Marcel Marceau poetics of gesture E-Book

Patrizia Iovine

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The origins of theatre date back to 500 b. C. with religious rituals of ancient Greece. Mime drama dates back to Theocritus, to performances of folk life, to gatherings in honour of the God Dionysus, during which the use of a mask was introduced. The Romans used to mime political situations inventing satirical pantomimes. A silent genre developed in the town of Atella, the Atellan Farce, with fixed characters, ancestors of the stereotypes of the Commedia dell’Arte or theatre of the Zanni. The father of the family of the Zanni was the servant Arlequin. In the Commedia dell’Arte of the Sixteenth Century, the face was covered by a mask that would define the nature of the character. Created by Deburau in 1665, the melancholic Pierrot will step on stage and as his ancestors, he will be forever in love and rejected. With Molière, the use of the mask will start to change until it will disappear leaving space to the expressiveness of the face and nature of the character. With Carlo Goldoni the “Commedia di carattere” will flourish. In the Twentieth Century it’s Charlie Chaplin’s turn to write an important chapter of the art of mime with the romantic hero Charlot who wanders up and down the streets in the city of London in the Twenties, desperate and alone. In his gestural grammar, Etienne Decroux covers the face of the actors with a veil to leave only the body mass to speak. On the contrary, according to his pupil, Marcel Marceau, the face and the hands represent the backbone to gestural eloquence as in Oriental techniques with the aristocratic Noh and the commoner Kabuki. Starting from Graeco-Roman Statuary, retracing the phases of gestural art, remembering the myths of gesture and, working side by side with Decroux, Marceau will decide to generate the last heir of this imaginary dynasty, the merchant of illusions, Bip, leaving him free to live and dream in the temporal space of a performance. Transforming the invisible into visible, bringing into the theatres all around the world his pantomimes, the French Master has made palpable the art of emotions.

Leseprobe

Sommario

Preface

INTRODUCTION

I - MAKING VISIBLE THE INVISIBLE

1. Influences of techniques and drama myths in the twentieth century

2. My first encounter with Marcel Marceau

3. Birth of a mime

II - MARCEAU, HEIR OF A PRECIOUS ART

1. The origins of the artist Marceau

2. Body speaks in silence

3. The hierarchy of expressive organs

4. The volume and weight of imaginary

5. Style pantomimes

6. Mime dramas

7. The music of gesture

8. Oriental virtuosities

III - THE SOUL AT THE MIRROR

1. Bip, an angel on the stage of life

2. Bip and Charlot

3. Bip and Pierrot

4. Pantomimes of Bip

5. The solitude of Pimporello

6 Bip and Pimporello

IV - THE OTHER FACE OF THE ARTIST

1 Marceau, man of the world and of theatre

The sovereign of the realm of silence

The art of mime is to become an important art

Viterbo: Marcel Marceau at the Festival of Mime

Marcel Marceau: paradise of silence

CONCLUSION

Patrizia Iovine

Marcel Marceau

Poetics of gesture

Traslated by Jane Pasquarella

Preface

Before being a book – a biography, a critical essay- Marcel Marceau Poetics of Gesture, by Patrizia Iovine, is an act of devotion, an act of absolute love for an artist who has played a fundamental and controversial role in the theatre of the Twentieth century.

This is the story of a young Hebrew who, to escape from the Nazi persecution, takes on the name of a general in the time of the French Revolution, and then after the Second World War decides to become a silent actor, a mime, attending the school of Etienne Decroux, Jansenist Master par excellence of the theatre of the Twentieth century. It is told by Patrizia Iovine with such passion and empathy that this book is an exciting read.

The pages the writer dedicates to bring the reader into the story of Marceau’s magic world of the study of techniques, of exercises of style and of mime drama in the middle chapters of the book are fully enjoyable.

To the point that one forgets that Marcel Mangel, who changed his name to Marcel Marceau, is one of those unique cases, in the history of the Twentieth century theatre, of artists who have obtained absolute international glory and fame – like Gordon Craig, for example, or like Isadora Duncan – without being able though to fulfil the dream of having a school that could perpetuate the great magic artistic work carried out by them.

Towards the end of the Fifties and the beginning of the Sixties, I had the pleasure of personally meeting Etienne Decroux, Marcel Marceau’s Master, who, after having him glorified as his best pupil – he removed his name from the list of members of his school, as we would say nowadays, due to “excess of creativity”, and Marceau’s colleague and rival, Jacques Lecoq, as well as Marcel Marceau himself, who at the time was already considered an international star.

