I will leave it to others to assess my artistic progress but in this additional chapter, I want to highlight what stands out for me from Chekhov’s technique and the impact it has had on me and my practice.
Looking back to the beginning of this project, I see that a significant learning process is behind me. My method of working has been modified greatly. I have acquired practical tools that I can use to stimulate my imagination and as antidotes for nervousness. These tools include the qualities of movement like molding, floating and flying but my favorite quality is radiation.
The radiation, that has a strong relation to the sun, is a quality that I can easily access. I use radiation as a part of my warm-up routine and I often comprehend it directly with singing. It gives me a sense of calm, inner warmth and it makes me feel grounded, all of which distinguish a healthy and ideal physical condition to sing. It is through the radiation I feel that my entire body is an instrument, not just my voice.
Character preparation has become a much bigger part of the process of learning a new piece. It’s not just about learning the text and the music. When taking on a new aria and thus a new character, I ask myself, what is it that my character desires? That is to determine its willpower, and from there I find psychological gestures that express that desire. I then choose one or two qualities that apply. I furthermore perform the gestures and get into the qualities while first speaking the text of the aria, and then while singing. By operating in this way, I feel I inhabit the character into my own body, the gestures evoke certain feelings and senses. When it comes to performing the piece, I don’t actually have to make the gestures to evoke the feelings because my body has already been through them and remembers the sensation. I believe singers even have an advantage when it comes to imprinting our feelings because we also have music in the mix to help make these connections.
Chekhov’s ‘Four brothers’: feeling of ease, feeling of form, feeling of beauty and feeling of entirety have as well had a potent influence. As I see it, the four brothers are four intertwined visions of art and states of mind for the actor. I would even go as far as to say that they are also ways of life. The statement from the first brother (feeling of ease) – to achieve something begins with truly desiring – has encouraged me to always seek at least one likable angle of the subject or character. It has to be an angle that I can empathize with. If I have to learn a piece of music that I firstly find boring or not to my taste, it speeds up the process if I find at least a small part of the piece that I can relate to in some way. It can be something such as a modulation in the music I like or one line in the text that I find moving. As a result I gain the desire to deliver at least that specific part. When taking on a character that is mean or does evil deeds, I still search for some relatable aspects of the character. With that, I gain the desire to make others feel that too.
The third brother (feeling of beauty) reminds me to see beauty first before any shortcomings. This helped me in the fight against my own brutal self criticism, which is no longer welcome unless it’s led by beauty. This applies for other areas of life.
All the positive influences from researching Chekhov’s acting technique have not thus been listed but it is my hope that these examples give an idea of the effect. Now that the research project is completed, I hope to keep on exploring Chekhov’s technique as this project does not cover its every angle. I aim to lead many more workshops in my career and to spread the word to my colleagues about the benefits of implementing Chekhov with classical singing.