Movement Training for Actors

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

[post 190]

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.

Complete Books: More Commedia (in English)

[post 172]

We finally finish our saga of public domain books in English about the commedia dell'arte with these two offerings.

Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi
Count Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806) was, like Carlo Goldoni, a prominent eighteenth-century Venetian playwright who sought to improve upon what he saw as a declining commedia dell'arte through his own scripts. He was, however, a bitter rival of Goldoni, who he delighted in attacking in print. His most famous play, The Love of Three Oranges (1761), is a satirical fairy tale perhaps best known by way of Sergey Prokofiev's popular opera adaptation; likewise, Gozzi's Turandot became the basis for a Puccini opera of the same name. In the twentieth centrury, innovative Russian revolutionary director Vsevolod Meyerhold turned to commedia, and specifically to Gozzi, for inspiration, mounting a production of Love of Three Oranges and editing a provocative theatre journal that he named "The Love of Three Oranges." In 1996, Julie Taymor, of Lion King fame and Spiderman infamy, made a splash with her highly visual production of Gozzi's The Green Bird.

Although I have yet to find a public domain translation of Gozzi's plays into English, I do have his memoirs (1797) for you, which the Encyclopædia  Britannica describes as "vivid, if immodest."

The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi

_____________________________________

The History of the Harlequinade by Maurice Sand
Once upon a time, the early 1800s to be exact, there lived a prominent French novelist and celebrity by the name of George Sand, who had many scandalous affairs with both men and women, including Prosper Mérimée, Marie Dorval, Alfred de Musset and, most famously, Frédéric Chopin. The funny thing about George was that he was a she. No, not a transsexual or transvestite, just a dynamic woman and staunch feminist who used George Sand as a pen name, presumably so her works would be treated more seriously, just like that other George, the female author of Silas Marner, "George Eliot."

______________

"The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women." — George Sand

______________

All of which has nothing to do with commedia dell'arte, except that at the age of 20, long before her fame, George Sand married a baron and gave birth to Maurice Sand.  Sand mère soon ditched the boring baron and ran off, two kids in tow, to do her Lady Gaga thing. Sand fils grew up in a heady artistic milieu and not surprisingly became a successful novelist and illustrator in his own right, studying under the French romantic artist, Eugène Delacroix. And finally to our point: he also wrote and illustrated one of the earliest (1860) and most encyclopedic commedia histories, Masques et Bouffons.

I'll supply the original French text in a future post; meanwhile here's the 1915 English translation, published under the misleading title The History of the Harlequinade. Misleading because the harlequinade was actually a very specific segment in 19th-century English pantomime (read more here), whereas Sand's book traces the evolution of the commedia stock characters over the centuries and in different cultures, one chapter for each character.

First a few of the exquisite illustrations by Sand from the original French work; I'm not so sure the color plates in the English version are his. After that, the complete English translation in two volumes.

Pantalon

Le Docteur

Stenterello

Scapin

Volume 1:
historyofharlequ01



Volume Two:


historyofharlequ02

Complete Book: "The Commedia Dell'Arte" by Winifred Smith

[post 165]

Because the essence of commedia dell arte was improvisation, recreating it for the modern reader has always been a tough task for scholars, and because it never pretended to be great dramatic literature, it didn't get much interest from theatre historians or practitioners until the early 20th century. This started to change with directors like Copeau and Meyerhold, who took commedia as inspiration for a new approach to actor training, and modern art movements such as dada, futurism, and surrealism, that were less interested in literature than in the spontaneous theatrical event. Winifred Smith, one of the first commedia scholars from this period, was also a translator of futurist plays, and apparently quite a pioneer in her day. Here's her bio from the web site of her alma mater, Vassar College, a prestigious women's college that didn't go co-educational until 1969:


Winifred Smith (1897-1967) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was the daughter of Henry Preserved Smith, a leading Biblical scholar, and the sister of Preserved Smith, noted historian of the Reformation. After graduating from Vassar in 1904 and spending a year as a tutor at Mt. Holyoke College, and a year of student at the Sorbonne, Winifred Smith earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1912.


In 1911 Miss Smith came to Vassar as an instructor in English, rising to the rank of professor. In 1916 she started a theatrical museum at Vassar and, with Emmeline Moore, a Shakespeare Garden to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. Winifred Smith's scholarly interest was in dramatic literature. She wrote books on The Commedia dell-Arte and Italian Actors in the Renaissance and numerous articles and reviews for periodicals such as The Nation and The Dial. She also translated many futurist plays from the French and Italian. When the Division of Drama was organized in 1938, she became its chairman, working closely with Hallie Flanagan Davis during the years of the Experimental Theatre.


