Fool Dear BZ: Asan artist, I see myself as one of the clowns, one of the fools, one of those who see the world upside down and inside out. I am a fool in the classic sense. But I take my foolishness very seriously. ADS Washington, D.C. The day after Martin Luther King’s birthday, 2004ADVANCED ACTING Style, Character, and Performance ROBERT COHEN UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Ni Graw (il Boston Burr Ridge, IL Dubuque, |A Madison, WI New York San Francisco St. Louis Bangkok Bogota Caracas Kuala Lumpur Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan Montreal New Delhi Santiago Seoul Singapore Sydney Taipei TorontoMcGraw-Hill Higher Education $2 “A Division of The. McGraw-Hill Companies .d, Printed in the United States «the United States Copyright Act of: 1976, no Igeed or distributed in any form or by any ase vs without the prior written permission Copyright © 2002 by Robert Cohen. Al rights reserve ib i; of America, Except a5 permiced und lication may be repr parc of is pd ina database eieval STE, of the publisher. - 54 1234567890 Do~pec 99 87 § Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cohen, Robert ‘Advanced acting : style, Pp cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-7674-2542-1 1, Acting. I. Title. character, and performance / Robert Cohen. PN2061 .C582 2001 meee 2001030847 Sponsoring editor, Janet M. Beatty; production editor, Jennifer Mills; manuscript editor, Anne Montague; design manager and text/cover designer, Susan Breitbards art manager, Robin Mouat; manufacturing manager, Randy Hurst. This text was set in 10/12 Sabon by Thompson Type and printed on SO# Finch Opaque by R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company. Page 86 George Altman, Ralph Freud, Kenneth Macgowan, and William Melnitz, Theater Pictorial: A History of World Theater as Recorded in Drawings, Paint. ings, Engravings, and Photographs. Copyright © 1953 Regi Engray ents of the Universit of California, © renewed 1981 Felicia Gilbert, William Melnitz, Used with per Vaticana. 3878, 85v. , . 7899, S8v, Eunuchus V, 2. Biblio- ae de France. Used with Permission. Page 173 Brissart and Suave Used with con Tartuffe, The Harvard Theatre Collection, the Houghton Library. Lew min ps 24 Le Rone aes Pach . Pag }-236 Reprinted with permission fr. iP America, Part One copysight © 1992, 1993 by Tony Reshner Pubtehed a . leatre Communications Group. Pages 244-246 From Pyright © 1993, 1999 ind Faber, Inc., an affili www.mbhe.comCE LESSOn I] Commedia Greek and Roman drama all but disappeared with the fall of the Roman empire in 476 A.D. and the consequent rise of the Catholic church as the preeminent intellectual and cultural force throughout Europe. But classical theatre was reborn about a thousand years later, during what we now call the Renaissance, during which time the long-forgotten classic plays of the Greeks and Romans were rediscovered and, thanks to the invention of mov- able type in the mid-1400s, published for general readers, first in their origi- nal tongues, then in translation, and finally in modernized adaptations. By the early 1500s, emerging troupes of professional actors were performing both these and new plays in the public squares and royal courts of Europe, starting in the home base of the old Roman Empire (and the medieval Holy Roman Empire), Italy. Commedia Styles and Scripts One of the most exciting of the new emergent styles was the Italian comme- dia, comic drama based on the plays of Roman-era dramatists, chiefly Plau- 1us, We now recognize two forms of commedia: commedia erudita, which as an adaptation of a Roman comedy (written by a dramatist “erudite enough to read Latin), and the subsequent commedia dell arte, which, start- ing from the same stories, embroidered them with improvised dialog and Fecutting characters, most of them masked, who have since become famous: Alecchino (Harlequin), the scamps Pantalone, the rich old codgers Dottore 179,130 Part Hr the sem" € ap: Lerbino Acommedia greeting The scamplike Scapino and the pompous Capitano Zerbino meeting on the street in a 1618 commedia illustration by Jacques Callot. Notice the out-turned legs, the expressive finger gestures, the swords, and the angled postures. (Doctor), the pretentious intellectual; Capitano, the bragging soldier; Zanni, the clown; and Colombina (Columbine), the lovely damsel. Since it was largely improvised, no complete commedia dell'arte scripts hivive, although we have many fragments, illustrations, derivations, and descriptions. But we do have several plays of the eatlien commedia erudita ‘ype from which commedia dell arte was directly derived. Commedia Performances ee Revformances of both sorts almost always took place outdoors, gathered around on at hare ror O% a Simple trestle stage with the audience before ther ao a three Sides. Like the Roman comic playwrights