Scapin - American Conservatory Theater

a m e r i c a n c o n s e r v at o r y t h e at e r
Carey Perloff, Artistic Director • Ellen Richard, Executive Director
presents
Scapin
by molière
adapted by bill irwin and mark o’donnell
directed by bill irwin
american conservatory theater
september 16–october 10, 2010
prepared by
elizabeth brodersen
publications editor
dan rubin
publications & literary associate
michael paller
resident dramaturg
WORDS ON PLAYS
made possible by
© 2010 American Conservatory theater, a nonprofit organization. All rights reserved.
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table of contents
.
Characters, Cast, and Synopsis of Scapin
3.
Scapin Design Presentation
7.
Unfinished Clown Business: An Interview with Bill Irwin
by Dan Rubin
15. The Life of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin
by Valerie Hart
17. “I Take It Where I Find It”: Molière’s Commedia
by Michael Paller
21. Early Modern Servants
by Dan Rubin
23. Clowning Around: A Timeline
by Dan Rubin
28. Questions to Consider / For Further Information . . .
FRONT COVER Commedia dell’arte characters: Capitan Babeo and Cucuba, anonymous, 17th century. Museo Teatrale alla
Scala, Milan, Italy. Scala / Art Resource, New York.
OPPOSITE Scapin, by costume designer Beaver Bauer. All costume sketches © 2010 by D. B. Bauer.
NEXT PAGE Boccadasse, Genoa, Italy. Research photograph that inspired Erik Flatmo’s scenic design for Scapin.
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characters, cast, and synopsis of SCAPIN
Molière’s Les fourberies de Scapin (The Tricks of Scapin) premiered at the Palais-Royale in
Paris on May 24, 1671. Bill Irwin and Mark O’Donnell’s adaptation was first produced by
Seattle Repertory Theatre in 1995 and premiered in New York at Roundabout Theatre
Company in 1997. Both productions were directed by Irwin, who also starred as Scapin.
characters and cast
geronteGeoff Hoyle/Rod Gnapp
leander, son of Geronte Patrick Lane
scapin, servant to Geronte
Bill Irwin
zerbinette, beloved of Leander
René Augesen
arganteSteven Anthony Jones
octave, son of ArganteGregory Wallace
sylvestre, servant to Argante
Jud Williford/Richardson Jones
hyacinth, beloved of Octave
Ashley Wickett
nerine, a servant womanOmozé Idehenre
gendarmes and porters
Ben Johnson, Keith Pinto
george, at the “organ”Randy Craig
fred, on percussionKeith Terry
setting
The street outside the houses of Argante and Geronte.
synopsis
A
ct i. Two months ago, Signor Geronte and Signor Argante went away on a business trip together, leaving their respective sons, Leander and Octave, in the care of
their respective servants, Scapin and Sylvestre. While their fathers were abroad, Leander
and Octave both fell in love: Leander with Zerbinette (a gypsy girl) and Octave with
Hyacinth (a penniless foreigner he met at an inn). Upon his return, Argante informed his
son that, during the trip, he arranged for Octave to marry the foreign-born, never-seen
daughter of Geronte. Unfortunately, Octave has already secretly married Hyacinth. Octave
and Sylvestre—fearing retribution from Argante—enlist the schemer Scapin (Geronte’s
servant). Scapin agrees to help.
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Scapin’s first attempt to reason with Argante does little to calm his anger: he threatens
to disinherit his son. In hopes of showing Argante that, relatively speaking, the situation
could be worse, Scapin reveals that Leander has done something much dumber than
Octave (but does not offer details), information that Argante then uses against Geronte,
who subsequently reprimands his son. Leander confronts Scapin for betraying him to his
father, but he is distracted when Sylvestre announces that the gypsies are leaving and will
take Zerbinette with them unless Leander can pay them 500 crowns. Leander turns to
Scapin for help. With Octave needing 200 pistoles to start his life with Hyacinth, Scapin
decides to trick both fathers out of the money their sons need. First, he disguises Sylvestre
as Hyacinth’s fictional brother—a violent and erratic man in need of startup capital for
his mercenary business. Upon meeting this scary character, a petrified Argante agrees to
give him 200 pistoles. Scapin then deceives Geronte into believing that Leander has been
kidnapped by foreigners and faces a life of slavery if a 500-crown ransom is not paid. With
great reluctance, Geronte relinquishes the funds. Scapin delivers both purses to the sons.
A

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ct ii. As Sylvestre entertains Zerbinette and Hyacinth by recounting how Scapin
tricked the fathers out of their money, Scapin takes his revenge on Geronte for telling Leander that he betrayed him. Scapin scares his master into thinking that Hyacinth’s
fictional brother (the violent mercenary) is after him. Terrified, Geronte agrees to hide in
a sack. Pretending to be a battalion of foreign mercenaries, Scapin beats his trapped master
until Geronte realizes what is going on. Scapin flees. Zerbinette, unfamiliar with Geronte,
inadvertently reveals to him how Scapin tricked him out of 500 crowns. Geronte vows to
kill Scapin; Argante, realizing he, too, has been duped, agrees to help exact vengeance.
News comes that the ship carrying Geronte’s daughter has been lost at sea. Geronte has
little time to mourn, however, before he encounters Nerine, his daughter’s servant, who
has been searching for a “Signor Pandolphe” all day. Geronte explains that he changed
his name from Pandolphe for business reasons. Nerine explains that Hyacinth did in fact
arrive safely, but shipwrecked and, unable to find Signor Pandolphe and his estate, penniless. Moreover, she has married. As Geronte laments this turn of events, Nerine reassures
him that Hyacinth has married the son of a wealthy man, a Signor Argante. Unbeknownst
to them, Octave and Hyacinth have coincidentally married exactly the spouses their fathers
wanted them to marry. Furthermore, Zerbinette, it turns out, is the long-lost daughter of
Argante, making her Octave’s sister. Her marriage to Leander is, therefore, acceptable.
At the height of the celebration surrounding these discoveries, Scapin enters, feigning a
mortal injury. Argante quickly forgives him for his schemes, but Geronte does so only on
the condition that Scapin marry Nerine. Scapin flees, and an enormous chase scene ensues.
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scapin design
presentation
Excerpts from Remarks Made to a.c.t. Cast and Creative Team, August 16, 2010
D
uring the first week of rehearsal of each production, the director and designers
present their vision for its design, which is typically the culmination of months of
research, discussion, and textual analysis. This introduction is a kind of “snapshot” of the
creative team’s understanding of the world of the play at the moment they step into the
room with the actors, an understanding that will evolve and grow and perhaps change in
significant ways as the cast brings life and breath and physical action to the playwright’s
words over the following four weeks of rehearsal.
Below are excerpts from remarks made at the first rehearsal of Scapin at a.c.t., which offer
a glimpse into the initial impulses behind the look and feel of the upcoming production.
director /adaptor /actor bill irwin
I want you to know that this is by far the rightest company of actors and team of designers
and stage and production geniuses to have at this play. And there is point number one in
my exegesis: this is a play.
It is tempting (and I’ve fallen prey to this misconception) to think that maybe this is
not a play, that maybe it is more like an armature for gags and business and “comic genius,”
that it is more of a lean, mean laugh machine, a comedy event, than it is play. Absolutely
wrong: this is a play. We will be working towards a very, very funny evening in the theater, but our best hope to get there is by engaging with this text as a play. It is a meeting
of particular characters, with particular needs and passions, and they don’t know what’s
happening next; if we employ our craft right and keep things moving, the audience will
be wondering, “What’s coming next?” at least as much, and hopefully slightly more, than
they’ll be thinking, “That was a good gag.”
