What he offered in his school was, in a word, preparation of the body, of the voice, of the art of collaboration (which the theatre is the most extreme artistic representation of), and of the imagination. He only posed questions. To release the imagination. Nothing! No, he replied vaguely, but don't you find it interesting?. 7 TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES THESIS | Forename Surname The human body can be divided roughly; feet . Its nice to have the opportunity to say thanks to him. This is the first time in ten years he's ever spoken to me on the phone, usually he greets me and then passes me to Fay with, Je te passe ma femme. We talk about a project for 2001 about the Body. Last year, when I saw him in his house in the Haute Savoie, under the shadow of Mont Blanc, to talk about a book we wished to make, he said with typical modesty: I am nobody, I am only a neutral point through which you must pass in order to better articulate your own theatrical voice. We then bid our farewells and went our separate ways. The following week, after working on the exercise again several hours a day, with this "adjustment", you bring the exercise back to the workshop. Your email address will not be published. The Saint-Denis teaching stresses the actor's service to text, and uses only character masks, though some of Teaching it well, no doubt, but not really following the man himself who would have entered the new millennium with leaps and bounds of the creative and poetic mind to find new challenges with which to confront his students and his admirers. Throughout a performance, tension states can change, and one can play with the dynamics and transitions from one state to the next. It developed the red hues of claret, lots of dense, vigorous, athletic humps from all the ferreting around, with a blooming fullness, dilations and overflowings from his constant efforts to update the scents of the day. In this country, the London-based Theatre de Complicite is probably the best-known exponent of his ideas. It was me. He taught us accessible theatre; sometimes he would wonder if his sister would understand the piece, and, if not, it needed to be clearer. [4], In collaboration with the architect Krikor Belekian he also set up le Laboratoire d'tude du Mouvement (Laboratory for the study of movement; L.E.M. And if a machine couldn't stop him, what chance had an open fly? I cannot claim to be either a pupil or a disciple. During dinner we puzzle over a phrase that Fay found difficult to translate: Le geste c'est le depot d'une emotion. The key word is 'depot deposit? Jacques Lecoq obituary Martin Esslin Fri 22 Jan 1999 21.18 EST Jacques Lecoq, who has died aged 77, was one of the greatest mime artists and perhaps more importantly one of the finest. Allow opportunities to react and respond to the elements around you to drive movement. Its the whole groups responsibility: if one person falls, the whole group falls. He emphasized the importance of finding the most fitting voice for each actor's mask, and he believed that there was room for reinvention and play in regards to traditional commedia dell'arte conventions. Jacques Lecoq. With mask, it is key to keep just one motor/situation/objective, such as a prisoner trying to gain the keys from the police officer and push the situation beyond the limits of reality. (Lecoq: 1997:34) When the performer moves too quickly through a situation, or pushes away potential opportunities, the idea of Lecoqs to demonstrate how theatre prolongs life by transposing it. is broken. The body makes natural shapes especially in groups, where three people form a triangle, four people a square, and five or more a circle. Allison Cologna and Catherine Marmier write: Those of us lucky enough to have trained with this brilliant theatre practitioner and teacher at his school in Paris sense the enormity of this great loss to the theatrical world. But for him, perspective had nothing to do with distance. But the most important element, which we forget at our peril, is that he was constantly changing, developing, researching, trying out new directions and setting new goals. This make-up projects the face of Everyman during the performance, which enables all members of the audience to identify with the situation. Lecoq thus placed paramount importance on insuring a thorough understanding of a performance's message on the part of its spectators. Repeat and then switch sides. Whilst working on the techniques of practitioner Jacques Lecoq, paying particular focus to working with mask, it is clear that something can come from almost nothing. He was the antithesis of what is mundane, straight and careerist theatre. Sit down. If two twigs fall into the water they echo each other's movements., Fay asked if that was in his book (Le Corps Poetique). I can't thank you, but I see you surviving time, Jacques; longer than the ideas that others have about you. But Lecoq was no period purist. This is the Bird position. But acting is not natural, and actors always have to give up some of the habits they have accumulated. Once done, you can continue to the main exercises. [2], He was first introduced to theatre and acting by Jacques Copeau's daughter Marie-Hlne and her husband, Jean Dast. If you look at theatre around the world now, probably forty percent of it is directly or indirectly influenced by him. Look at things. Focus can be passed around through eye contact, if the one performer at stage right focused on the ensemble and the ensemble focused their attention outward, then the ensemble would take focus. Lecoq had forgotten to do up his flies. The objects can do a lot for us, she reminded, highlighting the fact that a huge budget may not be necessary for carrying off a new work. In working with mask it also became very clear that everything is to be expressed