versal comic themes t ramatists limited themselves to simplistic and uni- sockcharacters the wiyserrane ees PAtital discord, social climbing, the sweet young girl, the frat the audacious maid, the bombastic soldier, Plot devices (mistaken idernes n, 2 0t0us old geezer), and conventional en identity, hiding and Spying, the reunion of long-lostlesson II: Commedia 13] In Som bs “Params. fm Ame. Francischina, Pantalone, and Arlecchino Three stock commedia characters—the servant woman, the self-important older man, and the rascally servant—appear in 4.1577 illustration by Sieur (Sir) Fossard. Pantalone, the model for Nicomaco in Machiavell’s Clizia, often pursues younger women; Arlecchino usually intervenes— both on the woman’s and his own account. The full gown and beard of Pantalone indicate his elevated social rank, though not any intelligence; the tight-ftted patch- work costume of Arlecchino, plus his black mask and sneaky crouch, are traditional tohis portrayal, and reflect his crafty mind and slippery nature. relatives). Since characters and plot were predictable, the plays succeeded mainly through the skill of the actors: their comic imagination, verbal and hysical dexterity, charm, and timing. ; Indeed, the necessity for acting genius is built into commedia dellarte, Which brags of a glorious performance mastery in its very name. The arte must be lived up to at every moment—even at the expense of other theatrical values (plot credibility, human sensitivity, thematic profundity, poetic uty) that earlier and later ages would consider more important. Though there is no chorus in either form of commedia, the characters often address the audience directly, giving the audience the role of chorus and asking them for their judgment of key issues. The setting is almost al Ways presumed to be a public one, generally a street or plaza, facilitating this rm of direct audience address. Characters in commedia often break into R28 OF comic bits of business (called lazzi), or independent speeches that 4 little relationship to the plot.OT stock Characters Commedia characters are ordinary People—not royalty, like Oedipus and focasta, NOE biblical figures with divine connections, like Noah and his wife. Nicomaco and Sofronia go to work, cook meals, raise children, gossip with their neighbors, struggle with their finances, go to church, and die known only to their immediate circle of family and friends. They’re like us, in other words, and don’t present the challenges of a larger-than-life reality you will find in, say, Teiresias or Lucifer. But they're also ot like us, for they lack the complexity of thinking and feeling, and the trail of history, that have gone into the making of our person- alities. This is somewhat true for all dramatic figures but particularly for those we call “stock characters,” who are used by dramatists to indicate not a specific real-life person but a class of like-minded and like-behaving indi- viduals. So, while they may be presumed to cook meals, pay bills, and go to work, we don’t see them doing this in the play—unless it is part of the stereotypical behavior of the part. Neither do we know any of their history. Nicomaco is a “dirty old man” conniving to win the sexual favors of a young woman, but Machiavelli gives us no clues as to how he got that way. Sofronia 'sa “suffering wife” (soffrire is Italian for “to suffer”), but we have no idea how or why she came to that role or what earlier options she may have discarded. These considerations, and the acting questions they provoke, are for another sort of drama. Rather, the character “type” precedes and deter- a the Parameters of the role. The “wily servant” will be a wily servant, mea of his name—which is why commedia dell’arte simply dispensed on Fa vidual names and called him Arlecchino, and gave him a mask to lus subordinating the actor’s individual face to the stock characteris- ‘es of the role, reed, stock characters, invented by the Greeks in their New Comedy, ie free and remained masked in Roman times. And the mask, in all » is in a certain sense the character.* Consequently, there is little ———— e Lar: Latin word for “mask” is persona and is the root of our words person Personality, Wer th146 Part Ul: The Scenes if any subtle psychology in any commedia role. The characters are driven h universal instinct (Nicomaco’s lust, Sofronia’s jealousy) rather than a logical developments unique to themselves. This does not mean, however, that stock characters must be played uni. formly. Quite to the contrary: The playing of stock characters can be as brilliantly innovative and individual as the actor’s imagination allows. One need only remember (if we have seen them) the commedia performances of Jim Dale, Bill Irwin, or David Shiner, or imagine those of Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, or Whoopi Goldberg, to