Meyerhold’s Biomechanics: 50 Critical Resources

ByJustin Cash Hours Updated

Russian and Soviet director Vsevolod Meyerhold developed biomechanics for the theatre in the 1920s and 30s. This novel approach to actor training focused on stylised movement and physicality. Meyerhold’s exercises allowed the actor to become intricately aware of the body in space and time. Etudes were an integral feature of the new training system, though never intended for performance.

Meyerhold’s career began as an apprentice to Konstantin Stanislavski, acting in several Moscow Art Theatre productions at the dawn of the 20th century. Meyerhold soon found himself as the pre-eminent avant-garde revolutionary director in the Soviet Union, and his new system of actor training was deliberately at odds with the methods of his former mentor.

On a crude level, biomechanics encouraged the actor to create a character externally, from the outside in. Stanislavski’s system on the other hand taught actors how to create characters internally, from the inside out. Like Stanislavski’s training methods, Meyerhold’s biomechanics was more than a bag of tricks for the actor. It, too, was aimed at creating a better person.

Biomechanics was likely sourced from elements of Commedia dell’Arte, mime, circus, ballet, silent comedy, acrobatics, kabuki, gymnastics, and even sport. There was also a direct association with the constructivist movement in the arts, with three of Meyerhold’s productions employing constructivist sets. Meyerhold also linked his new system of actor training with Soviet-Marxist philosophy, relating the necessary economy of movement to the production of labour, outside the theatre walls.

Ultimately, Meyerhold’s avant-garde and anti-realistic experiments in the theatre were too radical for the Soviet regime. He was executed by firing squad in February 1940, most likely on the order of Joseph Stalin, himself. – Justin Cash

Biomechanics for the Theatre

Vsevolod Meyerhold

Comprehensive biography of Vsevolod Meyerhold and his career in the theatre as an actor and director.

Meyerhold’s biography, accompanied by a few simple biomechanics exercises suitable for students.

Excellent biography of Vsevelolod Meyerhold with detailed accounts of his career and productions.

Vsevolod Meyerhold: The revolutionary communist director executed by Stalin
Vsevolod Meyerhold was a personality of great contradictions, and one of the movers and shakers in 20th century theater. It’s not an exaggeration to say that he influenced the art of performance as much as Fyodor Dostoevsky influenced the world of literature.

A detailed biography of Meyerhold and his achievements in Russian theatre.

Wikipedia entry on Vsevolod Meyerhold outlining his early life, career under communism, acting techniques and influence on 20th-century theatre.

By the early 1920s Meyerhold had discovered and utilized virtually every device of the theater we now associate with Weimar Germany, especially with Piscator and Brecht. The half-curtain, the use of projections, the refusal to hide the artifacts of the theater – brick walls, electric lights, and so on – the snapping on and off of the house lights, the bright stage lighting, the use of music and song, the striving for few but telling properties, the refusal to ‘identify’ the actor with the part, the formal groupings of actors on the stage, the breaking down of drama into episodes, the willingness to adapt a given text, ‘montage’ not ‘growth’, ‘each scene for itself’ in a ‘narrative’, not ‘one scene making another’ in a ‘plot’, all these and more were employed equally by Meyerhold and Brecht, but in every case the Russian preceded the German by years.
robert leach
vsevolod meyerhold

Biography of the director and his influences, contribution to 20th century theatre and more.

Overview of Meyerhold’s major achievements in the theatre – useful for senior students.

biomechanics
Meyerhold’s biomechanics in action: The Magnaminous Cuckold (1922)

Biomechanics Resources

Excellent essay carefully analysing Meyerhold’s system of biomechanics, his intentions and productions. Comprehensive coverage in easy-to-understand language. Great for senior theatre students.

Clear explanation of the purpose of function of biomechanics in actor training programs.

Useful outline of Meyerhold’s system and its links to Soviet-Marxist philosophy. Includes quotes from authors and academics.

Biomechanics establishes the principles of precise analytical execution of each motion, establishes the differentiation of each motion for purposes of maximum precision … We must be able to show the modern actor on stage as a complete automation. The actor’s art is the creation of plastic forms in space. Therefore, the actor’s art is the ability to utilize the expressive potential of his body correctly. This means that the route to image and feeling must begin not with experience, not with seeking to plumb the meaning of the role, not with an attempt to assimilate the psychological essence of the phenomenon, in sum, not “from within” but from without; it must begin with motion. This means the motion of an actor excellently trained, possessing musical rhythm and easy, reflectory excitability; an actor whose natural abilities have been developed by systematic training. Biomechanics.
VSEVOLOD MEYERHOLD

Excellent research essay on the very beginnings of Meyerhold’s new actor training system, including several rare archival photographs of early poses.