The work of this play is complicated by the fact that the playwright, 340 years ago, was
poking fun at the play even as he was writing it, creating what we now knowingly refer to
(as if we invented it) as “metatheater.” It is a piece of theater that Molière and his company—out of their love of theater and love of plays—were using to address the silliness of
some of the theatrical conventions of their day, and, by doing so, revealing how necessary
story and play are in our lives. For those of us working in the theater, it’s the central event.
There’s childbirth and other things [laughter], but doing a play is the central event. We’re
going to do Scapin in such a way that we will invite the audience not only to see the story
of the characters, but also to see their seeing of the story of the characters, in a way that
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hopefully shows how necessary story and identification with characters is in our lives.
[The bottom line is:] No story: no laugh
machine. No characters expressing their particular desires in each moment: no laugh machine.
And, perhaps most importantly, no sense of
grievance for each character: no laugh machine.
Finding all of that is our job and our joy.
Our job is also complicated by the fact
that this is one of those wily-servant plays.
Everywhere in the history of the world, wherever there have been servants, there have been
wily-servant stories, in which the servants are
smarter than the masters and really running
the show. It is important that we embrace all
these traditions, while also keeping in mind the
danger of foregone conclusions. It is easy to say,
“This is the crafty servant, so everything will go
his way,” but it is also important to remember
that in this particular wily-servant play, the title
character has a very spotty record of success. He
fails as much as he succeeds. We’ll mine that
for everything it’s worth. At every moment, as I
said, no one onstage is too sure what’s going to
happen next.
The characters in this play are all caricatures, but they are driven by their needs and the
legitimacy of what they want: that is what will
drive this play towards being a lean, mean laugh
machine. The fathers are, of course, standardissue bullies and caricatures of despotism, but
TOP Hyacinth
(and at this point in my life I have a lot of empaBOTTOM Zerbinette
thy for them) they’re the providers. Nobody else
brings any money to the table. Everyone else
wants to spend it, but nobody is bringing any money to the table except the fathers, and
that’s the position they come from. They are also presented with loss throughout the play:
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a lost daughter; at one point Geronte is told that
his son has been kidnapped. There’s also potential
loss for the young lovers and the servants. Loss is
an underpinning of the play.
costume designer beaver bauer
This is character-driven theater, so we decided
the costumes would have stronger, more saturated
colors than the set, which will be more pale and
faded. We talked a lot about the different social
levels and strata in the costumes of the servants,
the older gentlemen, and the younger people.
Knowing how physically active Bill is, we decided
the servants’ coats would end above their knees, so
we could see a lot of their movement and so their
bodies could be physical and present. Scapin frequently talks about how well-fitted everyone else’s
garments are, so the costumes of the servants will
not be as tightly fit—they will be slightly baggier.
The quality of the fabric is also a distinguishing
factor: the gentlemen will have more sumptuous
fabrics; the servants’ fabrics will be simpler and
plainer.
The fabrics will not be very heavy. We won’t
be using upholstery fabrics; we’ll be using fashion
fabrics, because I really want the fabrics to move
and don’t want the actors to get really hot. In the
costume fittings we’ll find out what lets the actors
move the best. Fittings define proportions: costume drawings are a bunch of lines on paper. You
can either be a slave to the sketch, or adjust it in
a fitting. I happen to be in the “adjusting” camp.

TOP Octave
BOTTOM Leander
scenic designer erik flatmo
The setting is very simple: the street in front of the houses of Geronte and Argante. We have
a view down the street, which ends in a wall and a strip of blue, which is the ocean, because we
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ABOVE Research photo of an Italian street by Erik Flatmo
BELOW Preliminary set model by Erik Flatmo
are in a port city. The facades of the buildings are not naturalistic, they’re a bit more
playful. Elements of our set are inspired
by the Italian designer, Pierro Fornisetti,
but a lot of it comes from my photographs
from when I was in Italy five years ago,
which provided enough material to pattern
all these facades. It all really exists.
We have lots of windows and shutters.
If you’ve been to an Italian city, or any
European urban center, there is a density
to the structures. Just walking down the
street and having all the windows and
doors shut: [it gives a] magnificent feeling of being alone on the street. Also, the
windows, with the shutters opening and
slamming shut, will provide Bill and the
company with opportunities for comedy.

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unfinished clown business
An Interview with Bill Irwin
by dan rubin (may 2010)
B
ill Irwin was an actor before he was a clown. After a few years of clowning with the
Pickle Family Circus, he returned to acting. Now, in Scapin, he’s doing both.
Born in Santa Monica, California, and raised in Southern California and Tulsa,
Oklahoma, Irwin attended Oberlin College in Ohio, where he majored in theater arts.
There he sought refuge from the often cerebral world of drama by studying the history of
clowning. He was hooked. After graduating, he entered the Ringling Brothers and Barnum
& Bailey Clown College, where he learned to appreciate—and transcend—the differences
among clown categories. “Auguste clowning and carpet clowning styles interested me, but
the look of the whiteface interested me too,” Irwin remembers. “I took white makeup . . .
added baggy clothes, and put on the red nose and red wig. It didn’t really conform to any
historical categories, but I liked the feel.”
After Clown College, Irwin came back West to San Francisco, a city that had previously
provided him part-time employment in its Renaissance and Christmas fairs. After a few
months working as a bicycle messenger, he answered an ad in the paper: “Wanted: Jugglers,
Tumblers, Equilibrists.” Larry Pisoni and Peggy Snider, two members of the San Francisco
Mime Troupe, were putting together a circus. Irwin auditioned for them in the Mime
Troupe’s studio, navigating around the motorcycle parked in the middle of the room, and
the chemistry was immediately obvious.
Performing without a tent or live animals, the unconventionally clown-centric Pickle
Family Circus officially opened in May 1975 in the gym of John O’Connell High School
in San Francisco’s Mission District. Later that year, Pisoni and Irwin were joined by Geoff
Hoyle in the center of the ring, where they transformed into the beloved Pickle trio—
Lorenzo Pickle (Pisoni), Willy the Clown (Irwin), and Mr. Sniff (Hoyle)—performing
extended clown acts, complete with dialogue, in parks and schoolyards up and down the
West Coast (and beyond). San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll contends that
their collaboration constituted “the most amazing moment in the history of 20th-century
American circus, three great clowns making each other greater.” Evolving into a beloved
West Coast institution, the Pickle circus—which also included Scapin composer/keyboardist Randy Craig, percussionist Keith Terry, and movement consultant Kimi Okada—
built upon and contributed significantly to the larger comedic tradition that extends from
Aristophanes through Italian commedia, Shakespeare’s fools, and vaudeville into New
Wave Circus and Cirque du Soleil.
