CHAPTER SIX
DIRECTING. INTRODUCTION
This chapter focuses on the directing work of Lecoq alumni in Australia. It will examine how alumni's approaches to directing have been influenced by their Lecoq training and the influence their work has had on Australian theatre. The chapter is divided into four sections focusing on a discussion of alumni's work within the framework of the four key elements of the Lecoq pedagogy: creation of original material; use of improvisation; a repertoire of performance styles and movement-based approach to performance.
Overview of the Research Findings: The work of alumni in the directing category has contributed significantly to the challenge mounted by many Australian theatre practitioners over the last forty years, offering alternative approaches, processes and forms of theatre that have opened up Australian theatre to new possibilities and undermined the privileged position of text- based realism. As directors, some alumni have chosen to create original material rather than working with pre-scripted material, using improvisational and participatory approaches for devising and rehearsal processes. As well as introducing new performance styles to this country, they have created innovative forms of theatre and their approaches are strongly movement and visually-based.
Of the alumni I have interviewed, fourteen have worked as directors. Most of these have not made directing their major area of work but have worked variously as directors, actors, teachers and writers. The following list serves to introduce these alumni and give some indication of their areas of directorial work.
Celia Moon has worked primarily as an educator and theatre consultant on a variety of projects involving cultural exchange, community projects, theatre-in-education and collaborative projects with women's professional organisations. She has co-directed Amar Desh: My Country at Belvoir Street, Fish Without Bicycles at the Performance Space in Sydney and Jules Feiffer's Hold Me at the Bondi Pavilion as part of the 1990 Sydney Festival program.
Christine Grace has worked as a teacher, performer and director. While her main focus has been community theatre projects, she has directed Mabinogion which toured in Australia and New Zealand, and four pieces for the 1994 Melbourne Fringe Festival.
133 Therese Collie has worked as an actor, performance trainer, director and community theatre worker, primarily with Brisbane s Street Arts community theatre company. Her most recent directing credit was Anna Yen s one-woman circus/theatre show Chinese Take-Away performed in Cantonese and English for Brisbane s Stage X Festival. Collie was also writer/director of the episode Long Way Round for SBS/Film Australia s award winning series Under the Skin and won a 1996 Australian Writers Guild nomination for Murri Time, which was performed at the Come Out Festival in Adelaide and toured to Sydney and throughout northern Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Judith Pippen has worked as a university lecturer, movement trainer, Feldenkrais practitioner and has published a number of papers on movement-based theatre training. She has a PhD from the Centre for Innovation in the Arts at the QUT Academy. Pippen has directed The Rivers of China at the Woodward Theatre (1996 ) and The Three Cuckolds at La BoIte (1987). Pippen has also worked as Movement Director on productions of Measure for Measure at the Woodward Theatre (1994), Servant of Two Masters at the Cremorne Theatre (1994) and The Imaginary Invalid for TN! at the Princess Theatre in 1991.
Richard Moore has worked as an actor, university lecturer and performance teacher but currently works as a director, producer and writer of documentary films. His most recent film, called Art from the Heart , screened on ABC television in 1999 and focused on issues surrounding the sale of Aboriginal artworks.
Russell Cheek has worked as an actor, director and teacher of theatre. His directing work has been focused mainly in tertiary education and theatre-in-education situations, Cheek recently wrote and directed the live entertainment program for Sega World at Darling Harbour (1996/1997).
Dominique Sweeney has worked primarily as an actor in film, theatre and television productions. He directed the devised contemporary commedia piece Accidente for the 1994 Adelaide Fringe Festival.
John Bolton has worked as an actor and director, but primarily as a teacher. His directing credits include The Beautiful Necklace, Dust at Theatre Works, Odyssey for the 2000 Melbourne and Adelaide Festivals, and The Business as Usual, which won Best Comedy in the 1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival.
134 Ron Luda Popenhagen have been resident in Australia only since 1998, working primarily as teachers and theatre consultants. They directed Etiquette Zero for the 1999 Sydney Fringe Festival.
Richard Hayes-Marshall has worked primarily as a theatre teacher. In 1992 he directed a group-devised piece called IV Virtue, which was performed at the Seymour Centre.
Alex Pinder has worked as an actor, director/consultant, teacher and community theatre artist. He is probably best-known for his role in the long-running children s television series Ocean Girl. In 1988 he directed Franca Rame s I Don t Move, I Don t Scream, My Voice is Gone at La Mamma for the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
George Ogilvie is the most successful and well-known alumnus in the directing category. Ogilvie s work as a director has been concentrated in mainstream sections of Australian theatre. Since returning to Australia in 1965, Ogilvie has worked as artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company (1965 - 1972), artistic director of the South Australian Theatre Company (1972 - 1976) and as a freelance director of theatre, film and television. This includes work with the Australian Opera Company for six years, with the Australian Ballet Company, the Sydney Theatre Company and Playbox in Melbourne. Ogilvie is greatly responsible for the initial introduction and dissemination of Lecoq s work and pedagogical principles throughout mainstream sectors of Australian theatre. As Kevon Kemp observed in 1977:
The teaching side is a strong element in [Ogilvie s] perspective; one way or another, his directing has always had a light touch of the tutor (1977:21).
Ogilvie has always conducted Lecoq-based workshops alongside production in theatre as well as in film and television work. For three and a half decades, Ogilvie has been teaching and applying Lecoq s work to mainstream text-based productions. He has brought a strongly visual, physical and stylistic focus to his work, using improvisatory processes and approaches in rehearsals. His impact on and contribution to Australian theatre is indicated in the following comments by Rally Davison:
George Ogilvie s career has embraced most of the performing arts and his ability to elicit sub-textual references from varied and difficult works has established him as one of Australia s foremost directors. He introduced new interpretations of classics and his training as a mime artist and a teacher contributed immensely to the development of the Union Theatre Repertory Company (later the Melbourne Theatre Company) and the South Australian Theatre Company (later State
135 Theatre). His directing of 23 plays in six years for the former company and his work with every other major Australian company have impacted greatly upon two generations of playwrights, directors and actors. Ogilvie is rare among Australian directors in having been able to work with a permanent company on a series of plays. The results of his training with the Melbourne Theatre Company were quickly evident in his landmark productions of Arthur Wing Pinero s The Magistrate and Anton Chekhov s Three Sisters - the company s first Chekhov - in 1969 [...J. Ogilvie has been described as an actor s director and this is illustrated by his fast-moving, flowing style (1995:413).
Ogilvie s influence on Australian theatre should not be underestimated. His early work with the MTC, the SATC and workshops with the APG occurred at a critical time in Australia s theatrical history. His post-Lecoq career has spanned thirty-five years, during which time he has worked consistently in state theatre companies. His work has thus touched many audience members, critics, actors, directors, designers, writers, teachers and producers of theatre.
Nigel Jamieson has been directing in Australia from the late 1980s. He has quickly risen to prominence as a director of large scale, site specific outdoor events and productions by physical theatre company Legs on the Wall and Brisbane s Rock n Roll Circus. In 1991 he established the Australian International Workshop Festival, where he brought Jacques Lecoq to Australia for the first and only time as one of the contributing theatre practitioners. His directorial works include Red Square for the 1996 Adelaide Festival; Kelly s Republic, the central commission for the 1997 Sydney Festival; Flamma Flamma: Fire Requiem, the opening event of the 1998 Adelaide Festival; artistic directorship of Adelaide s biennial Come Out Festival for young people (which he renamed Take Over); The Labours of Hercules for Brisbane s Rock n Roll circus; The Cutting Room with Dancer Ros Crisp; Monsoon with Robyn Archer and Paul Grabowski; Galax Arena for the Adelaide Festival Trust; and the children s piece Wake Baby, which has toured internationally. Jamieson s most recent theatrical undertakings include the millennial and Sydney 2000 Olympic celebrations.
In the relatively short time Jamieson has been in Australia, his directing work has impacted enormously on Australian theatre. Jamieson s productions have enjoyed huge audience exposure, not to mention any impact his work has had on other theatre practitioners. In addition, he has been a pioneer in areas of physical and circus theatres, pushing these genres in new directions:
136 Nigel Jamieson [...] has shaped and influenced contemporary Australian circus and physical theatre over the last seven years [...]. Nigel has been instrumental in integrating highly physical and visual theatre at large scale events (Robins 1999:44).
While Jamieson has studied under a wide range of theatre teachers through the International Workshop Festival, his training with Lecoq remains the most fundamental influence on his work (see Jamieson, in Robins 1999:44).
CREATION OF ORIGINAL MATERIAL
A significant feature of many of the productions directed by Lecoq alumni in Australia is the creation of original theatrical material rather than the use of pre-scripted written texts. A number of alumni have worked almost exclusively with devised texts and all have used devised material on at least one occasion. Alumni have created theatrical texts on multiple and diverse themes, drawing on a wide range of sources for inspiration. George Ogilvie, for example, devised a piece with members of the Australian Ballet School in which he developed ideas from the writings of Kafka. Judith Pippen created a piece in collaboration with the Older Women's Network in Brisbane with the members' personal recollections forming the basis of the dramatic material. Christine Grace devised and directed a piece for the Melbourne Fringe Festival based on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. Therese Collie co- created and directed Anna Yen's one-woman circus show Chinese Take-Away based on Yen's Chinese/Australian family history. Dominique Sweeney's Accidente was based around two neighbouring Italian/Australian families. Nigel Jamieson took fire as the central theme in his creation of Flamma Flamma for the opening event of the 1998 Adelaide festival, co-ordinating the construction of moving firescapes, lanterns and fire structures in a celebration of Adelaide's cultural and spiritual diversity. For All of Me with Legs on the Wall, Jamieson took 'the physical and emotional extremes of human bonding' as the departure point for creation. In Wildheart, also with Legs, Jamieson re- worked the traditional `Tarzan' story in which a Victorian naturalist husband and wife team and their guide venture deep into the jungle to discover and subsequently 'civilise' a woman who has been raised by wild animals.
A number of alumni have been particularly influenced by Lecoq's techniques for creating dramatic approaches to poetry, painting, music and objects. George Ogilvie,
137 for example, devised performance material with actors at the MTC using mime, song and poetry. Christine Grace adapted a Welsh poem for performance in Mabinogion, where a knight of the round table goes on a quest for the source of life. Nigel Jamieson has created a number of large-scale, outdoor, site-specific events using painting, music and objects as departure points in the creative process. Jamieson s contribution to the 1997 Sydney Festival, for example, incorporated both painting and music as creative impulses. Called Kelly s Republic, the piece was inspired by Sidney Nolan s Ned Kelly series which Jamieson had seen for the first time in 1995:
[Jamieson] was struck by an inherent theatricality about the paintings, a feeling of tension and drama beneath the almost childlike surfaces. "There was a naivete about them that I found completely wild. I thought then that they could form the basis of some kind of great show" (Bennie 1996a:15).
Jamieson wanted to explore the darker sides of Nolan s imagery and examine the socio- cultural complexes surrounding the Kelly mythology. He saw the armoured Ned Kelly as a metaphor for the processes of Australian manhood and used the Kelly mask as a representation of physical and emotional armouring (Burke 1997:18). Music, song and sound played an integral role in the piece, working in conjunction with other production elements to create dramatic tension and counterpoint. The opening sequence began with a sound-scape of music, text, exploding fireworks, roaring motorcycles and pounding drums. Amidst the rabble, the figure of an armoured Ned Kelly appears from the shadows high on the sails of the Opera House. The sound-scape stops and in the silence Kelly plays a lament on the uilleann pipes. As he plays, the figure of Ned Kelly on horseback appears far below on the forecourt and rides slowly through the residual smoke towards the audience. Dozens more Ned Kelly figures of various sizes appear carrying long Nolanesque rifles. On a tower at the rear of the forecourt is a scaffold from which Kelly will ultimately hang, to the accompaniment of a boy soprano (Bennie 1996a:15).
Jamieson has also used objects as creative elements in devising dramatic material. In Wake Baby, which was devised in collaboration with the Canberra-based puppet company Skylark, ropes and toilet rolls became trees, flowers and domestic animals (Gripper 1997:35). In creating Red Square for the 1996 Adelaide festival, Jamieson took industrial objects and transformed them into a theatrical environment. Situated on the Army s Torrens Parade Ground opposite the Festival Centre, Red Square was a late- night, open air, performance space which Jamieson has described as a cross between an Elizabethan theatre and a rave venue (Jamieson 1998:323, interview). Jamieson created the venue/event from one-hundred and fifty rust-red shipping containers stacked
138 vertically up to twenty-five metres, providing multiple levels and performance spaces in which a number of theatrical events could occur simultaneously.
In addition to these techniques, alumni have also drawn on aspects of the neutral mask work in creating dramatic material. Celia Moon, for example, has drawn directly on a number of the exercises in identification with various phenomena in helping actors to create characters for devised texts, using the work with animals, elements, colours and materials:
I ve used the work with animals a lot with people to help them find character no matter what they re doing: "What animal are you? What colour are you? "What s the rhythm of the character?" I ve used all those elements and people can access that quite easily once they get used to this sort of quirky thing you want them to do because it s approaching it from a way that just makes it seem quite tangible and quite accessible. It s not some mysterious thing that s out there and once you feel it then you ve got to try and re-experience it. You can just build a character in quite a tangible way. It s a very concrete approach I guess. I ve used that a lot with people and they ve found it tremendous (Moon 1998:395, interview).
In Wildheart, Nigel Jamieson has used the forms of Lecoq s exercises in identification with animals to depict the primate family with whom the `Tarzan woman was raised (Evans 1994). The neutral mask exercise called Le Voyage elementaire - The Elementary Journey - is also a notable feature of Wildheart. In Lecoq s exercise, the student travels through an imaginary terrain (see Lecoq 1997:52). In Jamieson s production, the performers journeyed through a forest which John McCallum described as a marvellously theatrical trek through the wilderness (1994). In Wake Baby, the neutral mask exercise of waking and exploring the world as if for the first time is positioned within the narrative context of a spirit child who falls to earth and explores the world of matter. Here the child undertakes Journeys of discovery in taste, sight, smell, sound and touch (Gripper 1997:35).
USE OF IMPROVISATION
As directors, alumni have employed improvisational approaches in multiple ways and with multiple aims that include: providing departure points from which the actors can explore character and textual possibilities; freeing the actors emotionally and physically
139 by developing spontaneity and playfulness; developing strong ensemble playing between the actors. More broadly, however, the work of alumni is characterised by a preoccupation with spontaneous and impromptu aspects of the production process and a valuing of the personal creativity, spontaneity, vitality and playfulness of the performer. Their work foregrounds approaches which are non-analytical, visceral, extempore and involve working with un-planned and unknown elements, constructing theatrical dynamics out of random occurrences. This preoccupation cuts across multiple aspects of their work as directors, but is particularly foregrounded in their engagement with textual material and their interactions with the actors. Christine Grace s comments are indicative:
Directors tend to think actors are really stupid, but at Lecoq s you devise your own work as actors so it s really coming from the other end of the spectrum in that you re a creative, expressive vessel. Lecoq is about bringing out the performer, bringing out that person on stage by seeing where that person is bigger, open, content, happy to play, and everyone is quite different. People s play, the way people play is so varied and so rich. I think a good director responds to the actor and I think it s quite rare to find a director who will allow you to play and to find your own way of expressing that play in a dramatic context (Grace 1997:264, interview).
