Biomechanics in Lockdown

Written from the perspective of the Lead Educator and designer of the Massive Open Online course (MOOC), Physical Theatre: Meyerhold and Biomechanics (and its variants), this essay harnesses action research data from some 30,000 students who have studied Meyerhold’s practice online since 2014. It addresses the contradictions and challenges of digital training drawing on the voices of students who have experienced the course and educators who have moderated their learning. It will lay out some of the principles of embodied history which underpin the course, and it will assess the relationship between online learning design and the student experience.

Meyerhold’s Biomechanics offers a particularly rich case study to address broader aspects of digital learning. As a form of training originally conceived as a theatrical response to the post-Revolutionary wave of new technology and productivity, how has it adapted to the technological context of the 21st century? As a pedagogy so deeply entrenched in vertical traditions of hands-on instruction and master-pupil dynamics, can it retain its integrity spread across the world wide web in a diffuse and distributed form of democratised learning? These questions are considered through three themes: i) training the trainers, ii) experiential embodiment, iii) the rhythm of online pedagogy, before a conclusion returns to the balance of mastery and collectivity in this form of learning.