Biomechanics is learning acting "from outside in"...
In Acting 121 I show it by example. You know, the very first introduction -- your name, your other classes this semester...
"Are you acting?" I ask.
No? Why not? A little bit? Make it bigger, make very big! Scream it!
They laugh. They scream it. The mood is changed.
How about speaking while you are doing the push-ups?
You see, the movement change your speech pattern -- and your emotional state!
How about running around, while you introduce yourself to the class?
Different?
Get on the chair... Or even better -- on the table!
Did you notice the difference in your address?
Because your spacial relations to us are different....
This is "bio" and that is "mechanics" -- because we hadn't change anything inside, only the outside!
Actor, your body is the connection between your SELF and the WORLD. It belongs to two worlds. Make YOUR world visible. Your thoughts, feelings, visions... We call it visualization and physicalization.
Visualization is your aim, physicalization -- your means.
In order for you to connect with the world, your body must transform the space and time around it intro SUBJECTIVE time and space. It must be charged with the meaning, become a text to see, to read, to understand. You can do it, friend. Through MOTION.
Teach yourself to be a master of your body, because your body must be a master of time and space, that is the field you share with the public.
If you didn't read yet "Fundamentals of Acting" -- you should start with some Stanislavsky first. And after you are done with Biomechanics... return back!
Method -- Apollo
* This is not "How-To" book: you act the way you want. This is "What is What" notes. I write about laws and priciples that govern drama, stage, screen. The formulas in art are much more complex than in science, but the rules of composition are no less fundamental than basics of electricity or gravity. They are there, believe you in it or not. It's up to you what to do with life, it's your life, I simply write about what I know. How to apply the knowledge is your business. I am not teaching, but you are welcome to learn.
Please, read acting for the camera pages in advance: Actors in Film Directing, Film in BM and Camera in Method Acting -- before we have video-sessions in class! You have to have your monologues shots-broken (Actor's Text).
Meyerhold: "In order to rescue the Russian theatre from its own desire to become the servant of literature, we must spare nothing to restore to the stage the cult of the cabotinage (stylised character from Comedia) in its broadest sense." (As cited Symons: 63)
"(T)he grotesque, advancing beyond stylisation, is a method of synthesising rather than analysing. In turning away details, the grotesque recreates the fullness of life." (Symons: 65-6).
Central to this is the idea that life represented in the theatre—when one considers this question — is not to be found in naturalism but in abstraction.
I got a new domain meyerhold.us and I will be working on the BM pages (THR221 Intermediate Acting) @ my Yahoo website. Anatoly: 2-1-2004
filmact.txt
Vsevolod Meyerhold (new)
I can't believe it! You are still here! Are you indeed reading the book? Allright, I won't say a word, it's your life, kid, and this is a free country!
Intro to BioMX for ACTORS & DIRECTORS
2005: You heard it many times and I said it many times "Acting is Re-acting"! If only I can find the way to explain it, to demonstrate! Reacting to visible and invisible, imaginary and real, past and future "given circumstantes"... You know, the "situaion"? [Webster] a condition, fact, or event accompanying, conditioning, or determining another...
I drive to the campus and I think -- this is act; I drive. But do I act, or re-act? I react to my schedual, road signs, traffic lights, other cars, road conditions, weather, my mood -- is there anything besides "reacting"? I hope not -- the police would call it an accident, the falior to react!
[webster] an essential or inevitable concomitant...
I park my car (I can't just leave it on the street -- reaction to the UAF police and their parking tickets). Even the parking lot is a reaction and the path to the Arts Buiding and the door, the lights, the steps! The stage is a reaction to the house, the seats...
It's time to start my rehearsals. They wait for me -- and I react. I direct them.
I direct The Taming of the Shrew. I react to Shakespeare and my own life with my marriage(s), I react to the news about the internet match-making, react to the kids, my cast, with their love stories, wishes, hopes, pain...
"Get upstage!" I'm yelling. I react to the space, to the set, which they see yet, but I know how it should look like, the designer's reaction to the play, me, the director, our theatre space, our life in America, our lives... How do I do it, the directing? I do not do anything. This is the secret -- do not act (zen), do the minimum. Do nothing. "I don't understand you!" I scream.
I react. There will be a spectator in my seat -- and he won't get the line (I know this line, he doesn't). I react because I am alive, the actors are alive and this is a live show! Reacting is very mechanical. You push something -- and it falls. When you push people, thoughts, emotions -- it's bio-mechanical.
Circumstances [webster]: the sum of essential and environmental factors (as of an event or situation).
If you live, you react. If you don't react, you are dead. Acting is being alive.
Three hours later I get to my car, I walk down the hill, it's dark. No Northern Lights tonight. No reaction. I get the keys (reaction to the car and need to get home). My car reacts to the key (me). Even the stupid machine knows that acting is reacting! We drive, me and the car, the biomechanical unity...
The structure of "BioMX Theory for Actors" was the most difficult task: how to organize the lessons? I keep changing it every time I teach a class. If you are familiar with Method and Stanislavsky, maybe it's better to see what was missing in it, and then you would understand the NEED for a different approach to acting, the way Meyerhold saw it. (Read a short review on Meyerhold to get a historical record of the period).
Stanislavsky believed that we can manipulate our feelings, Meyerhold believed in BodyMachine. Biomechanics (BM) saw actor as a worker and stage set as a maching for acting. Meyerhold was influenced by Taylorism and the concept of the efficient work. In that sense BM is to cut out everything that does not belong to ACT. You can see every movement of actor as a dance of drama...
