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Key Historical Influences and Practitioners of Physical theatre

It is difficult to pin down the exact origins of physical theatre as it has grown and developed over many years, through many different practitioners and art forms. Vsevolod Meyerhold Perhaps the first person to explore the idea of physical theatre was Vsevolod Meyerhold who was a student of Stanislavsky. He disagreed with several of Stanislavskys main philosophies; such as the actors having to believe that the space they were performing in was real and that the audience were non-existent. Meyerhold thought that the very essence of theatre was the relationship between the audience and the actors and he sought to extract a reaction from audiences. He called this relationship between actor and spectator the fourth dimension and believed it to be vital for a performance. Biomechanics is a system of actor training introduced in the early 1920s by Meyerhold. Through this training, he sought to develop actors whose work would convey a geometric precision, an acrobatic lightness and agility, and a rhythmic, musical sensibility. The technique emphasized the development of skills from traditional, non-realistic theatrical sources such as commedia dellarte, Russian folk theatre, circus performance, Japanese Kabuki theatre, east-Asian dance, and pantomime. The training is intensive and physical. He also spent a lot of time exploring improvisation with his students and many of their productions would be devised pieces created from improvised moments. During the improvisation, Meyerhold would tell his students to investigate what was happening to their bodies and how this affected how they felt as a character.

Antonin Artaud One of the early practitioners of physical theatre was Antonin Artaud. His ideas included total theatre, wherein actors appeal to all of the audiences senses; he rejected the idea of the proscenium arch and directed his actors to use the space in different ways. It was also his view that in performance, all expression was physical expression. These philosophies set the way for many future practitioners. Jacques Lecoq Jacques Lecoq is regarded as one of the twentieth century's most influential teachers of the physical art of acting. During World War II he began exploring gymnastics, mime, movement and dance with a group who used performance to express their opposition to the German occupation of France. He later studied and was influenced by masked performance, Japanese Noh theatre, Commedia dell'arte as well as the tradition of masked chorus work developed in Ancient Greek tragedy. He opened his own school, the Ecole Internationale de Mime et de Theatre in France. Lecoq's work and research has mainly been disseminated through the training he has conducted with the many students who have attended his classes and demonstrations overseas or his classes at his school in Paris. His book, The Moving Body (Translated and published in English posthumously in 2000) outlines a number of his philosophies and approaches. His training is very practical and very specific for each student because every actor's body and mind has accumulated different tensions and conditioned responses. Lecoq's training methods therefore focus on releasing preconditioned views of acting and bringing an actor's attention back to playing.' The

strong emphasis on improvisational activity at his school reinforces the central significance of play and students are introduced to physical exercises, masks and popular theatre that reinforce the distinction between playing and being. His research and analysis of masks, movement, body language and gesture has had a huge impact on the development of contemporary theatre and his work has popularised genres such as the clown, bouffons, commedia dell'arte, tragedy, and melodrama. Mime and theatre schools have been very influential in the world of physical theatre as they have produced pioneering practitioners who have each developed unique styles of physical theatre. Steven Berkoff Berkoff is a British practitioner whose career has spanned from 1965 to today. He is arguably the most famous contemporary theatre practitioner of the last 40 years. His style incorporates actors using their whole bodies, including facial expressions to tell the audience the story, and actors using their bodies to create sound effects. He is also a great believer in Le Coqs seven states of tension, in this exercise the actor will move through seven different body states, starting off as exhausted and lazy and finishing in petrified trepidation.

His physical, exaggerated style of theatre is both popular and controversial, defying the norms of naturalistic theatre. Berkoffian actors use techniques such as background movement, repetitive actions, and mime to explore further the ways in which Berkoff approaches exchanges between two characters. Berkoffs approach to theatre is incredibly physical. Kenneth Reah titled an article, Like smoking, naturalism can damage your health which sums up Berkoffs approach to naturalistic theatre. His style is non-naturalistic, often focusing on movement rather that voice. According to him, the only purpose of a script is to help minimalise and physicalise the story; stripping it down to its most basic components.
Styles The style of physical theatre can differ widely between companies, but generally in a performance of physical theatre one might expect to see: elements of contemporary dance (fluid, graceful movements), detailed mime, as there are often limited props in physical theatre performances, complex lifts sometimes with several people, acrobatics and gymnastics and many fast-paced moments where actors will be stretching the limits of their bodies. In todays world of contemporary theatre, there are many practitioners of physical work, each bringing different styles and ideas to the art form. A lot of companies nowadays will devise their own pieces or plays; others will physicalize an older text. Famous Companies Famous companies include Frantic Assembly, who are famous for their energetic and precise movement, mixed with text, DV8 whose eloquent movement style draws inspiration from contemporary dance and PUSH who strive to bring communities together and touch people emotionally through their strong movement. These are just a few companies in the modern world of physical theatre. The style is constantly growing and evolving as new practitioners and companies explore different ideas and techniques in order to create exciting, revolutionary theatre. Source: http://www.iwasarat.co.uk/schools-and-families/physical-theatre/