Actor domination

Perhaps the supreme example of the actor-dominated production can be found in the commedia dell’arte tradition. Not only did the actor have financial and administrative control over production, but the very quality of performance was woven almost wholly out of the actor’s art. At first, in the 16th century, the commedia troupe consisted of traveling actors; by the 17th century many of them had found permanent residence at the courts of Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Each actor had a special role (Arlecchino, Pantalone, Brighella, and the inamorato, or lover, among others) with its attendant set speeches and traditional business. The young would learn the tradition appropriate to a role and, if talented, embroider upon that tradition. Thus prepared, the actors would improvise a presentation on the thread of a story selected by the troupe leader. Scenarios of commedia dell’arte plays did exist, but they were only pale shadows of the production itself, which came to life only in performance.

Other actor-dominated theatres include the Elizabethan theatre, Chinese opera, and Kabuki. In these instances, however, the blending of administrative control and artistic preeminence did not go so far as in the commedia dell’arte. The Elizabethan professional company, for example, had a production system that was based upon actor control of the repertory, but the artistic character of the work was determined by the plays that were presented. However fine the actor’s art, the dramatist’s contribution was paramount.

Dramatist and director domination

During certain periods the work of the dramatist, regardless of his subsequent involvement, determined the creative process in production. In ancient Greece the selection of a play was the first step in production. In the 19th and 20th centuries the acquisition of a script was also the preliminary step in establishing the single-show association. Only occasionally, as in the court theatre at Weimar, of which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe took charge during the late 18th century, did the dramatist take responsibility for establishing and conducting the theatrical enterprise. Rarely has the dramatist dominated a production system, unless, as occurred with Molière, he was also an actor. A notable exception was the German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

In imperial Rome, the dominus gregis (manager of the festivals at which theatrical performances were given) controlled the lives and probably the art of the Roman comedians. During the 18th century the theatrical actor-manager came into prominence. But it was in the 19th century, with the rise of the stage director, that artistic and, in large measure, administrative control passed into the hands of a nonperformer.

The stage director was responsible for modulating the acting, correlating the animate and inanimate aspects of production, and creating a single effect that inevitably became the expression of his own genius. At the beginning of the 20th century, the British theorist Edward Gordon Craig carried the ideal of unity even further by recommending the merger of director and scenic designer and advocating the reduction of actors to automatons completely responsive to the director-designer’s vision.

The designer’s rise to special importance had begun during the Renaissance. In the first half of the 17th century, the architect and designer Inigo Jones was the driving force behind the elaborate productions of the English court masque, while the stage machinery of Nicola Sabbatini and the designs of Giacomo Torelli exerted considerable influence in Italy and France.

A special theatrical form in which one person typically functions as manager, designer, and director is the puppet show. A puppet is any inanimate figure manipulated by a human being. The figure may be a three-dimensional hand-operated or body-operated puppet, either miniature or approaching life size; a two-dimensional shadow puppet manipulated by means of sticks; or a string-operated three-dimensional puppet, called a marionette. All types share a common aesthetic principle whereby their movement in a highly restricted space creates the illusion of lifelikeness. In some cultures, such as the Javanese and the Turkish, the puppet show has been a major theatrical form. In Japan the Bunraku doll theatre commands a respect and a following comparable to those accorded the traditional live-actor theatres. In fact, many plays of the prominent writer Chikamatsu Monzaemon were written originally for the puppet theatre.