realize how brilliantly unique these roles can be in performance. Stock characters demand, above all, outrageously energetic and creative performers, making tadical choices in playing—and exaggerating—the aspects of the stereotypical behavior the dramatist was hoping to poke fun at. ; Playing stock characters, therefore, is fundamentally a theatrical act, de- pendent not so much on investigations revealing the real-life background ° the character but preparations based on an understanding of the author's use (and abuse) of the character’s stock urges and behavior and how they inter” mingle with others in a theatrical construct. Though with this necessary caveat: Brock characters are based on real life, but on the collective behavios anda ae “ han on those of individual men and women. osthan d version of “Niccol6é Mae hi well” wa iad yu nes ee eae nth young prostitutes and nemesee inclu FA who was known to consort wi miere this play. The stock characte * hewin, dl whe performed oie aa of indi- viduals, are filled with th ers herein, therefore, while abstraction’ G with the breath of real human life.)John Wright WIY IS THAT SO FUNNY? A Practical Exploration of Physical Comedy Foreword by Toby Jones —_ ‘Vone \ an NICK HERN BOOKS London www.nickhernbooks,.co.ukA Nick Hern Book Why Is That So Funny? first published in Great Britain in 2006 by Nick Hern Books Limited 14 Larden Road, London w3 7st Copyright © 2006 John Wright Foreword copyright © 2006 Toby Jones Reprinted 2007, 2009, 2011 John Wright has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work « Cover designed by Ned Hoste, 211 over photograph of Hayley Carmichael by Jon Barnes Author photograph by Robert Golder, Kingsdown, Kent cr14 8xs by CPL Ann d in Great Britain ny Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Acp aval ob record for this book Mle from the British LibraryCaricature A caricature is a stylised visual representation of a character, Lik aspects of parody it’s a term that is often used pejorativel; beca weit thrives on stereotypical two-dimensional acting. But these limitations stem not from the device itself so much as from how it’s used. If ou drift towards caricature whilst making an intense psychological ‘rama you'll inhibit resonance and nuance with the result that your work will become dangerously predictable. But if you're working with masks or puppets, then caricature will be in the foreground of your work. If you're making a complex visual farce to be played in the street, or a sketch show for television with short inter-cutting scenes, or an exu- berant and irreverent parody where situations have to be established in seconds, caricature is essential. It’s the most effective means we have of creating instantly recognisable characters that are sufficiently larger than life to be spotted from a distance across a crowded town square. Commedia dell’Arte was a form of theatre based almost entirely on caricature. It developed from street entertainers playing parodies of the country bumpkins that used to turn up at hireling fairs in pre- Renaissance Italy. Like many parodic forms, Commedia thrived on the attempts of the authorities to suppress it. Imagine a small group of players satirising a powerful priest in an Italian city-state. Let's say that they were so popular that it would have been more trouble than it was worth for the authorities to ban them completely. But when the Company came to the city again, the authorities were wary of ees they forbade the actors to use speech, in the belief that this we ; - amp their style. So imagine the actors mimed and grunted ans vented a gibberish language that made them even more cloquen “ir imagery even more graphic than before. The next time eee of ‘turned, the authorities were so incensed that they forbade i" ‘ ine or speech of any kind, so the resourceful actors sang and dance!2 78 THE GENTLE ART OF RIDICULE their feelings about the powerful huge simplification of a trend that a emerged over m: in ahi complex politcal imate; but, as areal of various caren ey different city-states, Commedia developed as a versatile popular nena . n- ment that could cut across language barriers and cultural differen Commedia companies travelled all over Europe, ae China and Indonesia. Priest instead. Of course, this is a and even ventured into This Success ae based, for the most part, on a style of play which was largely improvised and which gave the actors scope to play the audience. They developed a style where gesture and movement worked in conjunction with the spoken word, giving the audience more to see and less to hear in a crowded open-air space. This physicality makes Commedia unique in European theatre. Just as the language was simpli- fied, so was the presentation. The same set of masked characters appeared in every production. These stock characters were instantly recognisable