Embodied correspondences with the material world: Marcel Jousse’s ‘laboratory of the self’ as a force for creative practice in performer training

Abstract

Drawing on the French anthropologist Marcel Jousse’s notion of the body as a ‘laboratory of the self’, this article considers the compositional potential of an embodied imagining process starting from a sense of being with the material element of rock, more specifically, Haytor, located on Dartmoor National Park. In exploring the processes that took place during this research project, the article discusses how the trajectory of Jousse’s approach to learning might enrich our understandings of a theatre-making process rooted in the relationship between the self-aware body and the substances that make up our environment. It suggests how this process-led model can offer fresh insights into a performer training ethos that welcomes uncertainty and the indeterminate. How might an embodied inner sense of self prompt students to be alert to what the world is telling us?

keywords:

• devising
• research project
• Marcel Jousse
• ‘intussusception’
• mimesis

Notes

1 Mentioned by Pagneux in a workshop I attended in Barcelona (2007). Quoted by Garet Newell, educational director of the Feldenkrais International Centre Ltd, in an ATM session I attended in 2006.