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Irwin left the circus in 1980 to create work outside the ring. Combining his unique blend
of acting and clowning, he has created an impressive body of original works, to which New
York’s Signature Theatre dedicated its 2003–04 season. Among them is the comic audienceparticipation escapade Fool Moon (created and performed with David Shiner), which was
seen on the American Conservatory Theater stage in 1998 and 2001 and won Irwin a
special Tony Award for Live Theatrical Presentation. Inducted into the International
Clown Hall of Fame in 1999, Irwin has also earned acclaim for his performances in
“straight” dramatic roles, winning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance of George in the revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, one of many Broadway
appearances that include Waiting for Godot, Bye, Bye Birdie, and Accidental Death of an
Anarchist. He is also known for his work on the screen, both small and large, beginning
with the 1980 film Popeye, which he made with Robin Williams and numerous fellow
Pickle performers. His most recent appearance at a.c.t. was in 2001’s Texts for Nothing, his
powerful interpretation of Samuel Beckett’s prose meditations on human existence.
In 1988, Irwin began a relationship with the Seattle Repertory company when they
helped him develop his Tony Award–winning piece Largely/New York. He returned in their
1992–93 season with Mr Fox: Ruminations on the Life of a Clown, which reunited him with
Geoff Hoyle. Having first discovered Molière in high school (when he played Argan in
The Imaginary Invalid), Irwin teamed up with poet-playwright-humorist Mark O’Donnell
in 1994 to adapt Les fourberies de Scapin for Seattle Rep. They continued working on their
adaptation by long distance while Irwin was in New York for Fool Moon and on the road.
“For a while in early ’94,” Irwin recalls, “I was down in El Paso with my wife and son, so
I communed with Molière in Texas while Mark translated straight from the 1671 French,
until we finally had a completed script.” The successful production moved to Roundabout
Theatre Company in New York in 1997.
Since then, says Irwin, Scapin has sat in his drawer—and in the back of his mind. We
sat down with him to ask why Molière’s late work continues to inspire him, and why it
requires the sensibilities of both the actor and the clown to do it justice.
how did you get started in clowning?
From this vantage I’m very glad I had some training as an actor first. It’s informed my
love of clowning, and my work as a clown; now, of course, I’m making my living more and
more as an actor, not as a clown. I guess without being completely conscious of it as a kid,
I had a fascination with clowns, and then as a young actor I realized that I would just as
soon follow that. Thank God I did that training as an actor first, because it just grounds
you differently.
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how is a clown
different from an
actor?
Like a Supreme Court
justice, I know it when I
see it. Some people operate at a magnitude of
­storytelling that is slightly
different from that of a
straight-ahead actor who
is serving a text. There’s
just something about
when a really terrific
Bill Irwin. Photo by Terry Lorant.
clown does something. It
has a different depth of
meaning. I hope to be able to do both, acting and clowning. I hope I haven’t lost either set
of muscles—that I can be a complete team-player actor one minute and something slightly
different from that the next minute, depending on what’s called for.
And I use the term “clown” very broadly. I’m putting people you wouldn’t normally think
of as clowns in that category. Al Pacino, for instance. He played Jack Kevorkian [in You Don’t
Know Jack] on hbo. It’s really worth seeing. Pacino as Jack Kevorkian lifts the project into
something else. I emailed John Goodman, who is also in it, and said, “Wow! You were all fantastic.” He emailed me back and said, “I don’t know how Al did what he did, and I was there.”
How do you define who is an actor and who is a clown? I don’t know except to say that
the demands of the crafts are different: usually clowning involves somehow acknowledging
a live audience (or camera audience), somehow directly relating to them.
did you see an opportunity to do that with SCAPIN ?
I saw that you could do something interesting with this play, more than other Molière
plays. The others don’t seem to lend themselves to adaptation, or ask for adaptation, the
way Scapin does.
I suspect there’s a story about this play that I haven’t heard yet, and I keep waiting for
Molière scholars to confirm it for me. I’ll be disappointed if they destroy my theory. In fact,
I won’t let them—I’ll stick to it even in the absence of facts. [laugh] But I imagine that this
play came about because Molière was in trouble with the authorities. His company (like
all regional theaters) was in financial trouble and he had to get something onstage, but he
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
was told, “Don’t you dare write any more Tartuffes. Keep your head down.” So Molière, in
my theory, turned to this, his second-to-last play before he died, and created something
about the theater.
I can’t read it in the original French, unfortunately, but my coadaptor, Mark O’Donnell,
could. Molière (who, by the way, probably wouldn’t have called himself a clown but was
of classic clown dimension), like Dario Fo, wrote his plays, acted in them, directed them,
and shaped them around himself. He knew where the laughs were. He wrote this play that
feels, on the surface, like a commedia plot exercise, but I think Scapin (and this is another
reason why the play lends itself to continued life and reinvention) is really a reflection on
the theater: a celebration and declaration of love for the theater. At the same time, for
him (and us) it is like poking fun at your family: in the original French there are lines like,
“Here comes my son as if his cue had been called,” and you know that it probably made
people laugh both on- and offstage. In a previous production, we had Sylvestre swinging
onstage in an attempt at bravado. We’re not sure we’re going to be able to do that with this
set design. In the script the line reads, “I’m coming down,” but if we can’t have the actor
swing on we are thinking about changing it to “I’m coming downstage,” because Sylvestre
is besotted with being an actor, and here he is standing in front of an actual audience who
is conscious of him. So he gives a stage direction.
John Turturro made a movie called Illuminata—I had a role in it, one I loved—which
is really about the theater. In the movie, the theater manager says to his actor (and maybe
John found some historical reference somewhere for this), “Demetrio,” or whatever his
name is, “why are you looking at the audience instead of playing your character?” And
the actor says, “Well, I know they’re there. And I see that they know that I’m here. And I
know that they know that I know they’re there. And I just think, really, that I should look
at them.” Either that’s the narcissistic actor or it’s the brilliant clown. Or both. It’s where
storyteller meets entertainer.
That reminds me of another old theater joke. A man goes to the doctor and says, “I’m
miserable. I hurt everywhere. I don’t have any will to live. I’m depressed.” And the doctor
says, “Well, I can’t find anything physically wrong with you, but you should go see Grock
the clown. He’s playing in town. He’ll make you feel better.” And the man sobs, “But doctor, I am Grock.” That’s told about every famous clown.
are you saying that most clowns are driven to perform and seek a
relationship with the audience because they’re unhappy?
It’s a pervasive cliché that every clown is masking despair. I don’t know about that, but I
will say this: laughter is a powerful thing. And it is much desired. If you feel you can con-
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trol it, or convince a producer that you can control it . . . people try to make people laugh
as a defense and as a way to empower themselves. It’s like a drug. It’s like being attractive.
[Jokingly] There’s also a great love of humanity and enlightenment, but it’s partly about
the power. It’s like rock musicians who say, “You go into rock ’n’ roll to get girls. Don’t let
anybody tell you differently.” That’s, of course, not the whole story, but there is an element
of that that’s true. Laughter is just too powerful a feeling. If a kid in third grade realizes he’s
able to make the class laugh, God help him. God help the teacher. God help everybody.
Like all power, it’s addictive.
a lot of adaptations attempt to be hip and modern, but you seem
to achieve a timelessness with your text.
We could be accused of that, too, but I really feel that Mark and I are serving Molière’s
text and staying true to his vision. I have shelves filled with straight-ahead adaptations at
home. They tend to be by English translators, so they’re translating into an English that
we don’t really speak. And they’re trying to translate it line by line. That is one of the
accomplishments I am proudest of: in the original, it’s “block of text, block of text, block
of text, one-liner, block of text,” but we smashed that down to a kind of vaudeville patter.
