Etienne Decroux’s dramatic corporeal mime is taking the body as a main means of expression and the actor as a starting point for creation with the aim of “making the invisible visible” (Etienne Decroux), of allowing the actor to show thought through movement.

Art of movement rather than art of silence, dramatic corporeal mime is first of all the art of the actor/actress. An actor, whatever his artistic ambition might be, must, before all, be present, “be” on stage and this presence is shown through the body. The body is what sustains the costume, what the spectator sees, what carries the voice. It is the skeleton, the hand in the glove.

Placing the body at the centre of his work, the corporeal mime actor seeks to recreate the essence of drama, to integrate in the body all principles of an action or a dramatic situation – disequilibrium, instability, causalities, rhythms – and to attain the control of the latter through learning a corporeal technique. The actor becomes sculptor and sculpture.

The dramatic corporeal mime of Etienne Decroux, as a teaching process, aims to give to the actor this control of presence on stage, of placement, displacements, actions through learning the technique, articulation, mobile statuary, improvisation and repertory.

To study a technique, as in music, multiplies the possibilities of the actor, allows him to do what he wants, not only what he can. In this way, it is a door open towards more freedom and imagination, and more clarity in in the execution.