Masked Theater and Animation

I’ve been in Denmark at the sooper-cool Animation Workshop these last few weeks teaching a crash course in transitioning to CG from hand-drawn animation. Everyone who has worked with me in CG can now be reduced to hysterical laughter at the thought of me trying to teach someone how to do constraints, cope with breaking rigs, etc. etc…

On the last day of the course just for a change I talked a bit about animation as a stylized theater– before I studied animation I did a degree in Theater History. I was particularly interested in masked theaters, such as Noh or Commedia del’Arte, and as I got more into animation I started to see it as obviously part of this tradition– an animated face, after all, very much resembles a mobile mask:

Masks
It isn’t so easy to find good reference about this sort of thing and it helps to know your way around some theater history lingo so I promised the class I’d collect some stuff and put it up on this website. You could write several large books on this subject so this is going to be more like a Rough Guide to Abstract Theater with a lot of YouTube links:

This is a scene from “Weyreap’s Battle”, with the Monkey-king so well-known all over Asia meeting a mermaid. Khmer classical dance, rescued from extinction in Cambodia with extraordinary heroism by these great artists, is one of the best and most compete examples of masked theater.

All theater right up until about 70 or 80 years ago was masked in one way or another– either with actual masks, or heavily painted faces, and the kind of performance and movement the actors used was also highly exaggerated and stylized. The kind of acting we’re used to in television or the movies, that doesn’t LOOK like acting, is very new. This is the ‘Method’ school, and it bears the same relationship to the theatrical tradition as photography does to painting. This kind of realism in acting of course is something every animator needs to understand. For me however animation fits more naturally into the older stylized school– Bugs Bunny would look quite weird acting in an ‘invisible’ style like Marlon Brando; personally I think with stylized characters and stylized backgrounds the performance needs also to be stylized. The Golden Age guys all took their acting from Vaudeville, and Vaudeville took all it’s acting from Commedia del’Arte, which comes from Roman comedy, which comes from Greek comedy.

It’s hard to think of where to start on this subject, so here’s a broad outline of the universal characteristics of this kind of theater. When you see a very abstract performance such as Noh it may seem very alien, but actually if you look again you will see some things that are surprisingly familiar. I think, for example, that every single element in the following list appears in “The Lion King”:

Attributes of masked/stylized/abstract theater

Story:

  • stock stories– fairy tales or myths. Usually the story is already very well known to the audience
  • stock characters– ‘types’– the Miser, the Lovers, the King, the Villain. Identifiable as soon as they appear by costume, characteristic gesture, etc.
  • stock settings– The Forest, The City
  • often set in a past ‘Golden Age’
  • sentimental, universal emotions– love triumphant, wicked defeated
  • mix of ‘high’ and ‘low’ characters, such as ‘straight’ lovers and grotesque clowns.
  • concern with kingship/leadership– true leader missing, imprisoned, lost, etc, and must be recovered
  • mix of plot scenes with interludes pure dance, song, comedy, or fighting, that does not drive the story
  • mystery, allusive and illogical action, dreamlike moods
  • plots of large single actions ending in stasis– complication and release
  • catharsis– either happy or tragic endings, disaster averted or disaster happens
  • people being drawn into or driven out of society– ends on marriages for the good and punishments for the guilty
  • heroes that support the core social values, and rejection of antisocial qualities
  • teaching role, religious role– essentially a conservative medium
  • but also satyric role– licence to mock establishment
  • audience participation in cheering and booing
  • assumed shared values of audience
  • Elements:

  • gods, fairies, talking animals, ghosts
  • monsters, demons
  • magical events, creatures, and devices
  • physical transformations, people into animals, ghosts, or into other people of different social status or different genders. Disguises.
  • glamour and fantasy– power, riches, beauty
  • ‘the people’ as a character– a ‘chorus’ representing the society
  • events culminate in ‘tableaux’– a moment where all the players stop and create a ‘picture’ of the dramatic event
  • spectacle, music, dance
  • romance- true love and weddings
  • music and dance. Poetry for dialogue.
  • masks, opulent costumes, heavy face paint
  • clowning
  • no 4th wall– characters address audience
  • gags and ‘lazzi’– comic business often with props, puns, misunderstandings, fast talk
  • Performance characteristics for the actor/animator to be aware of:

