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Tricks of the Trade
By Dario Fo
Methuen £12.99
217 pages
Dateline: 25th June, 2006
In Tricks of the Trade, playwright, director and actor Dario
Fo, with the assistance of his wife Franca Rame, seeks to explore performance
of every type. He goes far beyond merely considering what might occur
on a traditional stage as we know it today.
Following extensive research over a lifetime of love for his subject,
the writer feels able to deliver six lectures, divided up into "Days"
that together form his thesis about the nature of performance and theatrical
history.
The first few days' lectures analyse Commedia dell'Arte, a subject
on which an Italian can be expected to have strong views.
Fo is helped by Franca Rame, who comes from a 300 year old line of
Commedia performers. In Fo's opinion this art form should be regarded
as one of the finest examples of "actors' theatre". In this
heavily improvised form, it is they rather than directors or producers
who decide how any evening's performance will run.
To achieve this, they need great skill and a massive range of learned
instincts and lines that can be thrown in as needed by their characters
and the situation, almost like some mix and match children's game.
Fo also educates us in the arcane art of Grammelot, the use of real
and invented words in a language which the purveyor need not understand.
This trick, popularised in United Kingdom by Professor Stanley Unwin,
is apparently particularly effective as an extra string to the bows
of physical artists.
The first half of the book uses Commedia as its starting point but
branches out into many different aspects of theatre, not to mention
clowning and acrobatics. For anyone wishing to know more about physical
theatre or hoping to take up a career in that field, it will prove both
fascinating and instructive.
As the book progresses, it also offers many interesting observations
about playwriting and acting and a short section that is most illuminating
about the practicalities of theatre production in Ancient Greece. In
exploring the world of the stage, Dario Fo looks at the whole world
as a stage. His list of sources carries a depth that only someone like
Peter Brook could even seek to match as so many odd corners of the globe
yield up gems that help the author to illustrate the points that he
is trying to make.
It takes into the fifth day before this view of every element of the
theatrical tradition finally reaches the spoken word. As with the silent
arts considered in the first four, Fo proves to be a diligent researcher
with wide background knowledge; and also an intuitive teacher.
Following what is probably a fictitious attack upon the playwright
by an audience member, most of the lecture on Day 6 is delivered by
his wife. Ironically, since Dario Fo has a reputation as the most political
of playwrights, it is only when his Signora Rame takes over the baton
for the final lap that serious left-wing and feminist politics emerge.
In particular, she tells a lovely story of a theatrical happening in
Italy in which reality is allowed to impinge to an extent terrifying
enough to bring comparisons with Orson Welles' legendary radio production
of The War of the Worlds.
Tricks of the Trade is primarily a book for theatre practitioners,
whether directors, actors, designers or writers. However, the general
reader might also find it eye-opening, both for insights into the way
in which performances are created and also a look at byways of theatre
history that are not commonly visited.
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