'In life, I want students to be alive and on stage I want them to be artists' Jacques Lecoq Jacques Lecoq was one of the most inspirational theatre teachers of our age. In The Moving Body, he shares with us first-hand his unique philosophy of performance, improvisation, masks, movement and gesture, which together form one of the greatest influences on contemporary theatre. Neutral mask, character mask and counter masks, bouffons, acrobatics, commedia, clowns and complicity: all the famous Lecoq techniques are covered in this book - techniques that have made their way into the work of former collaborators and students including Dario Fo, Ariane Mnouchkine, Yasmina Reza and Theatre de Complicite. The book contains a foreword by Simon McBurney, a critical introduction by Mark Evans and an afterword by Fay Lecoq, Director of the International Theatre School in Paris. In a very accessible language and with clear exemplifications and illustrative drawings, Lecoq sheds light on a vision of mime considered as training for theatre and for life ? Both for the actor, and for the researcher interested in Lecoq's theatre, this book is an essential read; for the theatre historian it is also a theoretical source on "dramatic mime" and on the expressive body that transversally influenced dance and theatre in the twentieth century.