"In this series of essays, Thomas Leabhart presents a thorough overview and analysis of the roots of Etienne Decroux's artistic genealogy. After four years' apprenticeship with Decroux, Thomas Leabhart began to research and discover how forebears and contemporaries might have influenced Decroux's project. Decades of digging revealed striking correspondences that often led to adjacent fields--art history, philosophy, and anthropology, forays wherein Leabhart's appreciation of Decroux and his "kinsfolk," who themselves transgressed traditional frontiers, increased. The following essays, composed over a thirty-year period, find a common source in a darkened Prague cinema where people gasped at a wooden doll's sudden reversal of fortune. These essays: investigate the source of that astonishment; continue his examination of Decroux's "family tree"; consider how Copeau's and Decroux's keen observation of animal movement influenced their actor training; record the challenging and paradoxical improvisations chezDecroux; and recall Decroux's debt to sculpture, poster art, sport, and masks. These essays will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in theatre and performance studies"--
In this series of essays, Thomas Leabhart presents a thorough overview and analysis of the roots of Etienne Decroux’s artistic genealogy.
| Acknowledgements |
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vi | |
| Preface |
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vii | |
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1 Introduction: Lessons from Prague |
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1 | (6) |
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2 Blowing up the palace and hanging up on the Opera: Dramaturgy in and of the body |
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7 | (10) |
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3 Monkey business and Robin revelations: Animal observation in actor training |
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17 | (12) |
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4 Friday night pearls of wisdom |
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29 | (11) |
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5 E.G. Craig's Ubermarionette and E. Decroux's "actor made of wood" |
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40 | (12) |
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6 Triptych: Three aspects/one figure |
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52 | (15) |
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7 Everything weighs: Wrestling with an invisible angel |
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67 | (13) |
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8 From Copeau to Decroux: the mask in actor training: Sculpting new bodies for ancient heads |
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80 | (19) |
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9 The face in corporeal mime: From plaster death mask to living actor's visage |
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99 | (25) |
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10 L'Homme de sport: Sport and statuary in Etienne Decroux's corporeal mime |
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124 | (46) |
| Index |
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170 | |
Thomas Leabhart, Professor of Theatre at Pomona College, California, worked with Etienne Decroux from 196872. He authored Modern and Post-Modern Mime (Macmillan, 1989), Etienne Decroux (Routledge, 2019) and co-edited (with Franc Chamberlain) The Decroux Sourcebook (Routledge, 2008). Leabhart edits Mime Journal, and for a decade participated as Artistic Staff at Eugenio Barba's ISTA meetings.