George Ogilvie, who has worked almost exclusively with pre-scripted texts, has used improvisation extensively in rehearsals as part of his directorial approach. As a way of helping the actors to develop characterisation, Ogilvie often invites the actors to play , to improvise, explore and experiment with their roles, sometimes asking them to bring pieces of clothing into rehearsals that they think their character might wear. The exercise is not aimed at costuming the characters for production, but providing the actors with a departure point from which to explore and develop characterisation through playing with costume in the same way as a child plays dress-ups (Ogilvie 1998:446, interview).
George Ogilvie has also used improvisations with comic half-mask and clowning techniques to develop the spontaneity and ensemble work of the actors. In rehearsals, particularly if he feels the actors are getting bogged down in the scene, Ogilvie stops rehearsal of the script to do a clowning session with the cast:
Not because I wanted the actors to be funny, but because I wanted them to understand what it is to share, and clowning is an amazing exercise for actors to find out how to share things. For example: if a clown has a hat and he s very
140 proud of that hat and the other clown wants that hat, then there has to be a sharing here, because if the actor with the hat refuses to give the other clown the hat, then the play dies. So he s got to find a way of giving the hat to the other person. And it s exactly the same way when it comes to a classical text: actors have to listen to each other and give each other certain things in order for their words to come alive (Ogilvie 1998:447, interview).
Celia Moon has also used improvisational techniques to provide departure points for the actors in their explorations of character. In rehearsal processes, she encourages the actors to play freely with different styles of performance. In addition, Moon has found improvisational approaches important in terms of developing the spontaneity of the actors:
I think it s important to get people feeling more free in their bodies, and not take themselves too seriously - to really free it up and play with it and then you can bring it back to whatever it has to be, but if you can t do it big then you can t bring it back (Moon 1998:395, interview).
That s been very much my approach to working with character: do it as a soap opera or regular opera, rock and roll, just try different styles without bothering about what s going to actually resonate with the character. Different rhythms, using different languages - speaking different languages even though you don t know the language, like Japanese, but it s getting the rhythm of a particular language [...]. With text, once again, get people singing it in an operatic style. Get to know the text really well so that you can do it as you re running from one end of the theatre to the other, once again, do it in different styles, do it slow, do it fast, melodrama or whatever, just getting into the rhythms of the patterns of speech (Moon 1998:397, interview).
As a way of developing the actors ability to interact with each other on stage in terms of timing and focus, Moon has often used a Lecoq ball game exercise that functions as a physical metaphor for the dynamics of timing and focus in performance:
I pass the ball to you, you pass it back to me, it s your focus, it s my focus. It s really a different way of describing the dynamics that occur on stage so that while you re present on stage and everybody can see you it doesn t mean that you have to be the centre of attention all the time, and rather than say to people: "Stop upstaging!", to actually play games and say: "Well it s just like playing this game" (Moon 1998:395, interview).
141 In addition to using improvisational approaches in their work with the actors, alumni indicate a concern for spontaneous elements in their engagements with and creation of textual material, incorporating approaches that are impromptu rather than analytical. This approach is epitomised in the following comments by Nigel Jamieson:
I used to have all these exercises I used a lot, and approaches and stuff and used to prepare with copious notes all over the script [...]. For a while I was incredibly thorough in terms of scene breakdowns, very much a Stanisla yskian approach; beats, character objectives, action and all of that sort of stuff. Now I think I almost like to go into a rehearsal room wondering what s going to happen, what the game is (in Robins, 1999:49).
George Ogilvie uses improvisation as a starting point for exploration of the dramatic possibilities of the narrative and as a way of engaging with the dynamics of the narrative in lively and spontaneous ways. In directing Chekhov s Three Sisters for the Melbourne Theatre Company, for example, Ogilvie began the rehearsal process by asking the actors to improvise around the phrase: I hear they ve put a rope all around Moscow (G. Milne, pers. com., 8 July 1999).
Alumni have also used improvisation as an approach to developing and creating original theatrical material. Nigel Jamieson, for example, has used a variety of improvisational techniques in devising texts with Legs on the Wall. For All of Me, Jamieson began with the theme of the physical and emotional extremes of human bonding . Part of this work incorporated improvisations based on the company members personal recollections in an exploration of exhaustion levels :
Which means that you run as fast as you can in erratic movements for about an hour or an hour and a half continuously: falling, dropping, coming up, running, falling, dropping, coming up and at the end of that you transpose a scene on top of it. One of the classic scenes was where Bernie remembered being lost in Disneyland when she was a child and then being surrounded by crowds. The idea was to use our bodies, that we were the crowds and she had to use our bodies to get over it (Keogh, in Pottage 1995:5).
Richard Moore has drawn on his training in improvisation to devise production material for his work as a documentary film maker. Here Moore has mixed the pedagogical leaven with a new medium, re-contextualising improvisational techniques in a play between the various elements involved in the production process:
142 I think I would have used that sense of play very directly on a number of occasions: the play between action and non-action, between the spontaneous material and the more formal material and in being able to combine those elements together into an hour long format that does play with the audience and provoke the audience (1998:406, interview).
Moore cites his most recent documentary 'Art from the Heart' as an instance of his use of 'provocative play' in 'creating' production material. The film addresses issues surrounding the exploitation of indigenous artists in Australia, focusing on Aboriginal artists who sell their works on the streets of Alice Springs. Here, Moore has employed his skills in improvisation and 'play' in his role as interviewer, posing provocative questions and 'playing' with the interviewees in an attempt to elicit response and confront them with the issues which the film addresses.
A MOVEMENT-BASED APPROACH
While the Lecoq pedagogy has sometimes been described as 'non-psychological' and consequently situated in opposition to text-based realism, in effect it sits somewhere between this opposition, disrupting its polarity through the promotion of the integrated body. Other than operating from the Cartesian split, the pedagogy enacts a position whereby neither the mind nor the voice is separate from the body. For Lecoq, the movement of the integrated body in space is the driving force of theatrical dynamics.
In an enactment of this pedagogical position, alumni situate movement as a key aspect of theatrical endeavour and their approaches to directing are underwritten by an acute awareness of movement and spatial dynamics. Their training thus manifests as a particular sensitivity in terms of how the placement and movement of bodies and/or objects in space operates dramatically. Judith Pippen' s comments regarding her direction of Alma de Groen's The Rivers of China are indicative:
I saw the whole thing in a kind of visual movement picture and I would say that the Lecoq work that I've done very much influences me on visualising the scenes. I see things in terms of movement patterns, of dynamics in space, as well as looking at things like motivation and all of those kinds of basic things, but certainly my placement of characters [...]. I saw things in terms of the shapes of
143 the actors bodies crafted in space together. So, for example, I would have the woman sitting and the servant that was talking to her was massaging her back so there was the rhythm that would link with the text and the way the bodies formed around the stool [...]. I would like to think that you could photograph a piece I was doing at any point of the action and it would be a really aesthetically pleasing visual image, minimalist in its leanings but really spatially interesting [...]. So that whole spatial thing is very important for me, and I know that I was deeply influenced by Lecoq in terms of that work (Pippen 1998:466-467, interview).
In constructing the mise en scene, a number of alumni have made particular use of a Lecoq exercise that is principally concerned with spatial dynamics in the theatrical context. Called L'Equilibre du plateau - The Equilibrium of the Plateau (see Appendix D, page 335), the exercise is designed to develop an understanding of the dynamics of time and space in a theatrical context, of a sense of the fullness or emptiness of the space, of the distribution of the actors in the space, and of the dramatic effects of rhythm, pace, energy and quality of movement. Nigel Jamieson has noted this as a key aspect of his directorial approach:
[Lecoq s training] is to do with the very fundamentals of space and how we inhabit space [...]. You start with understanding how a stage is balanced, the fundamental choreography of chorus. This is absolutely fundamental to the way I approach theatre. In almost every rehearsal [...]. I utilise exercises to balance the space and to get the performers to feel the rhythms and energy of the game they are playing. (Jamieson, in Robins 1999:47).
The plateau exercise has also been an important aspect of George Ogilvie s directorial approach:
[Lecoq] was a man who had a vision about the space we call the stage and it was this vision that I saw. We did a lot of work on Greek chorus and on the focus of the stage and this is really what I d left Australia to discover as a director and that was to learn about the stage itself. I wanted to see it in a much more choreographic way and the notion of focus in a chorus and in a Greek script, which we began to use, became the most fabulous way of approaching theatre as a director (Ogilvie 1998:441-442, interview).
Alumni s focus on the possibilities and dramatic potentials of movement and spatial composition also manifests as a preoccupation with such elements as focus, energy and
144 rhythm, both in terms of the movement of individual actors and the dramatic text as a whole. As Isabelle Anderson comments:
I see the body of the play almost as a physical thing. It s like I see it in terms of timing and rhythm and pace and I have to feel the shape of it. These are all physical terms I m using. I don t look at a play initially and say, "Well, what is the emotion here?". I mean Lecoq has been called the European expressionist theatre - it s non-psychological. All roads lead to Rome because of course you do have to get psychological at some point, but that s not the way in. See when I did A Midsummer Night s Dream, I had to get the whole picture of the play and the movement and the pace and the jumping from scene to scene. So I start with the big picture and then work it down to the tiniest detail and then every single beat has to be there. So on the one hand you feel kind of dictatorial because you re not sort of giving your actors all that much room to take a long pause or do whatever creative interpretation they like because there is a sense that you are controlling the rhythm and the dynamic of the whole. But then when it does get down to working with the actors, I think I m very much an actor s director because that was very much the training - that it is the body on stage. I have to have a certain energy level in the ensemble, in the group, and that energy level comes from their physical commitment to the roles. And they don t have to be fit, they can be one hundred years old and fat but there is a physical commitment to the role that brings a certain heightened energy on stage [...] you need physical presence on stage and you all have to have it because it feeds each other and that s how actors work together (Anderson 1999:8, interview).
Alumni s training in analysis of movement notably manifests as a concern with the readability of theatrical dynamics, particularly in terms of clarity and precision of movement. As George Ogilvie indicates:
I think the main word for me with Lecoq is the word clarity - clarity of intention - and Lecoq did that for me in every possible way. Everything he did was to make things clear, to be very precise and then, with all that precision of course never to show the precision but just to let it flow. And the combination of that is a marvellous way for an actor to work (Ogilvie 1998:444, interview).
[A]s an actor you have to be absolutely, positively clear and, if that clarity is there in your performance, the audience will come to you (Ogilvie, in Evans 1991).
145 Richard Moore and Therese Collie have also indicated a preoccupation with clarity and precision:
[At the Lecoq school] the message was to be clear, concise and to use your whole body in everything that you did. Well I know that carried through into the theatre work that I did but also when I m making documentaries because you re going out into the field and you re gathering information and you come back into the editing room and you have to make the story in the editing room and you have to be as clear as possible, in a way as direct as possible. So you learn to go straight to the heart of the matter, whatever it is. So in other words, you don t take three shots to describe a scene, you can describe it in one wide shot rather than three wide shots. So you choose the most simple and direct way to get in (Moore 1998:405-405, interview).
I think attention to detail is something that Lecoq taught and that has really influenced my directing style. I like really precise directing where every movement is there for a reason. I hate sloppy kind of whooshy movement-ship that adds no meaning or character or context (Collie 2000:156, interview).
Clarity and precision have often been noted by reviewers as a feature of a number of the productions directed by Lecoq alumni. One reviewer, for example, described Wildheart as precise and disciplined ensemble work (Payne 1994). Two reviews of George Ogilvie s Pericles refer to the movement of the actors as choreographic , one as meticulously so (see McGillick 1987; Nugent 1987). Ogilvie s productions of Macbeth (1996) and King Lear (1995) have both been variously praised by reviewers for their clarity, uncomplicated simplicity and accessibility (see Hawkins 1996; Payne 1996a; McGillick 1995; Gifford 1995).
Alumni s concern with the movement aspects of theatrical dynamics also manifests in their productions as a foregrounding of visual elements, where they use image, action and movement to construct the theatrical text. These characteristically feature in ways that work co-operatively with the spoken text or operate to convey the narrative or aspects of the narrative solely through movement and spatial dynamics. As Richard Moore comments:
Lecoq is very keen on the mise en scene, on the total picture, and on what you re presenting to the audience in visual terms. The emphasis of Lecoq, for me anyway, is the visual picture rather than the text, obviously because it s a mime school so you re concentrating more on the action, on making things happen and
146 on how the scenes translate or the transition points between the scenes and how you can make that happen in terms of action rather than in terms of words. So it s looking for action and looking for pictures and how you can construct the total stage picture and how you can make that visually exciting and make that visually interesting for an audience, but again, as simple and as concise and as pared down as possible (Moore 1998:405, interview).
In some cases, the alumni s preoccupation with movement and visual aspects of production operates as a privileging of the visual text over and above other textual elements, particularly the verbal. This is a notable feature of much of Nigel Jamieson s work. Wake Baby, for example, featured acrobatics and puppetry, using no spoken text. Jamieson s large-scale, site-specific projects necessarily rely heavily on visual impact, since verbal narrative elements present major difficulties for outdoor performance and particularly on such a large scale. Jamieson s work with Legs on the Wall, where the performance text is constructed almost entirely through movement dynamics, also relies strongly on visual rather than verbal impact. All of Me is an apt example, where the textual narrative is enacted with few words, but with the imagery and skilled acrobatic movement for which Legs are so renowned. Here, the physical interactions of the characters become clear metaphorical images of the relationship dynamics being portrayed.
The text told the story of familial relationships, focusing on the story of daughter Elizabeth, following her from birth to death as she matures into a naughty child and a troubled teenager. The opening image is of the unborn Elizabeth suspended in a cone of light floating high above the audience on her way down the birth canal. Upon her arrival into the world, Elizabeth walks across the hands of her family members as they roll across the stage, portraying the child taking her first tentative steps. These stumbling attempts develop into agile climbing ability as the supporting clan builds a human formation of backs and shoulders playfully proffered as footholds for her adventurous excursions, exploring the world and tumbling over her parents bodies. Bliss gives way to arguments and violence graphically choreographed with physical and emotional intensity as the cradling, supporting and balancing transforms into the percussive whack of body against body, into bodies hurtling through the air, crashing into one another but always just saving each other from injury, creating physical metaphors of the changing relationship dynamics.
Working with Legs members, Jamieson developed the physical and visual text from the images and narrative possibilities suggested by the group s acrobatic movements and balance skills:
147 I came along to Legs and said show us what you do and they did these balances and I got a certain emotion and feeling from each balance. I was very impressed and I thought that the balance language was very beautiful. The company showed me a four-high table pyramid and I thought that it looked like a circus move, but the first part where the legs wrapped and eye contact was made, when the top person leaned back, looked like something else. To me, in the early days, certain advantages lay in the fact that I didn t know the balance work that well. I felt that some of the moves I d seen before had a beginning of a narrative or emotional statement, from which you could weld a narrative (Jamieson, in Robins 1999:50).
