Theatre and the Civilizing Process: An Approach to the History of Acting (P.23-28)
[Selected by Victor for Body Performance]
- P.23 The theory of acting in the Baroque period proceeded form the assumption that strong emotional impact was its primary aim. Emotional responses were excited by the representation of emotion onstage, and it follows that the representation of emotion was the most important task and function of acting.
- P.24 (In seventeenth-century) Norbert Elias notes that, for the formation of this new society, the individual was required to earn self-discipline, calculation of future aims and purposes, and control of not only the emotions but the whole body.
- P.25 The qualities and proprieties (禮貌) of the required social behaviour exactly coincided with those promoted by the contemporary art of acting. Thus, the comportment of the actor could be presented and perceived as a generally acknowledged model that should be copied.
- P.26 (In eighteenth century) Art was expected to become an imitation of nature in accordance with the development of materialistic culture. The new ideal of life and art was "naturalness".
- The greatest German actor of this epoch, Conrad Ekhof, defined the task of acting thus: "The art of acting is to imitate nature through art and to approach it so closely that probabilities must be taken for truth, or to present events as naturally as if they were taking place right now."
- Sainte Albine argued, the actor, sensing the emotion the dramatic character was supposed to fell, would bring forward the appropriate gestural signs for this emotion quite automatically.
- Mr. Remond de Sainte Albine.......external movements of the body occur as natural consequences of the internal condition of the soul, and thus follow spontaneously. [....] Onstage, however, we want to see sentiments and passions expressed not just in a partial manner, not just in the imperfect way in which an individual would express himself in the same circumstances. We want rather to see them expressed as perfectly as possible, leaving no room for further improvement.
- P.27 ...education spoils man by teaching him either to hide or to exaggerate his true emotions. [...] Where then should actors find the natural language of emotions which was to be imitated? [...] The actor should search for them where they preserve their original expressiveness, as in savages, children, and the common people. And the natural language of emotions might be reconstructed with reference to the "Law of Analogy": anything that occurs in the mind has its analogue in the body.
- P.28 The actor's body is thus presented as a cultural system which nature itself has created and defined as such: it becomes a composition of signs constituted by nature as a "text" which is "written" in the "natural language of emotion." While attempting to "read" and understand this text, the spectators supposedly forget that actor's body is sensual nature and perceive and interpret it as a texture of signs which represent most adequately the emotions of a dramatic character.
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