A microphenomenological approach to eliciting the intuitive and poetic dimensions in the creative agency of Lecoq-trained theatre makers

In the last 15 years, the interplay between performance studies, phenomenology, and cognitive sciences has contributed to the blooming of Lecoq-focused studies. However, to date, no scholarly inquiry has explicitly addressed the fundamental, elusive dimensions of intuitive perception or poetic sensibility frequently evoked by Lecoq alums. This inquiry sets out from a particular embodied perceptive experience, called synaesthetic resonance, during which the researcher-practitioner, without explicit or conscious process of reasoned thinking, experiences an immediate somatic insight, engaging with what they experience as their sensible interiority, their environment, and their poetic sense, yielding a particular kind of intuitive ability. Constantly in flux, in what I characterise as a cybernetic loop, these emergent intuitive abilities function as a strategic compass for generating and evaluating the poetic resonance of creative propositions, simultaneously revealing the actor-creator’s poetic reflective processes through their embodied metaphorical transposition. In order to understand this experience, this research is a phenomenological inquiry into the affordance of intuitive abilities within the creative agency of Lecoq-trained theatre makers. It relies on the methodology of micro- phenomenology, accessing ‘deeper’, otherwise occluded aspects of the lived experience of the creative practice of eight Lecoq trained theatre makers from around the world. By means of a bifocal process of diachronic fragmentation and synchronic expansion, the micro-phenomenological interview and analysis enable the unfolding of deep and hidden aspects of the situated moments of lived experience at the heart of the Lecoq devising practice: aspects of which the theatre makers are, in a very real sense, not even aware. This also allows for the comprehension of the intuitive and poetic dimensions that only emerge through embodied practice. As no existing research has been able to access unconscious embodied ‘know-how’ data of Lecoq alumni, the study bridges the epistemological gap in Lecoq research. Illuminating the practical implications of the first-year training at Lecoq’s school on the actor-creator's intuitive abilities, the analysis results show the pervasiveness of intuitive abilities through the different stages of the creative practice and reveal their crucial role in navigating the unpredictability, liminality, and transmodality inherent to the creative experience of Lecoq-trained theatre makers.