This workshop was run at the Actors’ Gymnasium in summer 2011. If you’d like me to run this workshop with your actors’ company, just email me

Check out my theatre credits, references and production photos

Workshop outline

You’ve been cast as a character who lives in a time, place and culture that you have no direct experience of. How can you develop authentic ways for your character to gesticulate, move and stand? In this workshop you’ll try steps from folk dances in order to gather clues as to how people used to communicate with their bodies in centuries past. You’ll use these clues to develop an authentic physicality for your character. The focus text is Chekhov’s The Seagull.

At the start of the workshop you’ll each be allocated a character from Chekhov’s The Seagull, which is set in the 1890s. You’ll be paired up with another actor and will begin to develop a scene from the play, focusing on posture, gesture and movement.

You’ll take a break, during which you’ll watch actors perform two extracts from contemporary plays Shining City (Conor McPherson) and Blood (Lars Noren) as well as two extracts from Chekhov’s 1895 play The Seagull. Each of the four extracts features a pair of lovers who are in crisis. Through observation and discussion you’ll identify the physical actions which actors default to when attempting to play a character from a distant time and place. Which of their physical actions are authentic? Which of their physical actions have been inaccurately handed down from famous British productions? Which of their physical actions are associated with British culture rather than the culture of the play, e.g. Russian culture?

Next, you’ll learn steps from Russian folk dances and will identify rhythms, postures and movements which you can use to develop a way of sitting, standing, walking and gesticulating for your character.

With your acting partner you will continue to rehearse your Seagull scene, making use of what you’ve discovered to develop an authentic physicality for your character.

At the end of the workshop you will perform your Seagull scene and receive feedback from myself and the other actors.

Recommendations for this workshop

“You were terrific Kati! Great craic!”

Gavin McAlinden, artistic director, Charm Offensive

“It was so much fun! thanks for bringing us back to our peasant roots.”

Fiona McKinnon, actor

“Thanks for another brilliant workshop! It was good to get the booty moving! I never knew Russian folk dancing was so testing!”

Cairine MacBrayne, actor

About Kati Rynne

Check out my theatre credits, references and production photos