Jacques Lecoq Training

Time and Performer Training addresses the importance and centrality of time and temporality to the practices, processes and conceptual thinking of performer training. Notions of time are embedded in almost every aspect of performer training, and so contributors to this book look at: age/aging and children in the training context how training impacts over a lifetime the duration of training and the impact of training regimes over time concepts of timing and the ‘right’ time how time is viewed from a range of international training perspectives collectives, ensembles and fashions in training, their decay or endurance. Through focusing on time and the temporal in performer training, this book offers innovative ways of integrating research into studio practices. It also steps out beyond the more traditional places of training to open up time in relation to contested training practices that take place online, in festival spaces and in folk or amateur practices. Ideal for both instructors and students, each section of this well-illustrated book follows a thematic structure and includes full-length chapters alongside shorter provocations. Featuring contributions from an international range of authors who draw on their backgrounds as artists, scholars and teachers, Time and Performer Training is a major step in our understanding of how time affects the preparation for performance. https://www.routledge.com/Time-and-Performer-Training/Evans-Thomaidis-Worth/p/book/9780815396284

An extended conversation hosted by Amy Russell with fellow guides of Embodied Poetics : Kamili Okweni Feelings; Aurelian Koch; Lazlo Pearlman; Norman Taylor; Ed Woodall; Jonathan Young

This is an extended conversation about a shared project of canonical intervention, the new London-based training organization, Embodied Poetics, specializing in the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq, Jacques Copeau and Suzanne Bing”. Seven pedagogues, all of whom have completed a two-year, Lecoq-based pedagogy, and hold a significantly different embodied positions vis-à-vis each other, discuss their pedagogic practices, invoking notions of physical and dramatic neutrality, aesthetic permanence, archetypes of gender and character, and a eurocentric map of theatrical territories.

Based on interviews with tutors and department heads in a number of key institutions, this chapter investigates the incorporation of Lecoq-inspired teaching into UK actor and director training, with its various synergies and occasional tensions. It charts the way in which drama conservatoires and university departments sought to insert into their curricula Lecoq pedagogical approaches, usually by employing Lecoq graduates returned to Britain. Their integration into mainstream (or even alternative) British drama training is seen against the background of already established methodologies of movement and acting training, in particular the dominance of voice-based training in the traditional conservatoire, the influence of Stanislavski, of Rudolf Laban and the Central European Movement tradition, and of the Copeau/Saint-Denis approach.   The chapter looks in depth at the influence of Lecoq teaching at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, at Rose Bruford College as well as at Dartington College.  It also examines the influence of Lecoq-inspired work on the emergence of mask-orientated work in companies such as Trestle and Told by an Idiot, which arose out of John Wright’s teaching at Middlesex University.

A partir da segunda metade do século XX, diversas produções teatrais têm sido realizadas em lugares distintos das salas de espetáculo tradicionais construídas especialmente para estas atividades, experimentando configurações espaciais diferentes da oposição frontal palco-plateia. Muitos artistas têm proposto espetáculos que consideram não apenas uma configuração espacial diferente como também têm problematizado as relações entre atores e espectadores assim como explorado os ambientes. Neste sentido, podemos nos referir tanto a ambientes internos quanto externos, tanto ambientes urbanos da vida das cidades quanto construções arquitetônicas específicas. Quando consideramos estas questões, colocamos em pauta questões relativas ao espaço e à cenografia e, consequentemente, ao trabalho do cenógrafo. Assim, o pensamento cenográfico tem sido ampliado e as dinâmicas do espaço de quem faz e de quem vê o espetáculo têm sido problematizadas inferindo discursos teatrais. Não por acaso, a dramaticidade, a carga dramática ou a dramaturgia inscrita no espaço (urbano ou arquitetônico) têm sido utilizadas como elemento espetacular de forma ampla. O ambiente não é apenas tomado como um receptáculo do espetáculo, mas como um enunciador de uma fala própria. Neste sentido, a compreensão da cenografia se estende para além do palco e o cenógrafo passa a articular além de elementos visuais, o espaço de maneira mais ampla.
Uma proposta pedagógica que considera fundamental a experimentação empírica do espaço é o Laboratório de Estudo do Movimento, da Escola Internacional de Teatro Jacques Lecoq, em Paris, França. A pedagogia lecoquiana é mais conhecida na área de formação de atores, visto sua escola estar em funcionamento desde 1956 e já ter tido alunos de aproximadamente 80 nacionalidades diferentes (LECOQ, 2010).
Na sequencia deste texto, proponho algumas considerações sobre o trabalho de Jacques Lecoq relativos ao tema proposto, considerando sua experiência junto à formação de arquitetos e à criação do Laboratório de Estudo do Movimento (LEM). Por fim, pondero sobre alguns aspectos a partir de minha experiência como professor e coordenador do Curso de Especialização em Cenografia da Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, em Curitiba, Paraná.

