Cass Fleming

Founder, The Chekhov Collective | Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London (UK)

Cass Fleming is the founder and co-director of The Chekhov Collective (https://chekhovcollectiveuk.co.uk/) and works with the department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths. She is a director and a teacher of acting, directing and theatre making. Her practice and research centres on the use of play in the actor training and theatre making processes developed by Michael Chekhov and Suzanne Bing (2013). Cass has a long-standing interest in developing non-canonical actor training genealogies and co-edited a special edition of the ‘Theatre, Dance and Performance Training’ journal entitled ‘Against the Canon’ (11:3) with Mark Evans (2020). She also contributed an article on the work of Bing and her female collaborators to this journal (2020). She has also written a book section with Mark Evans on the director Jacques Copeau, and the contribution of Bing to his practice, in ‘The Great European Stage Directors’, Vol. 3 (Bloomsbury, 2018) and presented a paper ‘Suzanne Bing: The interior rhythm and musicality of play’, at the Makings of the Actor: Rhythm in Acting and Performance Conference, Athens, March 2021. Cass was lead researcher, with Tom Cornford, on the long term, muti-institutional practice research project that led to a book: ‘Michael Chekhov in the Twenty-First Century: New Pathways’, which she edited with Cornford (Bloomsbury, 2020). The Chekhov Collective has run over 50 open access practice research events including workshops, lectures, work demonstrations, theatre productions and panel discussions exploring different uses and dialogues with Chekhov Technique. In 2020/2021 she is Scholar in Residence, with Roanna Mitchell, at the Michael Chekhov Association in the USA where they are exploring: The ‘Third Space’: Chekhov Technique in Pedagogic, Applied, Therapeutic and Community Contexts and in February 2021 she presented a paper “A Constant Process of Expansion’, on the Michael Chekhov: Imagination and Community Panel at the Performing Arts Research in Times of Crisis (II).Conference, Universidade Estadual do Paraná, Brazil.