Oleksandr Tokarchuk

How it all began...

By O. Tokarchuk

When I was still studying at school, our mathematician Rudolph Petrovich Ushakov (Sheintsvit) liked to say that everything in mathematics and life should be treated as a task. Solving a task is not a boring, routine activity. This is what arouses interest, brings joy, surprise, and satisfaction. Solving a task from scratch, without homework, is a special passion. Defeat an armed opponent with bare hands. In the wild, find water, food, shelter, and survive. There is no fear: rush into a new sphere, into an unknown realm, and find out there, master new territories. This is a kind of «adventurism».

Since the 80s of the last century, I have been involved in experimental, research, and teaching activities in various theatre studios, and I have come across the fact that the vast majority of existing systems for training professional actors are based on a rehearsal approach. In most cases, a student-actor works with a specific dramatic material, trying to find himself or feel the outlines of a character in given circumstances, following the advice of his mentor, teacher, or director, etc. Most of the time, he is told/advised what and how he should do very specifically in certain given circumstances. In most cases, this obviously led to the actors becoming reduced copies of their mentors, conditioning them not to realise their own creative potential. Acquired in the eyes of colleagues, the status of a specific character play-type and is tied to this character. In my opinion, this kind of work does not fundamentally differ from amateurism, the amateur leisure time of amateur actors in theatre circles and studios.

As an addition to the rehearsal method, special attention is paid to technical abilities and skills when training actors, such as voice production, plasticity, choreography, fencing, stage fighting, etc. Adding these «passives» can potentially expand the technical range of actors' capabilities, but, in my opinion, precisely. Potentially increasing the actor's technical equipment is not enough. Mastery of voice and body will never make a student a professional actor. He still needs to learn how to use his technical capabilities. Without the appropriate management skills to administer one's own behaviour, this entire arsenal does not work fully. Other extremes, ideas about the actor's game are two widespread polar concepts:

1. Frank, sincere naturalism, playing on an open nerve, on a burning heart, on a rupture of the aorta. Legal hysterical psychopathy at the limits of human temperament.

2. The concept of a cold actor-manipulator. Somewhat similar to the way Denis Diderot saw him, who was an opponent of the hot soul on the inside. He spoke about the need to control oneself, to be a cold, audacious player. He called for an orderly, judicious, rational game. Perhaps it would be appropriate to recall Bertolt Brecht with his theatre of detachment and alienation. When considering these two dichotomies, the truth, in my opinion, lies in the middle, between technique and rehearsal, between naturalism and manipulation. Both the rehearsal method and the development of technical capabilities, as well as open naturalism/heat due to identification with the character/role or, on the contrary, coldness/sensual detachment, irreversibly condition the actors' actions! As a result of such pervasive total conditioning, the described substitutions in the world of acting/theatrical art are taken for granted. We believe that this cannot be called Art in the most perfect sense of the word.

The territory of our search and affirmation is not in the extremes - not in the hellish temptations and not in the ice of detachment, but in the warmth, where life flourishes. The School of Imagery does not practice the approach of a group of amateurs or technical equilibrists. We believe that before any rehearsals, the actor should understand their means of expression. Not technical, but managerial, systemic. Develop and establish his own success criteria. In love with his unique creative essence and confidence in the inevitability of personal artistic heritage! Our speciality is the systematic management of bodily and mental processes, which is based on the dramaturgy of one's own unique experience of impressions. The harmonising of these processes produces a convincingly impressive quality of self-manifestation that we define as — Imagery! Educational programs of the acting School of Imagery, developed based on practical research and teaching activities for 30+ years!

Graduated from the Physics and Mathematics School in 1975. In 1985, he received a diploma of higher education, specialising in physics and acoustics. A practical researcher and developer of a unique Actor education system. The author-developer of the method «Versions Theatre - «factory» of theatrical pilot projects» and the corresponding training program. Developer of many applied trainings for education, business, art and life in general. Methodist and teacher of acting.

For more than 30 years, he has been recognised in the Kyiv theatre environment for his innovative program and methods of teaching and training actors, a system he developed himself. Since 2007, the system was established within the Ukrainian theatre community as the "Acting School of Imagery".

Founder of the School of Imagery

Iniciator of the Institute of Creativity Methodology(ICM)

The head and leader of the Research Department of the ICM