claudio vicentini

The first history of acting theory in the West, from antiquity to the eighteenth century when the specific characteristics of the actor’s art were established. An account of the long cultural journey to understanding every aspect behind an actor’s on-stage transformation. 

Summary:

ACTING THEORY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
Divine Possession. Alteration and Contagion. Development of Dramatic Forms. Acting as a Specialized Activity. Emotional Tension and Frenzy. Persistence of “Ion’s” Doctrine. Moderation and Self-Control. The Emergence of the Character. The New Form of Emotional Involvement. The Actor’s Art and the Orator’s. The Use of Emotion. Emotion and Expression. The Techniques of Identification. Control and Perfection of Expression. Possibility of an Anti-Emotional Theory.
FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Theatre as a Source of Irrational Impulses. The Condemnation of Christian Authors. The New Image of Acting. The Humanist Ennobling of Theatre. Humanist Experiments and Court Performances. Professional Actors and the Commedia all’Improvviso. The Revival of Religious Opposition and the Actor’s New Status.
THE EARLY ITALIAN TREATISES AND THE THEORETICAL ACTING MODEL
The Academicians Establish the First Rules of Acting. Giraldi Cintio’s “Discorsi”. Angelo Ingegneri. Stage Characters as Reality Perfected. Leone de’ Sommi’s “Dialoghi” and Theory Based on Stage Experience. The Writings of Pier Maria Cecchini. The Theoretical Model of Acting. Flaminio Scala and the Decline of the Early Treatises.
THE WORLD OF ORATORY. PERRUCCI, GRIMAREST AND GILDON
The Theatre Controversy. The Horizons of Oratory. Recitation: the Mysterious Difference. The New Treatises. Andrea Perrucci, Recitation, Oratory and “Commedia all’Improvviso”. Experience, Rules and the Insufficiency of “Actio”. Grimarest. Gildon.
THE BIRTH OF EMOTIONALISM
The Dramaturgic Function of Recitation. Natural Recitation. The Beginnings of Emotionalism. Luigi Riccoboni. Acting by Improvisation. First Formulation of the Emotionalist Theory. Criticism of Riccoboni. Reform of the Code and Franz Lang’s Treatise. Jean-Baptiste Du Bos.
THE CRITIQUE OF ACTING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTIONALISM. D’AIGUEBERRE, CIBBER, AARON HILL AND RÉMOND DE SAINTE-ALBINE
D’Aigueberre and the Founding of the Critique of Acting. Cibber’s Autobiography and Garrick’s and Foote’s Essays. Aaron Hill. Rémond de Sainte-Albine’s Treatise. The Functions of Technique. The Problems of Emotionalism.
ANTIEMOTIONALISM. ANTOINE-FRANÇOIS RICCOBONI, LESSING, DIDEROT
English Versions of “Le Comédien”. Antoine-François Riccoboni’s “L’art du Théâtre”. Lessing’s project. Sticotti and Diderot. Artistic Creation. The “Paradoxe” and Its Reasoning. The Characteristics of Sensibility. Real Life-Theatre Difference. Actors and Characters. The Problems of the “Paradoxe”.
THE END OF CENTURY DEBATE. ENGEL, BOSWELL AND TOURON
The Late Eighteenth Century: a Profusion of Treatises. The Work of the Author, the Creation of the Actor. Performing the Part. Study, Observation and Imitation. The Function of Sentiment. Engel’s Treatise. Boswell and the Levels of Interiority. Touron. Epilogue.

La storia della recitazione teatrale dal mondo antico alla scena digitale, e gli studiosi   Dall'Introduzione alla Storia della recitazione teatrale dal mondo antico alla scena digitale, Marsilio Editori, 2023, in uscita a ottobre. Per gentile concessione dell'editore.

The Sagra della Croce is a three-day parade and celebration that takes place once a year, in May, in Casteltermini, a town of about 10,000 people in Sicily. The parade is performed in honor of a wooden cross that, according to an old legend, was miraculously found several centuries ago by a cow in the fields near the town. The cross is kept in a small church (the Chiesa di Santa Croce) on the hills about two miles from Casteltermini. Preparation for the Sagra takes the whole year and comprises a large part of the town's social life.The Sagra has been performed for several hundred years. Originally it was prepared and performed by three “ceti” (guilds): the pecorai (shepherds), the borgesi (farmers)—who also included the burdunara (muleteers)—and the schetti (bachelors).

