Christopher Tester

 

 

            My group from CSSD, our tutors on the course and the MAXT Angels that made our visit so easy.

 

Between 3rd - 16th September, I was one of just over a dozen students who attended a two week intensive acting course at Moscow Art Theatre School.  The trip was the first of it's kind for a UK drama school, as MAXT strives to create similar links with Central School of Speech and Drama as it has with Harvard University, where American students spend an entire semester in Russia.

This section is made up of my personal observations, reflections and feelings about the two weeks in its entirety rather than a history lesson.  For a brief history of MAXT, click here.  For my impressions of Moscow as a city, check my online diary.

 

The training programme MAXT offered us was a 'Western friendly' and necessarily compressed impression of their main Acting Program.  Our hours were the same of a typical UK drama school, starting at 10am and concluding around 6pm from Monday through to Friday.  

A typical day divided itself into three distinct blocks, starting with movement.  This came either in the form of a ballet class (taken by former Bolshoi prima ballerina Larisa Dmitrieva) or a typical 'movement' class which included deep-stretching, holds, aerobics and acrobatics.  After lunch, we would then spend just over an hour either in the company of the school's principal (and head of the Arts in Russia),  Anatoly Smeliansky, or doing exercises in Michael Chekhov's technique.  After another quick break, we would then have acting classes (consisting of games, improvisation and scene study on Anton Chekhov's The Seagull), taken alternately by actor and master teacher Igor Zolotovitsky and award-winning Russian director Viktor Rijakov.

As stated before, movement at Moscow Art divided into two main strands; ballet class and pure movement.  We had them on alternate days, so fortunately there was always an hour to either (a) sleep in, or (b) recover afterwards. 

Both made all participants break into a sweat within the first fifteen minutes of class.

Ballet

As these classes were lead by a former starlet of the Bolshoi ballet, they were always incredibly demanding.  Rather than soften the programme for us visiting Westerners, Larissa emphasised from our first day that she wanted to give us as thorough an impression of the overall training as possible.  As a result, a typical morning with her started with bar exercises before moving on to solo and duet sequences.

None of the boys in class had much ballet experience before going into Larissa's studio.  Two or three of the girls had done ballet for five years or more, but the majority of us were novices.  But this brooked no point for Larissa.  From the beginning, her expectations were high, and if this meant that you ended up embarrassing yourself time and again then so be it.  That she possessed almost no English vocabulary apart from 'yes', 'no' and 'sit down' (which was indiscriminately used to mean 'bend further', 'straighten your legs' or 'that's just wrong'), also elminated the opportunity to excuse oneself.   

With an accompanist at hand at all times, we were drilled in bar exercises for the best part of forty five minutes each class.  There was no room for error or personal (in)flexibility.... you did it, simple as that.  Similarly with the solo and duet sequences - however impossible you thought a particular move or hold was, you were made to keep repeating it until you got there.  Though initially soul destroying, this soon increased each participant's self-knowledge about what they really were capable of.  In my second class I found things that had been almost impossible in my first lesson be well within my grasp.  No excuse was made for the inexperienced, and that necessarily upped the standard over the course of two weeks.

Movement

This was lead by a woman called Natasha, who supplements her teaching role at MAXT with being a translator of Western plays and musicals.  From the beginning the ethos was established: pain was now 'pleasure' (or 'playsure' in a heavy Russian accent) as far as we were concerned, and the more 'pleasure' we put ourselves through the better. 

Again, the sentiment throughout was one of pushing yourself beyond perceived expectations.  Each class started with stretches where many of us popped virtebre in our back we hadn't even realised needed popping and twisted our limbs to the verge of dislocation.  Rather than heavy aerobic work, the focus was purely on flexibility and core strength.  By the middle of the class, I'd isolated muscle groups I never even knew (or indeed wanted to know) I had.  In the latter half of the lesson, we were also told to perform basic acrobatics: hand-stands, jumps and cartwheels (both one and two handed).  If we ever thought we couldn't do any of the above, Natasha often involved the rest of the class to raise the stakes, ie. making someone scared of flipping a cartwheel doing it inbetween two other people.... you either hit them or did it.  Again, the sessions seemed to be an all out interrogation of the role psycholgy has in judging our own 'perceived' physical capabilities. 