Scapin is funny in ways that are different from Molière’s other plays, and I think it is
funnier overall. Even in a crusty 1930s English translation I think it’s funnier than, say,
Tartuffe, which may be a great play but is not really a funny play. [Humorist] S. J. Perelman
wrote home from school once and said, “I’ve been cast in one of the allegedly hilarious
plays of Molière.” Because everybody thinks that he’s the basis of Western comedy, well
then, Molière must be a hoot. Sometimes he is. Sometimes not. The Lucy Show can follow
its roots back to Molière, but that doesn’t quite mean that he was funny in the same way
that The Lucy Show is funny . . . there are common roots of architecture.
when did you start working with geoff hoyle, with whom you are
reuniting for this production?
It wasn’t technically until the second season of [Pickle Family Circus (pfc)] shows [1976]
that Geoff joined us. He had just come from England with street theater skills. Geoff,
[pfc cofounder, artistic director, and clown] Larry [Pisoni], and I spent a lot of time in the
circus ring together. The night before last we went to Teatro ZinZanni: Sean Penn was
raising money for his Haitian relief organization. Robin Williams was doing the auctioneering, which was a wonderful event in itself. Hoyle and I had worked with him on [the
1980 Robert Altman film] Popeye and we heckled him and Geoff ended up onstage with
him briefly, semiclothed. Robin, back in the days when we were shooting that movie on
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the island of Malta, was crazy about Geoff. We were on this island: we had to entertain
ourselves, so we would have talent shows, and Geoff would utterly steal the show—from
Robin. So Geoff ’s an example of that mix of octane—some flames are yellow, some are
blue—because he’s a clown and a terrific actor, too, and like all of us who have hit a certain
age, he’s returning to acting roles.
With Geronte, the character Geoff plays in Scapin, we’re going to have a noteworthy
mix of an actor who is telling a story from the point of view of a character who exists
whether an audience is there or not, and the point of view of a clown who acknowledges the
audience and makes their presence part of the story. For example: during a performance,
somebody may sneeze in the quiet of the upper balcony—just that isolated sneeze—and
the clown’s muscular response is to do something. That’s a crucial difference between
clowning and acting. There are shows, of course, where I would deserve to lose my job if I
followed that impulse. When [I’m working strictly as an actor and] I have that impulse to
look up when somebody sneezes or coughs, I realize I’m not fully concentrating enough on
the proper set of muscles. At the same time, I think, well, it’s a good sign that I thought
about doing it but stopped myself.
There are plays that ask for a dimension of clowning, like [the work of ] Edward Albee.
If you have zero clowning in your dna, then I don’t think you are going to serve Edward’s
plays very well. He was adopted into, and raised by, the Albee/Keith family, who owned a
vaudeville circuit, so there were vaudevillians over at his house while he was growing up.
So in [performing] Edward’s plays you shouldn’t “take” to the audience, but you better have
some dimension of clown understanding. He writes very funny characters. George in Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is one of the funniest characters in theater. Almost too funny. It’s
almost like a stand-up comedy routine. If you can fold that into the character, it’s great. If
it gets away from you in either direction . . . bad news.
Beckett’s texts also require a clown’s understanding. Nathan Lane said of Waiting for
Godot, “If you don’t make this play funny, it’s a long fucking night in the theater.” And he
was right.
What exactly the mixture is for Scapin is what we’ll be working on in rehearsal. And
one of the reasons I want to return to it is that I have unfinished clown business with it.
what else are you looking forward to in returning to this piece?
will you do anything differently?
I’m excited to sit inside the play with a greater maturity. It needs to keep moving. If it gets
slow, it gets deadly. But if you let speed dictate, it goes wrong as well. I think I rushed it
too much the first time, 15 years ago. I want all the characters really to live in the dilemmas
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of the story. I want the audience to have the pleasure of watching the characters squirm,
and, I hope, of wondering always what will happen next.
Seattle Rep, God bless them, is really responsible for our adaptation. We did it there in
’94, ’95. It was a very successful production, but I wanted to return to the play, so we did it
again with a very different scenic design in New York three years later. Again, it was successful, and there was talk of a move to Broadway (as there always is), but the show didn’t
really feel right for that.
Then the piece sat in my drawer. I kept mentioning it to [a.c.t. Artistic Director] Carey
[Perloff ], because she would always ask me, “What do you want to do?” I kept mentioning
Scapin, but she’d say, “There was a production of Scapin my first year here, so we can’t do
it.” But I told her that this was a totally different adaptation. I would bring it up from time
to time. Then she called me one day: “I read it on the airplane. We have to do it!”
She introduced me to Jud Williford, and she was right in saying that he will live inside
the role of Sylvestre, again with just the right mix of clown and actor. Each one of these
roles is different in that way. The role of Ashley Wickett’s young Hyacinth requires a different mix from Geoff ’s crusty old Pantalone-style father. Hoyle, by the way, does the most
inspired Pantalone interpretation that you will ever see. It’s accessible to Americans; it’s
not encrusted in Italian rules and traditions that we’re not privy to.
and scapin is a zanni?
I think so. I guess so. But the thing about commedia . . . I love it to death, but it’s like fire:
it’s beautiful, it’s life sustaining, but don’t put your hand in it.
because it ’s too confining?
Commedia’s energy comes with a lot of historical and scholarly baggage. There’s an industry of people telling you how not to do it. When you watch contemporary commedia, it’s
very easy to get distracted by that. That’s why I’m glad Molière’s characters don’t have
those classic names. If they were called “Zanni” and “Pantalone,” the play would immediately become more difficult. [Carlo Goldoni’s 18th-century comedy] Servant of Two
Masters is a great but really difficult play that is burdened with those character names:
Brighella, Pantalone. For me watching, that makes it harder to get into.

why are you excited to return to scapin with greater maturity?
It’s a way for me to reenter the clown world, while doing justice to a play—and without
having to get in and out of a trunk eight shows a week.
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and scapin almost acts as a father figure to his young master, so
the age difference seems appropriate.
Yes, and we’ve tried to bring that out in the adaptation. I feel it in the original, and we tried
to make it clearer. One of the hardest things to do, in this story and any story from that era,
is to give contemporary audiences a feeling for the master/servant relationships of the time.
it ’s not what you expect. the older master leaves . . .
. . . and the servants are put in charge of the younger masters. Right.

and then they have to choose
which master to listen to.
damned if you do, damned if you
don’t.
That’s what happens in Molière. There’s a
richness that we don’t entirely get. Young
people back then were very different from
young people now: circumstances often
forced them to wait around for their parents
to die, to wait to inherit the resources. All
of Molière’s plays are filled with the rage of
the young and the counter-rage of the old:
Willy the Clown (Bill Irwin, right) and Mr. Sniff (Geoff Hoyle) “Oh, you just want to see me fall over, don’t
share a trunk. Photo by Terry Lorant.
you. Well, until I do, you won’t get any of it!”
All of that tension. And then the servant/
master tensions: that’s hard for us now to analogize. We’ve looked for ways to get that
complexity and to bring it out. Anybody playing Geronte[, Scapin’s older master,] has to
be appealing onstage, but you also have to understand and root for Scapin when he puts
him in a bag and beats him.
that physical violence seems difficult to laugh at.
