Two Productions by Eminent 'Auteur' Directors from the Archive

 (Part 2: Artist Profiles)

[For an explanation of the origins of this post, I refer readers to Part 1 of “Two Productions by Eminent Auteur Directors from the Archive,” published on Saturday, 10 October.  What follows is freshly written, but it harks back to the two performances I saw at the Lincoln Center Festival in July of 2005.  Although one of the directors profiled below, Giorgio Strehler of Il Piccolo Teatro di Milano, died in 1997, the company he founded is still producing and still internationally esteemed. 

[Ariane Mnouchkine is still working at 81 and, like Piccolo Teatro, Le Théâtre du Soleil, is also still acclaimed for its unique theater style.  As I asserted in Part 1, the very fact that I got to see the work of both these artists and companies here is proof to me that New York City is the capital of the world—at least as far as the arts are concerned.] 

ARLECCHINO, SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS
by Carlo Goldoni
Piccolo Teatro di Milano—Teatro d’Europa
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
22 July 2005

CARLO GOLDONI

Born in Venice in 1707, Carlo Goldoni is considered one of Italy’s most prominent playwrights.  He was theater-obsessed from an early age, despite efforts by his father to redirect his life.  He eventually studied law and clerked in the small town of Chioggia near Venice; it became the setting for one of Goldoni’s comedies, Le baruffe chiozzotte (“The Chioggia scuffles”), considered one of the classics of Italian theater.

Goldoni made his theatrical début with Amalasunta, a tragedy produced in Milan in 1733.  The play was a critical and financial flop.  Goldoni returned to his inn and threw the manuscript of his first play into the fire.

When productions of his other first works, including his first opera, Belisario (1734; not to be confused with Gaetano Donizetti’s 1836 opera), were not received well in Milan and Venice, Goldoni decided that the Italian stage needed to be reformed. 

Abandoning 17th-century neo-classical theatrical traditions and the improvised buffoonery of commedia dell’arte, Goldon developed a comedy of manners inspired by the people he knew and enriched by his critical observations of the society of his time.  His comedies demonstrate a sharp eye for the difficulties, paradoxes, and injustices of life. 

L’uomo di mondo (“The man of the world”), his first real comedy, was written in 1738, and after several drafts, Il servitore di due padroni (Servant of Two Masters) was first performed in 1747.  Between 1750 and 1751, adopting Molière (1622-73) as his model, Goldoni wrote 16 “new comedies,” comedies of representations of actual life and manners through the characters and their behaviors (as distinguished from the commedia dell’arte conventions of masks, lazzi, and intrigue), which together are considered to represent a manifesto of his theatrical ideas.  (For further information on commedia dell’arte, see my brief discussion below.)

Goldoni worked with the Teatro San Luco in Venice for nine years (1753-62).  Throughout his career, however, he was attacked by rivals who never accepted his theatrical innovations.  After a dispute with fellow dramatist Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806) which left him disgusted with the taste of Italian literati, Goldoni left Italy in 1762 and joined the Comédie Italienne in Paris. 

The playwright died in Pais in 1793 at 85 after several years of illness, which he describes in his autobiography, Mémoires (1787).  Among Goldoni’s 120 plays are La putta onorata (“The honorable maid,” 1749), La locandiera (The Mistress of the Inn, 1751), Il campiello (“The campiello” or “The small square,” 1755), La trilogia della villegiatura (The Holiday Trilogy, 1756; see my report on this play mounted by the Piccolo Teatro, on Rick On Theater on 27 July 2009), I rusteghi (The Boors, 1760), Sior Todero brontolon (“Sior Todero grumbles,” 1762), La baruffe chiozzotte (1762), and Una delle ultime sere di Carnovale (“One of the last evenings of Carnovale,” 1762). 

COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE

Commedia dell’arte (which translates as "professional theater") developed in the 16th and 17th centuries, first in Italy and then in other parts of Europe.  This transgressive form of improvised comedy relied on the physical and verbal dexterity of actors who played scenes based on canovaccio, a basic plot or scenario accompanied by a few instructiions on how the comedy should be performed. 

