Additional Articles on the Technique and the Teacher

She offers ongoing courses for actors residing in Los Angeles covering all aspects of the industry including basic and advanced acting, on-camera commercial and scene study courses, audition, interview, and cold-reading techniques as well as image/marketing and networking skills. In additional to group classes, Lisa privately coaches many working actors for film, television and stage roles and offers concrete career guidance and motivational support for beginner and intermediate level professionals.

In recent years, Lisa has crafted intensive programs for actors from Italy, Denmark and Japan, as well as various areas of the United States. Each program is custom designed to meet the needs of the individual or group, taking into consideration the objective of the student/organization, the length of stay in Los Angeles, the budgetary needs and the artistic goals. Having taught in many different countries, Lisa is experienced in working with interpreters and skilled at assessing the work of actors acting in languages other than English.

WHY STUDY WITH LISA?

When it comes to selecting an acting training method, there are aspects to consider beyond convenience, price and fancy marketing. Every actor must able to act within the requirements of the medium- be it television, commercials, stage or film. They then must be able to get the opportunity to work. But there are many successful “stars” in Hollywood who are wonderful actors, getting all of the work they want, making millions- who, as human beings, are in deep pain. Lisa Dalton takes a very strong stand on this added element, giving significant attention to nurturing the full human being. She helps strengthen the fragile nature of aspiring actors, knowing the depth of their dreams and the complementary fears of never achieving or of fully achieving those fears. Her classes build the inner core of belief in the individual artist’s love of acting and the power that this love will supply to the actor. This is why the predominant training method Lisa focuses on is based on the greatest actor Russia ever produced-Michael Chekhov. His technique is the longest established most fully developed technique in contemporary acting methods based in unlimited imagination as manifest through the physical body. His work is founded upon the power of our love for acting, for our audiences, for portraying the human condition, for healing, uplifting, entertaining and educating.

WHY LEARN MICHAEL CHEKHOV'S TECHNIQUE FROM LISA DALTON?

Lisa Dalton is in a most unique position to teach Michael Chekhov’s work, especially to actors interested in on-camera work and all styles of stage. Here’s why: Michael Chekhov died in Hollywood in 1955, after coaching many great stars including Marilyn Monroe, Anthony Quinn, and Gary Cooper. He began his teaching as a member of the Moscow Arts Theater in the late 1910’s, and was marked for arrest in 1928 by the Soviet government for integrating eastern meditative practices and visualization techniques into his training methods. He had begun to develop the power of “Radiation” (used by actors such as Yul Brynner and Clint Eastwood) and the now famous “Psychological Gesture” (used by such notable actors as Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Depp and Jack Nicholson.) After is escape from Russia, his next ten years were in Europe where he continued to develop his work in Latvia and Lithuania, France and England.

In 1938, he moved his school to New York and Connecticut, and then, in 1942, to Hollywood. He taught in Los Angeles until his death in 1955, evolving from an antipathy toward film, to “falling in love with the problem” and creating new means to cope with the shortened preparation process.

During each of these phases, Mr. Chekhov’s teaching methods grew and changed- as would any great master’s. The needs of the Russian stage actor varied from that of the Hollywood film actor. No direct students of Mr. Chekhov remained with him throughout the evolution of his technique. Hence, the developments made in his work for film were never taught by the “first generation” of teachers who emerged from his Russian, European or East Coast student body. By the same token, Hollywood students of the late 40’s and 50’s never received the “conservatory” style training for a life long career in the theater.

Interestingly, Mr. Chekhov had an uncanny ability to reach each protégé on the level at which that protégé was working. Hence, each protégé’s subsequent teaching placed emphasis on different aspects of the whole technique. For example, unless a student specifically and privately addressed the issue with Mr. C, he did not openly share the more spiritual nature underlying the work. In addition to this, many of Chekhov’s students were previously trained in “the method” based on Stanislavsky as expounded by the Actor’s Studio. Mr. Chekhov felt that Stanislavsky’s system of analysis was excellent and he himself built on that knowledge. So, some of his students who then taught purely what Micha taught often excluded the system of analysis that was part of their knowledge prior to training with Chekhov. These gaps made teaching and popularizing the techniques difficult for the first generation teachers. The general public was not ready to accept this “Alternative” system of training.

