Copeau/Decroux, Irving/Craig

In this series of essays, Thomas Leabhart presents a thorough overview and analysis of Etienne Decrouxs artistic genealogy. After four years apprenticeship with Decroux, Thomas Leabhart began to research and discover how forebears and contemporaries might have influenced Decrouxs project. Decades of digging revealed striking correspondences that often led to adjacent fieldsart history, philosophy, and anthropologyforays wherein Leabharts appreciation of Decroux and his "kinsfolk," who themselves transgressed traditional frontiers, increased. The following essays, composed over a 30-year period, find a common source in a darkened Prague cinema where people gasped at a wooden dolls sudden reversal of fortune. These essays: investigate the source of that astonishment; continue Leabhart's examination of Decrouxs "family tree"; consider how Copeau's and Decroux's keen observation of animal movement influenced their actor training; record the challenging and paradoxical improvisations chez Decroux; and recall Decrouxs debt to sculpture, poster art, sport and masks. These essays will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in theatre and performance studies.