Lecoq

Lecoq- Mime


·      Most famous for his methods on physical theatre, movement and mime.

·      Taught at the school he founded in paris, L’ecole international de theatre Jaques Lecoq – from 1965 until his death in 1999.

Exercise 1: Pushed our hands against a mirror to see what physical changes happened to our hands and body, and found that they went hard, flat, tense and fingers splayed slightly more. We then turned around and mimed pushing against the mirror, trying to recreate the physiological changes we experienced to create an accurate and believable mime. We did the same with stroking curtains. We realised that our the way our body physicalises an object, links to how the objects actually feels. For example with hair, our hands become soft, subtle and floaty- like the hair!

Exercise 2: We had to mime holding an object and the rest of the class had to guess what it was. Mine was an ironing board. My shoulders hunched over and my hands bent as if I clasped an iron, and my left hand fell flat, smoothing the 'clothing' down on the board. 

Exercise 3: We were told to say “Hello. How are you” as if we were talking to someone. The idea was that the rest of the class should be able to guess who we are talking to through the use of our body language and vocal choices. Such as if our voice sounded patronising and childish, and our body bent down, we were talking to a child; relating to again, to becoming like the person we are talking to.

Exercise 4: We were told to mime a clear task, which was short and had a steady rhythm. I chose to use the motherly mixing bowl gesture. Each time Ezra clapped we would go through a series of reactions:

First- starting with slowing our mime down

Second- slowing it down more

Third- slowing to a stop and looking round

Fourth- we stopped the move and ‘dropped’ our object.

Exercise 5: Music was played and we had to portray the music through our bodies without ‘dancing’ or trying’. 

From this workshop:

·      I found ways of how to mime and make my actions believable which will be useful when devising.

·      I found that if I practise using an object before I mime, it will give me a better and more clear understanding of how I would naturally hold the object without making my moves too over the top and not clear.