Moving Imagination: Q&A with Camille D’Ambrose

--Debbie Anderson Iversen

"No matter what your field is, if you’re doing a workshop that makes you better at what you do as an actress or a mathematician or an English teacher… it has a direct benefit to students," says local actress and Metropolitan State University acting teacher Camille D’Ambrose.

As recipient of a community faculty professional development grant, D’Ambrose participated in the Michael Chekhov International Workshop and Festival held on the Amherst College campus in Massachusetts, July 30-Aug. 10. She was one of about 60 participants including teachers, actors and students from United States, Taiwan, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, England, Canada and Brazil.

The workshop was based on the acting techniques of Michael Chekhov (1891-1955), who was considered the most brilliant student of master acting coach Konstantin Stanislavsky. D’Ambrose previously studied the Chekhov technique in London.

She shares her experience with students in her acting classes, in rehearsals, and with The Metropolitan.

Q: Tell us about the workshop.

A: "Michael Chekhov" is very physical theater. His theories are about the physiological and psychological relationship of an actor, or a human being for that matter, so that everything, all his exercises...are very much based on physical body work. It really was six hours a day doing physical exercise. It was exhausting but incredible...

What was fascinating about having all of these instructors was they’re all teaching...the same theory, and yet their point of view, what they emphasize, what they bring to it themselves is so vastly different...

Everything we did was reflective of the person who was teaching it and, of course, as a teacher, what was wonderful about that is that you’re not teaching. You’re working yourself, as a person who does this as an actor. And then, of course, you add to it all the varying points of view from the participants. Many, many of whom are teachers. One teacher from Spain had three of her students with her.

Q: How will this inform you as teacher?

A: Chekhov’s theories are very open to interpretation and so it’s useful because someone else’s interpretation might send you off in a completely different direction or completely different level of understanding... I’ve been using it in my acting class, just kind of dropping it in the past two years since I took the first workshop, but this time I am using much more than I have in the past and I find that students really react well to it. It’s visceral. It’s sensual and it’s something that people understand.

Q: You will be teaching a theater class based on movement in the spring. Has this workshop given you insight into that class?

A: That certainly is applicable, this technique. No question about it… The need for that class [on movement] has to do with understanding style, certainly, or the difference between doing "Streetcar Named Desire" and "Molière." But I think one of the things that Chekhov will be helpful in addressing is the need for people to move in a neutral pleasing manner... It has a lot to do with clothing and shoes and age.

Q: Can you share with us your upcoming roles since taking the workshop?

A: I am actually working in a restaging of a play I did last year at the Illusion Theater called "Autistic License" by Stacey Dinner-Levin. What I mean by restaging is that we’re making it shorter and we’re going to take it out to several places...

I’m doing "Cloud Nine" here at Metropolitan. Scott Rubsam is director and I’m playing Betty in the second act…. It’s really wonderful. I know many of my students have seen my shows, but it’s a wonderful opportunity to teach by doing in the process of rehearsal as opposed to a finished production that someone comes to see, so it’s not that I’m pointing out anything. It’s teaching by example... In the process of doing workshops, you would come up with this role very much as you do in rehearsal.

The reason I think it’s a good thing to be doing in a school situation, working with students, there is the relationship between me and Scott, which is actress/director... You’re able to show that it is important for an actor to bring offerings; that it’s not about the director telling you what to do. It’s about paying attention to the person with whom you are doing a scene and talking to that person. Being able to do that in this situation is terrific because I think that’s an intellectual concept and I think most students are way too tied to their scripts so it all becomes about learning lines as opposed to speaking to one another.

"Cloud Nine" opens at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 8, at Metropolitan State University’s Minneapolis Campus in the Whitney Mainstage located at 1424 Yale Place. Metropolitan State and MCTC students are admitted free of charge. General admission is $5. "Cloud Nine" contains mature themes and may not be appropriate for younger children.