All of Me represents one instance where verbal text has been strongly relegated to the background of the dramatic narrative. However, the privileging of the visual over the verbal has not necessarily been operative in all cases of the alumni s work. It is perhaps more correct to say that alumni have sometimes privileged, sometimes foregrounded, and at other times given equal emphasis to visual and verbal elements of production, contingent upon the theatrical context in which they are operating. Jamieson, for example, has also indicated a preoccupation with creating theatrical dynamics that give equal status to the visual and the verbal. As Angela Bennie reported in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Jamieson was interested in developing theatre that told its story as much through imagery as words, so that it could tap into something in the audience that lay beyond language, but which they would all recognise [...]. Jamieson has worked steadily on creating a theatre that, whether is be The Odyssey or Blood Wedding, "if you went to see it and didn t understand the language you would still understand the story" (Bennie 1996a:15).
George Ogilvie, who has worked primarily with scripted material, has directed productions with a parallel focus on movement and text. In addition, he has sometimes used movement alone to convey aspects of the narrative, such as his use of mime sequences The Royal Hunt of the Sun for the MTC in 1966 and in Burke s Company in 1968. Ogilvie is strongly resistant to more traditional approaches to the rehearsal process that begin with the actors sitting down and reading the play. In this, Ogilvie enacts Lecoq s pedagogical principle that theatre is created on the floor , through the movement of bodies in space. Ogilvie s methods begin with the actors reading only a scene or sequence from the play before they are asked to get up onto the floor to explore and develop their characters through movement:
148 So that in fact most of the time my feeling is always that we do not construct a character simply through text, but that we construct a character not only with the text but with physical work at the same time, to find how physically it comes about, how clearly it can come about by a physical action as opposed to a word, and for the actors to find out: "How still does that word require me to be or can I move with that word and does that make it more interesting?" So I think that s probably the way I work with almost every text that I do (Ogilvie 1998:446, interview).
Judith Pippen s approach to text, although influenced by Linklater s voice work, is also impacted by her Lecoq training, where her primary focus is the possible connections between words and movement:
Obviously I m interested in the actual meaning of the text, the sense of the text, but then I m interested in where the mood switches are in the text, where the triggers are in the text that switch the mood. So again I m interested in the physical impulses. There s often something in the actual words that would make me change my body, make me change what I m doing. So it s the vocal triggers that switch my mood and then the effect that mood would have on my actions (Pippen 1998:467, interview).
Therese Collie s directing work has often focused on devised rather than scripted material. In her approach, the verbal text is developed in conjunction with character creation using movement techniques. She has often used Lecoq s undulation exercise sequence to help the actors to create character and narrative using movement as the primary departure point:
I would teach that movement and get it flowing through their bodies and talking about where you breathe, and if you breathe in as you come up, and out as you go down, then that s a different feeling to the opposite. And then stopping at one part of the body and then walking and leading with that part. So the hips for example, and the feelings and attitudes and character that surfaces out of walking in that way. And then the sounds and the words and then they take off into a rave which will create story, character, situations, point of view. All sorts of things will surface spontaneously without thinking about it too much. So it s actually coming through the body and you can do that through all the different parts of the body and then put different people together and so on (Collie 2000:154, interview).
149 Collie used this technique when working with Anna Yen to create the characters for her one-woman show Chinese Take-Away:
[We] did a lot of improvising and videoing improvisations and using photographs of her family and using the undulation to create the characters of her father, the old grandmother and the way her mother walked in the fifties with the corsets and the high heels, and learning ways of changing from one character to the other. Because the stories were all there, but then we had to find different ways of communicating them in the play. I also used that Lecoq exercise where you have to come to school as a character and be that character all day and we did that with Anna [...]. So getting her to really take on these characters as a second skin (Collie 1998:140, interview).
Alumni demonstrate an ability to utilise a wide range of reference points in relation to the exploration of movement possibilities and the construction of movement dynamics. The undulation exercise used by Collie is one in a wide range which alumni can deploy in exploring movement possibilities and constructing movement dynamics for character and mise en scene. Alumni demonstrate particular skills in relation to detailed observation and analysis of action and of the movement dynamics of various phenomena which they are then able to transpose into theatrical dynamics. As Nigel Jamieson comments:
Lecoq s one man show was called Tout Bouge - Everything Moves . Colour moves, either towards you or away from you, red has a movement that is entirely different to blue; each passion moves differently, jealousy has a movement, anger has a movement: animals, minerals and buildings have a movement, the texture of this sofa moves, and in our imagination, within our bodies, we possess the ability to recapture all of these movements. That to me is the fundamental thing in the Lecoq experience, you don t limit yourself (Jamieson, in Robins 1999:46).
Jamieson has re-invested these movement skills in his creation and direction of the `Bobcat Ballet , as part of the Red Square performances, where plant machinery `danced to Carmina Burana:
For Red Square I choreographed a kind of Swan Lake with two huge excavators - the ones with the big grab arms that use traction - and I also used bobcats and cranes and things like that. And I think there s an emotion and a movement and a colour in those objects as much as there is in a piece of text (Jamieson 1998:324, interview).
150 Nigel Jamieson s investment of the animal work in his direction of Wildheart with Legs on the Wall, is also notable:
The movements of [the actors] reveal a scrupulous observation and exacting depiction of a kind of simian behaviour, as they walk on all fours, their feet turned out, buttocks raised and knuckles pressed to the floor. The impression is of prehistoric hominids related to chimpanzees or baboons (Evans 1994).
It is notable that while alumni have drawn on these aspects of Lecoq s movement-based approach in their direction of dramatic material, they have not often employed the neutral mask work as a rehearsal tool or as an approach to preparing actors for a role. In this aspect of the Lecoq training students move towards a neutral physical and emotional foundation on which they can build character, aiming at creating a blank page on which to write the drama (Lecoq 1997:47). While alumni have often used the neutral mask as a pedagogical tool in their work as performance trainers, few have employed it as a directorial aid. Considering the hallowed position of this work in the Lecoq pedagogy and the importance which alumni have placed on this aspect of the training, this is a significant departure. Celia Moon, Judith Pippen, Richard Moore and Therese Collie, for example, have all used neutral mask techniques in teaching capacities but not in their work as directors. Isabelle Anderson and George Ogilvie are notable exceptions. Anderson has often used the neutral mask and sometimes character masks in her rehearsals:
Some people don t do much neutral mask work at all, they stick to character or to clown or something, but I do a lot of neutral. I just find it so fertile. The neutral mask is just the most extraordinary tool. In early stages of rehearsal, in exploratory stages of rehearsal it can be a real can-opener. It can remove a block, it can open an actor, definitely [...]. So I think the neutral mask is a very sophisticated little weapon actually. I use it very carefully and very extensively [...]. There s a level of using it that s very easy, but if you re going to use it to get into the different energies you ve got within you, the different elemental forces, the different possibilities, whole paradigm shifts of character type, shifting your whole being into another character, then it s a great tool for that (Anderson 1999:9, interview).
Early in Ogilvie s directing career he used the neutral mask work with actors but abandoned this technique when the set of masks he was using were stolen. Ogilvie subsequently explored other methods of helping actors prepare for a role without the use
151 of the masks. Geoffrey Milne notes, for example, that Ogilvie continued to utilise neutral mask techniques with actors at the MTC, substituting the concept of a blank face for the physical mask (pers.com. 7 July 1999). In the late 1970s, Ogilvie began to introduce principles of meditation and Eastern spiritual philosophy into his directorial approach with similar objectives to those of the neutral mask work:
One of the principles that I teach now is that in order to work you must be empty. In order to work you must be empty of concepts, judgement, anything else, in order to be able to fill up (Ogilvie 1998:444, interview).
Ogilvie considers these techniques as a departure from his Lecoq training, but his approach parallels the objectives of the neutral mask work in two ways. Firstly, in that it aims to create a clean slate on which to build character and secondly, in that it aims to create in the actor an emotional state free of preconceptions, judgment or expectation. In a sense Ogilvie has merely substituted the metaphor of the actor as creative vessel for Lecoq s metaphor of the actor as tabula rasa.
A REPERTOIRE OF PERFORMANCE STYLES
The work of alumni in the directing category is characterised by their reference to a repertoire of performance styles. Their work is underwritten by an awareness of the operations of form in the theatrical context and a positioning of form as a key aspect of theatrical endeavour. Nigel Jamieson s comments are indicative:
Lecoq encouraged us to think in terms of style, form and different vehicles [...]. When you go to the Lecoq school you look at tragedy, comedy, melodrama, buffoon, clown. All these different forms have a different medium and different way they use space, a different relationship between the players on the stage, the audience and the gods. It makes you think, what form am I going to use? . If you do training at NIDA, I don t know if they quite think like that (Jamieson, in Robins 1999:46-47).
Alumni have created productions using styles such as clown, commedia dell arte, tragedy and melodrama. In some cases alumni have mixed a number of these forms to
152 create a stylistic melange or else have used their training in a repertoire of styles as a departure point, mixing the pedagogical leaven with new ingredients and giving rise to innovative theatrical forms.
Christine Grace mixed a number of the styles taught at the Lecoq school to create a stylistic melange in Mabinogion, which she co-created and co-directed with New Zealand Lecoq graduate Lizzie Cook. The piece incorporates elements of bouffon, tragedy, clown, mask and the neutral mask work with the elements and animals:
I think both of us had come back from Lecoq and had rules and these different styles of theatre and our understanding had expanded a lot and probably we were very thirsty to use it all. So this show reflected all the different aspects of styles that we d been studying at Lecoq [...]. The elements have a strong part in the play: there was water, there was ritual. There was also a scene where we played the two very strong gallant knights wearing masks. We chose a really strong male image and we had a duel and we had to depict two knights clashing on a horse with their long swords and I remember that we ended up using two long poles each and facing each other on the stage and galloping towards each other on the spot and then we d come to each other and really whack these long poles together, against each other. And I think that the way we came to represent all these different scenarios in the play was quite Lecoqian in the way that it captured the poetry of it and it was strongly visual, but simple. (Grace 1997:255, interview).
Grace has also used her training in a repertoire of styles as a departure point, mixing the pedagogical leaven with new ingredients by re-contextualising particular styles or by mixing them with new theatrical elements, creating innovative styles and uses of style. In two pieces which she directed for the 1994 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Grace re- contextualised the bouffon and clown styles by incorporating circus elements. The pieces were performed at the Footscray Arts Centre as part of the New Circus Works, an event inviting circus performers in Melbourne to devise new performance pieces that combine circus skills with performance elements. With the bouffon piece, Grace used the bouffon style but incorporated trapeze work: It was kind of going into new territories with the bouffon and seeing what they could do on a trapeze and what context, what world that would create (Grace 1997:256, interview). The clown piece was devised with two actors who normally perform traditional circus tight-wire routines. Here Grace wanted to exploit the duo s tight-wire skills incorporating them into a strong clown routine and exploring how the style might operate in this context (Grace 1997:256-257, interview).
153 Grace has also invented a new performance style which she calls Gothic melodrama . She developed the style while devising and directing a piece for the 1994 Melbourne Fringe called Arachne and Dr Succubus. Here she drew on the large gestural properties and thematic concerns of traditional melodrama but gave the form darker and more sinister overtones. The piece was based on traditional travelling side-shows and included characters such as the vicious spruiker Dr Succubus, the freakish spider woman called Arachne, and Dr Succubus s mute son. After performing for the Melbourne Fringe, the group decided to develop the piece further. This extended version toured successfully for three years to festivals and primary schools throughout Victoria. Because Grace felt that the original piece was a little too dark and heavy for a school touring show, She attempted to lighten the piece by injecting more elements of clown. In addition to the original characters, there was a snake-charming dwarf and a contortionist and his wife. Called Dr Succubus and the Circus of Wonders, the narrative alternated between the characters side-show acts and their interactions with each other back-stage between acts. The plot-line involved the different characters attempting to overthrow Dr Succubus, culminating in a minor revolution on stage (Grace 1997:258- 259, interview).
While Nigel Jamieson has worked with multiple theatrical forms in his directing work in Australia, his productions have been focused in two main areas. The first is work that has involved movement-skilled performers and has included productions with physical theatre company Legs on the Wall; a dramatisation of Gillian Rubenstein s novel Galax Arena with gymnasts, acrobats and actors; The Labours of Hercules with Rock n Roll Circus that mixed opera with circus skills; The Cutting Room with dancer Ros Crisp; Wake Baby, which incorporated acrobatics and puppetry; and Monsoon with Robyn Archer. In these productions, Jamieson has worked with a variety of forms that are characterised by their integration of physical or movement skills and theatrical elements. And while this integration has been a preoccupation for a number of contemporary performance practitioners, Jamieson has been particularly successful at working with forms that place movement skills in theatrical contexts. Legs on the Wall s All of Me and Wildheart, for example, were both directed by Jamieson and have received critical acclaim for their innovative marrying of the physical and the theatrical:
In Wildheart - as in its last production, All of Me - Legs on the Wall pushes physical theatre into that intellectual, poetical and complexly narrative arena usually associated with dialogue-based theatre. Both productions have been directed - with rigour, subtlety and great invention - by Nigel Jamieson (Payne 1994:142).
154 In 1994, Legs on the Wall won the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for All of Me. Notably, the award citation suggests that the piece was chosen because of its significance as an innovation in physical theatre forms:
All of Me has proven to be a breakthrough piece in terms of the use of acrobatic and physical theatre to carry an expressionistic and emotional narrative (Sydney Morning Herald 10 May 1995:17).
According to Legs member Thor Blomfield, much of this credit goes to Jamieson s direction:
Nigel had that [Lecoq] training quite strongly and he brought that back more strongly than say Gail Kelly who hadn t worked in that area at all. So the director has a big influence on the show and how it is developed. I think Gail s background was more a traditional theatre background and therefore perhaps with the shows we did with Gail the skills and theatre were less integrated. But when we got to All of Me, Nigel brought them back together again more closely (Blomfield, in Pottage 1995:2).
In his work with physical theatre, movement theatre, circus and dance theatre, Jamieson s acute understanding of form and innovative use of form has pushed the boundaries of these theatrical territories and contributed to a wider exploration of their dramatic possibilities.
The second area in which Nigel Jamieson s work has been focused is his large-scale, outdoor, site-specific projects that include: Red Square, Kelly s Republic, Flamma Flamma and the Tin Symphony, part of the opening ceremony for the Sydney 2000 Olympics. While the forms used in these events vary widely, the productions share a common stylistic element in that they each incorporate aspects of chorus work. Notably, Jamieson has indicated the choreography of the chorus as fundamental to his theatrical approach (see Robins 1999:47) and in these productions he has used the idea of the chorus on a grand scale and in innovative ways.