externally, rather than internally. Lecoq's school in Paris attracted an elite of acting students from all parts of the world. Try some swings. His approach was based on clowning, the use of masks and improvisation. With a wide variety of ingredients such as tension states, rhythm, de-construction, major and minor, le jeu/the game, and clocking/sharing with the . Lecoq's Technique and Mask. In order to convey a genuine naturalness in any role, he believed assurance in voice and physicality could be achieved through simplification of intention and objective. He received teaching degrees in swimming and athletics. The clown is that part of you that fails again and again (tripping on the banana peel, getting hit in the face with the cream pie) but will come back the next day with a beautiful, irrational faith that things will turn out different. Later we watched the 'autocours'. Lecoq also rejected the idea of mime as a rigidly codified sign language, where every gesture had a defined meaning. . I was able to rediscover the world afresh; even the simple action of walking became a meditation on the dynamics of movement. For example, if the game is paused while two students are having a conversation, they must immediately start moving and sounding like the same animal (e.g. To actors he showed how the great movements of nature correspond to the most intimate movements of human emotion. Their physicality was efficient and purposeful, but also reflected meaning and direction, and a sense of personality or character. We were all rather baffled by this claim and looked forward to solving the five-year mystery. What he offered in his school was, in a word, preparation of the body, of the voice, of the art of collaboration (which the theatre is the most extreme artistic representative of), and of the imagination. Think of a cat sitting comfortably on a wall, ready to leap up if a bird comes near. flopped over a tall stool, There are moments when the errors or mistakes give us an opportunity for more breath and movement. Don't let your body twist up while you're doing this; face the front throughout. He is a physical theater performer, who . Similarly to Jerzy Grotowski, Jacques Lecoq heavily focused on "the human body in movement and a commitment to investigating and encouraging the athleticism, agility and physical awareness of the creative actor" (Evan, 2012, 164). As students stayed with Lecoq's school longer, he accomplished this through teaching in the style of ''via negativa'', also known as the negative way. [5] He has shifted the balance of responsibility for creativity back to the actors, a creativity that is born out of the interactions within a group rather than the solitary author or director. During the 1968 student uprisings in Paris, the pupils asked to teach themselves. He was much better than me at moving his arms and body around. Instead, the physicality of an animal is used as inspiration for the actor to explore new rhythms and dynamics of movement, committing themselves to concentration, commitment, and the powers of their imagination. [4] The aim was that the neutral mask can aid an awareness of physical mannerisms as they get greatly emphasized to an audience whilst wearing the mask. Play with them. This unique face to face one-week course in Santorini, Greece, shows you how to use drama games and strategies to engage your students in learning across the curriculum. It is very rare, particularly in this day and age, to find a true master and teacher someone who enables his students to see the infinite possibilities that lie before them, and to equip them with the tools to realise the incredible potential of those possibilities. The breathing should be in tune with your natural speaking voice. This led to Lecoq being asked to lecture at faculties of architecture on aspects of theatrical space. Who is it? I cry gleefully. Lecoq's guiding principle was 'Tout bouge' - everything moves. He taught us respect and awe for the potential of the actor. Many things were said during this nicely informal meeting. Other elements of the course focus on the work of Jacques Lecoq, whose theatre school in Paris remains one of the best in the world; the drama theorist and former director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Michel Saint-Denis; Sigurd Leeder, a German dancer who used eukinetics in his teaching and choreography; and the ideas of Jerzy Grotowski. Indeed, animal behavior and movement mirrored this simplicity. Like an architect, his analysis of how the human body functions in space was linked directly to how we might deconstruct drama itself. Parfait! And he leaves. This vision was both radical and practical. Following many of his exercise sessions, Lecoq found it important to think back on his period of exercise and the various routines that he had performed and felt that doing so bettered his mind and emotions. I did not know him well. As part of his training at the Lecoq School, Lecoq created a list of 20 basic movements that he believed were essential for actors to master, including walking, running, jumping, crawling, and others. However, before Lecoq came to view the body as a vehicle of artistic expression, he had trained extensively as a sportsman, in particular in athletics and swimming. and starts a naughty tap-tapping. As part of this approach, Lecoq often incorporated animal exercises into his acting classes, which involved mimicking the movements and behaviors of various animals in order to develop a greater range of physical expression. [4] The mask is automatically associated with conflict. He was a stimulator, an instigator constantly handing us new lenses through which to see the world of our creativity. When we look at the technique of de-construction, sharing actions with the audience becomes a lot simpler, and it becomes much easier