Suzanne Bing: The Interior Rhythm and Musicality of Play

This paper addresses the work of Suzanne Bing in relation to the development of her methodology of embodied play that was inextricably bound to a specific development of inner rhythm and sense of musicality.

I have argued elsewhere (2013, 2014, 2018, 2020) that Bing’s technique was not simply about a use of games, but became a complex methodology of embodied play. Play is a fully embodied activity that enables body-mind integration, described by Caillois as a ‘total activity’ (1961: 175). Bing’s form of creative play was rooted in movement, but this was always inseparably connected to what she defined as ‘the inner feeing of rhythm’ and a specific form of ‘hidden musical feeling’ (Bing, JCA/KC/46, circa summer 1920:102). Bing sought to develop ‘the free improvisation created, suggested, by a child’s play (le jeu d’enfant)’ and ‘the interior music of this play, as one could put it’ (Bing in Copeau/Sicard 2000: 114).

This article considers the development of this radical approach by Bing, and a number of her female collaborators, and what this gave the actor, the play-enabler (teacher or director), and devised theatre-maker in the early decades of the twentieth century and continues to offer today.