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A movement director creates physical vocabularies through actor movement in various production settings, including theatre, television, film, opera, fashion, and animation.
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Movement directors work closely with directors and performers, collaborating with the creative team to realize the physical life of the work. They propose a physical language to performers and directors, and devise training methods or teach skills that will help facilitate a specific physical style. The movement director may create and research information about etiquette, proxemics, gestural language, social codes, a character's condition (related to medical conditions within their historical context, and factors such as inebriation, pregnancy, etc.), and personal journey (e.g., ageing). They are also responsible for specialist movement such as period dances, falling techniques, acrobatics, animal work, and chorus movements. [1]
Although choreography may be part of a movement director's skill set, not all choreographers are movement directors. For instance, primate movement consultant Peter Elliot worked on Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes , showcasing specialized movement consulting that diverges from traditional choreography. [2] In recent years, fashion campaigns and shows have employed movement directors like Stephen Galloway and Ryan Heffington to enhance the presentation of models and clothing on runways. [3]
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The title of "movement director" has existed since the early 20th century, although rarely mentioned in credits. The National Theatre created the role "Head of Movement," first held by Jane Gibson. Glynn MacDonald has long been the Master of Movement at the Globe Theatre, while Struan Leslie became the Royal Shakespeare Company's Head of Movement in 2009. [4]
Prominent contemporary movement directors include Jane Gibson (Cheek by Jowl), Kate Flatt, Struan Leslie (English National Opera), and Liz Ranken (Shared Experience). Other notable figures are Michael Ashcroft, Steven Hoggett, Polly Bennett, and Toby Sedgwick. [5] The influences of Jacques Lecoq and Rudolf Laban have been foundational in British theatre movement, shaping practitioners like Claude Chagrin and Michel Saint-Denis.
In 2020, the Movement Directors in Contemporary Theatre: Conversations on Craft by Ayse Tashkiran was published, marking the first book dedicated to contemporary movement direction practices. [6] In 2022, Kate Flatt published Movement Direction: Developing Physical Narratives for Performance. [7]
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Movement directors have been advocating for formal recognition of their profession. Training programs are available at institutions like the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where Ayse Tashkiran leads the MA/MFA in Movement: Directing and Teaching. [8] The Guildhall School of Music and Drama offers a similar program, as does Manchester Metropolitan University. [9] In 2020, the Movement Director’s Association was established to represent professionals in the UK .
Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode.
Stage combat, fight craft or fight choreography is a specialised technique in theatre designed to create the illusion of physical combat without causing harm to the performers. It is employed in live stage plays as well as operatic and ballet productions. With the advent of cinema and television the term has widened to also include the choreography of filmed fighting sequences, as opposed to the earlier live performances on stage. It is closely related to the practice of stunts and is a common field of study for actors. Actors famous for their stage fighting skills frequently have backgrounds in dance, gymnastics or martial arts training.
Physical theatre is a genre of theatrical performance that encompasses storytelling primarily through physical movement. Although several performance theatre disciplines are often described as "physical theatre", the genre's characteristic aspect is a reliance on the performers' physical motion rather than, or combined with, text to convey storytelling. Performers can communicate through various body gestures.
Jacques Lecoq was a French stage actor and acting movement coach. He was best known for his teaching methods in physical theatre, movement, and mime which he taught at the school he founded in Paris known as École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq. He taught there from 1956 until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1999.
École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq is a school of physical theatre previously located on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. In May of 2023 the school announced its departure from Paris and relocation to Avignon, where its next season training would commence that autumn.
David Bradby was a British drama and theatre academic with particular research interests in French theatre, Modernist / Postmodernist theatre, the role of the director and the Theatre of the Absurd. He wrote extensively on the theatre of Samuel Beckett, Roger Planchon, Jacques Lecoq, Arthur Adamov among many others. He also translated several works, principally by Michel Vinaver, Jacques Lecoq and Bernard-Marie Koltès.
A mimeartist, or simply mime, is a person who uses mime, the acting out of a story through body motions without the use of speech, as a theatrical medium or as a performance art. In earlier times, in English, such a performer would typically be referred to as a mummer. Miming is distinguished from silent comedy, in which the artist is a character in a film or skit without sound.
