Actors need to have, at their disposal, an instrument that, at all times, expresses their dramatic intention. All quotes from Jacques Lecoq are taken from his book Le Corps Poetique, with translation from the French by Jennifer M. Walpole. In life I want students to be alive, and on stage I want them to be artists." Larval masks - Jacques Lecoq Method 1:48. 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. People from our years embarked on various projects, whilst we founded Brouhaha and started touring our shows internationally. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. He clearly had a lot of pleasure knowing that so many of his former students are out there inventing the work. So next time you hear someone is teaching 'Lecoq's Method', remember that such things are a betrayal. He will always be a great reference point and someone attached to some very good memories. Because this nose acts as a tiny, neutral mask, this step is often the most challenging and personal for actors. Last of all, the full body swing starts with a relaxed body, which you just allow to swing forwards, down as far as it will go. He is a physical theater performer, who . Jacques Lecoq. He believed that was supposed to be a part of the actor's own experience. 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. Dressed in his white tracksuit, that he wears to teach in, he greeted us with warmth and good humour. The Moving Body. In that brief time he opened up for me new ways of working that influenced my Decroux-based work profoundly. However, it is undeniable that Lecoq's influence has transformed the teaching of theatre in Britain and all over the world if not theatre itself. It was me. In order to avoid a flat and mono-paced performance, one must address rhythm and tempo. Lecoq's emphasis on developing the imagination, shared working languages and the communicative power of space, image and body are central to the preparation work for every Complicit process. I have always had a dual aim in my work: one part of my interest is directed towards the Theatre, the other towards Life." Allow your face to float upwards, and visualise a warm sun, or the moon, or some kind of light source in front of you. To share your actions with the audience, brings and invites them on the journey with you. 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 . This method is called mimodynamics. Like with de-construction, ryhthm helps to break the performance down, with one beat to next. He received teaching degrees in swimming and athletics. I cannot claim to be either a pupil or a disciple. He believed that to study the clown is to study oneself, thus no two selves are alike. Many actors sought Lecoq's training initially because Lecoq provided methods for people who wished to create their own work and did not want to only work out of a playwright's text.[6]. 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. One of these techniques that really influenced Lecoq's work was the concept of natural gymnastics. by David Farmer | Acting, Directing and Devising, Features. [5] Chorus Work - School of Jacques Lecoq 1:33. First stand with your left foot forward on a diagonal, and raise your left arm in front of you to shoulder height. both students start waddling like ducks and quacking). Unfortunately the depth and breadth of this work was not manifested in the work of new companies of ex-students who understandably tended to use the more easily exportable methods as they strived to establish themselves and this led to a misunderstanding that his teaching was more about effect than substance. [1], As a teenager, Lecoq participated in many sports such as running, swimming, and gymnastics. This is a list of names given to each level of tension, along with a suggestion of a corresponding performance style that could exist in that tension. [4] Three of the principal skills that he encouraged in his students were le jeu (playfulness), complicit (togetherness) and disponibilit (openness). August. We have been talking about doing a workshop together on Laughter. Bring your right hand up to join it, and then draw it back through your shoulder line and behind you, as if you were pulling the string on a bow. June 1998, Paris. The Animal Character Study: This exercise involves students choosing a specific animal and using it as the inspiration for a character. Whether it was the liberation of France or the student protests of 1968, the expressive clowning of Jacques Lecoq has been an expansive force of expression and cultural renewal against cultural stagnation and defeat. 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. Like a poet, he made us listen to individual words, before we even formed them into sentences, let alone plays. The 20 Movements (20M) is a series of movements devised by Jacques Lecoq and taught at his school as a form of practice for the actor. Jackie Snow is head of movement at RADA. One way in which a performer can move between major and minor would be their positioning on the stage, in composition to the other performers. The communicative potential of body, space and gesture. After the class started, we had small research time about Jacques Lecoq. He is survived by his second wife Fay; by their two sons and a daughter; and by a son from his first marriage. And from that followed the technique of the 'anti-mask', where the actor had to play against the expression of the mask. Raise your right arm up in front of you to shoulder height, and raise your left arm behind you, then let them both swing, releasing your knees on the drop of each swing. Table of Contents THE LIFE OF JACQUES LECOQ Jacques Lecoq (1921-99) Jacques Lecoq: actor, director and teacher Jacques Lecoq and the Western tradition of actor training Jacques Lecoq: the body and culture Summary and conclusion THE TEXTS OF JACQUES LECOQ Lee Strasberg's Animal Exercise VS Animal Exercise in Jacques Lecoq. where once sweating men came fist to boxing fist, 7 TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES THESIS | Forename Surname The human body can be divided roughly; feet . Everybody said he hadn't understood because my pantomime talent was less than zero. In working with mask it also became very clear that everything is to be expressed externally, rather than internally. Lecoq surpassed both of them in the sheer exuberance and depth of his genius. This was blue-sky research, the NASA of the theatre world, in pursuit of the theatre of the future'. 