Gennady Ostrenko

Gennadiy Ostrenko was a stage designer and movement instructor in performance "Lullaby for Hamlet" created in the framework of the international collaboration between Stavropol Academic Drama Theatre named after M. Lermontov, "ArtUniverse" Agency and "IUGTE".

In 2015, he was invited to take part in the great project between Saratov Kiselev Youth Theatre, “IUGTE” and “ArtUniverse” in a position of a movement director during the creation of a performance "Love and Death in Verona" based on "Romeo and Juliet" by Shakespeare.

Ostrenko's passion in movement has resulted in newly designed program for performers - "Theatre Biomechanics". This program is mainly based on Vsevolod Meyerhold investigations of techniques for performers training and rehearsals. "Theatre Biomechanics" stands in opposition to Stanislavskian tradition of acting, despite the fact that Meyerhold was a student of Stanislavsky. "Theatre Biomechanics" brought movement in theatre of 1920s, campaigning against naturalistic theatre. Meyerhold believed movement to be the most powerful form of theatrical expression. In creation of this approach, Meyerhold investigated and took inspiration out of traditional theatres, such as Chinese theatre, Commedia dell'arte, classical Japanese dance-drama and others. Simple idea of "body is a machine and actor is machinist" gave rise to many modern techniques and has a lot of followers, even nowadays.

Ostrenko based his program on elements of classical Meyerhold's biomechanics, which go in conjuction with contemporary movement training for performers.

Another important part of Gennadyi's teaching approach is improvisation. Improvisation is an important part of training for actors, as it is related not only to body work, but also to work with imagination and images. Meyerhold said: "A work of art can influence only through the imagination. Therefore it must constantly stir the imagination". One of the ways to train imagination is to improvise. Improvisation, also has facilitated Gennadiy's use of biomechanics, an acting system which relied on motion rather than language and intellectual understanding.

Gennadyi said: “My professional interest lies in the researching the training based on dance and contact improvisation as it is the constant work with your body, you constantly explore new body possibilities and work with partner. At some moment, your intellectual mind just switches off and you start just to understand everything without words. After several years of practicing contact improvisation I discovered that just one touch of your partner can give you the whole history of partner’s life, full of emotional content. The most important thing for me in performance practices is work with a partner/s, feeling and communicating with partner, even without words… Words could not pass the information about you, your life and your emotions, as it does a dance. This is what I am passionate about…”.