ABSTRACT
The school is full of ghosts. Whilst each training has its ghosts, the South American influence upon Jerzy Grotowski’s Theatre of Sources or the trauma of rapid industrialization in post-war Japan that can be traced in Butoh, it is perhaps only when leaving the training that the form of these ghosts can really begin to emerge. The twenty movements are a crucial rite of passage in the Jacques Lecoq training. Rather than bonding students to the past, Lecoq insisted that his School was intended to train artists to ‘acquire an understanding of acting and develop their imaginations. Mark Evans’ research into the possible influences that make up the Lecoq training led him to cite exercises with ‘roots in European physical training’ and the ‘late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century construction of the efficient body. The French Resistance framed Lecoq’s own training, as he attended the Association Travail et Culture which created ‘cultural opportunities for working class people’ during the Resistance.
