[e-drive][WORKSHOP: EQUITY DISCOUNT. TORONTO]

[Kaethe Yanovsky]

~~~~~~~~~~e-drive~~~~~~~~~~~~

IMAGINATION, CHARACTER,AND THE ACTOR'S CREATIVE INDIVIDUALITY: MICHAEL
CHEKHOV AND HIS PSYCHO-PHYSICAL APPROACH TO ACTING

With SARAH KANE
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Equity Showcase Theatre is proud to offer the exclusive opportunity to study
with Sarah Kane, one of the foremost experts in the U.K. on the Chekhov
Technique (see the bottom of this page for a description of Michael
Chekhov's Technique).

Chekhov strove to create an identity between the impulse and its
realization.  The spontaneity of the actor's response to the character is
crucial, and must be preserved in the performance. This spontaneity has the
potential to lead to a renewal of confidence and joy in the individual
actor's specific creative capacities. It can, at the same time, imbue the
same actor's  work with greater differentiation and depth: a character may
start to become a three-dimensional individual, with quirks and foibles.

Uncovering the power of the imagination will be at the heart of this
one-week workshop, and will include applying it to the process of embodying
a character. At the same time, the workshop will explore other tools that
can help in this intimate and specific creative process, focusing in
particular on movement and gesture, another key principle of what, in
Chekhov's view, inspires and makes actors creative.

Please bring a character that you would like to develop and incorporate,
along with shoes and clothing suitable for movement

RUNNING DATES: May 13th - May 17th, 2002, Monday to Friday 12:00pm - 5:00pm

COSTS FOR EQUITY MEMBERS: $290
COSTS FOR NON-EQUITY MEMBERS: $320
Subsidies for Equity members are provided by Equity's professional
development fund.


Sarah Kane is an actor / director and has been teaching in the U.K. and
across the United States since the late '80's.  Sarah is the vice-president
of the Michael Chekhov Association in the USA, Founder/Co-Ordinator of the
Michael Chekhov Centre in the UK, and a facultymember of the London Centre
for Theatre Studies (UK).

Application with photo, résumé & payment are required by May 1st.  For your
convenience applications are gratefully accepted can be on-line at
www.equityshowcase.ca or by mail at

Equity Showcase Theatre
651 Dufferin St.
Toronto, ON    M6K 2B2

Please direct any questions to Jennifer by telephone at 416-533-6100 x 21 or
by e-mail at mail at equityshowcase.ca
_____________________________________________________________________
Michael Chekhov's Technique:

Michael Chekhov (1891-1955), nephew of playwright Anton Pavlovich Chekhov,
became one of  Russia's greatest theatre performers early in his career.
Later on in his life he was also a refugee, a revered acting teacher and an
Oscar nominee for his supporting role in
Hitchcock's Spellbound.  Chekhov's career began at Moscow Art Theatre with
which he was associated for sixteen years.  He was considered to be
Stanislavski's greatest student.  He also worked with Nemirovich-Danchenko,
Vachtangov and Sulerjitski.  His technique is a result of a long process of
developing, experimenting and observing directors and actors from various
traditions.

Simon Callow cleverly summed the differences between Stanislavski and his
greatest student after taking a workshop in Chekhov's Technique in England:
"If Constantin Stanislavski was acting's Freud, Michael Chekhov was it's
Jung".

Chekhov insisted that the source of all acting is the imagination, not
personal experience, and that the actor's essential work on himself is the
development of the power of one's imagination. "To put it another way,
Chekhov was essentially interested in the poetry of
acting, Stanislavski with the prose", succinctly concludes Callow.
When embarking on a new play, and beginning the work on a part, most actors
will, in some form or other, use their imagination to bring the role, and
the words the character speaks, alive.

More than four decades after its creator's death Chekhov's method is
continuing to inspire the likes of Jack Nicholson and Anthony Hopkins.
Generations of younger actors are striving to learn the intricacies of the
Chekhov style.  Chekhov studios are growing in U.S.A., Holland, U.K., Israel
and, of course, Russia.