The Meyerhold Approach.

For 37 years, Meyerhold worked tirelessly in the studio experimenting and developing an acting style that would bring together genuine emotion and sharp characterisation while embracing all modes of performance, including farce, pantomime, tragedy, melodrama and naturalism. The ability to perform each of these styles demanded that the actor have complete mastery of his or her body.

Meyerhold emphasised that an actor must formulate a physical relationship with the text the way a musician does with an instrument; one can not separate the physicality of what one is seeing and what one is hearing. The actor must also acquire an internal mirror in which he or she can simultaneously be the creator of the material and the material itself. Drawing upon his influences--Commedia dell'arte, Chinese and Japanese theatre, clowning and circus acrobatics--Meyerhold developed a style of training that exercised both the brain and the body simultaneously.

What Are Biomechanics?

Biomechanics is not an all-in-one system of acting, but rather a rigourous training technique.
It is a means of refining the actor's (1) balance and physical control, (2) rhythmic awareness, both temporal and physical and (3) responsiveness to one's partners, audience and external stimuli. It is the application of music and rhythm to the text and movement on the stage. The actor must use physicality to fill the rhythms of any given moment. A mastery of Biomechanics will provide the actor with a heightened sense of kinaesthetic response while developing an expressive vocabulary that will better allow him or her to follow the commands of the director.

The Ètude.

In addition to the Biomechanical exercises, Meyerhold developed 16 études: a limited and precise system that encompasses all the fundamental expressive situations an actor will encounter. The étude tells a simple story of action through a series of prescribed stylised movements in a certain sequence ranging in complexity from simple movements (balancing on one's toes) to more co-ordinated actions for individuals and pairs. Each movement is executed precisely, without any superfluous adjustments.
Training in the études develops a springiness, balance, and an understanding of how the smallest gesture of the hand has an effect of the entire body.