La storia della recitazione teatrale dal mondo antico alla scena digitale, e gli studiosi.   Dall'Introduzione alla Storia della recitazione teatrale dal mondo antico alla scena digitale, Marsilio Editori, 2023, in uscita a ottobre. Per gentile concessione dell'editore.

Ma l'insegnamento di Stanislavskij e ancora attuale e realmente efficace? Sembrerebbe di si. L'insospettabile Strehler, nella sua entusiastica prefazione al "Lavoro dell'attore sul personaggio", proclama di provare per il regista russo un autentico "amore", che "non e amore da poco". E diversi mostri sacri della recitazione, attivi oggi sulle scene, continuano a vantare la loto provenienza da scuole esplicitamente devote al metodo stanislavskiano.

Nell'ambito della recitazione comica ancor oggi praticata, il saggio distingue e studia due pratiche: quella per cui l'attore prende le distanze dal personaggio ridicolo che rappresenta (ad esempio ridendo di lui), vicina ai meccanismi della satira, e l'altra in cui aderisce invece del tutto al suo ruolo, secondo una modalità in cui la distanza comica dello spettatore dal personaggio si può combinare con l'identificazione.

Da C. Vicentini, La teoria del teatro politico (Firenze, Sansoni), pp. 125-162.
Sommario: 1 La nozione del teatro di guerriglia. 2 Teatro sperimentale e  teatro politico. 3 La nuova sinistra e il teatro di guerriglia. 4 Teatro di guerriglia e azione diretta. 5 Lotta rivoluzionaria e spettacolo teatrale. 6 Il modello del teatro di guerriglia.

Da C. Vicentini, La teoria del teatro politico (Firenze, Sansoni, pp. 45-82).

Sommario: 1 Dimostrazioni antineutraliste e manifesto del teatro sintetico. 2 L'operazione artistica e il teatro. 3 Lo spettacolo teatrale come guerra. 4 Azione politica e spettacolo teatrale. 5 La politica come territorio arretrato. 6 Dal teatro sintetico al teatro della sorpresa. 7 Depoliticizzazione e fine del teatro futurista

Da C. Vicentini, La teoria del teatro politico (Firenze, Sansoni, pp. 83-124)

Sommario: 1 La formula del teatro politico. 2 Teatro e trasformazione storica. 3 Epoca storica e modello teatrale. 4 Unicità e molteplicità del modello. 5 Connotazioni delle tecniche teatrali. 6 Liquidazione e ricupero dell'estetica.  7 Carattere politico del teatro. 8 Connotazioni politiche delle tecniche teatrali. 9 Brecht e la formula del teatro politico

Claudio Vicentini, La teoria della recitazione. Il distacco dell’attore dal
personaggio
The article (in reference to a previous work, Per un’ecologia delle nozioni di
lavoro. L’identificazione dell’attore con il personaggio, «Acting Archive
Review», n. 7, May 2014) explores two notions: «distacco» (detachment: to
express the character’s feelings the actor must make no recourse to his own
feelings), and «dislocazione» (dislocation: the actor’s presence remains
visible beside the performed character). The two notions, mostly confused
and related to Brecht’s alienation-effect, were actually independently born
in the late XVIIIth and early XIXth centuries, well before Brecht’s a-effect
theory was conceived. They were both developed to answer a key question
of the theory of acting of the time: how to perform on stage a character that
is hardly representable (a tragic character whose powerful expressions,
acts, attitude cannot be performed with the actor’s simple human means; or
an evil character whose wickedness is unbearable to the audience moral
delicacy). The «distacco» was firstly introduced by Antoine-François
Riccoboni in 1750, and then developed by Diderot in his Paradoxe sur le
comédien, the «dislocazione» was described by Charls Lamb who in his
article Imperfect Dramatic Illusion (1825) put in question two effects usually
required to the acting: the «dramatic illusion» (the spectator must to some
degree feel like real what happens on stage), and the «fourth walls» (the
actor performing the character must look totally unconscious of the
audience presence).