types; contemporary parodies portrayed through hugely exaggerated mannerisms and movement motifs. Today, the closest parallel to the physicality of Commedia is to be found in knockabout cartoon films like Bugs Bunny or Fritz the Cat. Here we see the same stylised violence, the same extreme physical reactions where the fear of dropping a single china cup can result in an elaborate juggling sequence with an entire dinner service, or an innocent remark to a passer-by can lead to a complex chase sequence involving the entire neighbourhood. Commedia was the prototype for farce, and Fawlty Towers is replete with examples of the form. Here we sec a similar use of stock characters and heightened physicality. In Commedia, the audience were encouraged to laugh at the characters as much as they were to empathise with them, and to do this they had to balance the recognisable with the abstract. This balancing act is typical of all satire and all parody — and it's at the heart of caricature. When you identify your target and design your exaggerations, you end up with a sort of shorthand; you create a stereotype rather than person. We're suspicious of caricature because it trades on stereotypes, and we see stereotypes as being simplistic and patronising. We want to see humanity on stage, which we all know is unique. But for all its quirkiness, that humanity must be typical. If we can't recognise the ‘type’ of person we're dealing with or if that person is so unique thatCARICATURE 279 that we have no refi erence i ” oe area } es to bring to bear, then we'll be confused and Precious time trying to work out who or what that person is sup- posed to be rather than engaging with the action of the scene. Stereotypes I remember Monica Pagneux giving an international workshop in the eighties. She divided us into groups according to nationality, so we had groups of French, German, English and Spanish working separately and in their own language on a choreographic task that required a lot of organisation. As an added provocation she gave us a restricted amount of time to work on it. The results were fascinating. Each group instinc- tively reverted to its national stereotype: The Germans were eal ‘isciplined and well organised. The French talked at lot and didn every loud and finish wh: : at they had to do. The Spanish grou ‘ 4 mboyant. And in the English group we argued so much that we ons : ni something that we hadn't planned to do at all. We all a " “onclusion that national stereotypes; 4 expressed throug! “Nt an, . thm of a parti- Uap ‘l behaviour, are inextricably linked to the thy i i nt trolled experime fy any ond ame. Clearly this wasn’t in any Way Sea iguing line dy . ‘ intri Ne ‘qui in an academic environment — it was a just intrigu € “Yt Ty in between langueé ke the more we Ip wert nd 2 Workshop — but the connection Nati, oe, dV wa, tonal stereotype became more convincing ith it YP! heEo * .... OT —— Physical Definitions External references lead you to discover a series of ex, cal traits or typical characteristics that signal who youa speed. What starts as an external reference for you be definition for the audience. Because all we see is ‘Aggerated Physi. re at remarkable Comes a physical the shape and the movement, we're not interested in how you arrived at what you're doing — just what you look like and what you do in the Context of the scene. This is physical definition a sort of visual shorthand for who yoy are, which can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on how it’s used. Inexperienced actors tend to want to cling on to their definition, as if it were a lifeline. They see it as ‘the character’ when in reality, nothing could be further from the truth; it’s a reminder for the audience, but if you never depart from it, you'll end up looking like a badly operated puppet. Once you've signalled who you are, and by implication what you want to show to the world, you can get on with playing the scene and reacting to everything around you, only returning to your definition at key moments. This ‘way your caricature will trans- cend our expectations by moving towards a more unique represen- tation of humanity; this preposterous individual will be seen to have credible feelings after all. The question is, of course, where are these key moments? And when should you return to your physical definition? When is the best time to make a comment about your target; when do you want to remind us Who you're supposed to be? Key moments tend to occur either during the anticipation or the pay-off ofan action (there's normally too much going ° ne release to find time to play anything else). To see a potentially very fen oa aneeet Thatcher trip over a doormat is Powerful and dignif ed before o more interesting to see her looking dignity after it? Yo 'P» OF to see her trying to regain her ‘ More interesting to