Rooted in Chekhov’s Guiding Principles and Laws of Composition, <i>Acting the Michael Chekhov Way: A Playbook for Healthy, Sequential Training offers a step-by-step pathway for actors, directors, and teachers with an emphasis on the health and wellbeing of the performer.
Developed over 30 years within the National Michael Chekhov Association’s renowned certification training, this clear, accessible training sequence for Michael Chekhov’s techniques is designed to support artists at every level. The chapters build logically and functionally, layering in benefits for artistic and personal growth.
Central to the approach is the Chart of Inspired Action, created by Chekhov for his student and estate executrix, Mala Powers, who co-founded this pedagogy with Dalton and Professor Wil Kilroy. In these pages, Dalton introduces SynthAnalysis™, a groundbreaking synthesis of Stanislavsky’s analysis and Chekhov’s methods, bridging theory and practice tested through decades of global application. She also shares anecdotal insights from her 45-year acting/stunt career and draws on Chekhov’s esoteric inspirations―elements often absent in most books and teachings on Chekhov. The book presents mystical concepts like the Goblet in playful, functional ways, empowering artists to use them as imaginative metaphors and explore their deeper potential.
A helpful tool for both solo and classroom use, Acting the Michael Chekhov Way >will speak directly to the actor and their teachers, guiding them on a transformative journey into the heart of inspired action and creative freedom.
The book includes access to detailed discussions, additional activities, downloadable templates, and suggested syllabi and tips for instructors, available at Routledge Online Resource Centre. Link is in book.
Michael Chekhov Playbook Series
Series Editors: Lisa Loving Dalton and Wil Kilroy
The Michael Chekhov Way Playbook Series is the result of over thirty-five years of collaboration between Wil Kilroy and Lisa Loving Dalton, developing a fun, healthy, and comprehensive way of training and applying Michael Chekhov’s (acting) techniques to stage, film and the artist’s life.
The series focuses on various aspects of performance art training, such as core concepts for actors, improvisation, script analysis, directing, devising, dramaturgy, design and applications for specific use in style, marketing and media. Each playbook offers step-by-step guidance and tips for “free styling” the integration of the concepts. Look toward Directing to come.
Improvisation the Michael Chekhov Way: Active Exploration of Acting Techniques
Wil Kilroy
Acting the Michael Chekhov Way: A Playbook for Healthy, Sequential Training
Lisa Loving Dalton
Review
“Acting the Michael Chekhov way is a simply masterful step by step introduction to the many wonderful tools of the Michael Chekhov technique. A game changer in the classroom, this detailed textbook not only offers a clear scaffolding from abstract physical exploration through to direct application into scene work, it also offers actors a beautiful philosophy on self-guidance, self-assessment and autonomy. This healthy and positive approach to actor training (a hallmark of Chekhov’s work long ignored) is a welcome antidote to the many problematic approaches to actor training that exist today. Equally perfect for personal study or in the classroom, this marvelous text provides endless opportunities for exploration, growth and the expansion of artistic discoveries for years to come.”
Anjalee Deshpande Hutchinson, Chair, Dept of Theatre and Dance Bucknell University Author of Acting Exercises for Non-Traditional Staging: Michael Chekhov Reimagined
“In Acting the Michael Chekhov Way, Dalton lays out an easy to follow progression through the entire Chekhov cannon that culminates with the SART, a stunningly efficient process we used in Small Town Boys. Rehearsing the climactic moments does more than unite all the elements of a show, Lisa’s approach gives an actor the rhythmic soul of the performance. Ms. Dalton is a brilliant teacher and director!”
Sean Casey Leclaire, Playwright/Actor/Leadership
From the Author
I have long been searching for a clear sequence for training in the many gifts Michael Chekhov brought to his artists. This book allowed me to pour into it a flow of introducing, experiencing, and developing practical application skills that replicated Chekhov’s own training process. Filled with anecdotes, life lessons, and healthy practices, the focus is on finding your love of the art and bringing all that you imagine into expression in a way that makes you “happy” as Mr. C would say–“as you like it” Shakespeare might say. It does so in a deeply researched and practical sequence.
The way of teaching has developed since 1988, when I began teaching with the Chekhov Estate Executrix, Mala Powers. Over 18 years with her and our National Michael Chekhov Association co-founder, Wil Kilroy, and in the additional 18 years since Mala passed, Wil and I continued to hone the world’s longest-running teacher certification training. I had published the course manual, The Michael Chekhov Technique Playbook, and encouraged Wil to write Improvisation the Michael Chekhov Way. Then, I felt the need to write a new book for discovering the foundational principles and exercises, to fill in the details from the course manual, specifically for the actor or the actor’s trainers. This book takes the first 85 pages of the Technique Playbook and expands them to 312 pages, adding many details. There are another 100+ pages and video links in the Routledge Online Resource Center.
If you are well-versed in Michael Chekhov’s techniques, you may discover some aspects of the approach, some tools even, that are less familiar to you. These would be inspired by information I gained in training with and interviewing two dozen direct students of Michael Chekhov. In that process, I discovered each of his students had learned their own techniques. What he gave to one was received uniquely, and all those who passed on their experiences did so through the filter of their own creative self. Their own thinking, feeling, and willing forces flavored how they shared what they experienced and what they added to the stream of knowledge. And so here too, you will find my lens introducing Synth-Analysis(tm) as a pathway to unite all of Chekhov’s elements and principles into production. Acting the Michael Chekhov Way culminates with the Actor’s SynthAnalysis with references to its essential use for Directing. This book concludes with a call to cultivate Chekhov’s Four Daily DEEDs of Love. Our next Michael Chekhov Way Playbookwill bring SynthAnalysis to the Dynamic Directing process.
About the Author
Lisa Loving Dalton has made profound contributions to the performing arts through her extensive work with the Michael Chekhov technique. As president and co-founder of the National Michael Chekhov Association (1993), and Certifying Master Teacher, she has been instrumental in advancing Chekhov’s methods globally. Her ground-breaking documentary From Russia to Hollywood and the creation of the Chekhov.net video archive underscore her dedication to preserving and promoting Chekhov’s legacy. Applying Chekhov over her rich and diverse 45-year career as a film and stage director, actor, and stuntwoman deeply informs this innovative pedagogy.
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