I remember, in Paris, watching Decroux with the Master, by then well into his sixties, who was getting his pupils to perform body mime exercises. His face was covered with a veil, while he crisply moved a wooden spoon in the air with which, at the same time, he stirred the semolina he fed on: his teaching was focused on the ability to generate and feel the movement in the trunk, using arms and legs as extensions of the solar plexus, without a real expressiveness, in a rigorous pursuit of reinvention of human body; all this while the pregnant smell of cooked garlic – that as the master stresses, was essential to disinfect the belly from which impulse of movement originates – drifted through the Studio.

I recall the energy and the creativity of Jacques Lecoq, his incredible emotional athleticism with which he passed on to his pupils the idea of physical theatre and mime, centred on a vision of a poetic body as an essential instrument, beyond the face, and that he sometimes hid behind a neutral mask created with Amleto Sartori.

I met Marcel Marceau through Michael Meschke, who was a pupil of Decroux, and Director of the Marionetteatern of Stockholm, the most famous theatre of marionettes at an international level. Of Marceau I remember a slight vein of melancholy with which, when talking with Meschke and myself, he framed his position in the theatre of those years: he knew he was a star, the most famous mime, that he had created, through his own style. It was based on poetic ideas and both oriental and western supports, an absolutely new way of acting and thinking mime, unique and unusual, but he said he felt as if he were in mid-air, uprooted from contemporary theatre, without a future development, destined to sink into oblivion.

Sic transit gloria mundi. Marcel Marceau wished above all to be able to perpetuate his method of work and also his artistic creations, so much so that he made many attempts to open a school in his name. The first was opened in 1969 and lasted for two years, then in 1978 for four years, and then again in 1990, with varying success, until the school named after him would be closed for good in 2005, two years before the death of the Master.

This book carries the great merit not only to focus the attention on an artist of genius, unique in his ability to absorb and reinvent in himself the art of great western and oriental Masters – from Charlie Chaplin to Umewaka Rokuro, from the circus funambulists to the actors of the Opera of Peking - but also to tell with levity the artistic story of a Master who knew how to reveal, through pantomime art, man in his deepest and most secret ambitions.

Ferruccio Marotti

INTRODUCTION

The charm of gesture art enraptured me the moment I met a creator of dreams, Marcel Marceau. A mime often forced to speak, to chronicle the phases of his artistic career, starting from the origins of pantomimic genre. I met him in Paris at the Academy of Arts, at the end of the Nineties, in the space Pierre Cardin, dedicated at the time to the art of silence. Together with the Nouvelle Compagnie de Mimodrame, Marcel Marceau was just about to stage an act.

He told me about some fundamental episodes of his existence on the stage of the world, about the Resistance in France, about the school of Charles Dullin, about his strict Master Etienne Decroux, about the creation of the character Bip, related to the older Pierrot and Charlot.

The great hall in which the colour red dominated, the magic atmosphere that drifted through the empty chairs, the magnetic eyes of Marceau, his unexpected eloquence, coloured my visual memory with indelible images.

Gesture colours the dreams of childhood, it establishes the first material contact with the objects. Observing the world, a child creates his first heroes. In adulthood, dreams are part of the creative universe of man; however, for some artists, the game of life will always be easy to grasp on stage. Since his childhood, Marceau loved art, music and cinema. His myth, Charlot, is a hero of silent movies. He imitates him wearing his father’s clothes. He sets up his first drama company with other children. His vocation shows through these passions.

Marceau describes art starting from Theocritus, from ancient Greek times. He describes the Roman mimes fighting against the invisible.

The Atellana Farse is a farcical genre that originates in the Campanian town of Atella. There are some fixed types which are ancestors of the stereotypes of the Commedia dell’Arte. According to Marceau, pantomime ends with the decline of Rome, and comes back to life with the Commedia dell’Arte. The family of the Zanni will give birth to the highly beloved host of cunning servants such as Pedrolino, often mentioned by the French Master, and the character created by Deburau, Pierrot and later, the romantic character created by Marceau, Bip.

With Noverre and Deburau, the pure pantomime begins, completely silent. It will be the artist’s face and his gestural pirouettes that do the talking. The so-called pantomime sautante. After a period of decline, this art will see the light again, thanks to the heroes of silent movies, first amongst all, Charlie Chaplin.

The art of the actor makes use of costumes, of masks. Marceau is able to transform his face into a mask. With the pantomime “Le fabricant de masques” he shows all his expressive suppleness. His studies at the school of Charles Dullin, working with the strict Master Etienne Decroux, guide him towards the art of silence. While for Decroux expressiveness is in the trunk, in the belly, the less mobile part of the body but the centre of energy, for Marceau the hierarchy of expressive organs is modified. The face and the hands represent the backbone of gestural eloquence, as in the Oriental techniques. The actor doesn’t need a mask, his face is a in continuous metamorphosis, and it confronts itself with each single element. With his hands, the artist can give shape to his life and his emotions.

