자크 르콕의 중립가면 연구 (A Study on Jacques Lecoq's Neutral Mask)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국연극교육학회
· 수록지 정보 : 연극교육연구 / 22권 / 22호 / 205 ~ 234페이지
· 저자명 : 장인숙

초록

After the French revolution of students in 1968, there had been a great upsurge of collaborative theatre productions in which actors took centre stage and many of successful companies associated with theatre of movement and gesture were founded. As performers and audiences began to take more interest in the creativity of the actor, the need was felt to explore different training methods. Theoretical developments in theatre scholarship were favourable to this enterprise. Their emphasis was on process rather than product, on the need to understand creative method as much as to assess the outcome. They began to redefine the notion of a ‘text’ in the theatre, showing that the old binary opposition between the writer's text and actor's performance was untenable, and that the performer also generated a ‘text’ which would be rich, combining words, action, movement, gesture, dance and music. Because of the new approach, theatre scholars and critics were able to appreciate the originality of Lecoq's approach to theatre of movement and gesture. In his practice and his pedagogy, he refuses to allow an academic distinction to be made between text and performance, insisting that the actor ‘writes with his body’ in space. He began as an athlete, not as an actor, and so his first interest was always in the capacities of the human physique and in the way that every action, every movement that we make, carries meaning, whether we intend it or not.
Lecoq believed that all human beings share a ‘universal poetic sense’ and the ability to respond creatively or poetically, depended on the laying down of a series of sediments through the universally shared experiences of being born, nurtured, developing movement and speech, and discovering a world of movement, objects, sounds, colours and other human beings outside ourselves. For an actor to enter into the necessary state of creative openness, he had to be able to relate afresh to these basic discoveries. His exploration of the laws of movement was always practical and could only be experienced in and through the body. But neither was it divorced from the realm of the emotions on the basis of physical experimentation, he was always searching for ways of introducing the imaginative and poetic dimensions. Although the training pioneered at the Lecoq School initially begins in silent improvisation and neutral mask work, it quickly moves on to integrate speech.
This paper examines the neutral mask which has become a central part of curriculum of Lecoq School on the purpose of preparing the creative actor. Lecoq developed his research and teaching on the neutral mask from Jacques Copeau and together their work represents the most significant investigation into this teaching tool within the twentieth century. Wearing the neutral mask encourages students to find a pure economy of movement which is uncluttered by social patterns or habits, and which invites them to explore a sensual and physical relationship with the world and its matter. Although the neutral mask is not a mask for performing, any observer of these exercises will have their attention directed towards the whole body of the wearer, now that the overly expressive qualities of the face are erased and rendered ‘neutral’. Later, when the neutral mask is discarded in actual performance, the supposition is that this total body awareness will serve the actor well when tackling different forms of characterisation. The landscape of neutrality contains a number of noteworthy features and assumptions that take us to the root of Lecoq's pedagogy. Therefore, Lecoq's acting method with the neutral mask contributes the value and the function of creative actor in the future, beyond the existent acting theories on psychological motivation and emotional identification.

영어초록

After the French revolution of students in 1968, there had been a great upsurge of collaborative theatre productions in which actors took centre stage and many of successful companies associated with theatre of movement and gesture were founded. As performers and audiences began to take more interest in the creativity of the actor, the need was felt to explore different training methods. Theoretical developments in theatre scholarship were favourable to this enterprise. Their emphasis was on process rather than product, on the need to understand creative method as much as to assess the outcome. They began to redefine the notion of a ‘text’ in the theatre, showing that the old binary opposition between the writer's text and actor's performance was untenable, and that the performer also generated a ‘text’ which would be rich, combining words, action, movement, gesture, dance and music. Because of the new approach, theatre scholars and critics were able to appreciate the originality of Lecoq's approach to theatre of movement and gesture. In his practice and his pedagogy, he refuses to allow an academic distinction to be made between text and performance, insisting that the actor ‘writes with his body’ in space. He began as an athlete, not as an actor, and so his first interest was always in the capacities of the human physique and in the way that every action, every movement that we make, carries meaning, whether we intend it or not.
Lecoq believed that all human beings share a ‘universal poetic sense’ and the ability to respond creatively or poetically, depended on the laying down of a series of sediments through the universally shared experiences of being born, nurtured, developing movement and speech, and discovering a world of movement, objects, sounds, colours and other human beings outside ourselves. For an actor to enter into the necessary state of creative openness, he had to be able to relate afresh to these basic discoveries. His exploration of the laws of movement was always practical and could only be experienced in and through the body. But neither was it divorced from the realm of the emotions on the basis of physical experimentation, he was always searching for ways of introducing the imaginative and poetic dimensions. Although the training pioneered at the Lecoq School initially begins in silent improvisation and neutral mask work, it quickly moves on to integrate speech.
This paper examines the neutral mask which has become a central part of curriculum of Lecoq School on the purpose of preparing the creative actor. Lecoq developed his research and teaching on the neutral mask from Jacques Copeau and together their work represents the most significant investigation into this teaching tool within the twentieth century. Wearing the neutral mask encourages students to find a pure economy of movement which is uncluttered by social patterns or habits, and which invites them to explore a sensual and physical relationship with the world and its matter. Although the neutral mask is not a mask for performing, any observer of these exercises will have their attention directed towards the whole body of the wearer, now that the overly expressive qualities of the face are erased and rendered ‘neutral’. Later, when the neutral mask is discarded in actual performance, the supposition is that this total body awareness will serve the actor well when tackling different forms of characterisation. The landscape of neutrality contains a number of noteworthy features and assumptions that take us to the root of Lecoq's pedagogy. Therefore, Lecoq's acting method with the neutral mask contributes the value and the function of creative actor in the future, beyond the existent acting theories on psychological motivation and emotional identification.

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