from the outside world. You cannot deny that there is a part of you that craves external attention and safety. The trouble is you can never get enough of this. You can’t find the sort of recognition you really seek because you are different. Others can’t recognize the real you and therefore cannot acknowledge and nourish you.
Your wounded, inner child will never be healed by something from the outside but only by yourself, your own power and wisdom
You are very prone to this kind of spiritual melancholy. The answer is to rekindle your Inward Light in order for the heavens then to fan it into a raging fire again. This is where the Quaker thing has really helped you. The Quakers remind you you are light.

And the third obstacle after anger and depression is plain old Fear. Particularly the fear to do with a lack of trust in your own inspirations, feelings and intuitions. If you doubt your own feelings, you worry a lot and you invoke a whole series of emotions which take you further and further away from your centre
Fear blocks the actor’s intuition. When the intellect and the emotions gain the upper hand ican easily create stage-fright and chaos. The intellect and the emotions need the intuition, the heart as a foundation. Only then can they serve you in a useful way when you’re acting.

Pedagogus in Electra (2004)

Set yourself free from worry and to go back to your heart. What do you really feel underneath all those restless thoughts and confused emotions? In breathing calmly down to your base chakra you are able to go back to your foundation. Then you may feel a relief valve deep within, a point of silence beyond thought and emotion. You may then choose a certain thought or emotion.
…
Every time you make contact with this inner center and take a step backwards you will find a renewed clarity within your soul- something changes at a very deep level- however imperceptable. From there you can observe your feelings and emotions without being absorbed by them or attached to them. You can watch your anger and send it love. You can observe your depression and offer yourself a healing hand. You can see the smallness of your fear and send it the energy of deliverance and transcendence.

You have now an armoury of tools for countering the negative energies of anger, depression and fear. For instance, the silent worship of the Friends’ meetings, your spiritual reading, your prayer and meditation discipline, your spiritual journal, your acting, your teaching (Yes, incredible as it may seem…teaching- But working with teenagers alerts you to all three of these spiritual pitfalls, and forces you to face them and overcome them. At last this time is coming to an end and you are going to conquer the limiting ideas of having to be a guy named “Mark”, of being anything somehow less than perfect, of being just material or thought energy. You can be Love and Light).

This is all heavenly nourishment you have been given just in the last 2 or 3 years.

It may be a cliché but there is much truth in it: as an actor you have access to the soul’s multidimensionality and in fact live many, many lives. At an early age you adopted the personalities and tics and habits and gestures of those closest to you. Your mother worried that you seemed too easily influenced, that you appeared not to have a strong enough sense of who you were (In actually fact she was saying that she was afraid I would never make an impact on the material world if my ego as so apparently swayed by the influence of others. She would say, “What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you got a mind of your own?”) But people like me are in fact powerful once they find their niche at least because they are not quite so trapped in their identity. I could morph, and this scared your mother, because she didn’t realise who you were any more. She identified the Mark she knew with the everyday Mark and not the soul that inhabited his body, the larger and universal energies that could take up residence within his energy field and transform him into many different people. Some of those energies were acceptable to her and others were not. But you were able to learn that you can shed your own egoic attachments when necessary- even for a little while- and can glimpse and show others something of the human’s potential to be Godlike and become anything they imagine themselves to be. In time you learned how to shed those energies once they had served their useful purpose. This is an incredibly powerful gift, and it is often really only a glimpse that is given, as if by flashes of lightning if you’re lucky, but then it is through acting you are able to gain far more access than many others, who are not able to live a life where they can connect with their own true life purpose and see it from so many different perspectives. In your case, as an actor you live many lives, inhabiting many dimensions, many hearts and minds. It is a tremendous privilege and it IS what you came to this earth to do. Teaching has been about trying to show others how to do this, but this coming year you are going back to actually doing it. You have done your time, serving others through the dense fog that is teaching and we in heaven have now seen that the time is now right for you to go back into the profession. But preparing for all of that will involve you going to college for the foreseeable future, getting training.

