A popular Italian comedy, “Troupes of the commedia dell’arte was very popular throughout Europe in the early 1600s. They would work on makeshift stages and without scripts. These companies, which included women actor’s spread a new wave between the actor’s and audiences. Actor’s improvised their own words and comic actions using a basic plot and character types, which created theatrical creativity and would capture the interest of the audience as a whole group. This was so unlike the opera or literary theater, where the emphasis from the audience concentrated on a playwright’s speeches or individual. Scenic displays and literary concepts were not common, thus inspiring the art of acting.
Theatergoers in England by the beginning of the 17th century learned how to distinguish Hamlet by actor-manager, Thomas Betterton. This was accomplished by other productions of Shakespeare’s plays. Using different staging of familiar and classical plays sharpened spectator’s senses. Good acoustics were designed into theater halls to help performers to be heard differently and to have more subtle and natural reflections. Visual details of a performance were easily perceived and critiqued with the introduction of indoor stage lighting. Individual actor’s faces and hands were then displayed by the indoor stage lighting.
Charles Macklin and his student David Garrick became one of the first modern actors on the British stage in the 18th century. Commedia-like farces and pantomime was Charles Macklin’s background and why he was hired, based his character Shylock (a Jewish businessman in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”) on Jews in London. Lifelike details of movement and speech were added to written text. These details might not have been noticed 50 years earlier if not for the stage lighting, acoustic changes and other technologies.
Under better lighting conditions and more plausibility, David Garrick continued natural acting. Mimicry was brought to the stage through Garrick’s practices of imitating facial expressions of actual people. In his performance of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Garrick used a crazed neighbor to reenact the accidental killing of his infant daughter. Garrick never dropped his character during a performance and he would listen and react in character to all the dialogue around him. Because of this, he was very popular with theatergoers.
