Improvisational notes:

...and extended physicalization have asked the question on both sides of of his five-play season...

...stories within stories...

...GERALD WEALES POMPEII JERUSALEM, & NEW YORK Improvisational notes IMIMI D'APONTE cated fourteen miles south of Naples...

...creating suspense...

...ance's actors must refer, not only as tion, the audience comes to the actor, Drama historians point out that there touchstone, but as ballast...

...The cast works in intimate en- ern Italian dialect, English, French, Itallating between brusque staccato and eerie semble fashion, closely attuned to the ian...

...Brian Murray, who did finished show...

...Its ten-member repertory comter...

...As I Teatro Grande, designed originally by Guglielmo Guidi, parsimonious old Euc- can attest, all three are erupting lavishly the Romans c. 150 A.D., rocks with lio's pronouncements were delivered in in modern-day Pompei...

...Artistic given the characterizations presented, members as for those who were biDirector Yossi Ysraely prepares two of with all "suspects" fully rehearsed to lingual, thanks to the brilliant teamwork the Khan's annual productions...

...It is an old-fashioned play in Honor), and Abe Vigoda (Barney Miller) as old friends...

...He Sills and his company of three women terity as a living, ever-changing illustracreates numerous dreamlike sequences and five men base their technique on ma- tion of what he is saying...

...Both plots unfold as of theatrical improvisation at its best...

...the spot before an audience...

...By using techniques improvised wishes of the audience, always utilizing eyes and without costume or prop, from a from ballet...

...sides of the Atlantic...

...While invites not only discussion but perhaps ern dramatic phenomena: the human Terence is always strictly tied to the text, redefinition...

...The Khan was established in 1968...

...twentieth-century seating pads, is lo- spoken in the modern Neapolitan dialect...

...music, and pantomime, Ys- the special talents of each of its gifted chatty fellow letting us in on historical raely has removed The Dybbuk light members...

...On the two Mystery of Edwin Drood, 1986 Tony both the vision of the playwright and occasions I attended the Khan last sum- Award winner for best musical, offers improvisational techniques which are mer, its 300 seats were filled with young little room for genuine improvisation...

...worth of theatrical improvisation...

...The result was an occasional funny line and, and rhythm and who ignore the specialty aspects of the char- in Holliday's case, the real suggestion of a character, but no acters and work as an ensemble...

...Only that it has three acts, in addition to flashy curtain lines, and a Tony Roberts was somewhat stinted in applause the night I was somewhat laborious way of building its comic effects and there...

...with the audience, evidenced by numerWhen does a classical play in the hands He relies heavily on the comedies of ous interruptions of the performance with of a new generation of theater artists Titus Maccius Plautus (c...

...The attentive audience brought The barometer of audience applause used Western theater...

...In an era when actors its performances under the stars, but, as Neapolitan comedy which exists with the become mayors and even grander its modern performers will explain works of Aristophanes and Plautus, but politicians, such a theatrical concept animatedly, it offers that rarest of mod- not with Terence," says Guidi...

...And College and at the City University of New tions are , also common in early since 1984, all works are performed in York's Graduate School and University Cen- twentieth-century Neapolitan comedy, Hebrew...

...Paul using his large body with incredible dexYsraely's style is surrealistic...

...Now let me tell you about that production in somewhat better with Hay Fever last year, and his all-star cast Indianapolis...

...play's own subtitle is borrowed...

...Fo through exceptional deaths - are in- relates superbly with his audience, as if, exorably intertwined with the intracacies in fact, he were speaking to a group of of Hasidic law and communion with the people whom he has met before in some dead...

...direct rapport years, a new question arises as well: ducing classics in these revitalized ruins...

...The audi- of Fo and his impressive young AmeriI was fortunate to attend both his The ence's choice of "lovers," however, can translator, Ron Jenkins...

...the Roman dramatist, as the staple "Bravo...

...Last year I saw of the acting style, a necessary device in the Atlantic...

...There is an employss modern lighting techniques for assonance between classical and MPROVISATION...

...In using im- surrounds the actor, making his work are three distinct characteristics of provisation to recreate ancient and clas- play...

...Roman comedy, all of which relate to sic plays for contemporary audiences, as Since 1951, Franco Natalino, director improvisation: Spontaneous dialogue, in I have seen done increasingly in recent of Pompei's tourist board, has been pro- the form of frequent asides...

...laughter and applause...

...And along each step of the For the Khan Theater, however, im- creation, all chosen by the audience...

...Each story is unraveled before the In an Off-Broadway production of oft-frequented piazza...

...Similarly, audience assigns each player specific cally biting, physically hilarious, and he has transposed Tehilah from short animal designations, and scenes of spon- theatrically successful in its maintenance story to a true theatrical piece...

...is that a comment on his association with Woody Allen...

...I B.C...

...254-184 bursts of applause and shouts of yield genuine improvisational theater...

...ation of his basic script - which, despite often dissonantly chanted works, heavily The work of Dario Fo, the Italian thea- diversions and meanderings, remains dependent upon once-improvised ele- ter artist who was denied a visa to the true to his constant theme of cutting the ments which have since been fixed into United States in 1980 because it was de- politically powerful down to size...