So then, how can you be the truly multidimensional, spiritually protean actor God intended you to be? How does one employ one’s multidimensionality in such a way that one can move freely through the many dimensions and levels of being and yet not lose touch with one’s divine spirit?
Being multidimensional from a place of wisdom and awareness: that is your chosen spiritual destiny. It is your destiny to become a fully conscious multidimensional creator with God. This is the path of the mystic.
Release the illusion of linear time and become more than just your body. Your purpose in this regard is fulfilled through acting. Do not be ashamed of this.
Acting gives you the opportunity of being consciously multidimensional.
But when you get stuck in holding limiting beliefs such as “I’m not good enough,” “That isn’t done,” “This’ll just go wrong,” etc., you sink into the illusion of separation, the earth-bound oblivion. You are trapped in the quagmire of linear time, the illusion that you are a body, the illusion that you are separate from God. In this way, the soul gets temporarily “stuck” and then in the habit of dwelling in the lower realms of creativity. Settling for less. The soul forgets about its true origins, its divine freedom... and begins to die.
Acting is your way of remebering your own divinity.
You become an aspect of God.
An actors using his higher self is not so much a person as an energy vortex or pattern with an individual flavor.
The Holy Spirit externalises and expresses aspects of Himself in this way, driven by the sheer joy of creativity.
And your Higher Self makes the CHARACTER a unique soul.
Not even God can be entirely sure of the results. I like to think this is what He craves of the actor: not to know everything he will do, but to experience something new! You become a co-creator with Him, stepping into an empty space, , a space of potentiality, a space of unending possibilities.
The actor finds out that he can create many forms and live in them. Every form you inhabit as a conscious actor has a certain angle or perspective to it which enables “unformed consciousness” to experience things in specific ways through the embodiment of the imagination.
At this very moment, there is a layer of pure divine energy inside you, a layer of pure Light. There are also layers of confusion and fear inside you. But you can choose, at any moment, to be the Light self, the angel that you are. This is not something you need to develop, it is simply a part of who you are.

You are beginning to realise you no longer need to look up to spiritual masters, guides or angels. There is not one authority above you. You yourself become God and angel.

The easiest way to get in touch with your Light self is through connecting with the layer of pure Spiritual consciousness within you. And you now know hot to do this- by becoming silent on inner and outer levels. This silence is always present within you; you only need to become aware of it.

You are what some spiritual writers would call a lightworkers, working towards a greater awareness of oneness with Spirit. You have travelled into duality a very long way in your youth, and now you can hear a voice calling you, telling you you are ready to come back Home. And Home is not a static place of bliss, but a dynamic, creative reality of divine, multidimensional life filled with joy and light.

Keep your longing and determination alive- trust that impulse, for it will bring you Home.

You are a lightworker. This is better than being a journeyman actor. It elevates you, and lifts you above the thick fog that has often surrounded you in egoism, fear, anger, weary despair and the desire to prove yourself.

Sculpt with light and feel the love!

Acting reminds you of all the levels we exist on and how they come together to create what it is to be in this miracle we call life.

King Lear (2006)

The Master Actor first teaches himself, and then teaches his audience the law of attraction the truth that the light of faith combined with the compassionate will to Love can and does move mountains.

A long blog this, but I'm buzzing at the moment

:-)

Tally's Blood 3

.

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy."
Rabindranath Tagore

I have been listening in the car to Michael Chekhov's lectures on CD over the last few days, and what comes across to me so vividly, hearing him speak- much more so than in his writings in fact- is the true significance, depth and sheer beauty of his highly practicable spiritual wisdom. What he called 'the Love thing', his radical ideas of Giving ("...giving! Giving!!") and the 'expansion of the Soul' through the Imagination underpin his entire philosophy. The concepts of the Higher Ego and the transformative power of Divine Love were woven into every single aspect of his teaching. What a disservice the editors, critics, teachers, academics and biographers do when they neglect to appreciate the importance of those spiritual ideas to the maturation of the actor's development- opting instead to focus their attention on Chekhov's technical discoveries alone! Wonderful as they are, his legacy is far, far richer than just the Psychological Gesture, Physical Centres and the Imaginary Body exercises for which he is still most famous. Chekhov demonstated such extraordinary courage venturing as he did to share the 'crazy', 'simple' idea of Love and its primary importance to the art of the actor, especially with a deeply cynical and no doubt utterly bemused Hollywood of the mid-50s. I know he loathed the name of 'Mystic' being attached to him, but he is the closest the theatre has ever come to having one as their patron saint.

