Performing

by ELISABETTA SANGIORGIO

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TTBIBLIOGRAPHY

J.W.GOETHE, Wilhelm Meister La vocazione teatraleCARLO GOLDONI, in Opere - prefazione alla prima raccolta delle Commedie 1750, Mursia

NICOLA MANGINI, prefazione alle Opere di CARLO GOLDONI, MursiaG. TOMMASELLO, La trilogia del teatro nel teatro, “Luigi Pirandello Triologia” Ed. Universale Ecomica Feltrinelli

C. ALVARO, Pirandello parla della Germania del cinema sonoro e di altre cose, “L’Italia letteraria”, 14 Aprile 1929K. S. STANISLAVSKIJ, Il lavoro dell’attore sul personaggio , Editori Laterza

BERTOLT BRECHT, in Scritti teatrali - La dialettica nel teatro, Einaudi

SPECIAL THANKS

for giving us the chance to take some pictures, Piero Lenardon and Marta Maragon, actors in the play "Stasera Brecht (per due attori e un piano solo)" at the theatre Ringiera of Milan. Maurizio Maravigna patient and irreplaceable director, for helping us at school in our path of formation as young actors, and for guiding me in the making of this script.

My colleagues actors, and schoolmates for the time we shared in the backstage.The teacher of the photography class Marco Costa.

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TTThis project moves from a personal synthesis of two main activities I car-ried on at Liceo Cremona: the three years photography class taught by pro-fessor Costa and the five years theater laboratory from professorMaravigna.

The project runs on two parallel levels: the text tries to analyze the evolu-tionary path of the actor’s role and work analyzing the thinking of some ofthe major theorists of modern and contemporary theater; the pictures,on the other hand, go back over the history of a theater performancefrom conception to applauses.

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“ “The main purpose o fan actor should be to learn his own role with utmost preci-sion. First of all, he should learn it by heart, then carefully study the variousshades it involves. The attitude in coming and going, in stopping and standing onthe stage, to behave and act, he should analyze it under every single side, thusacquiring the mastery of the mechanical element, so he can fully loose himself,during the play, to his heart, to his fancy end to luck.This way his acting would become so varied to look new to the audience evenafter a number of performances. […] where a mediocre actor cannot find butlimitations and chains, a smart and expert actor can find an open road.

J.W.GOETHE, Wilhelm Meister’s Theatrical Calling

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Carlo Goldoni ““This is what I learned from my two great books, the world and the theatre.

My comedies are mainly ruled, or at least I thought to rule them, by the rules I foundwritten in those two books: books, […] that shall always give to anybody this art’s truelessons.

CARLO GOLDONI, in Opere - prefazione alla prima raccolta delle Commedie 1750, Mursia

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ommedie 1750, Mursia

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““I thought then […] that easily we could make a better comedy, safer and still more

sucessfule, writing all character’s role, inserting various characters, and shaping them allwith nature’s wheel, and with the tastes of the country where my comedies were played.

CARLO GOLDONI, in Opere - prefazione alla prima raccolta delle Commedie 1750, Mursia

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ommedie 1750, Mursia

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““The path of the reform, which – as we saw – was long and conflicting but steadfast,took form through a complex process of adjustments, including from one side the pro-gressive elimination of the conventional and the uneven which could be found in comedytradition, while on the other side new formal structures and new meanings were pro-gressively inserted . The first goal was, as has already been said, to replace the schematic sceneries with afully written text, which implied that the actor’s presence, up to then abusing, was notonly disciplined, but also put under the ‘poet’ personality.

NICOLA MANGINI, prefazione alle Opere di CARLO GOLDONI, Mursia

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di CARLO GOLDONI, Mursia

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“““

I admire Germany’s theatre for his discipline and for the means athis disposal [...] actors are the most disciplined and meticulous inthe world, they don’t act, they live with all the semblances of a reality very closely examined.

Luigi Pirandello

G. TOMMASELLO, La trilogia del teatro nel teatro,“Luigi Pirandello Triologia” Ed. Universale Ecomica Feltrinelli

C. ALVARO, Pirandello parla della Germania del cinema sonoro e di altre cose, “L’Italia letteraria”, 14 Aprile 1929

“Tonight we improvvise, it’s the drama the author explicitly entrusts his own thea-trical poetics’ exposition to, at the end of the twenties.

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““THE COMMEDIAN: No wonder! If one wants to live…here are the consequences! But we are not here for that, you know! We are here to hact, written roles, learned by

heartdo you expect one of us to die every night?

THE LEADING ACTOR: We need the author!DOCTOR HINKLFUSS: no, not the author! Written part yes, at most, so the can get new life

from us, for a moment, and…

to the public

no more with the tonight’s impertinences, that the audience wuill forgive us..

Bow

CURTAIN

L. PIRANDELLO, Questa sera si recita a soggetto, Berlino 24 marzo 1929

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K.S. Stanislavskij ““If the first period, the cognitive analisys one, has prepared the spiritual ground fit tothe birth of the creative wish, the second, the rebirth one, expanded this need, motiva-ted its inspiration, the inner need (that’s the push) towards a creative action, preparingthe outer physic action, or the role personification.Besides, if the first period of knowledge rised the circumstances stated by the authorfor the character’s life, this second period of rebirth gave life to “the truth of passionsand likelyghood of passions”.

