Yat Malmgren

Who was Yat Malmgren?

Yat Malmgren was a Swedish dancer and acting teacher, born in Gävle, Sweden to Gustaf Sigurd Eriksson and Signe Emma Maria Malmgren.

Named Gert Olof Sigurd Eriksson, he changed his surname due to a strained relationship with his father, to Malmgren, which was his mother's maiden name. He became known as Yat rather than Gert when he lived in England because of difficulties with the Swedish pronunciation of the name.

Malmgren was a key figure at the Drama Centre London; his teaching approach drew from the applied psychology of movement developed by Rudolf Laban, with whom he collaborated. Malmgren's method of character development is concerned with a technique for expressing the inner state of a character through movement and is a synthesis of Laban's theory of movement expression, C.G. Jung's character types and key principles of acting established by Constantin Stanislavski.

There are no official published works on Malmgren's method. However, the system is described in detail in two PhD theses. The first, entitled "The Way of Transformation" is by Vladimir Mirodan, Principal of the Drama Centre, 2001-2011. This thesis is available online through the ETHoS system of the British library and can be found here. The second, entitled "The Knowing Body: Meaning and method in Yat Malmgren's actor training technique" is by Janys Hayes and is available online.