We have to set it up. I think we have to feel that he deserves it. There is a deep cauldron
of rage welling up in most of the characters in the play, and particularly in Scapin. He
doesn’t need much of a trigger. That is one of the resentments that fuels commedia plays:
the servants are smarter than the masters, they know it, and the masters ask the servants
to bail them out with their wit. It’s so unjust—I hope it’s funny, too.
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the life of jean-baptiste poquelin
by valerie hart
T
he comedy master known as Molière was
baptized Jean-Baptiste Poquelin on January
15, 1622, in Paris. His mother, Marie Cressé, died
ten years later, having borne six children in six
and a half years. His father, Jean the elder, was a
successful upholsterer who purchased the post of
tapissier ordinaire du roi, or royal furnisher. Young
Poquelin was educated at the rigorous Jesuit
Collège de Clermont, which, as the Lycée Louisle-Grand (so renamed by Louis xiv), trained many
other brilliant Frenchmen, including Voltaire,
Pierre Gassendi, and Cyrano de Bergerac.
An important part of Poquelin’s upbringing
was the regular visits he made with his maternal
grandfather to the farces and tragedies performed Jean-Baptiste Poquelin de Molière, French school,
at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, one of the two indoor 17th century. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans /
theaters in Paris—where a trio of famous clowns Lauros / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library.
would close any play—and the fair at SaintGermain. Also influential was Poquelin’s long,
close friendship with the Italian actor-mime Tiberio Fiorelli, who came to Paris in 1640.
Poquelin studied law after finishing his secondary education and was admitted to the
bar in 1641. He renounced this life in 1643 and, determined to seek a living on the stage,
joined with nine others to establish the Illustre-Théâtre. He took his stage name, Molière,
in 1644, presumably to shield his family from the embarrassment of association with the
disreputable acting profession. Three of the founders of the new troupe were members
of the established theatrical Béjart family, which included the successful tragedienne
Madeleine. She and Molière began a long and fruitful association that ranged from
romantic to eventually purely professional; in 1662 Molière married Madeleine’s daughter,
Armande Béjart, an event that generated scandalized uproar throughout Parisian society
(it was widely rumored that Molière was Armande’s father).
The Illustre-Théâtre fought a losing battle for financial success in Paris, in large part
because they were considered unsuccessful at playing tragedy, the dominant dramatic form
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
of the time. When the company eventually collapsed, Molière and his associates fled the
city to tour the French provinces with another troupe. During their 13 years in provincial exile, comedy as a dramatic form grew in popularity; Molière wrote, directed, and
performed several during this period, including his first two known plays: L’étourdi (The
Blunderer, 1655) and Le dépit amoureux (The Amorous Quarrel, 1656).
Molière’s troupe eventually returned to the capital and in October 1658 presented a program at the Louvre that included his comedy Le docteur amoureux (The Amorous Doctor).
King Louis xiv favored it over everything else on the program, and its success secured
for Molière’s company the patronage of both the king and his brother, Philippe, the duc
d’Orléans. The company became known as le troupe du roi and was installed in the Théâtre
du Petit-Bourbon, which they shared with an Italian commedia dell’arte troupe that
included Fiorelli. (Molière’s company would later form the foundation of the ComédieFrançaise, honored to this day as the national theater of France.) From then on Molière
focused increasingly on his own work as a writer of comedy and on his responsibilities as
actor/manager/producer of a company.
Once established in Paris, Molière went on to write and act in a series of plays that
satirized the manners and morals of Parisian society and the royal court while winning the
enduring admiration of the king: Les précieuses ridicules (The Affected Young Ladies, 1659),
Sganarelle (1660), L’école des maris (The School for Husbands, 1661), L’école des femmes (The School
for Wives, 1662), Tartuffe (1664), Dom Juan (1665), Le misanthrope (1666), Le médecin malgré
lui (The Doctor in Spite of Himself, 1666), L’avare (The Miser, 1668), George Dandin (1668), Le
bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman, 1670), Les fourberies de Scapin (The Tricks of
Scapin, 1671), and Les femmes savantes (The Learned Ladies, 1672), among many others.
The king’s favor earned Molière the jealousy of his theatrical and social rivals, and his
unyielding and unerring mockery of the hypocrisy of Parisian social and religious life
engendered the ire of the Catholic Church. These two groups would dog Molière for the
rest of his life, causing him to struggle constantly to hold his company together.
A life spent traversing the extremes of success and adversity exhausted Molière. On
February 17, 1673, at age 51, Molière eventually collapsed backstage while playing the title
role of The Imaginary Invalid. He was conveyed to his house in the rue de Richelieu,
where he soon died. After two priests refused to hear Molière’s deathbed renunciation of
his profession—a common practice of dying actors, who were forbidden by Church law to
be buried in consecrated ground—Armande requested special permission of the king and the
archbishop so her husband could be buried with appropriate sanctity. The king agreed, but the
archbishop stipulated that the burial be held without ceremony, at night. Molière was buried
after sunset on February 21 in the cemetery of Saint-Joseph.
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“i take it where i find it”
Molière’s Commedia
by michael paller
A
ll writers borrow. They use what’s around them: history and current events; novels,
plays, and stories that they pick up in the course of their reading and then walk off
with; their own and their families’ lives—alienating relatives by revealing secrets and bad
behavior is a writer’s occupational hazard. Molière borrowed so much from the commedia
dell’arte—the Italian comic troupes known for their virtuoso improvisations on stock characters and their emphasis on physical acting—in terms of people, situations, and point of
view that it’s hard to pinpoint where commedia ends and Molière begins.
For 15 years until his death in 1673, Molière’s company and an Italian commedia troupe
shared a Parisian theater: first the Petit-Bourbon and, beginning in 1660, the grand PalaisRoyale. The Italian company was led by Tiberio Fiorelli, inventor of Scaramouche, the
character described by commedia scholar Pierre Louis Duchartre as a valet who “loves all
women and bottles.” Molière is said to have modeled one of his most famous characters,
Sganarelle, closely on Scaramouche. Indeed, a jealous contemporary of Molière characterized his method of creating Sganarelle not so much as modeling as stealing. He described
Molière as holding up a mirror to Fiorelli and imitating every “contortion, posture, and
grimace of the great Scaramouche.” In any case, Molière and Fiorelli were close friends,
and no doubt the learning went both ways. It was said of Fiorelli: “He was Molière’s master, and Nature was his own.”
Molière’s attraction to commedia predated
his meeting with Fiorelli. His first notable
SCAPIN’S NAME
success, L’étourdi (The Blunderer), was based
“Scapino” comes from the
on a commedia scenario, or plot outline, by
Italian scappare, meaning to
the actor Niccolo Barbieri, who had writflee or escape, a comment
ten it out and published it as a complete
on the character’s lithe nature
play. Barbieri also happened to originate
and propensity for flight when
the servant character called Scapino, who—
intrigues turn sour.
along with Scaramouche, the servant figure
Brighella, and Arlecchino (Harlequin)—form
Scapin’s complicated family tree.
Molière borrowed everything from commedia that wasn’t nailed down, including such
situations and stock characters as the greedy old man called a pantalone, who is perpetu-
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
ally terrified of being cuckolded by his much younger wife or robbed of his daughter and
wealth by an undeserving—meaning poor—young suitor; the wily servants who bring
the lovers together; and others. Molière wasn’t alone, of course, in his assiduous mining
of commedia ore. In The Taming of the Shrew, Gremio is referred to as a “pantaloon,” and
there’s speculation that Shylock, who we’re told bemoans the loss of his daughter and his
ducats in the same breath, first occurred to Shakespeare as a pantalone figure.