For Red Square Jamieson took the idea of the chorus as a representation of the people in a particularly literal sense. In both productions, a number of large choruses were formed by various community groups. Choruses in Red Square consisted of one hundred line dancers, one hundred percussionists on sixty drum kits, a chorus of thirty motorcycle stunt riders, and four brass bands all performing together on the vertical stage complex. Another evening s entertainment saw a chorus of twenty-five Morris
155 Minors in which the Cantabile Choir performed the Hallelujah Chorus. Red Square was highly successful and Jamieson attributes its popularity in part to the involvement of so many people from a wide cross section of the community, including Morris Minor clubs, local choirs and pigeon fanciers (Bennie 1996b:18).
In Kelly s Republic, Jamieson made an innovative and poignant leap in what is, effectively, a merging of the chorus and the tragic hero. Here, Jamieson has taken the figure of Ned Kelly as the hero and, using the iconic Kelly mask and armour, has created the chorus as representations of Kelly. In the production there was not one but a chorus of Ned Kellies all wearing the mask and armour. Sometimes a single Kelly figure took the dramatic focus and operated alone as the tragic hero; at other times the chorus of Kelly figures, of various heights with some on stilts, worked in ensemble as representations of society. In this, Jamieson has made a critical link between a culture and its mythology, suggesting that a culture both constructs and is constructed by its heroes:
This work will be about the legend of Ned Kelly, it is true. But it is also about what causes the legend, about the society that took Ned Kelly and made him its most potent hero (Bennie 1996a:15).
In addition to the Kelly chorus, other choruses were present in the piece with ensembles of thirteen percussionists and thirty five Irish dancers. Jamieson also injected elements of clown into scenes like the police chase conducted by a dozen Constable plods on tricycles and where Kelly s mother hands her boy a VB six-pack along with his rifle as he sets off from home for the first time (Bennie 1996a:15).
Dominique Sweeney s Accidente took the forms of the traditional commedia and re- invested them in a contemporary context. The piece focused on two neighbouring Australian-Italian families, one a wealthy man and his daughter and the other a poor man and his son. The piece was performed outside the Migration Museum building in Adelaide, serving as the wealthy man s mansion. A caravan was moved into the courtyard of the building for the poor family s abode. The crux of the plot was an insurance scam, where the wealthy and miserly old man buys expensive paintings, insures them for four times their value and subsequently burns them to collect the insurance money. Sweeney used the masks and improvised plot scenarios typical of the commedia but created new contemporary characters based on the stock types. The son and daughter were based on the commedia lovers, the rich and miserly man who succumbs to lust and greed was based on Pantalone, the poor man on Il Dottore and the rich man s gang of thugs were based on the zanni.
156 In contrast to Sweeney s piece, George Ogilvie has directed productions using the more `traditional commedia dell arte style. Ogilvie directed The Servant of Two Masters for the MTC in 1967 and Leon Katz s The Three Cuckolds in 1974 for the opening production of the Adelaide Festival Centre Playhouse. Notably, the commedia style was relatively unknown at the time of Ogilvie s 1967 production, and this piece marks the introduction of the form to Australian mainstream stages. The influence of Ogilvie s training in a repertoire of performance styles is not confined to these two commedia productions, however. Ogilvie has also injected commedia elements into the MTC s production of The Government Inspector, for example. Using the commedia style comic-half masks, Ogilvie worked in collaboration with the actors and the designer throughout the rehearsal period:
I had the designer Kris Fredrikson with me all the time. Every character, every actor went through about three masks until opening night. In other words: we started with a mask, then they discovered they needed more, we discovered watching they needed more, so they had a second mask made and then a third. So in fact we built the mask with them as they built the character on the floor (Ogilvie 1998:445, interview).
Ogilvie s direction of The Comedy of Errors at the South Australian Theatre Company also incorporated aspects of commedia, with Mary Armitage describing it as a sort of restrained Tudor commedia dell arte (in Ward 1992:59). Ogilvie s training, not only in commedia but also in clown is evident in many of his comic productions. Indeed, he has been described as a director who excels in stylish comedy and farce (Clark 1995:193) and the master of farce (Ward 1992:56). His clowning skills were particularly noted in a review of Twelfth Night for the Q Theatre:
Ogilvie makes certain that the old-fashioned clowning of Toby Belch, Andrew Aguecheek and Feste are used to the full (LePetit 1991b).
As with Nigel Jamieson, however, Ogilvie s training in a repertoire of styles also manifests more broadly as an awareness of the operations of style in the theatrical context and the positioning of form as a key aspect of theatrical dynamics. Indeed, `style is a word that has often been used in connection with Ogilvie s work. Ann Nugent, for example, described Ogilvie s production of Pericles as stylish, provocative and visually rich (1987), while Peter Ward claims that Ogilvie brought to the SATC a romantic commitment to style, passion and the large gesture (1992:49).
157 CONCLUSION
The directing work of Lecoq alumni has contributed significantly to a shift in the long- standing dominance of text-based realism in Australian theatre. The work of alumni has helped to displace the central position of this form, offering alternative approaches, processes and styles of theatre. As directors, alumni have applied and re-contextualised Lecoq s pedagogical principles and techniques, both in their direction of scripted plays and devised theatrical material. In the case of the latter, alumni have shifted the role of director from interpreter of a script to that of creator, effectively blurring the mainstream distinctions between director and writer. Alumni s use of improvisation and their foregrounding of spontaneous elements represents a significant movement away from mainstream theatrical practice. Their directorial approaches foreground the creative input of the actor, deploying improvisation as a means of providing departure points from which the actor can actively contribute to the creative process. By involving the actors more significantly in the creation of the theatrical product, these directors position the actor as collaborator and co-creator of the theatrical event. Their approaches effectively undermine the hierarchical structures of performance practice and the central role of the director. They operate to destabilise the privileged position of the written script and the processes of analysis and interpretation so that theatrical dynamics are constructed at the sites of interaction between the director, the designer, the actors and the text rather than the director analysing and interpreting the text in isolation from the actors and the rehearsal process. Through their positioning of form as a key aspect of theatrical endeavour, and their use of a repertoire of performance styles, alumni have brought a multiplicity and diversity of form to their work. Notably, these forms are often characterised by their integration of physical or movement skills with theatrical elements.
158 CHAPTER SEVEN
TEACHING. INTRODUCTION
This chapter focuses on the teaching work of Lecoq alumni in Australia. It will examine how alumni's teaching has been influenced by their Lecoq training and the influence this teaching has had on performance training in Australia. In addition, it will examine what influence 'Australia' has had on the teaching of the Lecoq pedagogy. One of the key questions explored here is whether alumni have 'modified' their teaching of the Lecoq pedagogy. Modifications include any or all of the following: the subjects taught, the sequence and structure in which those subjects are taught, the time frame in which the content is presented, the methodology by which material is taught and the teaching style adopted by the performance trainer. I will consider both how and why alumni have modified their teaching of the Lecoq pedagogy. The chapter is divided into four sections focusing on a discussion of alumni's teaching within the framework of the four key elements of the Lecoq pedagogy: creation of original material; use of improvisation; a repertoire of performance styles and movement-based approach to performance.
Overview of the Research Findings: The teaching work of Lecoq alumni in Australia has had a significant impact on performance training in this country. Three independent theatre schools have been established and operated by Lecoq alumni: the Drama Action Centre in Sydney, The John Bolton Theatre School in Melbourne and, most recently, the Popenhagen Atelier in Sydney. The Drama Action Centre (DAC) was founded by Lecoq graduate Francis Batten in 1980. Batten was director until 1989 when DAC graduate, Peter Hall, took up the position.
The Drama Action Centre was initially established as a two-year full-time course, operating in a similar fashion to the Lecoq school. The curriculum covered: neutral mask, expressive mask, commedia, clown, storytelling, mime, bouffon, communication training and chorus, with weekly sessions in improvisation, voice and acrobatics. In addition, music and singing were also included in the curriculum. Over the years, the DAC has maintained aspects of the Lecoq pedagogy as the core of its curriculum. However, it also began offering weekend workshops which were generally not Lecoq-based, but were given by various theatre and personal development practitioners. The main course has changed significantly over the years to accommodate student demand. For some time the core training program had been considerably scaled down, running for only one year rather than two, and operating on a part-time rather than a full-time basis. Classes had been conducted in the evening and on weekends. At the beginning of 2000, however, the DAC
160 announced that it would once again be offering a two year course, although this was still on a part-time basis operating as an evening/weekend course. This curriculum covered neutral mask, movement, improvisation, clown and storytelling in the first year. The second year focused on developing performer and facilitator roles, deeper exploration of spontaneity and providing an understanding of some approaches to non-scripted drama. The second year explored Playback theatre, Forum theatre, Socio-drama and continued to develop improvisational skills. In addition, the DAC was once again offering a third year of training for graduates of the first and second years in which students studied conimedia, storytelling, Playback, movement and improvisation, including intensive classwork and performance projects. However, Peter Hall has recently indicated that he intends to close the school (pers.com. Oct 2000).
A significant departure from the Lecoq pedagogy has been the inclusion of Playback Theatre as part of the DAC curriculum. In the early 1980s, the DAC invited Jonathan Fox, founder of Playback theatre, to Australia where he conducted intensive Playback training workshops with students at the DAC. After Fox had left Australia, the DAC continued with the Playback training, with Playback Theatre techniques and approaches being incorporated into the curriculum. The DAC subsequently established the first Playback Theatre troupe in Australia. Playback has since grown to the point where there are now Playback troupes in a number of Australian states. Francis Batten and Heather Robb, both instrumental in bringing Playback to Australia, maintain that the Lecoq-based training at the Drama Action Centre significantly influenced the way that Playback developed in Australia. Batten notes, for instance, that:
A lot of the first Playback troupes in Australia and New Zealand came from people who had done the Drama Action Centre training, such as those in Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney and Wellington. Having that kind of Lecoq background, those people had quite an influence on Playback here. It became much more physical, or more physical than it was (1998:20, interview).
Some of the projects that have directly emerged from the Drama Action Centre or from people who have trained at the Drama Action Centre include: Playback theatre; Tina Town Clowner; the Stilt Walkers; Parliamentary Men; Sydneysiders or the Little and Big Theatre Company; Common Ground Company, using drama with the disabled; Fairtales; Shuttleback Theatre; Snakes and Ladders; and Grotesqui s Monkey Choir.
The John Bolton Theatre School in Williamstown, Melbourne, was founded by John Bolton in 1991 and was operated by him until its closure in 1998. It was very closely modelled on the curriculum at the Lecoq school in terms of how the course was structured,
161 the subjects taught and the methodology by which those subjects were taught. Bolton initially offered only one year of training, but in 1997 extended the course to include a second half-year for graduates of the first year. The first year curriculum covered group- devised work, neutral mask, Basel mask, character, melodrama, bouffon and clown. The second year offered studies in tragedy, commedia half-mask, a personal project and approaches to script. In addition, weekly classes in movement, mime, voice, singing, music and Feldenkrais were also included. The course was structured in the same way as the Lecoq school with one and a half hours of acting classes taught through improvisation, followed by one of the other curriculum subjects, followed by a group-devised session. As with the Lecoq school, students presented their devised pieces to staff and students at the end of the week and prepared major soirees for public performance twice yearly.
The curriculum departed from that offered at the Lecoq school in a number of respects. Firstly, Bolton gave students only one mime class per week, whereas the Lecoq school offers two classes per week. Secondly, Bolton notes that his school offered different sorts of movement classes to those at Lecoq s (Bolton 1997a:43, interview). On this point, the type of movement classes any actor training course offers is, of course, largely dependent on the particular expertise and training of the movement teachers themselves. Monika Pagneux, who was the movement teacher at Lecoq s for many years has a background in Feldenkrais for example, whereas Bolton s movement teacher, Rinske Ginsberg, has a background in contact improvisation, and approaches her movement classes accordingly. A third difference is the length of time allocated to the teaching of each performance style. With the exception of neutral mask, Bolton taught each style for four weeks, whereas Lecoq allocates some six weeks to the study of each style.
Some of the theatre troupes and productions created by graduates of the Bolton school include: Andrea Litras, who created a solo piece called Odyssey which was invited to the Melbourne and Adelaide 2000 Festivals; Clare Bartholemew, Penny Barron and Glynis Angel who have performed in a piece called The Business as Usual which was the winner of Best Comedy award in the 1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival; The Four Noels who received five star reviews at the 1999 Edinburgh Festival; Born in a Taxi who perform mainly in Melbourne; Clare Kurth and Alicia Clark who won the 1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival award for Best Drama for a piece called Finding the River; Moira Finucane who won 1999 award for Best Cabaret; Santha Press who won the 1998 award for Best Cabaret; Tania Bosack and Margie Mackay who are members of the Hunting Party; Hunchback theatre troupe; The Bell Hops, street theatre troupe; Endangered Species, a Basel mask street theatre troupe; and Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, a shadow puppet theatre company (Bolton 1999:62, interview).
162 The Popenhagen Atelier located in Newtown, Sydney, is the most recently established Lecoq-based school. It was founded in mid 1998 by Luda and Ron Popenhagen. Both are Lecoq graduates and both have also taught at the Lecoq school. In addition, Luda Popenhagen has taught at the Ecole Gaulier/Pagneux for many years. Due to the Popenhagens other commitments, the Atelier currently operates for only one day per week and, because of the diverse interests of the students, the course has a varied and flexible structure. The Popenhagens present a variety of pedagogical elements from week to week in no predictable or regular manner. A teaching session may be oriented towards a particular style, for example, or it may combine a style with written text, or it may focus on voice and movement analysis. As Luda explains:
What we re doing is based on current students needs, what we think the students should be doing right now. So if there is a particular direction that the students are very interested in from one week to the next we go further with that idea, and so it s evolving in that way (Popenhagen, L. 1998:481).
At present, the Popenhagens are focusing on accommodating the interests and the requirements of the current students. They feel, however, that the school may eventually branch out and evolve into more substantial classes with a regular structured curriculum.
In addition to these independent schools, Lecoq alumni have taught at almost every university, at many tertiary institutions, and have given numerous independent workshops throughout Australia. They have taught at every major performance training institution in Australia.4 A number of alumni have taught aspects of the Lecoq pedagogy to school teachers through pre-service and in-service courses and/or workshops for the Department of Education. Alumni have taught acting to members of the Australian Opera and the Australian Ballet.
Through the work of these alumni, the Lecoq pedagogy has been mixed in and through Australian theatre training regimes. However, the prominent place of text-based realism in many Australian theatre training institutions should not be underestimated, nor should the
4 At the Actors Centre in Sydney: Richard Hayes-Marshall (1988 - 1990); Russell Cheek 1991-1996; Russell Dykstra as a guest tutor in 1999. At the Centre for Performance Studies, Nigel Jamieson has been guest tutor and Luda and Ron Popenhagen have been guest speakers. At the Ensemble Heather Robb (1975 - 1977); George Ogilvie (1976 - 1982). At NIDA: Heather Robb (1977 - 1980); Isabelle Anderson (1980 - 1984); guest tutors include Russell Cheek, Nique Murch, Richard Moore, Nigel Jamieson, Ron and Luda Popenhagen; George Ogilvie. At the VCA: Nique Murch (1982 - 1985); John Bolton (1986 - 1990); Richard Hayes- Marshall (1987 - 1988); Lorna Marshall (Head of Movement 1997); guest tutors include George Ogilvie and Alex Pinder. At WAAPA: guest tutors include George Ogilvie and John Bolton. The current movement teacher at WAAPA is Gaulier-trained.
