In Remembrance: Clown Dimitri

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There are professional clowns today who have never even heard of the great Swiss clown Dimitri, though they owe him a big debt. Dimitri died this week at the age of 80 in the Italian region of Switzerland, where he lived and, since 1975, operated the still-thriving Scuola Teatro Dimitri. But he sure should be remembered, because he played a major role in elevating the status of the clown as a performing artist. And I'll tell you why...

Flashback to October, 1975, when Dimitri made his New York debut at the age of 40, performing his one-man show on stage to a packed house at Hunter College. (Yes, I was there.) Sure, Marcel Marceau was filling theatres bigger than that on a regular basis, but Dimitri was a CLOWN, not a mime. Audiences loved him and came away with a heightened understanding of what a clown could be. And aspiring clowns took inspiration from his success and began taking themselves more seriously. This was especially true in the United States, where clowns rarely got to play in theatres. And Dimitri reminded us that clowns were traditionally highly skilled, as he played ten different instruments (including four at a time), juggled ping-pong balls out of his mouth, and performed sleight-of-hand and balancing feats, all to great comic effect, as he got himself in and out of endless troubles.

Interesting connection: It was another great Swiss clown, Grock, who earlier in the 20th century packed European theatres with his full-length show and demonstrated that the clown could be a star in his own right, outside of the circus ring. Early on, one of Grock's whiteface partners was the French clown Louis Maïss  Decades later, after studying with Decroux and Marceau, Dimitri launched his clown career playing the auguste to —you guessed it— Louis Maïss.

Here's what the great Swiss playwright Max Frisch had to say about Dimitri:
Look at him, I say, this is a real clown. But, what is a real clown? I don’t know, but look at him – he can do practically anything, and yet remains calm and serene when he accomplishes something new and incredible. He’s a delight to behold, like watching a child discovering the pits and traps of the world who manages, as though by some miracle, to avoid falling. I was tense during the whole performance until someone started to laugh, roaring out loud as though alone – not how one laughs at a joke, but a laugh of joy, the laughter of a child. I was the person laughing, and the clown was Dimitri.

Thank you, sir!

Leonard Pitt: Physical Theatre Lecture-Demo

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On my last post I welcomed Leonard Pitt to the blog as he introduced us to a great documentary on Mel Blanc. The 20-minute video below is How I Learned to Write by Learning How to Move my Body, which he performed at a monthly conference called (coincidentally) Leonardo, an evening of art and science presentations. In it Leonard touches on different aspects of physical theatre, with topics ranging from the work of Etienne Decroux, to poetry, to Balinese masks. A special delight is an excerpt from his widely-acclaimed show, Doppo, Clown of Yesteryear. Truly a must-see!




Yes, I've already told him he should do this for a TED Talk!

• Previous Leonard Pitt post
• Leonard Pitt web site

Movement Training for Actors

Moni Yakim teaches a class at Juilliard
(Photo: Jessica Katz)

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The notion that physical comedians and other movement artists might have something to teach traditional actors goes back at least a century, when such innovative directors as Jacques Copeau in France and Vsevolod Meyerhold in Russia hired accomplished clowns and variety performers as guest instructors. In the United States, this became a trend in the 60s and 70s as "experimental" theatres sought to break the confines of the fourth wall and Stanislavski method acting to forge more theatrical performance styles.

Jewel Walker and Hovey Burgess were two of the first teachers to become influential fixtures at major universities ((Carnegie-Mellon and NYU). Nowadays no respectable college acting program is without its movement specialist and — if you believe the optimistic job descriptions you see in the ad postings — the desired skill set includes mime, circus, clown, acrobatics, masks, dance, biomechanics, yoga, and stage combat, not to mention the techniques of Laban, Feldenkrais, Alexander, Grotowski, Decroux, Lecoq, and Pilates. If you can integrate it with vocal training, so much the better! All this for a position that is often low on the faculty pay scale and not even tenure-track.

Movement training for actors was not just some trendy idea that came and went. It is now widely accepted in the profession and has demonstrably expanded the range and possibilities of many a successful performer. I bring this up because I recently stumbled upon two useful articles on the subject in American Theatre magazine that are available on the web. This first offers a broad survey of the field, what the disciplines are, and what value various teachers and performers see in it.