Equally important was the influence of the Italians’ acting style. French acting in the
mid-17th century was static, grave, declamatory, and often so loud and intense that it
was alleged to give actors apoplexy onstage. Whether that was literally true or not, the
commedia-inspired comedies that Molière was writing required a style in which they
could be effectively played. The Italians were known for their liveliness, spontaneity, and
natural speech, and the style that Molière developed from observing them was swift, light,
graceful, and physical.
The commedia players themselves were hardly amateurs when it came to the art of
borrowing. They took their physical approach to acting from the ropedancing, miming,
tumbling, and other acrobatics their ancestors had done in fairs and festivals in the classical era of Greece and Rome and that lived on in the street and fair entertainments that
were ubiquitous in Renaissance Italy. The characters and situations that Molière took
from them they had acquired from the ancient Atellan farces of southern Italy, which
had among their recurring characters a comic old man, a braggart, and a gluttonous
fool. These figures in turn have roots in the comedy of Hellenistic Greece, where the
same characters are found alongside separated lovers, a shrewish wife, and the usual wily
servants. It’s easy to follow their footprints beyond commedia and Molière into music
hall, vaudeville, and the great early film comedians such as Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd
into television sitcoms.
The commedia actors were virtuosos not only in physical comedy and improvisation
but also in prodigious feats of memory. The best of them were voracious readers; those
who played the lovers, for example, were expected to learn all the new romantic poetry
so they could turn it into dialogue when they improvised a scene.
Molière didn’t limit himself to his commedia colleagues when searching out material for
Scapin. He brazenly took a line from a 17-year-old play called Le pédant joué (The Pedant
Imitated), by Cyrano de Bergerac. It was considered the great punch line of its day and
was still associated with Cyrano, but Molière, who said forthrightly that his policy in these
matters was “I take it where I find it,” didn’t hesitate (the line has something to do with
a boat). Using the line may have inspired him next to borrow an event from Cyrano’s life
involving a hammer and a scaffold.
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Italian and French Comedians Playing in Farces, 1670, attributed to Verio. Comédie Française, Paris, France / Giraudon / The
Bridgeman Art Library International.
Les fourberies de Scapin (The Tricks of Scapin), which premiered on May 24, 1671, was born
of twin necessities: to fill an empty theater and to stay out of trouble. Molière’s most recent
play, Psyché, written in collaboration with Corneille, had been a big success at court, and
he hoped to transfer it to the Palais-Royale. Psyché, however, was an elaborate comedyballet, a spectacle featuring music by Lully, dozens of dancers and singers, and characters
who floated across the stage borne aloft by a vast, custom-built machine. This contraption,
originally constructed to fly the entire royal family and their attendants in an opera called
Ercole Amante (Hercules in Love), proved too heavy to sit on the Palais-Royale’s stage without alterations, which took six months to accomplish. Molière could ill afford to keep the
theater dark for so long, so to fill the gap he dashed off Scapin.
His plays satirizing the morés of the aristocracy and emerging middle class had kept
Molière in and out of hot water for years. Tartuffe, written and rewritten between 1664
and 1669, offended the Church and the powerful religious party that surrounded Louis
xiv; on the order of the president of the Paris parliament the play was banned, and the
archbishop of Paris forbade his parishioners from seeing it on pain of excommunication.
It was only the fact that Molière was protected by his patron the king that saved him from
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
likely excommunication himself. In 1669, he presented a revised version of Tartuffe at the
Palais-Royale. It was an instant hit and one of Molière’s few real financial successes. This
must have been gratifying; still the play left him with powerful enemies and lingering bad
feelings. An inoffensive domestic comedy was called for. Yet, while Scapin seems to fit that
description, Molière couldn’t help giving a good nose-thumbing to authority in a play that
celebrates freedom, joy, and the triumph of resourceful servants.
Scapin was a failure. If Tartuffe was too dangerous, many of Molière’s supporters thought
the new play was too slight. One of them said that in Scapin’s knockabout comedy he didn’t
recognize the author of The Misanthrope. If Molière gave offense, he found himself in
trouble. If he didn’t, he was deemed insufficiently profound. It’s no wonder he died at 51.
The Fiorelli company would also experience a run-in with censorship following
Molière’s death. It had resided in Paris since 1661, and for much of that time had the
reputation of being bawdy and even scurrilous as well as brilliant, but since it performed
much of its dialogue in Italian, audiences either didn’t notice or they looked the other way.
Around the time that the commedia troupe moved into the Palais-Royale, however, they
began mixing French with their Italian, and their offenses, if that’s what they were, were
unmasked. In 1696, they were warned to tone down their performances or pay the consequences. The following year, they announced a play called La fausse prude (The False Prude),
which apparently satirized the sexual attitudes and habits of the king’s wife, Madame de
Maintenon. Before they could perform it, the chief of police received a letter from the palace: “The King has dismissed his Italian Players, and his Majesty commands me to write
you that you shall tomorrow, May 13th, 1697, close their theater forever.” The king banned
them from performing within 30 miles of Paris, their home for more than a century.
The troupe’s leaders returned to Italy. Other members stayed on to play at Paris’s two
annual fairs. They, sang, mimed, did acrobatics, danced on a wire suspended above a trestle
stage, and found other ways of telling a story without dialogue. It would be 19 years before
they were allowed to play again in a theater.
Meanwhile, the great tradition of taking it where one finds it continues in the 21st century. In translating and adapting this version of Scapin, Bill Irwin and Mark O’Donnell
have borrowed one or two things very close to home.
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early modern servants
by dan rubin
A
s Molière was writing Les fourberies de Scapin, France (and all of Western Europe)
was almost halfway through a 30-year recession that spanned the 1660s to the 1690s.
The wealthy increased their holdings by foreclosing on indebted properties, pushing the
rural elite (land-owning tenant farmers) down into the life of the undernourished and
poorly clothed peasantry. Merchants fared a little better, but not much. Throughout
the 17th century, in France’s severely unequal society, only ten percent of the population
(property owners) were guaranteed regular meals. It was not a bad time to be a servant: at
least servants had jobs. During the second half of the 17th century, the number of servants
increased rapidly.
The concept of servitude in Early Modern Europe (1650–1800) did not denote a simple
division between higher and lower class. Servants were not, in fact, a social class. The
category could include everyone from the lowest-paid scullions to members of the nobility
acting as “serving-gentlemen” and “-gentlewomen.” As a career, servitude was open to just
about anyone. Peasants headed to towns and cities from rural locations to work their way
out of poverty. Service in great households was also popular among lesser-ranked nobles,
because it offered the possibility of advancement; noblewomen entered household service
because it was one of the few salaried positions open to them at all, providing a means to
secure a dowry and marry (or to escape an unhappy marriage). Interestingly, nobles rapidly disappeared from household service after 1650—even as the number of total servants
increased—as less degrading avenues for advancement opened up: service in the bureaucracy and army, attendance at court and Parisian salons, and education in academies and
colleges.