Drama Centre London was a British drama school in King's Cross, London, where it moved in 2011 after a major reshaping of the University of the Arts London. It was part of Central Saint Martins, a constituent college of the university. Following a review in 2020, the school closed with the graduation of its final students in 2022.
Cheek by Jowl is an international theatre company founded in the United Kingdom by director Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod in 1981. Donnellan and Ormerod are Cheek by Jowl's artistic directors and together direct and design all of Cheek by Jowl's productions. The company's recent productions include an Italian-language version of Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, Russian-language productions of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, an English-language production of The Winter's Tale and a French-language production of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Cheek by Jowl is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation and an Associate Company of the Barbican Centre, London.
Tanja Michaela Karin Liedtke was a German-born professional choreographer and dancer. She was most noted as a dancer, choreographer and director of contemporary dance in Australia and Europe.
Peter Bramley is an actor, director and theatre maker. He held the post of Head of Movement at Rose Bruford College, a drama school in Kent, for 12 years. He is the artistic director of theatre company Pants on Fire.
Simon Dormandy is an English theatre director, teacher and actor. As an actor, he worked with Cheek by Jowl and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), as well as at The Donmar Warehouse, The Old Vic, Chichester Festival Theatre and The Royal Exchange, amongst many others. He is perhaps best known on screen for his performances in Little Dorrit (film) and Vanity Fair. Between 1997 and 2012, he taught drama at Eton College, Berkshire, and held the posts of Director of Drama, Head of Theatre Studies and Deputy Head of English. He worked as a freelance theatre director until 2019 and has been Head of Academic Drama at St Paul's School, London since 2020. His directing credits include Julius Caesar at the Bristol Old Vic and Much Ado About Nothing at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, and his own adaptations of A Passage to India and the Coen Brothers' film The Hudsucker Proxy.
Devised theatre – frequently called collective creation – is a method of theatre-making in which the script or performance score originates from collaborative, often improvisatory work by a performing ensemble. The ensemble is typically made up of actors, but other categories of theatre practitioners may also be central to this process of generative collaboration, such as visual artists, composers, and choreographers; indeed, in many instances, the contributions of collaborating artists may transcend professional specialization. This process is similar to that of commedia dell'arte and street theatre. It also shares some common principles with improvisational theatre; however, in devising, improvisation is typically confined to the creation process: by the time a devised piece is presented to the public, it usually has a fixed, or partly fixed form. Historically, devised theatre is also strongly aligned with physical theatre, due at least in part to the fact that training in such physical performance forms as commedia, mime, and clown tends to produce an actor-creator with much to contribute to the creation of original work.
Ana Sánchez-Colberg is a Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist working internationally. She has been awarded Fellowships by the Swedish Research Council, Arts Council of England, British Council amongst others. She has also been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award in 2016 and the recipient of the highly coveted MAP Funding (USA) award in 2019, among other awards and recognitions.
Jake Harders is an English actor and educator.
Patsy Rodenburg, OBE is a British voice coach, author, and theatre director. She is the Head of Voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and has also worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre.
The physically integrated dance movement is part of the disability culture movement, which recognizes and celebrates the first-person experience of disability, not as a medical model construct but as a social phenomenon, through artistic, literary, and other creative means.
Toby Sedgwick is a British movement director, actor and theatre choreographer. He achieved critical acclaim for his expressive "horse choreography" for life-size puppets used in War Horse (2007), which played at West End's New London Theatre, Broadway's Vivian Beaumont Theater and Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre. For the latter, Sedgwick won a 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer and a 2012 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Choreography in a Play or Musical. Due to its success, the play went on a 30-city tour in the United States and was also produced in Australia and in Germany, opening late in 2013, just before the centenary of the first world war.
Alizia Pisk, or Litz Pisk, was a movement teacher and movement director who worked in British theatre.
Suzy Willson is a British director and choreographer. Willson is co-artistic director of London-based performance company Clod Ensemble.