Tally's Blood is very obviously all about Love. That's really what attracted me to the play in the first place. Family love, friendship, romantic love, patriotic love, love of God, love of the past, etc. As I conduct the relaxation and psycho-physical warm-up exercises each day I coax the actors to focus on something or someone that their character happens to deeply love and then to express that love in an ardent PG. I ask them what as actors they most love about their work? and then get them to imagine inwardly a multiplication and an immense expansion of that love- connecting and merging it with the love their character has. The quality of the work produced is very, very high from those members of the cast who are willing to yield to this strange exercise. I am convinced that this simple shift and opening-up in our thinking can transform the humblest artist into a genius. I have been very moved by what I have seen from the actors already and we have only had eight rehearsals,. Progress has been rapid, and working with them is a joy. I'd like to think they are feeling as positive and excited as I am.

Michael Chekhov and Focusing

I received an interesting email yesterday from an academic, one Christelle Nassar, at the University of Lebanon in Beirut. She's writing a book on Michael Chekhov, and wants to introduce his ideas to the Arab world.

"Chekhov’s name is known in Lebanon and the Arab world, but there are no Arabic versions of his books nor serious researches on his work, therefore, I chose to write my study in Arabic in order to familiarize the Arabic speaking acting students, actors, trainers, and directors with his work. I have also chosen to work on Chekhov because he addresses the actor directly and suggests to him means of elaborating his part on his own during a mise en scène…
A part of my study will be based on Chekhov’s books “To the actor” and “On the actor technique”. And a second part of it – equally as important as the first – would be a study of the application of the Chekhov’s by people other than Chekhov himself…
Therefore, I would be much obliged, if you as a professional trainer in Chekhov’s acting method, (and using his method as an actor) would answer some questions that allow me to use your personal experience (I would appreciate having your personal CV), and that of your studio as essential references in my study.

1. How were you introduced to Mikhail Chekhov’s method in acting?
2. Have you learned the method through Chekhov himself, a trainer, Chekhov’s books…?
3. How did you become a trainer through Mikhail Chekhov’s method in actor training?
4. Are you familiar with other acting methods?
5. In your personal opinion and experience, what are the particularities of Chekhov’s method in actor training (what made you choose this method)?
6. Do you follow the exercises given by Chekhov in his books “To The Actor” and “on the acting technique” the way they are? Or, you prefer to make changes (such as adding other exercise, deleting some, combining others…)? In case you do, would you please give some description of the changes, and of the reasons behind them (I would like to know particularly why you chose to combine Chekhov’s method with Eugene Gendlin's Focusing/ Bio-spirituality, how you did it, and what were the benefits of this combination)?
7. What are the most common difficulties you encountered with the trainees?
8. Were this difficulties the same for acting students, professional actors, and for non professionals interested in theater?
9. Do you think reading Chekhov books would suffice for an experimented actor or director to teach his method?
10. Comparing with other actor training methods, why – regarding your experience – should an actor choose to be trained in Chekhov’s method?
11. Particularly, and since Chekhov was Stanislavski’s student, what do you, as an actor trainer, think the strong points of Chekhov’s method are, and where do you see the differences between both methods?
12. Chekhov addresses the actor directly, and asks him to try the exercises while reading them in order to understand his method. Based on you experience in teaching his method, do you think the person or the group of persons who want to become actors can train themselves alone by reading the book and applying the exercises?

Thank you in advance,
Christelle Nassar "

How cool is that? :-) I've spent the last couple of hours composing a response, which I've just emailed her.

