Michael Chekhov : Teaching (Acting) in a Foreign Land

Abstract

Born in St.Petersburg in 1891, Michael Aleksandrovich Chekhov died 64 years later in the United States (1955 in Los Angeles). A nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov and a member of the Moscow Art Theatre’s First Studio where the Stanislavsky system was forged, Chekhov had a celebrated acting career in Moscow. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and evolving communist cultural policy, however, forced him to leave his homeland. As an exile in Germany, France, Latvia, Lithuania England, New York and Los Angeles, he established a series of acting studios in which he tried to bring to artists in other countries and in other parts of the world new insights into the system developed by his own master, Konstantin Stanislavsky, along with a range of approaches to acting that was clearly his own. The adventures he had communicating this Russian style of work in English to artists working with him from across Europe, the United States, Canada and from as far away as Australia at a time when the Stanislavsky system was just becoming known was a source of linguistic frustration for him over the years as well as a source of linguistic frustration. What follows is a look at Michael Chekhov’s life and work across these many borders written by Chekhov specialist Liisa Byckling of Finland.