The Paris Manuscript: The Early Draft Rediscovered

By Michael Chekhov
Edited by Hugo Moss
Methuen, 208 pp.

Reviewed by Lenka Pichlíková-Burke*

Practitioners, teachers, and scholars of the Michael Chekhov method, and all those interested in the development of 20th-century acting pedagogy and dramatic theory, received a New Year’s present in January 2025 with the publication of Hugo Moss’s English translation of Schauspiel-Technik: Pariser Manuskript (1932-34). This manuscript was Michael Chekhov’s first extended attempt to articulate his theories and approach to teaching acting and directing.

Chekhov was a famous Russian actor, the nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov, and both a student and colleague of Konstantin Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre. Chekhov reformed and expanded Stanislavsky’s Method with an emphasis on imagination, mental images, and psychophysical techniques. The manuscript, written in German, resulted from Chekhov’s collaboration with Georgette Boner (1903-98), a Swiss scholar, producer, writer, and patron of the theatre (her father was a Swiss millionaire industrialist), from 1931 to 1935. Chekhov had been in exile from Russia since 1928; he had worked principally in Germany and Austria until October 1930, when he moved to Paris. While the Pariser Manuskript as now known was almost certainly not “written” in Paris, Chekhov’s collaboration with Boner did begin when they met there in 1931. The collaboration lasted until 1938.

The editor and translator of this new volume into English, Hugo Moss, is a British-born teacher of Irish descent, a theatre and visual artist, and author. Based in Brazil, he founded Michael Chekhov Brasil in 2012 with the late Thaís Loureiro, working closely with her until her death in 2019. Moss also collaborates with MICHA: The Michael Chekhov Association, headquartered in New York.

The Pariser Manuskript, which Moss considers to be in Chekhov’s own handwriting, is known from photocopies deposited in the ZHdK Archive at Zürich in 2008. They were found among the papers of the Georgette Boner Estate. A Forward and an important section describing teaching exercises are mentioned but not included, and four pages are missing in the center of the text. Five drawings noted within the manuscript are also missing. The whereabouts of the actual manuscript itself are still unknown. Nevertheless, this publication is a genuine “rediscovery” in the sense that it is now possible for an English-speaking audience to access the text in a magnificent translation, not to mention Moss’s insightful comments.

It should be noted here that Moss abridges the German text in his translation. As he puts it, “The work published here is about two-thirds of the complete text in the Zürich Archive, with the largest single cuts coming from sections dealing with speech and rhythm that include lengthy examples in German” (Chekhov and Moss 15). These sections relate, among other things, to dramatic techniques such as Eurythmy and Speech Formation developed by Rudolf Steiner. They would later form part of the curriculum of the Michael Chekhov Theatre Studio (CTS) in Dartington, UK, and Ridgefield, Connecticut from 1936 to 1942, though they were not emphasized by Chekhov after his move to California in 1943. While the techniques are still taught in the curriculum of some centers offering the Chekhov method, they are not considered essential. This reviewer agrees with Moss that they would have made the translation “of doubtful use to actors” (15).

Moss had to make many such decisions. One can only sympathize with him as he navigates the pasted-on sections and many crossed-out paragraphs. For example, was the paragraph, seemingly crossed-out on ms. page 229, really intended to be omitted, or are the three triangles made by the lines drawn over the paragraph intended to illustrate what Chekhov says? (“This work must be carried out systematically. It involves seeking and asking questions in three directions.“) The next paragraph does not pick up on this idea, so Moss’s decision to omit is surely right.

As already suggested, the manuscript also demonstrates how important the collaboration was between Chekhov and Boner as he struggled to articulate his ideas for the first time and in a foreign language. Moss notes the many revisions and marginal queries seeking advice about wording and idiomatic expressions.

On February 28, 1932, Chekhov and his wife, Xenia, left Paris for Latvia, where Chekhov was to mount productions with the Russian Dramatic Theatre in Riga. Boner followed Chekhov to help him organize and write down his techniques in the summer of 1932. They apparently corresponded in late 1932 and particularly in August-September 1933, and Boner returned to Riga in 1934. The result provides important early statements of what Justina Kasponyte has described as Chekhov’s “systematic pedagogy.”

In particular, Chekhov’s ideas from Riga and Kaunas have not been paid the attention they deserve by scholars outside the Baltic states, with the notable exceptions of Liisa Byckling and Justina Kasponyte. What is more, they provide an idea of what might have been contained in the exercises for the second missing part of the Pariser Manuskript. For example, in the first exercise at Kaunas, Chekhov began psycho-physical exercises, adding what would later be called “coloring” or psychological “qualities” to gestures and movements, as well as introducing the substitution of Imagination and images for Affective Memory (reiterated in the fourteenth and fifteenth lessons) In the second class, Chekhov introduces juggling (what he called a “juggler mentality” after 1936) and the use of objects as a way to interact with partners and create both outer and inner dexterity and lightness, an ease of movement coming from within.^[1]

In presenting Chekhov’s text in English, Moss decided to leave a group of technical terms in their original German. These include Seele (soul or psyche – Moss prefers “mind” [19-21]), Geist (spirit), Gestalt (form, figure, shape, build/stature, image, frame of a picture, person, character or role in a play), Weltanschauung (worldview), and Weltempfindung (sensory perception of the world – Empfindung means “sensation” or “feeling” in the physical sense). Geist, Gestalt, and Weltanschauung are often used in English psychological or philosophical discussions. In leaving the terms in German, Moss correctly underscores the special meanings Chekhov gives them, carefully explaining his choices in the Introduction.

