Etienne Decroux and his Theatre Laboratory

Description

Etienne Decroux and His Theatre Laboratory is based on the long-awaited translation of Marco De Marinis' monumental work on mime in the twentieth century: Mimo e teatro nel Novecento (1993). Now revised and updated, the volume focuses specifically on the seminal role played by French mime artist and pedagogue Etienne Decroux. Mime is a theatrical form of ancient tradition. In the nineteenth century, it saw both apogee and crisis in the west with the realistic and gesticulating 'white pantomime'. In the twentieth century, it un­derwent a radical overhaul, transforming into an 'abstract' corporeal art that shunned imitation and narrative, and which instead tended towards the plastic, elliptic, allusive, and symbolic transposition of actions and situations. This book is the result of detailed investi­gations, based on contemporary accounts and obscure or unpublished materials. Through the examination of the creative, pedagogical, and theoretical work of the 'inventor' of the new mime art, Etienne Decroux, De Marinis focuses on the different assumptions underlying the various modes of the prob­lematic presence of mime in the theatre of the twentieth century: from the utopia of a 'pure' theatre, attributed to the sole essence of the actor, to its decline into a closed poetic genre often nostalgi­cally stuck in the past; from mime as a pedagogical tool for the actor to mime as an expressive and virtuosic means in the hands of the director. Cover Title Copyright Contents Preface to the English Edition Notes INTRODUCTION: LABORATORY THEATRE AND DRAMATURGY OF THE ACTOR: THE CASE FOR DECROUX Starting Points Many Decroux Towards Art: The Counterfeiting of the Body The Double Articulation: Dramaturgy of Body and Action Interlude: Regarding Two Misunderstandings Why a Theatre Laboratory? Seven Reasons Beyond Art: Poverty, Misery, and Wealth Work on Oneself and Mime as Political Theatre Conclusion: Decroux and Grotowski PROLOGUE: 1945 AND OTHER DATES 1945: 'At Last a Creator in the Theatre’ A Brief Chronology 1 THE VIEUX COLOMBIER TRADITION 1.1 Sources vs Apprenticeship 1.2 Jouvet, the Actor-Marionette 1.3 ‘Corporeal Mime’ at Copeau’s School 1.4 Improvisation and ‘Plastics’ at Dullin’s Atelier 2 DECROUX AND BARRAULT 2.1 ‘Cutting off the Theatre’s Right Hand’ 2.2 A Controversial Collaboration 3 OTHER SOURCES, CONTEXTS, CO-EXISTENCES 3.1 Mime and the Supermarionette 3.2 Mime and the Arts 3.3 The Rediscovery of the Body in Twentieth-Century Theatre 4 DECROUX PEDAGOGUE 4.1 A Different School between Anecdote and Legend 4.2 Mime’s Mime and Actor’s Mime 4.3 ‘The Place for Young People is at School’ 4.4 From the 1960s to the 1980s: Success and Organisation 4.5 Beyond the System and the Technique 5 CORPOREAL MIME: AESTHETICS AND GRAMMAR 5.1 The Mobile Statue 5.2 Towards an Abstract Gesture 5.3 The Drama of Movement 5.4 Gesture and/or Word? 5.5 The Corporeal Specific: ‘History’ and ‘Manner’ 5.6 A New Grammar of the Body 6 CORPOREAL MIME AS THEATRICAL UTOPIA 6.1 Corporeal Mime and the Spectator 6.2 Between Presence and Absence: Decroux in Contemporary Theatre EPILOGUE: MIME AND THEATRE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In Search of the Lost Body Art and/or Pedagogy A ‘New’ Means of Expression in Theatre The Aporias of Contemporary Mime and Decroux’s Theatre Contribution Chronology Bibliography Index