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. Through his pedagogic approach to performance and comedy, he created dynamic classroom exercises that explored elements of . But the fact is that every character you play is not going to have the same physicality. Lecoq was a visionary able to inspire those he worked with. This use of tension demonstrates the feeling of the character. First, when using this technique, it is imperative to perform some physical warm-ups that explore a body-centered approach to acting. Nobody could do it, not even with a machine gun. He enters the studio and I swear he sniffs the space. For him, there were no vanishing points, only clarity, diversity and supremely co-existence. [4] Lecoq's pedagogy has yielded diverse cohorts of students with a wide range of creative impulses and techniques. 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. to milling passers-by. Lecoq never thought of the body as in any way separate from the context in which it existed. In 1956 he started his own school of mime in Paris, which over the next four decades became the nursery of several generations of brilliant mime artists and actors. They can also use physical and vocal techniques to embody the animal in their performance. We needed him so much. arms and legs flying in space. We sat for some time in his office. He offered no solutions. 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. Jacques Lecoq's father, or mother (I prefer to think it was the father) had bequeathed to his son a sensational conk of a nose, which got better and better over the years. L'cole Internationale de Thtre Jacques Lecoq, the Parisian school Jacques Lecoq founded in 1956, is still one of the preeminent physical training . I feel privileged to have been taught by this gentlemanly man, who loved life and had so much to give that he left each of us with something special forever. Lecoq did not want to ever tell a student how to do something "right." This was a separate department within the school which looked at architecture, scenography and stage design and its links to movement. Repeat until it feels smooth. Jacques Lecoq. 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. Its a Gender An essay on the Performance. Naturalism, creativity and play become the most important factors, inspiring individual and group creativity! In fact, the experience of losing those habits can be emotionally painful, because postural habits, like all habits, help us to feel safe. H. Scott Heist writes: You throw a ball in the air does it remain immobile for a moment or not? The actor's training is similar to that of a musician, practising with an instrument to gain the best possible skills. 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. The breathing should be in tune with your natural speaking voice. His concentration on the aspects of acting that transcend language made his teaching truly international. They include the British teacher Trish Arnold; Rudolph Laban, who devised eukinetics (a theoretical system of movement), and the extremely influential Viennese-born Litz Pisk. Tempo and rhythm can allow us to play with unpredictability in performance, to keep an audience engaged to see how the performance progresses. Repeat and then switch sides. Sit down. Freeing yourself from right and wrong is essential: By relieving yourself of the inner critic and simply moving in a rhythmic way, ideas around right or wrong movements can fade into the background. This neutral mask is symmetrical, the brows are soft, and the mouth is made to look ready to perform any action. Lecoq believed that actors should use their bodies to express emotions and ideas, rather than relying on words alone. Like an architect, his analysis of how the human body functions in space was linked directly to how we might deconstruct drama itself. This vision was both radical and practical. His own performances as a mime and actor were on the very highest plane of perfection; he was a man of infinite variety, humour, wit and intelligence. He saw them as a means of expression not as a means to an end. 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! Among the pupils from almost every part of the world who have found their own way round are Dario Fo in Milan, Ariane Mnouchkine in Paris, Julie Taymor (who directed The Lion King) in New York, Yasmina Reza, who wrote Art, and Geoffrey Rush from Melbourne (who won an Oscar for Shine). Help us to improve our website by telling us what you think, We appreciate your feedback and helping us to improve Spotlight.com. 