by Molly Grogan

Relatively unknown at home, yet remarkably famous abroad, the Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq and the Ecole Internationale de Mimodrame de Paris Marcel Marceau have attracted thousands of students from as many as 30 countries, over a combined total of six decades of teaching. Located a stone's throw from one another in the 10th arrondissement, these institutions teach distinctive, original approaches to a shared specialty: the art of silence, as envisioned by an inimitable Maitre.

The Mimodynamic Method: Ecole Jacques Lecoq

Amid the bustle of the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, the Ecole Jacques Lecoq is easy to overlook; a small name plaque and a steel security door are its only advertisement.  But for the students who throw themselves, literally,  into the school's rigors each year, this institution is unquestionably the place to be. Their enthusiasm is sparked by Jacques Lecoq, who founded the school in 1956, and his method, in which numerous theater celebrities have trained, from director Ariane Mnouchkine, to playwright Steven Berkoff, to actor Geoffrey Rush, whose performance in the movie "Shine" won him an Oscar last year. This method is one of mimodynamics, which holds that the dynamic of man and nature can be represented through the miming body. Mimodynamics does not mean mime in the traditional sense, however; although corporal movement lies at the heart of the Lecoq method, the written and spoken word figure among the resources students are taught to tap.

The school offers a two-year program. In the first year, students return to a pre-speech state. They learn to play wearing a neutral mask - the key to the Lecoq method and which is meant to strip away adopted attitudes - and study ways of expressing poetry, painting and music through the body. They also train in acrobatics, juggling and stage fighting and are required to master 20 essential movements to qualify for further instruction. In the second year, students apply the method to various styles of theater, including melodrama, tragedy, comedy and Commedia dell'Arte. The study of classic and modern texts and play writing are covered as well. Students gain stage experience by giving three annual public performances, and all students in the school participate in a weekly "autocours", or independent workshop, which promotes group work on an assigned theme. A small number of graduates follow a third year of pedagogical training.

The exhausting physical program is heightened by tough competition to stay in the school. All beginning students must pass a three-month probationary period, and one in three students are accepted into the second year. Those who make it that far, however, will usually receive a diploma.

According to Fay Lecoq, the school's administrative head and the founder's wife, the Ecole Jacques Lecoq is a "school of the arts" that wishes to "train students in all directions." The first year's training, she says, is "a very good basis for life in general," and she is quick to point out the number of professions practised by former students. In short, she said, while, ideally, the school trains  creative actors, "we have no illusions" about the difficulty of working as an actor today. With the school's fame continuing to grow, applications should be submitted one year in advance of enrolment.  Prospective students may wish to read about the theories of Jacques Lecoq in his book Le Corps poetique, published this year by Actes Sud and scheduled to appear in translation in the spring of 1999.

The Art of Pure Mime: Ecole Marcel Marceau

If the Lecoq school incorporates the principles of mime in an original dramatic method, the Ecole Marcel Marceau, founded in 1978 in the basement of the Theatre de la Porte Saint-Martin with an annual grant of 3MF from the Mairie de Paris, teaches pure mime. Here, a select group of aspiring young mimes trains in the shadow of the world's best known and best loved ambassador of the genre.

The first challenge of the school is simply making the admissions cut, which is no small feat. Students vying for a spot participate in a grueling audition that includes an interview with the teaching staff, a one-week-long mime workshop, a five-minute performance before a jury and an improvisation on a theme chosen by Marceau. Those who survive this process embark on a three-year program that teaches primarily mime and dance (classic and modern/jazz), combined with fencing, acrobatics and spoken theater, and which requires all students to participate in a year-end performance. The pressure to shine among one's peers never lets up, either; on average, only four final-year students receive a diploma.

Third-year student Claudia De Siato summed up the experience after last spring's final performance: "It's not an easy road. We are constantly plagued by doubt as to our abilities. In the end, though, it's the work that matters and that keeps us going." Judging by the expressions on the faces of the students who appeared on stage with Marceau that evening, the chance to bask in the glow of their famed master is no less a motivating factor.

With Marceau clearly the school's best advertisement, the ethnic composition of the student body has tended over the years to reflect the countries in which he has toured.  Interested students in Paris can take advantage of an annual open house held every January at the school to find out more.

Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq: tel: 01.47.70.44.78.

Ecole Internationale de Mimodrame de Paris Marcel Marceau: tel: 01.42.02.32.82

Jacques Lecoq: The Perfect Gesture

Considered one of the most influential figures of 20th century theater, Jacques Lecoq, born in Paris in 1921, began his explorations of corporal theater while teaching gym classes in Belleville. In 1949, he made a decisive move to Italy, where he immersed himself in the pantomime of Commedia dell'Arte, discovered the neutral mask of sculptor Amleto Sartori, and created the school attached to Georgio Strehler's Piccolo Teatro di Milano. Taking what he learned back to Paris, Lecoq founded his own school of mimodynamic theater in 1956. At the Ecole Jacques Lecoq, his life's interest in the language of the body, based around an original technique of mask work and with special focus on the clown, has attracted some 5,000 students. Working also as an architecture professor since 1969, Lecoq has extended his theories to the plastic arts, developing an approach to scenography which he has taught at the school since 1976, in what is known as the Laboratory of Movement Studies. The Lecoq method is a total method: theater and life are inseparable; the body of the actor expresses all of life, through words but primarily through the perfect gesture. "I am a collector of gestures," Lecoq has said, adding, "I am a mime and a counter-mime... I am for an open mime, a mime of action." Director Ariane Mnouchkine paid her former Maitre this tribute: "Lecoq is there to remind us of the universals of theater. If you don't apply them, you are merely playing literature in costume."

issue: September 98

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