Professor Smith was also active in the suffrage movement and participated in local civic activities, including the Community Theatre, the Women’s City and County Club, and the Citizens Better Housing League. She was the first president of the Dutchess County local of the American Federation of Teachers. She was interested in such social issues as disarmament and child labor.


Her retirement in 1947 was marked by an only slightly slower pace in a career outstanding for her willingness to act on a broad range of social concerns and scholarly interests. In a faculty memorial minute, Winifred Smith was named "one of Vassar’s great teachers” and “one of its great rebels."

And here's her complete book, The Commedia Dell 'Arte: A Study in Italian Popular Comedy (1912).

The Commedia Dell Arte

From Meyerhold to Cirque Mechanics' "Birdhouse Factory"

[post 092]

This post was supposed to be almost as easy as my last one. Surely I could knock it off in an hour or two. I'd caught Birdhouse Factory a while back in Newark, found it more than a little interesting, figured I'd write a paragraph or two of observations, throw in some pics and a promo video and be done with it.

As usual, one thing led to another, and I started making all these links between this and that — this being Cirque Mechanics and that being Russian constructivism, biomechanics, and eccentric acting — and before long I was spending days trying to connect all these dots. At this rate I'll never get those other ten chapters of my Clowns book up here before I have to return to my other lives two months from now, much less keep up with Pat Cashin! Oh well, you can't fight your own DNA, can ya? But no, je ne regrette rien; some good stuff here.


Acrobatics + Machines + Theatre + Circus = ??

Cast of characters:
• "Birdhouse Factory," cirque nouveau production by the Las Vegas-based group Cirque Mechanics. The show had its premiere at San Francisco's Circus Center in December, 2004 and has been touring North America pretty extensively ever since.

• The Russian constructivist art movement of the 1920s, and specifically the work of the Russian director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, whose (anti-Stanislavsky) productions and "biomechanical" movement for actors borrowed a lot from commedia, circus, and the variety stage. Meyerhold was the darling of the avant-garde in the early days of the Russian Revolution, but ended up being executed by Stalin for not towing the party line.










The Story:
The creators of Birdhouse Factory are performers with experience with Cirque du Soleil, Pickle Family Circus, and even the Moscow Circus, and its program lists such influences as "the Detroit industrial murals of Diego Rivera, the outrageous illustrations of cartoonist Rube Goldberg, and the gentle political slapstick of Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times." Their work aims to make connections between the functionality of industrial machinery and the pure physics of circus acrobatics. Founder Chris Lashua explains that "we want to see every gear, every cog, every relationship between chain and sprocket, every gear ratio and mix with people flipping and doing acrobatics in the air and utilizing the machines or the factory setting."

In a landmark 1922 constructivist production, Meyerhold took Fernand Crommelynck's dark bedroom farce, The Magnanimous Cuckold, and physicalized the abstract concept of "farce machinery" with a set that was part machine, part jungle gym, and performed upon by actors trained in what he called "biomechanical" movement.

Here's a performance photo showing Lyubov Popova's original set in action:

And a poster for the production...


Before you knew it, constructivist artists were in demand as theatre set designers. Here's Alexander Vesin's set for Alexander Tairov's 1924 production of The Man who was Thursday.



Fast-forward 80+ years:







In his book The Theatre of Meyerhold: Revolution on the Modern Stage, Edward Braun explained that Popova's set functioned both as a dynamic playground for the actors and scenery for the storyline:

"At his invitation Popova joined the teaching staff of the Theatre Workshop and agreed to build a construction for The Magnanimous Cuckold. It consisted of the frames of conventional theatre flats and platforms joined by steps, chutes, and catwalks; there were two wheels, a large disc bearing the letters 'CR-ML-NCK', and vestigial windmill sails, which all revolved at varying speeds as a kinetic accompaniment to the fluctuating passions of the characters. Blank panels hinged to the framework served as doors and windows. As Rudnitsky says, the aim was simply 'to organize scenic space in the way most convenient for the actors, to create for them a 'working area.'

But despite the skeletal austerity, the grimy damp-stained brickwork of the exposed back wall, and the absence of wings to hide either stage-crew or cast, Popoya's contraption evoked inevitable associations with the windmill in which the play was supposed to be set, suggesting now a bedroom, now a balcony, now the grinding mechanism, now a chute for the discharging of the sacks of flour. Only in the isolated moments when it enhanced the synchronized movements of the complete ensemble did it work simply as a functional machine. In the theatre, whose whole allure depends on the associative power of the imagination, every venture by the Constructivists led to an unavoidable compromise of their utilitarian dogma and each time demonstrated the inherent contradiction in the term Theatrical Constructivism."

