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CLAUDIO VICENTINI THE ART OF WATCHING ACTORS A Practical Manual for Spectators of Theatre, Cinema and Television MARSILIO & ACTING ARCHIVES Claudio Vicentini The Art of Watching Actors A Practical Manual for Spectators of Theatre, Cinema and Television Marsilio & Acting Archives Original Title: L’arte di guardare gli attori. Manuale pratico per lo spettatore di teatro, cinema, televisione © 2007 by Marsilio Editori s.p.a.® Venezia The Art of Watching Actors. A Practical Manual for Spectators of Theatre, Cinema and Television English translation by Jennifer Lorch Online publication by kind concession of Marsilio Editori © 2013 by Acting Archives Acting Archives Essays. AAR Supplement 20 Napoli. September 2013 ISSN 2039-9766 Front Cover: Honoré Daumier, At the Theatre CONTENTS 9 WHERE SHALL WE BEGIN? The Hopeless Art of Watching Actors 9; The Basic Techniques 10; The Objects Rule. Liv Ullmann’s Canapé and Glenn Close’s Bed 12; Emphasised Actions and Imaginary Objects. Cary Grant Shaves Himself with Eva Marie Saint’s Razor 17; The Empty Stage and the Crowded Stage 20; A New Way of Acting 25; Real Actions on the Stage. How to Tend a Wound 27 31 TWO TYPES OF CHARACTERS What is Cliché Acting? 31; The Acting of Clichés. From Spaghetti Westerns to Mafia Bosses 32; Ways of Avoiding Clichés 34; The Character as Type. From Molière to Marilyn Monroe 36; The Character Becomes an Individual and the Tragic Hero Opens His Own Front Door 39 43 EMPHATISING: TECHNIQUES AND TRICKS Emphatising in the Past and Now 43; Techniques and Devices. The Ghost Scene 47; What is “Emotional Memory” 49; The Boleslavky Principle and Its Effects. From Marlon Brando to Bette Davis 50; The “Retention” Effect. Why an Actor’s First Entrance is so Difficult 54; How to Recognise “Emotional Echo”. Two Ways of Acting Surprises 56 59 PHYSICAL SENSATIONS AND THE CHARACTER’S UNCONSCIOUS Physical Sensations and the Reduction Technique 59; A Variant 61; The Game of Levels of Consciousness. The Cup and Music 63; “Subsidiary Gestures” and the Character’s Unconscious. Another Look at Objects on Stage 64 68 PRETENDING AND IMITATING The Useless Strategies of Empathy and the Role of Acting Manuals 68; How to Weep, Become Pale and Make Your Hair Stand on End Without Being in the Least Bit Envolved 70; Why Pretending is Not Enough 74; Actors and Their Support Structure. Laurence Olivier and Richard III’s Nose 75; Type-Casting. Why the Actor Must Not Look Like His Character 78; The Function of Make-Up 80; How the Actor Changes into the Character. Tina Fey Becomes Sarah Palin 82; The Chamaleon Actor. From Garrick to Peter Sellers 84 88 THE TECHNIQUES OF IMITATION The Actor Indicates the Character. The Effects of the Techniques of Imitation 88; Another Look at Types and a Definition of “Character Actors” 90; Emphasising and Comic Effects. A Long Discussion 94; Different Forms of Imitation. From Grace Kelly to Petrolini 98; Dario Fo and the Creators of Objects 101; From Chaplin to Totò. Creators of Language 103 5 108 INTERTWINING OF TECHNIQUES, THE ATTENTION OF THE AUDIENCE AND THE ACTOR’S TIMING “Factitious Feeling” and Stanislavski’s Moustache 108; Conquering the Audience and Kean’s Defeat 112; The Actor as Narrator. The Importance of Canned Laughter 114; The Stage as Playing Field. Why an Actor Must Not Be Upstaged 116; The Plumber and the Actor. The Purpose of Concentration 119; Timing and the Device of Expectation 122; The Art of the Pause and the Actor’s Rhythm 124 127 THE SCREEN AND THE STAGE The Cine Camera Learns to Act 127; The Wonders of Editing 131; The Lunacies of Dubbing 133; The False Realism of the Stage 137; The Construction of Dialogues 140 143 THE FINAL TECHNIQUE OF THE ACTOR’S ART The Stage and the Set 143; The Absence of an Audience and the Camera’s Eye 144; The Overkill Effect 146; How This Can Be Avoided 148; Passive Acting and the Deep Technique of the Actor’s Art 150 6 THE ART OF WATCHING ACTORS This book would never have seen the light of day but for the support from several people of whom I have repeatedly asked for help. I am deeply grateful to them all. In particular to Aurora Egidio, for her invaluable work in resourcing the illustrations, and to Laura Ricciardi, with whom she collaborated; and to Nicola De Carlo, Maurizio Del Ministro and Marisa Pizza for their help in finding relevant material. A good number of the ideas and topics in the book have been discussed, often in considerable detail, with a small group of friends and colleagues, Lorenzo Mango, Angela De Lorenzis, Antonio Pizzo, Paolo Sommaiolo, Aurora Egidio, Giovanna Buonanno, Stefania Maraucci and Mario Prosperi. Arnold Aronson and Lorie Novak made invaluable suggestions during the preparation of the English edition. And finally I must extend a warm ‘thank you’ to Jennifer Lorch for the skill, enthusiasm and