On June 22, 1897, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, both leaders of contemporary Russian theater, held a historic meeting at the Slavyansky Bazaar restaurant in Moscow.
What followed was the foundation of the Moscow Art Theater where the two created an innovative approach to theater art, maintaining the principles of psychological realism with the aim of achieving truth through a deep aesthetic understanding of universal human experience.
Continuing an ongoing series of actor-training workshops, international director and acting teacher Louis Fantasia will conduct an intensive 10-day session on acting in Chekhovian drama.
Based in Los Angeles, Fantasia has traveled worldwide teaching and directing.
Since 1994 Fantasia has been coming to Tokyo with acting workshops on Shakespeare, applying techniques that he has developed over 25 years as a director and educator.
Participants in the workshop will be guided by Fantasia through various breathing and relaxation exercises and will work on selected scenes and monologues from Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard."
A common trap in Chekhovian productions is the tendency to play the characters as emotionally oppressed, resulting in an overall generalized mood to the production. One phrase that Fantasia repeatedly emphasizes in his workshops is "mood spelled backward is doom."