Muscular compensation that the body finds after a movement represents the so-called “law of counterbalance”, developed by the Master Decroux and passed on to his pupil. Thanks to this law, Marceau is able to imagine not only the objects, but also their volume and weight. In the pantomime “La marche contre le vent”, for example, his body is bent by the strength of the wind that becomes visible matter.

The pantomimes of style comment through mime the anguishes of life. Virtuosic pantomime, inspired by Oriental suggestions, marks the beginning of the artistic career of the French mime. Later, his art will reflect more concrete images, leading to the analysis, through a deforming lens, of real characters. A tangible example of this is “Le jardin public”.

Mime drama is a pantomime that involves many characters. The action is staged in a choral manner and is always accompanied by a scenographic frame and by a musical counterpoint. The first of this kind dates back to 1948, “Je suis mort avant l’aube”. Jacques Noel curates the music of his spectacular mime dramas, real cuttings of life sewed onto an imaginary canvass, amongst which is “Le manteau”, a marvellous stage transposition from Gogol’s homonymous text, that travelled round the world and arrived in Italy in 1953.

Music is the right counterpoint to silence, and for Marceau it has a strong suggestive importance. It accompanies in detail many of his pantomimic creations and all his mime dramas.

Marceau is inspired by Oriental drama techniques. He loves Noh and Kabuki performances, which he had the chance to discover in 1935, during a tour in Japan. In the same year, the Opera of Peking arrives in Paris, and Marceau has the chance to watch those artists. He is particularly fascinated by them.

Bip is a burlesque hero created in 1947 by the French Master. He is a down-to- earth character with a romantic nature, a dreamer who must live in real society. The personification of a solo hero that holds in himself all of humanity. In the text “L’histoire de Bip”, the author Marceau has drawn, with precision, the image of his alter ego by inserting it in a cosmic dimension.

The silent movie, with its melancholic heroes, has given a new impetus to the art of gesture. Charlie Chaplin has given a code to emotions. His character, Charlot, posterity of Pedrolino and of Pierrot, will suggest, to Marceau, the creation of Bip, a street mime with a lunar pallor.

There are many personality traits in common between Charlot and Bip. They are two champions of our age who, like Don Quixote, fight against windmills.

Despite the misadventures that often hinder their intentions, the two characters love life, they smile and survive. Bip is a Parisian mime who attends world stages. Chaplin’s hero is a wanderer mime who moves along the foggy streets of London, basking under the lights of the film set. Their melancholic eyes appear to be in contrast with the carefree gestures that seem to want to put a brake on the outflow of emotions. Bip creates the visible from the invisible, and Charlot creates the invisible from the visible. Bip’s clothes come from Charlot’s wardrobe.

The pale face of Pierrot, invented by Deburau in the Nineteenth century, has found his reflection on the painted face of Bip. Both have a white face, but the mouth and the eyebrows have different shapes. The costume is also different.

As the pantomimes of style, the pantomimes of Bip created by the Master are about fifty. Bip moves in a world populated by imaginary characters. From the virtuosity of “Bip chasse le papillon” in which the flapping of the butterfly’s wings represents love flying away, the artist moves on to social pictures with great definition of outlines amongst which the amusing “Bip dans une soirée mondane” and “Bip et l’agence matrimoniale”.

In a more mature phase of his existence, Marceau creates a novel with an oneiric atmosphere, Pimporello, who carries the name of his character. He is a street mime of Italian origin, with a clear autobiographic profile who looks like both his precursors, Charlot and Bip. It is an expressively poetical novel, that seems to channel, among the lines of the text, all the emotions of the man Marceau, his childhood memories, the cruelty of the war, his deep artistic and cultural interest for Italy, the nostalgic world of circus, fantasy and dreams, and lastly, pure love. Little Nina is infatuated with his famous clown Pimporello, and she will not stop loving him, even when she discovers that the old artist is only a poor street mime. Pimporello is similar to Bip, but he will never experience the exhilaration of performing on stage like his “brother” Bip has. He is condemned to wander along the city streets in search of a corner to stop and show any inattentive passer-by his pantomimic acts. Luck will gradually come upon the oblivious Pimporello, transforming him into the immortal hero of a poetical novel: he too, holding onto a paper cloud, will travel the world.

I thought it would be appropriate to quote in the appendix the biography of Marcel Marceau, the details of his Ecole Internationale de Mimodrame, the basic subjects taught in a three-year-course, mentioning some of his pupils, and a few articles on the French Master, written by me and published.

Marcel Marceau represents the last piece of the antique and precious mosaic of gestural art.