Here are a few quotes:

"Suppose I hit a line drive over the head of the second baseman. I'm off running right away. And I'm watching the ball, and there comes the possibility I can get to second base on this hit. My body knows without looking where first base is, and I need to watch only the ball and the fielder. If I have to look down at my feet, I've lost. That's like being on stage—you have to be super aware." — Jewel Walker

"What is essential? It tends to change, depending upon the time period. I've been teaching for a long time, and students used to be a bit more out there and crazy: curious, and wildly splattering themselves on the walls. So it was a matter of focusing that wild energy. Students coming in now are better trained, in many ways, and more disciplined. Sometimes you want to tweak that wildness." — Jim Calder

"The hardest things to teach actors are that the pedestrian body embodies a kind of virtuosity, and that movement has a theatrical power that must be trusted in its own right. Actors want to act; they want to create some reason why they are standing on the stage. I take that away from an actor—I say, 'Oh, just raise your arm, just take four steps to the right, just bow your head'—it has meaning. The body is expressing things that are way beyond what you can impose on it in this moment." — Annie Parsons

"Three strong voices spoke to me—Bertolt Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski and Étienne Decroux—and I see them as a triangle of aspects of what I think constitutes full actor training. From Grotowski, it was the visceral aspect, of going beyond the socially acceptable and really finding the primal, visceral self; and from Brecht it was the whole aspect of dramaturgy and social relevance and the importance of the relationship of the artist on stage to the audience. And from Decroux, the concept of shape and form spoke to me—this idea of the actor's ability to physically manifest thought and give specificity to emotion.... The laws of physics tell us that gravity falls through us and pulls us to a perfect vertical. And life pushes us off of that sense of neutrality. If we understand that neutrality, then we understand how a character is pulled off of being perfect. Life creates our imperfections. And a character is a beautiful collection of imperfections."  — Kari Margolis

"I deal with various forms of the mask, including the red nose. One is the full-faced character mask; it is a nonverbal mask. I follow that by the neutral, universal mask—also nonverbal—and that I follow with the character half-mask, which is a verbal mask. All of that is followed by the red nose, for what I call contemporary classic clowning. [Prior to the clown work, Francesconi works with...] “...movement improvisation, which is nonverbal. It is somewhat abstract, somewhat of a combination of modern dance and eccentric behavior, which is the basis, really, of physical comedy. 'Eccentric behavior' could be something as simple as a body part going out of control. It is essential that the early work be somewhat abstract and focused on the body in space, rather than on creating story."

— Robert Francesconi

You can read the whole article here.

The second article features ten prominent performers, each explaining what approach they use for creating a more dynamic stage presence.

Again some quotes:

"I encourage Synetic actors to train in parkour movements because there is an emphasis on gaining knowledge of one's body in space as it relates to dangers (falling, colliding with objects, losing balance) and applying that knowledge to move through obstacles with ease and safety. To me, parkour is about understanding the relationship between your body and the physical world, and enjoying it. Learn to fall, roll, land, climb and interact with the physical world so that you can perform better in your run, play or dance piece. The real joy of parkour is that it changes how you look at your environment—everything becomes a potential playground!" — Ben Cunis

"Lecoq is a way, a path—not a 'technique'—that asks the actor: What do you have to say? Tragedy, commedia and bouffon all have a different approach, but the overarching theme in Lecoq is 'actor as creator.' The process helps you develop your own voice, not just as an actor but also as a theatre artist. That rounded training is lacking in the U.S. The empowerment of the actor to understand more than just the role he is playing is not often embraced here, and in New York there is a palpable hunger for physical-theatre training." — Richard Crawford

"I just played Florindo, the boastful lover in A Servant of Two Masters, at Yale Rep. I went back to basics: leading with the chest, exercising muscles in my back, realizing how to look upward when I walked around, asking where my character's power comes from. Florindo is a funny character, but not to himself. Even doing commedia, I had to find the truth in this body. I did a whole monologue walking straight downstage till I got to the apron, and then ran all the way back crying and yelling. To do that eight times a week, you have to go back to your training. That's what Moni's [Yakim] about: the freedom inside the body when doing these extreme characterizations." — Jesse Perez

And you can read that whole article here.

The articles have lots of links, plus the reader comments to each article provide some additional information and pespectives.

"Clowns": Chapter Two — Supplementary Material

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Chapter two (previous post) covered a lot of ground — about twenty centuries and at least four continents — so there's a ton of potential supplementary material. I'll just throw a few at you here, and then follow up in my next posts with some free books.

The first comes from the 18th-century tradition of French fairground theatre, which thrived outside the censorship laws imposed on the royally-sanctioned "serious" theatres in Paris. The most popular form of fairground comedy was a short farcical sketch known as a parade.  Popular, that is, until they were closed down by the police in 1777.

Below is a quite humorous example by Thomas-Simon Gueullette (1683–1766), a lawyer and scholar who wrote over sixty pieces for the commedia actors of the Théâtre-Italien. Rather than inventing much that was new, I suspect that Gueullette, like Goldoni and Gozzi, took much of the comic business made popular by the improvisatory commedia actors and repackaged it in a more tightly structured, written form. The good news is that he did a nice job of it.