Lisa Dalton trained with at least ten different “first generation” teachers from these various phases of his career. She also had the opportunity to work with Russian Actors who had retained early, more intangible energy-sending exercises like those that first brought him under the suspicions of the Soviet government, as well as from his European and New York/Connecticut Phases and his early and later Hollywood years.

HOW DID LISA SYNTHESIZE THESE MANY MENTORS’ POV’S?

When Lisa began to notice variations in the teacher’s points of view, she sought a way to understand the underlying essence that would make each teacher’s approach equally valid. Sustaining a nearly paralyzing back injury in 1989 served as the perfect catalyst. The permanency of the medical prognosis- a life of chronic pain-compelled Lisa to begin to research scientific, metaphysic, athletic, quantum physic, eastern philosophies and psychology to find a way to be pain free. In her research, she discovered that everything was related to Chekhov’s world of Unseen energies. She found many underlying universal principles. With the world’s much wider acceptance of mind-body relationships, theories of relativity (the observed is affected by the observer), the unified energy field, the Messages from Water, the inner game of tennis, etc. Lisa is now able to present these once esoteric and ungraspable ideas in a manner that everyone can access and integrate. And by the way, her back has improved beyond all medical prognostications.

HOW DID LISA DALTON LEARN MICHAEL CHEKHOV’S TECHNIQUES?

She began her Chekhov training in 1980 with Wilfred Hunt, working on the world premiere of a silent adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence novel, “The Fox”. Later, she joined with Ted Pugh and the Actors Ensemble from the early 80’s through 1987, including several years at the Michael Chekhov Studio in New York, where her faculty (with where they trained with MC) also included Deirdre Hurst du Prey (UK, US), Beatrice Straight (UK, US), Joanna Merlin (Hollywood), Hurd Hatfield (UK, US), Eleanor Faison (UK, US), and Felicity Mason (UK, US). Additional faculty and workshops included Eddy Grove (Hollywood), Richard Kiley (Man of La Mancha), Simms Wyeth, Mel Gordon. Moving to Los Angeles in 1988, Lisa continued to train even as she was teaching, with Mala Powers (Hollywood, MC Estate Executrix), Jack Colvin (Hollywood) and George Shdanoff (UK, NY, Co-director). In addition to these classes, Lisa has collected over 160 hours of video interviews with many of her teachers and other MC students and colleagues of Michael Chekhov who have helped expand Lisa’s grasp of the essence of the man and his work. Anthony Quinn (early Hollywood), Lloyd Bridges and his wife Dorothy (1946, Hollywood), Phil Brown (1946, Hollywood, Star Wars), Leslie Caron (Hollywood), Ford Rainey(US), Paul Rodgers (UK), Daphne Field (UK, US), Mary Lou Taylor (UK, US), and John Berry (NY, 1941, Hollywood).

LISA DALTON AS AN INTERNATIONAL PRESENCE

In addition to this extensive exposure to the techniques of Michael Chekhov, Lisa Dalton has been on the organizing board of many Michael Chekhov International Workshops (MCIW) in such places as Berlin, Moscow, and London. She has been able to participate and video tape scholars from Russian, Latvia, Germany, Finland, the UK and the US, presenting their studies of MC, his theatrical genius, his biography, the evolution of his psycho-physical technique and the growth of it’s popularity in the last decade of the 20th Century. In 1998 and 1999, she was able to bring the MCIW to America for the first time, serving as the Artistic Director at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut.

Lisa Dalton is currently president of Lisa Dalton Studios, Inc., a private acting studio and performance ensemble in Fort Worth, TX. The Dalton Gang Ensemble completed a short film shot on location at Dreamworks in Burbank. Nearly one third of the footage in the Now Available DVD “From Russia to Hollywood” is from Lisa’s archives. She also contributed significantly to the new video “Chekhov: The Dartington Years 1935-38.”

IS THIS A CASE OF “THOSE WHO CAN'T DO…TEACH?”