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. We were all rather baffled by this claim and looked forward to solving the five-year mystery. On the walls masks, old photos and a variety of statues and images of roosters. Think M. Hulot (Jacques Tati) or Mr Bean. They contain some fundamental principles of movement in the theatrical space. During World War II he began exploring gymnastics, mime, movement and dance with a group who used performance . Jacques Lecoq method uses a mix of mime, mask work, and other movement techniques to develop creativity and freedom of expression. The documentary includes footage of Lecoq working with students at his Paris theatre school in addition to numerous interviews with some of his most well-known, former pupils. Who is it? I cry gleefully. The training, the people, the place was all incredibly exciting. In mask work, it is important to keep work clean and simple. This use of de-construction is essential and very useful, as for the performer, the use of tempo and rhythm will then become simplified, as you could alter/play from one action to the next. Perhaps Lecoq's greatest legacy is the way he freed the actor he said it was your play and the play is dead without you. He challenged existing ideas to forge new paths of creativity. Each of these movements is a "form" to be learnt, practiced, rehearsed, refined and performed. Simon McBurney writes: Jacques Lecoq was a man of vision. [9], Lecoq wrote on the art and philosophy of mimicry and miming. Shn Dale-Jones & Stefanie Mller write: Jacques Lecoq's school in Paris was a fantastic place to spend two years. To actors he showed how the great movements of nature correspond to the most intimate movements of human emotion. As a teacher he was unsurpassed. Dipsit Digital de la Universitat de Barcelona; Tesis Doctorals; Tesis Doctorals - Departament - Histria de l'Art One of the great techniques for actors, Jacques Lecoq's method focuses on physicality and movement. After a while, allow the momentum of the swing to lift you on to the balls of your feet, so that you are bouncing there. In the presence of Lecoq you felt foolish, overawed, inspired and excited. His work on internal and external gesture and his work on architecture and how we are emotionally affected by space was some of the most pioneering work of the last twenty years. Please, do not stop writing! To meet and work with people from all over the world, talking in made-up French with bits of English thrown-in, trying to make a short piece of theatre every week. As part of this approach, Lecoq often incorporated "animal exercises" into . Jacques lecoq (Expressing an animal) [Lesson #3 2017. (Extract reprinted by permission from The Guardian, Obituaries, January 23 1999. David Glass writes: Lecoq's death marks the passing of one of our greatest theatre teachers. practical exercises demonstrating Lecoq's distinctive approach to actor training. What is he doing? Jacques Lecoq. 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. This led to Lecoq being asked to lecture at faculties of architecture on aspects of theatrical space. 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. Jacques Lecoq was a French actor and acting coach who developed a unique approach to acting based on movement and physical expression principles. Lecoq believed that this would allow students to discover on their own how to make their performances more acceptable. We plan to do it in his studios in Montagny in 1995. Jacques Lecoq developed an approach to acting using seven levels of tension. 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. One game may be a foot tap, another may be an exhale of a breath. He was best known for his teaching methods in physical theatre, movement, and mime which he taught at the school he founded in Paris known as cole internationale de thtre Jacques Lecoq. He was the antithesis of what is mundane, straight and careerist theatre. 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. Contrary to what people often think, he had no style to propose. As a matter of fact, one can see a clear joy in it. Play with them. As with puppetry, where the focus (specifically eye contact) of all of the performers is placed onstage will determine where the audience consequently place their attention. When five years eventually passed, Brouhaha found themselves on a stage in Morelia, Mexico in front of an extraordinarily lively and ecstatic audience, performing a purely visual show called Fish Soup, made with 70 in an unemployment centre in Hammersmith. The mirror student then imitates the animals movements and sounds as closely as possible, creating a kind of mirror image of the animal. 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. What he taught was niche, complex and extremely inspiring but he always, above all, desperately defended the small, simple things in life. Go out and create it!. These first exercises draw from the work of Trish Arnold. Jacques was a man of extraordinary perspectives. Here are a few examples of animal exercises that could be useful for students in acting school: I hope these examples give you some ideas for animal exercises that you can use in your acting classes! Jacques Lecoq was a French actor, mime artist, and theatre director. Lecoq's theory of mime departed from the tradition of wholly silent, speechless mime, of which the chief exponent and guru was the great Etienne Decroux (who schooled Jean Louis-Barrault in the film Les Enfants Du Paradis and taught the famous white-face mime artist Marcel Marceau). 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. Wherever the students came from and whatever their ambition, on that day they entered 'water'. Summer 1993, Montagny. 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. To actors he showed how the great movements of nature correspond to the most intimate movements of human emotion. Kenneth Rea adds: In theatre, Lecoq was one of the great inspirations of our age. No reaction! Shortly before leaving the school in 1990, our entire year was gathered together for a farewell chat. [4] The mask is automatically associated with conflict. There are moments when the errors or mistakes give us an opportunity for more breath and movement. No reaction! And again your friends there are impressed and amazed by your transformation. This make-up projects the face of Everyman during the performance, which enables all members of the audience to identify with the situation. 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. Brilliantly-devised improvisational games forced Lecoq's pupils to expand their imagination.