Early modern France had a stable social structure at its core, but it was a remarkably
fluid society, both geographically and socially. It was in this way similar to the Roman
society that formed the basis of Plautine comedy, a foundation of commedia dell’arte and
Scapin. The Roman practice of authority, auctoritas, was not something that was granted or
static: it was determined by one’s continued record of achievement. Rome was a society of
endless rankings that assigned unequal rights and responsibilities based on gender, juridical status, geographical provenance, wealth, and cultural/intellectual achievement. Scholar
Kathleen McCarthy explains, “Because status could be defined in so many different ways
and because status was so important in the functioning of Roman society, the contesting
of status, the continual battle to define and assert oneself in preference to others, was a
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
defining feature of Roman life. In such a society (almost) no one
is permanently and universally subordinated and (almost) no one
is permanently and universally dominant.”
This reality of social uncertainty is at the root of the master/
slave relationships we find in Plautine comedy—and of the master/servant relationships of Scapin. Like status, power in ancient
Rome was mercurial. Mastery was not a given, but expressed
through a series of events. Household authority was a personal
matter, meaning different masters treated their slaves differently;
furthermore, slaves were not powerless: they had ways of making
mastery a labor-intensive enterprise by obeying the letter but not
the spirit of their masters’ orders. They were able to bargain for
compensation for well-performed
tasks. Advice for masters at the
time could be summarized simply:
“Good slaves should be treated
Sylvestre
well.” The promise of reward
(ultimately, freedom) was an important instrument by which
masters could motivate and control slaves.
Plautus divided his fictional subordinates into the good
slave, who accepts the structure of reward and punishment,
and the servus callidus, or “clever slave,” who is defined by
disobedience and disbelief in the system. The servus callidus
was not only a commentary on slavery; he also served as the
hero for an entire population, anxious about constantly jockeying for position in the many minutely gradated hierarchies. Likewise, the patresfamilias were not simply masters.
Nerine
They at once represented an oppressive authority—a fitting
target for an audience’s contempt—while also mocking,
through their weaknesses, the widely held insecurities of a people one mistake away from
losing status. SOURCES Andrew Calder, Molière: The Theory and Practice of Comedy (London: The Athlone Press, 1993); Kathleen
McCarthy, Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); James
B. Collins, “The Economic Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies, vol. 16, no. 2 (1989); ibid.,
“Geographic and Social Mobility in Early Modern France,” Journal of Social History, vol. 24, no. 3 (1991); Sharon Kettering, “The
Household Service of Early Modern French Noblewomen,” French Historical Studies, vol. 20, no. 1 (1997).
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clowning around: a timeline
by dan rubin
“Laughter is a way of thinking. If you feel a laugh from an audience,
the joy is to feel, ‘Oooh, we’ve shared that idea,’ and that will set up the
next one. When I hear a laugh, it’s an expression of an idea received.”
—Bill Irwin (1995)
7th c. bce The tradition of Western theater is started in ancient Greece by itinerant clowns
and acrobats (deikelistai or “those who put on plays”). They devise short, improvisational
farces (mimos or “mimes”) around loose plots, lampooning daily life and mythology using
stock characters like the braggart soldier and the larcenous servant.
485–67 bce Epicharmus is the first noted author to script plays for the mimos; Plato will
later dub him the father of comic poetry.
342–292 bce The Greek dramatist Menander introduces New Comedy, which will serve
as inspiration for Roman comedy writers Plautus (254–184 bce) and Terence (195–159 bce).
3rd c. bce–476 ce The deikelistai tradition appears in southern Italy as phlyakes comedy,
inspiring a tradition of Atellan farces that will thrive until the fall of the Roman empire.
Mimes are patronized by emperors, and, as adultery becomes a favorite theme, onstage
lewdness becomes customary. This earns mimes the enmity of early Christians.
the middle ages (5th–15th c. ce) Throughout Europe, the most fortunate entertainers
find permanent patronage as court jesters, but the majority work as disenfranchised street
artists or rove the land as nomadic performers. Mimes adapt into all-around entertainers,
combining comedy, magic tricks, music, and acrobatics, often finding audiences at country
fairs. Some become mountebanks, fraudulent “doctors” who publically perform pranks and
jests while peddling their miraculous cures, or “zannis,” the doctors’ disruptive assistants.
The zannis’ primary task is to attract an audience; during the presentation, they provide
comedic commentary.

16th c. The English word “clown” arises from colonus and clod, meaning farmer or rustic.
Based in part on mystery-play characters, clowns are exaggerations of naïve stupidity.
As suggested by Hamlet’s speech to the players, clowns during the Elizabethan period
maintain a healthy disrespect for written text, preferring to invent their comedy in the
moment of performance. In 1594 William Kemp joins Shakespeare’s company, the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men, as its first clown; he is succeeded in 1599 by Richard Armin.
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16th c.–18th c. Commedia dell’arte (which
translates into “comedy of professional
In the 1620s, the mountebank
actors”) troupes become a common sight in
Mondor and his zanni, Jean
Europe, especially Italy and France, someSalomon Tabarin, set up shop
times performing at court and in theaters, but
in Paris. Their act depended on
more often on makeshift stages in the marwitty dialogue, several scenes of
ketplace. Commedia characters are rooted in
which were borrowed by Molière
Italian folklore and ancient Roman comedy.
for Scapin, including the sackAlso known as commedia di zanni, much of
beating scene.
the action of these performances is instigated
by servants, who frequently perform in pairs: a
clever first zanni (e.g., Brighella or his brother
Scapino) and a stupid second zanni (e.g., Arlecchino, Pedrolino, or Gilles). Performers often
play the same role throughout their careers, and, while every commedia performance is
improvised around a basic scenario, they often employ lazzi (stock tricks or short bits) they
have perfected. As a distinct genre, commedia dell’arte will gradually disappear during the
second half of the 18th century as elements are absorbed into the written dramatic canon.
Harassment from authorities in England and France throughout the 18th century
pushes many comedic performers towards silent pantomime, which, lacking offensive language, suffers fewer restrictions. An emphasis on physical action arises: chase scenes filled
with a succession of practical jokes, displays of acrobatic agility, animal impersonation,
violent slapstick, and stage trick work (often using trapdoors). Out of this era comes Joseph
Grimaldi (1778–1837), whose contribution to the tradition of clowning is so great that the
most enduring nickname for clowns is “Joey.” In terms of makeup (using whiteface), costuming, and propwork, Grimaldi is a trendsetter, earning him distinction as the father of
modern clowning.
MOLIÈRE’S MOUNTEBANK

1671 Molière writes Les fourberies de Scapin, borrowing commedia themes and characters.
1768 The first “circus” (from the Latin circenses, for chariot race) is primarily an equestrian
affair devised by Sergeant Major Philip Astley on the outskirts of London. Early programming consists mostly of trick riding but also includes conjuring, tumbling, strong-man
acts, and performances by the clown Fortunelly—all within a 13-meter-diameter ring still
used today.
1770 Astley’s first circus-clown act, Billy Button, or The Tailor’s Ride to Brentford, pits a
tailor’s need to get somewhere in a hurry against his horse’s unwillingness to cooperate.
Early circus comedy gives rise to two areas of 19th-century clowning: the equestrian clown,
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who performs horse-centric comedic skits, and the mischievous clown, who spars with the
dignified ringmaster to fill the gaps between circus acts.
1782 One of Astley’s horsemen, Charles Hughes, gives the modern circus its name when
he founds the Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic.