Clearly not. Just visit www.imdb.com and enter Lisa Dalton for a partial list of film and TV credits. Visit www.talnet.net/ldalton to view older resumes.Lisa was in the 2005 Season Finale of ER with Noah Wylie. Recent films include The Sensei (www.thesenseimovie.com) and Midnight Clear. Her work as a professional actress has been quite active. Lisa was seen in national commercials for MICKELSON SCIENCE INSTITUTE, ANNHEUSER BUSCH, Pizza Hut, Procrit, Post Cereal, and Mervyns. Her film work included independent projects- MY NORMAL LIFE, THE CONNEXTION, THE SHADOW BOX and JUDGE IS GOD. On stage, Lisa appeared in the world premiere of “A Room without Corners.” She also directed the stage production of “OF MICE AND MEN, and Moose Mating”.

LISA DALTON: IN FRONT OF THE AUDIENCE

The process of teaching a living art requires application. This is where Lisa Dalton carries Michael Chekhov’s work into the contemporary acting needs of modern technology. Lisa has maintained a career in front of the camera and on the stage throughout these last two decades, applying on a practical basis, all that she has studied and taught. While living in NY, Lisa performed as an impersonator/comedienne/clown at over 150 events per year. In 1976,she was a cofounder of the Bond Street Theater (now in it’s 27th year) at the La Mama Theater in the East Village. From 1980-1990, she appeared in over 100 films, television shows and commercials as an actress, stuntwoman or comedienne. Her credits include Splash, Ghostbusters, Highlander, World According to Garp, Money Pit, Crocodile Dundee, Saturday Night Live, Guiding Light, As the World Turns, Ford, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, and Cadillac.

On stage, Lisa did national tours of “Dr. Silkini’s Great Ghost Show” and “The Wonderful World of Burlesque.” She performed at Lincoln Center, various Theater Row houses, La Mama, ATA and the St. Clement’s Theater. She has acted in over 50 plays in Washington DC, Boston, Milwaukee, Syracuse, Moscow, England, NY and Los Angeles.

She spent 18 years in LA, and has appeared in several television movies and series (HBO”S Fall 2003 Series CARNIVALE, Melrose Place, Life Goes On, Dr. Quinn, FBI) and many commercials such as Staples, Wesson, Coke, Key Bank, Cable One, AT&T, “Got Milk”, Michelob, Polaroid and Blue Cross. She was a recipient of the DramaLogue Award for Outstanding Theater Performance in 1997.

In addition to having used the Michael Chekhov technique to execute the varied acting styles of the on-camera and live venues, Lisa used them to win over a dozen awards for producing/directing/editing short films, documentaries, music videos and narrative videos from such places as the American Film Institute, Houston WorldFest, Crystal Awards and Hometown, USA Awards. She has developed their use for Head shots, marketing, networking, auditioning for the actor and directing, writing, producing and editing for the other side of the business.

top

ARTICLE # 2

INTERVIEW WITH ACTOR ROBERT DAVI

LISA DALTON: How many years have you been a professional actor?

ROBERT DAVI: Since ’77, nearly 60 films, and many TV shows including 4 years on Profiler.

LD: You’ve trained with the masters, right?

RD: Yes

LD: What is it that brings you to me? To study Chekhov at this stage?

RD:I just know that inside of me there is a sense of destiny unfulfilled and I’m here as a creative artist wanting to expand.

LD: You think this work can lead you to that potential?

RD: I’m almost positive it can. I went through layers of working: Stella used to say the truth is in the imagination and there were exercises for that. There was Strasberg, then the Actors Studio. Then you have the Meisner work. But there’s something that the Chekhov work transcends. When Stella talked about “breaking down your action,” Stella would say “Go to life. Go to nature to get an action”. The verb, the incorporation of it, in the psychophysical response, wasn’t there. The Chekhov work seems to draw upon, like you say, the force of the totality of nature in a certain way in terms of your creative imagination.

The psychophysical- taking it out of your head – I’m already cramped up in here and putting it in the imagination. Working now with you, you have a terrific understanding of Chekhov and that’s not easy to find. Chekhov’s system seems the most--seems? It is the most complete. The actors I love, from Gary Cooper to Marilyn Monroe, Anthony Quinn, Jack Palance and a score of other people, Chekhov trained when he was alive. I knew at some point in life that I must find this Michael Chekhov.

