Unrehearsed Future (S5) #5 Beyond the Black Box: The Social and Environmental Practices of the Lecoq Diaspora

If you come across a group of people in a classroom shaking like a leaf or attempting to be a tree in a forest fire, or a whale on two legs – it might seem like an exorcism in process to your bewildered eyes. However, you are most likely to be witnessing a movement-based class in session derived from the late French movement practitioner Jacques Lecoq’s pedagogy. 

Speak to any student or practitioner who has undergone some form of Lecoq-based training, and you will hear of similar instances of actor-creators-students miming elements of the non-human world, from the natural world to find fodder for their creations. Here, mime is understood as the means through which the student rediscovers their connection to the natural and material world.

The notion that ‘everything moves’ (tout bouge) underpins Lecoq’s pedagogical philosophy. He believed that human creativity is intrinsically connected to the world that humans live in, giving the pedagogy an ecological lens to understand the world and creatively interpret it. 

At recent Unrehearsed Futures conversation, curated by Mark Evans (UK), performers and scholars Michael Pearce (UK), Denise Kenney (Canada) and Ellie Nixon (UK) shared how they adapt the pedagogy in response to their local contexts and specific social, cultural and environmental pressures and challenges.

Diminishing imaginations

“I kind of think of my [Lecoq] training as a way of being in the world, a way of co-creating with the world, and privileging the body and the body-mind,” says Denise, who teaches on the new Bachelors course on sustainability and creative engagement strategies at the University of British Columbia. Her work there has involved collaborating with colleagues who were poets, visual artists and computational artists – traditionally non-theatre spaces – which pushed her to consider using Lecoq engagement strategies outside the traditional space and out into the world.

In terms of making work and training, one of the biggest challenges Denise identifies is that of time. Looking back over her many projects, the ones that seem to be the most successful were the ones that happened over very long timelines, she says, and that’s really difficult to replicate each time.

“In a university setting, I barely get the students to be present and then, it’s over. As a Lecoq practitioner, we’re uniquely positioned to address social and ecological issues. The idea of embodied learning and embodied experiences is hard now at my university because the more students they can get into a lecture hall with clickers and multiple choice, the happier they are,” she shares.

The Lecoq pedagogy, especially the parts which engage with the material world, can be best felt when it is allowed to unfold over a long period of time. So, engaging in short workshop settings often makes Denise feel like a novelty act and she has been looking for ways to make those engagements more meaningful.

“Over the last 15 years, the imaginative realm seems to be diminishing with my students,” she says. “I don’t know about audiences yet. But my instinct tells me that the Lecoq pedagogy in the way of being in the world is well positioned to address some of these contemporary challenges; though not necessarily in the way that we would all immediately recognize.”

From anthropocentrism to ecocentrism

A scholar and Associate Professor at the University of Exeter, Michael has been interested in how theater can support eco-consciousness and pro-environmentalism, especially in relation to issues of inclusivity and equality of access. When he began his research into environmentalism, what struck him most was the advocacy for a shift in worldview away from an anthropocentric to an eco-centric perspective. “Numerous scholars were identifying anthropocentrism as a dominant driver of climate change and biodiversity loss – specifically the belief in human exceptionalism that only we as humans have intrinsic value, and that justifies the way that we extract and exploit the more-than-human world,” Michael says.

Inspired by scholars such as David Abraham and Donna Haraway, who advocate for a reconnection, for us to acknowledge, understand and then, principally, feel our entanglement with the world – beyond going into nature on a safari or having a walk, Michael feels there is need for a fundamental shift in how we perceive our relationship with the more-than-human world, as interconnected and codependent. “What struck me reading a lot of these ecological and philosophical texts was the emphasis on embodiment, and how they were talking about not only the need to reconnect but do so in a sensorial way.”

What also struck Michael was how his Lecoq training challenged the human and nature binaries in the various exercises they were encouraged to do, to observe and embody the more-than-human world. “It demands a kind of empathy in an embodied way, not necessarily an emotional way.”

And so, his research led him to start an experimental module at the University of Exeter called Eco Theatre, Outdoor and Immersive Performance, to look for ways to decenter the human and help us think about these entanglements. 

An evolving pedagogy

There seems to be something inherent about the Lecoq training, as opposed to other training, that speaks to these kinds of themes.

After graduating from the Lecoq school in Paris in 1989, researcher and educator Dr. Ellie Nixon co-founded the La Mancha International Theatre Company with Rodrigo Malbrán. In 1995, she co-founded La Mancha International School of Image and Gesture in Santiago, Chile at a time of transition between dictatorship and democracy. Initially, there was an urge to share the Lecoq pedagogy in the same way they had received it at the Paris school. Between Ellie and Rodrigo, they realised their experiences of the school and pedagogy had been different, and they had to listen to what the students wanted at that point of time in Chile. Little by little, students became co-creators of an evolving pedagogy, Ellie says. 

“I think that one of the key essences of the Lecoq pedagogy is that it’s always evolving and adapting, but you have to listen,” she shares.

The school is nestled in the Andean mountains, filled with natural resources. Ellie recognized that there was a relationship between Lecoq’s adaptable pedagogy, the students’ embodied cognition and their world. “That triumvirate got us really, really excited,” she says, “And the students have changed. The students’ needs and their desires have changed. So, we’re really engaging with the kind of environmental sustainability Michael was talking about.”

While it might be satisfying to the patriarchal vestigial mind in us to refer to it all as the Lecoq method, one could argue that if one paid close attention to what the pedagogy does, it is the distillation of the idea of what theatre practice per se can do for community and society. But Amy Russell, pedagogic director of Embodied Poetics and one of the co-curators of Unrehearsed Futures, prefers to think of it in terms of a difference between ethics and methods. 

“There’s a lot that you can find in the Lecoq practices that ethically resonate with other practices,” she says, such as an ethos of responsiveness, playfulness, curiosity, humility and more in spiritual practices. “But then, in terms of the methods, I would say that what Lecoq put together, and I think of his methods as a compendium because he clearly drew from his sources, [Jacques] Copeau and [Suzanne] Bing being his most important precursors. I think the methods can be practiced in ways that are distinctly not like those ethical qualities.” 

Amy believes that the social and environmental quality of this pedagogic field depends on the intention of the practitioner; it doesn’t come from the methods themselves. “[The method] can be practiced in a very hierarchical way. They can be put squarely in the black box. One can simply refuse to acknowledge that there’s anything outside the black box. I mean, I think even within the school, there were examples of the black box being strictly enforced; there was nothing environmental about it. So, I think it’s good to be realistic about the fact that it can go different ways in different hands and that we’re really talking about a community interest in evolving the ethos and practices towards an environmental and a social focus,” she elaborates, as the conversation comes to a close. 

Compiled and written by Phalguni Vittal Rao