re improv

[david ferry]

Below is an exerpt from an interview with Robert Lepage --in it lepage talks about the influence of Alain Knapp on his own work. You can read the whole interview at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/lepage_transcript.shtml

There is a book (in French) by Knapp also: A.K. une école de la création théâtrale by Alain Knapp (Paperback - Aug 12 1993)
a.. Paperback: 200 pages
a.. Publisher: Actes-Sud (Aug 12 1993)
a.. Language: French
a.. ISBN-10: 286943376X
a.. ISBN-13: 978-2869433762

Back cover of Knapp book:

"What appears in the pages of this book is that the acquisition of power created in the performance theater predisposes an ability to create a broad plan otherwise: that his behavior in the world . From this point of view, the work of Knapp is in line with mirror-works, from Plato through Montaigne, Chateaubriand, Rousseau, add to our understanding of the universal. "Vinaver (extract the preface) Alain Knapp has taught theater for twenty years. Nous entrons, avec cet ouvrage écrit sous forme dialoguée, dans l'intimité de son cours de " création théâtrale ", lent cheminement attentif pour faire naître les situations, les enjeux, les complexités, et arriver à une richesse de matériau telle que le dialogue théâtral puisse à la fin s'esquisser. We went with this book is written in dialogue form, in the privacy of his being "theatrical creation, slow journey attentive to situations arise, issues, complexities, and reach a wealth of material such as dialogue theater can take shape at the end. Il s'agit d'un processus d'exploration : la recherche de la théâtralité par entraînement guidé, " l'activation " des pouvoirs imaginants, le plaisir de l'invention. It is a process of exploration: the search for theatrical training guided by "activation" of being able to imagine the pleasure of the invention. Tous ceux qui sont à la recherche de la qualité et de l'exigence dans l'exercice du théâtre trouveront là le récit d'une pratique et des propositions concrètes d'exercices. All those who are looking for quality and demand in the year the theater will find here an account of a practical and concrete proposals for years.


>From Lepage interview:

I also want to go back a bit to 1978, you moved to Paris, you studied with a man called Alain Knapp. Now what did he really teach you?

Well I think that what was interesting is it was in, it was in the years of where everybody believed a lot in improv, and improv was a very, very vague and messy thing. People just went up there and improv-d on different themes and, and the actual improv event had an importance in itself. With Alain Knapp what was interesting is that it was a kind of improv that was extremely structured so you were actually writing as you were going on, and a lot of people who would see performances made up of improvs thought that they were actually prewritten and they were not, so it was a very sophisticated refined kind of improv and, and that really, really stimulated me into working in, in that direction, and it was all based on intuition, not a lot on intellect, and in those days we were in the days of political theatre and people were using theatre as a vehicle for political ideas and philosophies and, and things were happening from the neck up and I was very interested in trying to find, to be more in touch with my intuitions and Alain Knapp had different exercises and different ways to put you in, in touch with that. 
 
Did that seem to come naturally to you or did that originally come as a shock, this invitation to be true to your instinct? 
 
It, it came as a shock because what drew me to theatre was the theatre that I saw and it was a, a theatre of words, a theatre of ideas, a theatre of the intellect a lot, and suddenly I was, I felt much more familiar and much more, it was much more close to me to actually just let go and, and indulge into, into my intuitions, and they brought me on, on paths that I never would have imagined before, so suddenly all the possibilities, everything was possible. 
 
Was it anti-intellectual or just non-intellectual? 

It was, it was non-intellectual, not anti-intellectual, and I'd say that it had a lot to do with the fact that you know if, if one was interested in doing some collective work, people, nobody ever took into account let's say if we would be using a theme like war for example and say well let's do a show about war, nobody took into account the fact that the collectivity was made of people from different classes, who had different experiences, sometimes different cultures, and war doesn't necessarily relate to them in the same way, so in order to have a communal piece of art you have to do a lot of compromises, you have to put a lot of water in your wine. By working with non-intellectual themes and just images or objects or impressions you, you do not debate impressions. I cannot be confronting your impressions, your impressions are your impressions and mine are mine, so, so it was a much more open and, and a richer way of working than working from themes and intellectual ideas. 
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