attention to detail which she has devoted to the translation of the text. Claudio Vicentini, The Art of Watching Actors I WHERE SHALL WE BEGIN? The Hopeless Art of Watching Actors Several years ago the Theatre Studies Department of New York University organised a course on the new avant-garde theatre. In those days New York was the centre of an intense period of theatrical experimentation. In the cellars and lofts of Manhattan, in tiny semi-official rooms, various groups of actors, some already well known, others just emerging and destined to disappear within a month or two, launched their experiments, which at times were inspired – at other times just silly – with the firm intention of revolutionising all aspects and forms of theatre. Every one of us on this course was sent out in search of these exploits. We had to unearth them with the help of information which appeared in the Village Voice, the bible of the sector’s enthusiasts, and then we had to discuss in class what we had seen. We had hardly understood a thing of most of these performances. We thought it probable that the actors had clear intentions in mind and even something important to say. But it was not at all clear what that was. Only rarely did they perform a known text, and when they did they reduced it to a springboard for actions, words and gestures which appeared mysterious and incomprehensible. For the most part, however, there was neither text nor narrative: the actors “did something” on stage, and that was the performance. The course was directed by Richard Schechner, who at the time was one of the most eminent gurus and theorists of avant-garde American theatre. He established a fundamental rule. When a performance seemed incomprehensible, there was only one way of proceeding, he explained to us: you have to watch it noting down everything that the actors do, without worrying about understanding anything. And then you have to go back the next evening, and then again and again, three, four or five times, making notes of everything that happens, until you can reconstruct the whole production, moment by moment, in your mind’s eye. At that point it would be highly likely that the meaning of the performance would begin to surface, that a gleam of comprehension would illuminate the darkness. Having reached that point, we could start analyzing and discussing in the usual way. In several cases, the Schechner rule, strange though it was, proved effective. In others, though, it failed. However frequently we attended a performance, however much we observed it and made notes, the performance continued to seem to us just one big muddle. We could not understand a thing. This was because when you cannot understand anything, it is difficult to choose what to look at. From all the actions and movements that actors undertake – from the way they walk to the way they turn round, direct their glance, speak their words, turn to their companions, use their hands and arms, the expressions on their faces – it was impossible to pick out 9 Acting Archives Essays the elements which were really important from those which were only secondary or even casual. To note them all down was a hopeless task and to choose those that really mattered meant trusting in luck. And when luck did not come to the rescue, the discussions in class in front of Schechner and our fellow students collapsed into desperate declarations of defeat: we had not managed to understand a thing. We comforted ourselves thinking that these were avant-garde experiments and so, by definition, very difficult to understand. We would have got on much better, we thought, with performances of traditional theatre. There, at least, what actors do on stage is clear. They have to represent a character in a convincing manner, put the character into a perfectly comprehensible situation (a declaration between two people in love, a business discussion, a lunch, an unexpected encounter), gain the attention of the audience and keep their interest for the whole scene. But in fact we were grossly mistaken. Placed in front of a traditional performance, even a crowd-pulling highly successful show on Broadway attracting audiences with no specialised knowledge of theatre and fascinating them with a story abundant in easy and accessible effects, our problems, as we had to admit with some horror, did not lessen in the least. On the contrary, if anything, they increased. And even watching an episode of any of the most accessible television soaps did nothing to improve the situation. There was no escape, and we no longer had an alibi. We had to admit it. When it was a question of observing an actor, understanding what techniques were being used and finally deciding with some degree of certainty if the acting was good or bad, we literally had no idea where to begin.

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