VIVACITYAN OPEN SCHOOL
Saturday, 16 May 2015 | Shrabasti Mallik
Israeli theatre director David Zinder is teaching NSD students techniques developed by Michael Chekov.Shrabasti Mallik took some lessons
In a quiet corner of the National School of Drama campus a group of students sat, listening in rapt attention to what was being explained. A workshop on the theatre techniques of Michael Chekov was being conducted by noted Israeli theatre director David Zinder and students grasped every single word he said as he described the nuances of ImageWork, a technique that he developed to train an actor’s creativity, the ability to make his presence felt to the audience. “It is very fundamentally connected to the Michael Chekov technique,” he told us after finishing his class.
Zinder is one of the master teachers of the Chekov technique and is pleased at the growing interest that the Indian theatre fraternity is showing to this. The technique, he explained, was practiced in underground America in the beginning. “It was not regarded as one of the forms of theatre training but now it has become part of mainstream teaching,” he said. The basic connection between ImageWork and Chekov’s technique is that they are both based on the profound connection between the body and imagination. He added, “Chekov was a student of Stanislavsky but he moved away from that because Stanislavsky and the American techniques are based on finding a connection between personal history and the character. But according to Chekov it was a very limited resource. His technique is much easier and more fruitful because it involves finding the character in the imagination than in personal biography. In a way it is also easy because it is natural. Chekov was a brilliant actor and what he did was to analyse his own way of working. His methods are quite similar to what Freud did with psycho-analysis, he psycho-analysed himself and then applied it to other people.”
The director also prefers to work on a different kind of “image based” theatre. There are no linear narratives but there is an accumulation of images which eventually results in the effect of the play, he told us. “We call it art theatre and it is difficult as compared to other genres,” he said and added, “You cannot make a living through this kind of theatre because it is much more difficult. Physical or image-based theatre has a much smaller audience. Big productions sometimes do art theatre but if they do about seven new productions in a year then may be one will be of this category. Sometimes they do classics like Shakespeare, Ibsen, Lorca, too, but it is still a small percentage. Theatre and everything associated with it — acting, direction and production — are all very good. This is just not my kind of theatre.”
According to Zinder, Israelis are more passionate about theatre — more than any other country in the world. He explained to us that the country has the highest per capita of theatre going public. “In comparison to the size of the population, we attend theatre more than any other country,” he pointed out. He attributed this partly to the habit of the people, “because it is part of the culture,” and partly to aggressive advertising. “On any given night in Tel Aviv there are about 25 different theatre performances. There are three major theatres — National Theatre, Municipal Theatre and one that is subsidised by the government,” he added.
Although the content of Israeli theatre has changed in leaps and bounds over the years, the director is disappointed at the fact that no more theatre on politics is written and produced. In the 70 and 80s, theatre in Israel was very political, he said. “A lot of the original plays are now on social issues. Back in the day, all the venues were doing well and staging very political theatre — mostly left wing; in terms of the situation. It had largely to do with the Palestinians and with Palestine-Israel ties. Now it has disappeared, which I think is unfortunate because the issues are still there and are probably worse,” he elaborated.
During the course of his workshop at NSD, he will be conducting an exercise called the imaginary body. He explained that it requires an actor to sit and in his imagination, build up a character. “The actor has to imagine what the character looks like and has to get into its skin,” he said. The most important technique that Chekov came up with was the psychological gesture. It is a way of creating a physical gesture, which is the expression of what the character wants, throughout the play. Chekov described it as a neo-impulse, coloured by qualities. “If your character wants to embrace, either violently or affectionately — you find a gesture for that and that becomes the key for your whole character,” he concluded.