PROYECTO DE MEMORIA DE TÍTULO ESCUELA DE PERIODISMO

I came to theatre by way of s ports. At seventeen I discovered the geometry of movement through exercising on the parallel and horizontal bars at a Paris gymnastics club k nown as En Avant. The movement of the body through s pace demanded by gymnastic exercise is of a purely abstract order. In doing these physical movements I discovered extraordinary sensations which could be carried over into everyday life. On my way home in the metro, I would go over them in my mind. I would then sense all the rhythms perfectly, far more than in reality. I used to train at the R oland-Garros Stadium. I would run u p for the high jum p, then spring with the sensation of clearing a two-metre bar. I adored running, but it was the pure poetry of athletics which attracted me most: the contraction or elongation of the runners’ shadows thrown by the sun slanting across the stadium when the rhythm of running sets in. This physical poetry had a powerful effect on me.

In 1941 I attended a college of physical education,1 where I met Jean-Marie Conty. He had been top of his year at the E´cole Polytechnique, was an international bask etball player, had piloted planes for the Ae´ropostal company with Saint-Exupe´ry,2 _{and was}

in charge of physical education for all of France. His friendshi p with Antonin Artaud3 _{and Jean-Louis Barrault}4 _{led him to tak e an}

interest in the lin k s between s port and theatre. It was than k s to him that, during the German Occupation, I discovered the theatre through Barrault’s demonstration of the man–horse.5 _{This discov-}

ery aroused a strong emotional response in me. Jean-Marie Conty helped to set u p L’Education par le jeu dramati que (EPJD) [Education Through Dramatic Performance], a school based on unconventional methods founded by Jean-Louis Barrault with R oger Blin, Andre´ Clave´, Marie-He´le`ne Daste´ and Claude Martin.6

Later, in 1947, I was to teach physical ex pression at this school.

perso nal journ ey

My first theatre training was with Travail et Culture (T EC) [Work and Culture].7 _{With Claude Martin, who had been a pupil}

of Charles Dullin,8_{we would practise ‘mimed improvisations’, and}

with Jean Se´ry, a former dancer with the ballet company of the Paris Opera but now a convert to modern dance, we would improvise choreography to The Hymn to the Sun or The Fire Dance . As we were athletes (one of my com panions, Gabriel Cousin, was a fine runner as well as a poet and playwright) our fundamental gestural language was based on the s ports we practised: I was a swimmer, he was a runner. Sports, movement and theatre were already closely related.

After the Liberation of France in 1944, following on from my ex periences with TEC, a group of us set up a troupe k nown as Les Aurochs . Then we lin k ed up with Luigi Ciccione (our physical education teacher from the Bagatelle college), Gabriel Cousin and Jean Se´ry and founded Les Compagnons de la Saint-Jean. Through- out this heady period of post-war freedom, we put on large-scale festive events such as the first pilgrimage of the French Scouts to Puy-en-Velay, under the direction of Georges Douk ing, and the homecoming of the prisoners of war to Chartres. The arrival of a train carrying prisoners was re-enacted: we sang, we danced, and we mimed to the songs of Charles Trenet on the walls of the town, watched by thousands of people gathered on the grass. When we performed at Grenoble, Jean Daste´ came to see us, and invited several of us to join the com pany he was putting together called Les Come´diens de Grenoble.9 _{That was my professional de´but in}

theatre. I too k on responsibility for physical training within the company. It was not a question of training athletes, but of training dramatic characters such as a k ing, a queen – a natural extension of the gestures acquired through sports. I hardly noticed the difference.

Through Jean Daste´ I discovered mask ed performance and Japanese Noh theatre, both of which have had a powerful influence on me. In L’Exode [Exodus ], a performance using mask and mime created by Marie-He´le`ne and Jean Daste´, every actor

From Sport to Theatre

wore a ‘noble’ mas k , which we nowadays call the neutral mas k . I also have a vivid memory of a Ja panese Noh play, Sumidagawa [Sumida River ], in which we mimed the movements of a boat while our voices evo k ed the sounds of the river. We drew our inspiration from Jacques Copeau, who had been Daste´’s teacher, as we performed in Grenoble and the surrounding region. I discovered the s pirit of ‘ Les Co piaux’,10 _{their ambition to ta k e}

theatre that spok e simply and directly to unso phisticated audien- ces. Co peau became a reference point for my wor k , alongside Dullin who belonged to the same theatrical family. Our youthful enthusiasm found its echo in the school Dullin had founded in Paris.

I left Grenoble at the end of 1947 to teach at the EPJD, then I moved to Koblenz, Germany, where I wor k ed as an ‘ animateur dramatique ’11 _{as part of a programme bringing together young}

people from France and Germany. For six months, wor k ing in teacher-training colleges in the R hineland, I gave my first lecture- demonstrations, using the ‘noble’ mask to guide both teachers and students towards a discovery of movement and dramatic ex pres- sivity. I li k e to thin k I hel ped a little in the ‘dena zification’ of Germany : I tried out a relaxation exercise which consisted of lifting the arm and letting it drop. I found that their way of doing the gesture was stiffer and different from ours, so I taught them to loosen up!