Radical Theatricality: Jongleuresque Performance on the Early Spanish Stage

Chapter Three: Picaresque Actors and Their Theater

90 Chapter Three Picaresque Actors and Their Theater When Pushkin said that the art of the theater was “born in the public square,” the square he had in mind was that of “the common people,” the square of bazaars, puppet theaters, taverns, that is the square of European cities in the thirteenth, fourteenth and subsequent centuries. Mikhail Bakhtin The Dialogic Imagination Picaresque Apprenticeship One of the most notable features of medieval jongleuresque performance is its connection to that of the Roman mimus, the Teutonic scôp, and others, whose performative practices continued —modified to be sure, but unabated—for hundreds of years after the fall of the Roman Empire. The mechanism that allowed for this ongoing performance tradition, of course, even in the face of the much-remarked strong ecclesiastical opposition to the theater, was the institution of apprenticeship, an institution that functioned as such even when it was never formally recognized. A number of scholars, in fact, see the Church’s lack of imprimatur as the driving force behind the solidification of just such an informal system of training. For, without a respectable societal space in which professional acting could be pursued, medieval and early modern street performers were obliged to band together. The performing arts, like any skilled craft, have long depended on a guildlike system of training whose more experienced members pass on the secrets of the trade to younger novices. Chambers, for instance, catalogues several organized minstrel guilds existing in France 91 Picaresque Actors and Their Theater and England between 1105 and 1561 (2: 258–62), while the work of N. D. Shergold and J. E. Varey clearly demonstrates the importance of the cofradías in the development of the early Spanish stage.1 Such institutions are as important today as ever, even though many young actors now hone their abilities in either a university setting, where acting workshops are part of the undergraduate degree curriculum, or outside of traditional academia in workshops taught by famous actors and directors such as Lee Strasberg in his influential Actors Studio.2 Indeed, new performance groups like Mario Moscoso’s “Zarandajas: Escuela del arte teatral” in Buenos Aires self-consciously keep alive a tradition of jongleuresque performance training that goes back several hundred years. Tradition plays an extremely important role in this educational process because the rules and techniques of the craft— like everything else associated with an oral tradition—are passed from one generation to the next through informal transmission . By working closely with their mentors (as well as each other), young artisans gradually acquire a wealth of knowledge about their chosen profession: knowledge of its artistic techniques , of its superstitions, of its unwritten rules of conduct, and of its pre-eminent but bygone performers. Even today, little of this type of information makes it into print, and yet most actors come to know it through their informal contact with other actors. Of course, a large number of acting textbooks are available (and Constantin Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares is often required reading), but the core “text” for any modern acting workshop is still a combination of rehearsal, discussion, and feedback. For performance training, experience is a much more valuable pedagogical tool than lecture, and apprenticeship is still the dominant pedagogical model. Lord highlights the importance of apprenticeship for his guslar singers by noting that they usually go through three stages of training on their way to becoming experienced performers . The first stage, Lord argues, is really one of observation in which the “neophyte” may not even be conscious of the desire to become a singer. During this stage he lays the foundation for his mature techniques by “learning the stories and becoming acquainted with the heroes and their names,” by becoming familiar with the “themes of the poetry,” and by 92 Chapter Three “imbibing the rhythm of the singing and to an extent also the rhythm of the thoughts as they are expressed in song” (21). The second stage occurs when the young singer first “opens his mouth to sing” and finds himself struggling to fit his thoughts into the rigid structure of the melodic and rhythmic framework, and to do so at the moment of performance where erasure and redaction are impossible (21–22). In both of these stages, the singer will choose a number of experienced performers as models and will copy their style and technique. Says Lord: “Learning in...