AIARG 2016, Fifth Annual Conference.
Jacques Lecoq is recognized as one of the most influential pedagogues of modern theatre. Nevertheless, his
contribution to architectural education is little known and quite underestimated. Lecoq starts to apply his
research on mime, gesture and movement to architectural pedagogy in 1968, when he is invited to teach at
the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. From then on, along with the theatre courses
offered in his own school, he develops, over 20 years, a mimodynamic approach to architects’ training. Based also on my direct experience of Lecoq’s method at the School of Mimodrama of Teatro Arsenale in
Milan, my discursive, and - possibly - also non-discursive, contribution aims to show how embodiment and
en-acting exercise can help architects to rediscover the value and authentic meaning of the architectural
environment as theatre of life.

This article examines two aspects of Philippe Gaulier’s pedagogy in relation to the development of Neutral Mask pedagogies in twentieth-century French mime training, specifically those responding to nineteenth and early twentieth-century marionette theories of movement. The first is his strategic use of disorientation through lack of instruction (via negativa) in order to make visible inculturated embodied habits; the second is his emphasis on the performer embodying genuine ‘pleasure’ as she pretends to have a different emotion. The paper examines these techniques in the context of Neutral Mask training, and its development during the twentieth century in France, in order to consider the ways in which they both reflect and revise nineteenth- and early twentieth-century marionette theories of performer movement as espoused in particular by Heinrich von Kleist and Edward Gordon Craig. It considers the ways in which constructions of the ‘natural’ body as pursued by Jacques Copeau and later Étienne Decroux and Jacques Lecoq respond to these marionette theories which seek to do away entirely with interior states such as consciousness and emotion, and in placing these responses alongside Gaulier’s deployments of disorientation and ‘pleasure’. It suggests that Gaulier’s techniques of disorientation serve a similar function to donning the neutral mask in stripping away learned habits of movement, and that his emphasis on experiencing and demonstrating ‘pleasure’ in the pretence of performance both reflects marionette theories by replicating the puppeteer/puppet dynamic, and revises them by foregrounding emotionality.

O artigo abordará aspectos relacionados à disciplina optativa "Espaço cenográfico" oferecida no curso de Bacharelado em Design na Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná. Apontará aspectos da ementa e abordagens dadas em aula. Partindo de conceitos de teatro e cenografia, as atividades criativas propostas expandem o olhar para o espaço como matéria, incluindo temáticas como: dramaturgia do espaço, poesia espacial, intervenções, instalações e vitrines conceituais. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: cenografia: espaço : poesia espacial: processos de criação.

RÉSUMÉ
L'article traitera des aspects liés à la cours  « l'espace scénique  » offert dans le cadre du baccalauréat en Design à l’Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná. On désigne les aspects du programme et des approches donnée en classe. A partir de concepts du théâtre et de la scénographie, les activités créatives proposées élargissant le regard à l'espace en tant que matière. L’article compris des thèmes tels que la dramaturgie de l’espace, la poésie de l'espace, les interventions, les installations et les vitrines conceptuelles.