Scholarly essay outlining Meyerhold’s system.

A personal reflection of working with biomechanics in actor training.

Brief entry on this highly physical form of theatre from Encyclopaedia Britannica.

A handy collection of articles from across the web, now gone, discussing this form of actor training.

According to Meyerhold, Biomechanics teaches the ability to turn chaos into well-ordered cosmos. With the help of Biomechanics the new man will be able to control his body, which inevitably will give him power over his emotions, feelings and psyche. It allows to organize all types of the matter, and hence to rationalize them, to cleanse it from dark passions and ugliness. As long as this method is taught only in the theatre school, the actor trained in this way will represent an example of a harmonious personality.
Vadim Shcherbakov
Study on the Constructivist Utopia of Vsevolod
Meyerhold

A curated collection of resources from across the web on physical theatre.

A series of video resources on biomechanics, explained.

University student essay on the importance of Meyerhold’s teachings on physical theatre.

Helpful article on the history of the theatrical methods of Vsevolod Meyerhold.

A brief overview of the nature of biomechanics from Wikipedia.

Constructivism

Article by well known Meyerhold scholar Jonathon Pitches discussing among other things connections to both the constructivist and futurist movements in the arts.

Meyerhold’s acting system relied on motion rather than language or illusion. Opposing the Stanislavsky System, which Meyerhold believed over emphasized the spirit and psychology, biomechanics emphasized elementary laws of reflexes. In addition to the bare scenery facilitating this technique, the costumes were also integral. In constructivist fashion, the costumes were not extravagant, but drastically simplified, which allowed the actors to easily perform using biomechanics and without hiding mistakes.
sophie brun
cityacting.co.uk

Excellent academic article on Meyerhold’s biomechanics and its links to the constructivist movement at that time.

meyerhold biomechanics
Set design for The Magnaminous Cuckold. Notice the elements of constructivism with sharp angles, ramps, stairs and treadmills.

1981 New York Times article discussing Meyerhold’s interest in dance, its influence on biomechanics, and the recreation of the constructivist set for The Magnanimous Cuckold at the Guggenheim Museum.

biomechanics meyerhold

Academic Papers

Academic thesis on the origins of biomechanics in Meyerhold’s work and the ability to use this form of movement to motion capture acting for film.

PhD thesis The Use of Meyerhold’s Biomechanics Training and Principles of Composition in Contemporary
Theatre.

(Meyerhold) said that the emotional state of an actor was inextricably linked to his physical state (and vice versa), and that one could call up emotions in performance by practicing and assuming poses, gestures, and movements. Meyerhold’s acting technique had fundamental principles at odds with the American method actor’s conception. While method acting melded the character with the actor’s own personal memories to create the character’s internal motivation, Meyerhold connected psychological and physiological processes. He had actors focus on learning gestures and movements as a way of expressing emotion physically.
sophie brun
cityacting.co.uk

Thesis titled Towards a 20th Century History of Relationships between Theatre and Neuroscience discusses movement, physiology and Meyerhold.

Journal article proposing if young actors and directors wish to properly use biomechanics, then they must first be knowledgeable in the simple mechanics of motion.

An academic paper with three exercises using a stick and one etude exercise for biomechanics training.

Lesson Plans

A fantastic article from Teaching Theatre magazine is about a teacher’s regular use of biomechanics exercises in the classroom as a way of getting students away from scripts to better understand the physical nature of their characters.

A detailed description of Meyerhold’s career and theatre productions in a social and political context. Includes numerous biomechanics exercises suitable for students.

Key terminology for Meyerhold’s biomechanics and etudes.

Vsevolod Meyerhold saw theatre as a kinaesthetic spectacle where the actor’s outer life came first and informed the inner life or inner rhythms of the character. He thought that theatre should not mirror reality; instead that it should transcend the everyday by deliberatively exaggerating and distorting it through stylised theatrical techniques.
Mark Eckersley
a matter of style

Introduction to this form of actor training pitched at students, from the New South Wales Department of Education.

Background to Meyerhold and biomechanics includes a series of exercises suitable for students (p.39 onwards).

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