to realise the moments in which to share this action. Keep the physical and psychological aspects of the animal, and transform them to the human counterpart in yourself. Bring Lessons to Life through Drama Techniques, Santorini. As Trestle Theatre Company say. With a wide variety of ingredients such as tension states, rhythm, de-construction, major and minor, le jeu/the game, and clocking/sharing with the audience, even the simplest and mundane of scenarios can become interesting to watch. You are totally present and aware. The influence of Jacques Lecoq on modern theatre is significant. This is a guideline, to be adapted. Think, in particular, of ballet dancers, who undergo decades of the most rigorous possible training in order to give the appearance of floating like a butterfly. Some training in physics provides my answer on the ball. Born in Paris, he began his career as an actor in France. Required fields are marked *. This book examines the theatrical movement-based pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq (1921-1999) through the lens of the cognitive scientific paradigm of enaction. This teaching strategy basically consists of only focusing his critiques on the poorer or unacceptable aspects of a student's performance. He said exactly what was necessary, whether they wanted to hear it or not. As a teacher he was unsurpassed. Jacques Lecoq is regarded as one of the twentieth century's most influential teachers of the physical art of acting. He was equally passionate about the emotional extremes of tragedy and melodrama as he was about the ridiculous world of the clown. Magically, he could set up an exercise or improvisation in such a way that students invariably seemed to do . Let your arm swing backwards again, trying to feel the pull of gravity on your limbs. Thousands of actors have been touched by him without realising it. For this special feature in memory of Jacques Lecoq, who died in January, Total Theatre asked a selection of his ex-students, colleagues and friends to share some personal reminiscences of the master. He was known for his innovative approach to physical theatre, which he developed through a series of exercises and techniques that focused on the use of the body in movement and expression. In this way Lecoq's instruction encouraged an intimate relationship between the audience and the performer. He was clear, direct and passionate with a, sometimes, disconcerting sense of humour. Bouffon (English originally from French: "farceur", "comique", "jester") is a modern French theater term that was re-coined in the early 1960s by Jacques Lecoq at his L'cole Internationale de Thtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris to describe a specific style of performance work that has a main focus in the art of mockery. practical exercises demonstrating Lecoq's distinctive approach to actor training. And again your friends there are impressed and amazed by your transformation. While theres a lot more detail on this technique to explore, we hope this gives you a starting point to go and discover more. Who is it? Lecoq is about engaging the whole body, balancing the entire space and working as a collective with your fellow actors. He was interested in creating a site to build on, not a finished edifice. Lecoq did not want to ever tell a student how to do something "right." Lecoq strove to reawaken our basic physical, emotional and imaginative values. Each of these movements is a "form" to be learnt, practiced, rehearsed, refined and performed. He remains still for some while and then turns to look at me. In fact, the experience of losing those habits can be emotionally painful, because postural habits, like all habits, help us to feel safe. We visited him at his school in Rue du Faubourg, St Denis, during our run of Quatre Mains in Paris. Don't try to breathe in the same way you would for a yoga exercise, say. In many press reviews and articles concerning Jacques Lecoq he has been described as a clown teacher, a mime teacher, a teacher of improvisation and many other limited representations. I had asked Jacques to write something for our 10th Anniversary book and he was explaining why he had returned to the theme of Mime: I know that we don't use the word any more, but it describes where we were in 1988. These exercises were intended to help actors tap into their own physical instincts and find new ways to convey meaning through movement. [4] The expressive masks are basically character masks that are depicting a very particular of character with a specific emotion or reaction. (By continuing to use the site without making a selection well assume you are OK with our use of cookies at present), Spotlight, 7 Leicester Place, London, WC2H 7RJ. as he leaves the Big Room My gesture was simple enough pointing insistently at the open fly. See more advice for creating new work, or check out more from our Open House. Not mimicking it, but in our own way, moving searching, changing as he did to make our performance or our research and training pertinent, relevant, challenging and part of a living, not a stultifyingly nostalgic, culture. [9], Lecoq wrote on the art and philosophy of mimicry and miming. Games & exercises to bring you into the world of theatre . an analysis of his teaching methods and principles of body work, movement . The excitement this gave me deepened when I went to Lecoq's school the following year. By putting a red nose on his face, the actor transformed himself into a clown, a basic being expressing the deepest, most infantile layers of his personality, and allowing him to explore those depths. The training, the people, the place was all incredibly exciting. You can make sounds and utter a phrase or two but in essence, these are body-based warm-ups. Repeat on the right side and then on the left again. One exercise that