Commedia performances were outdoors, often in the town square where the players set up a wagon that served as the troupe’s stage.  (The troupes were itinerant.)  Sets were minimal and stock, props were only what was needed for the action and often conventional, like slapsticks and bladders.  Actors wore masks and costumes identified with stock characters that audiences immediately recognized, such as foolish old men, devious servants, or braggart soldiers.  

Most masks had exaggerated features to aid in improvisation and help identify character and personality.  Behind the masks, actors relied on their voices and gestures, rather than facial expressions, to demonstrate feelings and emotions.  (I have a post on masks in theater, “The Magic of Masks,” on ROT on 17 September 2011.) 

Conventional gestures, phrases, exclamations, and curses were an essential part of the actors’ performances.  Extended comic riffs, called lazzi, frequently interrupted the action, giving actors an opportunity to display their improvisational skills.

Though the scripts were almost entirely improvised, the troupes sent company members into the town in advance to spy out the current gossip and get intelligence on prominent citizens and community leaders.  The scenarios would be adjusted on the fly so that topical foibles and scandals would end up in the plays.

(A secondary benefit of the masks most commedia actors wore in performance was to hide their off-stage identities from affronted townsfolk who might seek reprisals for insults and revelations made during the plays.)

Italy’s commedia troupes travelled throughout Europe, influencing theaters in Spain, Holland, Germany, Austria, England (Punch-and-Judy puppet shows; Shakespeare), and, especially, France (Molière).  In the 18th century, Goldoni, for instance, used and revised many of the theatrical  conventions of commedia, writing complete play texts and turning conventional character types into more rounded and credible human beings.  (See comments on Goldoni’s “new comedy,” above.)

Arlecchino was one of the best-known characters in commedia, with his cat-shaped mask; multi-colored, diamond-patterned costume; and constant scheming.  Il Dottore (Dr. Lombardi in Arlecchino) wore an almost-entirely black costume, including the academic robe of a Bolognese scholar.  His mask, which covered only his forehead and nose, had a small mustache and eyebrows.

Pantalone’s costume was typically tight red pants with a matching shirt, a long black cape, pointed shoes, and a belt with a purse dangling conspicuously from it.  His mask included a pointy beard and long nose; it sometimes also had a mustache and bushy eyebrows. 

Brighella wore a servant’s suit of rough fabric and a long shirt.  His mask had a hooked nose, beard, and mustache.  The Lovers (here Silvio, Clarice, Beatrice, and Florindo) wore whatever the latest local fashion was.  They didn’t usually wear masks.

In addition to particular costumes and masks, the characters in commedia dell’arte traditionally spoke specific dialects that indicated class distinctions and regional differences, as well as reflected defining qualities of the original stock characters.  For example, as a symbol of the wealthy merchant class of Venice, Pantalone spoke with a “pure” Venetian accent that was emphasized when he conducted business. 

The original zanni (or jester) character that was the basis for Arlecchino was a servant from the countryside of northeast Italy, near Venice; therefore he spoke a rougher, less polished form of the Venetian dialect used by Pantalone.  Although an innkeeper rather than a servant, Brighella was also based on a zanni character and used a dialect similar to Arlecchino’s. 

Il Dottore, however, spoke in a Bolognese dialect to indicate that he was a learned man from Bologna, where one of the oldest universities in Italy is located.  As a professor of law and medicine, Goldoni’s Dr. Lombardi often mixes his Bolognese dialect with his own versions of Latin phrases, creating an often comic manner of speaking. 

In contrast, the Lovers (and Smeraldina in Arlecchino), all spoke an older form of Italian (from the 18th century) that’s more elegant than current conversational Italian but that would be familiar to a contemporary Italian audience.

GIORGIO STREHLER

Affectionately called “Il Maestro” by his European audiences, Giorgio Strehler was one of the most celebrated directors of the 20th century.  Born in 1921 in Trieste, at the head of the Bay of Trieste on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, Strehler graduated from Milan’s Filodrammatici Drama School (literally, Academy of amateur dramatics) in 1940. 

