Book Review

Staniewski and Hodges Hidden Territories. Jessica Smith

Staniewski believes that sound and musicality are the fundamental
principles needed within life. He believes that we as a generation and
European nation have lost our sense of sound within our soul and have
'became to be more and more deaf'. This is meant in a direct sense; in
that we literally cannot hear as there is a 'direct, indispensible
relation between what you see and what you hear', and we have come to rely
too much on what we see. Additionally, he is also referring to our inner
lives stating that we do not hear the same harmonies, sounds and
polyphonies as 'ancient people' heard, with our ancestors being able to
hear the microtones within sound which are fundamental for music and
antiquity. He says that the problem he faces as a practitioner is in
'developing visual perception while audio perception is reduced' as he
believes the two are strongly linked together with 'equality between time
and space'.

Furthermore, Staniewski worked on developing harmonies as a technique
using the physical body to encourage the inner harmonies out of one's
soul. He used movement when rehearsing with his performers such as,
jumping and moving from side to side in order to direct the pitch level
and tone of the sound being produced. Thus, this encouraged the performer
to follow the physicality with their voice to produce the desired harmony.
Staniewski wanted to extract the sound from the inner body thus, training
his performers to listen to their inner bodies in order to reach the sound
they required. He developed this technique using the flute and playing a
sound on the flute that the performer would have to imitate exactly,
moreover, re-creating a sound with their body that was created by an
instrument. This required intense focus and concentration into oneself in
order to express such a sound and thus, the performer had to listen deeply
from within. Additionally, Staniewski used movement to encourage his
performers to listen to their inner sounds of their body with physicality
leading to musicality.

Furthermore, this is apparent in the work we have been studying as we
always begin by working or developing something physically before adding
sound thus, the sound is developed from our inner body as an impulse
reaction to our physical movement. In addition we have always been
encouraged to use sound and voice throughout our classes as well as
movement filling the space with life and sound creatively and naturally as
a way of energising the space and each other thus, listening to one
another and developing our audio perception.

Furthermore, Staniewski is working to create a 'way of inventing
sound...bringing them back to our practise and our memory' as he believes
we have lost the art of hearing which is connected with the 'invisible
organ', being the soul. In addition, he believes that our creativity and
imagination depends on the depth of our souls which become more open
through our 'channels of absorbing sounds'.

vanessa hunt

Jacques Lecoq is one of the most influential theorists and teachers of physical theatre. Published in France in 1987 'The Theatre of Movement and Gesture' is the first English language translation of his book 'Le Theatre du Geste'. The book sets out his philosophy of the human movement and the manner in which it takes expressive form in a wide range of different performance traditions such as the history of pantomime and the Commedia del'arte. His ideologies challenge a different pathway to Stanislavski as Lecoq emphasized physical movement, mime and the use of non-text based acting style. An important part of Lecoq's method, which he focuses a lot of attention to, is the definition of mime and the components of it. He also discusses the explosion of physical theatre in the second half of the twentieth century.

Lecoq developed his training methods over thirty years but still encouraged his actors to discover their own style rather than merely have it imposed on them. He refuses to allow an academic distinction to be made between the text and the performance as he insists that the actor 'writes with his body in the space' and compares it to the way in which an author 'writes with black lines on white paper'.

In his interview with Jean Perret he explains that his earlier career began as a sportsman not as an actor, director or practitioner. Thus his first and most important interest was always in the ability of the human physique and the manner in which every action, every movement that a human being makes carries meaning, whether intended to or not. The explorations of movement is therefore always practical and can and should be only experienced through the body however he was still searching for the way to incorporate the imagination and a sense of the poetic into the movement.

An essay on the universal practice of imitation introduces the play. In this Lecoq draws attention to the fact that it is simply by mimicking movements that children are able to learn about the world around them, and this simple copying of gestures is continued into adulthood subconsciously and consciously. He explains that everyday gestures are conditions of time, place, class and fashion, thus affecting each individual differently, however he also question the aspects of physical expression and whether there are some gestures that are shared by all. His aim was to find the physical impulse, which he believed, would show the thinking, emotions and the expression of the actor.

Lecoq has been a huge influence on many directors and theatre practitioners such as Ariane Mnochkine, Robert Wilson and peter Stein hence the contributions in the book from those that were influenced by his methods.

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