Tales of tomatoes and romance

By LAUREN MODISETTE

Published on August 03, 2007

The summer theater season in Amherst continues this weekend with tales of tomatoes and comic romantic pursuit presented by the New York-based Michael Chekhov Association.

MICHA returns to Amherst College with a 10-day theater festival and workshop in the Michael Chekhov acting technique.

"Chekhov's approach uses the body and imagination in a full and intuitive way," said Joanna Merlin, a former student of Michael Chekhov and president of MICHA. Merlin is also a crime-fighting actor on the TV show "Law and Order SVU."

"He was relentless about continuing to explore, penetrate, and create ideas for actors to use to tap into their collective unconscious," she said.

Born in 1891, Michael Chekhov was the nephew of Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov. As one of Russia's noted thespians of the 20th century, Michael studied with the founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, Konstantin Stanislavsky. It was there that Chekhov developed his own acting technique, which fused the body, imagination and mind.

Kicking off his career in the 1920s, Chekhov acted and taught his way around Europe until he moved to the United States in 1939. In 1942 he established The Drama Society in Hollywood and coached such actors as Marilyn Monroe, Yul Brynner, Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. He continued teaching his technique until his death in 1955.

"I worked with him for about five years until he died," Merlin said, adding that in the 1990s an interest in alternative acting techniques surfaced and motivated her to establish MICHA to continue his work. "We have grown considerably since we began in 1999," she said. "We have 70 students from eight different countries [joining us this year]."

Merlin said that in the workshops, MICHA is providing actors with a safe creative space where they won't be judged or criticized, but rather encouraged to play with Chekhov's technique.

"Chekhov has a way of penetrating [a character[']s] desires, essence and psyche," Merlin said. His technique includes what he calls psychological gesture. "It's the physicalization of a character's desires, and applying them to a text," she said.

In other words, an actor pulls a character's desires to the surface in the form of a physical action before repressing it to create an internal memory of those desires. The memory of the physical and emotional qualities of the character then cause the performance to work on an unconscious level, adherents say.

Although the workshops are not open to the public, interested actors can sit in and observe for $100 a day, and the public has the opportunity to see Chekhov's technique integrated into two original performances this weekend.

On Saturday at 8 p.m. in the Holden Theatre at Amherst College, Jessica Cerullo performs her original play, "Miracle Tomato."

"It's a piece I've been developing for years," Cerullo said. "It [emerged] from a bunch of coincidences."

The one-woman show depicts the journey of a tomato through the lives of three sisters - a bio-engineer, an organic farmer and a waitress.

"As an Italian-American I wanted to address the fourth immigrant generation," Cerullo said. "I parallel the journey of the tomato with the journey of the [women]."

The play is never performed the same way twice, she said. "It depends on the audience. I ask them questions, and, depending on their answers, I take a different direction."

"[Cerullo[']s play is] very original, funny and imaginative," said Merlin. "It will give people an idea of what some of our artists are doing."

Moving on to romantic comedy, the second show, Sunday at 8 p.m. in the same space, is an adaptation of Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac," directed by Lenard Petit, one of the founding members of MICHA.

"It's an interesting script," Petit said, with a cast of three playing several characters.

"Cyrano," by Jo Roets, is a gender-bender in which a woman plays Cyrano, the sweet romantic with the gigantic nose, and a man takes the role of the fair Roxane. Although Cyrano loves Roxane, he winds up assisting another character in wooing her with his eloquent love letters. Roxane can't get past Cyrano's nose, but it is him she truly falls for.

"The highest way to work an audience is to get them to laugh and cry," Petit said. "The play is completely fun and family-friendly. It's a really wonderful play, if I do say so myself, and it's a pleasure to use [Chekhov[']s] technique."

Tickets for each play are $15;$10 for students and seniors. They are available at the door or can by reservation at (202) 841-5141. For more information visit www.michaelchekhov.org.