We offer classes for adults in puppetry technique, movement technique, and devised theater. Check below to see what’s on offer this year for individual signups. If you don’t see what you’re looking for, send us an email. We take requests!
Interested in hosting a workshop at your company or university ? We can come to you. Let us know here.
Caroline Reck and Connor Hopkins
January 15 – 31, 2019
Classes are Tuesdays & Thursdays from 7-9:30pm
Fundamentals of Lecoq: Movement and Improvisation
Next Class: TBA 2019
For updates, join our Lecoq Movement Classes group on Facebook or email [email protected].
A one day, five hour introductory physical theatre class that introduces the participant to Lecoq’s approach to mime, neutral mask, performer’s presence, use of space, and collaborative group creation.
INSTRUCTOR: Caroline Reck is a graduate of the Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq’s two year program in physical theater, a competitive program that graduates only about 30 people a year from around the world. The training covers movement, stage presence, story creation, comic timing, clown, mask, and object theatre. Caroline has taught Lecoq Technique semester classes at Towson University, and workshops at U.T. Austin, Franklin & Marshall, & The National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.
What’s the Technique?
Jacques Lecoq worked from the belief that any movement performed by an actor onstage, intentional or not, contributes to (or detracts from!) the story being told. One of Lecoq’s goals was to train actors to be in control of the story that their movements created. To do so, he worked with and developed many genres, including neutral mask, mime, clown, cabaret, buffoons, and tragic chorus, providing obstacles for his students to discover their own way through, and develop the capacity to be able to play up or downplay their natural movement tendencies in order to transform themselves into a wider variety of characters.
He also believed that the creation of theater wasn’t solely based on a playwright creating texts. For Lecoq, a great deal of the information in a performance comes from what is happening “between the words.” He felt that actors could be instrumental in the actual creation of the performance. He developed many tools to creating story through improvisation, on one’s feet, rather than by one playwright alone at a keyboard. These included physical exercises, improvisational prompts, and themes and approaches to collaborative performance.
Lecoq Class presentation from Towson University undergraduate theater majors (2009). The group assignment: Pick a movie and perform a synopsis in under 10 minutes using techniques learned in class.
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