Jacques Lecoq

Jacques Lecoq (15 December 1921 – 19 January 1999) was a French stage actor and acting movement coach. 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 École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq. He taught there from 1956 until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1999.

Jacques Lecoq was known as the only noteworthy movement instructor and theatre pedagogue with a professional background in sports and sports rehabilitation in the twentieth century.

Life As a teenager, Lecoq participated in many sports such as running, swimming, and gymnastics. Lecoq was particularly drawn to gymnastics.

He was first introduced to theatre and acting by Jacques Copeau's daughter Marie-Hélène and her husband, Jean Dasté.

In 1956, he returned to Paris to open his school, École Internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq, where he spent most of his time until his death, filling in as international speaker and master class giver for the Union of Theatres of Europe. The school was eventually relocated to Le Central in 1976. The building was previously a boxing center and was where Francisco Amoros, a huge proponent of physical education, developed his own gymnastic method.

Teaching style/method Lecoq aimed at training his actors in ways that encouraged them to investigate ways of performance that suited them best. His training was aimed at nurturing the creativity of the performer, as opposed to giving them a codified set of skills. As students stayed with Lecoq s own experience. 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.

His training involved an emphasis on masks, starting with the neutral mask. This neutral mask is symmetrical, the brows are soft, and the mouth is made to look ready to perform any action. Lecoq believed that this mask allowed his students to be open when performing and to fully let the world affect their bodies. This is because the mask is made to seem as if it has no past and no previous knowledge of how the world works. This is supposed to allow students to live in a state of unknowing in their performance. The aim was that the neutral mask can aid an awareness of physical mannerisms as they get greatly emphasized to an audience whilst wearing the mask.

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. The larval mask was used as a didactic tool for Lecoq's students to escape the confines of realism and inject free imagination into the performance. The mask is essentially a blank slate, amorphous shape, with no specific characterizations necessarily implied.

The French concept of 'efficace' suggesting at once efficiency and effectiveness of movement was highly emphasized by Lecoq. Lecoq viewed movement as a sort of zen art of making simple, direct, minimal movements that nonetheless carried significant communicative depth.

Lecoq wrote on the art and philosophy of mimicry and miming. Therein he traces mime-like behavior to early childhood development stages, positing that mimicry is a vital behavioral process in which individuals come to know and grasp the world around them. Lecoq also wrote on the subject of gesture specifically and its philosophical relation to meaning, viewing the art of gesture as a linguistic system of sorts in and of itself. Lecoq classifies gestures into three major groups: gestures of action, expression, and demonstration.

In 1999, filmmakers Jean-Noël Roy and Jean-Gabriel Carasso released Les Deux Voyages de Jacques Lecoq, a film documenting two years of training at École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq. 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.

Notable students Annabel Arden, actress Hilary J. Bader, screenwriter René Bazinet, actor, mime, and clown act creator of Cirque du Soleil Steven Berkoff, theatre director, actor and writer Malachi Bogdanov, theater director and writer Luc Bondy, theatre and opera director Peter Bramley, actor, teacher, theatre director, founder of Pants on Fire Julian Chagrin, British-Israeli actor and mime Chris Channing, performer, designer, and theatre maker Avner Eisenberg - performer ("Avner the Eccentric"), teacher Isla Fisher, actress Oliver Foot and Andrew Simon, co-founders of the Footsbarn Theatre Philippe Gaulier, teacher, actor, pedagogue, master-clown Toby Jones, actor Beejan Land, actor Simon McBurney, actor, director, and founding artistic director of Théâtre de Complicité Gates McFadden, actress, choreographer Ariane Mnouchkine, theater director and founder of Théâtre du Soleil Yasmina Reza, playwright and director Geoffrey Rush, actor Sylvaine Strike, writer, actress, theatre director, co-founder of Fortune Cookie Theatre Company Julie Taymor, director, designer, and choreographer Suzy Willson, director and founder of Clod Ensemble Paola Colletto, teacher, theatre director, pedagogue Rodrigo Malbrán, teacher, director and founder of escuela internacional del gesto y la imagen la mancha

Educational programs l'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq - Paris

Publications Le Theatre du Geste (1987) Le Corps Poetique (1999)