He interrupted his career to join the Resistance movement in World War II and, in 1944, Strehler was captured and imprisoned by the Nazis and the Fascists.  After being exiled to Switzerland, he began staging plays in French, making the theater his home.

Strehler returned to Milan after the war and founded the Piccolo Teatro (‘little theater’), Italy’s first public theater, in 1947 with Paolo Grassi and Nina Vinchi Grassi.  During his 50 years as artistic director of Piccolo Teatro, Strehler developed a theater that was formally rigorous, politically committed, and open to as broad an audience as possible. 

Over the course of his career, he directed some 200 plays and operas in Milan, Rome, Paris, and Salzburg.  In addition to Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters, seminal productions include Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, William Shakespeare’s King Lear and The Tempest, Goldoni’s Il campiello, Luigi Pirandello’s Mountain Giants (I giganti della montagna), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, and Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera and The Good Person of Szechwan. 

Strehler’s opera credits include Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, Simon Boccanegra, and Macbeth, as well as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Juan, Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), The Magic Flute, and Cosi fan tutti.

Strehler, always active in politics as a socialist, was also a member of the European Parliament (1983-84) and a Senator of the Italian Republic (1983-89). 

Strehler died of a heart attack during rehearsals for Così fan tutte in Lugano, Switzerland, on Chrsitmas night, 1997, at the age of 76.  The opera was to have inaugurated the Nuovo Piccolo Teatro (New Piccolo Teatro) in Lugano, the largest city in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland where Strehler had maintained a home for some years.

IL PICCOLO TEATRO DI MILANO

Piccolo Teatro di Milano (Italian for “little theater of Milan,” so named in homage to Moscow’s Maly Theater—which also means “little theater,” in contrast to the “big” Bolshoi Theater), founded by Strehler, Paolo Grassi (1919-81), a theater manager and director, and Nina Vinchi (1911-2009), Grassi’s wife, in 1947, was one of Italy’s first artistic ventures after World War II and its first public theater (also called “permanent,” as opposed to private companies, which were itinerant).  Grassi was its general manager and Strehler was artistic director.

Piccolo Teatro soon became known as an “art theater for everyone” (teatro d’arte per tutti) producing distinctive work at a price that everyone could afford.  Strehler staged numerous classical works, from Shakespeare to Goldoni to Chekhov, and many of the greatest works by 20th-century dramatists, including Brecht, Sameul Beckett, and Pirandello. 

Strehler’s productions have toured to more than 40 countries around the world.  The artistic excellence and community orientation of Piccolo Teatro has become a model followed by many other Italian theaters.  In 1991, Piccolo Teatro was designated a Teatro d’Europa and joined the Union of European Theatres, an international organization that encourages cultural exchange among theaters across Europe.

After Strehler’s death in 1997, Sergio Escobar, manager of renowned opera houses in Bologna, Genoa, and Rome, and international director Luca Ronconi, were appionted to lead Piccolo Teatro.  (Ronconi died in 2015.  Playwright Stefano Massini is currently the artistic consultant of the Piccolo Teatro.)  

With its three theaters, the Teatro Strehler, the Teatro Studio, and the Teatro Grassi, Piccolo Teatro is one of Italy’s most important cultural centers, producing some 600 performances each year.  In addition, since 1999, Piccolo Teatro has hosted an international theater festival showcasing productions from around the world.

*  *  *  *

LE DERNIER CARAVANSÉRAIL (ODYSSÉES)
conceived by Ariane Mnouchkine
Théâtre du Soliel (Paris)
Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
27 & 29 July 2005

ARIANE MNOUCHKINE

Ariane Mnouchkine, born on 3 March 1939 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, a western suburb of Paris, is the daughter of Russian-born French film producer Alexandre Mnouchkine (1908-93) and Jane Hannen, daughter of British actor Nicholas Hannen.  (Alexandre Mnouchkine named his production company Les Films Ariane for his daughter.)

Mnouchkine attended Oxford University in England to study psychology, but then joined the Oxford University Drama Society and decided that that’s what she wanted to do.  She continued her theater studies at L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, a school of physical theater in Paris, where in 1964 she founded Le Théâtre du Soleil (“Theater of the sun”) with some of her fellow students.

