IUGTE offers many workshops across Europe, often in isolated towns during the off-season for tourism. It is an ideal environment for disciplined work and reflection. This particular workshop and conference offered five days of intense physical training followed by a three-day international conference on physical theatre techniques.

We were pretty isolated in the ski resort town of Bovec (pronounced BŌ-vets), Slovenia, surrounded by the monumental landscape of the Alps on all sides and enjoying the opportunity to study with very few distractions. Our community consisted of artists from around the world; Canadian, American, Austrian, British, Croatian, Irish, Ukrainian, Norwegian and Russian. We met each day, trained in the morning and afternoon and then met for discussion each evening. The training concentrated on the biomechanics of gesture, following in the area of study pioneered by Meyerhold over 90 years ago.

The system of biomechanics was developed in post-revolutionary Russia and at a time when the ideology of the newly formed Soviet Union placed the worker at the center of the national identity. Industrialization was a key element of the Soviet zeitgeist. Mechanical processes became the model for creation, production and management. Even human motion was rationalized and examined to increase productivity and industrial output. In this context, the dominant metaphor of progress was the machine and by transposing the language used to describe mechanical processes, the contemplation of human motion could also progress and enter the industrial age.

Vsevolod Meyerhold, the artistic pioneer and creator of biomechanics, was born in 1874 and died c.a. 1940. He was a student of Stanislavski but established himself as a major innovator of theatre in his own right. Much of his work was in reaction to the naturalistic theatre of the 19th century and investigated a theater that could reveal inner dialogue by means of movement. He rejected aestheticism (art for art’s sake) and endorsed the constructivist view that art should always serve a political and social function. This functionalism is present on many levels in biomechanics training.

In Meyerhold’s view, the actor is an artist of plastic forms in space and human motion is a primary area of study for performance. Biomechanics provides a language for analyzing movement and outlines a practice for developing and reproducing it precisely. The system divides motion into four parts; Otkas, Posyl, Stoika and Tormos. These Russian terms are standardized, much like the French terms used in ballet training. The following definitions are transcribed from Jenny Marlowe’s article on the Meyerhold Technique:

Otkas – literally, “the refusal” – is a set-up or preparation for the main movement of the sequence, enacted by a movement in the opposite direction, like a spring.

Posyl – literally, “the sending” – is the main action of the sequence – the execution of the movement set up by the otkas.

Stoika – literally, “the stance” – is the completion of the movement – a stop-motion pose that serves both as the closure of the posyl and as the starting point for the next stage of the étude.

Tormos – literally, “brake” or “resistance” – is the element underlying the other three parts of the movement sequence – the physical control which allows fluid, precise completion of the action.

Under Ostrenko’ guidance, we studied these principal elements of movement in the well-known étude, Throwing the Stone. As we repeated and refined our understanding of this movement sequence, we were able to use this technical language to give particular, individual feedback. Often are the times when a performer might obscure the clarity of a performance by idiosyncratic or unconscious habits. A performer in training might rush from moment to moment or appear stiff and wooden. Using the language of biomechanics and repeating the etudes, the rushed actor can learn to inhabit “otkas” (preparation) before rushing from idea to idea; the wooden actor can adopt more freedom of “posyl” (sending) instead of moving from stance to stance.

In our week of training, this language was applied to many exercises, each one designed to address form in movement on the stage. We learned to work with the aesthetics of figural composition by doing pieces inspired by the great neoclassical and baroque painters. One of the benefits of biomechanics lies in its versatility. It is not a performance style, but a language of construction.

It is beneficial to all styles of performance, even to the naturalism of film acting. Some of the most prominent practitioners of the American “method(s)” have come to the conclusion that much of what happens on the stage or in the frame of a shot is “action”. Whether in the extremities of Meyerhold’s symbolist art or in the minimalism of a ”kitchen sink drama”, what happens to the performer is based in what they do, not solely on what they think or feel. It is becoming more widely accepted in actor training that psychological and physiological processes are inextricably linked, requiring a psychophysical method to training. Meyerhold argued that one could call up emotions in performance through movement and gesture. This concept is present in some of the oldest texts on actor training from Cicero’s writings on rhetoric and gesture and the Natya Shastra by the Sanskrit sage Bharata to the more recent writings of Grotowski, Barba, Brook and Bogart.

Biomechanics does not stand alone as a complete or closed method of actor training. Through rigorous, skills-based physical training, the performer can develop balance, strength and coordination and integrate these with the unique conditions of performance on the stage. Like many physically-based training methods, biomechanics develops concentration and awareness of self and others. The breaking down and sequencing of movement focuses the performers’ perceptions on the moment to moment life in a scene, not solely on what is going on inside the mind.

Meyerhold’s constructivist views and Bolshevik sympathies did not prevent Stalin’s government from closing the Meyerhold Theatre in 1938. Meyerhold was arrested, tortured and finally executed sometime around early 1940. But his writings and legacy of work, passed on through his students, have continued to influence contemporary physical theatre practice.