163 ideological and financial structures which have served to maintain this prominence. While Richard Fotheringham has noted the diversity of training backgrounds now prevalent among actors in Australia, he has also indicated the way in which NIDA s longstanding and privileged position as Australia s foremost actor training institution has operated to exclude `othered training approaches (1998:27).
Socio-cultural, ideological and economic forces operate to determine what a culture defines as the role and function of the actor, and institutionalised actor training regimes operate to produce actors that fulfil the criteria. Acting pedagogies which do not fit into these definitions are consequently often not valued or legitimated. In the introduction to Part Two of this thesis I discussed a number of cases where Lecoq alumni have experienced prejudice in Australia because of their Lecoq training, and these situations are indicative of the legitimating forces that are operative in this country in terms of which types of actor training are validated. Ideologically and philosophically, the Lecoq school defines the role of an actor in vastly different terms to those of mainstream Australian theatre training institutions. While these institutions seek to produce actors to put on plays under the direction of a director and the pen of an author (1998:5), to use Nigel Jamieson s words, Lecoq s pedagogy aims to empower the actor to create their own theatre. This approach proposes a very different scenario for the actor which does not revolve around competing for roles in an industry in which only a very small percentage of practitioners are employed at any one time.
Lecoq s pedagogical approach has rarely been seen as central to most actor training courses in this country. Commonly, the pedagogy has been marginalised and considered, as Ron Popenhagen notes, a bit of decoration, as a bit of exoticism on the side (Popenhagen, R. 1998:495, interview). Certainly it has not been central to NIDA s regime, although alumni Heather Robb, Isabelle Anderson and Richard Hayes-Marshall between them have injected a strong Lecoq presence between 1977 and 1997. Since then, the Lecoq presence has been at NIDA has been less direct, with the current movement teacher Julia Cotton claiming a Lecoq influence on her own work through contact with Russell Cheek and Geoffrey Rush (Cotton 1998:170, interview). Notably, the Lecoq pedagogy has always been more central to the VCA s drama school than perhaps to any other major acting institution in Australia. John Bolton, for example, taught at the VCA between 1986 and 1990; Lorna Marshall was Head of Movement in 1997 and, when she left in 1998, the school specifically wanted another Lecoq graduate to fill the position. With the growing interest in and popularity of physical/circus/image/dance theatre forms, approaches that have previously been considered alternative and marginal have begun to be seen as more central and desirable. Lecoq s pedagogical approach has begun to take a more prominent role in our institutions and it is possible that with the successes of Legs on the Wall, Nigel
164 Jamieson and Geoffrey Rush, the pedagogy will gain status as a legitimated rather than a marginalised training regime. Regardless of its status, however, the Lecoq pedagogy has touched many, many Australian actors and students of acting over the last thirty-five years.
Approaches to Teaching Methodology and Learning Environment: The curriculum taught at the Lecoq school and the curriculum which Lecoq alumni choose to teach in Australia is a major topic of analysis in this chapter. However, the 'what' of the Lecoq pedagogy must also be considered in the context of the 'how' of the Lecoq pedagogy. Lecoq alumni living and working in Australia as performance trainers have had varying responses to the teaching style and the learning environment they encountered at the Lecoq school and their experiences have subsequently impacted on their own teaching styles and the learning environments they attempt to create.
It should be noted that a student's perceptions and recollections of the teaching style at the Lecoq school, or indeed any performance training institution, are in certain respects an extremely subjective and volatile matter. For a start, a student's experiences of the teaching style are somewhat dependent on the individual personality of their teachers. The Lecoq school has been operating for over forty years, and although Lecoq taught much of the core curriculum for quite a number of those years, he also engaged many other teachers during this time: Philippe Gaulier, Monika Pagneux, Pierre Byland, Lassaad SaIdi, Serge Martin, to name a few. Further, an individual's teaching style and approach is itself subject to change and development. As John Bolton observes:
I mean of course [my teaching] is different because it's me doing it. I don't know how it's different because it's been changing over the last twenty years and I have no idea how different it is now (Bolton 1997a:44, interview).
In addition, a graduate's memories, recollections and attitudes to the teaching style are also subject to change and variation. For example, their attitude may alter because of their own teaching experiences, or attitudes may change depending on the period of time which has elapsed since they went to the Lecoq school. Isabelle Anderson provides an apt example:
It's funny when I think back, I know we went through all that and I know it occupied our days and our nights and we all spent hours in the coffee shop talking about whether Lecoq was too fierce, but I don't remember any of that now. That was just useful folly, you know. And I think people who are just fresh from the school might still talk like that, but I tell you, after twenty-five years what I remember is just pure gold. And it hasn't tarnished a bit. It's just brilliant, brilliant, and I feel so fortunate to have worked with him (Anderson 1999:15, interview).
165 While responses to the teaching style and learning environment at the Lecoq school are certainly varied, it is notable that most alumni have had some element of reservation about the approach and those reservations have impacted on their own approaches to teaching. Some alumni experienced the approach as harsh, uncompromising, unsupportive and even brutal, while others felt that a certain stringency is part and parcel of a good performance training.
John Bolton is one of the few alumni to express no reservations about the teaching style at the Lecoq school:
The via negativa - the negative road - is, in a sense, the whole style of teaching and which, in anything I ve been interested in I ve found to be the most productive because it does force the student s imagination to work so much more and almost as if there are more and more barriers put in your way so that you think of people opening doors for you and in a sense each new style is an opening of a new door. But the actual teaching in each class is putting barriers and setting problems all the time and just confronting you to jump over them or somehow get through them [...]. I think it s the most interesting approach for a teacher as well because you re never bored because you re always seeing something fresh [...] and I think that comes from barriers being put in people s way so they re forced to come up with the goods (Bolton 1997a:42-43, interview).
Although Isabelle Anderson and Richard Moore found the approach often difficult and confronting, they consider this a positive and appropriate element of the teaching style and, indeed, a necessary aspect of any performance training:
Like a lot of actor training, I guess, it was the constant throwing up of barriers or obstacles against you that you had to fight, in a sense confront your own fears and your own acting habits and clichés, to encourage you to go much deeper and to probe much deeper (Moore 1998:403, interview). The thing about Lecoq s classes is that they re immensely challenging. You re up against your limits all the way, but they are not in any way the traumatic, destructive kind of experiences that one hears about in acting classes. Not at all (Anderson 1999:4, interview).
It was a very challenging school to your sense of identity. You had to be strong and if you weren t strong you became strong because you were constantly delving right into yourself and giving expression fully to your impulses and your thoughts and
166 getting told you were bad. It was a school of tremendous learning about yourself in terms of seeing your weaknesses and extending your limits. So we all had rough times, but I think any decent theatre school should be like that or you re not growing (Anderson 1999:13, interview).
While Anderson never found Lecoq brutal , she did find Philippe Gaulier quite harsh in his teaching style. At the time Anderson attended the Lecoq school, Gaulier taught the clown segment of the curriculum and in her own approach to teaching clown, Anderson has modified and moderated her teaching style in response to her experiences with Gaulier (1999:13-14, interview).
A number of alumni hold moderate to strong reservations about the teaching style at the Lecoq school. These alumni have consequently modified their own methodology and endeavoured to create a more supportive teaching environment than they themselves had experienced. As Lorna Marshall and Linda Raymond have commented:
I also work quite consciously in an anti-Lecoq way. The era when I was at the school, it was an extremely competitive, extremely harsh learning environment. I, as a pedagogue, do not believe this is the most effective training method, so in fact, I don t have that confrontational, "Get up and do it!", as the French call it "s e defendre sur scene" - "defend yourself on stage", which is one of the underlying philosophical views of many of the teachers at the school. I resist that very firmly. I work within a different methodology. So although I m using the exercises I m always placing them in an environment of exploration and discovery without needing to "se defendre" (Marshall 1997:363, interview).
You don t go somewhere and expect to be cushioned about everything, but at the same time, you do expect to get support while you re going through what is really quite a profoundly devastating process (Raymond 1998:513, interview).
Interestingly, a number of alumni have positioned the teaching approach at the Lecoq school in generalised cultural terms. Lorna Marshall, for example, found the teaching methodology,
very, very French. Because I did study also with Decroux and there s always that very strong need to be in an almost aggressive place as a performer. So that seems to be something that is very particularly cultural as opposed to specifically Lecoq (1997:363, interview).
167 Richard Moore has also positioned the teaching approach in terms of French culture, saying,
Although the creative imagination is encouraged wherever possible, it was also severely criticised. So it went hand in hand with the French penchant for tearing everything apart. It s not true to say that there wasn t encouragement, but it was of a particular French nature so that anything you ever did that you thought was good was "pas mal" - "not bad" (Moore 1998:403, interview).
Francis Batten also considers the non-supportive approach he experienced at the Lecoq school very French :
Lecoq wasn t interested in people s personal problems. I remember one wonderful moment when someone was just not doing it because they were having some personal difficulty and expected to be a bit sort of looked after and I remember Lecoq said: "On ne fait pas un hOpital ici!" - "We are not a hospital here!". And that was very much his approach and very French (1998:21, interview).
Where alumni have perceived the approach in terms of a generalised cultural difference, they have adapted their own teaching styles accordingly. That is, they have adapted their approaches according to what they consider is more appropriate to the cultural mores in which they teach. As Russell Cheek so eloquently expresses it:
It s kind of like a car at the Bathurst 1000, you know, it s got to be adapted to Australian conditions, you ve got to get the tyres right for the circuit. (Cheek 1998:108, interview).
For Alex Pinder, adapting his teaching to Australian conditions has involved a more `casual approach, which he pits in opposition to what he sees as the French formal approach:
I think Australia is more layed back than France. It s less formal. It s much more casual. So I have to sort of adapt [my teaching] to that as well. Especially with Lecoq, it was a very formal thing. I mean he would come in, hardly know your name, and he would call the women "vous", by the French formal term for "you". So there was much more formality about it. He was the master and you were just... the turd (Pinder 1997:452, interview).
168 Celia Moon has also felt the need to adapt her teaching approach to suit Australian conditions . She recalls that when she began teaching in Australia after studying with Lecoq, she adopted a similar teaching style to the way she had been taught which she describes as pretty serious hard-line stuff (Moon 1998:399, interview). She began to receive feedback from the students that they weren t particularly enamoured of this approach and subsequently modified her teaching methods accordingly:
So I think I started becoming more flexible. Now I can t say what that means in terms of changing ideas or anything like that but just maybe more fun, or a more relaxed style which is maybe more an Australian thing, not as intense as the French or Italian [...]. And just responding more to people rather than having the, "Well this is what it is and this is how you do it" attitude. Even when I taught at the Drama Action Centre I can remember things coming up. I mean things come up: "How do you deal with blocks? How do you deal with this or that?" So you just sort of adapt and find different ways in and then you try out different methods (Moon 1998:400, interview).
Francis Batten had similar responses from students when he returned to teach in New Zealand and later in Australia. He has consequently developed, what he describes as, a more user-friendly teaching style and a more supportive learning environment:
I found when we first came back to New Zealand we were a bit of a shock to everybody. We had this kind of very uncompromising approach. So it was quite a journey, finding a way of not compromising Lecoq s adherence to what actually is not fake, what s true, but being gentle with people about it (1998:21-22, interview).
Michael Newbold believes that training at the Lecoq school was the fall off your bicycle, you get hurt, you get back on method. You keep falling off until either you don t ride bikes any more or you succeed. It s trial by fire. It s painful. It means you fail (Newbold 1998:429, interview). On returning to Australia, Newbold attempted to conduct workshops by the same method and was met with indignation from students who found it unacceptable:
I d take workshops and tell people, "Don t do that!" and they d say "I beg your pardon!". They just won t take it at all (Newbold 1998:429, interview).
While some alumni have positioned Lecoq s teaching style in terms of cultural difference and have modified and adapted their own style in terms of what they perceive is appropriate to a generalised Australian context, others have adapted their approaches to
169 more specific contexts. Some alumni have, for instance, modified their teaching methods according to the varying circumstances of the teaching situations in which they find themselves engaged. Therese Collie, who works primarily in community theatre contexts for example, has adopted a gentler, community-based approach to how I develop exercises or critique what people do (1998:147, interview). Alex Pinder teaches in many different pedagogical situations and modifies his approach accordingly:
I ve had to adapt it to the circumstances of where I teach and who I teach. Occasionally I teach at [the John Bolton Theatre School] and I teach in a certain way, probably in the purest Lecoq way. But then if you re teaching to a community group well you re not going to teach a la Lecoq because they ll be frightened off. So you really adapt it to the different circumstances. Even some of the TAFE courses you have to adapt it to the kids because basically they re very, very frightened. Which doesn t mean that we weren t probably frightened when we were at Lecoq s but we were probably much more motivated than I find a lot of the students in some of the courses, both at a tertiary level, at universities and at the TAI-Es where I teach. You know, their commitment is questionable. So you have to adapt it to that. But I think it s the best training and I just temper it down and I m up there helping them a lot more than probably Lecoq would. I get up with them, I sort of nurture them a lot more than Lecoq would do to me. He would let me sink and then let me work it out on my own, you know, when I go home and cry; whereas I would, as a teacher, try and be in there with the students (Pinder 1997:452, interview).
Russell Cheek has modified and adapted his teaching methods because the time frame involved in the courses or workshops he conducts is very different to that at the Lecoq school. That is to say, he adopts a more supportive approach because he is often working with people for a shorter period of time than the two years he spent at the Lecoq school:
I m just as energetic and hard-edged and demanding, absolutely. But I m much more supportive of people than ever was the case at the school [...] because I m not working with people over a long term, over two years. So I don t let people go home depressed - that s not my style. I always like to leave people going away with something positive and feeling that they have got some confidence and ability. So I suppose in that way I m a much more supportive teacher. But I also believe that theatre is hard knocks and you ve got to be able to perform, no mucking around really, life s too short (Cheek 1998:109, interview).
170 In addition to alumni having reservations about the Lecoq approach in terms of its perceived harshness and unsupportive nature, some of the female alumni have expressed reservations about the school from a feminist perspective. These alumni have noted that the teaching staff was strongly male-dominated:
Because I'm a woman, a feminist who believes in as many opportunities for men as for women [...]. I really feel like Lecoq and the school was very male-dominated and really he didn't know what to do with people like me who are large and Australian (laughs) you know, a bit loud and irreverent [...]. I just think that when you presented things, he didn't always understand where you were coming from and he didn't know what to do with you. But it's not just him either. See that's the other thing - it was mainly male teachers (Collie 1998:147, interview).