There’s a different level of expressiveness that I think is found…I feel is found in Chekhov. And separating thinking, feeling, will--that simple concept of breaking that down and what leads to inspiration. This makes the instrument electrifying!

With this technique, there are so many different areas you can tune up for expressiveness. He took what Stanislavsky did and added, for the aliveness, having the body vibrate and then radiate. Chekhov really is terrific.

LD: He clarified the necessary elements.

RD: Yes. If you read Stanislavsky in Rehearsal, when Stella went to Paris to talk to him, he was no longer there (where American method was). It was physical actions, psychological actions. Now you have psychological gestures-- putting the action into the body, the objective into the body. How powerful is that! Then, being able to visualize that. It’s just a complete technique. Albeit, unless someone knows what they are teaching and how to communicate that, when you read the book, you could be scratching your head a lot. I read those booked and I scratched my head a lot but I said “My God, how brilliant!” My inner creative self knew how brilliant this was and to be able to find a school that teaches it, someone who teaches it and understand it-- that’s exciting.

And also in today’s day and age, it’s a spiritual journey. He’s very deeply spiritually rooted in his higher power in the creative power. The whole idea of summoning up the forces of nature and radiating them out to the world, that one famous exercise where he talked about the jewels-

LD: Quinn brings up – he did it on Inside the Actors Studio.

RD: Yeah. And that whole thing is basically summoning up the jewels of the universe and giving them to the world- the expansion/contraction. His whole thing is about giving and radiating a truth and a love. A technique based on that kind of selflessness is good.

top

ARTICLE # 3

Excerpts from THE CRAFT by Jean Schiffman
April 6, 2000 Backstage West

THE “OTHER” CHEKHOV
Michael Chekhov’s underappreciated methods may offer the solution to actors struggling with sense memory.

If you’ve studied Meisner and Strasberg and other approaches to acting training, yet you feel you’re still not quite fulfilling your potential as an actor—Try Chekhov. Working with the Stanislavski-based meat-and-potatoes of acting, such as actions and objectives, Chekhov stressed integrating the physical with the psychological, and focused on the use of the imagination rather than a reliance upon personal memories to access feelings. His techniques are applicable to both film and stage.

We’re talking about the “other” Chekhov, of course—Michael Chekhov, the Russian-born nephew of the playwright Anton. Among the famous and influential acting teachers of the century, Michael Chekhov is also one of the most obscure, at least in America (where he lived and worked the latter part of his life, dying in 1955 on the same day as James Dean.)

Although many of Chekhov’s exercises are used widely in acting programs, there are only a handful of teachers in the United States who focus entirely on Chekhov’s approach. Why?

It’s probably because of the mystical element in his theories. Chekhov was a follower of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian who formulated a belief system called Anthroposophy. However, I just read Chekhov’s book “On the Technique of Acting” (published in 1991 based on earlier writings), and whatever you think of his spiritual beliefs, Chekhov had plenty of down-to-earth advice for the actor. Chekhov wrote, “The desire and the ability to transform oneself are the very heart of the actor’s nature.”

I asked Los Angeles actress Lisa Dalton, one of the few who teach pure Chekhov, why she thinks his lessons are important. “Chekhov merges imagination and inner life with physical life,” she said. “Only Chekhov addressed the spirit of the actor.” Initially Dalton taught both Meisner and Chekhov but eventually focused just on Chekhov, believing his system encompasses all others. She explained it this way: “Actors remove themselves from the everyday environment and put themselves in the circumstances of the character. They use an image to do that—whether through the immediate, as in Meisner, through the memory, as in Strasberg, or through the power of observation, as in Adler or Hagen, Chekhov does all that, plus he uses what lives in our dream world, our fantasies.”

She further clarified the difference between Chekhov and Meisner: “Meisner gets you under the mask (the everyday face we present to the world) to respond as you. Chekhov says all our characters have (their own) masks, and we climb inside our character and find out how he feels, but the art is in finding the mask of that character.”