The leader of the Théâtre du Soleil has developed her own works, like the political-themed 1789 (1970), which dealt with the French Revolution, as well as numerous classical texts like Molière’s Don Juan and Tartuffe.  Between 1981 and 1984, she translated and directed a series of Shakespeare plays: Richard II, Twelfth Night, and Henry IV, Part 1.  

While she developed the shows one at a time, when she finished Henry IV, she toured the three together as a cycle of plays.  Similarly, she developed Iphigenia by Euripides and Aeschylus' Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides) between 1990 and 1992.  Together, the four Greek plays became Les Atrides.

A Mnouchkine production has been notable for the choice of subjects the director addressed, often providing food for thought on the human condition.  These subjects often present dramas that are shocking or have upset the planet to make theater a means of shedding light on the history of our time: fundamentalism in Molière’s Tartuffe, political cowardice in Tambours sur la digue (“Drums on the dike”), refugees in Le Dernier Caravansérail. 

Her pieces are especially distinguished by her very visual staging; her famous moving sets present the scenes from different angles, for example.  The performances are supported by an omnipresent “soundtrack,” often played live from the edge of the stage by the one-man-orchestra, Jean-Jacques Lemêtre, with whom Mnouchkine’s been collaborating since 1979.

While mainly a stage director, Mnouchkine’s been involved in some films.  Her movie 1789, filmed from the live production, brought her international fame in 1974.  In 1978, she wrote and directed Molière, a biography of the famous French playwright for which she received an Oscar nomination.  

She collaborated with Hélène Cixous on a number of projects including La Nuit miraculeuse (“The miraculous night”; film, 1989) and Tambours sur la digue (stage, 1999; film, 2003), two made-for-television movies.  She also has screenwriting credit for L’Homme de Rio (“The man from Rio”), 1964.  In 1987, Mnouchkine was the first recipient of the Europe Theatre Prize.

In 1992, Mnouchkine criticized Euro Disney Resort as a cultural Chernobyl and was very opposed to the decision to open the European branch of the theme park in Paris.

On 20 May 2009 (playwright Henrik Ibsen’s birthday), Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann, the head of the selection committee, announced at the Ibsen Museum in Oslo, Norway, that Ariane Mnouchkine was the second winner of the International Ibsen Award.  The prize, awarded for bringing new artistic dimensions to the world of drama or theater, was given to the director at a ceremony at the National Theatre in Oslo on 10 September 2009.  

Two years later, Mnouchkine received the Goethe Medal, given to non-Germans “who have performed outstanding service . . . for international cultural relations.”

Mnouchkine’s recent productions have included Shakespeare’s Macbeth in 2014; Une chambre en Inde (“A room in India”), created by Mnouchkine and Hélène Cixous in 2017; and Kanata – Episode 1 – The Controversy, created in collaboration with Canadian Robert Lepage’s production company Ex Machina (Quebec City) in 2018.

Also in 2018, Mnouchkine was awarded two Molières, the French national theater honor often compared to the Tony Award in the U.S. and the Laurence Olivier Award in Great Britain.  Her production of  Une chambre en Inde won for the best show of the subsidized theater/public theater.  The director won an individual Molière as the best director of a public theater show for the same production. 

Last year, Mnouchkine was awarded the Kyoto Prize, Japan’s highest private award for lifetime achievement in the arts and sciences, for her work as “a stage director who has innovated theatrical expressions through her original masterpieces for over half a century.”

LE THÉÂTRE DU SOLEIL

Founded in Paris in 1964 by Mnouchkine and a group of actors and technicians from L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, Le Théâtre du Soleil combines socio-political activism with a collective sensibility.  The collaborative creation of original works is the hallmark of this company that consistently functions like one large family that lives together and equally shares the work of creating its productions.  The collective shares daily meals together, often with the attending audience.     

Mnouchkine has summarized the philosophy of the troupe as “Theatre du Soleil is the dream of living, working, being happy and searching for beauty and for goodness . . . .  It’s trying to live for higher purposes, not for richness.  It’s very simple, really.”

