Research

My current research centres around Lecoq’s understanding of the BOUFFON, and contemporary teachers who have adapted the territory.

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Recent Publications include, “The Shadow of the Neutral Mask: A Jungian Examination of Lecoq-based Neutral Mask Praxis”, in ArtsPraxis (2019)

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My PhD thesis, "Myth in Contemporary Mask Praxis", was a practice as research exploration of mask and mask construction.  

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Thesis Abstract:

Through the construction of the neutral mask, the renowned teacher Jacques Lecoq (1921 – 1999) shifted conventional hierarchies away from a medium dominated by playwrights and directors, towards an actor created theatre.  The aim of this thesis is to address a developing critique of the Lecoq pedagogy: specifically, his monist view of mask as a means of creating a tabula rasa and his rejection of any form of introspection, by demanding a purely extraverted approach to theatrical creation.  It views the masks of Lecoq through a Jungian critical framework, amplifying the “cornerstone” of the pedagogy by linking it with mythic themes, and, in so doing, challenges Lecoq’s approach to “neutrality”, psychology, and the role of the actor.  Through a Practice as Research methodological approach, I have developed a process of mask construction as a means of accessing what Carl Jung referred to as the “personal shadow”, asking how the actor creator might playfully approach his or her personal complexes, so avoided by Lecoq, and use them to construct a “new theatre of tomorrow”.  This research offers significant contributions to the fields of actor created theatre and mask pedagogy, offering an approach that does not hide or strip away the person who creates, but speaks directly of and through that individual.  Viewing mask construction through a Jungian critical framework, I argue that masks have a symbolic function that link them directly to myth: they cannot be fully removed from their archetypal core and, therefore, speak to the unconscious psyche. By linking mask to myth, one is able to make theatre that speaks to those personal complexes, while still being accessible to the ensemble and audience.  Adopting mask construction as a method of approaching Lecoq-based actor created theatre, this thesis has helped to generate an original piece of devised theatre, The Marked (2016), as well as critically examining the potential for the development of an actor’s own “personal myth”.  Ultimately, it re-envisions Lecoq’s goal of an actor created theatre, and through a PaR investigation, proposes an alternative paradigm for thinking about, talking about and making theatre from a Lecoq-based mask praxis.