FutureLearn: Physical Theatre, Exploring the Slap

This FutureLearn training course is all about physical theatre and one of the seminal forces in modern theatre, Russian theatrical producer, director, and actor Vsevolod Yemilyevich Meyerhold.

Expertly created by Jonathan Pitches, Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Leeds, it is aimed at students making the transition to university or the work place.

This is a four hour online course spread over two weeks, with a rich variety of activities including watching videos, painstaking animations, joining discussions, taking quizzes, reading articles and completing exercises.

The introduction includes a fabulous interactive timeline which explores the events of the early 20th Century and the pivotal events of the Russian Revolution. We learn that Meyerhold invented the technique of biomechanics, a very precise and physical approach to actor training, and this was the vehicle for realising the Theatre of Stylisation.