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Jacques Lecoq and the Neutral Mask

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Jacques Lecoq and the Neutral Mask EMBODYING ENGLISH LANGUAGE: JACQUES LECOQ AND THE NEUTRAL MASK NIKOLE LAUREN PASCETTA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN EDUCATION YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO AUGUST 2015 ©Nikole Pascetta, 2015 ii ABSTRACT My study explores the process of settlement for Newcomer-to-Canada youth (NTCY) who are engaged in English-language learning (ELL) of mainstream education. I propose the inclusion of a modified physical theatre technique to ELL curricula to demonstrate how a body-based supplemental to learning can assist in improving students’ language acquisition and proficiency. This recognizes the embodied aspect of students’ settlement and integration as a necessary first- step in meaning making processes of traditional language-learning practices. Foundational to this thesis is an exploration of the Neutral Mask (NM), an actors training tool developed by French physical theatre pedagogue Jacques Lecoq. A student of Lecoq (1990- 1992), I understand NM as a transformative learning experience; it shapes the autoethnographic narrative of this study. My research considers the relationship between the body and verbal speech in English-language learning, as mediated by the mask. An acting tool at the heart of Lecoq’s School, the mask values the non-verbal communication of the body and its relationship to verbal speech. My study explains how the mask, by its design, can reach diverse learning needs to offer newcomer students a sense of agency in their language learning process. I further demonstrate how through discussion of an experimental applied practice field study. One of the overarching questions of this research is whether the ELL experience enhances or hinders newcomer youth in their settlement integration. Through the critical lenses of phenomenology and embodiment, I suggest reshaping the language-learning classroom into a pedagogical space that better fosters newcomer youths’ bodies-of-cultural origin as they begin to distance from their heritage language. Preparing to make Canada their home, newcomer youth can be provided with a learning space for the exploration of the body before the language – for the learning. iii Per Donato e Eugenia … iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my Supervisor Dr. Karen Stanworth, and the guidance of my committee members, Dr. Chloe Brushwood Rose and Dr. Barbara Sellers-Young. Thank you for the advice and support that has helped me to pursue research on topics for which I am truly passionate. Karen, your supervision of the work has been invaluable, weathering the struggle that came with helping me find and release the English translations of my other dominant (Italian/French) speaking/writing languages of expression. I have grown as a scholar and a writer because of you and for that, I will always be thankful. Chloe for your articulate notes and suggestions that reminiscent of a great theatre director, encouraged the work and in the process motivated me to, quite simply, make it better. Barbara for recognizing the actor and believing I could be the academic, your wealth of somatic knowledge inspired me and inspired ideas in me. Each of your contributions greatly strengthened the research. I am grateful to the close attention given to my work by the external examiner, Fiona Blaikie, Chair, Belarie Zatzman and internal member, Mark Wilson. Thank you all for being an important part of my oral examination process. I thoroughly enjoyed the rigorous questions and thoughtful discussion. I want to thank the Graduate Program in Education at York University and the extraordinary assistance from the Program Office, many of whom have come and gone since I first began. An especially deep thank you to my fellow cohorts Jane Griffith and Cristyne Hebert, as I continued the journey of the little disconnected preschooler discussed in this autoethnographic narrative journey, I could not have encountered two better fellow travellers. v This dissertation would not exist had it not been for L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq—a learning experience that completely transformed my life almost 25 years ago. Directly on the heels of graduating from Ecole Lecoq, I was invited to join the France-based Lecoquian repertoire company Theatre de la Jacquerie. I am eternally indebted to La Jacquerie and its founding Artistic Director, Alain Mollot (also senior acting teacher at the Lecoq School). Similar to Lecoq’s training, La Jacquerie engages a research process through the exploration of movement, grounded in the humanness of lived experience. Six seasons as a core repertory member—the empirical ‘nuts and bolts’ of creating new work, i.e. the analysis of le jeu (the play), the design of story-telling, actor/audience