005: I do not think I want to go to Heaven.

In
Hell they torture bodies, this place must
have theatre and they need directors...
Theare is physical. Period. It better be, when 
everything else becomes digital. Theatre is the last 
refuge of the Real! Theatre's future is bright. When 
everything will be virtual, Theatre Live Shows will be 
like a ritual and church.

I made a page for Commedia (and Kabuki) in order to 
make sure that the traditions of physical theatre 
behind BM are not forgotten.

Theatre was born of rites, song and dance of the flesh.
But physical doesn't have to be something opposite to 
psychological. Meyerhold v. Stanislavsky? The conflict 
between those two Russian directors belongs to history.

I keep repeating it: Meyerhold developed the theory of 
Biomechanics for his practical needs as a director. Not
only for professional actors, but because in his 
revolutionary mind he believed that ANYBODY could and 
should act. A dedicated Marxist, he thought that every 
peasant or worker can do theatre, if only they can have
the right tools, the technique!

Historically, that was the aim of his movement 
"Theatrical October" (named after the Great October 
(Bolshevick) Revolution). The Method Acting requires an
education; knowledge of dramatic literature, which was 
"class" property. Meyerhold (and Eisenstein) wanted to 
get an average man from the street and put him in front
of the camera or on stage. Can we provide this 
uneducated non­actor with the simple and fast system? 
Physical (non­psychological) aspect of life is known to
all ­­ even to children! What if we look at stagecraft 
from this perspective?/tt>

BM is Physical Theatre!
Meyerhold wanted his actors to be athletes. He had a 
circus as model!
Actor's body must work. Body Acts! For updates ­­ Body 
Page. Now, take a look at the text of your monologue. I
advise your to visualize the basic breakdown (framing) 
of your body as a cameraman does.

There are simple ways to focus public's attention with 
director applies: I can ask designers to do it. The 
face can be permanently framed with the costume or hat,
or wig. I can ask for light or even simply move the 
actor to the window, which will frame the action. Do 
you want to have MLG? Place his in the door­frame! Or 
get him into arm­chair.... You got the idea

"Mechanical" has negative connotations, of course, and 
this is wrong. "Mechanical" means repeatable, means 
that we can do it time and again, every time, 
regardless. The idea of bio­mechanical is a 
contradiction in itself. "Bio" (life) is something that
is always new, non­repeatable at all! And this is the 
trick; you train yourself to the point when you can do 
it, no matter what, and ­­ then on the top of it you 
add inspiration and improvisation of the live theatre.

The body has to learn it through repetitions; the 
musicians and the athletes do it. The body has to 
remember it, not you. We call it ­­ skills. We call it 
physical memory: you remembers how to ride a bike, how 
to swim, how to walk ­­ you do not have to "remember" 
it. Biomechanics are supposed to FREE your for acting!

The same with the blocking and costumes, with lines and
light. The limitations are good for you!

Get it mechanical for the sake of the "bio" ­­ the part
which will be new every night.

Try.
Meyerhold's Biomechanics
"If the tip of the nose works, the whole body works."
V. E. Meyerhold

Biomechanics is an approach to actor training and to

theatre developed by Russian actor, director and teacher,
Vsevolod Meyerhold during the 1920’ and 1930’s. For
political reasons, Biomechanics was forced underground
after Meyerhold’s execution by the Soviet regime in 1940.
During the 1970’s it began to re-emerge semi-secretly.

In 1972 Moscow’s prestigious Theatre of Satire invited the

teacher of Biomechanics from Meyerhold’s own school,
Nikolai Kustov, to train a group of the Theatre’s young
actors. One of these was Gennadi Bogdanov. Mr.
Bogdanov has become one of the leading exponents of
the living tradition of Meyerhold’s work. Glasnost and the
subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union have brought Mr.
Bogdanov invitations to teach in the West-first in Europe,
then in the United States. Thus Meyerhold’s legacy has
become available for study here.