I asked Dalton why his teachings are a relevant for today’s film actors as for the classical stage actor in wig and false nose. “The character you’re playing may be 95 percent you, and that ‘ain’t broke’, so you don’t need to fix it,” said Dalton. “But you need to pay attention to that five percent that’s different from the everyday you.” Agreed.

Psychological Gesture

Chekhov is particularly well known for the psychological gesture, another physical rehearsal technique. Its purpose is to explore your character – her needs, desires, by creating a physical gesture using all of your body that represents the character. If you truly engage your body and mind, promises Chekhov, you can count on that gesture to internalize and affect your performance in imaginative and deeply truthful ways. He also developed the rehearsal technique of finding your character’s Center, the physical place from which impulses originate. Imagine a center in your chest, suggests Chekhov. “While moving onstage ever so slightly – perhaps only your finger moves – you will feel intense streams of power coming from your chest to your finger.” You can see where rehearsal techniques like this can work for you on screen as well, when your movements are limited but you must be full of inner life. BSW

Contact www.chekhov.net or (818) 220-3074 for further information.

top

ARTICLE # 4

Backstage West - To the Actor Review by Rob Kendt, April 3, 2003

In Sanford Meisner’s famous axiom, acting is the “art of living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.” For underrated acting guru Michael Chekhov-nephew of the Russian Dramatist and sometime student of the granddaddy of modern acting training, Stanislavski- the secret to great acting had as much to do with the imaginary as with truth. A famously brilliant and individual actor in major stage roles and, near the end of his career, in Hollywood Film roles, Chekhov has been dismissed by some as sui generis- a unique genius whose working methods could never be taught. This common misunderstanding of his contribution to acting training should be set straight by the new revised editions of his 1953 classic, To the Actor (released previously under the title On the Technique of Acting), which makes the case for his approach with qualities that distinguished his acting: simultaneous force and elegance, lightness and sharpness.

Indeed it’s hard to understand why Chekhov’s name isn’t mentioned among the acting training greats, including Meisner, Strasberg, Hagen, and Adler. His ideas, without his brand name attached, have entered the acting mainstream: the Psychological Gesture and the Emotional Center are taught in many college programs, and his emphasis on mind-body connection - influenced variously by yoga and by the mystical philosophy of Rudolf Steiner-represents a powerful strain of conventional wisdom, both inside and outside the acting academy. For among the alternatives to Stanislavski’s system and its legacy as handed down through the American Method, Chekhov’s approach- with some exceptions-remains among the most accessible, practical and inspiring for professional actors. His life’s work represented an attempt to create exercises to discipline and harness the imagination, to consciously forge habits of body and mind that would eventually become like second nature to actors.

There’s some jarring jargon here-such as “will impulses” and “the law of triplicity”-and the detail and scope of many of the exercises may make it difficult for actors to make full use of the book on its own outside a class structure-obviously, his “group improvisation” exercise requires more than one person. Many of the exercises in To the Actor are as grittily specific as any of Uta Hagen two-minute “recreations,” but those, too are often most productively practiced and honed with an audience.

One is impressed above all by Chekhov’s powerful sense of shape and form; he wanted to free the actor’s imagination from the “slavery” of imitative naturalism, but only so the actor could better serve the material with his own individual artistry. This isn’t let-it-all hang out but a disciplined, refined aesthetic system. Like Hagen, Chekhov strove to define an acting regimen as alternately rigorous and freeing as those undertaken by trained painters, composers, and or writers.

A new appendix on applying the Psychological Gesture, by Andrei Malaev Babel, is strictly classroom stuff; there’s also a characteristically incisive and rousing foreword, by Simon Callow, and a ploddingly informative chapter on Chekhov’s life and work by his literary executrix, Mala Powers. This is finally not a book “only” for actors; indeed Chekhov’s Chapters on “Atmosphere” and “ Composition of the Performance” offer exceptionally rich insights for directors. Really, though, this distinction is moot: A well-trained Chekhov Actor/artist is in a sense a performer/director/designer all in one.

top

Home | Acting Workshops | About MCC