Collie actively pursues her feminist stance in the way she works with women by encouraging female performers in areas that have been traditionally male-dominated such as circus work and clown (1998:147, interview). Heather Robb also modifies her approach to teaching in this regard by encouraging women in previously male-dominated areas such as clowning. Both Collie and Robb feel that their very presence as female teachers in these traditionally male domains serves as a positive role-model to women. As Collie comments: 'Just the fact of me being in that position as director or teacher is different' (1998:147, interview) and Robb observes that traditionally, 'Women have tended to be the ones who taught the movement part but not the rest, not the fun part' (Robb 1998:521, interview).
CREATION OF ORIGINAL MATERIAL
In their work as performance trainers, Lecoq alumni have undertaken group-devised work with their students on relatively few occasions. This may be due to a number of factors. Firstly, where alumni have taught at performance training institutions, universities and tertiary institutions, the subjects that they teach are largely dependent upon the requirements of those organisations. It can be assumed then, that these organisations do not place a high priority on students creating their own performance material. This situation points to a privileging of pre-scripted material in our performance training institutions. Secondly, group-devised work may have been undertaken in teaching situations contingent upon the time-fames in which alumni have taught. Relatively few Lecoq alumni have been appointed to the teaching staff of performance training institutions for extended periods of time. In addition, many alumni have given independent workshops
171 which are usually short-term propositions. Group-devised work, or at the very least the group-devised work taught at the Lecoq school, is a performance training technique which requires a certain time frame in which to operate effectively. In the auto-cours sessions at the Lecoq school, students work on devising their material for one and a half hours per day over a period of a week, and sometimes two weeks. Further, the group-devised work is done in conjunction with, and is in effect an application of, the skills and techniques learnt in the other sessions. Where alumni have had only limited teaching time available, an extended period of group-devised work may not have been a viable proposition. It is notable that where alumni have conducted independent public workshops (of which there have been many), none have been specifically geared towards group-devised technique, although this may have been incorporated in a minor way in these workshops. By contrast, where alumni have had extended teaching time available to them, many have chosen or were requested to conduct group-devised work. As Russell Cheek comments about his group-devised work at Mitchell College, Bathurst:
I knew I had them one day a week over a semester and I wanted them to perform something at the end. I suppose it's a way of seeing what people can do and getting an idea of who they are (Cheek 1999a:111, interview).
No alumni have noted any major or indeed minor modifications in their teaching of group- devised techniques, although it is probable they have found it necessary to adapt this work according to different teaching contexts, available time frames and have also invented their own group-devised themes, stimuli or provocations depending on the teaching context.
Of the three independent Lecoq-based theatre schools, all have included group-devised work in their curriculums in some form or another. The John Bolton Theatre School, for example, offered group-devised work in the same time frames and the same structure as the Lecoq school. Students worked on group-devised work for one and a half hours per day and presented their creations to staff and students at the end of every week, or two weeks for more complex projects. The provocation for each devised piece was given to students in accordance with the techniques or styles they had been working on, such as neutral mask, clown or chorus work. Similarly, the Drama Action Centre offered group- devised work as part of its curriculum and the nascent Atelier in Newtown incorporates devised work in its program.
A number of alumni have taught group-devised work to students at tertiary institutions and universities. Richard Moore for example, who lectured in acting studies and theatre-in- education at James Cook University in Townsville from 1985 to 1988, used the principle of auto-cours as a key aspect of the course. In Alex Pinder' s teaching at Rusden campus
172 and Gordon TAFE (Geelong) he has taught devised work under the title Tlaymaking Russell Cheek directed a bouffon piece which he co-devised with the students at the University of Western Sydney, Nepean in 1995 called The Bouffons: Show Us Your Holy Bits. The devising process for the piece involved Cheek firstly teaching the students the bouffon style from which they used improvisation to develop characters and created a storyline: We worked and improvised and built [the piece] together with each student (Cheek 1999a:111, interview).
Cheek has also directed a piece at Charles Sturt in Bathurst in 1990 which was partly devised with the students called The Invitation. The plot told the story of Chook Chook, a foundling child who lives on a chicken farm with Uncle Adrian. One day, Uncle Adrian receives a letter saying: Now you have to bring Chook Chook back home . Unfortunately, Uncle Adrian doesn t quite know where home is, but he sets off down the Ohmney Road with Chook Chook in tow, and so they begin their journey to take Chook Chook home . On their travels they encounter strange and wonderful characters such as the Chinese ferryman who takes them down the river; Gracey, of Gracey s hotel; and a laconic bushy. Eventually Uncle Adrian dies and Chook Chook has to continue her journey alone. Ultimately she meets George the storyteller, whom we gradually realise is the person in control of the story. George tells her she has passed the test: she has made it to the end of the story, and alludes to there being an even greater storyteller than himself (Cheek 1999a:114, interview).
At the time of this production, Russell Cheek was writer-in-residence at Mitchell College, Bathurst. He began the writing/devising process by conducting half-mask workshops with the students using a number of different forms of the half-mask including standard commedia masks, leather half-masks and some plastic joke shop masks. He then conducted auditions, again using the half-masks, and selected his cast. Having seen the students explorations of the half-mask in auditions and workshops, Cheek made decisions regarding which students were most suited to play which masks. He began writing the beginnings of the piece based on the students work and continued writing the material in bits and pieces , doing improvisations with the students and videoing these improvisations, developing script and characters in workshop. Together, Cheek and the students created some half a dozen original half-mask characters (Cheek 1999a:115, interview).
Russell Dykstra has directed two student-devised pieces at the Queensland University of Technology. The first, in 1997, was a clown piece called Who Nose Romeo and Juliet ? which Dykstra devised with a group of education students who had formed their own company on campus. The narrative focused on a group of clown characters who want to
173 mount a production of Romeo and Juliet. Unfortunately, they know very little about the play and what they do know is vague and mis-informed. They mount a series of their own clown-inspired versions based on their scanty knowledge. Dykstra devised the piece by firstly introducing the students to clown technique and then used improvisation to develop narrative and characterisation. Dykstra says that he helped students to develop their clown characters through a lot of hard work and lots of being told, "No, that s no good. That s no good". He adds:
It s a very hard process and I think a lot of actors find it very difficult because basically to find a clown you have to stop acting and end up feeling like you ve got nothing left to rely on, nothing left in your bag of tricks. And then you re kind of more open and vulnerable and that s where you ll start to get some real stuff happening (Dykstra 1999a:229, interview).
In terms of helping the students to discover the physicality of their clown characters, Dykstra explored the students own personal walks, their mannerisms and gestures and then encouraged them to exaggerate and push these physicalities into clown territory. The second piece Dykstra did was a bouffon/clown production called Kakos in 1998. The narrative involved three bouffon characters who capture the clown-actors and take over the theatre for the night. The bouffons wreak havoc on the actors by continually interrupting the show, changing the script and forcing the actors to do really silly things (Dykstra 1999a:226, interview). Dykstra conducted bouffon and clown workshops prior to co- devising the piece with the students using improvisation techniques.
Dominique Sweeney has lectured in first and third year subjects at Griffith University between 1995 and 1997 where he conducted group-devised work with the students on two occasions. Notably, Sweeney did not use Lecoq-based styles for either of these works. The first was inspired by a Kyogen production of The Merry Wives of Windsor which Sweeney had seen at the Adelaide Festival. The second student-devised piece also used the Kyogen style as inspiration, but this time Sweeney took only the actual word `Kyogen as the devising provocation. Kyogen means wild words and so Sweeney offered the theme of wild to students with the only other directive being that they substantiate their practical work with reference to critical theory. Sweeney describes some of the students creations:
One group took the notion of time and did a choreographed absurd word-play on the nature of time in the style of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Two boys thought drugs were the go and did comic routines about how far they could go. Another group worked on a funeral. One group had three nurses eating their lunch
174 from the back of a naked corpse and discussing their work-day in fairly coarse language. Another group did a silent shadow play, as a competitive bestial dalliance emerged (Sweeney 1999, e-mail, 15 Nov).
Sweeney worked with each group to extend their initial ideas and threaded the pieces together, with certain pieces interspersed throughout the performance.
In terms of the major acting institutions, NIDA appears to have had the major slice of group-devised tutelage from Lecoq alumni. Russell Cheek gave a seminar at NIDA in 1988 entitled Self-generated Theatre . Isabelle Anderson taught at NIDA from 1980 until 1984 where she worked with the first year students on clown technique and the students devised clown pieces that were then presented in-house (Anderson 1999, e-mail, 17 Aug). In the late 1970s, Heather Robb was staff at NIDA for a number of years where she taught mime, neutral mask, Basel mask, clown and commedia dell arte as well as co- directing student productions with Aubrey Mellor. One of these was a devised piece called Pantalone s Pizzeria that was co-created with Mellor and the students. Inspired by Ariane Mnouchkine s contemporary commedia piece L Age d Or, in which Arlecchino is an Algerian migrant worker and Pantalone is a property tycoon, Robb set the piece in a contemporary Australian context. Students made their own masks and, while there was a basic plot concerning real estate, Robb notes that this was mainly a vehicle for the students to explore contemporary Australian archetypes. Robb was particularly interested in discovering female characters, but found that this proved extremely difficult and apart from a Madame Pantalone and a naive alternative woman on an animal liberation mission, the remainder of the female students played male characters. Robb found that creating contemporary Australian counterparts to the male commedia archetypes was an easier matter. Although Robb considers they devised Australian stereotypes in the production, she is not convinced that they achieved the level of archetypes (Robb 1999, e- mail, 13 Nov).
USE OF IMPROVISATION
Improvisation is a key aspect of the Lecoq pedagogy. It is employed as the devising strategy and performance medium for the auto-cours pieces created and presented by students, as well as the teaching method in all acting classes. Many alumni working in
175 Australia as performance trainers have taught improvisation in a similar manner to the way it is taught at the Lecoq school, that is, in conjunction with other aspects of the pedagogy such as mask, neutral mask and the various performance styles.
Alumni who have undertaken group creation with their students have commonly utilised some form of improvisation as the devising strategy, although they have rarely employed improvisation as a performance medium in devised work. For Russell Cheek s co-created student production The Invitation at Mitchell College, he employed improvisational techniques learned during his Lecoq training, but also techniques which he has developed independently. Designed to discover vocal and physical qualities for characterisation, Cheek, in a sense, improvises with his students by provoking them to explore character and discover a spirit of play:
Very particularly with me with the half-mask, if people have got a physicality, the most important thing to distinguish the character is the voice and you have to be able to do a voice that s pushed some distance from yourself that has a real performing energy in it. And once you get that voice, then it becomes really easy to start finding a physicality, the gestures and the moves and all that. They just come with the package once you ve got the voice and the character right. But you get that through impro and really catching people by surprise and putting two people against each other and getting cross-rhythms happening. And I would quite often use the drum in that sort of work just to get people to stop and start and change rhythms and stuff like that [...]. I end up just working with the person one on one and talking to them and provoking them [...] just getting people to do a scenario and then me breaking it down and getting them to relate to the audience, to me, to do it again. Just really to get the spirit of play really and then try and get them on a roll (Cheek 1999a:118, interview).
Although Heather Robb s student production for the Sydney University Theatre Workshop was a scripted piece, improvisation was used extensively in the production process. The play, called The Wench, was mounted in commedia style and Robb conducted improvisation workshops in commedia masks in order to develop characterisation and achieve the extreme physicality and high energy levels required by commedia. Robb notes that doing a scripted commedia piece imposes certain restrictions on the actors in that they must contain a style that is essentially improvisational within the confines of the script, but still be able to convey the sense of play necessitated by the form:
One of the biggest challenges for the actors in this project is to find a balance between the demands of a set script, and exuberant freedom of the commedia style, a
176 style mainly based on improvisation and the ability to "think with one s body instead of one s head". The script imposed another discipline - the actor had to find his/her freedom within these parameters (UPC).
Notably, those alumni who have undertaken group-devised work with students have rarely utilised improvisation in performance although, according to Ron Popenhagen, this is no significant departure from Lecoq who did not have great faith in large quantities of improvised text (Popenhagen 1999, e-mail, 24 Aug). Alumni have, however, sometimes allowed for improvisational aspects within a pre-structured and rehearsed text. As an example, the narrative structure of Russell Dykstra s student production of Kakos was largely pre-arranged and fully rehearsed, but he left room for improvisation in performance and encouraged the students to experiment each night. Dykstra describes the segments in which the students could improvise:
We did this one routine where they were in cardboard boxes and it was all to music. It was basically people trying to reach out and touch each other s lives and they could bring out different things and play with different ways of contacting each other through the sequence. So like they may come up and pretend to be very shy the first time and maybe in the past they d been very open. Or they may pull a telephone out one night and pretend to be having a conversation with someone in another box. They might fall in love or they might end up hating each other, you know, whatever. Whatever developed was encouraged. And that started out as the first one, establishing something, and then there were two more. So there were three of these throughout the show. In the final one, the community had grown and there were more people involved and so new stories were created, the stories that had already been created were built upon, and it ended up having to be quite mad, because the bouffon became involved in that little segment. And other things, you know, they had to improvise things that they would say at certain parts, so they could play with the audience as well (Dykstra 1999a:227, interview).
Alumni have used improvisation as an approach to teaching aspects of the Lecoq pedagogy and as an approach to text. In a number of instances, alumni have modified, adapted and extended their approaches to improvisation to suit their individual teaching aims and objectives. George Ogilvie, for instance, conducted a term of improvisation at NIDA in 1980 where he used comic masks specifically as a means of teaching the skills of improvisation rather than for the purpose of developing mask technique:
I ve often used comic masks because I find comic mask is the best improvisation I ve ever discovered because improvisation itself is a very scary thing for many
177 actors; some actors have a talent for it, but many actors don t have any talent for it and in fact they fear it tremendously (Ogilvie 1998:445, interview).
Lorna Marshall considers the concept of le jeu one of the key aspects of improvisation and she has consequently foregrounded this aspect of the Lecoq pedagogy in her own performance training:
One of the key figures at the Lecoq school when I was there was a man called Philippe Gaulier [...]. His work focuses very strongly, as indeed the whole school did but most particularly in Philippe s work, on the game , the life, the inner joy, the naughtiness, all those words, and which I find to be an extremely important element in actors training. An actor cannot work from fear. An actor can work from many emotional centres: anger, disgust, desire. But one of the strongest emotional centres an actor can work from is delight. Philippe was, of course, a great master in the creation of this delight, and that s one of the key things that I have taken and again adapted, in my own work (Marshall 1997:361-362, interview).
Marshall has also mixed the notion of le jeu with the work she has done in Asian theatre traditions and most particularly with Peter Brook s work. The phrase she likes to use with her own students is Mad, bad and dangerous : a state of readiness, awareness and delight (Marshall 1997:362, interview).
Heather Robb also considers le jeu a key aspect of the Lecoq pedagogy and consequently encourages a strong spirit of play in her students:
Improvisation often involves two actors, so you can imagine le jeu being like a ball that you pass to each other and when it s your turn being fully aware that it s your turn and finding the pleasure of that moment. I mean that s what it s about if you want to be an actor: this incredible pleasure of it being your turn and have everyone look at you. It s your moment. But then having the generosity to know when your moment is finished and giving the ball to somebody else. And the complicity that is created between two people where you re working together and you might be improvising a terrible argument together but underneath is this tremendous generosity and complicity between two actors (Robb 1998:520, interview).