My paper focuses on Lecoq's work as a pedagogy in physical and movement oriented actor training work and its further evolution in the work of Philippe Gaulier. What has Philippe Gaulier added to the pedagogy left behind by Jacques Lecoq and how does that fulfill the training needs of present-day actors in the movement department when it comes to interpreting a written text? Let us first look at the similarities and differences of the two training approaches. Jacques Lecoq's training can be traced back to some of the sports and movement traditions he came from. In his work the elements that contributed to the actor's presence, such as readiness (disponibilité), transparency (openness), and lightness (le jeu) achieved help with the creative process and in building a character through movement and physicality. Interaction with the outside world is important in Lecoq's work and he puts much emphasis on spatial and personal interactions, explaining how attitudes and therefore acting and character could change based on the architecture of a space, the spatial interaction between actors on stage, and small details such the tilt of a hat or a shift in posture. Gaulier coming from a clown tradition, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of the game, personal presence, the desire to play, and the pleasure derived from it. Having had the chance to work with Lecoq student and collaborator Monika Pagneux in the early 90's and with Complicity Theatre's Simon MacBurney and Annabel Arden, I only have a secondhand experience in the Lecoq pedagogy, and none at all in the Gaulier approach except accounts from actor friends who studied with him. Therefore, my methodology will rely on revisiting writings on Lecoq's work (either written by him or others), and those of the pedagogy of Philippe Gaulier (personal interviews and writings from his pedagogic explanations on his website). In order to understand what Philippe Gaulier has added to the pedagogy left behind by Jacques Lecoq, and how this evolution fulfills the training needs of present-day actors in the movement department when it comes to interpreting a written text, it is important to understand first Lecoq's pedagogy, and evaluate the similarities and differences of the two training approaches.

Jacques Lecoq is recognized as one of the most influential pedagogues of modern theatre. Nevertheless, his contribution to architectural education is little known and quite underestimated. My contribution aims to show how embodiment and enacting exercise can help architects to rediscover the value and the authentic meaning of architectural environment as theatre of life.

A History of Collective Creation examines collective and devised theatre practices in Europe and North America, beginning in 1900. Long associated with U.S., British and French theatre collectives of the 1960s, collective creation in fact has its roots in the theatrical experiments of the early 20th century, emerging just after the rise of the modern director.  Tracing a lineage from explorations of collective creation in the work of Meyerhold, Stanislavsky, Copeau, St. Denis, Piscator, Reduta, Grotowski, and early documentary theatre, through mid-century manifestations as a theatrical expression of the New Left, A History of Collective Creation proposes that collective creation played a pivotal role in the evolution of the modern theatre.

Collective Creation in Contemporary Performance examines collective and devised theatre practices internationally--with emphasis on Russia, Europe, and North America--from the late 20th century, into the present. Building upon the authors’ previous work, A History of Collective Creation, this volume situates contemporary collective creation in a tradition which emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, and traces the aesthetic, social and political shifts that have marked this mode of theatre making, from mid-century manifestations as a theatrical expression of the New Left, to present-day devising practices.

O presente artigo trata sobre a máscara neutra com enfoque principal em Jacques Lecoq. É apresentado o contexto em que Lecoq conheceu a máscara nobre, assim denominada por Jacques Copeau. Também considerada a parceria entre Lecoq e o escultor Amleto Sartori que confeccionou a máscara neutra na técnica em couro. São apresentadas diferentes denominações para este tipo de máscara, dando-se atenção ao sentido de neutralidade. Também são feitas considerações sobre a forma da máscara neutra e da máscara nobre. Por fim, são feitas considerações do uso pedagógico da máscara estabelecendo-se relações da prática de Lecoq com a de Copeau, Charles Dullin, entre outros.

Abstract:

This article deals with the neutral mask with main focus in Jacques Lecoq. It is presented the context in which Lecoq knew the noble mask, thus denominated by Jacques Copeau. Also considered the partnership between Lecoq and the sculptor Amleto Sartori who made the neutral mask in the leather technique. Different denominations are presented for this type of mask, paying attention to the sense of neutrality. Considerations are also given about the design of the neutral mask and the noble mask. Finally, we present considerations of the pedagogical use of the mask, establishing relations of the practice of Lecoq with that of Copeau, Charles Dullin, among others.

