Skip to 0 minutes and 11 seconds I’m Jonathan Pitches, I’m chair in theatre and performance in the School of Performance in Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds. Actor training has proliferated all over the world in the last century, but our focus is going to be on the Russian tradition of actor training.
Skip to 0 minutes and 28 seconds It’s designed to give you a taste of the techniques of the master director, Vsevolod Meyerhold. And most importantly, it’s about the relationship of those techniques, to the history and politics of the region at the time.
Skip to 0 minutes and 44 seconds By studying on this course, you’ll learn about the rich tradition of actor training, about the Russian tradition, and about how Meyerhold actually taught biomechanics at the time. You’ll also get to practise some of his specific techniques, including actions taken from one of his etudes, or physical studies. Finally, you’ll document that experience, learning how to reflect on the relationship between the physical and the historical. It’s a very dynamic way of exploring history. You might call it history through the body. The course isn’t intended as a training in itself, but as a taster of the practical techniques which have inspired actors in the 1920s and is still inspiring theatre directors and actors today.
Skip to 1 minute and 28 seconds I’ve been teaching and researching actor training for almost 20 years now. And each year, I’m more and more fascinated about how the practicalities of the technique are embedded in the history of politics and ideology of a particular country. I’m lucky enough to be working in the perfect environment here at the stage@leeds to explore this relationship. I’d like you to join with me on this course to explore the theory and practice of physical actor training.