always throws up wonderful insights is to pick an animal to study - go to a zoo, pet shop or farm, watch videos, look at images. Photograph: Jill Mead/Jill Mead. There can of course be as many or as few levels of tension as you like (how long is a piece of string?). Jacques, you may not be with us in body but in every other way you will. So she stayed in the wings waiting for the moment when he had to come off to get a special mask. I remember him trying exercises, then stepping away saying, Non, c'est pas a. Then, finding the dynamic he was looking for, he would cry, Ah, a c'est mieux. His gift was for choosing exercises which brought wonderful moments of play and discovery. What is he doing? Feel the light on your face and fill the movement with that feeling. He had the ability to see well. He clearly had a lot of pleasure knowing that so many of his former students are out there inventing the work. He challenged existing ideas to forge new paths of creativity. JACQUES LECOQ EXERCISES - IB Theatre Journal Exploration of the Chorus through Lecoq's Exercises 4x4 Exercise: For this exercise by Framtic Assembly, we had to get into the formation of a square, with four people in each row and four people in the middle of the formation. Lecoq on Clown 1:10. By owning the space as a group, the interactions between actors is also freed up to enable much more natural reactions and responses between performers. Not only did he show countless actors, directors and teachers, how the body could be more articulate; his innovative teaching was the catalyst that helped the world of mime enrich the mainstream of theatre. Only then it will be possible for the actor's imagination and invention to be matched by the ability to express them with body and voice. I met him only once outside the school, when he came to the Edinburgh Festival to see a show I was in with Talking Pictures, and he was a friend pleased to see and support the work. Through his hugely influential teaching this work continues around the world. Please, do not stop writing! You need to feel it to come to a full understanding of the way your body moves, and that can only be accomplished through getting out of your seat, following exercises, discussing the results, experimenting with your body and discovering what it is capable - or incapable - of. This process was not some academic exercise, an intellectual sophistication, but on the contrary a stripping away of superficialities and externals the maximum effect with the minimum effort', finding those deeper truths that everyone can relate to. [1] This company and his work with Commedia dell'arte in Italy (where he lived for eight years) introduced him to ideas surrounding mime, masks and the physicality of performance. It is more about the feeling., Join The Inspiring Drama Teacher and get access to: Online Course, Monthly Live Zoom Sessions, Marked Assignment and Lesson Plan Vault. This method is called mimodynamics. As Lecoq trainee and scholar Ismael Scheffler describes, Lecoq's training incorporated "exercises of movements of identification and expression of natural elements and phenomena" (Scheffler, Citation 2016, p. 182) within its idea of mime (the school's original name was L'cole Internationale de Thtre et de Mime -The International . While theres no strict method to doing Lecoq correctly, he did have a few ideas about how to loosen the body in order to facilitate more play! Joseph Alford writes: From the moment that I decided to go from University to theatre school, I was surprisingly unsurprised to know that L'Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris was the only place I wanted to go. It was amazing to see his enthusiasm and kindness and to listen to his comments. In the presence of Lecoq you felt foolish, overawed, inspired and excited. Sam Hardie offered members a workshop during this Novembers Open House to explore Lecoq techniques and use them as a starting point for devising new work. I turn upside-down to right side up. August. Lecoq viewed movement as a sort of zen art of making simple, direct, minimal movements that nonetheless carried significant communicative depth. I remember attending a symposium on bodily expressiveness in 1969 at the Odin Theatre in Denmark, where Lecoq confronted Decroux, then already in his eighties, and the great commedia-actor and playwright (and later Nobel laureate) Dario Fo. He had a vision of the way the world is found in the body of the performer the way that you imitate all the rhythms, music and emotion of the world around you, through your body. You move with no story behind your movement. eBook ISBN 9780203703212 ABSTRACT This chapter aims to provide a distillation of some of the key principles of Jacques Lecoq's approach to teaching theatre and acting. [4] Lecoq's pedagogy has yielded diverse cohorts of students with a wide range of creative impulses and techniques. Franco Cordelli writes: If you look at two parallel stories Lecoq's and his contemporary Marcel Marceaus it is striking how their different approaches were in fact responses to the same question. Repeat. this chapter I will present movement studies from Lecoq and Laban and open a bit Jacques Lecoq's methods and exercises of movement analysis. Stand up. We thought the school was great and it taught us loads. The first event in the Clowning Project was The Clowning Workshop, led by Nathalie Ellis-Einhorn. His techniques and research are now an essential part of the movement training in almost every British drama school. Lecoq himself believed in the importance of freedom and creativity from his students, giving an actor the confidence to creatively express themselves, rather than being bogged down by stringent rules. In that brief time he opened up for me new ways of working that influenced my Decroux-based work profoundly. One of these