Dear Christelle,

I first discovered Michael Chekhov’s ideas about 7 or 8 years ago, when I happened to see a video of Joanna Merlin leading a workshop on Psychological Gestures, and I was immediately intrigued. I googled Chekhov on the Internet and what I read on various websites (Lisa Dalton 's particularly) constituted kind of an epiphany for me. I ordered the book immediately. I read it from cover to cover in a single afternoon, and then immediately reread it. It was as if all the blocks and frustrations and difficulties I had been having as an actor were dissolving. His vision for what he called the Ideal Theatre of the future filled me with hope, and the techniques he offered the actor offered the perfect way of avoiding the mind having too much control over the creative process. I could finally stop feeling guilty that I had always secretly found so many of Stanislavski’s techniques quite tiresome, long-winded and so mechanical! (More of which later!) I subsequently attended the Michael Chekhov Studio in London (http://www.michaelchekhov.org.uk/) under the tutelage of Graham Dixon. In addition I have attended the Michael Chekhov in the 21st Century Symposium at Dartington Hall, the venue for Chekhov’s own theatre studio, in 2005. I continue to amass a growing personal library of Chekhov related books, literature CDs and DVDs.

I am as you might have guessed somewhat evangelical about Michael Chekhov's ideas and techniques!

Yet I still have no formal teaching qualification in Chekhov methodology or techniques. This is quite deliberate. Although I am fully aware that there are various certificated courses available I am not convinced Chekhov himself would have approved of a formal program that leads to an official license or piece of paper to prove I have the credibility to use his ideas. I am an artist, not an academic. Besides Mischa’s whole philosophy resists fixed and inflexible theory which might strangle growth. He believed the art of acting, although founded on spiritually eternal principles accessible to all, was also, at its best, an organic process/experience that does- and indeed should- move with the times! In contrast, the educational institution tends to rigidify and ossify ideas and ideals! Chekhov insisted that the individual actor-artist should be quite free to take whatever he/she finds useful in his book, and disregard the rest. This freedom to choose was very important to me as an actor, and the fact that Chekhov wasn't promoting yet another prescriptive, rigid theoretical framework for the art of acting- (Stanislavski!)- appealed to me too. Chekhov’s ideas made me feel so much more liberated and creatively free than all the other theoretical approaches offered by theatre practitioners I had studied- Stanislavski, Meisner, Hagen, Strasberg etc.

In the last few years I have shared many of Michael Chekhov’s ideas with a number of theatre companies in Scotland, incorporating them into the rehearsal process of my productions of Timon of Athens, Awake and Sing!, A Hard Heart, The Crucible for the Ramshorn Theatre in Glasgow- as well as Razed Curtain Theatre Co’s improv troupe and their production of Anna Karenina last year, Macbeth for the Shakespeare Schools Festival UK to name a few. I am an acting coach for individual actors too, and I am a regular workshop leader on Chekhov for The Actors’ Bothy at the Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts (http://www.theactorsbothy.com/)- a weekly class offered to professional actors. In addition I have offered introductory weekend sessions in Chekhov’s techniques through the University of Strathclyde. The techniques seem to come as a revelation to many Scottish actors and it astonishes me that he is not more widely used or regarded.

What attracted me to Chekhov in the first place? Well, lots of things! First of all, his methods are not cerebral, always psycho-physical. They get the actor ‘out of his/her head’, never a good place for an actor to be! Also it forged a unique amalgam between what we now recognise as ‘Process work’ and an in-corporated, embodied, practical mysticism- but from an Actor's perspective. I had been interested in all these areas for a number of years but Michael Chekhov was for me the final piece in jigsaw that completed the picture of my own hitherto blurred sense of purpose and direction as a theatre artist.

I had struggled to find a philosophy that fully honoured the spiritual component within my creative life as an actor until I came across Michael Chekhov’s book. The concepts of Higher Ego, Radiation, Psychological Gesture, Inner Gesture, Feelings of the Whole, of Ease and Beauty, the Imaginary Body and what he refers to as 'the Objective Reality of the Imagination' etc were all drawn together into an articulate and coherent approach that made absolute sense of my own experience of my journey as an artist. Each element provided an access point to (- for want of a better phrase-) ‘Divine Inspiration’. Chekhov is never reticent or embarrassed about commending the deep, unconscious spiritual forces which underpin, inspire- and even compel- the actor’s ‘desire for transformation’. Of course, in the modern British theatre culture any such reference to spirituality in connection with the actor’s art is usually derided, even ridiculed as inherently pretentious or “luvvie” by those inside (and outside!) the profession. The fact that Chekhov was willing to be courageously unfashionable and to actively embrace the spiritual forces and religious origins of the art of acting deeply impressed me. In my view, he offers a radical and visionary dismantling of all the prejudices that seemed to be holding theatre and the art of the actor back from evolving to the next stage of its evolution. Here was the real possibility of what Peter Brook terms the Holy Theatre. Chekhov continues to provide us with a highly practical and at the same time deeply spiritual approach to the work.

