Joan Littlewood and Ariane Mnouchkine against the canon: developing the actors’ social representations through clowning

Abstract

The investigation of how Joan Littlewood and Ariane Mnouchkine used clowning to develop actors with social purposes responds to the current interest in the neglected counterhegemonic training processes of women. It also contributes to current efforts to decolonise and decentre actor training. Using Theatre Workshop’s Oh What a Lovely War (1963) and Théâtre du Soleil’s Les Clowns (1969) as exemplars, this article traces how Littlewood and Mnouchkine trained actors on clowning to theatricalise social struggles and develop their social representations. Through ensemble improvisations that exploited clown devices such as the master-servant, clown logic, object misuse, misfitness, and the flop the actors tackled their biases in two stages: the serious/comedic dissonance alienated the actor to critically explore social gests, and the process of finding the appropriate social representations during group improvisations addressed their biases. Contemporary actor training that wishes to invite students to explore how their body, voice and imagination in performance can resist dominant ideologies and historical stereotypes might proliferate from the use of clowning to create social representations. The tracing of Mnouchkine’s and Littlewood’s clown training processes through the deconstruction of their key works, can inspire and offer insights to pedagogues who wish to decolonise and decentre their pedagogies.

Keywords:

• Littlewood
• Mnouchkine
• clowning
• actor training
• decolonising

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors and reviewers of the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal and the guest editors of its special issue ‘Against the Canon’, and the research community at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Notes

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Evi Stamatiou

Evi Stamatiou is an actor and maker across stage and screen with 17 years of international experience. She has won international awards and her work has been funded by the Arts Council of England. Since 2010, she trains actors in Higher Education in the UK. She is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Course Leader of the BA (Hons) Acting at the University of Chichester and a Ph.D. Candidate at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. She researches social representations in actor training and popular performance. She has published in academic books and journals.