Jacques Lecoq

Jacques Lecoq (December 15, 1921 – January 19, 1999), born in Paris, was a French actor, mime and acting instructor. He is most famous for his methods on physical theatre, movement, and mime that he taught at the school he founded in Paris, L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq from 1956 until his death in 1999.

Jacques Lecoq came to study theatre and mime through an interest in sports. He began learning gymnastics at the age of seventeen, and predominantly worked on the parallel and horizontal bars. Lecoq described these movements as abstract and a kind of physical poetry that affected him strongly. In 1941, Lecoq attended a physical theatre college where he met Jean Marie Conty, a basketball player of international calibre, who was in charge of physical education in France. Conty's interest in the link between sport and theatre had come out of a friendship with Antonin Artaud and Jean-Louis Barrault, both well-known actors and directors and founders of L'Education par le Jeu Dramatique. Although Lecoq taught general physical education for several years, he soon found himself acting as a member of the Comediens de Grenoble. This company and his work with Commedia dell'arte in Italy (where he lived for eight years) introduced him to mime, masks and ideas surrounding the physicality of performance. During this time he also performed with the actor, playwright, and clown, Dario Fo. 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, L'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.

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. He accomplished this through teaching in the style of "via negativa," never telling the students how to do what was "right." The goal was to encourage the student to keep trying new avenues of creative expression. His training involved an emphasis on masks, starting with the neutral mask. 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 a state of neutral was achieved, he would move on to work with larval masks and then half masks, gradually working towards the smallest mask in his repertoire: the clown's red nose. Three of the principal skills that he encouraged in his students were le jeu (playfulness), complicité (togetherness) and disponibilité (openness). Selection for the second year was based mainly on the ability to play.

In collaboration with the architect Krikor Belekian he also set up le Laboratories etude du Mouvement (laboratory for the study of movement) in 1977. This was a separate department within the school which looked at architecture, scenography and stage design and its links to movement.

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 L'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.

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