Shakespeare and Jacques Lecoq: A Practical Guide for Actors, Directors, Students and Teachers

This book provides actors, directors, teachers and students with a clear, practical guide to applying the work of influential theatre practitioner Jacques Lecoq to the process of rehearsing or workshopping the Shakespeare text.

Written by theatre practitioner Ed Woodall, who trained with Lecoq himself, and Shakespeare academic Abigail Rokison-Woodall, this guide begins with warm-ups and ensemble-building, and moves through explorations of the story, the world of the play, the text, character emotion, thought and physicality and staging.

Lecoq’s method often relies on ’play’, and play is often seen as trivial or inconsequential. This book argues that the more playful you are, the more playfully you investigate your speech or scene and the more physically motivated that playfulness is, the more vital and lifelike your acting of Shakespeare will be.

Abigail Rokison-Woodall is Deputy Director of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK. She began her career as a professional actor, training at LAMDA. Her first monograph, Shakespearean Verse Speaking won the Shakespeare’s Globe first book award. She has authored a number of journal articles and chapters on Shakespeare and theatre, as well as Shakespeare for Young People, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Nicholas Hytner and As You Like It: Language and Writing.

Ed Woodall is an acting coach and movement director. He trained with Jacques Lecoq at the École Jacques Lecoq between 1989-91 and has worked in physical theatre with Complicité, Improbable and Kneehigh as well as acting in a number of films and RSC productions of Shakespeare.