1792 John Bill Ricketts of the Royal Circus establishes the first permanent circus buildings in the United States. The clown is a pivotal figure in the American one-ring circus,
becoming notably more verbose than his European counterparts. Two of the earliest
American clowns, Matthew Sully and John Durang, include song in their repertoire. Many
of the most famous American clowns also excel in acrobatics and other odd skills (magic,
ventriloquism, etc.). The most remarkable clown of the second half of the 19th century is
Dan Rice, who, at his height, earns $1,000 a week—twice the salary of President Lincoln,
whom he often entertains.
1858 The first known female circus clown is Amelia
Butler, who tours with Nixon’s Great American
Circus. (Women were performers long before “legitimate theater” accepted them onstage, playing in
ancient mime troupes and commedia dell’arte as
lovers and maids.)
1869 Tom Belling originates the auguste—a clownish character defined by stupidity, clumsiness, and
odd appearance. The role is popularized in 1878 by
Englishman James Guyon and visually defined by
ill-fitting evening clothes and hair waxed to stick
straight up. At first the auguste performs without
makeup, but when the character is supposed to be
drunk the performer reddens his nose. This leads to
the use of the popular red rubber nose. The auguste
joins the traditional whiteface clown in the circus
Le zani ou Scapin (The Zanni or Scapin), by
ring, where he serves as the comic butt of jokes. By
Jacques Callot (c. 1618)
comparison, the whiteface clown grows cleverer and
more refined. Full-length clown sketches become standard fare, resulting in the clown
“entree”: comic interludes sometimes lasting as long as 20 minutes.

1871–81 p. t. Barnum starts p. t. Barnum’s Museum, Menagerie & Circus in Brooklyn, New
York, a museum featuring human and animal oddities advertised as “The Greatest Show
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on Earth.” In 1872, the show begins traveling by rail and a second ring is added. Barnum
partners with James Anthony Bailey in 1881 to form Barnum & Bailey Circus.
1885 Benjamin Franklin Keith partners with Edward Franklin Albee ii (adoptive grandfather of playwright Edward Franklin Albee iii) to open a continuous 12-hour-a-day variety
show at the Bijou Theatre in Boston. This marks the birth of vaudeville, which collects
high and low elements from the country’s legitimate and itinerant amusements and houses
them in stable urban venues.
1888 Barnum & Bailey adds a third ring and surrounding track under a “big top” that
can seat up to 16,000 spectators. Unable to be heard in the large complex, clowns are
silenced.
1889 The motion picture is invented. For the next ten years, one-minute films, including
short comedies, will be produced for viewing on coin-operated machines in penny arcades.
1903 Grock gets his first major breakthrough. He will become one of the most famous
interpreters of the auguste role. He concentrates on refining a single entree into a one-man
show, which grows to be an hour long.
The first silent movie, The Great Train Robbery, debuts. Comedians immediately start
to reproduce vaudeville sketches on camera.
1907 An 18-year-old Charlie Chaplin starts performing with the Fred Karno Pantomime
Troupe in London. He will be signed by Keystone Studios in 1913 while on tour in the
United States. After filming numerous knockabout slapstick comedies, Chaplin will
develop his trademark tramp-clown persona in the 1915 film The Tramp.
1913 Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle begins working for Keystone Studios. His eight-year film
career as the bubbling, boyish, bulky comedian will propel him to stardom.

1915 w. c. Fields, “The Eccentric Juggler,” an international star for his vaudevillian juggling-tramp routine, stars on Broadway in Ziegfeld Follies.
1917 Joseph “Buster” Keaton, the son of vaudevillians, is brought into the film The Butcher
Boy after meeting Fatty Arbuckle. He will become one of the most physical silent film
comedians, known for the sight gags in his classics Three Ages (1923) and The General (1926).
Laurel and Hardy team up for the first time in Lucky Dog; the collaboration that makes
the duo famous will begin nine years later, when they are cast independently in Hal
Roach’s All-Star Series.
1918 Comedian Harold Lloyd creates his famous film persona, the “Glasses Character,” an
ordinary guy who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances.
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1919 Barnum & Bailey merge with the Ringling Brothers Circus (founded in 1898), forming a combo that will dominate the industry. Technological advances will soon make shifts
between circus acts quicker; consequently, clowns will become less of a practical necessity.
Clown performances will be reduced to visually arresting moments involving spectacular
movement, glittering costumes, oversized props, broad gestures, loud explosions, chase
scenes, etc. Over time, clowns will start to work in large groups rather than pairs.
1938 Abbott and Costello get their big break when they perform their signature act,
“Who’s on First,” on the Kate Smith Radio Hour.
nbc gives Bob Hope, a vaudevillian by trade, his own variety show. Introducing the acts
with a wisecracking American irreverence, he lays the foundation for modern stand-up.
1956 Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey performs its last tented show. Henceforth the
troupe will perform exclusively in arenas.
1959 r. g. Davis founds what will become the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
1968 Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey open the Clown College in Florida.
1974 After working with
the San Francisco Mime
Troupe, Peggy Snider,
Larry Pisoni, and Cecil
MacKinnon, founders of
the Pickle Family Jugglers,
decide to found the Pickle
Family Circus. Bill Irwin
graduates from Ringling
Bros. and Barnum & Bailey
Clown College and joins
the Pickles, soon followed
by Geoff Hoyle.

1984 Cirque du Soleil is
founded by street performers Guy Laliberté and Daniel Gauthier with assistance from the Quebec government.
Wendy Parkman and Judy Finelli found the San Francisco School of Circus Arts as a
special project of the Pickle Family Circus.
Three Musicians: Bill Irwin, Larry Pisoni, and Geoff Hoyle. Photo by Terry Lorant.
2000–01 The San Francisco School of Circus Art acquires the New Pickle Circus and
creates San Francisco’s Circus Center.
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questions to consider
i. How does Molière use Scapin to mock the theater?
2. How have Bill Irwin and Mark O’Donnell purposefully updated this 1671 play?
3. At what moments are the performers “acting" and at what moments are they “clowning”?
4. How does this production use the set and costumes to advance the comedy of the play?
5. What roles do the live music and musicians play in this production? How do they
advance the comedy of the play?
for further information
Briggs, Robin. Early Modern France: 1560–1715. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Calder, Andrew. Molière: The Theory and Practice of Comedy. London: The Athlone Press, 1993.
Davis, r. g. The San Francisco Mime Troupe: The First Ten Years. Palo Alto, ca: Ramparts
Press, 1975.
Duchartre, Pierre Louis. The Italian Comedy. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966.
Fo, Dario. The Tricks of the Trade. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Jenkins, Ron. Acrobats of the Soul: Comedy and Virtuosity in Contemporary American Theatre.
New York: Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 1988.
Lahue, Kalton C. and Sam Gill. Clown Princes and Court Jesters: Some Great Comics of the
Silent Screen. New York: a. s. Barnes and Company, 1970.

Lawner, Lynn. Harlequin on the Moon: Commedia dell’arte and the Visual Arts. New York:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998.
Lorant, Terry and Jon Carroll. The Pickle Family Circus. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1986.
McCarthy, Kathleen. Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy. Princeton,
nj: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Orenstein, Claudia. Festive Revolutions: The Politics of Popular Theater and the San Francisco
Mime Troupe. Jackson, ms: University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
Schechter, Joel. The Pickle Clowns: New American Circus Comedy. Carbondale, il: Southern
Illinois University Press, 2001.
Towsen, John H. Clowns. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1976.
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