Now, Gendlin’s Focusing, and Bio-spirituality, have a great deal in common with Chekhov’s ideas. They are all concerned with discerning and embodying images from the ‘edge of awareness’; the act of defining, refining and redefining of felt shifts (or “grace unfolding”) that can be then be worked with. These felt shifts- the removal of the actor's creative and psychological blocks- are gifts from the Higher Self, from the Higher Source and they are the tools for inner metamorphosis and eventually outer transformation- whether that be in the therapeutic or the artistic context.

The Psychological Gesture is the physical equivalent of Gendlin’s “Getting a Handle”. Chekhov’s concepts of Active Waiting and the Creative Gaze are also very similar if not identical to clearing a space, where one patiently and gently asks, “What is there?” Both processes allow us to disengage from the thought stream and connect with the present moment. They both ask us “How does it feel in my body to connect with these thoughts and feelings?” They open us to the body’s wisdom. I am convinced that Chekhov would completely agree with Gendlin when he says:

“Your physically felt body is …part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people - in fact, the whole universe. This sense of being bodily alive in a vast system is the body as it is felt from inside”

In Dr Edwin McMahon and Dr Peter Campbell.’s “Bio-Spirituality – Focusing As A Way To Grow” they say:

“There are two critical issues in spiritual development…The first is to discover a holistic approach for letting go of the mind’s omnipotent control as a prelude to allowing some broader wisdom within the entire human organism to speak. The second is to allow the unique next step that is “me” to emerge as an integral, harmonious expression of some Larger Process”.

This is the same ‘me’ that Chekhov would call the Higher Ego.

Chekhov says: ”The usual ego is not what stirs our imagination. To turn our consciousness upon it, to see the concreteness of its specific powers and qualities, is a means of strengthening our connection with it.”

Whenever I start a theatre rehearsal I adapt an exercise taught by Graham Dixon at the Michael Chekhov studio where he has the actors standing at the edge of the acting workshop space and step over an imaginary line that runs a metre or so inside the circumference of the room beyond which is the space which the higher Selves are to do the work ahead. The letting go of the everyday self is in my adapted version done in the same way as listing all the preoccupations of the everyday self that is done in the second step of focusing. I keep asking “And what else” whilst the participants silently list in their heads their respective worries and concerns which might stand in the way of doing the work. I ask them to wait at least 2mins before let them all go and then they cross over the imaginary line. Having done this shedding of everyday concerns and then decided to dress in their higher selves the ensemble meet in the centre of the room where I may ask indic=vidi=uals to devlop psychological gestures, a sense of how different physical centres manifest the archetypal eb=nergies of their characters.

Chekhov allows us to believe that we do not become greater actors by striving to be more than we are, but by surrendering to our talent, as if it were a gift of grace which we already possessed but simply lay hidden deep within if only we can get out of the way of our own lower egos. This is why, for me, his most profound teaching is really to do with his techniques for uncovering and honouring our imaginations as a reality because he suggests we “leave our personal things behind us” and enter into the mystical realm of the soul, or the Higher Ego.

It may very well be due to my own limitations as a teacher but, in my own experience teenagers benefit least from this way of working. Their egos are still making a massive claim on their attention and it is difficult for them to stay in a place of not quite knowing. They can be extremely reluctant to risk making fools of themselves, and prefer to demonstrate they 'already know the answers'! After 15 years of teaching this age group it is my view that too much uncertainty and ambivalence are anathema for the vast majority of 13-18 year olds- professional and non-professional, experienced and inexperienced. Experienced adult actors benefit most from Chekhov’s ideas, those who have maybe studied and worked with Stanislavski’s principles and then feel the need to go deeper. Preferably, the actors have a spiritual connection to their work (although they don’t have to believe in God!), and have learned to appreciate the value of ‘active waiting’ and meditation as part of their artistic process. I find that Focusing can help them understand the worth of this dimension to their work, but only if they are prepared to be open-minded! For those that are, it can open them up to a deep and untapped inner reservoir of imagination and extraordinarily inspired choices.

