past productions:

Meyerhold’s Theatrical Biomechanics, 2004

Sinéad was awarded a commission from the Chisenhale Dance Space in December 2004 to curate a workshop for actors and dancers in Meyerhold’s Theatrical Biomechanics. She invited Kathleen Baum, a leading teacher from the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Institute in USA to teach the technique.

Biomechanics is a rigorous physical training designed to forge the connection between the performer’s mind and body, to ‘teach the body to think.’ The goal of training in Biomechanics is the harmonious development and integration of all aspects of the actor’s psycho-physical being: kinaesthetic, spatial and relational.

Vsevolod Meyerhold, a renowned actor and director with the Moscow Theatre, regarded movement, gesture, space and rhythm, as the primary elements of the ‘language of theatre. He dreamed of retheatricalizing the theatre, of creating a theatre that would give its audience truthful images of life but that wouldn’t seek to imitate or copy life, a theatre capable of revealing ‘inner dialogue by means of the music of plastic movement.’ Meyerhold’s work over three decades resulted in his system of Theatrical Biomechanics.

Kathleen Baum has studied extensively with Gennadi Bogdanov, the leading Russian exponent of the living tradition of Meyerhold’s work. She has long worked as a performer with Bogdanov in Russia, Germany and Switzerland. Since 1998 Kathleen has been exploring the symbiosis between Biomechanics and the Alexander Technique.  She teaches at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Centre, Connecticut, USA and at the Syracuse University Drama Department where she received the Meredith Award for excellence in teaching in 2001-2002.

Sinéad has studied biomechanics with Nicolai Karpov (GITIS, Russia), Gennadi Bogdanov and Kathleen Baum.