Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov was a Russian-American actor, director, author, and theatre practitioner. He was the nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov and worked as an actor in Russia, Europe, and the US throughout the early and mid 1900s, until his death in 1955. Though Michael Chekhov first trained under Stanislavski system led to acting that was too naturalistic in style. He felt that it was important that actors not limit their characters by drawing from their limited, conscious, worldly experiences. He felt that infinite experiences of humanity were stored in the subconscious and the conscious- between the external world and the internal experience that a character was meant to have- was through the use of “Psychological Gesture.” Through …show more content…
He worked with and was taught by Stanislavsky, Leopold Sulerzhitsky and Yevgeny Vakhtangov among others. Chekhov had a great talent for characterization and was devoted observer of the creative process. Stanislavsky referred to him as his most brilliant student. When the First Studio became the Second Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavsky invited Chekhov to become its director. Stanislavsky once told the English director Gordon Craig that if Craig wanted to know about his method, he should watch Michael Chekhov perform. In 1928 Chekhov left Russia, never to return. He spent seven years in Europe acting and teaching as he moved from Germany, to France, to Latvia and Lithuania. He joined the Moscow Art Players, a company of Russian émigré actors who performed in the United States in 1935. Playing the role of Khlestakov in Gogol’s “The Inspector General’ to critical acclaim at New York City’s Majestic Theater, he was seen by Beatrice Straight who, in 1936, invited Chekhov to establish his Theatre Studio at Dartington Hall in England. Michael Chekhov was so influentiall, that it is one of the greatest artistic injustices of the 20th century for his work to have been overlooked by the media, taking a second place to that of Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner, and Stella