see the 4 might think it definitios b "i . because er sane sons: Td try as many Permutations as possible, Y were dealing with visual statements here, and it allCARICATURE 285 comes down to what you look like, These carefully selected physical traits, designed to signal who you are, take on varying levels of signi- ficance depending on the action. They're fixed, like a mask, but we want to see behind that mask; we want to see what you really feel; we want to catch a glimpse of those personal moments when the mask slips, and you’re forced to abandon the definition. These glimpses behind the mask give caricature even greater credi- bility. We know the definition isn’t real; we know it’s a front, and we delight in being reminded of this and can accept all the ludicrous exaggerations in the manner they were intended. Physical definitions are like key signatures in music. Once you've established that you're Playing in the key of C, for example, you can do. what you like within that range, and your. occasional return to the ‘home notes’ will be satisfying and reassuring, We're back to mobility again: if you get Yourself stuck in a rigid physical definition, you'll no longer be able to react effectively to what's going on around you, It will be like playing the chord of C over and over again without variation. Boring.THE GENTLE ART OF RIDICULE laying caricature if you think that playing a same as choreography: something that you've ¢ movements aren't choreog- 286 Problems emerge in pl ovement is the i t to get right. Thes amr i ae o an affective dramatic impulse. That might have come from your reaction to your target or from impulses derived pieces. These gestures aren't made in the aborract; they're a reaction to an external impulse and a source of obvious pleasure when you play them. That pleasure is infectious. It's fun to see you having a good time in caricature. was once invited to direct a production of Shakespeare's Richard III by a small-scale touring company called Third Party. The production was to play huge open-air summer festivals to large family audiences and then various small-scale venues up and down the country. They could only afford six actors so we started by rigorously cutting the text to reduce the number of characters and to clarify the core of the drama, Doubling was unavoidable, and, having decided that the only character not to be doubled should be Richard, it became apparent that some people would have to play as many as three characters. stylised m from props and costum Our solution to these problems was to think of the play as a sort of grotesque cartoon. By developing bold caricatures, we would leave the audience in no doubt as to which character was being played. We devised a framing device of a travelling Victorian freak show: so Queen Anne became the Fat Lady and was played in a huge fat suit, and the same actor played Queen Elizabeth as the Tattooed Lady; Buckingham was a dwarf or, rather, an actor clearly pretending to be a dwarf; Hastings was the Strong Man; and Queen Margaret, the Bearded Lady. It was an audacious conceit, but it clarified the drama and opened up an entire image system. Our vivid caricatures helped us evolve a macabre wor with mad Queen Margaret vigorously defending the coffin of her ead husband and putting the fear of God into Richard, The colossal aa Ame = crushed Hastings to death which only exacer- — eal ‘ over marrying Richard. This was a conceptual parody parodyin nae irreverent in the telling of the story whilst never replacin; "Rich i itself, We lost much from the original text. In ae i bo = ® rubles ambition for the throne with a ruthless litical read of the family firm, we clearly lost the original P resonance and the play became smaller and more parochial,CARICATURE 287 put we made an effective drama that caught everyone’s imagination, mut A major problem was the great battle scene on Bosworth Field at the end of the play. I remembered watching an episode of The Simpsons where Homer and Bart played a headbutting game wearing plastic buckets on their heads, so we devised a brutal combat game where the two combatants were joined together by a short length of rope, with metal buckets on their heads. They crouched on all fours and head- butted each other until a winner was declared whilst the audience were encouraged to place their bets, and ghost after ghost conspired to terify Richard, Caricature is a natural by-product of cartoon. If you’re going to look Fotesque and ridiculous, what’s to stop you behaving in a manner that’s equally Preposterous? We loved to hate Richard’s infamy and found his contempt for human life and his ruthlessness curiously life- cthancing, We followed his logic and marvelled at his daring. When the feled on, leaving his mangled body in the mud, we all felt he eserved everything he got, but we missed him all the same.