I'll be exploring the different methods founded by practitioners across history.
Today, it's MEYERHOLD.
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| The Meyer of Movement Town |
Vsevolod Meyerhold began his career as a student of Stanislavski. I'll get round to good ol' Stan the man in another post but the main gist of his work was naturalism, representation and realism - he wanted to make the acting as real as possible by starting from within the actor and creating a character from one's own experience and emotions.
I'm a fan of this approach as I feel it can elicit a more powerful response. If something is true and raw, we can probably relate to it more than if everything onstage is a metaphor. If there's a knife in the scene, we should see a knife, not a piece of paper reading 'knife'. That's one way I look at it, anyway.
After graduating, Meyerhold was invited back to work with Stanislavski, but not to work on this realism acting. On quite the contrary, Meyerhold investigated non-naturalistic styles, eventually inventing his own principle that creates a character not from the inside but the outside of the actor, using movement as the main tool.
Physical theatre can be impressive when done well but certainly in terms of performing, it's not my favourite style. I'm no dancer (seriously) but then again, that's not what Meyerhold aimed to do. Before I waffle on, I'll explain what his principle was really about...
Between 1913 and 1922, Meyerhold created what he called 'biomechanics', a strict method that preached purposeful movement. Essentially, every action needed to happen for a reason.
Now this is something I understand and have experience with. Often, if movement and staging is precisely planned, everything will work more fluently in a scene. This said, I see the staging as one of the many aspects amongst perhaps more important factors. Unlike me though, Meyerhold believed the physical theatre expression was the most powerful aspect. He was continuously inspired by circus and pantomime and he liked to train his actors in gymnastics and ballet amongst others. External movement and feeling was his starting point: the opposite of Stanislavski.
Now this all seems well and good, but there's a difference between focusing on movement alone (like in dance) and applying it to acting. This is where I don't think it's very practical and my uncertainty on non-naturalistic methods arises.
From about 19 and a half minutes in this next clip, the sheer absurdity of Meyerhold's method in practice is clear. I'll let you have a look and make you formulate an opinion before moving on to see mine.
So, assuming you've watched a bit of it (hopefully the somersault section @ 21:22), you'll see why I find it overwhelmingly amusing. It does seem like comedy because of just how abstract it is but, hey, that's the point of non-naturalism: to provide an alternative view on how to portray a scene. And how very alternative 21:56 is.
All humour aside, it's certainly a direct method of showing character motivation; it's easier to display wants and desires whilst the characters talk as they can form it with their bodies - clapping and stomping and bending and crawling and... sliding and somersaulting... and all sorts of physical expression elements that Meyerhold lived by.
To conclude, Meyerhold's 'biomechanics' may work in theory but in practice, whilst certainly alternate and non-naturalistic, they can't fit a serious scene as they don't elicit the same emotions in the viewer. Or at least for me. Maybe someone will find the above example a riveting example of divorce and torment in the twentieth century. It just doesn't work for me.
So, I'm hoping to find some better acting styles over the coming weeks that can go into the currently barren rank chart, where Meyerhold is the only member.
-BEST-
MEYERHOLD - 'BIOMECHANICS'
-WORST-
I have a feeling that's the closest biomechanics will get to the top of this chart, but each to their own.
