Theatre and Early American Films Part 2: Comedy. (Visual Documents About Lost ways to Perform in Theatre)

Introduction *

As I said in my post "Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse, Audiovisual Documents on the Net and An Extinct Way of Playing", early silent films are real documents about what we considered extinct ways of acting. I was greatly surprised when I found in the Library of Congress site a big collection of early American films, most of them simple transposition of short stage performances or dramatic excerpts: comedy, acrobatics, dance, "melodramas", and even some kind of tragedies.

The difference with other early cinema shorts filmed by Edison or Meliès (documentary images or camera tricks, even stories made especially for cinema) was that these I am showing here were chosen because were interesting "stage performances" for the eye, workable and practical for the new only visual Media, Cinematography, but also because were common and successful theatre performances at the time; some of them based in plays but staged on cinema set and, of course avoiding text or voice (some of the comedy sketch possibly), but the change was in place but not in style. The American Mutoscope & Biograph Company changed its simple style of doing things when DW Griffith entered to direct the company and when Edison's company joined (buying a big part of Mutoscope) to make a big Cinema Enterprise.

So, we have here some real documents about physical movement and performances on theatre from the end of 19th century and beginning of 20th. These are not playing by the best of the time nor even the stars but for common actors and performers.

We can quietly and calmly watch positions, chains of actions, gestures, even tempo and rhythms utilized on American stage more than one century ago. Once more, and that has been my own objective publishing, we can se"e this film-documents as one different point of reference for a new appreciation to what we have called "good playing" and "bad playing" during the "dictatorship of Realism" in the 20th century.

Comedy Films

This is what The Library of Congress site says about its comedy films:

"Comic sketches

Comedy acts in various forms--including monologists, two-person acts with a straight man/woman and a comic foil--and broad farcical sketches were dominant forms of variety stage entertainment. When these comic sketches were translated to silent film, however, the important element of dialogue was omitted. The examples found in this collection, therefore, largely feature non-verbal humor that could be easily understood in screen.

While these examples are certainly typical of vaudeville humor, there is unfortunately no way of knowing whether these particular skits were actually performed on the stage. It is possible that some skits were adapted for use in these motion pictures or that only the less verbal parts of the acts were used. These motion pictures did, however, use typical vaudeville sets, humor, and stereotypical characters from the vaudeville stage.

Some of the acts featured in this collection were based on characters from comic strips, including Alphonse and Gaston, the Happy Hooligan , and Foxy Grandpa. These characters were also used in stage shows. (...)"

Alphonse and Gaston, a comedy sketch filmed in 1903

Happy Hooligan, a comedy sketch filmed in 1903

* I repeat the same introduction I wrote for the first part of this series of entries on early American films.

三枝橘制作 Théâtre des Trois Oranges: 东宫西宫 "East Palace West palace" (A Slideshow from the performance)

A Slideshow of the last performance by 三枝橘制作 "Théâtre des Trois Oranges" in Beijing, China: 东宫西宫"East Palace West Palace", an interesting story about sadomasochism, violence and homosexuality in Beijing.

Written by Wang Xiaobo and directed by Xavier Froment, this play shows how two men, a "common" Chinese citizen who looks for sex inside the underground toilets of Tian'anmen and a policeman, find some ways of fighting and increasing their sexual desire.

I recorded also a video about this production directed by Xavier Froment, it is coming soon.

Chinese Shadow Theatre Exhibition at Denison Museum*.

A few months ago I received an invitation from Anna Cannizzo, curator of Denison Museum, (a museum of Denison University in Ohio, USA), to collaborate with one of my videos displayed on my Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/teatroesferico. The museum was planning an exhibition to display its collection of Chinese shadows puppet theater and also to talk about how this kind of puppets are handled; they had chosen a video I recorded at a performance by Wei family troupe from Sha'anxi in Dashanzi 798 in Beijing. The video apparently had some problems with the format and they preferred to use other, one so far the most watched of my videos, "A Monkey king fighting", recorded in 2007 in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province.

