The body voice of satire: Jacques Lecoq and Dario Fo

Abstract

One of the central metaphors of Jacques Lecoq’s teaching is the journey: his own, to perfect a teaching method and hone his craft; his students’, to test their bodies’ capabilities and find their own voice; and the theatre’s, to continue evolving with changing audiences and times. The actual journey that eventually led him to found his own theatre school in Paris in 1956 began in French gymnasia before World War II and continued in amateur theatre first, and with Jean Daste next. Daste is the one who introduced Lecoq to the teachings of Jacques Copeau before taking him to Italy in 1948, invited by Director Gianfranco Bosio, who had studied and met Daste at Education Par le Jeu Dramatique (EPJD).1 As Lecoq admits in an interview with Jean Perret, ‘In Italy I was also the actor that I would one day train’ (Lecoq, 2006: 107). The friendships and collaborations that Lecoq forged across the Alps were fundamental in shaping his teaching methods. His three years in Padua made him understand the power and potential of the masks created in collaboration with sculptor Amleto Sartori, who sought to re-discover ancient Commedia dell’arte ways of crafting leather masks for performance; he also came to understand and appreciate the true late medieval/early Renaissance roots of the Commedia Italiana (or dell’arte), and the importance of dialects, through the works of the sixteenth-century Paduan author Ruzzante. In 1949, Lecoq met Giorgio Strehler, who had founded the Piccolo Teatro di Milano with Paolo Grassi two years earlier and had been reviving Goldoni’s Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters, reinserting and reinventing routines (lazzi) that had been lost over the years. Lecoq introduced Strehler to Sartori, who began, in turn, his own long collaboration with the Milanese theatre, infusing new life into productions and performances that made theatre history.2 In 1951, Lecoq was asked to choreograph the chorus for a Piccolo Teatro production of Sophocles’ Electra. Subsequently, Strehler asked Lecoq to move to Milan and start the Piccolo drama school alongside Grassi and Strehler himself. It is there that he met and worked with the newly constituted acting troupe I dritti, which included professional actor Franco Parenti (with whom Lecoq laterfounded a company) and emerging young actors Giustino Durano and Dario Fo, as well as Lecoq’s own graduating students from the Piccolo school. Almost half a century before Fo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Lecoq’s choreography of the two shows of I dritti marked a fundamental change in both Fo’s and Lecoq’s careers. As they both acknowledged in writings and interviews, they learnt a lot from each other.