Art Is Not a Luxury, but an Essential Component to Any Life Lived with Dignity ― Rudolf Steiner
A new drama school begins in October. Rudolf Steiner wanted to create a new approach to all areas of life through anthroposophy: Waldorf schools, biodynamic agriculture, healing, arts, etc.
This also applies to the art of acting. In antiquity, humans communed with the gods in the mysteries and brought their experiences to the stage. This has changed. Humans have descended into the material world alone. The path ahead is uncertain; the gods await us. Faust is a representative for all of us who have lost access to the spiritual world. Today, many people become trapped within themselves and cannot find a space to work and live in harmony with their inner impulses. Faust exclaims in his desperate longing:
The spirit-world no closures fasten; Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen
Thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead: Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist tot!
Disciple, up! untiring, hasten Auf, bade, Schüler, unverdrossen
To bathe thy breast in morning-red! Die ird’sche Brust im Morgenrot
During the years I was director of the acting ensemble at the Goetheanum, we performed "Faust" in its entirety. It was a great challenge for me as a young actor to carry the weight of Goethe’s work. I played both Faust and Mephisto in various productions, and I always felt I was not big enough to cope with the power of the poetry. I stood before a mountain of text and the enormous demand to connect with its meaning and find expression for it through my body and soul.
The Faustian demand to penetrate the spirit world also applied to my acting task because on stage you are in the spiritual world; you are subject to spiritual laws, and I rattled the door to find my way in.
In our training at the Goetheanum, we placed great emphasis on developing a mastery of speech. Breathing, voice training, sense of rhythm, gymnastics, and much more served as the foundation for this mastery. The choirs of angels, witches, elemental and mythic beings sometimes lifted the roof of the Goetheanum. During a Faust conference we held in 1999, a professor from the Goethe-Institute remarked that he had, for the first time, truly experienced Goethe’s words through the rhythmical speech we practiced. Our production was successful, but our method was bound in the tradition of the oratory arts, and this tradition was dying out toward the end of the last century.
In the "Dramatic Course," Rudolf Steiner points to a path that brings the whole person onto the stage: The power of speech is not a demand that overwhelms the actor, but rather it works in conjunction with the personality. Acting and speaking on stage are always a great challenge, because one must transform oneself for it. But Rudolf Steiner demonstrates methods that embrace the whole person. He wants to unite will and thought, which often go their separate ways in our fragmented consciousness. When this succeeds, the will pulsates through speech, and speech illuminates the will. On stage, humanity finds freedom. That is what we work for at the Antigone Drama School!
This requires a struggle against habits and established patterns. But by fighting for your freedom in art, you simultaneously fight for the freedom of others who experience what you are doing on the stage. We free ourselves from the cage of fear, we fight against the force of inner fragmentation. This takes courage and a lot of work. It is tough, but it is fun!
Marc Cousquer's work has taken this new step of uniting speech formation and acting. Marc has a traditional stage training from Paris, he studied at the Chekhov Studio in Berlin and received in-depth training in speech formation in Dornach. For 20 years, plays inspired by the spirit of the Dramatic Course have been staged and performed by his ensemble in France, Germany, and Switzerland. Conventionally trained actors, eurythmists and speech artists revel in the interplay of all the soul's powers, creating something new – and the audience is thrilled!
This approach has led to the founding of the Antigone Drama School where there is great potential for human development. With many experienced instructors and students who want to pursue this path, a powerful team will emerge.
The school is situated in Colmar in France; we offer a full time education in French and German.
Learn more about the Antigone Drama School HERE or contact the School HERE or watch a short film about Antigone.
