the art of watching actors

155 Pages·2013·7.51 MB·English

CLAUDIO VICENTINI

THE ART OF WATCHING ACTORS
A Practical Manual for Spectators of Theatre,
Cinema and Television

MARSILIO & ACTING ARCHIVES

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The Art of Watching Actors
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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.
CCllaauuddiioo VViicceennttiinnii,, TThhee AArrtt ooff WWaattcchhiinngg AAccttoorrss

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
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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. We had to recognise
a bitter truth: to observe an actor acting is never simple, even when it’s a question of
productions which seem within everyone’s grasp and that all members of an audience
are able to follow, involving themselves appropriately in everything happening in
front of them.
For that reason it was necessary to go back to the beginning. To learn to observe
an actor, it is necessary to begin with a very banal observation, one that is absolutely
self evident: that is, that no two actors act in the same way.

The Basic Techniques
Just think for a moment of some of the great stage actors – Marlon Brando, Bette
Davis, Jerry Lewis, Johnny Depp or Dario Fo and we notice straight away that they
all act differently. Their ability does not enter into it: you cannot say one acts better
than another, they are all excellent actors. The difference between them depends on
their individual personalities, and for this reason the way in which each performer
acts remains basically the same even when they change register or the kind of text
they are interpreting.
Even individual personality on its own is not enough to explain the differences.
However personal the style of an actor, it is always possible to recognise other
performers who act in a similar way and we seem to find in all of them a certain
family likeness. Marlon Brando’s way of working, for example, is very similar to that
of Paul Newman, Al Pacino or Robert De Niro while it is very different from that of
Bette Davis, Johnny Depp and Dario Fo. Every actor is different. But actors are also
similar to several (but not all) of their colleagues.

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