There is an entire industry of workshops and courses that aim to give actors a practical experience of Chekhov’s techniques. However if the actor does the exercise in the books on his/her own as Chekhov himself recommends I can see no reason why they cannot assimilate and learn just as much, if not more- and certainly more cheaply! Having said this, it may be helpful to have a trusted witness (just as in so called ‘Authentic Movement’ work)- a director, friend or colleague perhaps- who is sensitive enough to be able to monitor and guide the Psychological Gesture work.

Chekhov’s writing is so clear that most intelligent and sensitive actors can learn the techniques and their uses in their own living room, independent of any practical group workshop or formal tuition. Having said that there is much to be gained from working with an ensemble who all drawing on a common vocabulary for the work they are doing. An ensemble who are united in their sense of purpose can support and guide each other through the process, whatever particular theory that might underpin the work itself- whether that be or Chekhov. Grotowski, Stanislavski, Brecht- whoever...

Stanislavski does mention the spiritual component to the art of acting if you are prepared to look closely enough. He writes of prana and radiation-and was very influenced by ideas of yoga- but his approach is at the end of the day very cerebral- as if he were saying that the actor can summon inspiration by concentrated acts of will. But the books are muddled by the fictional framework he uses to advance his ideas, and very difficult to read. Chekhov takes the very best that Stanislavski has to offer, and comes up with a book that is masterfully lucid but more far-reaching. Chekhov takes us further into the realms of the imagination and its mysterious connection with the actor’s body, Chekhov knew that the imagination and the Higher Ego were far more powerful tools for the artist than the mechanistic and ‘utilitarian’ approach of Stanislavski’s. Stanislavski’s theories have been taken up in the American tradition of acting by Lee Strasberg, and there are many in the west who still believe this to be the pinnacle of what it means to be a committed theatre artist. Of course most Method actors would dispute my assumptions about their process as being purely mental- or 'willed'; and admittedly I’m overstating things. But there has always seemed to me to be an implicit requirement of self-immolation bound up with the Method actor’s process. A “you can’t really be a serious artist unless you are prepared to hurt yourself” kind of creed. Both Stanislavski’s and Strasberg’s students were encouraged at times to generate unnecessary unhappiness and harmful psychological turmoil within themselves. In its extreme forms there is very little creative joy in this way of working; a deeply unhealthy level of self-bullying, in fact. Many of Strasberg's star pupils were seriously fucked up by what he asked of them- hence the early deaths, suicides, clinical depression, drug addiction, etc. But I share Chekhov’s view that the audience don’t really want to see the performer really suffer: the feelings should have what he called “an artistic fragrance”. Chekhov insisted the process should be joyful. In addition, he understood that the audience could tolerate the ambiguity of knowing that what is happening on stage is a fiction and yet could still be utterly engaged in the performance and the feelings. There is a gentler and more open method of acting that allows the heart and the imagination to soar rather than encouraging the actor to fix himself within intense, self-involved and rigid narcissism. There is also, I believe, an erroneous assumption in Strasberg’s Method (admittedly a perversion and a misunderstanding of what Stanislavski was actually saying) that if the actor feels emotionally authentic then that authenticity will inevitably communicate itself to an audience, and so move them. This is more often than not demonstrably untrue. Neither Strasberg or Stanislavski ever solved the problem of how to capture the genie in the bottle so that the truth of the character could be recreated each and every time through the use of the actor’s personal “emotional memories”. Chekhov likened emotional memory exercises to trying to dig up a corpse and make it alive again. Chekhov’s techniques helps come much closer to achieving a reliable connection with the ineffable because he does not start from the thinking, or even the emotions, but from the body. I know his techniques work for me anyway, and I do not fuck myself up in the process either! Method actors might accuse me of “acting”, of cheating or lack of authenticity, but you only have to see Strasberg and Chekhov acting on film to instantly know who is the better actor!

Hope this is of some help, Christelle. Let me know if there is anything else. I've attached a CV of my acting work as requested.

The very best of luck with your research- it sounds an absolutely fascinating challenge. It would be great if you could send me a copy when you're finally done! :-)

Yours truly,

Mark Coleman