2 Days Chekhov Technique

Workshop topics – psychological gesture

By getting to know psycho-physical exercises, we become familiar with Michael Chekhov’s technique and his ideas of how to train the body of the actor. On this basis, we deepen our work and dedicate ourselves to the different centers of the body, which give us a rich scope for inner and outer experience to broaden our space for creative play.

Using various tools of the Michael-Chekhov method, we will take an in-depth look at the topic of psychological gestures.

In order to be able to credibly embody the stage personality, which is seen in the imagination, Chekhov has developed so-called “psychological gestures”, which should help the actor to produce a posture and movement that corresponds to the stage character. These developed gestures run like a red thread through all situations which the stage character enters in a play.

As a theater educator, lecturer and actress, Kathrin Heuer has been designing advanced training courses, workshops and productions with young people, adults and professionals all over Germany since 2003. She currently works as a lecturer for future theater educators (BuT-Certification), is involved in the Berlin Children’s Opera project at the State Opera Unter den Linden and does her own work as a director. At the Michael Chekhov International Academy Berlin she completed the teacher program (MCIA Teacher Certification) in 2018 and, together with colleagues from the Academy, offers drop-in courses and workshops for professionals and other people interested Michael Chekhov’s physical and imagination-based system of actor training.

Supported by the intensive examination of the Michael Chekhov technique, she can awaken spaces for creative play in her work through inspiration and impulses, in order to then implement them in self-determined creative processes and movements.

Marcus Kohlbach, theatre director and arts manager. He studied “Sprachen-, Wirtschafts- und Kulturraumstudien” (cultural studies) in Passau. During and after his studies, he assisted at the Nationaltheater Weimar, Schauspiel Frankfurt and the Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel, among others. He worked as a director at the Württembergische Landesbühne Esslingen, the Landestheater Salzburg and the Schauspielbühnen in Stuttgart. He and Kathrin Heuer have been working together on projects in the theatrical-aesthetic context for many years and have conducted joint workshops during this time. He is the artistic director of the Utopienwerkstatt, which produces contemporary theatre at the intersection of other fields of art and designs innovative cultural education projects. Since 2013, he also is one of the two festival directors of the media art festival “Stuttgarter Filmwinter – Festival for Expanded Media”.