The exhibition is called "Between Light and Shadow: Chinese Puppets from the Denison Museum" and the openning on Friday, January 23th, 2009. I share some photograps Ms. Cannizzo kindly sent to me, and of course the two videos showed there.

The text on the panel says:

Contemporary Chinese Shadow Theater The clip you are viewing is an excerpt from video taken by Gustavo Thomas, a researcher of theater arts. The video provides two perspectives of a recent shadow puppet show in Wuzhen xizhan, China. The video is entitled “Monkey King Fighting” and was recorded on March 28th, 2007. According to Thomas the “experience was very interesting: old musicians playing traditional instruments, only one puppeteer (a young woman) with her assistance, and those beautiful puppets of course. It seemed that day they expected hundreds of children so they prepared a simple fight-scene between the Monkey King and other mythological warriors, showing how the Monkey King was able to change himself into anything he wanted and it was a unique opportunity to see how one shadow puppet performance is done facing the stage and behind it, to study it or simply to enjoy this traditional theatrical culture from two different points of view.”

Here those two videos taken in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province.

* About the Museum and the exhibition follow the link:

http://www.denison.edu/campuslife/museum/chinesepuppets.html

Theatre and Early American Films Part 1: Vaudeville, Melodrama, and Tragedy. (Visual Documents About Lost ways to Perform in Theatre)

Introduction

As I said in my post "Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse, Audiovisual Documents on the Net and An Extinct Way of Playing", early silent films are real documents about that we considered extinct ways of acting. I was greatly surprised when I found in the Library of US Congress site a big collection of early American films, most of them simple transposition of short stage performances or dramatic excerpts: comedy, acrobatics, dance, "melodramas", and even some kind of tragedies.

The difference with other early cinema shorts filmed by Edison or Meliès (documentary images or camera tricks, even stories made especially for cinema) was that these I am showing here were chosen because were interesting "stage performances" for the eye, workable and practical for the new only visual Media, Cinematography, but also because were common and successful theatre performances at the time; some of them based in plays but staged on cinema set and, of course avoiding text or voice (some of the comedy sketch possibly), but the change was in place but not in style. The American Mutoscope & Biograph Company changed its simple style of doing things when DW Griffith entered to direct the company and when Edison's company joined (buying a big part of Mutoscope) to make a big Cinema Enterprise.

So, we have here some real documents about physical movement and performances on theatre from the end of 19th century and beginning of 20th. These are not playing by the best of the time nor even the stars but for common actors and performers.

We can quietly and calmly watch positions, chains of actions, gestures, even tempo and rhythms utilized on American stage more than one century ago. Once more, and that has been my own objective publishing, we can se"e this film-documents as one different point of reference for a new appreciation to what we have called "good playing" and "bad playing" during the "dictatorship of Realism" in the 20th century.



Drama Films


This is what The Library of Congress site says about its drama films collection:


"Dramatic excerpts, dramatic sketches, and tableaus

Short dramatic sketches or scenes from long dramatic pieces were often performed as vaudeville "turns," or acts. The examples in this category, "Duel Scene, By Right of Sword' ," "A Ballroom Tragedy," and "The Society Raffles ," are typical of the fare seen on the stage during this period. The latter two were obviously chosen because of the strong visual qualities of their stories. "Fights of Nations" is a patriotic piece that features a series of vignettes leading to a grand finale that conveys the philosophy of the United States as a melting pot. (Several nations are depicted through stereotypes in a series of altercations that culminate in the peaceful representation of a United States with Uncle Sam presiding over all. Notably absent from this final peaceful picture are African-Americans; a Native American woman is shown kneeling in a subjugated position.)

Tableaus, or living pictures, were also popular on the vaudeville stage. While "Spirit of '76" is not technically considered a tableau because it incorporates movement, it still serves as a representative sample of famous scenes being brought to life on stage--in this case, the well-known painting by Archibald M. Willard."