Let me tell you about the problems I haven't mentioned in the Preface. First, a question. Is it possible to speak about BM without talking about Method?
Meyerhold (M) was very educated. Kabuki, Commedia, Stanislavsky -- is it possible to understand his intentions without "some" knowledge of the history of theatre? Honestly, do they really need Biomechanics or Method, if they want to get a part? Why should you bother to study it, if all what you want is a success through entertainment market? He and Stanislavsky developed their "theories" not for actors to make good living. Is it possible that I missing the point all together?
You see, I have to work on Theatre Theory pages as well (and I will keep them in THR directory). How else can I speak about Acting Theories? And before I know -- I have to go back to the fundamentals of aesthetics (Aristotle and etc.)
It gets more and more complex...
Let them speak, yes, the masters, the two -- Stanislavsky and Meyerhold. Let them answer your questions. After all we are talking about their ideas, not mine!
Silence.
They are agreed.
Here is a simple table to compare the two techniques:
The Viewpoints Book : A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition by Anne Bogart -- The Viewpoints is a technique of improvisation that grew out of the postmodern dance world. It was first articulated by choreographer Mary Overlie, who broke down the two dominant issues performers deal with-space and time-into six categories. Since that time, directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau have expanded her notions and adapted them for actors to function together spontaneously and intuitively and to generate bold, theatrical work.
The Viewpoints are a set of names given to certain principles of movement through time and space-they constitute a language for talking about what happens on stage. Coupling this with Composition, which is the practice of selecting and arranging the separate components of theatrical language into a cohesive work of art, provides theatre artists with an important new tool for creating and understanding their art form.
Primarily intended for the many theatre artists who, in the last several years, have become intrigued with Viewpoints yet have had no single source to refer to in their investigations. It can also be used by anyone with a general interest in collaboration and the creative process, whether in art, business or daily life.
Anne Bogart is Artistic Director of the SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is the recipient of two OBIE Awards and a Bessie Award, and is an associate professor at Columbia University. Her recent works include Alice's Adventures; Bobrauschenbergamerica; Small Lives, Big Dreams; Marathon Dancing; and The Baltimore Waltz.
Tina Landau, noted director and playwright, whose original work includes Space (Time magazine 10 Best), Dream True (with composer Ricky Ian Gordon) and Floyd Collins (with composer Adam Guettel), which received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, an OBIE Award and seven Drama Desk nominations. She has been an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company since 1997.
Think about it: in Fundamental of Acting THR121 I have to have minimum 18 students and I have less than one hour to work with them. Count it -- if I work with each of them 10 minutes, it's 180 minutes (3 hours). Can we make three minutes each?
So, I skip most of them, because "working" means several rounds. Meaning, that somebody who did his or her homework won't be seen. Great! And I need to review the previous class, I need to introduce the new topics, I need to...
That is why and how how my webpages came into existance. To save the time in class. I have no time for lectures, I need to work with each student in class!
See the applications of BM in my shows: WWWilde (Importance of Being Earnest), 12th Night and next -- Don Juan (Moliere 2003). Mostly for movement and comedy, not the style. Very difficult (impossible) to introduce BM, while rehearsing the show. It's even difficult in class! One reason (I spoke about it before), the true need for BM begins only if you know Method and its limitations. Second, the training: not just the knowledge, but exercises! Maybe it should be taught under strickly "movement classes"? Third, the real use of BM is connected with the concrete stage situations; therefore actors and directors must have workable knowledge of BM.
Also, the terminology! I listed some major definitions in Glossary, but it's not enough -- each new idea needs its own page. For example "Mass of the Event" (I took it from the filmmaking theory) -- how does movement create it? Well, we need to talk about space and time, if we mentioned MOVEMENT. It's not the same as "Depth of the Event"... And what is this STAGE EVENT to start with?
Too much theory...
So, often I find myself simply screaming -- Bigger!
Bigger what?
One example (from Dangerous Liaisons), the Valmont's first entrance. We already had the dramatic exposition (the women gossiped about him), now is the time to do visual. Brain, do you know any opera aria? Figaro? Fine (was written later, but who cares at the moment). Start singing it off stage, please.
We do it. Better, but still is not big enough. The appearence of the servant to announce Valmont helps, too. And the reaction of ladies to singing helps. Brian, please, bring your hat and throw it back to the servant, without looking. Two of you, rehearse it later. And, Brian, please dance your way to the table, before kissing hands...
Big enough?
How can I enlarge the mass of the event further?
All right, think about the end, when Valmont dies -- can I borrow something from there for the beginning?
VOICE. I like this kid...
I looked around but didn't see anybody. And it was said in Russian, mind you! I guess, I'm tired...
VOICE. Ask him to go around before he get to the ladies. Let him to have the whole stage. You must establish that Valmont is playing Valmont. Understand?
I understand, but I didn't understand where this voice is coiming from. What the hell is that!
- I understand, I said in Russian, too.
VOICE. Good. Asked the women look at each other, when they hear the voice. First, in his direction, then -- at each other, and again in the direction of the voice, stage right. Who is the boy, who plays the servant?
- Who are you? I asked.
VOICE. Who do you think I am? You talking about me and you think I can keep my silence? No way! No, Anatoly, I've been watching you, don't you know? Guess!
I didn't have to, Master was standing behind the curtain, stage left....