A problem seems to undermine the research on history of acting: the scholar cannot get in touch with what he is supposed to study. The actor’s work disappears as soon as the performance ends: according to a famous dictum, the actor «is  forever carving a statue of snow» (Barrett, Matthews 1914, Duerr 1962, Cole and Chinoy 1970). That happens however not only in the history of acting. In any research  concerning the past (the life of Napoleon, the tea trade in England at the end of the XVIII century) the scholar does not face the «real thing», but only documents that allow him to build up a mind-image of his subject-matter (Vicentini 1988, Fazio 2006, Pietrini 2009). The point is then the amount and the quality of the information the documents can offer in any research field.
As far as the actor’s art, the subject- matter of the study is obviously what the actors do on stage. But the books on the history of acting mostly dwell on something else: the social and economic condition of the actor’s  life, the job contracts, the companies organization, and above all the scholars tend to reduce the history of acting to the history of the theory of acting (see by example Duerr 1962, Allegri 2005, Benedetti 2007). The reason is simple. Usually  the documents we dispose of,  give us a scanty information on what the actors do on stage, and we cannot build up a certain and detailed image of their acting. The scholars are then tempted to study not what they should, but what they can, and they eventually offer to the reader a kind of «surrogate history» of acting.
The amount of information we can get on the actual acting, however, changes according the period of time we are considering. Until the XVIII  century (when a well aware and quite sophisticated critique of acting began) the information is quite rhapsodic  and undetailed. From the XVIII century on we dispose of a very large number of articles, essays, letters, that offer detailed descriptions and analysis of the performances of the most important actors of the time. Then technology in the XX century opened the way to record the actors’ performances on tapes and more sophisticated multimedia. That sets the standards of any possible history of acting: uncertain and undetailed so far antiquity, middle ages, renaissance and baroque acting are concerned;  more and more analytic and specific through the XVIII and XIX centuries. Eventually, when we will actually master the new recording techniques and develop the methods of analysis of the actor’s art they allow, a new era of acting studies will open.

Article first published in "Acting Archives Essays" (www.actingarchives.it) April 2011, later included in Theory of Acting. From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (chapter 1), Napoli: Marsilio & Acting Archives, December 2012 (download: academia.edu).

Summary: Divine Possession. Alteration and Contagion.    Development of Dramatic Forms.    Acting as a Specialized Activity.    Emotional Tension and Frenzy.    Persistence of Ion’s Doctrine.  Moderation and Self-Control.  The Emergence of the Character.    The New Form of Emotional Involvement.  The Actor’s Art and the Orator’s.    The Use of Emotion.  Emotion and Expression.  The Techniques of Identification.    Control and Perfection of Expression. Possibility of an Anti-Emotional Theory

Article first published in "Acting Archives Essays" (www.actingarchives.it) April 2011, later included in “Theory of Acting. From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century” (chapter 2), Napoli: Marsilio & Acting Archives, December 2012 (download: academia.edu).

Article first published in "Acting Archives Essays" (www.actingarchives.it) April 2011, later included in Theory of Acting. From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (chapter 3), Napoli: Marsilio & Acting Archives, December 2012 (download: www.academia.edu).

Summary: The Academicians Establish the First Rules of Acting.    Giraldi Cintio’s “Discorsi”.    Angelo Ingegneri.    Stage Characters as Reality Perfected .    Leone de’ Sommi’s ”Dialoghi”  and Theory Based on Stage Experience.    The Writings of Pier Maria Cecchini.    The Theoretical Model of Acting.    Flaminio Scala and the Decline of the Early Treatises.

Summary: The Theatre Controversy.  The Horizons of Oratory.  Oratory and Recitation: the Mysterious Difference.  The New Treatises.    Andrea Perrucci.    Recitation, Oratory and Comedy by Improvisation.  Experience, Rules and the Insufficiency of Actio.    Grimarest.    Gildon. Theory og Acting 

First published in "Acting Archives Essays" (www.actingarchives.it) April 2011, later included in Theory of Acting. From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (chapter 4), Napoli: Marsilio & Acting Archives, December 2012 (download: www.academia.edu).

The theory of acting in the second half of the century. The work of the author and the creation of the actor. The actor and the character. The study of the part: observation and imitation. Outer expression and inner feeling. Emotionalism and antiemotionalism, the functions of the sentiment on the stage. The ensemble acting. The presence of the audience. The end of the debate: Engel, Boswell, Touron.

“The End of the Century Debate”. First published in "Acting Archives Essays" (www.actingarchives.it) May 2012, later included in Theory of Acting. From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (chapter 8), Napoli: Marsilio & Acting Archives, December 2012 (download: www.academia.edu).

L'impiego delle nozioni teoriche nello studio del teatro e della recitazione. Equivoci e incertezze.  La nozione dell'identificazione dell'attore con il personaggio. I diversi ambiti del suo significato: intrecci, distinzioni, contaminazioni.