  • No distinction between acting and dance– one flows into the other.
  • ‘Suspension’– an extremely ‘ready’ way of holding the body
  • long, exaggerated lines of action
  • Participation of whole body in gesture OR
  • Extreme isolation of one part of body motion
  • exaggerated counterpoising of pelvis, ribcage, and head
  • core of performance is HOLDS of characteristic attitudes
  • basic movement of holds moved between with fast action
  • actions faster or slower than normal
  • eye pops, and eye leads, heavily outlined eyes
  • wave action through hands
  • wave action through body
  • exaggerated use of the breath– energy in waves through the body
  • stylized hand and eye movements often with gestural language
  • seemingly effortless, impossible, and acrobatic action
  • Large ‘theatrical’ anticipations and takes
  • Mimed or ‘objective’ action– that is, action deconstructed into parts
  • repeated actions to point of being mechanical;shakes and takes as though body
    siezed by outside force
  • Unashamed use of cliche
  • Romantic leads of unusual beauty and grace
  • Clowns with grotesque features
  • Crouching postures on servant/animal/clown characters– Groucho Marx, Bugs Bunny
  • Slapstick comedy– elaborate falls, hits, and takes
  • acrobatic stage fighting
  • tableaux of characters and sets
  • dancelike movement or outright dance
  • songlike speaking or outright singing
  • Someday I’ll put up some posts going into some of these points a bit futher (or at least to clarify what the heck they mean!), but in the meantime, you can always browse around the playlist I’ve put together.

    Names to Know (a very random list):

    Jaques Lecoq, the very influential in the physical theater movement, wrote many books that are worth reading. “The Moving Body” is a good introduction

    Eugenio Barba, those of you in the class will remember the videos with the ‘falling’ actors– this is Barba’s troupe. He’s written several excellent books on physical theater including the “Dictionary of Theater Anthropology”, easily the best book on physical theater for the animator. The Table of Contents will already tell you how much great stuff is in here! You guys in the Animation Workshop are very lucky to have several videos of his Odin Theater, which are very hard to get so be sure to have a look at them.

    Lee Breuer, head of the Yale Theater Department, directs avant-guard shows involving dance and puppetry

    Julie Taymore, from the same school, has done several high-profile projects including the stage version of “Lion King”.
    Improbable theater, does fantastic shows in an expressive style with a strong Commedia del’Arte influence

    Whew! I’ll put up a bit more as I have time.. I hope this is useful to you guys as a starting point, anyways!

    • Great summary! Its quite interesting to read through and think about how these ideas are still strong concepts in modern storytelling.

    • You are absolutely right about the masked theatre/animation link. Ooh, your lucky students – geeky-intellectual animation classes!

      This does make me wonder about ways in which animation gets pushed towards realism – or not. (One reason I can’t see the point of some of the ‘super-realist’ style animations where you get a sort of computerised-but-not-drawn cartoon Tom Hanks, or whoever.) I think there is a very interesting ‘serious-poetic’ liminal space between ‘cartoons’ and ‘stylised’ or ‘pared-down-poetic-realist’ cinema’ to explore. Were I remotely skilled at actual drawing (I don’t have the courage even to try and sketch my daughter, having been a pathetic ‘conceptual artist’ for too long!) the one film I’d love to have put my name to would be “Grave of the Fireflies”. I kept thinking I was watching what Ken Loach would have made if he’d been a Japanese animator. It was one of the most beautifl but harrowing films – not just animated films- I’d ever seen. Seeing the hyper-literal-fantasy of ‘Return of the King’ the very next day, in comparison, left the sourest taste ever. Mr Sphinx and I emerged slightly sickened from the cinema.

      I have a terrible confession to make – I HATED “The Lion King”. I don’t know why it’s considered such a masterpiece. (Um – you didn’t work on it did you – the pics were fine, I just didn’t relate to the whole). The music was especially forgettable compared to golden Disney oldies such as ‘Jungle Book’, and I don’t give a toss about Little Boys learning to be Great Rulers. (By contrast, I’m rather fond of the two ‘Mujin’ -? films, Disney’s stab at feminism, even though, again, the songs just don’t have it the way they did in the 40s).

      Jeremy Irons as the effete baddie Uncle Usurper

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