Chekhov uses terms such as Weltempfindung as tools to empower his approach to dramatic concepts. For example, in discussing the texts of plays, Chekhov says, “Every play, in accordance with its Idea, carries its own characteristic Weltempfindung [sensory perception of the world], which is decidedly different in Hamlet, King Lear, Faust, Peer Gynt, etc.” As Chekhov puts it, “Every artist evolves through their Weltanschauung, their Weltempfindung, or through their subconscious relationship to the world. … and this can occur in various ways, depending on the means of expression, on whether the artist paints, writes or acts this intuitive relationship to the world.” The idea that a dramatic script could evoke its own unique sensory experiences is closely linked to the entire psychophysical method behind Chekhov’s techniques, which often seek sensations as a means to trigger feelings. Chekhov wanted a sense of character that, living through the organism of the actor, radiates out to the audience. If the actor is cold, the audience will not be touched. The invisible (in this case, a sensory perception of an imaginary world) must be made visible.

A particularly important concept for Chekhov’s entire approach to human experience is Chekhov’s separation of Spirit (Geist) from Soul/Psyche/Mind (Seele) and Body (Leib). Moss translates an extremely important passage (67-8; ms. pp. 163-64) and reproduces a diagram of these elements found associated with the manuscript. The diagram shows this tripartite division of human existence (found subsequently in all of Chekhov’s writings) as it interacts with the worldview (Weltanschauung) through the Past, Present, and Future. The terms used are “Mystery Art” (Past/Spirit), “Naturalistic Art” (Present/Soul), “Mechanistic Art” (Future/Body), and “Art of the Free Individuality” (Future/Spirit), respectively. A second diagram, associated with ms. p. 207, shows the Path of the human being through the world as affected by good and bad forces (illus. p. 84).^[2]

The trio of Spirit-Soul/Psyche–Body reoccurs throughout Chekhov’s teaching and publications (To the Actor, 1942 and 1953 in English, 1946 in Russian). This is particularly apparent in his self-published 1946 Russian version, where technical terms are given in his own native Russian. When he says “soul” in English he probably means the Russian word, душа, with implications of heart, mind, and inner processes – that is, “psyche.” (The more spiritual meaning of “soul” in English is not what he means.) When he says “spirit,” it means дух – spirit, mind, ghost, wind, esprit. “Spirit” is also connected to “the higher self,” which, for Chekhov and like-minded Chekhov practitioners, represents a higher, spiritual power in the religious sense.^[3]

Moss also is aware of this spiritual quality. “What Chekhov puts in this script,” he insists, “is fresh and unconstrained, before he came up against … pragmatic challenges. … It is also the only text about acting that was written while Chekhov was still active as a stage artist and regularly creating and performing characters, and even in rough draft he is always distinct and very often eloquent.” He adds, in an endnote comparing the Pariser Manuskript with the 1942 first version of To the Actor (not published until 1991), “Chekhov is writing from deep personal experience, whereas the later version is predominantly didactic in nature.” (10-1, 169n28; cf. his further comments on the role of the spirit, 12-3).

Chekhov’s sections on Artistic Individuality (Chekhov and Moss, 52-6ff) and his extended description of the four stages of “a complex and subtle path” by which an author’s literary work is transformed into a stage performance (77-107) are particularly important. These four chapters are not only very close to what we know of Chekhov’s teaching in the Baltic states but also launch ideas that passed into his classes at Dartington, Ridgefield, and in New York City, especially the idea of images of the character (Gestalten) being a prime element in the transformation of the actor to embody the character.

Moss has given English-language readers an important window into Michael Chekhov’s dramatic theory and pedagogy at a significant turning point in his career, enabling Chekhov practitioners and the general public alike to move towards a fuller understanding of this 20th-century theatrical genius.

Endnotes

^[1] For the original documents, see Mikhail Chekhov, A. Adomajtite and A. Guobis, eds., Uroki Michaila Čechova …, Moscow: GITIS, 1989; and Justina Kasponyte, Stanislavski’s Directors: Michael Chekhov and the Revolution in Lithuanian Theatre of the 1930s, 2012; available here. Cf. Pichlíková 2025, Chapter One, op. cit., below.

^[2] In the ZHdK archives, the original diagram is labeled as p. 163, with 99, 175, and 41 crossed-out; when Moss consulted it, a tag saying either “194G” or “1946” was also attached. A label or placeholder on ms. p. 162 says that the diagram is separate, on p. 99, and a later marginal note says that p. 163 is missing. This further confirms that the diagram is the original. The renumbering is evidence of the extensive editing Chekhov and Boner had been doing.

^[3] These concepts are discussed in more detail in Lenka Pichlíková-Burke, Michael Chekhov’s Pedagogy: From Europe to America, two volumes. In the press, Routledge, 2025, Chapter One.

*Lenka Pichlíková-Burke is an actress, mime, theatre scholar, and drama professor active in Europe and the New York area. She holds an MFA and a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (DAMU) in Prague, and a Certificate of Completion from the Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA), USA. She teaches university classes in acting, dramatic literature, Commedia dell’Arte, and Michael Chekhov Technique. Her two-volume study of Michael Chekhov’s pedagogy and dramatic method is to be published by Routledge.

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Endnotes

Share this: