Bella
Merlin
Bella Merlin trained as an actor at the University of Birmingham (BA Hons in Drama and Theatre Arts, with a Distinction in Acting, First Class), with postgraduate diplomas in Acting from the Guildford School of Acting (UK) and the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. She has been acting in theatre, television, radio, and film for 20 years. Most recent theatre roles have included Susannah Cibber in A Laughing Matter (Out of Joint/Royal National Theatre), the critically acclaimed performance of Second Bereaved Mother in David Hare’s verbatim play The Permanent Way (Out of Joint/Royal National Theatre), and Pimple in She Stoops to Conquer (Out of Joint/Royal National Theatre); the International Judge, Barbara Williams in Sarajevo Story at the Lyric Hammersmith with the multi-media, Lightwork Theatre Company; Brecht’s Puntila and his Man Matti (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry); and Kennedy in Ron Hutchinson’s new play Topless Mum!!! (the Tobacco Factory, Bristol). Other roles have included Celia in As You Like It; Masha in The Seagull; the Governess in The Turn of the Screw; Antonia in Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!; the murderess, Florence Bravo in the real-life story The Malvern Widow, Lulu in Lulu and Josie in Steaming. She has made numerous television and radio appearances for the BBC – most recently as the French teacher, Mademoiselle Boyce, in Life in the Underpass – as well as an opera-film for Channel 4 based on Wedekind’s nightmare cabaret The Empress of Newfoundland.
In addition to articles ranging from Practice as Research in Performance, a ‘Riposte to David Mamet’s True and False and the teaching of acting in the 21st-century, publications include the following books: The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit (2007), With The Rogue’s Company: Henry IV at the National Theatre (2005), Konstantin Staniskavsky: Routledge Performance Practitioners (2003), Beyond Stanislavsky: The Psycho-Physical Approach to Actor-Training (2001). She also co-edited with Russian scholar, Andrei Kirillov, the autobiographies of Michael Chekhov, The Path of the Actor. She is currently under contract to Routledge for a book in their acclaimed The Basics series specifically aimed at university and conservatory students, Acting: The Basics (forthcoming 2009).
Directing work includes: Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, Ostrovosky’s Innocent as Charged and Wedekind’s Spring Awakening at the University of Birmingham, and Three Sisters at Central School of Speech and Drama, UK.
She has taught psycho-physical approaches to acting (featuring elements of Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov, Grotowski and Laban) in Australia, Colombia, across the UK, Japan, Poland, Russia and the US, to actors, directors, students and teachers. She has been actively involved with the Royal National Theatre’s Education and Platforms Departments for several years.
Other areas of research include: the eroticization of identity and the performance of biography involving her research into the life and autobiography of German actress, Tilly Wedekind. And: the creation of dramatic dialogue through the implementation of Transactional Analysis.
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