THE ACTOR AS ENTERTAINER ~ Literary Hunt

These acrobats, pictured in an Egyptian royal tomb, performed at
court about 2000 B.C. Pharaohs delighted in displays of skill.

Man has been sometimes described as the animal that makes the tools; he is also an animal that needs to be entertained. We saw how the drama started in magic rituals but it also served to taunt, amaze, and delight. Often the artist is a ceremonial ritual performer; on other occasions, he is simply an entertainer.

Some entertainers make "magic" and "conjure" (which means the ability to do the apparently impossible). Some have control over beasts that are wild. Some people can swallow swords or flames. Even then, some survive by their personal capacity. They may juggle, or walk tightropes, or swing on a trapeze. In many countries, such events are now seen only in highly organized "circuses," but the roadside, at fairs, in private homes, and in cabarets and variety theaters can still find single performers elsewhere.

Comics of the fourth century B.C., shown in an Italian vase painting of the period, parody a scene from the Greek tragedy Amphitryon in which the god Zeus (left), accompanied by Mercury, visits his mistress Alcmene (center).

The clown, or "comic," is an entertainer whose background is closely tied to the original practice. Since the gods once found the "fool" or madman to be "touched'" and thus close to the unknown forces, he was seen as a fertility bringer, a messenger, and a voice of unpredictable reality. He has been able to go where he wanted and to do what he wished. If he crossed the boundaries of his own country and language in his journeys, he took to pantomime (play without words) and talk of nonsense. The clown is an important figure in Shakespeare's period of medieval drama, Italian comedy, and English theatre.

Other entertainers-ballad singers, minstrels, tales tellers-often need to know more than one language. Thus multilingual Welsh storytellers spread the legends of King Arthur throughout Europe.

Like the Etruscan boy of the fifth century B.C. (above), 16th-century English comedian Will Kempe (below) relied largely on physical skill. The medieval French showman with his dancing bear (below, left) was a forerunner of 19ih-century amusements like this English "Equestrian Circus" (center).

In his great epic poem The Odyssey, Homer mentions how, at King Alcinous's feast, the floor was cleared and dancing boys mimed the movement of a story as it was sung by a blind poet, Demodocus, The tale Demodocus told about the gods, but it was racist and insulting, telling about the love of Ares and the goddess Aphrodite, and how they were both imprisoned by their friend, the lame Hephaestus, "A fit of uncontrollable laughter seized these happy gods," Demodocus singed.

A similar incident relates to another Greek writer, Xenophon, hundreds of years later. He tells us that a Syracuse entertainer (in Sicily) told the love story of Dionysus and Princess Ariadne at a banquet offered for the philosopher Socrates. While he told the story, a slave boy and a girl mimed it in dance and motion. The child not only participated in the plays but also appeared as an acrobat and sword dancer.

There we meet the "actress." for the first time. Female actors only belonged to the theatre of movies for years to come. A woman of low social status, the actress did not take part in religious rites, or in Dionysus theater, Japan's No works, or the pagan church's Christian drama. As in Elizabethan England

Two masters of mime kept the harlequinade alive in the 19th century: Bohemian-born Gaspard Deburau (above, left)

's elite theater, little boys played many of the female roles.

France's most famous clown; and England's great Joseph Grimaldi, portrayed in a scene from pantomime (below).

In character, the episodes mentioned by Homer and Xenophon are almost similar to the famous Greek and Roman plays called mimes. They were initially performed as a quiet accompaniment to a poet's singing or recitation, but gradually the mimes evolved into a spoken dialog between two, three, or four performers. They became small, intriguing plays and realistic or homely details. The mask he would be wearing defined each character. In absurd situations, the gods were presented without reverence and shown; the language was colloquial, the jokes often obscene. Those plays were played on a bare stage made up of boards placed on braids or barrels. A divided curtain through which the players played was hung at the door, and from which they slipped in and out.

Occasionally patronized by the fashionable world, the players trampled the roads from city to city. Finally, poetic people in Rome and other leading cities penned down, or imitated, some of their unwritten, extemporized works, but few examples have survived. Due to the lack of written evidence, most people are unaware of the great influence of the early entertainment theater on the Western drama's later development.

THE ACTOR AS ENTERTAINER

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