Psychological Gesture Explained

What It Is

Michael Chekhov, the Russian actor and teacher who had been one of Stanislavski's students, developed the psychological gesture as a way of working from the body inwards. The actor takes a character's need, the thing that drives them, and gives it physical form as an external gesture. The gesture is then suppressed and incorporated internally, so that the physical memory goes on informing the performance on an unconscious level.

Chekhov gave the tool its own chapter in his book To the Actor, first published in 1953 and still in print with Routledge. It sits beside atmosphere, imagination and characterisation as one of the core subjects of the book.

Why Start With the Body

An actor's usual problem is not understanding a character. It is turning the understanding into something playable. You can know perfectly well that a character is desperate to be forgiven and still have nothing to do in the scene.

The psychological gesture closes that gap. Instead of thinking about the wanting, you do it with your whole body: reaching, pulling, pushing away, opening, closing, lifting, crushing. The body tells you immediately whether you have found the right thing, because a true gesture stirs something and a false one feels like exercise.

How an Actor Finds One

1. Name the want in a verb

   Not a mood or an adjective. What is the character trying to do to the other person? To hold on to them, to shut them out, to win them.

2. Find a movement for it

   Stand up and let the whole body express that verb in one clear movement with a beginning, a middle and an end. Simple and strong is better than clever.

3. Repeat until it is clean

   Do it several times with full commitment. Adjust its speed, its direction and how much resistance it meets until it feels exactly like this character.

4. Take it inside

   Now stand still and make the gesture only in imagination. The outward movement has gone. The inner movement stays.

5. Play the scene

   Speak the lines with the inner gesture running underneath. Nothing shows, yet everything is coloured by it.

Qualities Change the Gesture

The same gesture done with a different quality becomes a different person. Chekhov taught movement dynamics such as moulding, floating, flying and radiating. A reaching gesture that moulds, as if through thick clay, belongs to someone determined. The same reach done floating belongs to someone uncertain or dreaming. This is how the tool scales from a broad stage character to a fine screen one.

Using It on Camera

The psychological gesture might sound theatrical, but it is at its most useful in front of a camera. A close-up has no room for physical business and reads thought directly. An inner gesture gives the face and the eyes something specific to carry without the actor adding anything. It is also quick, which matters when an audition arrives with a day's notice. That is why the studio's self tape and screen acting class leans on it.

Three Common Mistakes

• Performing the gesture. It belongs in preparation. If it shows up in the scene as a literal movement, it has not been taken inside.
• Making it small. In rehearsal the gesture should involve the whole body. A half hearted gesture gives a half hearted result.
• Choosing a feeling instead of a want. Sadness is not a gesture. Wanting someone to stay is.

Where It Fits in the Technique

Psychological gesture is one tool among several. Elena Stejko's introduction to the technique lists atmosphere, psychological gesture, qualities, body centres, radiation and image work as its fundamental elements. They are described together on our page about the Michael Chekhov technique, and they are taught from the first term in the beginners acting class.