This paper explores clown pedagogy in relation to authenticity, taking as its starting point the clown workshop at the École Philippe Gaulier in June 2008 in which I was a participant-researcher. I explore how and where an analysis of French clown training both reveals reinscription of authenticity—the idea that the " true self " is revealed through the mask form of clown— and exposes fissures in these ideas. Within this training, I argue, a construct of the authentic self exists alongside techniques that disrupt conventional notions of stable, linear identity by utilising techniques of disorientation to shift the locus of the self from the core of the body to a negotiable space between performer and spectator. Examining the ways in which gestural style was both linked with and contested the idea of authenticity within the French mime tradition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I examine how such conflicting ideas of authenticity continue to circulate within the contemporary clown classroom. Specifically, I look at how the pedagogical language used by Gaulier and the descriptive language of students, as well as embodied classroom practices, discursively reinscribe the idea of a stable, unified self while simultaneously disrupting it. By juxtaposing and drawing connections between an older mime tradition and a current pedagogical practice, I wish to highlight the ways in which the idea of the " self " has been and continues to be contested, altered and redefined within a specific site of performer training.

O Laboratório de Estudo do Movimento (LEM) da Escola Internacional de Teatro Jacques Lecoq, em Paris, é considerado um departamento cenográfico, dedicado especialmente à pesquisa dinâmica do espaço e do ritmo, por meio da representação plástica. Seu ensino não é uma transmissão de técnicas, mas um processo de experiências práticas que visa permitir ao aluno encontrar posteriormente sua própria escrita criativa poética. O ensino é baseado em permanências que são: as transferências; o estado de calma ou o neutro; o equilíbrio de forças; a economia de ações físicas.No presente artigo, serão apresentadas ponderações sobre estes quatro aspectos de acordo com a proposta metodológica do LEM. Serão observadas as correspondências entre a pesquisa corporal e a pesquisa plástica, considerando-se possibilidades de aplicação no trabalho cenográfico e arquitetônico. Serão utilizados exemplos de exercícios realizados, fontes bibliográficas de autoria de Jacques Lecoq e outros pensadores nos quais se vislumbra correlações teóricas, minha experiência como aluno no LEM no ano letivo de 2010-2011 e entrevistas.

Time and Performer Training addresses the importance and centrality of time and temporality to the practices, processes and conceptual thinking of performer training. Notions of time are embedded in almost every aspect of performer training, and so contributors to this book look at:

age/aging and children in the training context
how training impacts over a lifetime
the duration of training and the impact of training regimes over time
concepts of timing and the ‘right’ time
how time is viewed from a range of international training perspectives
collectives, ensembles and fashions in training, their decay or endurance.
Through focusing on time and the temporal in performer training, this book offers innovative ways of integrating research into studio practices. It also steps out beyond the more traditional places of training to open up time in relation to contested training practices that take place online, in festival spaces and in folk or amateur practices.

Ideal for both instructors and students, each section of this well-illustrated book follows a thematic structure and includes full-length chapters alongside shorter provocations. Featuring contributions from an international range of authors who draw on their backgrounds as artists, scholars and teachers, Time and Performer Training is a major step in our understanding of how time affects the preparation for performance.

https://www.routledge.com/Time-and-Performer-Training/Evans-Thomaidis-Worth/p/book/9780815396284

In the broad spectrum of performance studies and methods it could be agreed that training in the highly stylized techniques of clown and bouffon requires a great degree of skill. Conversely, for the audience often an extension of the clowning/bouffon-esque 'play' (jeu), it requires a willingness and degree of compliance. As two dramaturgical tools used to voice and mirror the views of peripheral social characters, clown and bouffon embody the absurd, melancholic, dark and sometimes cruel sides of society. The mastery of their performance lies in treading the fine line between tasteful and tasteless provocative play in their interpretive efforts to critically reflect social life. This study examines the two comic genres of clown and bouffon, particular to the pedagogies of Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier, to consider the limits of performance that dictate good taste from bad taste (le bon goût du mauvais goût) in the lampooning play of society and social issues. In an effort to examine the complex level of the performers jeu the study juxtaposes the humanness of Lecoq's Chaplin-esque clown with a Bhaktinian carnivalivistic view of Gaulier's grotesque bouffon. For the actor in the improvisatory play of clown and bouffon, making tasteful choices runs the risk of projecting dimwitted, trite, emblematic characters, whereas a raw, aggressive performance that deviates too far from shared or common aesthetic values and standards (in good taste) can be met with shock and repulsion. Galvanized by Friedrich von Schiller's claim that theatre, as of moral institution, plays a didactic and influential role in society, I draw from the applied 'play' of these physical theatre foundations to consider the paradox of what these fringe characters can—in their distaste—tastefully offer contemporary issues of the day.

