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). However, the two practitioners differ in their approach to the human body, Grotowski wanted to see how the body can be utilised to convey true emotion on the stage whilst Lecoq wants to understand and push the human body to its capabilities.
Lecoq’s understanding and theories about physicality in theatre had been heavily influenced by Antonin Artaud, a French playwright. Evan states,
Artaud’s influence on Lecoq’s thinking and teaching is clearly evidenced in the connection Lecoq developed between the breath and physical action, in his sense of the athleticism and agility of the actor, and in his writings around the relationship between movement and emotion (Evan, 2012, 165).
Researching Artaud to refresh my knowledge enabled me to see his influence in Lecoq’s theory and methodology. However, incorporating the theories of Lecoq’s into practice became an issue.
Bearing in mind Evan states, “movement for Lecoq is a way of perceiving and engaging with life and the world around us” (Evan, 2012, 168). This had been what I tried to achieve in our performance but I had to first understand the ensemble’s capabilities and limitations, I did this deceivingly by carrying out warm ups to witness what the cast could do. It became apparent that the cast’s capabilities were not in physical theatre or movement however, they listened to instruction well. Understanding the cast and what seems achievable helped me put set actors in each of the choreographed scenes by the physical and emotional needs of the scene which meant less time wasted on cast changes.
The scene in which I implemented Lecoq the most had been ‘The Forced Marriage’ scene, I focused on how the body could further assist the audience’s understanding of the scene without either outshining the verbatim or be too distracting for the audience. I did this by giving the actors a set of three to five movements to repeat and the movements corresponded with the verbatim dialogue. However, I got the actors to constantly exaggerate the movements to nearly looking absurd, this was to test if the images assisted the dialogue as well as keeping the audience’s attention and it worked. The movement tested the actors physicality as well keep the audience’s attention on stage whilst helping the audience empathise with the verbatim.
Work cited:
Evans, M. (2012) ‘The influence of sports on Jacques Lecoq’s actor training’, Theatre, Dance & Performance Training, 3, 2, pp. 163-177, International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text, EBSCOhost, viewed 22 May 2015.