Serious Business

Lecoq, Jacques
Theatre of Movement and Gesture
London: Methuen Drama, 2003

As a dance student in London I fell in love with European dance theater—a hybrid of dance, music, text, and themes so poetic and personal they could only have come from individual experience (I assumed improvisation from the performers) rather than the mind of a single choreographer. I looked to where those companies trained so I could learn the foundational techniques, then incorporate those ideas and that level of articulate physicality into my own choreography. Over and over again I saw the name Jacques Lecoq in Paris mentioned in the bio’s of companies and choreographers whose work I loved the most.

In Paris, France, they speak French; which I do not. But, as of 2002, Lecoq’s premiere work, Le Theatre du Geste, has been available in English. In this book, edited by David Bradby, you will find an intelligent, thoughtful treatise, Lecoq’s point-of-view on “the art of acting and its close relationship with the history of mime and of masked performance. His approach in this book is more impressionistic, more centered on genealogy and the aesthetics of his art, less concerned to set out a systematic pedagogy” than in other works (x). As a student of dance and theater history, and a teacher of aesthetic education, that approach holds a great deal of appeal for me.

“By publishing Le Theatre du Geste in 1987 Lecoq broke for the first time with his usual insistence that ideas about acting could only be developed through practice… his editorship [is] visible in the eclecticism of the volume, ranging from the history of acting to the mimetic behaviour of animals, from silent cinema to Japanese Kabuki” (x). Lecoq’s own writings form the backbone of this book, supplemented by interviews with Lecoq and other practitioners of this form, as well as essays on mime and the physical theater companies of the 1980s that I loved so well. Throughout the text there are sidebars that address questions such as “What makes a good mask?” (104), and “The body of Artaud” (84). As Lecoq indicates, Antonin Artaud was an influential theatrical pioneer working after WWI, who applied mime to theater—“a silent naked body on a silent, naked stage” (41), effectively redefining theater and paving the way for Lecoq’s “Theatre of Movement and Gesture.”

Lecoq’s ideas are very strong, placing responsibility for both content and expression on the performer. “In the 1980s there was a swing away from ‘director’s theatre’ and a general recognition that, without the actor, a director is helpless” (xii).

Reading through the interviews with him, it is also clear that the strength of his convictions are rooted in his early training during WWII and his experience of theater as protest directly after the war ended. It is inspirational to see that his belief in the power of theater to effect change has been unwavering throughout his life.

His work is both a product of the history of his craft and yet remarkably free of convention.

Listen, it’s very simple and clear:

1. I offer a form of mime that is free from any of its previous codes or aesthetic formalities.
2. After that, mime can speak. That’s it. That’s where we are.

This led to the foundations of my teaching: movement analysis and improvisation. These two parallel paths, each supported by preparatory exercises, define the pedagogy…Two features have always been present: what we can observe around us, and the imagination of theatre. I have always tried to stimulate an open dialogue between the two. (113)

What makes sense to me about this line of thinking is it connects the history of theatrical craft to the here and now through the individual’s imagination. As I prepare student’s to attend a performance, this is exactly the way I think about my workshops: an open dialogue between what I observe and what I imagine.

Throughout the book the language is formal, the ideas fierce. The Theatre of Movement and Gesture addresses the craft of mime, clowning, and theatrical gesture without humor or lightness. This is serious business. Jacques Lecoq: “The school itself is both exploratory and a place of exploration, a laboratory for the explorer. Teaching is a voyage of discovery in which the student will face obstacles of their own as well as the ones constructed by the school. This is where the teacher comes in, helping the student to understand better the meaning behind these encounters” (114). For me, the proof is in the product: theatrical experiences with the power to affect. It makes sense that the treatise is weighty.

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