A good actor, according to director Louis Fantasia, knows how to kiss -- that is, how to K.I.S.S., an aphorism he borrowed from playwright David Mamet, meaning, "Keep it simple, stupid."

Los Angeles-based Fantasia, a renowned teacher of acting technique, was recently in Tokyo to lead a nine-day workshop on performing the works of Anton Chekhov. I was among the 30 actors, both Western and Japanese, who joined the course to experience firsthand Fantasia's challenging teaching method.

This method -- though Fantasia claims to have no particular program -- draws on many sources. In his discussions of text analysis alone, for example, he cited leading theorists such as Martin Buber, Wilhelm Reich, Karl Jaspers and John Howard Lawson.

The texts for this workshop were "Uncle Vanya" and "The Seagull," and Fantasia swiftly dispelled our preconceptions about how they should be performed. There are just as many cliches in acting Chekhov, he told us, as in staging Shakespeare; the trick is to realize what they are -- and to avoid them.

Instead, he offered three key guidelines: Actors should get in touch with their natural instincts; tap into their imagination; and retain a "sense of truth" during scene work.

With his advice in mind, we embarked on what proved to be a challenging and creative nine days. The following are entries from the diary I kept during the workshop, which ran from Feb. 9 - 17.

Monday, Feb. 11

Watched a scene between Nina and Konstantine in the final act of "The Seagull." Konstantine, a struggling writer with little talent, has loved would-be actress Nina for many years. In this scene, she returns after a two-year absence in which she has had an affair with the novelist Trigorin and has been abandoned by him. The scene is loaded with emotional potential.

Louis' observation was that the actors were only playing at the idea of being sad and depressed, and failed to work off each other naturally. He followed this up with one of his favorite maxims: "Acting is like sex -- better with a partner than by yourself." No actor, by his or her performance alone, can give a scene emotional life; this springs only from interaction on stage.

Tuesday, Feb. 12

Watched a scene between Konstantine and his mother Arkadina, a famous actress. Arkadina is removing a bandage from her son's head -- distraught with jealousy over his mother's relationship with Trigorin, the young man had tried to shoot himself. This scene begins tenderly and then turns into a heated argument that reduces Konstantine to tears.

At first attempt, the actors didn't seem emotionally connected. Louis asked them to do it again, this time starting the scene as quietly as possible, then increasing the volume of their dialogue to a maximum; at the close they should become quiet once more.

This time, almost effortlessly, the scene became truthful and the relationship between the two seemed real. Having been given a physical task to concentrate on, the actors weren't worried about "acting" and just let the scene take them.

Wednesday, Feb 13

Did my scene today with my partner, a Kurdish actor named Mozaffar Shafeie. We had selected a scene from "Uncle Vanya" in which Vanya has taken a vial of morphine from Dr. Astrov's medical bag and is contemplating suicide. Astrov tries to get Vanya to admit the theft and to return the vial.

I found my desire to convey Vanya's emotional state getting in the way of playing the scene truthfully. Louis discussed the terms "manufacturing" and "indicating," words he uses to describe what happens when an actor tries to create an emotional state rather than re-create an event, trusting that the emotions will naturally follow.

At this stage of rehearsal, he explained, the actor should not be too focused on what emotions will occur, because "you don't know where the scene is going, nor should you, so you don't know what to manufacture or indicate."

Thursday, Feb. 14

The Animal Exercise. As today's scenes began, Louis asked the actors to decide what animal their characters most resembled.

The first scene was between Uncle Vanya and Yelena; the old man is in love with the young woman and tries to express his feelings in a drunken, self-pitying wallow. Yelena is impatient, angered and repulsed by Vanya. For this, the actors decided on a thoroughbred horse for Yelena and a sloth for Vanya.

The actors were to relate to one another, moving and making sounds, only as the animals would. The Yelena-horse walked stiffly and percussively around the stage area, seeming pent up in a stable, tossing her head from side to side as if shaking a mane. The Vanya-sloth dragged himself around the stage area, leaning on chairs as if spineless and hanging from overhead door frames.

After a few minutes, the actors were told to begin the scene keeping the characteristics of their animals in the performance. As the scene unfolded, the actors seemed to discover new vocal rhythms and physical behaviors. Vanya was more like a drunken slob and Yelena, pushing him away in disgust, made a motion as if trampling him, beating him off with her hands and upper body.

When the performance was over, we formed a circle, and Louis asked each pair in turn to enter the circle in animal-character and start our scenes. We found that the exercise unlocked responses in our bodies. Louis told us that "whenever you get stuck in a scene and don't know what to do, just go back into your animal for a moment; those impulses will take you back to the scene."

Saturday, Feb. 16

The masks. Today Louis brought a large bag filled with seven masks, each with a different expression, and placed them on a table. He asked a few of us at a time to approach the table and observe the masks. If one caught our attention in some way, we were to take it in our hands, study it, then put it on. We were to study ourselves in a mirror, then begin moving around. "Don't think," we were told. "Just do what appeals to you. Let your behavior evolve naturally."

I chose a mask with sharply angled cheekbones, a pointed nose, lined forehead and arched eyebrows that seemed suggestive of an inquisitive and challenging personality.

Then Louis paired me with a slightly built Japanese actor who had also been working on the Vanya-Astrov scene, playing the role of the doctor. As we walked around in our masks, Louis told us to be two wrestlers in the final of a sumo tournament. We squared off and faced each other in familiar sumo poses; then we started to wrestle. While we improvised, Louis asked us to begin the scene between Vanya and Astrov but to remain in the sumo match.

As in the animal exercise, we discovered fresh new readings of our lines; new body rhythms and tempos occurred as we continued the scene aggressively. At one point, the Japanese actor even picked me up and carried me round the stage area on his shoulders.

Playing the scene this way was exhilarating. I was energized during the performance and exhausted and breathless at its end. For an actor, wearing a mask has a liberating effect, it offers a newfound security -- your body becomes more freely expressive.

*    *    *

At the end of the nine days, what had I learned? The most important lesson that I took away was that actors should not be overly anxious to create a character. Instead, script analysis, a grasp of the sequence of events and of the action of a particular scene should be uppermost in an actor's mind. Only after working through these points -- what Louis calls the "architecture" of a play -- can an actor begin to consider characters, asking, "Who are the people responsible for these events?"

It is an ironic lesson: The less conscious "acting" a performer tries to do, and the more he or she trusts to instinct and the sequence of events as laid out by the playwright, the more successful the performance becomes. Trust that this will happen, Louis told us, and enjoy the surprising discoveries.