The Routledge Companion to Performance Practitioners Copeau

This article was downloaded by: 10.3.98.104 On: 23 Sep 2021 Access details: subscription number Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG, UK The Routledge Companion to Performance Practitioners Franc Chamberlain, Bernadette Sweeney Copeau (1879–1949) Publication details https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780367815998-3 Mark Evans Published online on: 17 Aug 2020 How to cite :- Mark Evans. 17 Aug 2020, Copeau (1879–1949) from: The Routledge Companion to Performance Practitioners Routledge Accessed on: 23 Sep 2021 https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780367815998-3 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR DOCUMENT Full terms and conditions of use: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/legal-notices/terms This Document PDF may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproductions, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The publisher shall not be liable for an loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. 3 COPEAU (1879–1949) Mark Evans 3.1 The life of Jacques Copeau In the history of the French theatre there are two periods: before and after Copeau. (Albert Camus in Saint-Denis 1982: 32) Jacques Copeau’s international success in the fields of journalism, playwriting, directing, acting and teaching represent a level of achievement unmatched in the history of modern French, and perhaps even modern European, theatre. At a time when French theatre was desperately in need of direction and purpose, Copeau, through his writing, his teaching and his practice, offered inspiration and a ceaseless pursuit of quality. His influence on French cultural policy has been profound and his work has also left its mark on the practice and policy of major British and American theatrical institutions. Copeau brought to the theatre of his time a new vitality, purposefulness and energy; an energy based on the actor’s physical skills, on a vision of the role of theatre, and on an instinctive feel for the rhythmic and structural demands of a play. In his search for a revitalised theatre – for a theatre which, as in Ancient Greece or Medieval Europe, was able to play a social and moral role with the community – he drew together the influences of other innovators such as Edward Gordon Craig, Adolphe Appia, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze and Konstantin Stanislavsky into a unique and successful synthesis. His innovative work on the use of masks, improvisation, mime and physical expression, as training tools for the actor and as ele- ments within the creation and presentation of performance, have led to his current recognition as a key figure in the history of what is now referred to as ‘physical theatre’. Copeau’s influence on the development of twentieth-century theatre practice has been diverse and extensive. His commitment to a true ensemble company where actors would play leading roles in one production and minor parts in the next, where the repertoire would include classical revivals and contemporary writing, was a profound influence on the founding principles of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 1960s. His belief in the value of a complete and rounded education for the student actor – preparing not just for the theatre of yesterday, but also for the theatre of today and tomorrow – can be seen underpinning the philosophies of many of the leading European and American drama schools. Copeau wrote many articles and pamphlets, but, unlike Konstantin Stanislavsky or Michael Chekhov, he left no handbook outlining his techniques. Though he promoted a broad cultural education for his students, he was equally clear 86 Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 14:30 23 Sep 2021; For: 9780367815998, chapter3, 10.4324/9780367815998-3 Copeau (1879–1949) that study through reading was not the way to educate the actor. His legacy has been a practical one; a way of crafting drama handed down by teachers and practitioners, learned through experience and participation. The purity and simplicity of his purpose and his work, his belief in the moral and social power of theatre, and his passionate commitment to the training of the actor’s body and mind as well as their voice, have shaped and inspired the work of so many of those who followed after him, both in France and further afield. Much that is now commonplace in contemporary theatre practice can be traced directly back to the work of Copeau and his small group of collaborators during the few decades between the two World Wars. If his influence is not so clearly evident at the start of the twenty-first century, then that is in part because it is so firmly embedded in the cultural framework of the British, European and American theatre industries that it has become taken for granted. My own introduction to Copeau’s work came during my three years as a mime student in London and Paris during the early 1980s. While I grappled with the rigorous and exacting demands of corporeal mime and physical theatre techniques, I found myself curious to discover more about the history and background of the skills that I was acquiring. Copeau’s influence has in this sense been a constant presence throughout my career – through my training with Jacques Lecoq, my work in community theatre, and my own teaching. Though Copeau began as a jour- nalist and wrote many pamphlets, articles and lectures, my own experience confirms for me that his theatre methods have been kept alive not only through publication, but also through their dissemination down a line of teachers and students, directors and actors – a living and changing heritage against which his writings need to be seen not as the main text, but as the footnotes, anecdotes and appendices. This book aims to draw attention to Copeau’s achievements, practices and ideas so that they may continue to enrich and encourage the practice of new generations of theatre makers. The formative years Jacques Copeau was born on 4 February 1879, at 76 rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis in the 10th Arrondissement of Paris. The France in which he grew up was a country of political uncertainty, a country still dealing with the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). The war had been a bitter conflict, leading eventually to the end of the Second Empire and the beginning of the Third Republic in France, and the founding of the German Empire. When peace returned to France, it brought with it relative economic prosperity and a growth in cultural activity. Over the following decades France continued to struggle with some profound political and social problems, most notable of which was the notorious Dreyfus affair in which a Jewish soldier was wrongly accused of treason; at the same time, Paris became one of the great cultural capitals of the continent, drawing to it modern artists and writers from all corners of Europe. This social and economic climate enabled middle-class families, such as that of Victor and Hélène Copeau, to prosper and survive, and perhaps encouraged their son’s cultural dreams and aspirations. They were a reasonably well off middle class family who owned a small iron factory in Raucourt in the Ardennes, and although they themselves had no notable literary or theatrical connections or background, their son found inspiration in the occasional family trips to performances, the family’s small library of melodramas, and from the games and flights of imagination that filled his childhood days. The young Copeau used to imagine the rooftop and courtyard views from his family’s house as a stage for his childhood fantasies. His mind, even at that early stage, noting the dramatic potential of the bare architectural spaces – ‘like a desert sunrise or a stage after the performance’ (Copeau 1990: 5) – and the rich details of everyday activity around him. His 87 Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 14:30 23 Sep 2021; For: 9780367815998, chapter3, 10.4324/9780367815998-3 Mark Evans childhood passion for games was intense. In his later work, Copeau was often to return to his childhood games and imaginings with a deeply felt sense of their value: The mind of a child wanders amid such semblances. He links his own fairyland to the bits of reality that he observes with a relentless eye and absorbs with a bold heart. This is the way we compose our first dramas, which we try out in our games and mull over in silence. (Copeau 1990: 6) Copeau was a pupil at the Lycée Condorcet (in the nearby 9th Arrondissement) from 1889 to 1897, during which time he attended various theatre performances at the Théâtre-Libre, the Comédie-Française and the Châtelet: ‘I used to sneak out of the house to go and spend the few sous I had carefully saved from my pocket money to attend the theatre’ (Copeau 1990: 211). The director André Antoine was an important and significant early influence, as he was for many young theatre enthusiasts at the end of the nineteenth century. Copeau was riveted by Antoine’s performance in Jules Lemaitre’s L’Age Difficile, ‘Everything he did fascinated me’ (ibid.), and, despite the differences in their ideas, Antoine was to prove a friend and supporter of Copeau’s work in the years to come.

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