Michael Chekhov: 16 Lessons in Kaunas

Joerg Andrees and Amina Zhaman, eds.
Berlin: Edition Immanente

Reviewed by Lenka Pichlíková-Burke*

The year 2025 was the 70^th anniversary of the passing, on September 30, 1955, of Michael A. Chekhov, the Russian-born actor, theatre studio director, dramatic theorist, and pedagogue. Today, Chekhov’s acting technique attracts thousands of practitioners who work on stage, film, and television, as well as scores of teachers in private studios and universities internationally.

From February 1932 to May 1934, Chekhov visited the Baltic States, acting, directing, and teaching in Latvia and Kaunas, Lithuania (working with his former Moscow Art Theatre colleague Andrius Oleka-Žilinskas, called Zilinsky or Jilinsky in English). At Kaunas, one of Chekhov’s acting students, Romualdas Juknevičius, took notes in Russian on 16 lessons, documenting one of the few surviving articulations of Chekhov’s early studio classroom technique. These are now available in this valuable trilingual edition, edited by Joerg Andrees and Amina Zhaman. The publication also contains a letter Chekhov wrote in 1933 about his concept of what he called “Atmospheres’.

In addition to complete transcriptions of the lesson notes in the original Russian with translation in English and German, there are separate Forewords by the editors – Andrees provides a list of nine themes to guide the reader using categories such as Rhythm, Atmospheres, and the role of the human spirit as a guiding force. There is also an introductory essay by Aldona Adomaityté and Aleksandras Guobys, who published the lessons in Russian in 1989 (Moscow: Gitis).

Following the lessons is a remembrance by Per Brahe (“My Kaunas Paper”) of his arrival in Moscow with a group of his Danish students in the watershed year of 1989, which was also the year of the Russian edition and its notable effect on Russian theatre pedagogy. Brahe includes perceptive comments on work with masks as a means of specific language.

Justina Kasponyte, the scholar who first analyzed the lessons in depth for an English-speaking audience, provides a valuable discussion of the lessons and the associated illustrations (also published in the current volume.) There is also a brief bibliography. Unfortunately, the volume has no index.

The Kaunas lessons, and those taught during the same period in Riga are closely influenced by Chekhov’s “Pariser Manuskript,” written in German during 1932-34 in collaboration with Georgette Boner, Chekhov’s patron and co-producer of productions in Paris in 1931 and a frequent visitor to Chekhov and his wife in Latvia. Indeed, since the exercises that accompanied the “Pariser Manuskript” are lost, the Kaunas lessons in effect complete that text, recently translated by Hugo Moss [Chekhov 1932/2025].

A number of the lessons underscore Chekhov’s application of Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy to dramatic theory and often look forward to constant elements in Chekhov’s future pedagogy. To begin with the latter, from the very first lesson, Chekhov uses exercises involving tossing balls, juggling, group exercises in body sculpting, movement through imaginary water, and other staples of his psycho-physical training. With regard to Steiner, one finds, for example, in the Tenth Lesson, Chekhov developing particular aspects of the actor’s mental “soul” [psyche] through group exercises and using color theory to add qualities to movements.

The following lesson, introduces Chekhov’s idea, reinforced by Steiner, of the “three-membered” (трехчленнoй) or “tripartite” human being, which consists of the physical body, the mental “soul” (that is, psyche), and the “spirit” (what is also called in English, “the immortal soul.”) [70]. He then introduces the concepts of the “personality” (личность)– the visible, corporeal human being – видимое телесного человека) versus the “individuality” (индивидуальность)– a collaboration between the human mental soul [psyche] and the spirit, in search of a higher consciousness).

Here, the parallels with the “Pariser Manuskript” are exact. The images that Chekhov used as an inspiration for the students – also included in 16 Lessons in Kaunas –are also paralleled in the Pariser Manuskript. In the final image [Fig. 5], the actor is compared to a goblet-like vessel that, having reached a higher consciousness and embodied the inner images of the character, finally radiates to the audience.

Worth noting: at the end of the seventh lesson, Chekhov describes an exercise [58-9], which is perhaps the original text of what Chekhov practitioners call the Actor’s March. The Fourteenth Lesson includes an extended discussion of the relationship between the actor and the director, described as one of mutual love, with the actor revealing his soul under inspiration from the director [84-6]. The passage reminded me of what Chekhov said about his teacher and close friend, the director Yevgeny Vakhtangov who “did not play the role instead of the actor, but he acted out the general outlines of the role, [sketching out] one entire act in no more than two minutes. After his demonstration, the entire act with all its details was clear to me…” (Chekhov 1928; 2005, 69-71).

The Fifteenth Lesson urges students to “turn [more] to the invisible.” This relates to Chekhov’s concern with the Theatre of the Future. An extremely important addition to Chekhov’s lessons in Kaunas was a letter on what he called Atmospheres (4 October 1933), written at Zilinsky’s request for his students, first published in 1936.

A few small corrections should be noted here in the essay by Adomaityté and Guobys:

–the date of Chekhov’s emigration from Russia took place in July 1928 (Chekkov 2005, 69-71);

— they suggest that Zilinsky and Chekhov played in the “MAT Prague Group.” In fact, though Chekhov had performed successfully in Prague in 1922, their work never coincided in Prague;

— Zilinsky and his actress wife, Vera Solovieva, came to New York with Chekhov in 1935.

As well, the Sixteenth lesson is dated erroneously 2 September 1932, A footnote [92n5] says that “previous editions” had suggested 2 November. The correct date might be 2 October, or, given that Chekhov was directing Zilinsky in Hamlet (opened 11 October), and then returned to Riga toplay the role of Hamlet himself (opened 21 October), he may have actually finished the lessons on 2 November.

Of interest here, both in the Pariser Manuskript and the Kaunas lessons, is that Chekhov uses terms strongly reinforced by his poet colleague and tutor in Steiner’s Anthroposophy, Andrei Bely (1880-1934). Bely, following Steiner, spoke often of “individuality” and “personality” in his own writings and in lessons given on Anthroposophy in Chekhov’s apartment, 1924-26. This system remains in place throughout Chekhov’s career, although the names change.

In sum, this trilingual publication of 16 Lessons in Kaunas is extremely important as a completion of the articulation of Chekhov’s dramatic method and provides a large number of exercises that will be of great interest to Chekhov practitioners today.

Bibliography

Chekhov, Michael. The Path of the Actor. Edited by Andrei Kirillov and Bella Merlin, translated by D. Ball, Routledge, 2005. Originally published 1928.

[Chekhov] Tschechow, Michael, and Georgette Boner. Michael Chekhov Schauspiel-Technik, 1932–1934: Pariser Manuskript. Edited by Georgette Boner, Zürich, ZHdK-Archiv Boner Papers, n.d. [ca. 1932–34]. Archive no. EFB-2008-E001-0059.

Chekhov, Michael. The Paris Manuscript: The Early Draft Rediscovered. Edited and translated by Hugo Moss and Georgette Boner, Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury, 2025. Originally written 1932–34.

Chekhov, Michael. Apiem aktoriauskúryba. Edited by J. Grybauskas and K. Kačinskas, Spaudosfondas, 1936.

Kasponyte, Justina. Stanislavski’s Directors: Michael Chekhov and the Revolution in Lithuanian Theatre of the 1930s. University of Glasgow, 2012. University of Glasgow Theses.

*Lenka Pichlíková-Burke, actress and mime, has long been a researcher into the theatrical pedagogy of Michael Chekhov. The editor of a two-volume study of his work published by Routledge, she holds an MFA and PhD from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (DAMU) in Prague and a Certificate of Completition from the Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA).

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