techniques that really influenced Lecoq's work was the concept of natural gymnastics. (Reproduced from Corriere della Sera with translation from the Italian by Sherdan Bramwell.). [4] Lecoq emphasizes that his students should respect the old, traditional form of commedia dell'arte. The only pieces of theatre I had seen that truly inspired me had emerged from the teaching of this man. I went back to my seat. We also do some dance and stage fighting, which encourages actors to develop their use of space, rhythm and style, as well as giving them some practical tools for the future. Special thanks to Madame Fay Lecoq for her assistance in compiling this tribute and to H. Scott Helst for providing the photos. The Mirror Exercise: This exercise involves one student acting as the mirror and another student acting as the animal. The animal student moves around the space, using their body and voice to embody the movements and sounds of a specific animal (e.g. The use of de-construction also enables us to stop at specific points within the action, to share/clock what is being done with the audience. Lecoq believed that masks could be a powerful tool for actors. They can also use physical and vocal techniques to embody the animal in their performance. He was certainly a man of vision and truly awesome as a teacher. by David Farmer | Acting, Directing and Devising, Features. The great danger is that ten years hence they will still be teaching what Lecoq was teaching in his last year. When creating/devising work, influence was taken from Lecoqs ideas of play and re-play. For me it is surely his words, tout est possible that will drive me on along whichever path I choose to take, knowing that we are bound only by our selves, that whatever we do must come from us. He had the ability to see well. They will never look at the sea the same way again and with these visions they might paint, sing, sculpt, dance or be a taxi driver. Learn moreabout how we use cookies including how to remove them. The mask is essentially a blank slate, amorphous shape, with no specific characterizations necessarily implied. Shortly before leaving the school in 1990, our entire year was gathered together for a farewell chat. He saw through their mistakes, and pointed at the essential theme on which they were working 'water', apparently banal and simple. Once Lecoq's students became comfortable with the neutral masks, he would move on to working with them with larval masks, expressive masks, the commedia masks, half masks, gradually working towards the smallest mask in his repertoire: the clown's red nose. It is a mask sitting on the face of a person, a character, who has idiosyncrasies and characteristics that make them a unique individual. He was genuinely thrilled to hear of our show and embarked on all the possibilities of play that could be had only from the hands. This game can help students develop their creativity and spontaneity, as well as their ability to think on their feet and work as a team. Keeping details like texture or light quality in mind when responding to an imagined space will affect movement, allowing one actor to convey quite a lot just by moving through a space. Lecoq believed that this mask allowed his students to be open when performing and to fully let the world affect their bodies. During World War II he began exploring gymnastics, mime, movement and dance with a group who used performance . Lecoq believed that actors should use their bodies to express emotions and ideas, rather than relying on words alone. Keep balancing the space, keep your energy up Its about that instinct inside us [to move]. Let your left arm drop, then allow your right arm to swing downwards, forwards, and up to the point of suspension, unlocking your knees as you do so. This was blue-sky research, the NASA of the theatre world, in pursuit of the theatre of the future'. Decroux is gold, Lecoq is pearls. As a young physiotherapist after the second world war, he saw how a man with paralysis could organise his body in order to walk, and taught him to do so. Let out a big breath and, as it goes, let your chest collapse inwards. [1] In 1941, Lecoq attended a physical theatre college where he met Jean Marie Conty, a basketball player of international caliber, who was in charge of physical education in all of France. Jacques Lecoq, born in Paris, was a French actor, mime and acting . Your feet should be a little further apart: stretch your arm out to the right while taking the weight on your right bent leg, leading your arm upwards through the elbow, hand and then fingers. He taught at the school he founded in Paris known ascole internationale de thtre Jacques Lecoq, from 1956 until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1999. People from our years embarked on various projects, whilst we founded Brouhaha and started touring our shows internationally. For me, he was always a teacher, guiding the 'boat', as he called the school. Lee Strasberg's Animal Exercise VS Animal Exercise in Jacques Lecoq. While we can't get far without vocal technique, intellectual dexterity, and . His concentration on the aspects of acting that transcend language made his teaching truly international. only clarity, diversity, and, supremely, co-existence. Jacques Lecoq, born in Paris, was a French actor, mime and acting instructor. Really try not to self-police dont beat yourself up! Kenneth Rea writes: In the theatre, Lecoq was one of the great inspirations of our age. He founded cole Internationale de Thtre Jacques . Jacques Lecoq. We sat for some time in his office. Jacques was a man of extraordinary perspectives. Teachers from both traditions have worked in or founded actor training programs in the United States. London: Methuen, Hi,Oliver, thank you for you blogging, you have helped me understand Lecoqs work much much better !