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The Impact of Working Conditions upon Acting Style

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Robert K. Sarlós  and
Douglas McDermott
Robert K. Sarlós
Affiliation:
Robert K. Sarlos is Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Davis;
Douglas McDermott
Affiliation:
Douglas McDermott is Professor at California State University, Stanislaus.
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Extract

All artistic conventions of each theatrical era have two intertwining aspects: the aesthetic goals, and the technical crafts for achieving them. In some cases, a particular combination or development of skills results in a refinement of the art or the discovery of a newly desirable aesthetic; in others, the demand for new artistic effects leads to the invention of appropriate techniques. Thus, when painterly standards and drafting methods of central perspective spread rapidly over Northern Italy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, illusionistic spectacle became an indispensable element of theatrical performance. It was eagerly supplied by architects in whom the printing of Vitruvius's De Architectura (1486) awakened both the responsibility for and the challenge embodied in designing theatrical scenery. Conversely, as Elizabethan playwrights conceived of plots dependent on avoidance of meetings between certain exiting and entering characters, second and third entrances were provided—either by cutting into the tiring house wall, or by hanging a curtain with several slits in front of it, to accommodate stage traffic.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1995 , pp. 231 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1995

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References

Notes

1. See Joseph, Bertram, Elizabethan Acting, 2nd. ed. (New York: Octagon Books, 1962)Google Scholar; and Doran, Madelaine, Endeavors of Art (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), pp. 24–46.Google Scholar

2. For a contemporary description of eighteenth-century theatrical practice in the English provinces see, for example, Tate Wilkinson, Memoires of His Own Life (York: Wilson, Spence and Mawman, 1790). For modern scholarship on the subject see Hare, Arnold, The Georgian Theatre in Wessex (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1958)Google Scholar and Rosenfeld, Sybil, The Strolling Players and Drama in the Provinces, 1660–1765 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939).Google Scholar

3. For the impact of the star system on the resident company see William B. Wood, Personal Recollections of the Stage (Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, 1855) and Morris, Clara, Life on the Stage (New York: McClure, Phillips, and Co., 1901).Google Scholar

4. On the deterioration of Booth's production and performance see Skinner, Otis, Footlights and Spotlights (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1924), pp. 171–3Google Scholar; for the effect of the production company on Mayo and O'Neill see Tyler, George, Whatever Goes Up (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1934), pp. 88–90.Google Scholar

5. For a description of the transfer of popular drama to film see Vardac, A. Nicholas, From Stage to Screen (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1949).Google Scholar

6. For a description of modern film making practice see Kawin, Bruce F., How Movies Work (New York: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 327–409.Google Scholar

7. Tr. by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1936), it was published in the Soviet Union only after his death, two years later. For a full account of the publishing history see Hobgood, Burnett M., ‘Stanislavsky's Books: An Untold Story’, Theatre Survey, 27, 1–2 (May-November 1986), pp. 155–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Hobgood, Burnett M., ‘Central Conceptions of Stanislavsky's System’, Educational Theatre Journal, 25, 2 (May 1973), p. 152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Ibid.

10. Tr. by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1949). A third volume, Creating the Role, 1961, was the translation of The Actor's Work on the Role, recording some of his own creative processes.

11. Kazan, Elia, Elia Kazan: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1988), pp. 706–07.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., pp. 255–6.

13. Ibid., p. 229.

14. A similar discussion can be found in Sarlós, Robert K., Jig Cook and the Provincetown Players: Theatre in Ferment (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), pp. 57–8.Google Scholar