This workshop will focus on some of the key principles in the technique of renowned actor and director, Mikhail Chekhov (1891-1955). Through exploring his radical psycho-physical tools of receiving, radiating, expansion and visualisation, we will investigate what it really means to come into the present tense and how the art of spontaneity can be learnt and inspiration prepared. We will examine how transformation and characterisation begin from the simplest of premises: listening and awakening the imagination.
Workshop format: Practical workshop.
Who is this workshop suitable for: This workshop is open to actors, teachers and directors, as well as non professionals wishing to gain an embodied understanding of Mikhail Chekhov’s ideas.
Equipment required of participants: Please wear loose clothing that you can move in. Bring a short piece of text from a play that you would like to work from; you do not need to learn it by heart.
Recommended reading or viewing: None.
Refreshments: Tea and biscuits will be provided at the start of the workshop. Participants should make their own lunch arrangements.
Sinéad is a theatre director, actor and teacher. She studied at Trinity College, Dublin and École Normale Supérieure, Paris before training as an actor at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, where she is a Senior Lecturer in Acting and Movement on the BA Acting CDT programme. She specialises in the Mikhail Chekhov Technique and Meyerhold's Biomechanics.
Directing credits include Concert (The Pit, Barbican, Centre National de la Danse, Paris, and 2017 Dublin Dance Festival; Gradam Comharcheoil TG4 2018 Award-Winner), Out of Time (The Pit, Barbican, London, Baryshnikov Arts Centre, New York & international tour; nominated for Olivier and Dance Critics' Circle Award), Gogol's Diary of a Madman with Living Pictures (Sherman Cymru, Cardiff, & international tour) and Something or Nothing with Guy Dartnell (The Place Theatre & tour), commissioned by Sadler's Wells.
She has directed four shows with her own company, out of Inc: Loaded (The Old Rep, Birmingham, Jacksons Lane, London), Night-Light (Oval House, London, Bristol Old Vic & tour), Life in the Folds (BAC, London & tour), and An Evening with Sinéad Rushe (BAC, London), all supported by Arts Council England.
She is the author of Michael Chekhov's Acting Technique: A Practitioner's Guide, (forthcoming, Methuen 2019), and is the co-translator into French of four plays by Howard Barker (published by Editions Théâtrales, Paris). For more on Sinéad visit www.sineadrushe.co.uk