The Society Raffles, a vaudeville filmed in 1905

The next film shows an interesting moment, after the jealous lady have killed her adversary, stopped moving and keept a posture showing the knife, then run away from the scene. A simple but effective technique, unique in this kind of scenes. Today this image would be ridiculed by everyone; we just have to remember that most of oriental theatres, Kabuki and Chinese Opera make use of this "stop motion postures".

Ballroom Tragedy, a performance filmed in 1905


A Duel, an American vaudeville filmed in 1904


Fights of nations (Part 1) an American drama filmed in 1907


Fights of nations (Part 2) an American drama filmed in 1908


Fights of nations (Part 3) an American drama filmed in 1909

A Walk Through Basho's Garden... and his Haiku.

閑かさや岩にしみ入る蝉の声
shizukasa ya iwa ni shimiiru semi no koe

oh in the quietude
seeping into the rock
the voices of cicadas

The first time I heard of Haiku was by feeling it.

During an exercise guided by my acting teacher, Antonio González Caballero (1), he was constantly repeating a few sentences translated from Japanese poetry. The immediate response within me, perhaps an explosive one (if explosions were so slow as powerful), was the opening of a door leading to the unknown; the inner self of my sensibility had an entry (perhaps it has more) and I had discovered it that day.

The teacher's words were listened to and repeated after a while by me, with my voice, ever lower, as wanting them to enter me; then I heard them in silence, I heard them traveling through my body, inside my body, and I started to feel.

The feeling brought tears to my eyes, but they were not tears of pain or sadness tears, or at least they were of a kind of pain and sorrow so big that they seemed near infinite, therefore intangible, and therefore neither sad nor painful, and they were only in me, and tears flowed as in a river, only because.

My body became more relaxed, my eyes were clouded by tears while listening to the poem.

Already on the ground and in a period of time without memory, that afternoon, I was enjoying all this, looking at the sky and laughing while the tears still came. It was all, It was much, and it was of such extreme softness!

My teacher’s voice and mine had long faded, but I was still listening to the poem in me. It was the first time I could say I felt a soul, that thing so intangible that only becomes tangible through poetry.

Since that exercise each time I hear the word "Haiku", I feel it through my body (and soul) and identify it with my experience as an actor, and each time I hear the name of "Basho" I identify it with the creator of that experience.

I’ve crossed paths with Basho (Bashō) several times in my life, since that day at González Caballero’s workshop and till now, when he crossed my path during a trip to Tokyo in January 2008. I was looking for a Sumo stadium, I wanted to see huge men in a ritual fight, instead I found this Japanese poet, I found his house museum that held me for a few minutes.

The house was almost destroyed by time and bombardments, there was nothing left of it, a new building replaced the original house with a small museum, and over there a garden which even in Winter remained alive.

I strolled around the garden and recorded some images, they are more beautiful for what they mean that for what they are. Showing them is a joy and reading his poems while watching them is a pleasure.

Trips are pretexts that lead to wisdom.

A Walk Through Basho's Garden

Basho Museum. Tokyo, Japan. (January 2008)

Basho Museum. Tokyo, Japan. (January 2008)

Basho Museum. Tokyo, Japan. (January 2008)

(1) Under González Caballero’s Acting Method this exercise is part of "Naturalismo chejoviano" (Chekhovian Naturalism), and the exploration work was precisely "Apoyo Haikú". There is a Blog I'm writing (in Spanish) called: El Método de actuación de A. González Caballero.

An Interview with Guadalupe Durón (Part 1): "How González Caballero's Acting Method influenced my actor career"

Guadalupe Durón (México, D.F. Dic. 2008)

A quick trip to Mexico (and an 18 hour flight) last Christmas forced me to think about how to maximize energy and information and use them for the improving of the González Caballero’s Acting Method Blog (1) (2) I have been writing in Spanish on the Internet since January 2007. I remembered that the main objective of that Blog was giving a first-hand testimony about the experience of the method, displaying it as it was, leading to a healthy discussion. The transcripts of the recordings I made of González Caballero during the 80s and 90s of the last century have been the real corpus of the Blog, but now I believed it was important to add the voice of those who helped to form this method and who were prepared by him, by González Caballero.