This approach, which Meyerhold developed over some

thirty-five years of experimentation and exploration as a
director and as a teacher, provides the acting student
with a comprehensive, detailed program for the
development of her/ his psycho-physical instrument.
Probably the most striking thing about training in
Biomechanics is the degree of integration between
"purely" physical training and the application of that
physical work to concerns specific to acting.

A course in Biomechanics begins with physical training.

But the purpose of that training is to forge the connection
between mind and body, to "teach the body to think." In
Biomechanics, even the simplest exercises that at first
glance might seem to be essentially traditional ones
designed solely to develop physical capacities such as
strength, agility, coordination, balance, flexibility and
endurance become-because of the thought process
involved-acting exercises. Thus while students run, jump
and work every muscle and joint in a dizzying array of
exercises during the initial physical training phase of the
work, they are already required to be continually aware of
their relationship to the space and to the other actors in
their "ensemble"-as well as their own "inner movement."

The training is highly systematic and sequential. Thus it

begins with fairly simple (although not necessarily easy!)
exercises. In time actors are asked to do a great variety of
exercises: work with objects such as balls and dowel rods,
leaps and rolls over platforms and up and down ramps
and stairs, and partner lifts and acrobatics. This phase of
the work culminates in the study of the Classical
Biomechanical Etudes. These are highly stylized
movement pieces which Meyerhold choreographed as
exercise material for his students.

The kinesthetic, spatial and relational awarenesses that

the student develops through training in Biomechanics
may, initially, be primarily in terms of the physical
demands posed by the exercises. But as the training
progresses, the actor’s moment to moment awareness
expands and deepens. As a result, Biomechanics provides
the student with a concrete methodology for addressing-
physically and through action-issues of acting that are
almost universally regarded as fundamental in the
Western tradition since Stanislavski. These include: "as if
for the first time," "give and take," "listening," "seeing,"
and "moment before."
All of this develops the actor’s sense of her/ his psycho-
physical being as a malleable instrument and an
awareness of space and rhythm as variables to be
explored in the creation of a role. The actor’s heightened
awarenesses and capacities are equally valuable for work
that is highly theatrical or absolutely realistic. As Igor
Ilynsky, one of Meyerhold’s finest actors, put it:
"Technique arms the imagination" (quoted in Meyerhold at
Work, Paul Schmidt).

EDWARD GORDON CRAIG, 1872-1966

Edward Gordon Craig was born in England on 16 January 1872, the son of the
actress Ellen Terry and the architect E. W. (Edward William) Godwin. In 1878, at
the age of six, he made his first stage appearance in a production ofOlivia, by W.
G. Wills. He studied at Southfield Park and Bradfield College, and was a member
of Henry Irving's theater company at the Lyceum Theatre in London beginning in
1889.

In 1893, Craig married May Gibson, and moved from London to Uxbridge. Under
the influence of the artists James Ferrier Pryde and William Nicholson, he learned
the art of wood-engraving, and began his career as a graphic designer. In 1893 he
directed and designed his first stage production: Alfred de Musset'sOn ne
badine pas avec l'amour. Around this time he also published a
magazine,The Page, consisting mostly of his own engravings, and in 1899
published a book of woodcuts with accompanying verses entitledGordon
Craig's Book of Penny Toys.

Craig's career as a stage designer continued to evolve as he collaborated with

Martin Shaw in 1901 and 1902 productions ofDido and Aeneas, The Mask
of Love and other plays. In 1904 Craig traveled to Berlin to work with the
Lessing Theatre, and in 1905 he published his most famous essay,The Art of
the Theatre, which was later expanded and republished asOn the Art of the
Theatre. In Germany he met the dancer Isadora Duncan, with whom he had a
brief but intense affair, ending in 1906. Duncan persuaded the theater producer
Konstantin Stanislavsky to invite Craig to Moscow, and there he designed an
important 1912 production ofHamlet. In 1913, Craig fulfilled a longtime dream
by founding his School for the Art of the Theatre in the Arena Goldoni in
Florence, however, it closed shortly thereafter at the outbreak of World War I.