Alas, there's no film record of Meyerhold's production, but here are two promo videos of Birdhouse Factory that provide glimpses of this interaction between set and performer.

The plot, such as it is, is set in a gloomy, gray factory run by an unfeeling boss. That begins to change when a stray bird gets loose inside, and by the second act the factory has been transformed into a joyous playground. The setting gives free rein to all kinds of experimentation mixing machines and acrobatics. The message, according to Lashua, has to do with finding the spirit of joy:

"Even though it takes place in a 1940s setting, Birdhouse Factory speaks to audiences of the twenty-first century. There’s a timeliness to what we’re doing in the sense that here are people that are lined up to work in a factory, and it’s the harsh kind of working environment. And as a result of things that happen in that place, people will find the spirit or the joy in what they’re doing, and it’s as important a message today as any other time.”

In some cases the circus acts and the factory environment really work together well, while with others it's pretty much a case of traditional circus acts being performed against a factory background. The trampoline act, which you can see glimpses of in the first video, above, makes brilliant use of a wall at the back of the tramp in the shape of a stack of boxes. The act becomes about scaling the wall and strutting atop the boxes. The ground below (trampoline bed) exists only as a launching pad. The boxes not only multiply the number of tricks possible, they add dynamic possibilities for attitude and posturing and interaction, all of which the performers make the most of. It's one of those acts that you just don't want to end.

__________

Update (4-9-10): Saw Cirque du Soleil's Ovo last night, and its crowd-rousing finale is a trampoline and tumbling act where three tramp beds are used to help propel the acrobats up a rock climbing wall.

__________

But even when Birdhouse Factory really isn't working 100% as theatre, it's damn good circus simply because of the caliber, presentation, and originality of the individual acts.

Comedy

But I know what you're saying: this is a physical comedy blog; what does any of this have to do with comedy? A lot, as it turns out. The main character in the piece is a worker-clown, played very nicely by Jesse Dryden, who by the second act has taken over as factory boss and is instrumental in the transformation of the workplace. The new-found joy and exuberance herald the triumph of the clown spirit, as the downtrodden, slumping workers rediscover their bodies and take flight.

Dryden also does a sweet audience participation piece involving a very old radio that mostly emits static — unless you're touching it, in which case it plays "It's Only a Paper Moon." He brings a woman up to dance with him but of course as soon as his hand loses contact with the radio, the static takes over, end of dance. So he brings her significant other up on stage as well and gets him to keep his hand on the radio. Predictably, the guy sabotages their dance by removing his hand and Dryden is forced to be the radio holder while the couple get to dance romantically without him. As a final twist, this being 2010 even if the radio's from 1930, Dryden dances with the man while the woman holds the radio. I have a real problem with clowns who use audience participation to make fun of spectators instead of making fun of themselves, but this was just the opposite. Bravo!

My favorite piece of physical comedy had to be a tightly-choreographed tango performed atop a giant industrial spool. I'm not sure who the performers were and I can't find any video, but it was full of character and some sharp partner acrobatic moves. The flavor was combative, somewhere between tango and apache dance, with many delicious moments.

Movement & Choreography
Back in the heady days of the Russian Revolution, choreographers were drawing inspiration from the industrial age for human movement. One such project was the Factory of the Eccentric Actor, whose 1921 manifesto begins "Wear Clown Plants and be Saved." Meyerhold introduced a system of "biomechanical" training for actors, meant to harness the findings of Taylorism as to efficient physical movement, though in reality most of the biomechanical exercises were directly derived from the physical comedy tradition.

Birdhouse choreographer and co-director Aloysia Gavre took much of the show's body language straight from Rivera’s industrial paintings—clear body positions, sharp angles, and deep motion. But the twist is including the “kookiness” of moves from Chaplin’s world. “It’s that juxtaposition of everything,” Gavre says. “It’s not dance choreography, it’s movement choreography.” (interview with Jennifer Pencek)

More on the Factory of the Eccentric Actor and on biomechanics in two future posts, but meanwhile some useful links:
• Meyerhold Museum
• Video documentaries about Meyerhold and the Russian Avant-Garde by Michael Craig
• Cirque Mechanics website
• Chris Lashua interview with Jennifer Pencek
• NY Times review of Birdhouse Factory