The plan then was to add some interviews with González Caballero’s direct students, and in such interviews to narrate, remember and bring back to life their experiences as actors, talking about the method, the exercises, the guide and about how they used to receive what was known as “la técnica”.

I thought Guadalupe Durón was the most indicated to start with these interviews because he was a very close friend of González Caballero (and mine) and a partner at González Caballero’s workshops.

Guadalupe Durón was considered by González Caballero as one of his real students, as an actor who worked with his acting technique, but also considered him as a rebel, an actor who was opposed to rules and structure; González Caballero said that Durón was using his method but always did what he wanted, with his own interpretation. This comments, strangely, are not against Durón, nor the method or Durón’s capacity on the scene; González Caballero gave an important role to freedom and creative interpretation, and Durón was his best example; he loved his work, his force and his projection on scene. Nobody denied nor denies that he was prepared with González Caballero’s acting method and many of his accomplishments are due to that preparation. González Caballero was his teacher in the whole sense of the word and both held each other in high esteem.

Guadalupe Durón performing "La Cura" (1998)

I decided to start this series of videos of Guadalupe Durón's interview with a description of how González Caballero’s method influenced Duron’s career. In this part Durón talked with his personal form of expression, his experience and feelings about building a character with the “Apoyos”. There is no analysis by me, I wanted to go directly to that recording as a testimony. I think in any case it would be interesting to compare the experience of this actor with the transcripts of González Caballero’s words I have published in the Method’s Blog.

The video is (of course!) in Spanish, but I made a free English translation from the video’s transcript (3):


"To begin... how did the master’s technique influence me? It was little by little. Er ... I remember that it was hard to build a character, but when he taught me there were Pesos, Introversion, that the characters could have a religion, that according to their Age they would walk, that they had a character (of the character), whether they were Introverted or not, and all that, I found a new world, a new world in which naturally he must have had more talented students than I, students who understood things better than me. Then I took two or three “Apoyos”, no more because I felt that it had become confusing, because they were many, many (Apoyos), which obviously I worked through but felt unable to use them all at once. So I used to choose just two or three (Apoyos): an Elemento, a part of the character ... and that gave me a different consistency than I had thought of a character, their attitude changed, blah, blah, blah.

"The sad thing about it is that the teacher didn’t leave a version of the method written by himself, in handwriting. Why? ... Because he had everything clear in his mind. And sometimes I wonder, why didn’t he write it down? if it was very important? And I realized that it is one thing to know what they say and applying it is something else ... Sure! That could apply to myself too. I mean, well, I'm putting into practice what he taught me. Sometimes I questioned myself - are you really using what he taught you? -

"Sometimes I write in my scripts, he has this element, it is blah, blah, blah ... and this and this and so on. As an artistic worker I have always this question: -Am I doing things right? - Well! I do not know whether people are fooling me or if it is because I am good! Or whatever! Once someone approached me and said, "Hey, I saw your work, it is different to what I had seen, I did not think that someone could make this kind of work, I did not know anyone”.

