Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov, known as Michael Chekhov, was a Russian-American actor, director, author, and theatre practitioner.
17 Facts About Michael Chekhov
2.
Michael Chekhov was a nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov and a student of Konstantin Stanislavski.
3.
Michael Chekhov was born in Saint Petersburg, the son of Alexander Chekhov and his wife Natalya Aleksandrovna Golden.
4.
Michael Chekhov was raised in a middle-class family; his father was in the Imperial Customs Service and was a moderately successful writer.
5.
Michael Chekhov studied under the Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski at the First Studio, where he acted, directed, and studied Stanislavski's 'system'.
6.
Michael Chekhov was influenced in his creative development as an actor by Yevgeny Vakhtangov and Leopold Sulerzhitsky.
7.
In 1922, after the death of Vakhtangov, Michael Chekhov became director of the First Studio, which was renamed Moscow Art Theatre II.
8.
Stanislavski considered Michael Chekhov to be one of his brightest students.
9.
When Michael Chekhov experimented with affective memory and had a nervous breakdown, this aided Stanislavski in seeing the limitations of his early concepts of emotional memory.
10.
Michael Chekhov thought that Stanislavski's techniques led too readily to a naturalistic style of performance.
11.
Michael Chekhov demonstrated his own theories acting in parts such as Senator Ableukhov in the stage version of Andrei Bely's Petersburg.
12.
Michael Chekhov developed the use of the "Psychological Gesture", a concept derived from the Symbolist theories of Bely.
13.
Between 1936 and 1939 Michael Chekhov established The Michael Chekhov Theatre School at Dartington Hall, in Devon, England.
14.
Michael Chekhov taught a range of movement dynamics such as molding, floating, flying, and radiating that actors use to find the physical core of a character.
15.
Interest in Michael Chekhov's work has grown with a new generation of teachers.
16.
When reissued in 1991 it had additional material by Michael Chekhov estate executor Mala Powers; an abridged version appeared under the title To the Actor in 1953, with a preface by Yul Brynner, and reissued in 2002 with an additional foreword by Simon Callow and additional Russian material translated and commented on by Andrei Malaev-Babel, a notable Russian-born acting scholar and teacher.
17.
Some of Michael Chekhov's lectures are available on CD under the title On Theatre and the Art of Acting.