Fundamentals of Lecoq is a one day, five hour introductory physical theatre class for experienced actors and directors at the gorgeous First Street Studio, taught by Ecole Lecoq Diplomé Caroline Reck, Artistic Director of the Award- Winning Glass Half Full Theatre.

Fundamentals of Lecoq will cover Lecoq’s approach to mime, neutral mask, performer’s presence, use of space, and collaborative group creation. It is intended as an introduction and overview. Glass Half Full will offer specialized courses in the different genres and extended group collaboration, starting summer 2016.

Cost is $75. There are a limited number of partial scholarships for financial assistance. Contact Caroline@GlassHalfFullTheatre.com with questions, or to get on a mailing list for future offerings of Fundamentals of Lecoq. Participants must be a minimum of 18 years old and should have several years experience in acting or directing.

Sunday, May 8, 2016 from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM

First Street Studio – 2400 East Cesar Chavez Street, Austin, TX 78702

From the Instructor:

In 2002, I graduated from the Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq’s two year program in physical theater. It’s a very competitive program that graduates only about 30 people a year from all over the world. I learned a great deal about movement, stage presence, story creation, comic timing, clown, mask, and object theater from this school, and it has informed much of the work I have made for Glass Half Full Theatre. I have taught Lecoq Technique semester classes at Towson University in Baltimore, and workshops at U.T. Austin, Franklin & Marshall, The National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. – Caroline Reck

What’s the Technique?

            Jacques Lecoq worked from the belief that any movement performed by an actor onstage, intentional or not, contributes to (or detracts from!) the story being told. One of Lecoq’s goals was to train actors to be in control of the story that their movements created. To do so, he worked with and developed many genres, including neutral mask, mime, clown, cabaret, buffoons, and tragic chorus, providing obstacles for his students to run up against in order to discover their own way through, and develop the capacity to be able to play up or downplay their natural movement tendencies in order to transform themselves into a wider variety of characters.

            He also believed that the creation of theater wasn’t solely based on a playwright creating texts. For Lecoq, a great deal of the information in a performance comes from what is happening “between the words.” He felt that actors could be instrumental in the actual creation of the performance. He developed many tools to creating story through improvisation, on one’s feet, rather than by one playwright alone at a keyboard. These included physical exercises, improvisational prompts, and themes and approaches to collaborative performance.

About Glass Half Full Theatre:

” . . . Glass Half Full Theatre, the company that in its few years creating theater in Austin has netted several awards and considerable critical acclaim for its inventive blend of puppetry and physical storytelling that employs gestures and expressions in tandem with props and sets to convey the narrative along with a variety of puppetry techniques — shadow puppetry, rod puppets and body manipulation.” Austin American Statesman

“It’s a rare gift to be able to tell a story without using words. And it’s even less common for us to get to witness such beauty on Austin stages.” Austin 360

“Reck was holding the stage all by herself – which is very much what the solo performer has to do . . . You have to expand your presence, become bigger than you are in ordinary life, radiate more light. Natural performers can do this with the ease of breathing. With no effort you can see, they simply amp up their wattage until they’re all us moths in the seats care to see. . . Reck accomplished it in silence, with the slow and subtle gestures of a lower limb. A performer can be taught this skill, but the ones who will snag your attention so hard that you don’t even want to blink are the ones to whom it’s second nature.”

Austin Chronicle

“There is a plot to THE ORCHID FLOTILLA, but, really, it is best that you just experience it, like the works of Beckett… which the piece very much reminds me of. Allow yourself to be immersed in the evening and I guarantee you days and nights of discussion over what you have experienced to follow… and you won’t miss dialogue at all.” Broadway World