Actor, teacher, acting trainer and director, Jerusalem-born David Zinder has created a unique form of acting training known as ImageWork Training and is a Master Teacher of the Michael Chekhov Technique. The connection between the two techniques is their fundamental understanding and training of the symbiotic connection between the body and the imagination. His book on the training – BODY VOICE IMAGINATION: A Training for the Actor – was published by Routledge in 2002 (a second edition, which includes an additional chapter on ImageWork Training and the Michael Chekhov Technique, was published by Routledge in 2010).
He has a PhD from the University of Berkeley (1976) and his PhD thesis – The Surrealist Connection: an Approach to a Surrealist Aesthetic of Theatre – was published by UMI, Ann Arbor in 1980. Returning to Israel, he subsequently taught acting and directing at the Theatre Arts Department of Tel Aviv University for 28 years, retiring in 2004 as Full Professor (Emeritus). During those years he directed over 60 productions both at the University Theatre and in professional theatres in Israel. Since the 1990s he has been a freelance international director, directing mostly in Romania, where he directed prize-winning and critically acclaimed productions of The Dybbuk, The Bacchae and Macbeth, among others, and also in Belgium, the US and in India. At the same time he has been giving numerous workshops in both ImageWork Training and the Michael Chekhov Technique in the US and the UK, as well as in Eastern Europe, India, Singapore and Taiwan.
He was a founding member of the Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA) in 1999, and is a regular member of its faculty, and is also on the board of Michael Chekhov Europe.
Image: Pre-rehearsal workshop for Six Characters in Search of an Author with the actors of the Miklos Tompa Theatre, Târgu Mures, Romania, January 2010