The proof of this methodology really came in the mornings after.  Everyone woke complaining of cramp, thigh, hamstring and calf pain - they could hardly make it to school.... but boy, you could move so much better in class!  I did the crab (just) for the first time in my life, gained huge flexibility in my shoulders and arms, could feel myself being so much more grounded... and all within the first week.

First encounters

The main acting lessons at MAXT were led on alternate days by Viktor and Igor.  In our very first lesson we were told to gather in a semi-circle around the tutors and given a warm welcome to Moscow.  After a brief breakdown of what we were to expect and that the intention of the course was to provide an overview of what training at MAXT entails, we were all put at ease by the respect and consideration of our welcome... which lulled us into a false state of security. 

After twenty minutes, Viktor suddenly informed us that they would like to see every member of the group perform a piece, right there, right then.  It could be a monologue, a song or physical sequence or a story about an event in our lives.  Whichever we chose, the emphasis was that it was something significant for either ourselves or the characters we might portray. 

The simulatneous intake of breath was almost audible.  We had all read The Seagull, made some effort to get into physical and vocal shape, braved the scruplious inspection of our visas by Russian airport officials.... but a monologue?!  And now?!!

I quickly calculated I was to be the third person to go up in the group, and immediately wracked my brains for something, anything that wouldn't invite absolute embarrassment.  Of course it was now that my memory comepletely deserted me.... none of the pieces I'd either done for auditions or worked on at school volunteered themselves.  But I didn't have enough time to come up with any movement, and any personal analogies I might have possessed had similarly decided to disappear from my memory.

Finally, my turn came, and as I stood up I realised that I could at least get through a monologue I'd begun to work on recently from Troilus and Cressida.  It was under-prepared, it wasn't always vocally on support, but it was a speech that I liked (when Troilus first reflects on Cressida's betrayal), and so I went for it.  The rest was just a blur, but I felt I'd aquitted myself moderately.  The rest of the group did songs, monologue pieces that had got them into CSSD plus the odd personal tail thrown in (of which Phil's account of working in a tailors was hilarious), but I was just releaved to have lived through, let alone rise to the challenge.

This first lesson reaffirmed part of the MXAT ethos... that on a daily basis you must confront and interrogate your own perception of your capabilities.  Once you've been forced to confront your fear right from the very beginning, you realise it's much easier to give in to the system than hold back telling yourself what's demanded of you is simply 'impossible'.

The actual structure of the subsequent acting lessons were established from day one: each class would begin with an etude.  These were basically group improvisations, but with characters and a exact given circumstance established in advance.  These etudes would begin just prior to the class commencing, and the tutors would enter them at any point.  The etude would not be rehearsed in any way, but character relationships and the environment they exist in would be concrete, and they must have a clear dramatic arc of beginning, dramatic event and conclusion.  Most importantly, we were all told to prioritise three central questions:

Who am I? 

What do I want?

How do I get it?

All straight out of Stanislavski in other words!

"Oh, right!" I thought.  We'd studied Stanislavski's method in our first term and drama school - the rest is going to be pretty straight forward..... but ladies and gentlemen, how wrong I was.....

 

Going deeper

From the evening of our first day at MAXT, I realised what one of my keys issues to deal with as an actor was; I struggle with the collaborative process.  Not in the reahearsal room, where either a tutor or director's presence instills some kind of order to proceedings.  But when the group convened in our halls of resistance at 9pm to talk over our first etude, I was so overwhelmed by people talking over each other, I was stunned into silence.  This had nothing to do with the group itself - everybody was passionate and involved without being dictatorial.... I just started to feel my self consciousness, or what I'd like to term the "little bugger", turn up and tell me I having nothing worthwhile to contribute.  Still, we managed to get a scenario out of it (a wedding in which the bride doesn't turn up), and nobody complained about devoting substantial 'free time' to the work because we all felt we had a point to prove.