Some alumni have modified and expanded Lecoq s approach to improvisation considerably. Francis Batten, for instance, regards the Lecoq school s absence of a formalised approach to improvisation as a distinct lack in the pedagogy:
178 Although at Lecoq s we were constantly improvising, [Lecoq] never actually formalised his thinking around what was actually going on when you improvised, as he had in other areas. So that was something after I left that I got much more clear in myself about [...]. Lecoq didn t teach improvisation per se, though you were constantly doing it. You did it always after some other quest, drawing out of your spontaneity. There weren t improvisation classes. There was no teaching or formalisation of it: how you might actually set up situations where you could learn that skill (1998:21, interview).
In his own teaching, Batten has endeavoured to create a more structured method of improvisation training. Upon establishing the Drama Action Centre, Batten spent time analysing the improvisational act and developing approaches to teaching improvisation skills. In the DAC curriculum, he placed a far greater emphasis on improvisation as a distinct skill-base than had been the case at the Lecoq school. He developed a number of exercises which aimed to make the principles of improvisation clear to students and which, he says, largely correspond to the ideas Keith Johnstone subsequently articulated in his book Impro. The exercises focused on developing students spontaneity, teaching them how to make offers, how to accept offers, how to move the action forward rather than blocking the action and thus teaching students how to work with their improvisation partners rather than against them. Batten explains:
There are certain exercises which make the principles clear [...]. Mainly through games and activities that make it clear what you need to do [...]. So developing a more refined intuition, sensing the energy that s happening in the group, following and proposing, those kinds of skills and awarenesses are the key to improvisation. There are some good principles in the mirror exercises - where one person leads and the other follows [...]. And leading people to the point where you say: "Okay. You can both lead whenever you want" and then people suddenly realise that things can happen without anybody leading. If you re both actually attending to what s happening between you. It s like the red and the yellow are there but suddenly you start to feel there s an orange and you re both actually following that and that s what you re after in improvisations is actually getting to the orange so that the relationship is creating something, not either one person. So it s being able to follow, being able to initiate strongly, make strong propositions and be flexible (Batten 1998:23, interview).
Batten s training in psychodrama also came to the fore in teaching improvisation. Although psychodrama was never a part of the curriculum at the DAC, Batten stresses that psychodrama s focus on developing spontaneity gave him the ability to act as facilitator if
179 people were thrown into personal crisis. This was the case particularly with improvisation in terms of helping people to become aware of when they are blocking and why they are blocking and to help them to develop the courage and the skills to be able to actually accept and develop offers in improvisation exercises (Batten 1998:22-23, interview).
John Bolton also teaches a broader range of improvisation exercises than he learned in his Lecoq training. Unlike Batten, Bolton s modification of the Lecoq pedagogy arises from the influence of his previous performance training rather than any perceived lack in the Lecoq approach. Before going to train at the Lecoq school, Bolton had studied at the Guildhall in London and although he found the approach generally uninspiring, he was particularly influenced by Ben Benison who gave improvisation classes one day per week. As well as developing many of his own techniques, Benison had been a member of Keith Johnstone s original Theatre Machine and was himself influenced in his work by Johnstone. As part of the curriculum at the John Bolton Theatre School, Bolton has included a number of the exercises he learned from Benison (Bolton 1997a:46;1999:57, interview).
Although Ron and Luda Popenhagen s approaches to improvisation remain Lecoq-based, they have both branched out in many directions with respect to this aspect of the pedagogy. They invent many of their own situations and lesson plans, often adapting them to the institution concerned or to the needs of the current students. They prefer to work non-verbally initially and use minimal text when working with verbal improvisation. When working with a written script, improvisation is used as a warm-up to verbalising the text. While their improvisational work may operate in conjunction with mask or a performance style, some classes lean towards an emphasis on the technical aspects of this material while others place more emphasis on improvisational aspects.
One notable extension of Lecoq s approach to improvisation is the Popenhagens use of languages other than English in their performance work, in their devised and directorial work and in their performance training. The Lecoq school has students from many different countries and students are encouraged to use their own language in improvisations. The Popenhagens have applied this to all aspects of their performance and performance training, to the extent that they feel that this has become one of the trademarks of their work. In performance writing and devising, for example, they will use different languages, depending on which language they feel is most suitable to the dramatic situation. In performance, they use different languages as though the audience spoke and understood that language. When casting people for productions, the Popenhagens take into consideration the languages spoken by the performers and the cultures they come
180 from and incorporate those languages and cultural aspects into production. While they concede that devised work allows more scope for this kind of verbal masking than scripted text, they have incorporated it as much as the situation allows:
I mean if we re working with Moliere, how much you can utilise all of that is vastly different than if we re creating our own piece. But if we see that someone can, for example, speak and sing Yiddish and the situation is such that we can nurture that and allow them to create a character or a scene or a situation around that - we really take into consideration each actor s personality, creativity, language ability, musical ability - and if it s possible to incorporate all of that, if we re writing the material or if we have the freedom within the text to write in some things ourselves we do. So that s very significant for us. And so many people who don t often get the chance to do that, for whatever reasons, are often elated at the opportunity to do that (Popenhagen, L. 1998:488, interview).
The use of different languages has also become a trademark of their performance training technique in their work at the Atelier. A number of the students who come to their classes are bi-lingual and the Popenhagens encourage these students to improvise in their native tongue,
because sometimes someone really expresses themselves in a slightly different manner when they say the same thing in Italian, say, because they re really Italian [...] the students love that, they love the freedom. And there s not too much of that happening in theatre training from our observations - where people who do not fit into an English based formal training, especially one that focuses on American and English classics or twentieth century classical theatre, for example, or Australian contemporary literature - it gives them an opportunity to use their own language or totally use their own literature in their own language [...]. So we encourage that in everything we do [...]. We feel confident that s going to be one important area where we re going to make a significant contribution because of encouraging that type of expressivity on the part of different individuals (Popenhagen, L. 1998:487, interview).
181 A MOVEMENT-BASED APPROACH
Many alumni have cited the neutral mask work as the most important aspect of Lecoq s movement-based training and have consequently used it extensively in their own teaching. Richard Moore comments, for example:
I did teach neutral mask quite a lot and I ve always felt that the neutral masks are perhaps the most important part of the training because you start from nothing. You start from being a nobody, and that s what happens when you go to Lecoq s: you are a nobody! [...]. It s like wiping the slate clean and neutral is perhaps not the right expression, but you start off with a blank sheet of paper and then you have to write yourself into the course as a personality. I ve always felt it was the most essential part of the training (Moore 1998:405, interview).
While many alumni consider the neutral mask as a core component of the pedagogy, it is notable that a number of them have modified their approach to teaching neutral mask perhaps more than any other aspect of the pedagogy. Isabelle Anderson considers the neutral mask is such a subjective animal that every performance trainer will re-teach it in a different manner (1999:9, interview). Loma Marshall agrees:
A subject like neutral mask will have quite different nuances depending on who teaches it, although the core exercise may be identical. An example would be the exercise of picking up the rock and throwing it into the sea, as a neutral mask exercise. In my experience, different teachers will focus on different purposes for this exercise: some will be interested in the clarity of bodyline, others will be interested in the clarity of intentionality. So although the subject matter and very often the specific exercises are very clearly derived from the Lecoq course, the focus and intention behind the exercise may vary (Marshall 1997:361, interview).
A number of alumni who have worked in Australia as performance trainers have modified their approaches to teaching neutral mask. Some have made what might be described as `minor modifications, while others have altered their approaches quite considerably. Isabelle Anderson, for instance, does not use the animal work because she finds that students have difficulty by-passing a cliched imitation of animals. She prefers to use the elements and materials work and finds this more accessible for students (1999:10, interview).
182 Russell Dykstra, who has trained in neutral mask at the Lecoq school and also at the Gaulier school in the early 1990s, found Gaulier s style of teaching neutral mask much more accessible than Lecoq s:
He never made it clear, to me anyway, what it was all about and whenever questions were put to the teaching staff the response was always: "Just go with the journey. Don t question it". And for me that was a bit frustrating because then I went and did neutral mask work with Gaulier and it was clear from day one what was being done and why you were doing neutral mask (Dykstra 1999b:235, interview).
Consequently, Dykstra uses Gaulier s approach in his own teaching and feels it is important for actors to know the pedagogical purpose of an exercise or a series of exercises.
Lorna Marshall, who was Head of Movement at the VCA in 1997, has been heavily influenced in her neutral mask teaching by her extensive training in the Japanese theatre traditions of Noh, Kabuki and Butoh. In terms of methodology, the manner in which she teaches neutral mask work has departed from and extended Lecoq s approach through her incorporation of these traditions. Most notably, Marshall conducts the elements work without the neutral mask. In addition, she incorporates the deep transformational work that has been developed in Butoh which, she says, is concerned with inner transformation as well as full physical transformation. While she considers that this work corresponds quite closely to the elemental work of Lecoq, she has found that utilising the transformational techniques that come from the Butoh tradition deepen the elemental work so that the transformation is more effective. Without this, she considers the Lecoq approach to transformation involves only a surface metamorphosis and can therefore be very superficial (Marshall 1997:364, interview).
Marshall has also extended some of the exercises she learnt at the Lecoq school by developing a whole series of pre-exercises and post-exercises . The pre-exercises focus on developing particular skills which are designed to assist the students in approaching the Lecoq exercises. The post-exercises involve strategies to enable students to apply the insights they ve gleaned from the exercise to a range of performance situations. Marshall s reasons for developing these exercises arise from a perceived lack in the Lecoq methodology:
I discovered that what was missing [in the transformational work] was the training of the eye [...]. With the animal work at Lecoq, for example, you basically just had to
183 get up and do it, which is fine if you were already fairly good. But for a lot of students that was a terrorising moment [...]. In a sense what the Lecoq school did was it tested whether you had an eye. It tested whether you had found a way of translating an observation into a physicalisation. But it didn t have the pre-stage of, "How do you set that up? How do you go about that?" That was never discussed. Time was not specifically set aside for that (Marshall 1997:365, interview).
Rather than the hit or miss , succeed or fail approach of Lecoq, Marshall considers that theatrical transformation requires a number of stages starting with observation, analysis, discovery and then finally transformation itself. The first stage Marshall uses in this work is what she calls the training of the eye . Although this has obvious links back to Lecoq s analysis of movement work, Marshall gives the exercises a different focus to Lecoq by incorporating Laban s techniques. Marshall comments that, while it may seem obvious, she emphasises to students that they must observe the animal before they can copy it. With this aim in mind, she organises visits to the zoo and also shows the students videos of various animal behaviour. Marshall is also particularly concerned that the students don t anthropomorphise by interpreting transformation in simplistic terms such as, The lion is proud, therefore I will play proudly (Marshall 1997:365, interview).
The second stage involves analysis, exploration and discovery. Here students are given time to explore and experiment in the space with their animal transformations. Students then show their work to the class and the efficacy of the transformations is analysed. In addition, Marshall also provides the opportunity for students to learn from each other whereby, if a student has done a particularly convincing vulture, for instance, they then share with the class how they achieved that transformation. Marshall then takes the process a step further by applying the animal transformation to a character that is based on that animal. Again she has introduced another stage which involves working with a partner. This incorporates the idea of audience as mirror so that students are constantly addressing the question of what the audience sees. Working with a partner, the students refine their work until a full embodied transformation has been achieved. Students then move from animal to the intermediate stage of semi-human, then to a character that is fully human but based on the animal dynamics.
Because Marshall is involved with training actors for film and television as well as for theatre, she has also introduced a series of post-exercises . In her Lecoq training, Marshall found that the animal work followed the sequence of: animal transformation, then transferring that physicality to a character. She found however, that this character work involved a particularly broad characterisation that may be suitable for physical theatre, but is not necessarily suitable for naturalistic theatre or indeed for film and
184 television work. To enable students to apply the exercises to a range of acting situations and to accommodate the different requirements of various media, Marshall has introduced the technique of scaling, so that students can scale their transformational work up or down in response to different performance contexts. That is, they can work big, they can work semi-big, they can work naturalistically and then they can work in a manner Marshall describes as interior which can be applied to film work (Marshall 1997:365-366, interview).
Ron and Luda Popenhagen have also developed their own teaching methodology over the years, particularly with respect to the neutral mask work. Their varied performance experiences subsequent to their Lecoq training have, as Luda expresses it, impacted a pre- existing framework (Popenhagen, L. 1998:483, interview). They have attended workshops with a number of performance practitioners including Ariane Mnouchkine, Monika Pagneux, Dario Fo, Antonio Fava, Augusto Boal and Yoshi Oida, to name but a few. They have also worked extensively as performers and directors focusing on popular performance styles and classical texts. In the early 1990s, they returned to academia, both completing doctorates in theatre studies.
In their approach to performance training, they have endeavoured to make liaisons between these various performance experiences. In addition, the students they have been teaching are interested in varying kinds of performance including opera and musical comedy. The Popenhagens exposure to different performance approaches and their response to the varying needs of their students has consequently individualised their use of the Lecoq work. They do, however, continue using many of the pedagogical structures that come from Lecoq and they approach all their performance teaching extremely physically:
Obviously the work that I ve done since Lecoq has shaped our philosophies on what we consider to be vital. But there are certain aspects which have come from Lecoq, such as the emphasis on the physical, the preparedness of the actor. We really require the actor to have a capacity to express themselves and this comes not only from a warm-up that makes the actor supple, but gives the actor toning and gives the actor stamina. And a lot of the particulars of this type of preparation have come from my work with Monika Pagneux. But then she taught at the Lecoq school for twenty odd years and so it gets hard to say who influenced who after a while. But I suppose the emphasis that Lecoq places upon the athleticism of the performer, I would attribute that directly to Lecoq [...]. I would definitely say that my consciousness of the spatial aspect of the performer, both the performer in the space and the entire spatial composition, that consciousness was raised by the Lecoq training (Popenhagen, L. 1998:483, interview).
185 The way in which the Popenhagens structure the content of their classes and the time frame in which they present materials departs from their training at the Lecoq school. For example, aspects of the pedagogy which may take a certain given period of weeks or sessions at the Lecoq school, the Popenhagens may present in a briefer or a longer period of time, depending on the teaching situation. In addition, they have integrated other elements from their various training. As Ron Popenhagen comments:
I think it s more just a method of the way we work that s different [...]. I think the route that we take to get the results - whether it be in a classical piece or a post- modern experimental piece or a realistic scene - the sequence of procedures that we go through is a different sequence and I think that s what people recognise as being maybe particular to the way we work: what we do first, and how we eventually get to the final product (Popenhagen, R. 1998:499, interview).