"Laura Gioeni (...) reflects on the relationship between her achitectural studies and practice, and her experience as a student at the School of Mimodrama, in Milan, a school based on Lecoq pedagogy. She starts from Wittgenstein's statement that "architecture is a gesture" and then goes on to explore the "relationship between gesture, movement, body and architectural space". Reflecting on the early work that led to the development of the Laboratoire d'Etude du Mouvement (LEM), Gioeni goes on to examine how Lecoq's movement work in general extends from the generation of theatrical space through movement and gesture to the exploration, through movement, of different kinds of architectural space (buildings, cities, vollages, furniture, rooms). Her fascinating chapter suggests the vital importance of the kind of training Lecoq proposes for student architects, and also describes very eloquently the relationship between movement, space and time and their overlap within the fields of theatre and architecture" (Mark Evans, 2016)

Resumen: En este artículo presento algunas reflexiones sobre la formación en escenografía, teniendo como foco la importancia de la vivencia corporal de los estudiantes en el espacio. Apunto algunos aspectos del pensamiento del filósofo Maurice Merlau-Ponty sobre la fenomenología, indicando como esta base está presente en la pedagogía de Jacques Lecoq y en el origen del Laboratorio de Estudio del Movimiento, atelier de escenografía de la Escuela Internacional de Teatro Jacques Lecoq, en París, Francia. También introduzco algunos experimentos que he realizado como profesor en el Curso de Especialización en Escenografía, realizado en la Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (en la ciudad de Curitiba, Brasil), considerando especialmente la cuestión de la percepción corporal del espacio y del desarrollo de la sensibilidad estética por la experiencia. He tomado en consideración también algunos aspectos de los estudios de Rudolf Arnheim sobre la educación visual. Palabras clave: Formación académica; Escenografía; Espacio; Historia del teatro francés; Fenomenología. Abstract: In this article I present some reflections on training in set design focusing on the importance of body experience of students in space. I point out some aspects of the thought of the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the phenomenology indicating how this base is present in the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq and the origin of the Laboratory of Movement Study, set design workshop of the École Internationale de Thèâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, France. Also present some experiments I have done as a teacher at the Specialization Course in Scenography, held at the Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (in Curitiba, Brazil), especially considering the issue of body perception of space and the development of aesthetic sensibility by the experience. Also consider some aspects of Rudolf Arnheim studies on visual education.

Abstract: In this article I present some reflections on training in set design focusing on the importance of body experience of students in space. I point out some aspects of the thought of the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the phenomenology indicating how this base is present in the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq and the origin of the Laboratory of Movement Study, set design workshop of the École Internationale de Thèâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, France . Also present some experiments I have done as a teacher at the Specialization Course in Scenography, held at the Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (in Curitiba, Brazil), especially considering the issue of body perception of space and the development of aesthetic sensibility by the experience. Also consider some aspects of Rudolf Arnheim studies on visual education.

This article seeks to examine the extent to which Jacques Lecoq's early experiences of sports, athletics and gymnastics informed his later work as an internationally influential specialist in movement-based theatre training. Although his experiences as a sports coach and therapist have been acknowledged, there has been little work to explore the extent to which these experiences, and the principles and values Lecoq may have acquired during them, have shaped his teaching and the structure and nature of the pedagogy at his school. The article begins with a review of Lecoq's own sports training and the critical influences on his early development as a sports coach and therapist. It then looks both at specific sports-related exercises that Lecoq used within his movement analysis sessions, and also at the overall structure of the school's training (the typical pattern of the classes, the classroom ethos, the integration of group/team activities, the nature of Lecoq's concept of ‘play’, and the development from exercise to dramatic genre). The article draws on personal experience as a student with Lecoq in the early 1980s, as well as writings on his work by recent commentators and by Lecoq himself.