The first etude, and all subsequent ones were a gradual but fantastic learning experience.  When I found out that 1st year MAXT students do these on a daily basis but never fully approach text work, it made sense to me.  The exercise lays many of the fundamentals in good acting without the fear of 'doing a text right' being attached. 

Throughout, certain fundamentals were increasingly hammered into us.  These were, in no order of importance (and subject to any amendments fellow students on the trip are more than welcome to contribute):

1) The task/target/objective of your character must be exact and true.

2) Your need to enter the stage is a need to answer a question or objective of the character's that moves you.  Tailor it to your own persoanl means.

3) You are never onstage to 'show'.

4) There are no tiny details.  The art is in the detail.

5) Don't make your character objective the be-all and end-all; be aware and receptive to the circumstances and events happening around you.

6) Never hide under the words - don't speak unless you have a need to (hello Patsy Rodenburg!)

7) Remember and truely picture the space that your character exists in.  Be sensitive to the surroundings.

8) The director is in no way a 'guru' - you should explore the work together.

9) Forget the story.  Your character doesn't know what's about to happen.  Live moment to moment.

10) Know what your characters dream/hope for.

11)  Your need must always be strong. You must create obstacles for yourself because no detail is too small, and it will help you focus on the immediate so you can be surprised by any 'event'.  Your physical actions to achieve a goal are beads on a string - make choices that engage you constantly in the moment.

12)  Good theartre is not  a recreation of everyday life - remember we are in the profession of artistic truth.

13) Always interrogate the title of the play.

14) Textual analysis should never be 'cold' - try to involve yourself as much as possible in a character's journey from the beginning.  If that means (acceptable) artistic license, so be it.

15) Remember that acting is a means of coming to terms with the most difficult human condition - actually living in the here and now. 

16) Imagination is superior to experience.

17) An actor should be a lawyer of their role - be sympathetic and understanding to all your character's motivations, regardless of how you, as a person, might be tempted to judge them.

18) The body relates a story as much as a hundred lines - never think that the playwight is responsible for creating the meaning of their piece.

Our subsequent etiudes varied quite a lot in content - a club bust, a tube stuck in the underground, a family gathering - and with each one the necessity of maintaining our own objectives, overcoming our own obstacles whilst still remaining completely aware and receptive to the group was reaffirmed repeatedly.  It came as no surprise that MAXT students spent their entire first year on exercises such as these rather than text work, as the fundamental principles apply tro both, but the former negates any 'am I doing it right' sentiment.

Overall, the need to create a journey of distinct objectives which allows you to be 'surprised' by any major events was a key lesson.  The second most important was to do everything possible to make a character's need as personalised to you as possible.  You need to find the answers as much as the character's.     

The group sensibility

Despite all of the above words of wisdom, perhaps the most undoubted pearls came from the series of group exercises Igor put us through for an hour every lesson .  After our etude of the day, the emphasis was purely on being completely sensitive and reactive to the rest of the group.  We underwent several exercises designed to heighten group awareness: impersonating a typewriter as a whole, attempting to recall every person's position in the circle, moving around with chairs whilst asking each other questions in the hope of being able to recount who asked what after the event.  The key emphasis was on concentration and the importance of listening to the entire ensemble.

 

Michael Chekhov

We were taught Michael Chekov's technique as an addition to the fundamentals training of Stanislavski, but it offered a fresh way 'in'.  Whilst Igor and Viktor emphaised all the different forms of preparation that needed to be addressed before commencing on a piece, Mischa (our tutor for this lesson) was much less dogmatic.  His lessons served as a good introduction to Michael Chekhov's technique - that there's a technique which starts on the outside and works in entitled "psychological gesture".

This is an initial list derived from my scrawled notes which I will be certainly adding to in the near future. 

More soon!