Did you say ‘training’?

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Notes

¹ Defined as ‘a preparation through repeated exercises’ (Quemada 1994: 472).

² Defined as ‘preparation for a physical or intellectual activity; learning through methodical repetition’ (Imbs 1979: 1228).

³ France seems to be the only country in the French world to have thus generalized the use of the word training, at least in oral language, about fifteen years ago.

⁴ Lectoure: Bouffonneries. English version (1979) The Floating Islands, Graasten: Drama.

⁵Lectoure: Bouffonneries. English version (1991) The Secret Art of the Performer, London: Centre for Performance Research and Routledge. Latest edition (2005) A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The secret art of the performer, London: Routledge.

⁶Saussan: L'entretemps. English version (1999) Theatre: Solitude, craft, revolt, Aberystwyth: Black Mountain Press.

⁷ It is interesting to analyse the variety of theatrical learning institutes that existed at the beginning of the century. When Copeau founded his school in 1920, the panorama of the period in France included numerous schools, classes and workshops. The Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique had already long been in existence. (It was created in 1784 as L'Ecole Royale de Chant et de Déclamation and became the Conservatoire in 1808.) The situation is the same elsewhere in Europe. In Belgium, the Conservatoire de Bruxelles et d'Anvers had been in existence since 1860. In Finland, the Finnish National Theatre offered courses to its actors from 1906 to 1920, and the Swedish Theatre did the same between 1910 and 1973. The Finnish School of Drama was created in 1920. In Germany, important schools had been in place for several years in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. In Italy, the Academia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica Silvio d'Amico was founded in Rome in 1930. However, without a doubt, the tradition of theatrical formation is strongest in the United Kingdom. The country already had numerous schools, of which the most important were the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) (1904), the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art (1906), and later, in the 1930s, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and Guildhall School, to mention only a few.

⁸When questioned about the ideal formation for a performer, most directors deplore the insufficiency of the formation offered in schools, while recognizing that this instruction has improved over the course of the years.

⁹ Vitez would speak of the school of the group, as opposed to that of the individual.

¹⁰Interestingly, today the Petit Robert lists the two words as synonyms. The word training has now entered common use.