One Armed, Blind Deaf Mute


Here's what that dumb comic servant Gille may have looked like:

And click here for a recent Ph.D. dissertation on the work of Gueullette.

If you've seen my favorite movie ever, Children of Paradise (1945), you already have some sense of the fairground theatre atmosphere, but transported half a century later from Gueullette's time to the heyday of the Boulevard du Crime in Paris. If you haven't seen Children of Paradise, you are hereby ordered to do so. Soon! It's on DVD and it's available on Netflix, though if you can actually see it in a movie theatre, it's worth the money to take it all in on a big screen. Much of the action takes place at the Théâtre des Funambules (theatre of the wirewalkers) and centers around the legendary mime, Jean-Gaspard Deburau (1796–1846), immortalized in the performance of Jean-Louis Barrault.

Here's a scene that did a lot to popularize pantomime. This is Barrault as a not-yet-famous Deburau, dismissed as the family idiot, forced to work the platform in front of the Funambules to help draw in paying customers.

There are no subtitles, but you won't need them. When the master criminal Lacenaire picks the pocket of a bourgeois gentleman, his accomplice Garance gets the blame. The police ask if there are any witnesses, and the silent mime suddenly speaks, saying he saw it all. Once he acts it out, Garance goes free, and her show of gratitude triggers a romance that is one of the movie's central plot lines.

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"Act! Act! You have the wrong place. We are not allowed to act here. We walk on our hands! And you know why? They bully us. If we put on plays, they'd have to close their great, noble theaters! Their public is bored to death by museum pieces, dusty tragedies and declaiming mummies who never move! But the Funambules is full of life, movement! Extravaganzas! Appearances, disappearances, like in real life! And then, BOOM, the kick in the pants!"   
— the director of the Funambules

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A mime piece performed by Barrault as Deburau at the Funambules:



Stay tuned: I will be posting a complete book (in French) of Deburau's mime pieces in a week or two.

Now here's a real curiosity: Etienne Decroux, the father of French mime, teacher of Marceau and Barrault, and later the creator of the more abstract corporeal mime style carried on by his students Tom Leabhart, Daniel Stein, and Steve Wasson, amongst others. Yes, that Etienne Decroux. Here he is, eye lashes fluttering, jabbering away, hamming it up like crazy as Deburau's very verbose father!

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"A kick in the ass, if well delivered, is a sure laugh. It's true. There's an entire order, a science, a style of kicks in the ass."
— Anselme Debureau (played by Etienne Decroux)

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Did I mention this is a great movie? Not only that, but once you've seen it, you'll want to know more about this whole theatrical era. Well, you've come to the right place, and I'm referring to our final supplemental item, "The Golden Age of the Boulevard" by Marvin Carlson.

When I was in graduate school at NYU and working as an assistant editor for TDR (The Drama Review), I commissioned this article from the distinguished theatre scholar Dr. Marvin Carlson for an issue on popular entertainments I was putting together. It gives me great satisfaction, almost forty years later, to have been back in touch with Professor Carlson, who kindly consented to have his article reprinted on this blog so it could reach a new and wider audience. It's an excellent article, and I once again thank Mr. Carlson for this and his many other contributions to theatre scholarship, which you can check out here.

Golden Age

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And, last but not least, an important correction. The following photo, from a Columbia Records lp of gamelan music, appeared in the color plate section of my book with the caption "Clown character from the wajang wong, the Balinese dance-drama."

Well, it turns out that was wayway wrong. After the book was published, I received a note from Leonard Pitt — mime, maskmaker, student of the above-mentioned Etienne Decroux, and expert on Balinese theatre — advising me that this photo was mislabeled. My bad for not having double-checked this. But I did save the note, and when I visited Leonard last year at his Flying Actor Studio in San Francisco, I was able to show it to him (35 years later!) and promise to finally make amends. I wanted to scan the note for this post, but it is lost somewhere here in my office. If instead I showed you a picture of my office, you'd see why it might take me a while to retrieve the note! Anyway, correction made, photo removed, and thank you again Leonard!

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Coming next, the following complete books, all related to Chapter Two material:
• The Mimes of Herodas
• The Commedia dell'Arte by Winifred Smith
• Masques et Bouffons by Maurice Sand
• Mimes et Pierrots by Paul Hugounet
• Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni
• Goldoni: A Biography by H.C. Chatfield-Taylor
• The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi
• The Life of Moliere by Henry M. Trollope
• Le Théâtre des Funambules by Louis Péricaud
• Pantomimes de Gaspard et Charles Deburau