"There was once a man who stopped me on the street, and said, -"Hey, I've seen theater in Europe, I've seen theater in the United States, I've seen theater in Mexico, but this is just different from everything I have seen.”- That pleased me, but I always questioned myself about that, -Are you really using what you were taught you? ... As ... I used to take some notes at the beginning of my study, especially when I was with him (with González Caballero), then I had some reference; when I was in doubt I came back to those notes and solved the problem, but one day there was a flood in my home and it ruined all my notes, and blah, blah, blah... Since then I've done things as I remember, so I’ve always questioned myself: Am I right? "

Video of an Interview with Guadalupe Durón (Part 1)

The same video on Vimeo.com

Guadalupe Durón: De cómo influyó la técnica de González Caballero en mi actuación. from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

(1) http://agcmetodo.blogspot.com There is a plan to translate the whole Blog to English.
(2) Antonio González Caballero was known in Mexico as a playwright since 1960 and as teacher of acting since 1967. Until the year of his death, 2003, he had prepared hundreds of acting students and had a reduced number of disciples. Besides his first successful plays, "Señoritas a Disgusto' and "El Medio Pelo", he explored one acting method to help the young actor to reach "a total character" ("un personaje total") for the commercial acting field in theatre, cinema and television. The development of this exploration was too far from its first objective and gave as a result the discovery of the "Apoyos", a new way to take control of the different features of a character. 35 years of exploration gave around 50 Apoyos and one comprehensive review of the different needs of the players from the XIX century to the end of the XX century.
(3) Original text in Spanish:

“Empezar, ¿de cómo al técnica del maestro influyó en mí?, pues fue poco a poco. Eh..., yo recuerdo que pasaba muchos trabajos para armar personajes, pero cuando él me enseñó que había Pesos, que había Introversiones, que los personajes podían tener una religión, que según su Edad caminarían, que su Carácter, que si era Introvertido o no, y pues todo eso, me planteó un mundo nuevo, un mundo nuevo en el que naturalmente debe haber (habido) alumnos más talentosos que yo y (que) entendían mejor las cosas Y entonces yo tomaba dos o tres apoyos, no más, porque sentía que me enredaba, porque eran muchos muchos, que funcionaban evidentemente pero yo me sentia incapaz de usarlos todos a un tiempo. Entonces por eso nomás elegía dos o tres: un Elemento, una parte del Carácter,... y eso me daba una consistencia distinta de lo que había pensado de un personaje; cambiaba de actitud, blah, blah, blah.

“Lo lamentable de todo ésto es que el maestro no haya dejado de su puño y letra el método. ¿Por qué razón? ...Porque él lo tenía claro, o a veces me pregunto, ¿por qué no lo hizo, si era muy importante? Y me he dado cuenta que una cosa es lo que dicen saber y otra cosa lo que aplican... ¡Claro!, eso podría tambén aplicarse a mí mismo. Yo digo -bueno, yo estoy poniendo en práctica lo que él me enseño-. Yo a veces me cuestiono -¿de veras estás empleando lo que él te enseñó?-

“Yo pongo a veces en mis libretos, éste tiene tal Elemento, éste tiene blah, blah, blah,... y tiene tal Peso y ésto y otro. A uno como trabajador artístico siempre le quedará la duda, -¿estoy haciendo las cosas bien?- ¡Claro!, ahí, no sé si porque la gente se deje engañar o porque uno es bueno, ¡o por lo que sea!, alguien se le acerca a uno y dice, -Oiga, vi su trabajo, es distinto a lo que yo había visto, no pensé que pudieran realizar tal clase de trabajo, es más, yo no lo conocía-.

“Hubo una vez un señor que me detuvo en la calle, bueno, y me dice, -Oiga, yo he visto teatro en Europa, he visto teatro en Estados Unidos, he visto teatro aquí en México, pero ésto que acabo de ver está fuera de todo lo que he visto.- Eso me satisface, pero siempre me cuestiona eso de que -¿de veras estás usando lo que se te enseñó-... Como,... Yo tenía unos apuntes que fui tomando allá por los inicios de la carrera, sobre todo cuando estuve con él (con González Caballero), entonces tenía cierta referencia; cuando yo tenía alguna duda pues recurría a ellos, pero un día sufrí una inundación en casa, se echaron a perder lo apuntes, y blah, blah, blah,... Y desde entonces he hecho las cosas como me acuerdo, por eso siempre me cuestiono: ¿estaré bien?”