Over his long career Craig became known as an important innovator in theater
design, popularizing a modern, minimalist style in contrast to the more
extravagant style of his mother's age, and his writings, artwork and design had an
enormous impact on twentieth-century theater. His publications include the
theatrical periodicalThe Mask (1908-1929), and the booksBooks and
Theatres (1925),Ellen Terry and Her Secret Self (1931),Nothing, or,
the Bookplate (1924),The Theatre - Advancing (1919) and his
autobiography,Index to the Story of My Days (1957). He spent the last
years of his life in the south of France, and died there in 1966.

Mime: The Art of Attitude

The School of Corporeal Mime, founded in 1985, today

coordinates three complex movement pedagogies; those of
Decroux, Lecoq and Feldenkrais. The study of corporeal mime is
obviously at the heart of this two-year course and is based on
the research and practice of a system developed by Etienne
Decroux ( 1898 - 1991). This French Master was the brilliant
founder of 20th Century Mime and, in part, of modern theatre.
Above all, the years between 1940 and 1970 are fundamental to
Decrouxian research, which was advanced by his most talented
pupils, the most memorable of whom are Barrault, Guyon and
Marceau. Directors such as Artaud, Copeau, Dullin, Craig and
many other artists stimulated Decroux to undertake his research
"ferociously" ( according to Gordon Craig's definition of Decroux's
method ) and for decades he worked to redefine the art of mime
in a modern context.
In both the actor and the pantomime artiste, gestures and facial
expressions predominate which are an uncontrolled use of the
face and hands. These are defined by Decroux as "instruments
of a lie" because they are bound to everyday habits.
Decroux began to analyse the body, deconstructing and
recomposing it and giving it a three-dimensional form, influenced
by classical Greek sculpture and by the plastic art of Auguste
Rodin.
Decroux's work was necessary to give mime the artistic
autonomy it has today, like other arts such as music or dance.
He did not develop his achievement in an abstract way, but in an
extremely concrete one, drawing daily inspiration from people,
jobs, situations and sport.
In corporeal mime the prevalence of the trunk over other parts
of the body is fundamental.
The actor, according to the Decrouxian model, becomes totally
expressive and is no longer awkwardly limited to the over-riding
and uncontrolled use of the face and hands.
As regards mime, one could speak not so much of the art of
movement, but the art of attitude determined by harmony and
achieved through the trunk and limbs, thought and form.
The art of sculpture tends to grasp attitude more than
movement. As Rodin says, " the movement of the body is the
passage from one attitude to another". For Decroux, attitude is
more important than gesture or actual movement and he defines
the latter as a succesion of attitudes.
Today Decroux's methodology is seen to be most modern
and truthful way for the forward-thinking actor who feels
the need to re-establish, starting from himself, a theatre
in which stylisation is both fundamental and vital .
As regards Jacques Lecoq (1921-1999) we are dealing with a
master who made an enormous contribution to the spread of
mime as a fundamental technique in an actor's training. Lecoq
proposed the study of mime or metamorphosis to indicate man's
innate tendency, as recognised by Aristotle, to imitate and to
know the world through a process of adaption, together with the
development of movement through the use of mask.
Added to this is the study of the relationship between mind and
body found in the methodology of Moshe Feldenkrais , the
Israeli physicist of Russian origin (1904 - 1984 ) through which is
possible to work towards a more profound awarness of
movement, the mechanisms of articulation and economy of
effort.
"Everything moves"
Jacques Lecoq (1921-1999) studied physical education and
worked as a physiotherapist during the Second World War. After
the war he worked as an actor and choreographer with Jean
Dasté's company.
Dasté, Jacques Copeau's son-in-law, introduced Lecoq to mask
work. Lecoq found his real role, that of a teacher, during the time
he spent with Jean Dasté. In 1948 he went in Italy, where he
lived and taught for eight years and during this period he met
Amleto Sartori. In 1956 he returned to Paris, where he opened
his school of Mime, Movement and Theatre.