K. S. STANISLAVSKIJ, Il lavoro dell’attore sul personaggio , Editori Laterza

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naggio , Editori Laterza

““So the supertask and the cross-line not only are the basic creative end and the creati-ve action, common factor of many minor tasks, of the character actions, but at thesame time are the living substance, arteries, veins, the drama beating itself.The supertask is the drama’s essence, while the cross-line is the leimotiv that crossesit: both are the compass guiding the actor’s creation and the ambition. The cross-line is the drama underground stream and in the same way an undergroundspring causes waves in the surface of a river, so it surfaces taking the form of innercreation and, consequently, becomes action.The cross-line is the deep bond which joins a character separated parts; is the spiri-tual thread passing from part to part through all separated passages divided like scat-tered grains o pearls in a necklace.The supertask and the cross-line are the vital purpose, inborn in our nature, in ourhidden “I”.

K. S. STANISLAVSKIJ, Il lavoro dell’attore sul personaggio , Editori Laterza

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““Bertolt Brecht

The drama theater audience says: “yes, I too felt this feeling. – yes, I too am likethat. – well, this is natural.- it will always be like that.- this man’s sufferings move me,because he has no way out.- that is big art: everything here is obvious, is clear.- I crywith the crying one, laugh with the laughing one”.

The epic theater audience says: “I wouldn’t have thought of this.- this is not supposedto be done this way.- it’s astonishing, almost inconceivable.- one cannot go on this way.-this man’s sufferings move me, because he could have a way out! - that is big art, herethere isn’t anything obvious- I laugh at the crying one, I cry at the laughing one”.

BERTOLT BRECHT, in Scritti teatrali - La dialettica nel teatro, Einaudi

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ettica nel teatro, Einaudi

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“ “activeinvolves the audience in a scenic actionuses up his activityallows his feelingshis emotionsthe audience is inserted in somethingsuggestionssensations are savedthe audience is in the very center, takespartthe man is supposed to be knownthe unchanging mantension regarding the outcomeone scene serves the other orgrowthlinear flow of eventsevolutionary determinismthe man as a given factthought brings about existencefeeling

narrativemakes the audience observerbut stimulates his activityforces him to take decisionsto a general visionhe is put in front of somethingtopicspushed to the consciousnessthe audience is in front, studyingthe man is subject to investigationthe man changeable and changertension about the ongoingevery scene by itselfeditingin curvesin jumpsman as a processthe social existence brings about thoughtratio

BERTOLT BRECHT, in Scritti teatrali - La dialettica nel teatro, Einaudi

THEATER’S DRAMATIC FORM THEATER’S EPIC FORM

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alettica nel teatro, Einaudi

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The Liceo Cremona theater laboratory has staged this year the Wilhelm Meister fromWolfgang Goethe.

The staging of a novel, if the choice is to save the narrative structure in the theateradaptation, requires necessarily an interpretation of an “epic” kind, mainly for thedescriptive parts which cannot be identified with a character.

Another element in favor of such an “epic” acting for this kind of performance is thedifficulty, for the contemporary actors and spectators alike, to identify with a cha-racter that can result incomprehensible due to the setting in a social and hystoricalreality so far from ours. It is Impossible to share the emotions of a character if heis too far from the actor or the spectator (take the character of Aurelia as a point incase) or if he is presented by the author with irony, exaggerating his faults, up tothe point of making him a caricature (see the example of Bendel).

The separation between the two ways of acting must not be considered so sharp: ashow played mainly as “epic” can, however, have characters or passages played as a“drama”. The “epic” acting is used mainly for descriptions and to portray charactershighly grotesque; on the other hand for simple actions and dialogs it comes moreimmediate, for a non professional actor, to identify with the character and recreatethe character emotions to transfer them to the spectators.

OUR LABORATORY

Translations, graphic and editorial project done by FABIO CARBONE

Laboratorio di Fotografia Istituto di Istruzione Superiore Cremona-Zappa Milan. MARCH 2011

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For this reason, even in a performance like ours, which corresponds basically to “epic”acting, individual scenes can be played in identification mode.

Also the performance that were put on stage by theater Laboratordy of LiceoCremona in the last five years were primarily “epic” acting.

In “Le citta’ invisibili” by Italo Calvino (staged in 2006) epic acting was inevitable asthe text was completely descriptive.The following year in “Pericle, principe di Tiro” by William Shakespeare the epic appro-ach was due to the comical exaggeration of characters and circumstances.The performance of the third year, “The waste Land” by Thomas Stearn Eliot, is themost complex text that our group has undertaken. Written in the objective correlative style, the author describes the contemporaryworld in a critical and detached fashion without making his presence known. The choice, therefore, was epic acting.“Pinocchio” by C. Collodi (staged in 2009) has, somehow, similar characteristics to thelast performance we staged in 2010; it is a novel adaptation too but, unlike the“Wilhelm Meister”, this text is closer to the nature and the world of the young peoplewho make up our group and therefore has been performed with more identification.

ELISABETTA SANGIORGIO

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Translations by NICOLA RIVOSECCHI, ELISABETTA SANGIORGIO, DANIEL SMITH, Photo, graphic and editorial project done by ELISABETTA SANGIORGIO

from Laboratorio di Fotografia Liceo Scientifico Cremona Milan. MARCH 2011

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