The company consists of close to 100 actors, technicians, and designers from throughout the world, speaking about two dozen different languages among them.  Included in this collective, for instance, are mask maker Erhard Stiefel and musician Jean-Jacques Lemêtre, composer and interpreter of the music for the productions, who’ve worked for the company for over 40 years, as did scenographer Guy-Claude François until hs death in 2014. 

Mnouchkine has directed scores of productions with the company.  Inspiration has come from major historical events like the French revolution and the partition of India, as well as from epics of world literature such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, Gilgamesh, and the Mahabharata.. 

The work of the Théâtre du Soleil is a mixture of Asian-based and Western influences.  Mnouchkine feels that Asian theater (music, dance, masks, and puppetry, among other techniques) is a fundamental art form and she uses this influence in her overall concepts.  She also emphasizes physical theater and improvisation, almost certainly because of her training with Lecoq, a world-renowned physical-theater and mime artist and teacher.

One example of drawing inspiration from non-Western performance was in the collective’s production Tambours sur la Digue in which they incorporated puppetry in the style of Japanese Bunraku.  Les Atrides took the classical Greek tragedies of Euripides and Aeschylus and staged them using the costumes, make-up, and conventions of East Indian theater forms, particularly Kathakali.

Commentary on current events at home appeared in the Théâtre du Solieil’s production of Molière’s Tartuffe in which the title character was presented as an Islamic zealot at a time when there was a movement in France against foreign immigration.  Le Dernier Caravansérail (the topic of the second half of Part 1 of this post) was a look at the worldwide refugee crisis that was especially prominent in France at the time (2003).

The company’s productions have included re-imaginings of classics of Western theater such as works of Shakespeare and Molière, but the Théâtre du Soleil is equally well known for its original works. The collective, under the direction of Mnouchkine, works together in a collaborative rehearsal process that stretches over many months to create a performance.  Les Atrides took over two years to complete.

Théâtre du Soleil’s productions are often performed in found spaces like barns or gymnasiums because Mnouchkine doesn’t like being confined to a typical stage.  (The troupe’s first production was mounted in a basketball court.)  Similarly, she feels theater can’t be bound by the “fourth wall.”  When audiences enter a Mnouchkine production, they’ll often find the actors preparing—putting on make-up, getting into costume—in their presemce.

Among their most influential performances are the collective creations 1789 and L’Age d’or (“The golden age,” 1975); the historical and epic plays written by Hélène Cixous, including L’Indiade (1987), L’Histoire terrible mais inachevée de Norodom Sihanouk, roi du Cambodge (“The terrible but unifinished story of Norodom Sihanouk, king of Cambodia,” 1985), La Ville Parjure (“The perjured city,” 1994), Tambours sur la digue; The Shakespeare Cycle (featuring Richard II; Twelfth Night; Henry IV, Part 1; 1980-84); Les Atrides (based on the Oresteia by Aeschylus and Iphigenia by Euripides, 1990-92); and Molière’s Tartuffe (1995).

Théâtre du Soleil’s first visit to the United States occurred at the Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles in 1984, where they performed The Shakespeare Cycle.  The troupe made its New York City début for the Brooklyn Academy of Music at the 14th Regiment Armory in Park Slope in October 1992 with the U.S. première of Les Atrides.  Other New York apparances include the North American première of Le Dernier Caravansérail and the U.S. première of Les Éphémères (“The ephemerals” or “Ephemera”) at the Park Avenue Armory as part of the 2009 Lincoln Center Festival.

The company has also created several films, including 1789 (based on the play), Molière, ou la vie d’un honnête  homme (“Molière, or the life of an honest man”; official selection, International Film Festival, Cannes, 1978), Au soleil mème la nuit (“The sun shines even at night”; documentary of Tartuffe rehearsals, 1996-97), and Tambour sus la digue (based on the play).                                                                           

Since 1970, the company’s permanent home has been an old, spacious Paris munitions factory, La Cartoucherie (cartouche is French for ‘cartridge’).  The Théâtre du Soleil performs at the Cartoucherie, in the Vincennes area of the city, as well as on tour in France and abroad.  The company’s rehearsals are open to spectators and the troupe encourages visitors at La Cartoucherie.