Jacques Lecoq

Murray, Simon (2003) Jacques Lecoq. Routledge, UK. ISBN 0-415-25882-0

Abstract / Summary

‘Jacques Lecoq’ (2003) was within the initial group of four publications commissioned for Routledge’s ‘Performance Practitioner’ series, and represented the first full-length monograph on Lecoq to be published in any language. The book was the outcome of three years’ academic and field-based research on Lecoq that included in-depth interviews with co-teachers, members of his family and theatre practitioners with close connections to Lecoq’s school and who might invoke his pedagogies in their own practice. The book contextualises Lecoq’s contribution to twentieth century theatre teaching within a wider framework of the French mime tradition, the European avant-garde and contemporary experimental and physical theatres. In particular, it interrogates the ‘driving motors’ of Lecoq’s pedagogy and attempts to site his work beyond the overly narrow classification of contemporary illusionary mime. In doing so, it establishes where Lecoq shared common elements of movement analysis with Etienne Decroux, and where he radically rejected certain features of Decroux’s highly codified ‘grammaire’ of mime. In addition, the monograph identifies play (‘Le Jeu’), complicité and disponibilité as three mutually inter-dependant dispositions essential for both the ‘creative actor’ and for the generation of an authentic sense of ensemble.

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