One of the major modifications to the Popenhagens training methodology is their approach to the neutral mask work. Following their academic studies and their increased exposure to modern and post-modern theory, the Popenhagens experienced critical moments of difficulty with the word neutral and the whole concept of neutrality . As Ron Popenhagen observes:
Everything has taken on new connotations since the time Lecoq brought [the neutral mask] in. You use the word mask and masquerade now and you get into aspects of feminism and aspects of subjectivity, all kinds of things and all kinds of areas where things have meanings that they didn t use to have. So sometimes I ve found it easier to bring it in later, more as a stylistic development or another thing we can do but maybe less essentially with the object than the Lecoq pedagogy does [...]. It s just become more problematic than it used to be: having the masks, passing them from one person to another when people are so concerned about transfer of germs and all these things that didn t used to even enter our thoughts have become more problematic (Popenhagen, R. 1998:505, interview).
Consequently, the Popenhagens pursue many of the objectives of the neutral mask work without the use of actual masks. Ron Popenhagen feels, too, that they have integrated the mask work so deeply that they are able to work with the concept of the mask without actually using the physical object. They work instead with the face and the use of the face, working in similar directions to those of the neutral mask but minus the mask. In addition, Ron Popenhagen has also expanded into many different kinds of masking that were not directly taught at the Lecoq school. This is an extension of the Lecoq training rather than a
186 departure, as Ron Popenhagen has similar objectives to Lecoq in using the mask work as a springboard to creating new and different theatrical forms rather than re-creating the mask performance of another culture or historical tradition (Popenhagen, R. 1999, e-mail, 24 Aug).
In addition to their work at the Atelier, the Popenhagens have been teaching performance and movement techniques to opera singers at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Here too, the Popenhagens work extremely physically with the operatic performers:
The awareness among singers of how much is communicated visually is not always known and establishing a character who is seen as a full and believable character requires an awful lot of thought about what the body is doing. This is particularly interesting with singers, because they do think about the body so much but it s just the vocal section and they don t necessarily have a solid awareness of the torso. Certainly they do of the head and the neck area, but getting them to think more in a full body manner and make their gesture and all the work they re doing move the entire body or be involved in their whole body has been quite a revelation I think for some of them. It s not always been quick but it does start to happen and we have started to see real results [...]. And there s no difference really to the kind of work that I do there from the work I would do with a regular actor or a speaking actor [...] because the dimension of singing and the dimension, particularly of opera, really demands a physicality which is terribly, terribly, frequently absent (Popenhagen, R. 1998:503-504, interview).
Ron Popenhagen has directed two productions for the Conservatorium: Le Pauvre Matelot by Darius Milhaud (text by Jean Cocteau, performed in French) and Angelique, by Jacques Ibert (text by Nino, performed in English).
A REPERTOIRE OF PERFORMANCE STYLES
Lecoq alumni working in Australia as performance trainers have taught many of the theatre styles they learnt at the Lecoq school. As with alumni s work in acting, directing and community theatre, the most popular styles with performance trainers have been clown, commedia dell arte and bouffon. Alumni have also conducted a large amount of teaching in mask. Notably, alumni have rarely chosen or been asked to teach tragedy, pantomime blanche or melodrama. As far as I am aware, only two alumni have in fact chosen to teach
187 these styles: Richard Hayes-Marshall conducted independent workshops in tragedy and pantomime blanche between 1988 and 1997, and Christine Grace has given workshops in melodrama between 1991 and 1998.
In their teaching, alumni have employed, modified, expanded, explored, experimented and sometimes discarded certain aspects or general approaches to teaching the various Lecoq styles. Celia Moon, for example, has invented many of her own styles, asking students to play a character in the style of soap opera, regular opera, rock n roll or cowboy (Moon 1998:397, interview). While teaching at the Ensemble theatre school, Heather Robb created several large street sized three dimensional full-face masks for a student production of Jean Louis Barrault s play Rabelais in an attempt to find a style beyond psychology and naturalism (Robb 1999, e-mail, 13 Nov). Ron and Luda Popenhagen have modified their approach to teaching styles in a more generalised way:
When we re working with styles, say, we will contextualise a lot of our references or information within the literature of that style or the theory of that era or some kind of performance history. So I suppose we more readily provide our students with specific references that way rather than just refer them to an expansive reading list, which Lecoq provides [...]. I suppose that when students ask us about our own background, we have a very diverse professional performance background which we can draw upon. We can say, "Well this is how Mnouchkine presents the Oriental mask and this is how Dario Fo works with the commedia dell arte mask as opposed to Ariane Mnouchkine". Whereas, within Lecoq s pedagogy he, if you will, often works with what you might call the essence of a moment , which by diverse practitioners can of course be interpreted differently (Popenhagen, L. 1998:484, interview).
Commedia dell arte has been a popular style with Lecoq alumni in their teaching situations. It has been taught at many of the major acting institutions, universities and at many independent workshops. Heather Robb, for example, mounted two commedia productions with students at NIDA in the 1980s. One was the devised piece, Pantalone s Pizzeria, and the other was a scripted piece called The Anatomist. A third commedia production was mounted by Robb at the Sydney University Theatre workshop. Called The Wench, the script was based on a translation of a 16th century Italian text called La Fantesca. Robb describes the plot as very complicated including romance, disguise, mistaken identity and social politics. A review in the Sun-Herald made particular mention of the training involved in the production:
188 The students have taken a 16th century Italian farce, translated the lines and worked up a production for laughter which is bawdy but not gross [...]. The students have gone through heavy tuition for humour through body movement and are now a team of clever clowns (Robinson 1980)
It is notable that the review makes no mention of the commedia style of the production and, indeed, refers to the style of the students work in terms of clown rather than commedia. This is perhaps some indication that commedia was a form that was little known to the general public in Australia at the time. The piece was presented for a three week season at the Seymour Centre as part of the Seymour Student Theatre in March 1980.
When Judith Pippen taught commedia techniques as part of her course work at QUT, some of the students were so keen that they formed their own commedia troupe called Bonzani. Pippen taught basic commedia skills during the course work and then directed the group after hours. The troupe received a grant to make professional costumes and performed at a number of festivals in Queensland, including Expo 88. Pippen notes that a number of the members of this troupe are now successful arts industry workers, including: Wesley Enoch, David Fenton, Andrew Buchanan, David McGarrity, Susan Richer (Pippen 1998:470, interview).
A number of alumni working as performance trainers have modified, adapted and expanded their teaching of the commedia form. When Isabelle Anderson was teaching in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Sydney in the early 1980s, for example, she used the commedia masks and techniques to bring the script of an Asian play to life for her students. Although Anderson had not studied Asian mask techniques, she felt that there were parallels between Asian mask theatre and the commedia dell arte form and decided to undertake an experiment with the students studying Asian drama where she applied the commedia movement to the Asian masks:
Lecoq used to say to us, "These are human types. They re not Italian. Life has certain effects on humanity and it tends to fall into these categories: the avaricious, mean miserly man, and so on. These types are found everywhere: Eastern Europe, North America, South America and in Bali or Asian theatre". It s fascinating how very parallel all the masks are. I mean there is a Harlequin that you just could use as Harlequin (Anderson 1999:6-7, interview).
Anderson worked from the premise that the movements of the commedia are not arbitrary, but are movements which arise from the psychological type suggested by the mask. Anderson used commedia masks as well as Balinese masks and developed the movements
189 and characterisations in the same way she had learnt from Lecoq:
I worked the masks just as Lecoq had taught me and his principles are exactly the same as the Asian theatre principles as to how you hold the mask, get into a mask, wear a mask, assume a mask. They re the same, and that was interesting (Anderson 1999:7, interview).
While Anderson concedes it may have been a ghastly production for the purists, she positions the exercise as an experiment and couches it in terms of the value it held for the students in developing a deeper appreciation for the written play (1999:7, interview).
Marie Dumont and Mark Bromilow, who have worked in partnership for a number of years, have considerably modified their approach to teaching commedia techniques by using Balinese Topeng masks instead of the commedia masks. They have felt the need to abandon the commedia masks because of the historical and cultural baggage commedia has accumulated over the centuries. They feel that each mask is so stereotyped and has a very distinct character that the masks are not necessarily appropriate or useful in a contemporary context. Dumont explains:
Each of them is a character that has existed for so many centuries and you have to get through all this information about their life, who they are, where they re coming from, and it s so far removed from our own reality. So we ve decided that instead of doing traditional commedia dell arte workshops we were looking more for a human commedia and a modern one and we found that with the Topeng mask. And that s what Mnouchkine is doing. She is the one who started working with the Topeng mask as a sort of modern human comedy and we re following this type, which is definitely more interesting (Dumont 1999b:206, interview).
Bromilow and Dumont encourage their students to treat the Topeng masks as contemporary characters and give them the freedom to develop their own characterisations using the mask as imaginative stimulus. With this approach, characters can be invented and re-invented so that each student can create totally different characters using the same mask.
Russell Cheek has also significantly modified his approach to teaching the commedia masks in particular and the half-mask in general. In his student production of The Invitation at Mitchell College, Cheek used a number of the commedia masks as well as `five dollar joke shop masks . He used the commedia masks not as commedia characters
190 however, but developed new characters specifically for the piece. Cheek has also evolved his own approach to the half-mask, developing his techniques while working on The Invitation (Cheek 1999a:119, interview).
Many alumni have also taught Lecoq s clown style. Workshops and courses have been conducted at NIDA, the VCA, the University of Newcastle, the University of New England, Queensland University of Technology, University of Southern Queensland and Deakin (Rusden campus). Many independent workshops have also focused on clown. In addition, clown has been a popular subject at the John Bolton Theatre School and the Drama Action Centre.
Alumni Therese Collie, Heather Robb and Celia Moon note that clown has been traditionally male-dominated and has consequently been an area of performance where women have found it difficult to penetrate. As Collie comments:
It s really hard for women to find female clowns. How many female clowns do you know? It s not easy to just pick up a style or a character. There s not many role models. You have to create your own, whereas men can find one that everybody recognises (1998:147, interview).
Collie, Robb and Moon have attempted to rectify this situation by actively encouraging their female students in clown work. Celia Moon conducted a number of clown workshops specifically for women in the 1980s. She recalls a distinct resistance to the idea of women doing clown, particularly from the press:
You know how the newspapers start following something that s going on and they all pick up on each other? Well at one point they were writing things like: "Why a woman doing clown? It s not very typical or it s not traditional. Why are you doing clowning as a woman?" (Moon 1998:395-396, interview).
In 1988 Moon addressed this issue by working with a theatre-in-education troupe of women devising school performances on the changing role of women in society. Called And the Kitchen Sink, the group used the idea of the clown as a non-traditional role for women as their starting point for creating the narrative. Another workshop series, conducted with a group of seven women, Moon developed a piece called The Golden Legion of Cleaning Women, using clown-inspired characters. The narrative told the story of a group of women who work as cleaners in the offices of the stock exchange. Created pre-computers, the women start playing the stock market by fishing out stock exchange
191 information thrown out in the bins. The women become ridiculously wealthy and form an international legion of cleaning women who all get rich quick by playing the stock market (Moon 1998:396, interview).
In May 1983, the bouffon troupe Red Weather gave the first bouffon workshop in Australia, organised through the multi-cultural Artists Agency in Adelaide. Later workshops followed in Sydney, Newcastle, Bathurst, Melbourne and Queensland. Since then, other Lecoq alumni have also conducted bouffon workshops, including Heather Robb, Russell Cheek, Christine Grace, Russell Dykstra, Betty France, Nique Murch, Andrew Lindsay and Celia Moon. In addition, the John Bolton Theatre School in Melbourne included the bouffon style (called Grotesque ) as part of its curriculum for the majority of the period it was in operation.
While some alumni have adhered more strictly to the bouffon style they learnt at the Lecoq school, others have continued to research and experiment with the bouffon form, pushing the work of their students into unexplored bouffon territory. Christine Grace for example, has given bouffon workshops consistently since 1991 and has been researching the bouffon form from the perspective of the bouffon world as opposed to the parody element of the bouffon style:
I m interested in taking the bouffon into the culture of the tribe and explore what that is: "What is it that they celebrate amongst their own?" and explore more the humanity of the bouffon. The power of the humanity of bouffon is something that interests me a lot more than the mockery performance style that they have. When you re performing to an audience there s a certain style that they use which is good, it s entertaining, but I think there s a deeper undercurrent to the bouffon that s still yet to be discovered a bit I reckon, and that s what sort of interests me (Grace 1997:263, interview).
In Russell Dykstra s student-devised production of Kakos at QUT, he pitted his bouffon characters against clown characters and in addition to the usual deformities of the bouffon physicality, Dykstra feels that he gave the bouffon a more contemporary form:
The bouffons were pretty heavily deformed, more kind of traditional looking, but more contemporised [...]. In its more traditional way the bouffon is just dark clothing and humps and bumps, whereas we kind of took it a bit further. Like, one of them had three sets of boobs. They were just a bit more bizarre (Dykstra 1999a:227, interview).
192 Russell Cheek has also extended the more traditional bouffon approach in his student production of The Bouffons: Show Us Your Holy Bits at Mitchell College, Bathurst. Here Cheek and his students created wild and wonderful bouffon characters through applying the bouffon principle of exaggerated physicality to unusual parts of the body, and even to the entire body:
[The bouffons] had a saviour. They had the equivalent of a Jesus. We got this big cardboard box, like a refrigerator-sized box, and the bouffons made a procession and ritual about this guy in the box [...j. What we did was that we kind of created this character with this guy and we wrapped him all up in this stocking stuff so he had no arms, no legs and no head. So he was like this writhing worm and it was really wild and all he did was that at certain times they brought him out of the box and he d writhe on the floor and he was the saviour of the bouffons and we strung him up by his feet or something and hung him upside down (Cheek 1999a:111-112, interview).
Another character wore a beanie and a mask that was a hugely exaggerated chin. This character was paired with another who also wore a beanie but walked on high stilt-shoes. There was a character in a wheelchair dressed in garbage bags, and a character in a black body stocking wrapped up in electrical cords and light sockets who could only walk in dolly steps and constantly repeated the lines Pretty girl. Pretty girl. Another bouffon figure had incredibly long fingernails, and another wore a spandex hood over his head, putting his arms into it so that he resembled a grotesque frog with no head.
CONCLUSION
It has been my purpose in this chapter to trace and map the influence of the Lecoq school on actor training in Australia. I have attempted to indicate that, through the work of alumni, the Lecoq pedagogy has significantly impacted on Australian theatre training. Not only have alumni established Lecoq-based schools, but they have taught at virtually all the major actor training institutions and universities which teach actor training in Australia. Beyond this, alumni have given countless Lecoq-based workshops throughout Australia. The impact of these multiple sites of interaction between the Lecoq pedagogy and Australian theatre training are immeasurable. The pedagogical leaven would appear to have been mixed through and fermented in the Australian theatrical culture to such an extent that it is now alive with many aspects of Lecoq s pedagogy. Alumni have taught actors, acting students and other practitioners ways to create their own theatre, improvisation skills,
193 movement skills and techniques, and have introduced them to a repertoire of popular performance styles. These students have in turn enacted Lecoq s pedagogical principles, applying them to their own work in new contexts or teaching others the skills, techniques and approaches they have learned.
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