aesthetic exchange, architecture of the playing space, and, pertinent to this study, the puissance of embodied performance as a teaching and learning practice in which to inform and educate—all contributed to creating this project. My years with La Jacquerie provided opportunities to encounter problems—ones that exceeded our preparation as students of theatre. We often referred to these hard “art” lessons as “beautiful problems,” due to how they taught us to look to the body, and to the remarkable wonder of its organic function and organization for the answers. I have drawn upon all these experiences in my attempts to transpose physical theatre from the stage to the page. In my work as a physical theatre performer, artist-educator and teacher, I strive to uphold these fundamentals, cultivated from my years at the Ecole Lecoq and La Jacquerie. I would like to extend thanks to my incredibly supportive friends, Nina Szymanksa and Roger Dickinson, Bing and Pearl Wong, Lydia Hunziker, Mary di Felice, Marsha Field, Glenys Mcqueen Fuentes, Rae Johnson, Lauren Piech, Gary Boyce, Michael Miranda, Mary Vrantsidis, Tom Hamilton and my Gakkai family. Your enthusiasm and encouragement every step of the way has not gone unnoticed. vi Last but certainly not least, I want to thank my dear parents, Donato Pascetta and Eugenia Brinda-Pascetta. Humble farmers from rural Italy, they were children during the depression of the 1930s. As consequence, my father was only allowed to complete grade five, my mother grade two. I do not remember a moment in my upbringing that they did not fiercely advocate for schooling and education. I feel the critical significance of this learning trajectory covered in one generation. Ti amo molto e mi manchi profondamente. Amore, tua Cocoletta. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Dedication iii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents vii List of Figures x PROLOGUE 1 Finding my First 1 INTRODUCTION: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE 4 Backstory 8 Nel mezzo del cammin (Halfway through my Journey) 10 Me, Moi, Me: embodying states of being 14 Past Experience, Present Experiment 19 Research Questions and Objectives 22 Subject Positioning: Embodying the Research 24 Why an Autoethnographic Study? 25 Conceptual Framework and Overview 29 CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL ISSUES 39 Inspiration as Prelude: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology 40 Phenomenological Triad of Expression 42 Lifeworld, Lived Experience, Sense Experience 47 Body Literature: A Review 51 Habitus and Physical Capital 51 Social Reproduction and the Body 55 Analogizing the Body as ‘Home’ 56 The Body in the Space of ELL 58 English Acquisition: Marker of Success 61 Socio-Politics in the Classroom 65 Freire’s Notion of Oppressive Inscriptions and the Body 69 Bhabha’s Third Space 71 ELL Instruction, Acculturation, the Impossibility of Failure 73 The Uniqueness of the ELL Classroom 75 At the Intersection of Education and Newcomer Settlement 78 Speaking from Experience—the Loophole 79 Settlement, Settling, to Settle 83 Settlement Graph 86 CHAPTER TWO: JACQUES LECOQ AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS 95 On Jacques Lecoq 99 The Neutral Mask: Objects of Learning/Learning Objects 104 La Langue Lecoq (The Language of Lecoq) 112 Demystify: Reculer pour Mieux Sauter 115 Tacit and Body knowledge 121 viii Neutral Movement In Space 127 On Mime Dimension 132 The Moment Before: Silence before Words as an ELL Approach 134 CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH IN THE FIELD (Sartori & ELL) 140 Structuring the Research 142 Aims and Objectives: Differing Views, Same Theme 143 Research into the Sartori Mask Tradition: toward mainstream ELL connections 145 Sartori Overview 149 Sartori Centro - First Impressions 151 At the Centro 153 Via Negativa 156 Me, the Disadvantaged Student 158 Lost in Translation and the Cognitive Unconscious 160 Cinque Fasi di Construzione della Maschera (Five Phases of Mask Construction) 162 Grist to the Mill: Of Clay, Plaster, Paper Mache, Wood and Leather 165 Clay 165 Plaster 167 Paper Maché 169 Wood 169 Leather 171 Shifting Experience 172 Research in a Mainstream ELL Classroom: Testing the Body-Supplemental 174 In-Class Overview 174 Telling Stories: Body Experience to Language 178 In-Class Study: Day One 180 Two Introductory Body Exercises 181 Strings 183 Shapes 184 ‘Teacher’ 185 Participation 189 The Out-Of-Context Problem: point de repère (point of reference) 190 Lab Rat 191 Discussing the Body in Education 194 Implications for Practice: Looking to Contemporary Research Practice 196 Conclusion 198 CHAPTER FOUR: EMERGING CRITICAL AWARENESS 200 Thinking in Movement 201 Movement Epistemology 203 Body Self-Awareness 207 CRITICAL DISCUSSION 209 Language in the body 209 ix Canadian-izing 211 The Body: Object of Exchange 214
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