...his production of Plautus's The Pot of classical comedy because of the theater's Each summer for the past thirty-five Gold, forerunner of Moliere's The colossal size, but also a means of evoking years, Pompei's brilliantly renovated Miser...

...The ancient thea- formal Italian, whereas the rehearsed On another side of the Mediterranean, ter, a semi-circle of high granite steps asides and improvised remarks of the improvisation of a different sort makes whose seats are softened somewhat by comic slaves and servants were often its home at Jerusalem's Khan Theater...

...26 September 1986: 503...

...But in this loca- the audience...

...Says playwrights are generally dedicated to ing something new and unrehearsed on Giacomo Rizzo, one of last summer's performance, production, and spectacle...

...to mind a recent Israeli statistic: about 25 to determine Drood's "mysterious" The presentation at the Joyce was as percent of the population attends at least murderer tends to go in one of two ways effective for English-speaking audience one live performance weekly...

...Al- Joyce Theater for a week in late May...

...perhaps without equal in contemporary people...

...In this production, directed by heightened and cumulative laughter...

...productions of which are also part of the pany plays for about ten months a year at Commonweal: 502 its Jerusalem home, with three- or four- though promising the real thing, The Mistero Buffo (Comic Mystery) offered day runs in other Israeli cities...

...Centerpieces of their routine gossip, into an Italian peasant, a French years from its traditional performance by include scenes in which a variety of gib- advisor to the king, an English lawyer of the Habimah Theater, which I had seen in berish is employed, scenes in which the high place, a pope...

...These Israeli plays have voice of a playwright to direct this wealth each performance Fo weaves a new varievolved into highly choreographed, of improvisation...

...emed "inappropriate" by the State De- It appears that the art of improvisation, In New York, the current quality of partment, finally came before Off- in all its variety and variation, remains improvisation improves in direct propor- Broadway audiences in New York at the stubbornly alive and even well on both tion to its distance from Broadway...

...Yet dramatic stars, "Acting here is the best experience The result of such assonance is that one improvisation may also imply a pre- possible because the actor must usually can create a deep communication with existing text to which any given perform- dominate the audience...

...by the Fo/Jenkins pair, provided a study Agnon short story...

...An efficient play of its type, it can only Although all these performers have had solid stage careers, come alive in revival if its limitations are accepted and used by they played like refugees from other media, each in business a director and a cast who have a firm sense of the play's shape for him/herself...

...Traditionally speaking, "to voice amplified entirely by architectural Aristophanes, Plautus, and Neapolitan improvise" on the stage connotes creat- rather than electronic means...

...which incorporate ballet-derived pan- terials from Viola Spolin, the director's For several of the scenes, Fo employs tomime to illustrate the narrative, often mother and author of that contemporary "grammelot" - a nonsense language he punctuating the proceedings with the bible for actors, Improvisation for the invents phonetically as if it were Northsounds of voices and instruments oscil- Theater...

...He is at once coneyes of involved but powerless partici- Sills and Company at the Lamb's Club fiding, entertaining, gossiping, describpants whose inability to effect the out- Little Theater, on the other hand, the ing at random, it would appear, thoughts, come makes them appear as nearly de- audience receives more than two hours' emotions, impressions, and all the while tached from the action itself...

...way, the accurate and graceful work of provisation takes place entirely in rehear- Brilliant as the work is, however, by the the American actor/translator proved sal, never, as in Pompei, before the eyes beginning of Act II one longs for the beyond the shadow of a doubt that during of its audience...

...By According to Guidi, who also directs an 1972 it began to limit its productions to MIMI D'APONTE teaches theater at Baruch acting school in Naples, such interrup- those of Jewish or Israeli writers...

...never get Kesselring's chestnut properly roasted...

...Classic dramatic The evening's entertainment took a elements - childhood promises, broken good deal of its style from those medieval marriage contracts, father-daughter con- itinerant jugglers or giullari from whom flicts, ultimate peace and absolution the...

...step into the murderer's role...

...It Teatro Grande's repertoire...

...Each sketch is politiNew York twenty years ago...

...He becomes transformed, before our laments...

...fered, coupled with the comradely Moscow in 1922 - and his Tehilah -a master/apprentice relationship rendered dramatic adaptation of a famous S.Y...

...Jenkins Dybbuk-Shloime Ansky's Russian seems to be more varied and spontane- is also an actor in his own right, and the classic, originally written in Yiddish and ous, offering a genuine sense of improvi- spontaneous translations which he offirst produced by the Habimah Theater in sation...

...taneous poetry, short story, and operatic of character...

...precise performance patterns...

...play of Kesselring's that was ever popular, it is set in a All-star these days means movie and television perVictorian house in Brooklyn which means that it takes place in sonalities, and the audience greeted Jean Stapleton (All in the a Broadway theater, populated by comic types and a great Family), Polly Holliday (Alice), William Hickey (Prizzi's many jokes about theater critics...