Lassaâd Saïdi
Born in October 1951, he acted on the stage from a very young age, at primary school, high school, then in different troupes and finally in the university theatre. During this period he won several prizes which encouraged him to make this passion his way of life. He then began advanced theatre studies at the conservatoire in Tunis and at the end of this course he was awarded the first prize and a grant to further his studies at the place of his choice.
He chose Paris and the Ecole Jacques Lecoq which it seemed to him would be the perfect complement to his more traditional studies.
He discovered there much more than that. The training he found went far beyond his expectations and led him to discover a more appropriate way to make theatre his way of life by being more convinced and more convincing on stage.
It was a new vision that opened before him, a specific pedagogy, a new way to approach acting. It would provoke, nourish and develop within him even more strongly the desire to devote his life to defending this craft.
After two years of training at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq, he followed the third year of pedagogical studies as J. Lecoq’s assistant. In 1977 he became the youngest teacher in the team. A few years later he was the most experienced.
During these ten years of close collaboration with J Lecoq, he developed the pedagogical approach to several styles of acting and remains the only teacher to this date to have taught in all sectors and disciplines of the school.
– In the movement sector: acrobatics, movement analysis, preparation of the body, the relationship between body and space.
– In improvisation in the first and second years: from psychological play to acting styles, such as tragedy, bouffons, clown, masks…
In 1977 he was also one of the pioneers of LEM (Laboratory of Movement Study) within the Ecole J Lecoq. This is a scenography department for those artists with experience of plastic forms. In this department he taught movement study: the dynamics of the human walk, colours and passions, the body and space, portable architecture.
He needed freedom and a space to grow. So, quite naturally, he moved away from the man who was firstly his teacher and master and then his collaborator and friend, Jacques Lecoq, to become in his turn a master of pedagogy and training by founding his own school. Lecoq was in Paris…so there would be LASSAAD in Brussels. The Ecole LASSAAD was officially opened in 1985 in Brussels with the encouragement and in the presence of Jacques Lecoq.
Since 1975, Lassaâd has directed plays and organised international congresses, seminars and workshops on different theatre themes.